Mike Ion

If Oprah is calling time then how about...

2009-11-21T09:26:00.002Z

Yesterday Oprah Winfrey looked into the camera and told the millions of her loyal viewers what they already knew: She will be ending her talk show in September 2011, after 25 years on the air. I think she is making the right decision and tactically it makes sense to signal your departure early and leave people with a warm glow of appreciation and respect. Reflecting on Oprah's decision I could not help but think about whether some of the UK's most popular TV shows would be sensible to do an 'Oprah' and call time before it is called for them. For example:-

X Factor - how many more series before the public tires of the format, let alone Simon and Louis? It goes without saying that we are unlikely to tire of Chery in the foreseeable future!

I'm a celebrity get me in here (or whatever it is called) - I never watch it and cannot believe ITV still run it.

Strictly come dancing - is it just me but hasn't it lost it's 'sparkle' already?

Those are my top 3 suggestions - other would be gratefully received.

Susan Boyle, Wild Horses

2009-11-20T10:15:00.002Z

My goodness there has been an awful lot of drivel written about Susan Boyle. Just listen to her new song, listen as though you did not know who was singing it. It is excellent - good luck to her.

The Tories and the police - trouble is brewing

2009-11-20T09:15:00.003Z

Sir Hugh Orde is a police officer with a reputation for integrity, honesty and competence. When he makes a bold, uncompromising statement like the one he made on the Today programme earlier today you take notice. Sir Hugh, who is currently the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, told the BBC that his colleagues would resist Tory proposals for the reform of the police that would result in his senior colleagues being told how to protect the public by locally-elected leaders. Sir Hugh warned that in his view democracy would be undermined if there was even a "perception" of political influence over chief constables. He stated that "operation independence is absolutely critical," and that the perception that a local police service was under political influence would be a sad day for democracy.

When asked if he personally would quit if faced by the Conservatives' plans, he said: "I don't, sadly, have a police service anymore.

"But if I was a chief officer and was subject to direct political control, I absolutely would."

Is this really a fight the Tories want to pick? I doubt it is one they can win - nor should they.

Votes for 16 year olds

2009-11-18T23:03:00.000Z

The voting age in Britain was last reduced nearly 40 years ago. Since then, there have been major changes in society's expectations of young people, and in young people's contribution to their local communities and wider society. Currently, 16 and 17 year-olds can work, pay taxes, join the armed forces and get married. They are often invited to set up school councils and youth councils, urged to take part in consultations, sit on local government and Ministerial boards, volunteer in their local community, keep out of trouble and work hard at school. Many will have caring responsibilities, a lot will have a job, some will be parents, and a minority will be leaving care or custody – but they cannot elect those who govern them.

A few years ago the Electoral Commission carried out a public consultation on the voting age which found that 72% of respondents were in favour lowering the voting age to 16. Interestingly the consultation attracted huge participation including 8,000 young people which suggests that when issues are made relevant to them, young people are more likely to vote and engage in matters of public importance. If the Government is to successfully deliver on its promise of helping to create more sustainable communities then it must ensure that all members of the community are fully engaged in the shaping and delivery of local services. Young people represent an important proportion of that agenda.I strongly believe that as a nation we must take the aspirations and desires of young voters much more seriously. Rather than young people being disinterested in politics (as opposed to voting), the more real danger is that we have become uninterested in them. We bolt on campaigns for young voters rather than build them into what we do. This needs to change, and we now have a once in a generation chance to make that change and listen to what young people are saying. We should dispense with old political assumptions and acknowledge that we are dealing with a different generation.

A first-time voter in a 2010 general election was leaving nursery school when Labour came to power in 1997. To them we seem like the establishment. I also believe that the divide between organised politics and young people is a symptom of a wider disenchantment. People who feel alienated have little trust in the institutions of our society. This adds to the wider sense of disaffection and makes it more difficult for our politics to work. Surely young people’s belief in politics could only be helped by them knowing that they had a direct influence in choosing who represents them. In Austria - where they recently lowered the voting age to 16 - in the last local and regional elections the turnout amongst 16 and 17 year olds was close to 75%.

The most effective means of achieving all of this is to lower the voting age to 16 and the sooner we do so the better.

At our best when at our boldest

2009-11-17T19:57:00.002Z

At our best when at our boldest!

The clip below was played to this year's Labour conference prior to Gordon Brown's speech and will be Labour party political broadcast after Wednesday's Queen's speech.

Purnell is right and Wheatcroft wrong

2009-10-17T13:22:00.002+01:00

Labour in government "contributed almost nothing new or imaginative to the pool of ideas with which men seek to illuminate human nature and its environment". You may be surprised to learn that these words were not written recently but were part of a 1954 New Statesman biographical piece about Clement Attlee and the 1945-1951 Labour government. Just imagine - contemporary Labour figures lambasting its own government for its lack of ambition and for it not being "socialist" enough. Over 50 years later and the New Statesman has Geoffrey Wheatcroft despairing at the 'moral and intellectual vacuity of the "New Labour agenda." In fairness, it is not simply the usual suspects who are lining up to trash what they see as 12 wasted years of Labour rule. Some ordinary, or what Alastair Campbell might describe as "bog-standard", Labour members and supporters have concerns that "we" haven't done enough, that "we" haven't been radical enough. The problem with this is that in truth most Labour members and supporters have opposing requirements. We want our party to be both passionately principled and sensibly pragmatic: to be a party that proudly honours its past while it shapes it and the nation's future; to champion the state while being part of the market; to tackle poverty but to also support aspiration.

In the same edition of the New Statesman James Purnell responds to Wheatcroft's piece by pointing out that when Labour took office in 1997, Britain was suffering from what Blair later described as a "progressive deficit". The constitution was failing, with Scotland and Wales denied proper government and hereditary privilege still the foundation of the House of Lords. Unlike many of our European neighbours, Britain lacked quality childcare and universal nursery provision or schools and hospitals with proper equipment and enough well-paid staff. In the years up to 1997, Britain was a country that had spent billions of pounds keeping able-bodied people idle because of boom and bust, where unemployment often exceeded three million, and where the absence of a national minimum wage condemned millions to poverty pay. Labour's mission over the past 12 years has been to address this progressive deficit. On the constitution, Britain has now developed as a modern pluralist democracy - devolution for Scotland and Wales, mayors for London and others cities, House of Lords reform, freedom of information and the Human Rights Act. For working people, Labour has now delivered progressive rights that many other countries took for granted - a minimum wage, four weeks paid holiday, better maternity and paternity rights, the basic right to join a trade union. For communities and families torn apart by crime, anti-social behaviour, racial intolerance and drugs, Labour has established major programmes of inner city regeneration, excellence in cities for schools, Sure Start, and additional investment in youth and sport facilities.

All of the modernisation has been for a purpose: to renew our public services and keep them faithful to the ethos and values of public service, while at the same time making them responsive to the individual needs of the people they serve. We needed to create a patient-centred NHS and a pupil-centred school system, moving beyond a monolithic NHS and a uniform secondary school system. We needed to do this in order to further extend opportunity and social justice.

Purnell is right to point out that all too many of the changes Labour has made these past 12 years - on the constitution, economic policy, the minimum wage and public services - are likely to last. The challenge for future Labour governments is to make even more of our progressive agenda irreversible; changes that cannot be rolled back by a future right wing Tory government that wants to dismantle most, if not all, of the things that have been achieved. If we fail to further reform public services then one day the Tory right will come back and demolish the very ethos on which they are built - with more charging, less investment, good services for the well-off and second-class services for the rest.

Wheatcroft is wrong and Purnell right. Britain is doing better in 2009 than it was in 1997. We are a more progressive country today than 12 years ago - our constitution, our economy, our public services are all in better shape. We have achieved much in the last 10 years - but much remains to be done.

David Cameron: Who are the “fruitcakes", "loonies" and "closet racists" now?

2009-10-11T16:25:00.002+01:00

In an interview with LBC radio in 2006 David Cameron described the UK Independence party as "fruitcakes", "loonies" and "closet racists". Eric Pickles, the then deputy chairman of the Conservative party, backed Mr Cameron at the time, saying he had a "legitimate point" and UKIP had had "too easy a deal". Yet when compared to some of the Tories new allies in the European Parliament, UKIP looks positively mainstream and normal. Mr Cameron and his shadow Foreign Secretary (William Hague) have decided to partner themselves with some rather awful characters on Europe's far right. How, one might legitimately ask, would the Mr Cameron of 2006 have described the 'For Fatherland and Freedom' party in Latvia that has participated in an annual event commemorating the Latvian Waffen SS, the Lettish legion. How might the 2006 Cameron have defended any alliance with Mr Kaminski, a member of the far-right Polish Law and Justice Party, who was and is openly opposed to the apology by his countrymen in 2001 for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941. So according to the Tories of 2009 UKIP are still a bunch of "fruitcakes" but those that argue that global warming is a lie, that homosexuality is a "pathology" and that Europe is becoming a "neo-totalitarian" regime are respected partners who will help them shape the Europe of the twenty-first century. Is this really what compassionate Conservatism is all about? As David Miliband has recently pointed out, the Conservatives refuse to disown people that in Britain they would almost certainly not want to be associated with.

David Cameron's avowed aim since being elected Tory leader has been to take his party back to the centre in every policy area with one major exception: Europe. In his four years as Conservative leader, Cameron has never attended a summit of national leaders of the old EPP, the biggest grouping in the parliament, which routinely brought together around half the heads of government in the EU - including Merkel and Sarkozy. Cameron claims that in establishing a new alliance in Europe he is defending UK sovereignty. In practice he is jeopardising any British influence on matters of international importance like climate change and financial regulation. Under the Tories Britain could well become a marginal player in the EU where irrelevance as a major player will almost certainly lead to irrelevance elsewhere in the world - particularly with the US, India and China.

I am confused David and William: just exactly who are the “fruitcakes", "loonies" and "closet racists now?

If I could speak at Labour's conference...

2009-09-29T22:45:00.000+01:00

I am unable to be at conference (I find having to hold down a full-time job something of a hindrance in terms of being able to be as active politically as I would want). I have never spoken at annual conference and it may well be that I never will but if I were to speak this year this is what I would say:

Mike Ion
Wrekin CLP

Conference

When Labour took office in 1997, Britain was suffering from what Tony Blair later described as a ‘progressive deficit.’ Some twelve years on and Gordon Brown recognises that today’s Labour party needs to renew and rebuild if it is to avoid its own ‘progressive deficit.’ What Gordon recognises– unlike David Cameron and the Tories - is that ‘change for change’s sake’ is not enough. The forthcoming election will be one of ‘big choices’, one that will shape the future direction of our nation for the next 20-30 years. It is for this reason that we have to be bold as a movement; bold in our ambition and bold in our strategy for how we achieve it.

Most of us here today joined the Labour party to help change the world not to change the minutes of the previous meeting! In seeking further change for the future however we must not forget what lies in store if we fail and surrender that future to Cameron’s Tories. We must not forget that the public sector experienced massive, near-fatal under-investment during 18 years of Tory rule in the 1980s and 1990s. The return of a Tory government would inevitably see the return of a two-tier system in terms of public services with, for example, the ‘best’ schools being either private or in the most affluent areas and access to the best healthcare determined not by need but by wealth. Let us remember that under the Tories the highest crime areas were in the lowest-income neighbourhoods; and public transport was most deficient in serving the most deprived housing estates. In Cameron’s Britain the affluent and the well educated will be given the choice to buy their way out of failing or inadequate provision and universal services will be replaced by services for the poor which will inevitably result in poor services.

Yet still the real challenge to the continuation of the pursuit of a progressive political agenda comes not from a resurgent Tory party but from the defeatists, pessimists and cynics that exist within our own movement. If Labour is to secure an unprecedented fourth term then it must urgently set about renewing itself, its message and its organisation. A renewed party needs to reflect the aspirations of ordinary people but it also needs to be realistic about the challenges that lie ahead. Ambition, hope and aspiration are far more appealing than a constant reciting of the achievements of the past ten years - telling the electorate that things are much better than they were in 1997 is the political equivalent of living in the past.

So if a fourth term is to be achieved Labour must continue with its progressive reform package, stop fretting about the opinion polls and how often Gordon smiles and above all else it must not (as it has so often done in the past) end up defeating itself.

Thank you

scrap hospital car parking charges

2009-09-07T09:33:00.004+01:00

More than half of cancer patients do not get free or discounted parking on hospital visits, contrary to government guidelines according to a poll carried out by Macmillan Cancer Support.

The founding principle of the NHS was that it would offer free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare. Surely this should apply whether you go to hospital as a patient, as a visitor or a member of staff. It's simply not fair to expect patients or visitors to have to pay when they come to hospital, when they may be suffering personal anxiety, stress or grief. For this reason I welcomed last year's announcement by the Scottish government (following on from a similar announcement by the Welsh Assembly earlier in the same year) to scrap car parking charges at the vast majority of its hospitals - 3 hospitals will be exempt because of PFI agreements and please don't get me started on that one!

It is hugely disappointing that the DoH does not believe it would be a "sensible use of limited resources" to subsidise car parking at hospitals in England. Really? The NHS ended this financial year with a £1.75 billion surplus, surely it would not be unreasonable to use a small amount of this total surplus to offset the £95 million that NHS Trusts took from car parking charges in 2006-2007?Government guidelines on car parking charges "strongly recommended" that NHS bodies introduce some kind of "season ticket" arrangement and allow free or reduced-price parking for patients with a long-term illness or those with serious conditions who require daily or regular treatment, and their prime visitors. The government has also suggested a weekly cap on parking charges at hospitals. One option that needs urgently to be looked at is the provision of free hospital parking and help with travel costs for all cancer patients. The other option is to scrap the charges in England completely.

Labour's crisis

2009-09-03T07:44:00.001+01:00

Jon Cruddas has written a thought provoking piece on Labour's crisis in this week's New Statesman.

Are people really turned off by partisan politics?

2009-09-02T21:47:00.002+01:00

Too much of what passes for debate and argument in today's politics is driven by division and personal destruction and before people accuse me of hypocrisy, yes, I personally have been guilty of such things in times past. The American columnist, EJ Dionne in his book 'Why Americans Hate Politics' argues that one of the main reasons for people being turned off politics is because it (political debate) seems irrelevant to them, they feel that they are being manipulated because they are always being asked to make false choices: you're either staunchly religious or vehemently secular, pro-business or pro-unions, pro-growth or pro-environment, for civil liberties or against them, a progressive or a dinosaur.

The truth is, of course, that most people don't think like this, most people don't live their lives in this way, and most people long for a politics where we have genuine arguments, vigorous disagreements, where we don't claim to have a monopoly on what is right or wrong, where we don't demonise our political opponents. Most people want their politicians to engage in what Barack Obama has described a "fair-minded" approach to politics; politics that understands that truth and certainty are not the same thing. Being "fair-minded" is, it could be argued, a philosophical approach to politics. It is a philosophical approach that ultimately has as its goal the pursuit of the common good. Common good politics is primarily about empowerment; it is the politics that espouses cooperation not competition, the hand up and not just the hand out. The uncomfortable truth is however, that rather than some broad common good philosophy it has been what might be called an "uncommon-good", a rigid ideological approach to politics that has dominated the political landscape in the US and Europe over the past fifty years. Ideologues like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher believed that nations were best served by ensuring that the maximum concentration of wealth and power was in the hands of the right people. Whilst those that argued for the common good promoted the need for mutual responsibility, they were opposed by those that believed that in large measure people made their own luck, that there was no such thing as society. The belief that collective endeavour is both a strength and a virtue, that a problem shared is a problem partly solved was countered by often unilateral and isolationist policies - particularly in terms of trade and immigration. In contrast hose that adopt the "fair-minded" and common good approach to politics tend to believe that debate should be dominated by evidence and argument; that it is political philosophers that we need to embrace and political ideologues that we need to be wary of.

In a speech at Washington's Georgetown University, Bill Clinton said, "if you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another, but like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning, and you are certainly open to debate the practical applications of your philosophy. Therefore, you might end up making a principled agreement with someone with a different philosophy."

However, Clinton went on to argue, if you have adapted a particular ideology then you already have your mind made up. You know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to resort to assertions and and personal attacks. What we need are politicians who will devise policies that promote equal opportunity, shared responsibility, and inclusive communities.

In increasingly multi-cultural, multi-faith societies we need an approach to politics that both celebrates partisan differences whilst being humble enough to recognise that adherence to a particular ideology can be both debilitating and divisive. Impossible? No. A challenge? Most certainly.

Labour must not abandon the poor

2009-08-31T15:39:00.003+01:00

Reading various blogs, websites and newspapers over the summer one cannot help but be struck by the number of so called left-leaning commentators who have been at pains to point out that the likes of David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson aren’t too bad and that if we do end up with a Tory government in a couple of years time it wouldn’t be such a disaster after all. Too many of the Left's 'intelligentsia' appear to place punishing Brown and Labour for their collective ‘failings’ above the reality of the very real improvements to the lives and life chances of whole communities that were abandoned by the Tories in the 1980s and 1990s.

For many middle class bloggers and journalists voting Tory or even Lib Dem is a luxury that they can easily indulge. Why? Because they are the very people who can afford to not have a Labour government in office - but the poor cannot. Labour has a good record in terms of fighting poverty over the past decade: 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty since 1997, the poorest fifth of families will be £4000 a year better off by 2010 and the winter fuel allowance, pensioner credit and increases to the state pension have taken over 2 million pensioners out of poverty. The 10p tax fiasco was not a deliberate attempt by Labour to penalise the low paid, neither was it a calculated, cavalier act designed to appease middle England. It was, quite simply, a mistake – nothing more and nothing less.

The ‘talk left but act right’ tendency that is so prevalent in much of Britain’s media appears to have decided that Labour does not deserve another term. They are apparently untroubled by the fact that so many of the changes made since 1997 could end up being rolled back by a Cameron led, right wing Tory government that could easily dismantle most, if not all, of the things that have been achieved.If Labour does fail in winning a fourth term and is therefore unable to introduce further reform of public services then the Tories will find it almost impossible to resist the ideological temptation to demolish the very ethos on which they are built - with more charging, less investment, good services for the well-off middle classes and second-class services for the poor.

Labour used to be the party that gave comfort to the afflicted whilst afflicting the collective conscience of the comfortable. It needs to regain its sense of identity and purpose and above all it needs to remind people that under the Tories it is unlikely that things would get better but they could get a whole lot worse.

Blogging break

2009-07-31T18:03:00.003+01:00

For a variety of reasons I have decided to have a break from blogging - probably for some months. I will still be making the odd contribution to Labour List, Comment is Free and to Tribune but I have decided to put most of my energies into other areas of my life.

Mike

The Tory MP who wants a referendum on Lisbon Treaty but would not let the people decide on electoral reform

2009-07-30T13:24:00.009+01:00

Daniel Kawczynski is the Tory MP for Shrewsbury (you need to know that I stood as Labour's candidate for Shrewsbury in 2005 and lost to Mr Kawczynski). Mr Kawczynski holds some rather traditional Tory views particularly on issues like hunting and the European Union. He once described Otis Ferry as a political prisoner, had to apologise to Melanie Philips and is very keen that we get even closer to the regime that governs Saudi Arabia.

Mr Kawczynski has, on several occasions, called for there to be a referendum on the Lisbon treaty because, as he has he put it in his letter to the President of Poland the 'democratic consent to the Lisbon Treaty has neither been sought from nor given by the British people.' It is therefore somewhat bizarre that in a piece for Conservativehome Mr Kawczynski is worried that the government might, and I quote "engineer a referendum on electoral reform." Really? How exactly would the government do that Daniel? Do you mean 'engineer' having a referendum or the outcome of a referendum? As a democrat, as someone who feels that the Lisbon Treaty has such far reaching implications for our constitution and sovereignty we need to hold a referendum on it, why are you so opposed to a referendum on electoral reform?

I believe that we should let the people decide on any changes to the electoral system and I am surprised that you would deny them such an opportunity. Why is this Daniel? What are you so afraid of?

Would you trust Google with your health records?

2009-07-28T23:15:00.003+01:00

I find myself, somewhat reluctantly, in complete agreement with a Tory MP. David 'the bruiser' Davis is right to be sceptical about his own party's dalliance with the internet giant that is Google. Would you trust any IT company with your own personal, private health records? No, neither would I.

Aung San Suu Kyi - Ambassador of Conscience

2009-07-27T12:00:00.002+01:00

Aung San Suu Kyi has been named as the recipient of Amnesty International's highest honor, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.

Fans of Michael Jackson launch campaign for nomination for the Nobel peace prize

2009-07-27T11:53:00.002+01:00

Apparently thousands of fans have already signed an on-line petition in suppport of Michael Jackson being nominated for the Nobel peace prize. What is the wolrd coming to!!

The NHS: diversity or division?

2009-07-25T17:26:00.005+01:00

The founding principle of the NHS was that it would offer free-at-the-point-of-delivery health care. Surely this should apply whether you go to hospital as a patient, as a visitor or a member of staff. It's simply not fair to expect patients or visitors to have to pay when they come to hospital, when they may be suffering personal anxiety, stress or grief. This is just one reason why I strongly believe that the Government should consider to capping or scrapping car parking charges in England (they have already been abolished in Wales and Scotland). According to the DoH the NHS ended the last financial year with a £1.75 billion surplus, surely it would not be unreasonable to use a small amount of this total surplus to offset the £95 million that NHS Trusts took from car parking charges in 2006-2007?

Britain is experiencing an ever widening health care divide, under which patients in England are denied services and benefits enjoyed by those living elsewhere in the UK. For example in Scotland, NHS patients have access to more cancer drugs, benefit from free eye tests and get free personal care when elderly. In Wales prescriptions are free, while English patients must pay £6.85. Abolishing car parking charges at England's NHS hospitals would be a small but significant gesture and one that would illustrate the desire for fairness and equity to be at the centre of public policy.

Does religion have a role to play in British politics?

2009-07-24T11:55:00.002+01:00

I have written a piece for the Christian Socialist magazine on whether religion has any role to play in Britsih politics.

Norwich - take the kicking, re-group and move on.

2009-07-24T11:34:00.004+01:00

So, we have, as expected, taken a real kicking in Norwich, not because the Tories and Cameron connect with voters but because the electorate want to give us a bloody nose. They are angry with us, disillusioned with our rhetoric and keen to send us a message. The summer offers a period of reflection and for me the areas that we need to urgently address are as follows:

Style and substance - we need to be careful that we don't dismiss one at the expense of the other. Good policies badly presented and badly articulated are as useless and as ineffective as poor policies that have been spun positively.

Trust and confidence - who on Labour's front bench can inspire trust and and come across as fully paid members of the human race? Answer - Alan Johnson and Hilary Benn for starters.

'If you are not on offence you are on defence' - we must get back on the attack and create clear dividing lines between ourselves and our opponents. Education policy is an obvious place to start.

I am not ashamed to be in the Labour party and I am proud of what we have achieved since 1997 but I am also acutely aware that we cannot constantly keep talking about these achievement. Looking to the past has much to recommend it, living in the past nothing at all.

The Catholic Church and systemic child abuse in Ireland

2009-07-22T09:05:00.003+01:00

Yet another report detailing alleged sexual abuse of 450 children by Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin has been handed to the Irish Government. This is now the second report this year that has looked into the extent of abuse perpetrated by members of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland could be likened to the proverbial fish that understood how desperately it needed water only when it landed in the bottom of a boat on the end of a hook. It is a sad reflection on the enormity of the recent abuse cases that many faithful and sincere Catholics have only recently grasped just how much the Catholic community relies on trust - now that they have so little of it. Trust is a social practice - humans are social beings who swim in an ocean of trust. What happens when this ocean begins to drain away is that we become sceptical, often cynical and perhaps even a little paranoid. Some of the more disturbing aspects of the recent cases in Ireland have been the attempts by the Catholic Church to control information, prevent public disclosure and silence dissent and anguished cries of abused children and their families. Cultures of this sort are not unknown. Tendencies toward centralisation of power and control of information exist in all institutions. The Catholic Church is no ordinary institution. For believers the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit - a community in which God's saving work is accomplished and God's kingdom proclaimed. But the Church is also a human institution, managed by humans with all their failings, including susceptibility to the corruptions of power and mistaken judgment.

Might the Catholic Church look outward and make use of some of the practices adopted by secular institutions to check inevitable abuses? One example is the need for a formal grievance and appeals procedure. Some of the most heart-wrenching testimonies from abuse victims are their reports of having nowhere to turn when their priest was part of the problem and of their attempts to engage others within the Church that were ignored or rebuffed. Similarly, the laity has no formal recourse when their pastors are insensitive or incompetent. Surely, formal grievance and appeals processes, with recourse to independent outside bodies, could serve the people of God well? In the Catholic Church in particular, pressures to reassign rather than remove priests and to cover up both abuses and incompetence are certainly exacerbated by the serious shortage of priests.

Many mistakes and cover-ups, involving the abuse of children by clergymen, have been made by Bishops and it is ironic that the responsibility for resolving or moving beyond the present crisis of trust lies primarily with the Bishops themselves. The problem is that the Catholic Church is suffering from a form of paralysis. The people who can do something (the Conference of Bishops) have apparently done all they want to do or think they can do as a group. Yet those who want to do something to help to move things on, namely the laity and some clergy, have no real vehicle for doing so. Despite the long-ingrained tendency of lay men and women to defer to the hierarchy, lay people have both the right and the responsibility to make their voices heard. Many of them are now tragically aware of the consequences that follow from the concentration and misuse of power and lay deference to hierarchical authority.

For too long the Roman Catholic Church has, for whatever reason, refused to talk openly, candidly and even compassionately about the crisis of trust that clearly now exists. It will be difficult to regain that trust but without it there can be no growth or development.

Private schools and the pursuit of privilege

2009-07-19T10:00:00.002+01:00

Excellent piece in today's Observer on the hidden benefits of a private-school education.

In fairness it is not unreasonable that any parent should want their child to do as well at school and in life as they have done themselves, often they want them to do better. In a free society if some parents choose to secure advantage and privilege by sending their children to elite schools there is little the state can do about it. The disappointing reality is that so many parents (often left-leaning, socially liberal parents) choose to become part of the problem, rather than seeking to be part of the solution. British public schools have always been a production line for the class system. They employ some of the best-qualified teachers, with as many as two-thirds educated in the top 20 British universities. They can - and do - raise their fees steadily, they select their pupils; have a growing endowment income from their benefactors and some of the most impressive sporting and extra-curricular activities. What's more they now recruit from a middle-class obsessed by perceived educational and social advantage.

The really telling – and somewhat sad - truth about the fact that so many middle-class parents decide not to stay in the state sector is that it reinforces the view that those who do have influence, those who really do have a "voice" in our society have such a high stake in the current order they will seek to mobilise and organise in order protect it. What we all need to reflect on is the fact that when parents abandon the state sector in favour of the private, it is always conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.

Messgae to Gordon: scrap hospital car parking charges

2009-07-18T20:29:00.002+01:00

The founding principle of the NHS was that it would offer free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare. Surely this should apply whether you go to hospital as a patient, as a visitor or a member of staff. It's simply not fair to expect patients or visitors to have to pay when they come to hospital, when they may be suffering personal anxiety, stress or grief. For this reason I welcomed last year's announcement by the Scottish government (following on from a similar announcement by the Welsh Assembly earlier in the same year) to scrap car parking charges at the vast majority of its hospitals - 3 hospitals will be exempt because of PFI agreements and please don't get me started on that one! It is hugely disappointing that the DoH does not believe it would be a "sensible use of limited resources" to subsidise car parking at hospitals in England. Really? The NHS ended this financial year with a £1.75 billion surplus, surely it would not be unreasonable to use a small amount of this total surplus to offset the £95 million that NHS Trusts took from car parking charges in 2006-2007?

Government guidelines on car parking charges "strongly recommended" that NHS bodies introduce some kind of "season ticket" arrangement and allow free or reduced-price parking for patients with a long-term illness or those with serious conditions who require daily or regular treatment, and their prime visitors. The government has also suggested a weekly cap on parking charges at hospitals. One option that needs urgently to be looked at is the provision of free hospital parking and help with travel costs for all cancer patients. The other option is to scrap the charges in England completely.

Labour's annual conference - time for a change?

2009-07-18T17:44:00.003+01:00

I know the summer holidays are now upon us but before long Labour party members (along with the Tories and Lib Dems) will be turning their attention to annual conference. The autumn season of party conferences represents a tradition every bit as venerable as that of fish and chips on the pier, Brighton rock and Blackpool tram cars. However there are many – me included – who believe that the party political conference, like the traditional British seaside holiday, is an institution that has seen better days. In fairness I am not suggesting that Labour need do away with its annual conference altogether but I do feel that we can greatly improve on its present format and organisation. One of the main reasons for reforming how, where and when conference is organised is what it ends up costing ordinary members – especially in terms of travel, accommodation and time. Last year a delegate from Scotland told me that she had taken a week’s annual leave to attend her first and (given what it was costing her) probably her last conference. A significant number of delegates I spoke to over the past few years have told me that that they had often been forced to take unpaid leave in order to attend conference as they simply could not get the time off work in any other way. Having a party conference that only takes place on weekdays means that the only people who can easily attend are the people who are paid to, some retired people (I stress ‘some’), people who are independently wealthy - or just fanatics. If we are serious about reforming and renewing as a party then we need to make conference much more accessible for working people and particularly young working people.

The party understands that it needs to re-think exactly how it sets about reconnecting with the grass roots of the movement. What the other parties do is up to them but in a time of renewal and reconnection Labour needs to think long and hard about how it organises its traditional annual shindig.

Here are three practical suggestions:

1. Hold conference over a long weekend - this could assist in helping the party to reach out and reconnect with ordinary party members. Holding the conference throughout a working week makes it very difficult for many working people to attend and therefore participate in what is the party’s largest annual event.

2. Move on from hosting conference in traditional seaside resorts like Blackpool, Brighton or Bournemouth. The annual conference held in Manchester and was viewed by most delegates as a huge success. Why not consider hosting future conferences in cities like Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow?

3. Emphasise that we are a ‘British’ party by occasionally holding annual conference in Scotland, Wales or even Northern Ireland.

Or am I being too timid, too conservative in my ideas for change? What do others think?

Iran: protesters back on the streets

2009-07-18T17:37:00.002+01:00

It would appear that protesters are back on the streets of Tehran