Conservatives don’t like Europe. In fact, they don’t like abroad generally. However, it is also clear that they don’t care about Britain’s place in the world.
“I don’t suppose there are many heroes who wear a cardigan and cords. But that’s how I imagine the BBC World Service, an ageing uncle who’s seen it all. It has a style that makes understatement seem like flamboyance.
Yet I have never, ever, anywhere in the world, heard anyone say a bad word about the World Service. It is more trusted than its American equivalents, more lively than Deutsche Welle, more imitated (unsuccessfully) than any of them. It has a team of steady, dedicated and resourceful correspondents stationed around the world. Their probity is beyond doubt. Its television service puts its poverty on proud display every day.
How many people will be going to the barricades to save the Macedonian or Albanian services and the others now to be cut? Not many – most of us have no idea what they’re saying. And as for the Caribbean, that’s presumably a decision to leave the former colonies to the mercy of the American networks.
No journalistic service has a God-given right to exist for ever. But we are dealing here with something more. How many millions listen to the World Service in some form? A mere 241 million people, they say – the figures are so vast as not to mean very much. But it must be many more than will ever clap eyes on William Hague, listen to an ambassadorial speech or attend a Foreign Office leadership conference.
The World Service’s misfortune was to be controlled by the Foreign Office. I can imagine the scene when the menacing note comes across from the Treasury. “Good Heavens!” says the Permanent Secretary, “they want us to save money. Anyone got any ideas?” No one suggests abandoning the pile on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré or recognising that perhaps the whole diplomatic service belongs to the days before email and the internet – the telephone even. Then a voice pipes up, “I know, why don’t we hand the BBC World Service over to the BBC and make it their problem?” “Excellent,” says the PS. “Shall we have a cup of tea?”"
Every January, the Lord Mayor of London hosts a dinner at the Mansion House in the heart of the Square Mile in honour of the ‘Governing Bodies of London’. For the last ten years this has been addressed by the (elected) Mayor of London – in effect providing a platform for an Annual State of London Address
Mayor Boris Johnson has usually offered an entertaining, if sometimes rather incoherent, fifteen minutes or so of fairly random observations vaguely related to London issues. (Not quite the dignified and substantive gravitas-loaded approach originally envisaged by the Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common Council that make up the Corporation of London.)
Tonight was no exception. The only point of any substance was the Boris Johnson solution to poor industrial relations on the London Underground: an offer to those present to drive the trains. After several glasses of wine, quite a number in the audience seemed up for it.
Our safety in their hands (courtesy of Mayor Boris Johnson).
I have to admit that I am not a regular listener to BBC Radio 4′s ‘Moneybox’ consumer advice programme. However, I happened to be listening to the first part of today’s programme and heard the presenter, Paul Lewis (whom I knew years ago when he was Deputy Director of the National Council for One Parent Families and we were both involved in the National Fuel Poverty Forum), explain to listeners that as a result of the Chancellor’s decision to raise VAT to 20% the public was now paying a fifth of the shop price as tax on non-exempt items.
At the risk of sounding like an old f*rt, I have to point out that he was, of course, wrong.
(For the arithmetically challenged, the correct answer is a sixth – if the base price of an item is £100, VAT of 20% brings the shop price to £120, so £20 or one sixth of the purchase price goes in tax.)
No doubt, the Chancellor might have liked to clobber those on low incomes even harder, but the fact is that he didn’t.
Presumably, Jeremy Hunt (not the biggest fan of the BBC given the famous ‘Today’ spoonerism) will see this as yet another example of BBC political bias.
I fear, however, that the most likely explanation is incompetence. The programme’s script-writers cannot do simple maths.
But it is a bit worrying for a programme that is supposed to provide its listeners with financial advice.
Parliamentary budgets are not treated in the same way as other elements of public expenditure, but both Houses usually take account of the stringency being faced by the rest of the public sector. So as Peers arrived today, they found the building especially cold (often many parts are maintained at nursing home temperatures). The general consensus seemed to be that the heating had been turned off over the weekend (despite record low London temperatures) to save money. It is not yet recorded how many water pipes have burst as a consequence.
We are told that there will be a revamped National Cyber Security Strategy published in the next few months. This will explain what the £650 million of new money allocated for cyber security in the spending review will actually be used to deliver (I understand that Whitehall Departments are still bickering over who will get their hands on this money - the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office both believe it should come to them rather than the Cabinet Office).
However, I wonder whether it will also propose legislation. In the United States a number of members of Congress are putting forward what they are calling the “Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010”. This will give a statutory basis to the Office of Cybersecurity & Communications based in the Department of Homeland Security and would, in particular, create a new Cybersecurity Compliance Division to oversee the establishment of performance-based standards responsive to the particular risks to the .gov domain and critical infrastructure networks.
This is an interesting model. In the UK, the Government bodies that are responsible for protecting the critical national infrastructure do not have a statutory basis and do not have any formal powers. In my view, this hampered the effectiveness of the old National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre, which is now incorporated into the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure and falls under the ambit of the Security Service.
I have long advocated that underpinning the “voluntarist” and consensual framework Government needs to have a statutory frmaework that – in extremis – can be used to require Government agencies and those private companies that supply much of the national infrastructure to meet certain minimum standards and can direct action effectively in the event of some major problem arising.
The Financial Services Authority has decided that all investment bankers and traders in the UK should have calls made on company mobile phones taped in a bid to crack down on insider trading. According to the BBC:
“Office land lines, e-mails and communications through messaging systems are already recorded. … The FSA estimates extending the taping rule – to come into force in November 2011 – will cover about 16,000 mobile phones and cost about £11m to set up. Annual running costs will be a further £18m it predicts.”
Strangely, however, personal mobile phones are not being included in the move. So the rogue banker – if readers can get their heads round such a concept – who wants to do a bit of insider trading on the side, only has to use their personal phone or, if they want to be really careful, an unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile.
So either bankers are really stupid or the FSA are ……..
Avid readers of this blog (and there must presumably be one of you out there) will recall that I have been pestering the Department for Business Innovation and Skills with Parliamentary Questions designed to find out how serious the Conservative Coalition is about promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship. The first answer I got back essentially said they didn’t know. I have now had three more answers which essentially say they still don’t know:
Business: Entrepreneurship
Questions
Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the budget of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was spent on promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom in each of the past five years.[HL2879]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox): We are not able to provide the information requested. Owing to previous structural changes arising from decisions about the machinery of government, we cannot accurately allocate spend to these specific areas. Promotion of enterprise and entrepreneurship covers a wide range of activities and financial information is split between a number of areas of spend and individual databases within the department.
Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to increase or decrease the proportion of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills annual expenditure allocated to promoting and developing enterprise and entrepreneurship. [HL2880]
Baroness Wilcox: The budgets have not yet been allocated following the spending review (SR) settlement of 20 October 2010.
In the SR, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was allocated £14.7 billion in 2014-15 a reduction to its resource budget of 25 per cent and to capital spending of 44 per cent.
Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop the Work for Yourself Programme, as set out in the Coalition Agreement; and how much funding the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills plans to allocate to develop the Work for Yourself Programme in each of the next five years. [HL2881]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud): Your question has been passed to the Department for Work and Pensions as this department has responsibility for the new enterprise allowance formerly known as work for yourself. Following the spending review, funding for the NEA has been secured as part of the department’s budget for the years 2011-12 and 2012-13. The design and delivery of the allowance is currently being finalised and therefore no decision has been taken on the allocation of funding.
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