I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Val Shawcross AM, the Labour Group’s transport spokesperson on the London Assembly, has put forward an eminently sensible response to the Mayor of London’s interminable consultation on his favoured pet scheme of the abolition of the Western half of the Congestion Charge Zone.  She has proposed that the current Zone be split into two separate Zones – each with their own charge.

Her proposal would turn the western extension into a separate zone with its own rules, operating times and charging structure.  West London residents would not have to pay to drive in the new zone but would lose the discount they currently enjoy for driving into central London.

She quotes Transport for London figures that show that the Mayor’s proposals would produce a 15 per cent increase in traffic levels as a direct consequence of removing the western extension zone and up to £70m of revenue lost every year.

When Mayor Ken Livingstone first proposed extending the Congestion Charge Zone to the West, I tried to persuade him to create two separate Zones then, so it is good to see Val Shawcross reviving the idea now.

It always seemed barmy to me to allow the residents of Kensington and Chelsea – some of whom are extremely wealthy – to drive in the original Congestion Charge Zone with a residents’ discount when they had previously had to pay the full Congestion Charge.  It was in effect a subsidy to the already well-off.  And, as I suggested to the then Mayor, hardly an egalitarian thing to do.

The present Mayor now wants to stop the residents of the Western Zone getting this subsidy.  I would support that if it were not for the loss of revenue that will make TfL’s budget problems even more difficult.

Val Shawcross is now offering the sensible way forward: the well-off residents in K&C etc will only get a resident’s discount when they drive in their own part of the Zone, but would have to  pay the normal Congestion Charge when they drive in the other part of the Zone.

So her proposal is fairer, generates a lot more revenue for TfL to invest in the capital’s transport system, and would also further reduce congestion and improve air quality.

It is such a good idea, maybe the current Mayor will pinch it.

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Ken Livingstone has announced that one of his objectives if re-elected as Mayor in 2012 will be to make London the world’s first “Smart City”.

The examples he give include:

• easing parking chaos in London if re-elected by bringing in a system like that used in San Francisco, where 6,000 of the 24,000 metered parking places are fitted with sensors that allow drivers to find spaces via wi-fi. The American city’s $23 million network shows available spots on motorists’ mobile phones and electronic street signs. If drivers want to add more time to a parking meter they can also do it by mobile.
• using real-time “smart meters” to cut energy use in homes and businesses. In Sweden these have resulted in a 24 per cent reduction in energy use.

He expands on his ideas in more details at LabourList.

What he demonstrates is a long-term strategic vision for London that would not only benefit its residents but give London the edge in international competitiveness.  His ideas also highlight the lack of strategic vision currently displayed by the Conservatives in London.

The full Government list has now been published and I note that no fewer than ten Ministers are not drawing a salary.  I think this must be a record.

Presumably, some Ministers are sufficiently wealthy that they regard the Ministerial stipends on offer as just not worth bothering about – although there are clearly  others who despite being very well off have decided to take the money.

It would be interesting to know whether any of those declining a salary have been given any exemptions from the usual rules about holding other external appointments whilst serving as a Minister.

For the record the unpaid ten are:

• Lord Howell of Guildford – Foreign Office
• Lord Freud – Department of Work and Pensions
• Lord Marland – Department of Energy and Climate Change
• Baroness Warsi – Minister without Portfolio
• David Heath MP – Deputy Leader of the House of Commons*
• Brooks Newmark MP – Whip
• Philip Dunne MP – Whip
• Baroness Northover – Whip*
• Lord Taylor of Holbeach – Whip
• Lord Wallace of Saltaire – Whip*

The three marked with an * are LibDems.

The recent General Election means that I have only just spotted an item that was in the Daily Mail a week or so back.  This reports that:

“A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe.

The three members – two men and a woman – of the Italian terrorist group Il Silvestre were stopped just a few miles from their target with their explosive device primed and ready to go.

Italians Costantino Ragusa and Silvia Guerini, together with Italian-Swiss Luca Bernasconi, were arrested and jailed after a search of their vehicle revealed the bomb.

Guerini and Constantino – the 33-year-old leader of Il Silvestre – already have convictions for eco-terrorism offences and have served jail terms. 

The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons.

Swiss police said today that their car was halted on the night of April 15 at Langnau en-route to the technology centre at Rueschlikon, near Zurich. 

The site is due to be opened next year and already has some of the most complex and advanced computer equipment in the world installed in it.

‘A large quantity of explosives was found,’ said a police spokesman.”

The report continues:

“The IBM facility that the Il Silvestre group was targeting is still under construction.  When finished, it will contain the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe for nano-and-bio-technological research, with the probability of billions of pounds in profit for IBM.

Investigators are quizzing the suspects on whether the planned attack is part of a new co-ordinated wave of terror against such facilities on the continent.

Swiss media reported that the intended bombing was planned to coincide with a secret meeting of European anarchists on April 16 and 17 in the Swiss town of Winterthur.

Some newspapers speculated it was being planned to bring attention to the imprisonment of Il Silvestre member Marco Camenisch, currently in jail for the murder of a Swiss border guard.  Guerini and Constantino were in jail with him in 2006 and joined in a hunger strike.

Il Silvestre was spawned in the Tuscan countryside and is now considered to be one of the rising terror groups in Europe with a rigid cell structure, access to explosives and a membership that has no qualms about killing to achieve its goals.

It is considered as one of the successor groups to the lethal Red Brigades that scorched Italy in 70’s and 80’s.”

This is a timely reminder that – as I have repeatedly argued – the focus of counter-terrorist work must not just be on al Qaeda inspired groups.  There is a need to think outside the box and be aware of a much wider range of potential threats.

Most political commentators are now hedging their bets in terms of what will happen after the General Election.  Nick Robinson talks about a “growing expectation” that David Cameron will be Prime Minister but then fudges it by saying that we “can’t know the outcome”.

I am prepared to make a firm prediction, however.  If the polls stay as they are and there are no last minute shifts, there WILL be a Tory Government with a small (10-20 seats) majority.

And what will happen then?

It is pretty easy to predict that too.

An emergency budget within weeks in which Chancellor George Osborne (and doesn’t that strike terror in the heart?) will solemnly tell the nation that “the books are so much worse than we expected”.  So VAT up to 20% (maybe 25%) and an immediate public sector jobs freeze and pay freeze (if not a pay cut) coupled with a massive reduction in budgets and a suspension of most public sector capital spending.  This will be softened by an emergency Bill to “enable” the “Big Society” (or the post -bureaucratic state as they originally wanted to call it).

This will enable the Cameron Government to tell the public that they don’t need to worry about the cuts in schools budgets or the collapse of SureStart or whatever else it might be, because local effort can provide alternatives or keep things going.  Hopi Sen brilliantly explains what the impact of the Swedish Schools model would mean and Luke Akehurst has the reality of “The Big Society”.

In practice, very few people will have the inclination or the opportunity to organise alternative “community-led” provision and those that do will not be the low-paid, the marginalised or the dispossessed.  And they certainly won’t be those whose families are hit by the job losses in the public sector or the double-dip private sector recession that will be precipitated by an Osborne emergency budget.

Meanwhile, Cameron’s small majority will give disproportionate influence to the fanatic Euro-sceptics and climate change deniers in the Parliamentary Conservative Party.  To keep them sweet, the UK will become totally marginalised in Europe and allied with the Sarah Palin wing of US politics – the result will be the forfeiture of Britain’s position in the world.

So an isolated, bankrupt nation with devastated public services beckons after Thursday.

It is not an enticing prospect, is it?

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to happen.

Yes, there will be a Tory Government according to the present polls.

But, there is still time.  It only takes one in thirty Tory voters to realise that the Conservatives are still “the nasty Party”, one in ten of those flirting with the LibDems to realise that Nick Clegg is really Cameron-lite and decide they don’t want to help him deliver a Conservative Government, and one in ten of those that were planning not to bother to vote to realise what is at stake and that their vote matters and that their really can be “a future fair for all”.

It is not that many and all that needs to happen is that they listen to this in the next twenty-four hours.

The Ipsos MORI analysis in The Observer gives some interesting analysis of public perceptions of the three Party Leaders.

Actually, interesting is not the word – it is devastating for Nick Clegg and pretty awful for David Cameron.

When asked which of the three Party leaders would be best in a crisis, only 12% rated Nick Clegg (33% favoured David Cameron and 40% Gordon Brown).

On who is the most capable, Clegg only scored 17% (with 33% and 36% for the Cameron and Brown respectively).

And on who best understands world problems, Clegg could only muster 14% and Cameron 23%, while Gordon Brown scored 45%.

So with bombs in New York, melt-down in Greece, climate change, a fragile economy, and troops in Afghanistan, the message is quie clear:

“It’s no time for a novice.”

BBC’s Newsnight, demonstrating that their editors can still take what Sir Humphrey himself might have called “a brave – if not career-limiting – decision”, have produced (in the style of  “Yes Minister“) a brilliant dissection of the Tory manifesto.

See it here.

In fact, senior mandarins have already put the finishing touches on their memos for incoming Ministers.  As one proudly told me a few days ago: 

“New Ministers in my Department are going to be faced with three really urgent and unbelievably difficult decisions as soon as they arrive and they’ll have to deal with those before we can even start to consider their manifesto commitments.”