Paying Interns

Wow, that's helpful. And it's not even funny. But then again, it wasn't meant to be.

There is a growing campaign at the moment that suggests that we must do something to improve the lot of interns across the country. But especially those working in Westminster. The campaign is called Intern Aware and it is presently stepping up its efforts to lobby for them to be paid at least the minimum wage.

Of course, paid internship schemes already exist.

They are called apprenticeships.

There is little difference between the schemes. Both are about getting young people into work. Both are about giving young people the skills they need to do the job they’re interested in. Both are about the first step on the career ladder.

Only one of them is more elitist than the other.

Internships, of course, can only be taken by those of independent means. That, naturally, excludes vast numbers of the population from taking them.

Declaration of interest: this author was an intern working for an MP for a year. But that was only possible via an entertaining degree course at a certain University. Oh, and lashings of government student loans. Huzzah!

In truth, the internship had the opposite effect. It made me want to get as far away from working there as possible. But still, it worked (and so did I), and I now have over £20k of debts as a glorious millstone of thanks.

Not wanting to get on my Marxist high horse here (wheeled out only on rare occasions), but there is something unpalatable about internships versus apprenticeships. Making interships inaccessible to the working class and huge swathes of the lower middle-class has an unsurprising effect of making sure that those professions accessed only via internships (namely public policy and media) are bastions of the middle and upper classes.

Meanwhile, it’s OK for the working classes, failed because of the political class’s disinterest in their educational surroundings, to stay exactly in their place, by being wedged into manual trades and other “lesser” forms of profession.

Needless to say I have some sympathy with what the Intern Aware scheme is trying to achieve. Politics and the media have got away with abusing willing volunteers (in more ways than just money) for decades.

It’s just gonna be difficult to convince the public at this time that what we need is more money to send more people into the political class.

Good luck to them!

MOTs For Teachers

Was bloody hard to find an image for this post. And even this is a cop out!

Where Scotland leads…

Keith Brown [Scotland's Schools Minister] has told the profession’s regulator, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), to introduce a system of “re-accreditation” to ensure all staff are performing competently.

This is a very long overdue piece of news, and we can only hope it teaches England a thing to two.

Teaching is not like any other profession. It requires the teacher to be absolutely at the top of their game throughout their entire career. At least, if we’re talking about good teachers.

Good teachers are an extraordinary blend of a lot of qualities. But part of the mix is, naturally, being right up to date with both the subject you’re teaching, and the ways in which to teach it.

Teachers do all this now, of course. INSET days, the bane of all teachers’ existence, and the love of students worldwide, are all about keeping teachers up to date. A lot of them are rubbish. An INSET day about the latest piece of government tat, healthy eating,  social care databases… but some of them are indeed worthwhile.

The difficulty though is that we need to be aiming higher. I don’t like to denigrate the teaching profession, because they do a wonderful job, but they are carrying a lot of passengers. There are more new teachers than ever coming through the system, and not enough places for them. We need to use this opportunity get rid of the dross, pension them off, whatever, and start to improve the quality.

We need to settle for no less than “good” teachers everywhere. Turning those into “great” teachers should be a priority.

Teachers owe it to their profession to stay sharp through their career. And if they can’t do it any more (or maybe have never been able to) they either need to be more honest and quit going through the motions for an easy pay cheque, or be removed.

Teachers carry out professional development throughout their career, and rightly so.

Let’s not miss this opportunity to ensure that the nation’s teachers are the absolute best for our children. And in return, let’s cut a bit of the form filling out of the job…

Beware The Fruit Loops

Don't think I could put up with this in the British Parliament...

Nigel Farage is a man who is never going to miss an opportunity to deliver a soundbite.

His disgraceful antics in the European Parliament, unleashing a verbal tirade against the EU “President” was clearly inspired by Daniel Hannan’s equivalent diatribe against Gordon Brown.

And it worked. It got Farage coverage on the national news; I saw the clip on ITV News at 10 last night, and it has also been covered by certain media organisations today. Perfect for his campaign to try to unseat Speaker John Bercow in Buckinghamshire.

And all through behaving like a total clown.

Is this the kind of tone we want in our politics? Boorish, oafish, belonging more in The Red Lion than it does in a General Election campaign?

Because, though maybe things like this get coverage, at the same time no one is really all that impressed by it. Imagine if it was followed by an equally crass response by von Rumpy-Pumpy. I’m sure Sky News might get excited. Maybe too BBC3.

But more likely, it would just turn people off. We like to pretend we don’t care about politicians, and the expenses scandal has done serious damage to their reputation, but you still wouldn’t expect them to get into the kind of antics more closely associated with the bar than the Bar.

David Cameron called UKIP a bunch of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. And maybe I’ve fallen into the same trap with the subject of this post.

And yet it just felt like Farage crossed the line. Perhaps it was the personal insult that did it. And the fact that it was clearly a shameless attempt to cash in on the Hannan-love-in.

Somehow I don’t think it’ll be the last time though.

Do Labour Actually Want To Lose The Election?

Some things probably seemed funny at the time, like this Tory stunt. But it just looks rather... weird. Maybe it's the knee length white socks.

I don’t know about you but there is something in Labour’s behaviour that makes me think they are trying desperately hard to lose this next election.

After all, the past few days have seen the polls start to close, with a mere six point gap. A very exciting prospect for those of us who want a hung parliament and throw the country into a constitutional crisis!

But that’s no good for Labour. Because, as I wrote the other day, Labour’s organisation is woeful. They score too many own goals, and last night was yet another of them:

The chancellor says No 10 and the Tories unleashed “the forces of hell” when he predicted the worst recession for 60 years

What on Earth, at this point, with Labour feeling like they’ve gotten through a storm with almost no additional damage, would make Alistair Darling decide that now is the time to kick off yet another story about Gordon Brown’s style of government?

Let’s be clear, the Alistair Darling interview was nothing particularly new. Everyone knew there was an effort to remove him as Chancellor. The question mark, as always, was whether Brown was the orchestrator of it. Darling didn’t actually say he was. The problem is that it all harks back to a time when Derek Draper was having a major influence on government PR, and that little episode was very costly indeed to Labour’s poll ratings.

Labour really don’t want to remind everyone of the rather nasty individuals Gordon Brown had in his highest offices, running his media operation.

Or maybe they do.

Because it all just seems too coincidental. Every time they seem to be going along well, something throws them off course again.

I know I’ve said this is a good election to lose, but you never expect the national government to actually believe it…

And This Is What We’re Fighting For

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I don’t know about you, but this story makes me pretty mad…

Western diplomats have expressed deep concern at a decree from Afghan President Hamid Karzai giving him total control over a key election body.

The move gives him the power to appoint all five members of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

The body helped expose massive fraud in last year’s presidential poll, forcing Mr Karzai into a second vote.

The Afghan people, our soldiers, and those of other countries are dying for this.

They are dying to create a sham version of democracy which props up an ailing administration that has no power beyond its base in Kabul.

They are dying apparently to secure a better future for Afghanistan, when all that is happening is, as usual, the people at the top are abusing their position for personal and political gain.

But what can we do?

After all, we put him there. We made sure he continues to be re-elected. We set the framework for the constitutional arrangement of the country. We can’t go preaching democracy and then moan when we dislike the result.

But we’ll plunder on regardless. After all, that is the neoconservative view of the world. We have no principled objection to dictators. We’d just rather they all supported us. See Uzbekistan, China and Saudi Arabia. Oh, and Cuba, North Korea and Iran.

Afghanistan. A complete and utter travesty from which we will never extricate ourselves.

Nice job, politicians.

Bully Boy Brown

Somehow, it's hard to imagine someone with hair like that being a bully.

It would be wrong to let the events of the past 24 hours regarding the latest Brown shitstorm to pass without comment, so here goes.

First of all, Andrew Rawnsley is probably one of Britain’s best political journalists. His contacts within Labour especially are second to none. He has always been known as having his finger on the pulse of the New Labour movement, and has always written with tremendous insight into the Blair years in power.

Secondly, the Brown administrations defence of the situation seems to be rather curious. “I have never hit anyone,” said Brown. Well, that’s funny, because Rawnsley never actually accused him of doing so. That’s what we call a straw-man, Gordon. Brown’s spokesman also denied that there had been any inquiry regarding the allegations. Rawnsley never suggested there had been. Merely the Cabinet Secretary asking a few informal questions to find out what was going on.

Thirdly, you have the spectacle of Mandelson denying anything and everything. Except that Brown has a bit of a temper, and has an “impatience to get on with the job” (paraphrased, but broadly right). Classic media management. Try to turn a negative story into a positive one, that Brown is frustrated that he isn’t delivering quickly enough. Make out that the system is against him, but by gosh, he’s trying his damndest!

Fourthly, you have the unexpected twist: the director of a national anti-bullying charity breaking cover in the oddest way, publicly insisting that she has been in contact with members of the Downing Street team regarding allegations of workplace bullying: a claim flatly denied by Number 10, not that they would know if members of their team had indeed called a confidential helpline.

Drawing all this together is the hardest part. What is not disputed is that Brown is a grumpy, messy, sometimes angry person. Angry mostly at himself, and that frustration is taken out on Nokias, newspapers and potentially other people by shouting. Not necessarily at them for their mistakes or failure, but as way of sharing his emotion to his group: “They’re out to get me!” – his (alleged) shouted reaction when he heard about the loss of the child benefit database.

There is also no question about anything physical encounters. If there were, this would be very serious indeed.

That just leaves the unknown. Workplace bullying is hard to nail. Sometimes bullies don’t actually set out to be so. They’re just nasty pieces of work who aren’t very sociable, and their actions are perceived by staff as being hostile towards them.

That may partially answer these allegations, since we already know that Brown is a bit of a brooder, with very poor social skills. But maybe too he has gone a bit too far at some points.

The real question of all this is does it damage him politically.

Only the polls over the next few weeks will tell us that.

UPDATE 15:50 – and the story continues, with the allegations now that our unexpected twist above under “Fourthly” now has a Fifth Dimension. Might the rather amateur looking anti-bully charity actually be stuffed with Tory stooges?

Labour: Looking To The Future

It just doesn't work, does it...

The one thing that caught my eye this morning was a story in The Telegraph regarding how Labour intends to campaign for the next election. It is clearly written in a very scathing tone:

At a pre-election rally in the West Midlands, Mr Brown will warn his party to frame the election not as a chance to pass judgement on the Labour Government.

Most readers would think that that was some kind of crime, as if all elections are always a judgement on past performance.

I’m not so sure they are.

Elections are very rarely about the past. What’s done is done. They are more often a chance for the electorate to proclaim what they want to see different in the years to come. Even more than that, they are a verdict on the present state of the parties and their leaders: which one would be appropriate right now.

In 1983, the choice was a stark difference between Thatcher, emboldened by her Falklands adventure, and Foot, looking like he wanted to send Britain back to a renewed age of 40s and 50s state control. The dark, satanic mills of England’s past.

In 1992, the country thought they’d give the more calm, sober John Major another turn at the wheel, though they didn’t want him to get too carried away with his mandate, hence a small majority.

1997 – little needs to be said. 2001 was a case of Britain saying, “Let’s have more!” to dear Tony. 2005: we still like you Tony, but not a lot, and so we’ll clip your wings a little.

2010: the message will ring out clear: time for change. Again. We’ve heard that message before, of course, but it resonates with electorates throughout the centuries.

Labour would have to be utter fools to not appreciate the mood of the electorate. Rash, feeling angry, wanting to see a completely different style of government in the years ahead. They are verdicts on the past to some degree, but they are still more about wanting something different in future.

As such, Labour should not campaign on their record. Their finest achievements, e.g. the minimum wage, are so long ago now that to talk about them would be in danger of saying “Well, the best we did was in the previous millennium”. Very risky.

Their focus must be full-square on telling the country what life will be like under a fourth Labour term. How they will keep reforming Britain. How they will change the way we are governed. How they will protect our public services from harm in the worrying years of austerity ahead. How they will get the country growing again.

Dangerous, yes. It may mean they are admitting to mistakes. But maybe the voters will appreciate a little honesty in the face of a slippery David Cameron, promising all things to all people.

Renewed Labour, here we come…

Unambitious Britain

Will we ever see one of these here?

A couple of papers this morning are featuring the Tories sudden reversal of interest in backing a new high-speed rail line. Upon closer inspection, however, the story does not quite match the headline.

Apparently, Labour and Lord Adonis are backing a very specific route, while the Tories have decided to become more coy over the issue, instead claiming that they will not back anything this side of an election. Now there’s a surprise. Why would you want to tell the voters what you plan to do, after all?

There is still a fair chance that a new high-speed rail project goes ahead. After all, we are now light years behind our nearest economic rivals, and we are going to have to catch up. Only the US is as stunningly unambitious as we are, but even then Obama’s latest budget is promising to spend at least some cash on the railways.

But, in reality, we have missed the boat. Instead of that trifling little VAT cut, which cost the Treasury billions in lost revenue and was of questionable economic value anyway, why was that money not spent on getting this high-speed rail project up and running? At least it would have employed thousands of people, putting money directly into the economy, and ending up with a legacy that would, surely, have paid back the initial cost of construction in good time?

Instead, here we are, two years into major economic turbulence with no real end in sight, and no further money to get us going again. Options are now almost non-existent; and, in any event, costs are rising all the time.

But let’s go further back. We did, after all, enjoy something like 13 years of ceaseless, unprecedented growth. Quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, more and more economic development, resulting in more and more tax take. Why didn’t we use just a small portion of that investing for the future of this country? After all, the private sector is not going to spontaneously build us a new railway, let alone any other form of infrastructure. Governments have to lead.

Ours didn’t, and has never really been bothered about transport, despite it being almost the only government “service” that everyone uses every day. Whether by road, by train or by air; or whether it’s the goods arriving by lorries, or the letters and parcels being delivered across the nation… our reliance on transport to sustain our modern existence is overwhelming.

And have we done anything to support it?

Have we bollocks.

And The Polls Did Flow

It’s been over a month since we last gazed into our polling crystal ball (because we have other kinds of crystal balls too…) and I suppose it might be time to update it. But when you see the results, you’ll wish I didn’t…

• Conservatives: 40% (N/C)
• Labour: 22% (N/C)
• Lib Dems: 21% (N/C)

Whoops.

Seriously? No changes at all? Yes. It’s largely because we’re still waiting for that rogue Labour 22% poll to drop out of the polling window (in two days!) – and, as for the Tories, I’ve said it time and time again… their 40% poll rating is nailed on by now. They will not score lower than this in the GB overall result. I triple guarantee it!

The other issue is that the number of polls since then has been remarkably low considering how close we are to an election. Just four polls so far in February.

But, lo, there is news on the horizon to help us. And, alas, it means we have to be grateful for the deep pockets of Rupert Murdoch.

The Sun is going to be running tracker polls from now right up until the election. That’s probably going to be about 50 separate polls, presumably costing them hundreds of thousands of pounds. Fair play to them, though I guess their real agenda is having a daily stick to bash “LABOUR LOSERS!” about with. After all, only a fool would vote Labour when they are LOSERS!

So, although the subject of this post is indeed sarcastic, it is also prophetic. We are going to be truly spoiled in the weeks ahead. Though the people with the most to lose are going to be YouGov, as it will be their polling figures that dominate the news agenda. No doubt Labour will dismiss them as a biased internet polling organisation, but they did that for the London Mayoral election of 2008 as well and look where it got them.

In the weeks drawing up to an election, there may or may not be some exciting changes around here. There’ll be less of my opinionated wisdom (hooray!) and more number crunching. The hope is to capture a little of the American spirit of FiveThirtyEight.com – which was essential reading in the run up to the American election of 2008, and will be again this autumn. No regression analyses though. That’s a bit too far…

The waiting continues…

Swing

Haven't you always wanted one of these? I know I have...

“Still I need your swing” – almost sang The Kooks in one of their not very good songs that still sticks in my head.

Recently on Politicalbetting.com, long time poster Andy Cooke has written a few articles which have postulated his own theory as to what the election result will be based on various percentage results. They have been hailed as a major breakthrough of the conventional wisdom regarding UNS – Uniform National Swing.

The problem in my mind is that, while Andy’s work is excellent, it is not particularly revolutionary.

No one has ever suggested swing is indeed uniform. After all, Labour took the previously rock solid Tory seat of Crosby in 1997 with the night’s biggest “swing” of 18%; but the national swing was a mere 10%. UNS has always been an extremely simple tool to allow a very quick analysis of a result, to give a rough-and-ready idea of where an election is heading. It was more useful in the days of Labour v Tory, but these days, the plethora of third-parties makes using it for accurate projections extremely dangerous.

As such, I have never paid much attention to it. For years conventional wisdom has been saying the Tories need a 10% lead over Labour just to achieve a majority of 1. That has been based on our old friend, UNS, working in tandem with our appalling electoral system (have I mentioned that I hate our electoral system before?).

But, since everyone knows UNS is very rough, it has always been right to ignore such models. Clearly, the only seats that matter are the marginals, thanks to our electoral system, which, in case you’ve forgotten, I hate. If the Tories are indeed not making much impact in the Labour heartlands, who cares? Instead, if they’re doing well in Middleoftheroad Central and Sittingonthefence West – achieving very high resonance beyond what the national figures are saying, then it really is all over.

All that, and so far I’ve not even mentioned the dreaded “tactical voting”. This has the potential to magnify or dull any speculated surge to the leading party. After all, if non main-party voters decide they’ve had enough of Labour, the Tories will get a bonus. Conversely, if they don’t want Cameron in, Labour’s seat tally where it really counts will get a small but significant boost.

UNS is dead as a serious tool for predicting election results, but the fact is it has been for a very long time. Why else would Electoral Calculus have been providing the ability to set tactical voting parameters and “regional swings” for many years?

All Andy Cooke has done is piss on its grave.

Nevertheless, it is very good work, and it is a very useful addition to our toolbox for predicting what may be the most unpredictable election in modern times…