Grim up North? The north is doomed and we’d all be better off packing our bags and moving to the already overcrowded Home Counties, according to a Conservative leaning think-tank. The report, by Policy Exchange, has severely embarrassed the Tory leadership by suggesting that multi-million regeneration projects are a waste of money and cities such as Bradford, Liverpool and Sunderland should simply be abandoned. Even the report’s author admits he risks being seen as “plain barmy”, but my real objection to his work is that it shows an almost wilful ignorance of what is commonly termed “the north”. As anyone who lives here realises, that together with the undoubted deprivation of Buttershaw and Manningham you’ll find the prosperity of the leafier parts of the Aire and Wharfe valleys – and all are lumped together in Bradford thanks to the reorganisation of local government in 1974. My friend – let’s call him Jim – would no doubt have a chuckle at the report. He’s a committed southerner who spent the first 30 years of his life firmly ensconced within the confines of the M25. Just over a decade ago his firm dropped a bombshell – they wanted him to relocate to Leeds. Jim couldn’t have been more horrified if they’d exiled him to Siberia, but he sold it to his wife as a temporary move that would benefit his career in the long run. But soon the north began to work its charms. Firstly, Jim was delighted to discover that after selling his bog-standard Barrett box in the south east he could afford a magnificent former wool baron’s folly with views of Ilkley Moor and the lovely Middleton Woods on the doorstep. The daily 2-hour grind into London was replaced with a 40-minute trip on relatively clean and comfortable electric trains. His wife spent her mornings perfecting her ground strokes with the dishy young coach at the tennis club and her afternoons gossiping with new-found friends in Bettys. The children were enrolled in good state schools and their evenings were crammed with pony trekking, ballet and violin lessons and yet more tennis. At company get togethers Jim became accustomed to the pity – and ridicule – from London-based colleagues. “Have you bought a whippet yet?”, “Do you keep coal in the Jacuzzi?” and many more where they came from. Jim smiles wanly, as though he hasn’t heard them all before, but he is haunted by a terrible nightmare – what if the company decided to move him back to London! Perhaps he could afford to buy a semi in Bromley; maybe the Northern Line isn’t really as hellish as he remembers it; perhaps they’ll find schools where there aren’t too many knife-fights in the playground? Jim prefers not to think about it and instead keeps coming up with new reasons why it is imperative he remains in the Yorkshire office. His boss is properly appreciative of the sacrifices he has made for the sake of the company. As Jim could tell you – the north is a wonderful secret. Let’s keep it that way.

14.8.08 15:56 Permalink / comment

Gold Medal Olympics I was a little jaundiced about the Beijing Olympics. The drug scandals of recent years has taken the shine off many events and the Tibet protests and China’s woeful human rights records all added to a feeling of disillusionment. But after just a few days of competition I’m born-again fan. First came the opening ceremony that, despite the controversy over the lip synching tot, managed to be both spectacular and charming. Then followed some fantastic performances – not least by the Brits and in particular our women athletes. When a clearly exhausted Nicole Cooke climbed the winner’s podium to collect her cycling gold her 1000 watt smile lit up the whole of Britain. Happily the Olympics are giving us plenty of life-affirming stories of talent, hard work and endeavour. It is what sport should be all about.

14.8.08 15:48 Permalink / comment

Hypocrisy, self righteousness and violence You may remember a couple of years ago a group of eco-warriors set up a “climate camp” outside Britain’s biggest coal-fired power plant at Drax. A couple of telling details give the flavour of the protest. Firstly the camp’s organisers set up a car park - charging a distinctly capitalistic £10 per vehicle - for those well-heeled environmentalists who couldn’t abide the notion of sharing public transport with ordinary folk. The aim of the camp, which thankfully did not succeed, was to stop production at Drax, thereby cutting power supplies to about seven million people. But the activists ensured their own supplies wouldn’t be interrupted by rigging up a diesel generator to supply electricity to the campsite. This was hypocrisy on a truly monumental scale – people who consider themselves morally superior preaching to lesser mortals on the need to obey rules they had no intention of sticking to themselves. Now the entire circus has moved down to Kent where another climate camp has been set up to oppose the building of a new coal-fired station to replace an existing one at Kingsnorth on the Hoo peninsula. And the campers are displaying the same mixture of adolescent posturing and self righteousness, enlivened by regular outbursts of violence and thuggery, which have become the hallmarks of the modern environmental movement. There have already been a number of ugly clashes, several arrests and the police uncovered a cache of knives and other weapons close to the camp. Not all the campers are bad people. Many are well meaning, if naive. Some were even stupid enough to take their children on the protest. But a few are beginning to realise they are being used by a hardcore of activists intent on violence. Kent police reported that a group of more than 30 protesters packed up their belongings and left the camp earlier this week, telling officers they did not want to be associated with criminal activities. The flashpoint will come tomorrow when the protesters have threatened to use “direct action” to halt production at the plant. We have seen enough “direct action” at previous environmental protests to know exactly what that entails. Future energy policy is one of the most important debates we can have – but dangerous and irresponsible behaviour like this isn’t going to help. Let’s just hope the police are able to contain the violence and that no one is seriously hurt.

14.8.08 15:43 Permalink / comment

Mine's a 56.8cl Pop into a supermarket for a drop for beer for the weekend and you will find it sold in a variety of bottles – 33cl, 50cl, 75cl and a litre. Look hard enough you may just find a British beer sold in 56.8cl bottles – or what we old timers call “a pint”. Most supermarkets even helpfully tell you how much you are paying per litre – so you can make easy comparisons and don’t have to do the sums yourself. But if a pub or bar sells beer in litres it is breaking the law and could be fined £2,000, as Yorkshire businessman Nic Davison has found out to his cost. Mr Davidson and his Polish girlfriend set up a Polish restaurant in Doncaster selling beer in 33cl and 50cl glasses, as is common in much of Europe But he has been threatened with court action by the trading standards officers from the local council unless he changes the glasses within 28 days. As Mr Davidson said this is “barmy”. What business is it of the state to dictate the size of glasses a pub or restaurant uses? It doesn’t make any difference if a trader wants to sell beer by the litre – or bananas by the pound for that matter. What does matter is that the customer can make an easy comparison – a problem the supermarkets have solved quite easily. Mr Davidson should be commended for his entrepreneurship – giving Polish ex-patriots a taste of home and British punters something a bit different. Pubs and restaurants are having a hard enough time at the moment without trading standards adding to the burden.

14.8.08 15:31 Permalink / comment

The cost of gas Recently British Gas announced price rises of 35% - the biggest one-off increase in energy prices ever recorded. Meanwhile the oil giant BP announced half-year profits of £6.75 billion – or £37 million a day - an increase of 23% on last year, largely fuelled by the worldwide surge in oil prices. The reality behind these figures is misery for millions of people – pensioners crouched around a one-bar electric fire in the middle of a freezing January; families unable to visit grandparents because of the prohibitive cost of petrol. There is no doubt the pain is real - decisions made in oil company boardrooms and far-off sheikhdoms can have a devastating impact on our daily lives. In such situations it is tempting to search for an easy scapegoat - and the oil and gas companies are an obvious target. A consensus is beginning to develop - if only the government can be persuaded to hammer the energy companies hard enough, everything will be fine. What we need is a windfall tax on the fat cats of the oil and gas industries! Well, not so fast. If history teaches us anything it is that we should beware politicians promising glib solutions to complex problems. And if left wing MPs, the trade union movement and the eco-zealots are all agreed on something - as they are over a windfall tax - you can guarantee it will be 100% wrong. The first thing to note is that increases in oil company taxes won't make a blind bit of difference to world oil prices that are largely responsible for rising fuel bills. In fact one of the reasons fuel is so expensive in the UK is because of the high taxes already imposed. When you pay 118 pence for a litre of unleaded, just 1 penny goes towards oil company profits, while the government collects more than 50 pence in tax. Similarly of each £100 you pay for domestic gas, £3 goes in profit and about £6 in taxes to the government. So who is really to blame for high prices? If ministers are so concerned about fuel poverty, perhaps they should reduce the tax burden, rather than increasing it. An energy windfall tax might be more popular if the government could guarantee that the revenue raised would be used to help the most vulnerable in society. But we know that would never happen. Instead the money would gobbled up by the bloated state - yet more £50,000 a year sinecures for otherwise unemployable members of the Guardian-reading elite. Do we really want to hammer some of the country's most successful companies just so the state can recruit yet more real nappy co-ordinators and five-a-day facilitators? This is not to say that nothing should be done. Indeed the current energy price shock offers some important lessons we need to learn. At present clean, carbon-free nuclear power provides around a fifth of our electricity needs, yet within the next fifteen years all but one of our ageing nuclear power stations will close, leaving us even more reliant on despotic and unstable regimes that supply much of our gas. If we are to secure our energy needs in the future, prevent future price shocks and reach our carbon reduction targets we need a massive increase in nuclear energy alongside clean coal technology. There is no time to lose.

7.8.08 15:42 Permalink / comment

Call that a holiday? Who’d be a politician eh? The best expenses package in the world couldn’t persuade me to pose for cheesy pictures at the start of my holiday like Gordon Brown did recently. And if you can’t find it in you to feel sorry for the Prime Minister, at least spare a thought for his poor wife. She looked as though it will take more than a truckload of electrical goods from John Lewis to cheer her up. And no sooner had Brown settled down in his deck chair than one of his loyal lieutenants – foreign secretary David Miliband – made a pitch for his job. Once the holiday is over Brown has an autumn of backstabbing and plotting to look forward to, as Labour desperately try to turf him out as leader. Rather you than me, Gordon.

7.8.08 15:36 Permalink / comment

Making a Balls up Children’s Secretary Ed Balls is clearly a man who takes after his mentor and political daddy – Gordon Brown. When the going gets tough, he goes missing. The Prime Minister has earned the reputation as T.S. Eliot’s Macavity – the Mystery Cat, who is never there when something goes wrong. He voted for Iraq war and then acted for years as if he didn’t, and then followed that with the election that never was, the almost-secret and embarrassed signing of the EU constitution (on which he reneged on a promise to hold a referendum), the fiasco over the 10p tax band, and the Chinese Olympic Torch, which he endorsed but made sure not to touch. None of it was his fault, of course. Someone else was always to blame. To quote Mr Eliot: “But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!” For a man who wrote a book about political courage, Gordon is seriously lacking in the quality he so admires. And so it seems the same holds with his devoted acolyte Ed Balls. Over recent weeks, as the scandal over the disastrous failure over the marking of the schools SATs tests has unfolded, Balls has been conspicuous by his absence. His hapless underling, Schools Minister Jim Knight, has repeatedly been sent to face the critics, while the Normanton MP has sulked in his tent. Recently Balls was finally forced to face the House of Commons – and delivered a performance of such stunning ineptitude it made you wonder how he was ever talked up as a future Labour leader. Faced with strong evidence of utter chaos in the marking system, he refused to resign or even apologise. Told that waitresses and teenagers had been brought into mark exam papers, that thousands of scripts had been lost and that the American company contracted to mark the exams had failed miserably to meet the agreed deadline, Balls weakly admitted he was “accountable” but apparently not “responsible” and would therefore cling onto his job. Try that at work boss the next time you drop a clanger. What this latest episode demonstrates is that far from being leadership material, Balls is an over-promoted policy wonk, entirely lacking in the political nous or bravery required to lead a party or a country. Er… a bit like his boss really.

7.8.08 15:28 Permalink / comment

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