The Great Debates

As the week has been so hectic, I'm afraid it's been a while since I last had the chance to update the blog.

Well, it all started with the first of the great debates. OK, I'm going to give Nick Clegg a bit of credit - after all, he did manage to go, within the space of a week, from being someone most people wouldn't recognize if they bumped into him to being the most popular party leader since Winston Churchill. So I do agree with Nick about one thing at least - you have a choice in this election other than Labour or the Conservatives.

We have quickly seen the well worn arguments of the "Vote Clegg, get Brown," variety. The point, of course, is that Labour and the Tories have a symbiotic love-hate relationship. They must make a great show of hating each other, for of course their raison d'etre is to keep the other out. In fact, of course, both are entirely happy with a system that allows them to make a "it's one or the other" argument, and any other vote is a "wasted vote." If you don't vote for one of the big two, you don't count and neither do your views. With all this, it's hardly surprising that around a third of the electorate didn't bother to vote at all in 2005. But it's not just about the big three either; we need to tell people that their vote counts whoever they choose.

What has been particularly amusing is seeing the reaction of the tabloid newspapers to the scandalous notion that the British public should have the right to decide the outcome of the election instead of them. I think that Nick has so far been accused of just about everything short of satanic ritual abuse, although that too may soon be coming.

And so to the other great debate. Well, I'm not talking about the second debate last night, which I didn't see (as I don't have Sky) and which the BBC spent about 20 minutes dissecting ad nauseam on the news. We had the first campaign hustings, courtesy of the York Older People's Forum, at the Friends' Meeting House on Monday, at which I think all the candidates acquitted themselves well; this includes Paul Abbott of UKIP who popped along and spoke several times from the audience. I think there are a number of issues that might crop up again in later hustings, but more of that later.

Justice for the Jarvis workers

Yesterday, I attended the march in York in support of the Jarvis workers who have been made redundant. The march itself was just like the good old days - megaphones, banners and copies of the Socialist Worker on sale; in fact, it's a shame there weren't a few chants of "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out! Out! Out!" for old times' sake. I ended up with a good friend of mine holding the other end of his banner. But the purpose was certainly deadly serious.

The fiasco leading up to the sacking of the workers is testament to the dysfunctionality of the privatized rail system. Network Rail slashed its track renewal programme by 30% last year, leaving Jarvis in a vulnerable position and the firm finally collapsed in March. Meanwhile, engineering work has been contracted out to other firms employing agency staff. The workers have asked for a TUPE arrangement, which means that they would be taken on by the other companies doing the work under existing terms and conditions. Because this hasn't been applied already, the taxpayer could end up footing the bill for redundancy pay, while skilled employees are thrown out of work. This is entirely typical of the rail industry - public subsidy goes in at one end and private profit comes out at the other, a fact that seems to be lost on some people in other political parties.

However, as of earlier this week, Yorkshire minister Rosie Winterton was still insisting that Network Rail was a private company and that she couldn't intervene. Hugh Bayley, who didn't come to the march (though some of his Labour colleagues on the city council did) has pledged "100% support" for the workers, though it's not clear exactly what will happen in practice as a result of his representations.

It was interesting that a local PC who was policing the march came up to me and said how shocking she thought the treatment of the Jarvis workers was. Of course we need TUPE and decency for Jarvis staff - but we also need to end the shambles of a fractured rail system in which the different entities look after their own interests instead of those of the travelling public.

The Greens are the only party at this election calling for the railways to be brought back into public ownership.

It's hide behind the sofa time...

...and keep your household pets safely away from the television - yours truly has just completed an interview for Look North.

Danni Hewson from the BBC was interviewing three Green candidates about issues that concerned them: Dilys Cluer from Scarborough discussed pensions and older people, Jillian Creasy from Sheffield talked about health (she is a part time GP), and I discussed transport and the economy. We did the interview on the city walls next to the headquarters of Jarvis Rail, who have been hit hard by Network Rail's decision to cut back on track maintenance contracts.

Well, I did manage to fluff one question although Danni was extremely pleasant about it. I wonder whether they could do something like the "comedy of errors" as they used to at the end of the Dick Emery show - where they show all the mistakes that everyone has made, just for a laugh.

A couple of points I did want to get across - a personal passion of mine is that we need to invest in science and innovation. Of course this is partly to do with tackling climate change, but it's also about taking a pride in again being a country where people make and produce things, instead of having everything we used every day made by people on the other side of the world earning 5p an hour.

The other thing is that I don't shy away from saying that we need a more equal distribution of wealth and the taxation system ought to be designed to achieve that. All available evidence shows that almost every social indicator improves - there is less crime, better health, better mental health, people feel happier and more secure... and in fact things are better even for rich people.

Anyway, if I can find out the date of the broadcast it will no doubt be good for a few chuckles.

No to Trident replacement!

I've received a number of e-mails from people asking my view about the proposed replacement for the ageing Trident nuclear weapons system. In fact, this is a topic I've mentioned in my first election leaflet - although the correspondence suggests that the price tag is now £97 billion instead of the £75 billion I had last heard - but there's inflation for you I suppose!

Keeping the budget deficit in check after the disastrous bank bailout will require some tough choices on tax increases and public spending; however, surely one not-so-tough option is to decide not to replace a weapons system that protects us from nothing and no-one. I'm reliably assured that there is no current evidence of plans by any neighbouring country to invade the United Kingdom, so surely in the longer term investing in health, education, infrastructure and science will be of far greater benefit to us. Just to add to that, I believe we should also avoid unnecessary wars of choice, such as that in Iraq, which put military personnel in danger - and surely if we are going to be involved in conflicts, our troops should have the best possible protective equipment. I'm not sure how Trident protects us from roadside bombs planted by terrorists.

The letter also makes the perfectly valid point that, with Obama now seriously talking about cuts in the number of weapons, other countries need to be willing to follow suit to rid the world of as many nuclear bombs as possible. If we are serious about stopping nuclear proliferation elsewhere, we ought to stop proliferating ourselves!

It's also the official policy of the Green Party not to replace Trident, and I'm delighted to offer my full support to that.

Jam today and jam tomorrow

Firstly, I should say that I got a comment on the previous post about whether or not York Central is a marginal seat, and I've posted a response there. No doubt this is a topic that will crop up again.


On Saturday morning, I attended a Friends of the Earth action at Lendal Bridge, which involved handing out jam sandwiches and tarts to passers-by. The objective of this exercise - apart from attracting some slightly puzzled looks - was to highlight the fact that the council's current consultation on traffic levels does not include any option that involves reducing traffic - the only choice is on the level of increase we want to support.

This is coupled with recent data that have shown a sharp deterioration in air quality around the city centre - some particular hot spots are at the Bootham/ Gillygate junction, and at Holgate Road. There are now numerous sites where the EU limit of 40 micrograms/cubic metre for NO2 are being exceeded.

This should occasion some though about how we manage the city's traffic. It's clear from my own observations (I live next to the inner ring road) that the kind of problems that used to exist at peak times are now spreading through the day as roads clog up. This is without all the additional development that York is expected to sustain over the forthcoming years - an extra 1,000 houses or so a year, along with employment opportunities. It's clear there are two options - to simply manage an increasingly dysfunctional transport system, with jams in the centre getting ever worse, or to look at radical options, combining better public transport with measures - which could include congestion charging - to actually limit the amount of traffic that can drive into the city centre.

I make no apologies for favouring the latter of these alternatives. Where the other parties stand is an issue that will no doubt be addressed in the campaign.

The responsibility gap

I met a personal friend of mine this week who has been experiencing horrendous neighbour nuisance. He lives in a terraced house in the city next door to someone with a record of drug abuse and mental health problems who has also been dealing in drugs from his home. What is salutary about this story is that none of the agencies who should have been dealing with the situation - social services, health agencies, the police and the property owner - have been able to prevent it dragging on for years.

I'm certainly not advocating a return to the days when people were incarcerated for years because of teenage angst. However, because of the pressure to reduce the number of beds, the modern health service seems to have adopted the same sort of model as is now used for operations - the patient is whisked in, treated, and then is out of the hospital again before their feet have a chance to touch the ground. Now this may work for ingrown toenails, but for mental health issues it simply doesn't. Drugs are not always the appropriate solution and attempting to diagnose and treat too quickly can exacerbate things.

Perhaps even more of a problem is that the lack of mental health beds resulting from this policy means that people more or less have to sit in a queue waiting for treatment - just the same as for an eye operation. However, whilst they await a place in hospital, those people around them - friends, neighbours and family - have to try and manage desperately difficult situations. In the same way, the police have been aware of the drug dealing from the property, but the drug dealing has continued.

It is also an interesting case study into the problems caused by buy-to-let landlords. The landlady, who lives in the south of England, is an elusive character who seems to change her telephone number regularly and makes a point of being as difficult to contact as possible - so much so that, in the time since the problems began to occur, the police have never been able to speak to her. There is an answer to this - in Scotland, where landlords fail to take reasonable measures they can be recharged for doing so by the local authority. In my view, this ought to go much further - if landlords fail to co-operate with other agencies, then the local authority should be able to take over the property for a specified period of time - say five years - and should receive all rent due on the house in that period of time. Unfortunately no legislation has been enacted in England and Wales to allow this to happen.

In any case, I can only hope his situation improves. Whatever the answer is, we certainly haven't found it at the moment.

The sound of stable doors being slammed firmly shut....

Well, it's a topsy-turvy world. Apparently the Tories are proposing a new tax on banks, which has in turn been slammed by Alastair Darling because it could cause severe damage to the City of London. On that question, I can only quote George Monbiot's excellent riposte on the subject of the 50p top rate of income tax:

"It’s a bitter blow. When the government proposed a windfall tax on bonuses and a 50p top rate of income tax, thousands of bankers and corporate executives promised to leave the country and move to Switzerland. Now we discover that the policy has failed: the number of financiers applying for a Swiss work permit fell by 7% last year. The government must try harder to rid this country of its antisocial elements."

..which was pointed out to me by a Green Party colleague.

But coming back to the point, we should get a couple of things in perspective. We may imagine Dave donning his polo-necked sweater and making off with his mates to a bender in Glastonbury where they are about to plot the downfall of world capitalism - but we should also bear in mind that the Tories fully support the great bank bailout in 2008 - indeed, George Osborne actually called for it before Alastair Darling approved the idea. In my view, this is where the most profound mistake was made.

Let's take RBS as a case in point. In 2007 a consortium involving RBS gained control of ABN AMRO, an investment bank. Like most other investment banks, ABN AMRO was very hard hit when the financial crisis occured, and when RBS reported a £28n loss in January 2009, £20bn of this was down to its partial acquisition of ABN. By its nature, investment banking is a risky business, and it's very unclear why so much taxpayer's money was put into bailing out this operation - except for the fact that years of regulatory failure allowed it to become so heavily entwined with the more basic parts of the financial system that its collapse could have had unpleasant ramifications.

Those unpalatable problems should have been faced in 2008, when the affairs of the insolvent banks should have been wound up in an orderly manner. That doesn't mean there wouldn't have been a charge to the taxpayer - the branch network should have been nationalized and those ordinary RBS savers who had deposits should have been compensated - but this would have cost a fraction of the amount that was actually spent shoring up the whole rotten system. In fact, there are investment banks, hedge funds and other bodies in the appropriately named "shadow banking system," mainly based in tax havens, who should thank their lucky stars for the generosity of British, and other taxpayers - not that they pay any tax in the UK themselves, of course. Still, if you happen to be passing the Cayman Islands any time soon, I'm sure they might be civil enough to offer you a dry Martini in exchange.

Going back to the "bank tax," one should remember that in its original incarnation, it was billed as a sort of insurance fund in case the banks had to be bailed out again. In my view, this gives the worst possible message to the risk takers. However, given that we are where we are, I would support the bank tax so that ordinary people can claw back some of their money that has been so unwisely invested. The question is whether we can really look forward to a reduction in jobs in the City as a result.

The dominance of the financial sector has actually been like a powerful and unhealthy drug to the British economy. Successive chancellors have found it convenient to rub along with their mates in the city because of the money that it brought in for the Treasury - until 2008, of course, when a lot of it went back again. But it has also gradually but profoundly distorted the economy - destroying manufacturing because of the overvalued pound, making us dependent on cheap imports and the retail sector and increasing the disparity between the economy of the south east and other regions. The large bonuses so gleefully handed out have also helped to drive a ten-year housing boom, which at its height meant that many homeowners were making more money on paper from the appreciation in the value of their house than they were earning at work; all these things were symptoms of the "money for nothing economy."

That's why I put in my latest leaflet that we need to be supporting science, innovation and manufacturing for the 21st century. This is partly about dealing with climate change and creating "green technologies," but it's also about back to basics - earning our brass by producing goods and services that people want to buy. If that means that some bankers leave the country, then goodbye and don't forget to send us a postcard.