My interview with True Tube

A few weeks ago I did an interview with True Tube. Here it is:


TIME FOR RESULTS

Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade

I was the guest of honour at the Awards Parade of the London regiment of the Jewish Lads & Girls Brigade on Sunday.

There was a great, upbeat atmosphere and the children were clearly very proud to be there, the rain even held off until the end.

One of the elements I respect most about the JLGB is that they do not recognise any contradiction between a love of their faith and a love of the country. Allied to the excellent youth development work that they do it is a winning formula.

I wish them the continuing luck for the future.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Skovsende

Armed Forces Day

Although the official Armed Forces Day is on the 27th we held our celebration on Friday.

The sun shone and band played and Deputy Mayor of London, Richard Barnes AM, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nicholas Houghton KCB CBE and Under Secretary of State Kevan Jones all gave speeches thanking serving and past members of the forces.

I had a chance to talk to a number of veterans who were receiving their veteran's badges and serving personnel from all the services.

Here are a few photos from the day:

Band of the Irish Guards lead the march across Tower Bridge

Deputy Mayor, Richard Barnes AM with Flt Lt Michelle Goodman DFC

Me with a Lieutenant of the Royal Navy and a Major in the Royal Marines

London Select Committee

Yesterday Labour forced through a vote to create a London select committee to scrutinise London issues.

Hang on, that's my job.

The most worrying element of this vote was that the government clearly hasn't got a clue about the Mayoralty and assembly that they created.

Take this exchange from yesterday's debate.

"Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon) (Lab): A very good example of that is the current review of acute stroke and major trauma services going on within NHS London, in which the boroughs are advancing different positions. As a regional issue that is below the radar of the Select Committee on Health, is that not an ideal example of how a London Committee could do some value-added work to hold NHS London to account and check whether those proposals are indeed in the interests of Londoners?

Ms Harman: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As a Member of Parliament for a London constituency, I know that there are issues on which London MPs, working through a Select Committee, could achieve greater accountability on my constituents’ behalf. Health issues, for example, inevitably cross constituency boundaries. They do not fall within the purview of the London boroughs and are not the responsibility of the assembly. On their own, they would justify the work of a Regional Select Committee"

Funny thing is that on Tuesday the London Assembly's Health and Public Services Committee (which I chair) had the Chief Exec of NHS London in to scrutinise acute stroke and major trauma reconfiguration.

Until Harman knows what she is talking about I recommend she shuts up.

This whole plan also flies in the face of the government's claim to embrace devolution. Incompetence and lies all in one day.

Boris' taxi costs

This is getting silly. The idea that Boris is somehow pillaging the public purse because of last year's taxi costs is comic.

Most of the time he travels by bike and it's worth remembering that every London borough mayor has a dedicated car and full time driver. Would Londoners be happier if we went down that route?

By the way here is a picture of the Mayor of New York's official (tax funded) residence. Boris doesn't get one of these either.

RMT & Cuba

This is a photo of the headquarters of the RMT, below the RMT flag is the flag of Cuba.

Read the full details here.

Armed Forces Day

Any regular reader will know that I am immensely proud of our Armed Forces and more than pleased to support the Armed Forces Day on the 27th of June. It was great to see General Dannatt and the Mayor raise a flag by City Hall.

BUT....

What the hell is going on with that flag?

I managed to miss the announcement of its creation back in April and have to confess to being hugely underwhelmed having seen it today for the first time. Surely we could have come up with something a bit more fitting than just cutting the Union flag in half and gluing the words "Armed forces day 27 June" underneath.

Maybe I'm just being old and grouchy.

Ian Clement's resignation

The news of the Conservative's new European party group, the election of a new Speaker of the House of Commons and the opening day of Wimbledon have overshadowed the resignation of Ian Clement.

I've been at youth oriented engagements all day so I'm not fully up to speed with the details but it looks like Ian has been stupid and greedy at best. I'm angry and disappointed.

I won't pretend that this won't add to the local anger caused by Derek Conway's behaviour but both these issues are personal failings of individuals both of which were dealt with decisively by the party.

MP bought ornamental pig trough on expenses

No, not really!

But we've got to the stage where the headline is believable.

I am genuinely at a loss as to why the commons released the blacked-out version of their expenses knowing full well the unedited version is already in the public domain.

This indicates to me that many MPs, maybe the majority, still don't get just how bad this episode has made them look.

The new speaker needs to get a grip on this and I would suggest that as a guide to how deep the reforms need to go the phrase "if it aint hurting it aint working" should be used.

Spending cuts or tax increases

Gordon Brown and the Labour party are tying themselves up in knots over public spending. Their line that the election will be a choice between Labour investment and Conservative cuts is being laughed at in every corner of the media.

But even if it were true what would that mean?

If Labour are really going to increase spending where would they get the money? The interest payments on the national debt are going through the roof so additional borrowing isn't an option available to them. The only other option is a huge increase in taxation.

So what is it going to be Mr Brown, honesty about public spending cuts or do you have a plan for a major hike in taxation? I think we should know.

Labour activist says "entrench Labour policies in law"

I've heard some rubbish spouted by the left in my time but this really takes the biscuit. This is the opening sentence from an article by a London Labour activist over on LabourList.org:

The Government needs to expand on Yvette Cooper's announcement last week and start to entrench our values and policies in law to stop a potential Tory government undoing Labour’s achievements of the last decade.

That's right, Mike Smith says that Labour should enshrine their policies in law just in case the electorate are foolish enough to reject them. I have long felt that the left have a deep seated loathing of democracy and Mike Smith's post goes some way to proving it.

James Whale, what a dick!

At 6PM this evening I did a live slot with James Whale on LBC, talking about the youth alcohol report that the London Assembly has just published.

I've done plenty of "tough" interviews but was genuinely surprised by the one I did with him. He started by saying how shocked he was by the scale of youth drinking in London. He then went on to slate the fact that we had investigated and written the report.

I don't understand why he would devote an hour to discuss the findings of a report he doesn't think has anything interesting in it.

None of that worries me much but I have to confess to being disappointed to hear him then goad callers on to slag me off personally for the next half an hour.

Recommendations from the report are already being taken up by Croydon council and I am confident that it will make a difference. I don't care if it doesn't conform to James Whale's brand of uber-simplistic politics.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over this and I'll be happy to go on the show again. If James behaves like a dick again I'll blog about him being a dick again.

Very young Londoners drinking 180,000 bottles of beer a week

This just one of the shocking facts that has come out of the London Assembly's Health & Public Services Committee report into youth problem drinking "Too much, too young?".

I have chaired the committee's work in this area over the last 10 months and we have completed the first comprehensive assessment of young London's drinking habits, the news isn't good.

11-15 year olds drink the equivalent of 180,000 bottles of beer each week, more than a third of 11-21 year olds drink regularly compared to one in five who did so in 1996-1999. Young women and girls are catching up with the drinking habits of boys with the number alcohol related hospital admissions for 11-21 year old women more than tripling since 2002.

It's not all bad news, Bexley council have shown that tough licencing enforcement and good relations with police and alcohol retailers have seen a significant reduction in underage drinking and Croydon are launching a Community Alcohol Partnership to reduce the problem in New Addington.

A copy of the draft report can be found at the committee's website.

Some of the coverage of the report's findings:

Morning Advertiser - Drinks industry paper

The Publican - Drinks industry paper

BBC

The Guardian

Iraq inquiry, what a farce

What is Brown so scared of? The truth.

Once again the government is trying to bury any news which might make it look bad. Brown has today announced that the inquiry into the Iraq deployment will be conducted behind closed doors. The cost of the war in Iraq has been huge, both in terms of lives lost and money spent, the decisions which took us to war need to be investigated and that investigation needs to be in the open.

I'm not so naive to think that everything can be discussed in public but I feel that this (as with all government) should be as open as possible.

The justification for going to war given by Tony Blair at the time has now been shown to have been wrong, we need to know whether it was an inadvertent error of if the was "economical with the truth".

Pandemic, should we find a better word?

Pandemic sounds really bad doesn't it? Sounds like a mash-up of the words panic, pandemonium and epidemic. And epidemic sounds bad enough on its own.

The WHO (World Health Organization, not to Roger Daltrey et al) have changed the status of the influenza A(H1N1) virus to pandemic status. Basically this means that the outbreak is in a number of countries not that the virus has become any more aggressive or harder to treat.

Clearly swine flu is something which we need to take seriously but not something we should panic about. I can't help think that a better word than pandemic would help calm the nerves slightly.

The tube strike falters as does London Labour

Bob Crow tried to make this strike about pay, then it was about conditions, then it was about safety, then it was about showing solidarity to workers facing disciplinary action. The truth is that the strike was always about him and his desire to flex his muscle.

Clearly other transport unions and even other members of the RMT didn't want to play his game. His call for "all out" action has failed with many union members turning up to work and any attempt to win public opinion has dramatically failed.

The only people in London who seem to have any sympathy with Bob Crow's position are the Labour group on the London Assembly. At this morning's meeting we tabled a motion condemning the cabal at the top of the RMT for this costly and disruptive strike. Labour put forward an amendment trying to water down the condemnation and shift the blame onto the Mayor.

They clearly hadn't budgeted for the unwillingness of the other left of center groups to support their amendment. Both the Greens and the Lib Dems were on the side of Londoners and unequivocally condemned the strike.

Labour were left looking very foolish and join Bob Crow in the dinosaur side of the argument.

Bromley & Downham Youth Club

I had a great night last night at the Bromley & Downham Youth Club.

Opened in the 1920s it sits right on the borough boundary of Bromley and Lewisham and looks after the kids from Downham. They have a children's day care centre during the day and football, boxing, pool, Wii etc in the evenings.

The club provides another example of what passionate people can achieve with very limited resources, the boxing equipment and ring has to be built ever night and then disassembled after the training in preparation for the day care the next morning.

Despite this they have produce a number of really talented young boxers and provided support, activities and advice to a whole host of children who would never step inside a boxing ring.

The photos were taken by Mark Morris, who was a local councillor in Downham but now works at City Hall. What do you think, champion heavyweight in the making?

Sir David Normington on thin ice

Civil servants are meant to be politically neutral. Sir David Normington (Permanent Secretary at the Home Office) is very close to the point at which his political neutrality would be in question.

There have been some very serious questions about the accuracy of the information given to the Met by the Home Office in relation to the arrest of Damian Green MP. The scale of the police operation was in response to the sensitivity of the leaked information, information which we now know was embarrassing but not sensitive. As head of the Home Office civil service team that "spicing up" is ultimately Sir David's fault.

Sir David has now publicly commented on the resignation of Sir Ian Blair. He should not do so. The reasons that Boris lost confidence in Sir Ian were valid and numerous and Sir Ian did the right thing in standing down.

ChildLine

In amongst the hullabaloo of Friday I missed updating you on the morning I spent with Joelle Leader, Assistant Director of ChildLine and some of the London team.

It was a real eye opener, taking part in some of the training that the volunteers go through showed me what a professional organisation it is. Their volume of calls continues to increase and like so many voluntary organisations they are limited by the number of adults who volunteer.

Kids organisations in the capital are crying out for our help and in desperate need of volunteers and most people don’t realise that even a few hours a week can make a real difference.

The Mayor supported Volunteer Week (1- 7 June) and has made it easier for Londoners to volunteer, by launching a website containing a one-stop-shop of volunteering opportunities for Londoners to get involved, www.london.gov.uk/volunteer

You don't have to limit yourself volunteering as a counsellor because there are a range of opportunities including processing paperwork, filing, help with fundraising tasks, research and reception work.

Not right

Trade barriers, protectionism, higher public spending, government centralisation, nationalisation of industry!

How can anyone think the BNP are right wing?

Results undermine Labour's pre-election narrative

The election results over the last few days have been very bad for Labour.

Brown and his, increasingly small, core team have been trying to define the criteria for assessment for weeks. Thy claimed that people would say "a pox on all your houses" and abandon all of the mainstream parties, they said that economic crisis was the end of capitalism, they said the Gordon Brown was well respected by the grass roots and voters even if the Westminster village were attacking him. All of these claims have been shot to bits by the results.

In both the European and local elections voters abandoned Labour and rather than run to the loony fringes voted Conservative. The Conservatives have beaten Labour in many of Labour's traditional heartland regions.

The fact that left of center parties all across Europe have lost votes to the center right shows that voters do not believe in the end of capitalism, rather they recognise the need for business minded parties to dig us out of the economic hole we are now in.

And most damning for Brown is the clear statement made by the British electorate. Far from being an issue of Westminster introspection, his failings as Prime Minister have been rewarded with the worst Labour election results in 80 years.

I suspect that Brown will refuse to recognise any of these things and try to carry on regardless, I also suspect that the Labour party will show just as much weakness now as they did after Blair. It was that weakness which let Gordon Brown walk into Number 10 unopposed and untested.

I don't know what to say!

You might want to sit down.

I really am lost for words, I don't know what will happen next and I haven't been through anything like this before.  I can't see how Brown can stay as Prime Minister but I don't believe he will step down either.

He is losing cabinet ministers at an unprecedented rate and the kind of battles that Maggie faced behind the scenes in 1989/90 are being fought via the media and in the public eye.  Surely this makes his position untenable.

Yet.

If he steps down or is ousted a new unelected PM will take over, I cannot see the British public standing for that.  The new PM will have to call a General Election almost immediately which against the backdrop of division and in fighting they are bound to lose.  Probably badly.  Who on earth would want to do that?

So I'm lost!!!!  Give me a clue, what is going to happen?

£285million scheme helps just two families

Brown was keen to be seen to be helping families through the economic downturn, there were announcements, policy ideas, action, action, action. All for the headlines.

It now turns out that the flagship £285million mortgage rescue package had only helped two families keep hold of their properties. Set against the backdrop of approximately 20,000 people who have lost their homes it is scandalous.

Government by spin is bad enough during the good times but when people's homes and their livelihoods are at stake it is inexcusable. Brown has clearly lost control of his cabinet, his party's MPs and the government departments which are supposed to be delivering his rhetoric.

The government are clearly now powerless, it is damaging the country and destroying the Labour party. It has to end.

After the European and council elections the SNP and Plaid Cymru plan to table a Commons motion to dissolve Parliament and trigger an immediate general election. The Conservatives and Lib Dems will support the motion and if Labour back benchers cared about the country or even their party's own long term survival they would support the motion too.

The sad truth is that Jacqui Smith was always out of her depth

I'm sure that I will get accused of misogyny but I'm going to say it any way. Jacqui Smith was never up to the job, not because she was a woman but because she was rubbish. Home Secretary is one of the toughest jobs in politics and it needs someone who is at the top of their game, Jacqui Smith isn't.

I'm saddened that the issue of her husband's TV viewing did her so much damage as it really was an irrelevance (which is why I didn't write about it at the time), the real damage was that she used her position for party political advantage when defence of the nation should have been her priority.

With less than a year to go before a General Election, Brown will have to find another Home Secretary, who will take some months to find their feet and then be pitched into the maelstrom of the election campaign itself. We will have no real leadership at the Home Office until after the general election.

Greasy haired tw*t

I don't know what the proof reading is like at Cornwall Lib Dem HQ (better than mine on this blog I'll wager), but I'm amazed that they let this little gem through!

"The paperwork was distributed on behalf of Anna Pascoe, Lib Dem candidate
for Cornwall Council elections on 4 June.

It calls Mebyon Kernow candidate Stuart Cullimore a "greasy-haired twat".
He is considering what action to take."

I had to hold my sides when I first read it.