We would like to invite keen young politicos to apply to take over the shadow cabinet roles and suggest ones of their own. I will be pitching this idea to the new CF committee as a way for members to get politically engaged in a very practical manner. We would expect the new Cabinet to start posting from October after the next conference season at a time when innovative ideas for election manifestos will be crucial.
Please feel free to signal your interest here or by mailing ghostcabinet@googlemail.com
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Reshuffling
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Close to America, but not too close!
But, ten years is a long time and the British attitude towards
Nature has blessed Brown in this arena, his naturally grumpy demeanour allows him to participate in buggy rides with President Bush and not appear to enjoy himself, doing it because he has to rather than because he enjoys it, as Blair did. This enables him to fulfil his transatlantic obligations and not to do himself too much damage with the anti-American lobby back home.
Well done Brown, first hurdle overcome with apparent ease.
The real test, however, is yet to come. Our troops are dieing at an alarming rate in both
These cries, if heeded, will set him on a collision course with
It is in our short and long term interests to stand alongside
Friday, July 27, 2007
A Healthy Union
Introducing Phillip Lee this week's guest ghost at health.
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The decision by NICE last year to deny the English and Welsh access to Velcade, a drug clinically proven to extend the lives of those with myeloma was yet another example of how the devolution set in play by the Labour government has lead to blatant unfairness in the provision of healthcare in Britain. Whether NICE feels Velcade is worthy of being provided on the NHS or not is not my point. If we believe in a nationalised healthcare service, 'free' at the point of delivery to all Britons irrespective of their means, how can we tolerate any regional discrepancies in its provision?
What I think is particularly galling for the English is the fact that more money is spent per head on healthcare in Scotland despite more tax being collected 'South of the Border'. This has been the case for many years since the introduction of the so-called Barnett formula. The 2005 figures for annual health expenditure per head were as follows (source: NAO) -
England £1,350 per head
Scotland £1,563 per head
So, when Gordon Brown talks about increased spending to match European levels take note; we have had a NHS system in Scotland funded at European levels for many years. It would, therefore, be interesting to know what its 'output' has been? How healthy are our Scottish neighbours?
Today, the government has revealed that Scotland has the highest rates of cancer in the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 446 new cases of cancer per 100,000 males and 379 per 100,000 females north of the border between 2002 and 2004. In contrast, England had 394 and 338 cases respectively. Furthermore, Scotland also had the highest overall death rate for cancer in the UK. And let's not get on to the Scottish incidence of ischaemic heart disease, smoking rates and intravenous drug use, for that would be truly depressing.
Sadly, these worrying results are despite NHS Scotland achieving the following:
75 doctors for every 100,000 people (compared to 55 in England) twice as many hospital beds as found in England an average GP list size of 1,400 (compared to 1,840 in England)
These figures, in the light of the health outcomes mentioned above, clearly indicate that increased spending within an unreformed health system does not improve the public's health. For if improved health outcomes were that easy to achieve, the Scots' would be shouting over Hadrian's Wall about their outstanding health record. They're not. Ill health is primarily caused by an individual's social circumstances: diet, housing, prevalence of smoking, marital breakdown, the preponderance of illicit drug use (to name but a few). Hence, increasing spending on hospitals, as Scottish politicians have been particularly apt to call for, will not make much impact upon the incidence of the chronic diseases that bedevil the Scottish people.
The changes needed in Scotland to improve health are more profound. Firstly, there needs to be a shift away from the state towards the individual: one's health should primarily be one's responsibility. Secondly, government money should be concentrated on improving housing and public health provision, not on high-profile new hospitals. And finally, Scotland should start voting Tory again, for that will be the only way that the first two changes will ever be implemented.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
To Devolve or not to Devolve?
So The Dour One is here, and he’s performing surprisingly well given that all the political commentators were talking about Blair seriously overshadowing our new Prime Minister. Now, what does this regime change have in store for the devolved institutions? We know Brown has already made a visit to Northern Ireland for a summit of the British-Irish Council (something this Ghost seriously disagrees with) and has declared that he will work with Alex Salmond for Scotland's "prosperity". But most of this, heck, all of this is just jaw jaw so I thought I’d provide some guidance for the country that our new government seems incapable of doing.
Let’s first reacquaint ourselves with out aims. The aim of devolution policy should be to provide fair, accountable, local government at the lowest level; it is safe to say that the current set up is no were near fair with Scottish MPs having a disproportionate say in government, it is no were near accountable with unelected regional assemblies all over England and it certainly isn’t government at the lowest level, centralisation has continued to sky rocket, but how to cure this? Well I might have a few ideas up our sleeve!
To begin, abolish regional assemblies, they are costly, unelected and unaccountable; they provide a clear barrier to achieving all three aims. They should be the first thing to go and whatever powers they robbed from local councils returned, and some.
Secondly, rectify the constitutional imbalance brought about as a result of having devolved institutions in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, but not in England. This can be achieved by English Votes for English Members or bringing about the establishment of an English Parliament.
If Gordon moves on any of these proposals then it will be a great improvement from the current mishmash of local, regional, provincial and national powers that is currently destabilising, and destroying the UK.
A Guide To The New Cabinet
The Taxpayer's Alliance has prepared its own guide to the Cabinet.
Download here.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Any Chance Of Some Chancellory?
Well we've heard about the badger's drug experiences. Is there any chance we can hear anything from Alistair Darling about his plans to tackle huge economic issues the country is facing?
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Politics 101 back to basics!
I want to take a few steps back in the evolution of society & politics.We have become so advanced that we take a lot of things for granted without truly thinking about what they are or what they mean to us.
Here we go, Politics 101
What things CANNOT be done locally?
Education?
Health?
Internal security (courts prisons & police)?
Defence (security of borders & resources)?
Let me proffer some suggestions.For example, I once lived for in a small town in Kenya. The local ex-pat community paid for both a town doctor (from Holland) and a couple of teachers (from Scotland & Italy). These were much preferable to the government hospital & school that also existed. So I suggest education CAN be done at a local level.
Many of our current hospitals were built in a time before the NHS came into being. These were generally local trusts paid for by local benefactors, with subscriptions raised by the local people (a bit like national insurance, except it goes where you want it, and not into the BIG pot!!!). So I would also suggest that health can be run locally.
Courts are local by defintion, and so to a certain extent is policing. I'm not certain about prisons being local. It should be a punishment, and being able to see loved ones easily whilst inside may take away some of the pain I wish offenders were feeling, so I'll put prisons to one side for a moment. And some policing HAS to be done at a national level.
Defence is a different thing all together, as it requires national co-ordination, since it is involved in the defence of the nation (and dependant foreign territories) as a whole.
So there we have it. If you are looking to see how the money should be allocated in order of priority it's....... Bloody hell, it's not defence! What happened? have we lost our way? I suggest we have. Push everything we can down to local level, and let the people decide if they really want money spending on the things that it is currenly spent on. Then let central government concentrate on Internal & External defence, and match the budgets accordingly.
Easy eh!?!
I cannot let this post go by without utterly condemning the decision of the new prime minister to double hat Des Brown as both Defence & Scotland. This country's armed forces have not been so totally engaged in war-fighting since the Falklands, and even that was over in a month. The utter contempt that this signals to our fighting personnel will not go un-noticed.
ROLL OF HONOUR
Those killed in action since my first Ghost Cabinet post.
LEST WE FORGET
Afghanistan
Sergeant Dave Wilkinson, 33, of the 19 Regiment Royal Artillery.
Captain Sean Dolan 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters.
Drummer Thomas Wright, 21, 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters.
Guardsman Neil 'Tony' Downes, 20, from the 1st Battalion The Grenadier Guards.
Lance Corporal Paul Sandford, 23, from 1st Battalion The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters.
Corporal Mike Gilyeat, 28, from the Royal Military Police.
Corporal Darren Bonner of the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment.
Guardsman Daniel Probyn from the 1st Battalion the Grenadier Guards.
Iraq
Corporal Christopher Read, 22, from Poole, Dorset, of 158 Provost Company, 3rd Regiment Royal Military Police.
Lance Corporal Ryan Francis, 23, of 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh.
Rifleman Edward Vakabua, 23, 4th battalion The Rifles.
Private Scott Kennedy, 20, The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland. Private Jamie Kerr, 20, The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Corporal Paul Joszko, 28, 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh (The Royal Regiment of Wales).
Corporal John Rigby, 24, 4th Battalion The Rifles.
Major Paul Harding, 48, 4th Battalion The Rifles.
Lance Corporal James Cartwright, 21, of Badger Squadron, 2 Royal Tank Regiment.
Corporal Rodney Wilson of A Company, 4th Battalion The Rifles.
Corporal Jeremy Brookes, of 4th Battalion The Rifles.
Private Kevin Thompson, aged 21, from the Royal Logistic Corps.
Monday, July 2, 2007
MTAStic
The NHS has had its fair share of controversial IT projects. This shouldn't come as a surprise; it's Europe's largest employer and does challenging work, so the scope, number and complexity of its projects means that some are bound to catch the eye.
The one that's currently getting all the attention is NPfIT (National Programme for IT), run by Connecting for Health. It's the one that Accenture bailed out of last year. NPfIT has had loads of media attention, and rightly so. Maybe I'll do an article about it sometime.
For now, I'd like to look at MTAS. This was the Medical Training Application Service; the way that junior doctors apply for training-related posts to advance their careers. My esteemed colleague at Health has already written plenty on this subject on her own blog, but I thought it was worthwhile looking at it from an IT point of view.
MTAS has been a total, total failure. It's been offline since the end of April and may never return. The failure of MTAS directly led to High Court action, the resignation of the heads of both the BMA and Modernising Medical Careers, and probably dealt Patricia Hewitt the final fatal blow as Health Secretary.
Despite all this, the funny thing is that MTAS really hasn't had all that much attention from the computing press. Unless my website searching skills have deserted me, Computer Weekly hardly mentions it and I couldn't find anything on IT Week. The less 'establishment' website The Register does a little better. Perhaps everyone's distracted with NPfIT?
Let's look at the pure technical problems. The most significant (and the one that finally killed off MTAS) was an awful security vulnerability in the site. When I say awful, I mean it. Once you'd logged on, a trivial change to the URL (address) meant that you could see the details of other applicants right down to sexual orientation and criminal record. There were other problems too - it apparently didn't scale properly, which meant that it buckled under the sheer weight of applicants. Markers of applications could see what previous markers had given, which wasn't supposed to happen. Some applications disappeared, at least temporarily.
Why wasn't something done sooner? Large government IT projects can sometimes fail because the design and implementation structure is so massive and rigid that trying to turn things round when they go wrong is like trying to use a pea shooter to stop the Titanic from hitting an iceberg. For MTAS, something tells me that this isn't the case. The noddy nature of the security issue is one reason, and the implementors aren't one of the Titanic-like usual suspects. No, I think that two of the most basic rules of IT projects were ignored: listen to your users and test, test, test.
All of this is cold comfort to the legions of junior doctors who may be facing an uncertain future, or at the very least have had bags of time wasted. In truth, the main failings of MTAS weren't down to technology; the process was fundamentally flawed before one line of code had been written. Again, there were a number of reasons for this, but Column 2186W of the Written Answers of the House of Commons Hansard for 21st June 2007 gives us the most compelling one:
Number of posts available: 19,172
Number of applicants: 34,389
Fat Agnus
Friday, June 29, 2007
The Downside of Localism
Here at Local Government, we have a commitment to local democracy. Democratic power should flow upwards, not be filtered downwards through numerous ministries and unelected quangos of an over powerful State. Here I am using ‘Local Government’ in its broadest sense. Not just local administration, but the Courts, Hospitals, the Police. In England there is largely the individual and there is the State. In Europe as well as the United States, there are a host of local institutions vital to social cohesion.
Only through having strong local government, that is responsive to the needs of the local population, can faith in the democratic ideal flourish. The Welsh National Assembly and the Scots Parliament have already come up with innovative projects for their populations. Westminster however does not feel minded to give the English the same trust. My own views on having the equivalent of the German Lander are well known, as a way of devolving power to regions that have some grounding in the psyche of the English, Wessex, East Anglia etc. Largely unreported in yesterdays appointments were regional minister roles for a number of Ministers. Sadly this is more to placate the EU, than a genuine devolution of powers. More top down, than bottom up.
However despite my strong commitment to having elected Mayors, Chief Constables et al, there is a distinct danger that needs to be addressed if we go down the local power route.
In France power is devolved down to the Departmental and Commune level, in general this works well. However, it has become noticeable over the last twenty years that an element of corruption has started in the French system, through the operation of local cliques proverbially scratching each others backs, to the detriment of anybody not members of these cliques. The French have a phrase "Tout se tient": they hold together by joining the elbows. This influence extends to the operation of local Courts.
I certainly have knowledge in La Manche region of a company being liquidated on the authority of one director, without the knowledge of the other members of the Board. The Director concerned signed a false declaration to the Court, that the other directors had authorised the liquidation, the liquidation was forced through the local Tribunal de Commerce in days, Stock, equipment and other assets either disappeared or were sold by the local Mandataire Judiciaire ( Liquidator) without keeping any records or accounts of where the assets went. All totally illegal, but the local back scratching was such that it would not disgrace a banana republic, not a modern European State
In other regions of France, a local Mandataire collected and sold the assets of an insolvent company, then pocketed the proceeds, the creditors who could have looked forward to a significant percentage in the Euro, got nothing. Some of the Creditors also went to wall even though they knew that the assets and cash to pay them had been purloined. A sure sign of the corruption involved was that both the local bank involved and the files of the local Greffe (Court) have now suddenly disappeared. The Official concerned was eventually jailed for two years and subject to a massive 500,000€ fine, but this was only after he was allowed to operate unsupervised for twenty years, became the National President of the Association of Mandataire Judiciaires, and was rewarded with becoming a member of the Legion D’Honneur for his services to the State.
Local Taxation has an attraction in England, however a case has gone all to the way of the European Court of Human Rights where a faulty local tax demand was made when there was no tax due, the Mandataire and Tax official concerned, broke in to the Taxpayers residence and took the equivalent of £100,000 of goods. After a number of years it was confirmed that there was no tax due, but the £100,000 was long gone, and has never been repaid by the State. A clear case of state sanctioned theft
Is is well known in France that the office of the local Mandataire Judiciaire is a national disgrace, but the Ministry of Justice appears powerless to stop the local collusion and fraud. Whether this will change under Sarkozy is open to doubt.
I want to see Localism in England, but I do not want to see petty bureaucrats and their friends invested with the power to abuse local business and citizen for their own benefit and that of their cronies.
Should we be fortunate to have Localism, another elected official should be a County Attorney who has the power to investigate abuses of the system. Should any local official or bureaucrat be found guilty of any form of corruption, that official should be liable to massive personal fines and long terms of imprisonment, along the French Model, but not taking twenty years, to investigate.
The days of Chief Constables and other officials belonging to organisations like the Masons should be brought to an end. Should senior Policemen persist in belonging to these organisations, their position should be forfeit, as they are clearly inappropriate.
As a Nation we have suffered from lack of open government and a culture of secrecy at Whitehall. Translating this culture to the local level would be a disaster and far from enhancing democracy would bring it further into disrepute.
Trust the people at the local level, of course, but there must be checks and balances to prevent collusion, corruption and State sanctioned theft.
New Home Secretary paddling in shallow end?
Frightening apparitions are notable for often being seen holding chains. At the Home Office yesterday a ghostly appearance was notable for holding a whip instead - Labour's chief whip as it happens. Jacqui Smith was appointed Home Secretary and the unanimous response of the public was "who?".
Who indeed. A teacher by trade, Mrs Smith has held a few minor roles in the Government as parliamentary under secretary at Education, a minister at Health with a social services brief and responsibility for industry and 'the regions' (that would be England then) at Trade and Industry. Two years ago someone in the Labour party decided to find something she might have some experience of and hit upon the bright idea of making the former teacher the minister for schools back at Education. Genius. Last year it was decided she was not sufficiently unpopular with her Honourable friends and was made the Government's Chief Whip. So it is clear to any watcher of politics that Jacqui Smith was the natural choice to enter the Cabinet as Home Secretary.
Just hours into the role - one that has responsibility for such trivial matters as policing, counter-terrorism, security, immigration, borders and ID cards - the perfect opportunity for the new Home Secretary to stamp her authority on the job presented itself in the form of a car bomb found in central London. As the nation put its corn flakes on hold and tuned in for answers and reassurance from the minister who holds the brief for counter terrorism and policing, our TV screens revealed who is in charge at the Home Office - Justice Minister Jack Straw. What could it all mean? Is Jacqui too busy? Is she not ready for the role? Or does Jack have an inkling a judge or maybe some disgruntled probation officers are behind the bomb plot?
Jacqui arrived at the Home Office yesterday saying she was "very, very proud and pleased to have the job". She has since disappeared. Is Jacqui being confined to the shallow end of the Home Office pool until she can shed her water wings? An opportunity lost for Jacqui or a nation spared by Gordon? Time will tell.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Education, Separation, Dissociation
At a time when universities are complaining that A-level graduates aren't equipped to take degrees, it seems madness to split different tiers of education into different departments. But it's occurred to me that 'Innovation, Universities and Skills' may well be a putative Ministry of Technology. We lead, others follow... Fat Agnus
Alan Johnson Takes New Post
Although nobody will want to remember Patricia Hewitt, her legacy was of frequent political ill-thought through legislation and a refusal to be accountable for her results. That must change. Alan Johnson, my three words to you are ‘Patients, Patients, Patients.’ Good luck!
If They Call That Success
I'm off...
My back garden is a brown field site, my rubbish piles are still growing, large swathes of the country are underwater... but my enviroment secretary has kept his political nose clean and is off to higher things.
Should I follow Mr Miliband from the afterlife?
Ominous News At The DTI
An experienced Corporate finance advisor accepts a temporary role as head of the DTI! Rumours are swirling that science will be spun out of trade and industry into education and energy will be spun into environment and that the department will be rebranded the department for enterprise. These moves make sense. Has Gordon been reading this blog?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Department For Business
In my maiden post I said that my first task would be to get the DTI ruthlessly focused on its key challenges. With respect to the DTI's core objectives, British business is the key stakeholder, so we should use their feedback on the service provided as a key benchmark for performance and a driver for change. The London Chamber Of Commerce in partnership with pollsters CommunicateResearch recently surveyed London Business Leaders and I have been kindly allowed to reproduce their summary article in full below.
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Capital Business Leaders Call For DTI To Be Scrapped And Replaced With New ‘Department for Business’
Nine out of ten company directors in the capital support the creation of a dedicated Department for Business, headed by a Cabinet Minister, to replace the DTI, according to a new survey from the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), published ahead of a major House of Commons debate on the DTI's future.
There was also serious criticism of the department's performance in the London Business Leaders' Panel survey, conducted by the LCCI, in partnership with leading pollsters CommunicateResearch.
Figures show that some 56 per cent of London business leaders rated the DTI as 'poor' or 'very poor' at its stated objective of 'building an enterprise society in which small firms thrive'.
In addition, less than a quarter of directors rated as 'excellent' or good the DTI's performance over the past decade at 'creating the conditions for business success'. More bad news for ministers saw less than a third of directors giving the department a positive rating for its work preparing UK businesses for globalisation, while less than a fifth gave the DTI a positive rating for its performance on UK productivity growth.
More than two-fifths of directors said the DTI was 'not fit for purpose' in its current guise.
Government support for business is considered crucial however. Three quarters of company directors would back the idea of a new-look 'Department for Business', possibly even assuming some functions from the Treasury, to give targeted support to firms, promote UK trade overseas and championing the concept of enterprise.
Feedback also shows that nine out of 10 company directors believe a reformed 'Department for Business' should be headed by a Chief Executive recruited from the private sector rather than a permanent secretary from the civil service, and have headquarters in either the City or Canary Wharf.
Colin Stanbridge, Chief Executive of the London Chamber of Commerce, said: "Business wants support from the top, but the DTI, in its current form, is not even delivering on the ground, particularly for small firms."
"What we want to see is a department for business, driven by business, and focused on supporting business, but with the clout that only comes from a seat at the Cabinet table."
Full report here.
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I advocate the idea of a department for business. Indeed Alan Duncan and Peter Luff on the Conservative benches have referred to the above survey in recent Parliamentary debates. The existing failures are manifest, so why shouldn't we achieve a cross-party consensus on the way forward.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Home Office dishonesty over crime figures
The Home Office is a failing department and as a result its areas of responsibility... policing, counter-terrorism, immigration, border control and security all have very visible problems that need to be addressed. If you are to improve a department then it is vital you are honest about the current situation so you have a defined reference point from which to measure any improvement. If the Home Office is honest, then it will admit right now that crime is not being properly recorded. Nowhere close.
The Home Office favours the use of the British Crime Survey, or BCS. This survey asks 40,000 householders about their experience of crimes being committed against them and extrapolates the figure to give an overall crime figure for the nation. The Home Office believes it is an accurate measure of crime because many victims do not report crimes to the police, but do reveal crimes in a survey. This in itself shows the failure of policing policy and the negative effects of imposing targets on forces. But we discover today in the Daily Telegraph that the BCS is even more flawed than at first thought because it caps the number of crimes it counts if the victim reveals more than five repeat offences against them. This has been done "to avoid extreme cases distorting the rates". If crime is being recorded then all crime should be recorded. How can a rate be distorted? Either a certain number of crimes have been reported to the BCS or they have not.
It is clearly wrong for someone to make a value judgement and exclude a number of offences. The only effect of capping offences against the same victim is to reduce the crime figures and this evidently results in crime being under reported - allowing the Government the opportunity to claim that crime is falling. As the Telegraph reports:
[Criminologists have] recalculated the most recent BCS figures without the arbitrary cap of five crimes, they found that more than three million crimes were omitted.Despite this the Home Office responds thus:
Two million of these were violent or ''personal'' crimes, such as assaults and robberies, which rose from 4.1 million to 6.2 million, a difference of more than 50 per cent.
Household crime, such as burglaries and vandalism, went up from 6.7 million to 7.8 million, a 15 per cent rise.
Overall crime in the last BCS ''sweep'' was understated by 29 per cent.
"We are confident that trends in crime are largely unaffected by this aspect of the methodology."How can 29% not be a big enough distortion to affect the trends? Counting all the crimes is not a methodology, it is an accurate survey. The only methodology here is the skewing of statistics by capping the number of offences that an individual can claim to have suffered.
I am sure the rate would climb even further if all those people who have been victims of credit card fraud had the crimes they tried to report to police recorded. But in a sleight of hand the Home Office does not allow police to investigate reports of card fraud made by the public. Instead, police have to direct fraud victims to their banks, who may or may not decide to report the offences. This measure ensures that thousands of crimes are immediately wiped from the statistics and no effort is made to catch the perpetrators.
When statistic massaging of this nature is carried out routinely to make a Government look as if its measures are having an positive effect on crime reduction, is it any wonder people distrust politicians? It is time the public were told the truth and the police were allowed to tackle crime instead of being tied to desks writing about it.
Monday, June 25, 2007
What Now Brown?
Although not all ghosts track a single department here are the portfolios that our ghosts haunt most closely.
Chancellor: Gordon Brown
Home Secretary: John Reid
Foreign Secretary: Margaret Beckett
Education: Alan Johnson
Health: Patricia Hewitt
Trade & Industry: Alistair Darling
Attorney General: Lord Goldsmith
Communities: Ruth Kelly
Environment: David Miliband
DCMS: Tessa Jowell
Defence: Des Browne
Social Affairs: Hillary Armstrong
Wales & Northern Ireland: Peter Hain
Scotland: Douglas Alexander
What do you think will change by the end of the week and what difference will this make?
Update - this website is fun if you fancy your political punditry skills.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Next Post Monday 25th June
As the government operates in the twilight zone between Blair & Brown, we'll be keeping our powder dry. We return in the handover week.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Ghost Cabinet Going Forward
All ghosts have completed their maiden posts. We thought that now might be a good time to set out what you can expect from the Ghost Cabinet going forward. We have planned a weekly routine.
- On Mondays we'll prepare "a start the week" type posting as a trailer for the posts and political events in the upcoming week.
- On Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Fridays ghosts will write on their area of departmental competence. Guest ghosts may be invited to post and posts may attack government policy and present alternatives.
- On Thursdays ghosts may submit short and snappy postings on anything topical in their area. Labelled apparitions, it's one way that we'll make sure the Ghost Cabinet keeps you up-to-date with important developments.
- We take weekends off.
Should you have any ideas for other features, please let us know in the comments, so that we can discuss as a group.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A brief ramble around the DCMS…..
With all of the 'excitement' about the disaster waiting to happen that is the 2012 Olympics, it is easy to take one's eye off some of the other horrors that the DCMS has inflicted on us.
I take as my starting point that culture, media and sport were thriving long before the DCMS and its predecessors in title decided to start interfering, and if the DCMS was to be magicked away tomorrow, doubtless all three would continue, and thus it is therefore very much for the Department to make an overwhelming case for intervention in any of these areas prior to churning out press releases, ill-thought out green papers and the like
The casino fiasco is the most thoroughly covered by the long grass at present, and it is to that that I turn first. There are really only two ways that one can react to casino gambling and retain any degree of intellectual honesty: either it is a bad thing that should be illegal, or else it is something which it is for the would-be gambler to choose as he or she sees fit. Given that there has been legal small-ish scale casino gambling in this country for a number of years, no government could seriously hope to criminalise it again, and this would not appear to be on the cards, pun very much intended. So, if gambling is to be allowed, why the nonsense of permitting just one mega casino? It is not as though the Manchester casino is going to be built using public funds, or can be viewed as having direct neighbourhood effects akin to that of a nuclear power station. I would suggest that it should be entirely up to would be investors and local authorities as to whether there should be casinos – of whatever size – in Blackpool, Greenwich or come to that Croydon. If the market can support them, why not?
Arts subsidies – if forms of the plastic or performing arts cannot be supported through ticket sales, philanthropy or corporate sponsorship, why should the tastes of the cultural elite be funded out of general taxation, or put another way, why should any government support wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich?
The BBC – take a look at any given day's schedule on BBC1. Is its programming so transparently more deserving of funding out of a compulsory levy on viewers than that of the commercial broadcasters? Always supposing that there is a desire for public service broadcasting, should this be funded programme by programme or by funding an entire bank of channels? If the former, then a move towards top slicing, whereby any broadcaster can apply for public funding on a programme by programme basis would give PSB and go some distance towards making the BBC a little more honest.
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