A shock and plaudits for the NHS

So where was I? Back from Paris and ready to start political blogging again. There was just this little visit to a colo-rectal consultant to ascertain the results of a colonoscopy I had before going to France.

Result? A diagnosis of bowel cancer and instant admission to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for an ileostomy from which I emerged yesterday. I now have chemo and another operation to face if the chemo works.

But from diagnosis to surgery in 4 days? What private health cover could better that? And if you have to have colo rectal cancer then have it in Birmingham which is a centre of excellence in terms of treatment.

I have frequently said nice things about the NHS but never before have I been so personally involved in how fantastic it can be in emergencies and I had excellent pre and post operative care and excellent surgeons.

The only sad thing of course is the post code lottery. That not everyone in Britain has the same access to the excellent facilities I enjoyed because of where they live. At the moment I don't feel like postulating too much on this - I am just too grateful for living where I do.

West is wise to stay on the sidelines

Whether the 'convincing' election victory of President Ahmedinejad was intended to reinforce his position and prove his popularity in clear and open competition, it seems to have backfired badly with supporters of Moussavi continuing to challenge the result in cities all over Iran and thousands taking to the streets despite the use of violence by police and security forces.



President Obama is absolutely right to resist the hotheads in the US - particularly in the Republican camp - who want stronger censure of the Iranian government. Obama is only too well aware that any strong actions from the Americans will lead immediately to the finger being pointed at the US as the eminence grise behind the unrest.



He has felt obliged to say something, after resolutions in Congress condemning the Iranian government, but he has remained as low key and uninvolved as possible, simply asking the Iranian government to stop 'violent and unjust action against its own people.'

Obama has to stay strong and resolute on this issue, not giving in to the hotheads of the Bush years who would have been all for labelling Iran as the 'Arch Demon of Evil' or some such rubbish by now

A wonderful week away

Last week was a wonderful escape from the turgid derrings-do of British political life as I spent a week in Paris with two friends -separately if that makes sense. I had long arranged to meet an old American friend who was holidaying there with her daughter and grandchildren and this I did. It was so good to see her again after a very long time.

My other friend is English and she and her husband are living in Paris for eight months while her husband is on an academic assignment. I spent a day with them and discovered the delights of the 5th arrondisement, a clearly upwardly mobile area on the left bank of the Seine.


It was good to be in a 'lived in' area of Paris full of cheese shops, bread shops, book shops and patisseries and away from all the tourist attractions. Of course I did a few of those as well but I preferred the quieter areas of the city.



Normal service resumes on Sunday

What a silly blogger!!!

Apologies to readers of the blog for disappearing off to Paris on holiday and forgetting to post that I would be away for ten days. Do I have any readers left? It's clear not much has changed in my absence, MPs expenses and Gordon Brown's leadership still to the fore - although Brown does appear to have ridden the storm for a time. Now he has to be seen to learn from it.

The Iranian elections produced, not surprisingly, a victory for Ahmedinejad but the scope of revolt by the 'reformers' must have taken the Iranian authorities by surprise and now the genie is out of the bottle it will be interesting to see exactly how strong is the current regime's hold on power.







I thought President Obama walked a pretty skilful tightrope in making it clear that he was interested that due electoral process won out, and that was down to the will of the Iranian people.


Anyway now I am back in harness, I will get back to regular opinions and sorry for not letting you all know

Last Days in the Bunker?

The events of the last few days, for any supporters of the Labour Party, have been horrible. The election results, we knew, were going to be dire but to read of Gordon Brown attempting to reshuffle his cabinet, trying to preserve an air that he had some degree of choice, was more than painful. At the same time, Ministers have been resigning all over the place - Purnell bluntly, Hutton guardedly and Flint bitchily.



Brown has a cabinet in place and, I suppose in practice, can continue to govern but he looks more and more like a dead man walking. Clearly his hands were tied by events and people have stayed in jobs simply because he does not have the clout to move them.

He appeared on television and recited his usual mantra about being the man for the job, pushing Britain out of recession etc etc and there have been calls now to unite around the new government - naturally.

But how long can this frail knocked-together group last. Brown looks like a man with a bunker mentality - going on and on pretending he is leading the nation when everyone else sees him as a lame duck. I'm sure he means what he says. He believes in his destiny. He always has. But can he not see that the ranks of those who agree with him have withered away so fast that he is almost talking to himself.

It is clear he wanted this job so badly that he is going to hang on to it unless shifted by a force of Labour opposition within the parliamentary party. If Gordon Brown really loves the Labour Party, he should bite the biggest bullet of his life - and hand its Premiership to someone else. With Brown at the helm the party is headed for one of its biggest electoral defeats of all time.

Labour Party on the point of implosion

Gordon Brown must today have that uncomfortable feeling of being a General without a command. With his Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, standing down over the expenses scandal and the possibility still of high profile Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon and Hazel Blears following suit, Brown has had more bad news today when it was announced that, along with David Chayter, another expenses victim, former Minister Patricia Hewitt and Childrens Minister Beverley Hughes both announced they would not be standing at the next election, wanting 'more time with their families'







This time honoured excuse is probably a greater kiss of death for Brown than the expenses resignations. Because everyone knows its polite political speak for 'We are stuffed. I have had it. I have lost confidence in the Party under your leadership and I want out."

There are a growing number of these people and a growing danger for Brown. It is pretty clear that New Labour has fallen apart at the seams and that Brown is hanging on to salvage something from the wreckage.

He may not get the chance. As Labour's fortunes worsen , so the contempt for Brown's leadership seems to be growing within whats left of the Labour Party and he could easily be dumped before the next election. It won't save the Labour Party from electoral humiliation but maybe the Party will get the opportunity in the wilderness to renew itself and rediscover its core values.

Sensible voting may be the biggest casualty

Next week on June 4th , we have the European elections and, whether you are in favour of Britain's membership of the EU or not, should provide the opportunity for the electorate to make a rational decision at the ballot box. Of course they never do, and for years the European election has been seen as the big opportunity to work off your beefs about what is happening locally.



But this year the voters anger could take a new and dangerous turn. It's OK letting off steam if your frustration and anger results in a marginal rise in the fortunes of the minor - some extreme - parties but without creating more than a ripple.

This time the expenses row which has consumed Westminster has fired voters with a fierce rage and it looks, from the polls, as if Labour - not surprisingly - is destined to feel the brunt of most of this, and the Tories somewhere behind. Perhaps more surprisingly, even the Liberal Democrats look as if they are going to be punished for being one of the major parties. Voters seem to have a 'plague on all your houses' sense about them and it looks as if the benficiaries of their wrath are going to be UKIP and the British National Party.

UKIP look like making a very strong showing but what is more worrying is that, in certain areas, the BNP could well be sending MEPs to Brussels.

I sincerely hope that British voters have a last minute injection of common sense. For all that the anger with our established politicans is justified, it will not help the cause of politics or democracy to give power to parties like the BNP, even as a knee jerk reaction. Once they get a foothold, there could be very unpleasant and unforseen results for everyone, including those who were blinded enough by anger with the system to vote for them.

Promises, Promises ?

There is no doubt that, whatever you might think of David Cameron and the Conservative Party, the guy knows how to sell himself. While politicians of all parties have suffered the shame and humiliation of being exposed as expenses fiddlers - and some Conservatives have been the worst offenders - Cameron has seized the opportunity to show his leadership strength in dealing with his offenders in a way which leaves Gordon Brown appearing comparatively floundering.




Cameron himself has been under the spotlight for using his expense allowance to pay his mortgage but at least he has been clear and open about this from the start and, whatever you may think of the expenses machinery, he is clearly not a major offender. So he has been able to stride through this crisis of confidence in politicians and has become one of the few to come out of this with his reputation enhanced in the eyes of the public.

If as most people now suspect the Tories win the next General Election, Cameron's pronouncements take on a more pertinent hue and deserve to be subject to close scrutiny.

Yesterday, in a major speech, he declared that a Conservative Government would revolutionise British politics in a number of ways. They would :-

Reduce Prime Ministerial power and restore the role of parliament

Would consider fixed length parliaments , taking away the right of the PM to judge best date for an election.

Devolve more power to local government

Reduce the degree of whipping on key votes

Reduce the use of the royal prerogative by the Prime Minister


Wonderful. All this sounds very good in the light of the expenses scandal and there is no doubt that it's the kind of speech which will be seized on by those who are sick to death of the goings on at Westminster and thirsty for some kind of promise of change.

And I fear that's all it is. Tony Blair made a few grandiose promises before his election in 1997 with regard to the openness of the British parliamentary system but very little changed when he got into office. Some of these changes are easier than others. In order to give the British electorate real local choice, the whole concept of funding local government has to change and the balance between local and national taxes completely revised. Are the Tories going to commit to that?

And I see the promise about reducing Prime Ministerial authority as so much hot air too. I can't honestly see Cameron being prepared to subjugate his own pretty strong will to a Conservative Party where he has a number of elements of whom he is wary.

So does Cameron mean what he says? Maybe? Some of it. But I suspect he has gauged a speech which everyone wants to hear and which may help him sail into power next year - and what then? Well sorry if I'm cynical but the expenses scandal will be old news - though I don't doubt voter anger will still be high - there will be a new administration with lots of new MPs (if present predictions of sackings come to fruition) and an opportunity for Cameron to set out his personal stall.

I suspect much of this 'new Jerusalem' will be quietly shelved - just as it has always been in the past.

Cantab misreads the mood again

There are times when I read the pronouncements of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and wonder if Rowan Atkinson might do a better job. His latest pronouncement suggests that we have gone far enough in exposing the pecuniary frailties of our politicians and that to continue to do so 'might undermine our whole political democracy'.




This, in my view, is rubbish. What is he suggesting? That we are better off drawing a veil over these excesses thus preserving an impression that our politicians are thoroughly decent people and deserving of our trust? What tripe. Now that the lid is off, I believe there is a public duty to continue examining all these cases and if, as forecast, 375 MPs out of 625 are cleared out of the House of Commons in shame before the next election then so be it.

This is an opportunity for a complete renewal of our political establishment, and it should be grasped with both hands. If people have committed acts of, essentially, fraud with taxpayers money they should go..and let that be a warning to the new MPs who will replace them that times have changed and that the new system they find in place will be strict and relentless.

As for Dr Williams, well I suppose he will carry on chuntering into his beard to anyone who is the least disposed to listen. The crowds must be growing smaller by the day.

Just when Americans thought it was safe .......

...so George Bush's enforcer returned to the arena condemning President Obama's attempts to restore decency and order to American politics by closing Guantanamo. As always, pitbull Cheney contemptuously dismissed waterboarding, torture, deprivation of human rights and everything else Guantanamo signifies as justified in the interests of American security.

It is an easy argument to sell to the homeland because it plays on fear. An argument that uses some form of moral integrity allied to sound common sense, as Obama is attempting to do, is much harder to sell, and, indeed,the President has had to compromise a little on his original closure plans. But at least his aims and intentions are still firmly fixed on the right goals.

Cheney doesn't care about America's image abroad. He sneered at Obama's 'gaining applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo' He doesn't care about the views of Europe for which he clearly feels some disdain. But we all know this, don't we. He and the Smirking Chimp presided for 8 years over the most immoral and despised American administration in many years, a regime which callously murdered 100,000 Iraqis in order to achive 'regime change' to satisfy America's ambitions in the region. A regime which ignored world opinion and went ahead with its criminal war in Iraq anyway.

That's why so many Americans voted for Obama last November. When they listen to Cheney mouthing his contempt and his distaste for trifling incidentals like human rights, maybe enough of them will remember why they turned their backs on the Republican Party, and once again return the monster to his swamp.

Just the kind of Tory to drive Cameron to drink.

What an amazing interview by Tory MP,Anthony Steen, who exploded with anger at any suggestion that his expense claims were unreasonable.

His comments encapsuled everything the average joe perceives about the Tory gentry, arrogant, unfeeling and completely in a world of his own. Steen suggested that critics were jealous of his home, which resembled Balmoral.



More amazing were his assertions that Ministers had 'mucked up' the system by introducing the Freedom of Information Act and that the public 'have no right to interfere in my private life'.

No right? Whose money does this stupid man this he was spending? £87,000 of OUR money to be precise on maintaining his idyllic estate. And the suggestion that MPs should have been allowed to continue creaming off the cash unimpeded by some intrusive law.

For all that David Cameron is pushing his new Tory 'Jerusalem;, there are some party elders who will never change..and more than you think.

An inevitable finale

So Michael Martin has, at last, 'resigned' as Speaker of the House of Commons though of course he was really forced out of office, the first Speaker in 300 years to suffer such a fate. If he was to be admired today, it was the succinct no-nonsense way he delivered his resignation, effective in a month's time at which point elections will take place for the first time for a replacement. His insistence that the day's business be continued after his announcement was probably because, at that point, he couldn't stomach the intended plaudits and tributes from the mealy-mouthed, many of whom had wanted him out.



But the decision is the right one for the Commons needs drastic renewal..and at last politicians from all sides of the house are realising how urgently. The House needs a Speaker who commands respect and is beyond reproach. In addition, new measures were announced to ensure that in future an outside body will monitor and regulate MPs pay and expenses...no more a 'Gentlemens Club' as Gordon Brown put it today.

But is it too late? The disclosures have clearly shocked the British public and they are set to wreak their revenge, one suspects, in the European elections on June 4th. We could get a very strange pattern of results which , as I said in an earlier post, will probably do nothing for any sensible European representation but will be a knee -jerk.

Politicians of all camps are bracing themselves for this but the bigger worry will come in less than 12 months when a British general election is held. Will the electorate have cooled down a little in that period or are they just biding their time? Time will tell but the last few weeks have detonated a bomb under the British political system, the damage from the fall-out still incalcuable.

Hope for a new start in Palestine

I made reference in a post in April to the difficulties the United States has had in the past in influencing the way Israel behaves, due to the tremendous Jewish lobby within the US which has affected how much the United States can do. I expressed the hope that Barack Obama would herald a new approach.

It would seem that my optimism is justified for it would seem that Mr Obama intends to make clear to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's new Prime Minister, that there will be no more blank cheques, no more automatic support for Israel simply because that support is in the interests of the Jewish state. He will push hard, it seems, for two things - For Israel to make positive moves towards the creation of an independent Palestinian state and for Israel to give up its nuclear weapons - the latter having shocked the Israeli government.

What is so heartening about this, is that in a recent poll in the US, Mr Obama's initatives were supported overwhelmingly by the Jewish voters who supported him in November.

I think this is one of the healthiest signs for the future of Palestine for many years. The fact that Jewish voters in America have lost patience with the intransigence Israel has shown towards any recognition of a separate Palestine and endorse Mr Obama so strongly boosts his position tremendously and leaves Netanyahu holding a pretty sorry baby. Without the guarantee of US support, Israel is left facing a very tough reality check - and not before time.

Netanyahu will struggle to concur with much of this, his own position at home depends on his continued stubborness to grant Palestine anything more, but if the consequence of American firmness means that Netanyahu has to go, then it will be a great leap forward for peace in the region.

Police running the country now, are they?

I had a dream - or rather a nightmare - today, of all our elected representatives being booted out of Parliament after the expenses scandals and replaced by policemen. It seems my nightmare is part way to reality with the announcement from the Association of Chief Police Officers today that it no longer intends to monitor hunts, nor do hunts need to inform police of the time and place of their meets or their planned route.

So in other words, ACPO have taken it upon themselves to give a green light to hunting -legal or illegal - with the implied suggestion that they don't consider hunting a priority. Oh well that's fine then.

Whatever you may think of the rights and wrongs of foxhunting, many people fought long and hard to get the hunting ban put in place and surely the police should be finding ways to execute their responsibilities in this area instead of airily informing the public that they don't consider it a priority and don't intend to bother with it.



Instead they have told forces , on the one hand to rely more on anti hunt groups (getting someone else to do the police's job) and on the other to effectively distrust such information because of the emotional nature of the groups interest. So effectively they are telling forces to back off altogether.

Since when did the police acquire the right to ignore law made by our elected representatives , however slimy and fraudulent that latter group now appears? This really is symptomatic of the way the police regard themselves as another branch of government not servants of the people through the democratic will of parliament. It's not the first time the police have taken a unilateral high handed stance about what they will and won't prosecute.

Senior police chiefs have an important role in feeding their concerns to government and expecting those concerns to be taken on board. They do not have a right to effectively neuter an Act of Parliament by effectively removing its ability to function.

The government should seek an early meeting with ACPO and start hammering tables. ACPO should be left in no doubt that laws which are on the statute book of this country will be upheld and that it is an extremely arrogant position for the police to adopt to announce to the world at large that there is one law they see as pointless and , effectively, are closing down any resources dedicated to it. This position should not be tolerated.

The Nuremberg Defence

I have resisted - although the thought had crossed my mind - comparing our shamed MPs and their expenses racket with its 'I was just following the rules' - to the Nazis at Nuremberg and their 'I was only following orders' but a number of our national newspapers have seen the similarities, if not in extent of crime, then to the rather pathetic, whiny back-pedalling now they have been found out, and used the term 'The Nuremberg Defence'

It is now clear that our MPs have had the opportunity to canvass their constituency electorate in the weeks since this all blew up and it is equally clear that what they have discovered has frightened them to death. The degree of public revulsion is of such a magnitude that I think many now see their careers exploding before their eyes. That explains why so many MPs are preparing to pay back some staggering sums of money, led by Health Minister Phil Hope who is repaying over £41,000 in additon to a spaniel-like appearance on TV asking for people to start believing in his integrity again.





And Hazel Blears, quietly confessing 'I know people are angry'. Damn right they are Haze..when someone has blatantly worked the 'second home' system as comprehensively as you!!



But still few admit they were wrong. They just concede that people 'view them as wrong'. Ms Blears, Mr Hope and many others must be relieved that they don't have to face the electorate in the next few months, or their careers may have headed for oblivion. Fortunately for them there is the chance for the public mood to cool a little. The 'Nuremberg' parallel continues with the way these people continue to find euphemisms and excuses to justify their behaviour. Two MPs were today sacked from their jobs, one Labour, Elliot Morley and Tory Andrew Mackay. Morley described his claiming £16000 allowances on a mortgage already paid off as 'a sloppy accounting practice for which I take full responsibility' Bullshit, Morley. It's criminal deception which you haven't owned up to.





Mackay and his MP Wife Julie Kirkbride have each claimed a second home allowance on different homes without having a named first home. Mackay apologised, not for his own behaviour, but for listening to the advice of the Fees Office. That's right - find someone else to blame. Another 'Nuremberg' trait. Gutless.





Although I too am angry at what has happened, I hope this doesn't result in a massive cull of our errant MPs. The people guilty of blatant fraud should be booted out of their respective parties and prosecuted to the full extent of the law but maybe the lesser offenders should be given a flea in the ear and left to fight for their careers. I know the prevailing mood is 'they bloody well deserve it' but what would kicking them all out achieve? A wonderful opportunity for minor parties to cash in on the anger and discontent but all you may get is the election of some people of of lesser talents and some, like the BNP, who would be positively dangerous.

But I hope these MPs , now shaking in their boots, regard this as a massive kick up the backside for their impudence and arrogance. It will be hard for many - who have been exposed as claiming massive fortunes and playing the housing market - of saying again 'I am in tune with the wishes of my constituents' without receiving a massive raspberry in response. I hope they all learn from it. Humility is good for the soul.

Readers, I promise to get off the expenses scandal sometime soon but this really is a shattering political event which could change the face of our politics and hence the attention I have given to it. But I will try :)

Don't listen to Tebbit

Sir Norman Tebbit has suggested - and been predictably slapped down by David Cameron for doing so - that Britons should use the European elections on June 4th to register their contempt and disgust at the major parties over the parliamentary expenses scandal by boycotting them in the election.



Now I am all for showing my contempt and disgust in whatever way is most effective, because I believe MPs in all the major parties somehow took leave of their collective senses in the way they abused the expenses system, but I don't believe we should use the European elections for that purpose.






I would like to see the British exercise more responsibility in European affairs not less. We should be trying to select the men and women who can best represent us in a European arena which is ever growing in importance and legislative responisbility. For too long the British have simply used the European elections as a protest vote , and I realise there is even more likelihood now that the pattern will repeat itself, but I sincerely beg the British electorate to think twice...and start voting positively for your European candidates, not waste your vote on a knee jerk response to the sleazy individuals who have been disgracing parliament of late

Not the man for the job

In December last year, I expressed my view on Mick Martin's fitness for purpose as Speaker of the House of Commons and found it wanting. There has been more evidence over the last week of Martin's unsuitability for his role, first in the way he handled the expenses debate last week, which could have been called manipulative at best. I felt that he connived to achieve a result the government wanted last week and failed to show even handedness in the way he intepreted motions.



Now this week he flew into something of a rage because people criticised the way he handled that very debate. He seems to have no conscience about being a major player in the great expenses debacle just a whiny defensiveness about any suggestion that he might have been less than competent in the way the whole thing was handled.






And as Nick Robinson says on his blog, on a day when the mood was to show a little humility about expenses excesses, not a word of apology from the Speaker. I do believe it is time he was replaced, in the interests of Parliament.

Still creating scapegoats

I watched the 'Panorama' special which revisited the tragic Haringey 'Baby P' case and it was revealed that a video had been made, as part of a case exercise, of Baby P's mother talking about her new boyfriend, the man who later was found to be responsible for beating the baby.



The information was not given to the police and it seems that the only people who know why that was are Sharon Shoesmith, the former director of Haringey SS and her deputy Cecilia Hitchen who was sacked last week, along with case worker Maria Ward and two others. But I can understand why such things disappear in a maze of paperwork and red tape.






It seemed to me that the only thing which came out of the programme was a feeling of a buraucratic nightmare which still shows little sign of improvement and an understaffed service where the social workers on the ground are feeling more and more neglected by their bosses and the politicians.



Ed Balls, the Childrens Minister, seemed to have little time for the social workers with whom he has dealt, comparing their input unfavourably to that of teachers. But I believe there is now a real crisis of confidence - people frightened to do or say anything critical for fear of losing their jobs.



The government seems to have thrown a lot at social services - new technology, more management etc etc but at the level where it matters, there are social workers, some under trained, taking on far too much work and bowing under the strain.



And this attitude of creating scapegoats every time there is a tragedy like Baby P will not help the situation one iota.

These leaders of ours are beneath contempt

There seems to be a common thread between this and my previous post 'Screwing people honestly', for we are unable to get away from the issue of the expense claims of British MPs and, thanks to the Daily Telegraph, we now have details of the claims of Ministers of the Crown and the picture is even more disgusting than even seemed to be the case before.

The way these conscience less parrots bleat about 'it was all within the rules' sounds more and more like a group of people who, instead of showing us what leadership ought to be about, had completely lost any moral compass.

The Telegraph, regardless of how it got its story and for whatever political motive, has done the electorate a favour - and left us with a bleak picture. There are few of them on either side of the House who have not dived in, snouts in the trough, to get whatever they could out of the parliamentary expenses system.

Some of the revelations are appalling.

Multi millionairess Barbara Follett claimed £25000 of taxpayers money for personal security. Excuse 'It was within the rules'

Hazel Blears claimed expenses on THREE properties within a year as her 'second home' 'It was within the rules'

Jack Straw claimed 100% of his council tax back when he was only paying 50% anyway. At least he didnt say that was within the rules just that he was ' a busy man and it was an oversight' Have you noticed that these busy men never UNDER claim?

Phil Hope spent £37,000 of OUR money refurbishing his flat. 'It was within the rules'

And perhaps the biggest inbuilt scandal of all is the legal loophole which allows MPs to make massive profits on properties which they have refurbished using taxpayers money. It is clear that Ben Bradshaw, Hazel Blears and Geoff Hoon have all dipped into this treasure chest and of course they are not alone. The full picture with regard to the Tories is yet to emerge.

Of course now our great and good moral guardians are panicking. 'All this will benefit the BNP' whines Harriet Harman, now trying hard to beg for votes. Well so it might, but these people, these hypocrites who have the temerity to tell us how to behave, should have thought of that before.

Ah but of course they did - when they all tried to be excused being included under the Freedom of Information Act knowing what the outcome of exposure would be. Now they are blaming the Telegraph , the media in general and most of all 'the system'

Do any of them have the moral guts, late in the day, to reflect honestly on the real culprits -themselves?

Screwing people honestly

There is a rather nice story from America this morning about porn star Stormy Daniels - winner of the 2007 Golden G-String Award - deciding to challenge Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter for his Senate seat on a platform of 'Stormy Daniels - Screwing People Honestly'




This is because Mr Vitter is one of those anti-gay, God fearing, Christian values holy rollers who was caught with his pants down consorting with prostitutes back in 2007. There is little to compare with these smug self righteous zealots suddenly found wanting and Ms Daniels challenge has certainly stirred up a scandal Mr Vitter hoped might go away. Like all these sanctimonious Christian right wingers, Vitter -only when found out - confessed to a 'serious sin' but now 'had received forgiveness from God'. Presumably he has a direct line to the Almighty to be sure of these things. Whether that translates into forgiveness from the Louisiana electorate for his hypocrisy is another matter.

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Ms. Daniels is unlikely to win but the prospect of the competition must be sending Republican Party chiefs into the depths of despair and making Barack Obama's 'new' Democratic America appear even more attractive nationwide.

Meanwhile Ms Daniels is having a ball - or two if her quotes are anything to go by. She has challenged Vitter to a family values debate but says 'he hasn't got the balls' and says she decided to enter the political arena because she was looking for something that was dirtier than the job she already had.

If Vitter hangs on to his seat it will probably be a Pyrrhic victory with the spectre of his carnal sins brought up at every stage and the Republican Party just praying for the whole thing to go away.

A squalid shameful act

The Iranian government stands accused this week of a shameful, squalid - and cynical- execution of a young woman, Delara Darabi, who was convicted of murdering a relative when she was just 17. She initially confessed to the crime, hoping to save her boyfriend, and then retracted her confession. She had been in prison since 2003.

Amnesty International took up her case in 2006 when the facts of her trial came to light and which Amnesty does not consider to have been fair, her lawyer being denied the right to present evidence which, it is claimed, would have proved she could not have committed the murder.



Iran has ignored the international agreement to ban capital punishment for those who committed crimes as juveniles but , only on 19th April Delara Darabi was given a 2 month stay of execution while international appeals were considered. Despite this, on May 1st, with no notice to her lawyer or her family, Delara Darabi was taken out of her cell and hanged in the compound of Rasht Prison. The speed and secrecy was, of course, to avoid international protests until it was too late.

140 people have been executed in Iran this year, including another woman and one other who committed the offence while under the age of 18. Two more juvenile offenders are scheduled to die this week.

Amnesty International is launching world wide protests in front of Iranian emabassies and if any readers of this blog would care to add their protests in the form of a letter to the Iranian embassy in your location, to stop capital punishment particularly of child offenders, you will have my gratitude.

'Dark Forces' or simple incompetence?

I watched the Chelsea v Barcelona European Champions League semi final last night, which of course, as anyone who follows football now knows, Chelsea lost to an away goal scored deep into stoppage time.

I'm no great lover of Chelsea but it was hard not to sympathise with the explosion of anger after the final whistle, directed at a referee, many of whose decisions were incomprehensible. Chelsea had four penalty appeals turned down, two of which appeared absolutely clear-cut. It was perhaps unfortunate that two of them involved 'Dorothy' Drogba, the big girls blouse with talent,but who falls over if you blow on him. This, of course, leaves a mark on the minds of officials but a competent official should be watching the play not allowing such things to cloud his judgement. Drogba was furious with the referee at the end of the game and roundly abused him for some minutes,which will cost him dearly.




The referee, Mr Tom Henning Ovrebo was awful. There is no other adjective to describe his performance. What is amazing in a game at this level, Mr Ovrebo admitted later to EUFA officials that he had made serious errors - not all of them one sided. It was incredibly harsh to send off Barcelona's Abidal for a minor tangle of legs as well as his apparent lack of eyesight for many of Chelsea's appeals.

Doubly astonishing was the fact that the Barcelona manager and players, after the match, almost shamefacedly sympathised with their opponents over the referee's performance, Pique admitting that he had handled the ball and felt lucky a penalty had not been awarded.

All in all a shocking night for the referee. But of course there are those who see more in this. Some Chelsea players and the pundits in the Sky TV studio suggested that the referee may have turned a blind eye to Chelsea's appeals because EUFA did not want two Premier League clubs contesting the European Final again. I can well believe they didn't, and are happier with a Barcelona v Man United final but I think it demeans the accusers to make such allegations against the European Association. I think it is down to simple incompetence. Ovrebo was clearly not good enough to referee, under pressure, at this level and EUFA need to take heed of this. There needs to be a strict tier of high quality officials for games of this magnitude because last night did little for anyone's sense of justice.

Another step down the 'benign' authoritarian road

The government has published its list of people banned from entering the United Kingdom, based on the views they have publicly expressed. As I said once before when Dutch MP Geert Wilders was denied entry to the UK, I am becoming more and more concerned at the ease with which this government rolls over the established tradition of free speech in favour of some 'benign' - they think - authoritarianism.

OK most decent people dislike the views of homophobes, ranting racists and so on but hasn't it always been a part of our democratic system that we absorb those with views we don't like and only take action when a specific offence has been committed?

Since 2005, the Home Office has had the power to expel or exclude people from the UK if they are considered to hold views which are likely to inflame. In whose view? The view of the government of course and this is a very dangerous road we are on. Jacqui Smith has already announced, last October, that there will now be 'a presumption of exclusion'. In other words, the British government makes up its mind it doesn't like the cut of your jib and then you have to prove them wrong. And there are inconsistencies and omissions. Why for example did they ban American lifestyle guru Martha Stewart? OK she had been jailed for lying about shares in her company but hardly a threat to the safety of the UK. A lot of this is nonsense and incredibly intolerant.

The current legislation and its enactment cuts across all the principles of British principles and behaviour and it worries me greatly that the government is so easily prepared to go down this road wearing such a morally self-righteous stance as it does so.

Come on Hazel - you're either with him or you're not!

Labour's permanently beaming little snugglebunny, Hazel Blears, popped her head over the parapet yesterday to voice her opinions on the lamentable state of the Government, of which she is a prominent member. She claims that Ministers have shown a 'lamentable' failure to communicate, that YouTube is not the means by which to launch policy initiatives , that 'slick presentation and clever soundbites' should be left to the Tories and that people don't believe what the Government says. Pretty damning eh?

Ah but wait a minute. This was not, says Bubbly Blears, any hint of an attack on Gordon Brown's leadership. Of course it wasn't, Hazel. We know that Gordon is just a figurehead on the periphery of events and absolutely nothing to do with any of the failings you describe.

They really are spineless these modern Ministers who seem to be so easily bypassed by their leader. If Hazel's article was not an attack on the way Gordon Brown has allowed this situation to come about, I don't know what is. But of course it's not as simple as that. The whole point of Hazel Blears's article is called 'positioning'. You don't say quite enough to get yourself fired...or at least I assume she took advice on how weak Gordon's position is re firing Ministers...but she set herself up for a key post in any post-Brown Labour Party by setting out her stall.

It's all posturing and in-fighting and, at a time when Britain needs its government to be pulling together, hardly a pretty sight

Preparing to desert the sinking ship is a mistake

A story is circulating today that some Labour MPs, we are not privy to how many, are preparing to ditch the Labour Party when (rather than if) the Party loses the next General Election, and to seek a political future with the Liberal Democrats. Lord Ashdown who broke the story says these centrist politicians fear a 'shift to the left' when Labour loses.



Well first off, instead of talking about shifts in any direction, why don't we talk about a return to some good socialist principles of fair distribution of wealth instead of trying to ape Tory policies in a vaguely anaemic way. Let's not be ashamed to talk about public services paid for by the taxpayer in accordance with his abilities. Let's have an education system and a social services regime we can be proud of. Let's back off these hideous defence commitments designed to make Britain look like a first division military power when it is clearly all kippers and curtains. Surely these are not reasons to defect or pin labels. The Labour Party should be going back to basics. It's what has sustained it for over 100 years. The New Labour bubble was clearly built on straw and has failed as it was bound to do as there was no belief to prop it up, simply the desire to keep winning elections.






And what if these milksops do defect? Do they think the Liberal Democrats are the answer? Oh sure their hearts are generally in the right place and they sometimes support good causes but the Party is really a hotchpotch of the disenchanted. It has no real creed. Do these people not remember the SDP? How that was going to be the saviour of Labour's middle-of-the-roaders and how the 'old' Labour Party would disappear? Never happened did it - OK it went through changes but it remained intact - and the same will happen again.



My advice to the currently disenchanted is to stay put and take part in a conscientious debate about where the heart and soul of the Labour Party really ought to be. Then you might make a sensible decision. Let's not talk about shifts to left or right, let's instead talk about the Labour Party discovering its true self once again. It can't come soon enough.

Swine Flu: A little restraint required with the warnings?

The world has been obsessed this week with the outbreak of swine flu, understandable when a new strain of flu appears for which there is no current vaccine and which has the capacity - and I choose my words carefully - to reach pandemic proportions. It does seem to have gone beyond confinement to national borders yet so far there is little evidence of the disease appearing in clusters unrelated to the source in Mexico, though I accept it's early days.



What concerns me though is the reaction, much of it initiated by the world's press who provide their usual mix of valuable reporting and headline irresponsibility. To know where the flu pockets are is useful information, but headlines about 'Killer flu strikes' are not helpful. All influenza is a killer to certain vulnerable sections of the population and a figure was quoted yesterday that 31,000 Americans, for example, die of 'normal' flu every year.






It worried me to see anxious tearful mothers clutching their offspring outside a Torbay school where one child had contracted the disease after a holiday in Mexico. You would have thought that it was the children's last day on earth, rather than them running a mild risk of a type of flu. I do think there needs to be a bit of calming here and reminders that, like any other form of flu, if your child is unlucky enough to catch swine flu then plenty of bed rest, lots of liquids and tender loving care should see them over it in 5-6 days just like any other flu bug. Statistically speaking their chances of coming though it without serious health damage is very high. People need to be warned and advised how to best avoid it, but they also need to be reminded that its not Ebola fever or Typhoid - it's flu.



And Ive just watched a rather silly manifestation of media hype on this issue where dear old BBC Midland News, ever desperate for a news story that doesn't involve cats up trees or a dog with three legs, sent a news crew hotfoot to a Staffordshire school where it was reported that a girl had shown the symptoms of swine flu. Live we went to the scene of this tense, gripping situation where the reporter rather sheepishly admitted that it had just been announced that the kid had a cold!

Gordon Gump does it again!

Having staked his prestige on a cut-costs solution to the admission of Gurkhas to the United Kingdom - a shameful, squalid move designed to limit as many as possible from qualifying - our stumbling Prime Minister found himself on the wrong end of a humiliating defeat yesterday, only the third vote the Government has lost since 1997. The worrying thing for Brown is that the defeat was ensured not just by the Conservatives and Liberals voting together but by a sizeable number of Labour MPs who defied the Prime Minister's strictures and voted against him.






This really is the panic button for Gordon. The bells are tolling for Mr Brown's stewardship of the United Kingdom and he appears to be losing more respect and authority by the day. And today there is a vote on his proposals over MPs expenses. He must be shaking in his shoes

Obama and the Israel problem

President Barack Obama has just celebrated his first 100 days in office and declared himself 'pleased but not satisfied'. I think this is about the right tone to strike since America is still deep in financial crisis and unemployment is running at nearly 9%, the highest for many years.



But the President also has reasons to be cheerful. He is still riding high in the popularity stakes and he has taken some very brave decisions. His approaches to Iran, to Venezuela and to Raul Castro's Cuba have been giant strides towards opening windows of dialogue with nations America has shunned for years. His Presidency is a wonderful breath of fresh air in terms of approach.






But soon, in May, he may be faced with one of his biggest challenges as he hosts the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC. And it is here that Mr Obama needs to show a different side of change and talk extremely toughly. It is imperative that the new American administration shows that it regards steps towards an independent Palestinian state as a number one priority and concedes nothing to Israeli vacillating on the issue.





This is going to be tough. America has, since Israel's birth, given the Jewish state virtually unqualified support and there is a powerful Jewish lobby running through the American political system. But the President will need to take on all of that, and the intransigent Mr Netanyahu, if the current , totally unacceptable, situation in Palestine is to be changed.



Israeli politicians are already talking about discussions on a Palestinian state as 'premature' instead preferring to talk of options to lighten the economic problems without actually ceding anything. The Israelis continue to expand their settlements on the West Bank in direct contravention of UN resolutions to stop, and Mr Obama may well have to risk a lot of unpopularity with the Jewish lobby at home as well as the Israelis themselves by threatening some form of sanctions if the Israelis refuse to comply.



It is a difficult issue for the American President and he has my sympathy, for, in microcosm, I have experienced the frustrations of criticising the actions of the Israeli state. I have some dearly treasured Jewish friends but this issue is so often a stumbling block that I have taken to avoiding it. For many Jews it seems, a criticism of Israel is seen as close to anti semitism and a failure to understand the intense drive to protect Israel's borders at all costs.



While recognising the need for Israel's security, the Jewish state can not continue its political and military policy in Gaza, in Lebanon, on the West Bank without continuing to lose the world's sympathy..and heaven knows it has managed to lose enough. President Obama has to do more than talk tough to Netanyahu. The Israelis have to be brought, kicking and screaming if necessary, to a conference table with their Palestinian counterparts and a deal hammered out for a viable, independent Palestinian state as a matter of urgency.

Oh Lord, please Brown retire on 'health grounds'!

Gordon Brown should quit and quit now. Can't his advisers persuade him to develop a long dormant dicky heart or perhaps, more credibly, some mental condition. I don't care that pundits will say it would cost the Labour Party the next general election. They have already lost the next General Election. The public of Britain can't wait to get rid of them. Not because the Tories will be any better but simply because they are anybody but the Incapability Brown/Scrounger Smith/Manipulative McNulty/ New (and hopelessly adrift) Labour. Labour desperately needs renewal. It needs to find a path of honour and decency and with this gaggle of clowns and rank amateurs at the helm it is simply floating along, its only target the sole object of re-election.






Brown has no judgement. Not a scrap. Now the idiot is digging his heels in and defending his proposed quick fix for MPs expenses with a standard attendance allowance. Can he not see how the public would perceive that? Has he not taken soundings from the European Parliament where such a system is already in place? SISO they call it there. Sign in and Sod off. How is that going to restore the image of our tarnished politicians. The current system is dreadful but it is right that an alternative be properly thought out and intelligently implemented by a commission set up to fully research the task. Why does Brown think his quick fixes will not be seen through as an attempt to prop up his ailing party?.



Then back to the Damian McBride issue and Brown's belated apology on a building site for something he knew nothing about and was horrified to discover. Ian Hislop on this week's 'Have I got news for you?' almost blatantly accused Brown of lying. It beggars belief, he said, that a personal advisor can sit in the same room coming up with fancy schemes to discredit the opposition and his boss knows nothing about them. And it does. As I have said in earlier posts, once a plotter always a plotter. Brown's wonderful line showing his mastery of the situation was replayed to hoots of laughter in the studio. "I am prepared to take full personal responsibility for what has happened, and therefore the person responsible has been dismissed." If only!!



Frankly Brown's attempts at being Prime Minister are rapidly becoming a joke. He may see his future as world economic guru but his attempts at running the nation are rapidly subsiding into farce. There have been rumours for some months of a potential leadership challenge very soon. Normally these things subside to nothing and are stuff of the Fleet Street rumour mill but I believe there are many Labour MPs who believe as I do that the government is probably doomed anyway but absolutely for sure under this guy.



Blair's warnings about allowing Brown into this job have been borne out with interest. Rarely has a politician been found so wanting. The sad fact is that, should a successful challenge take place, it will simply produce more of the same and not the renewal that the REAL Labour Party so desperately needs. I am, however, getting to the point of thinking we who love Labour and its ideal can worry about that later. For now any alternative will do.

Cervical cancer jabs and Birmingham schools

I commented some months back on the wonderful breakthrough of the HPV jab giving Britain's girls the opportunity to enjoy a life with minimal risk of cervical cancer.

And indeed there is a marvellous opportunity to ensure total coverage by administering the injection in schools. I can't understand, therefore, why Birmingham has decided on a sort of half and half approach to this. Half the city is going to administer the injection at school and the other half have decided it's the GP's responsibility. It would seem that the problem lies, not with the schools, but whether you are lucky enough to live in an area of Primary Care Trust responsibility which has decided to sponsor school visits

This seems ridiculous. Surely the only way to ensure that all the girls who qualify for the injection receive it is through a common policy, namely via visits to the schools. What is happening seems a recipe for a mess. Schools are going to have to check that girls have not been injected at a GP's surgery, and GP's practices are going to have to waste time ensuring that the girls have not been injected at school.

The worst part, of course, is that the PCTs who choose to leave it to the GP are also risking that some girls will not get the jab at all.

Surely there is a Department of Health issue here which should ensure a common policy across the board.

Appalling pub toilets

I was going to head this 'Pissed off' but I thought that was rather too coarse and low for a blog of this gravitas (ahem!!) but I am horrified at the state of the toilets in some of the pubs I visit. As I mentioned in an earlier thread I suffer from colitis so, unfortunately, my necessary visits often involve more than just leaping in and out for a leak.

I can't believe that either the management of the pubs concerned or their owners are prepared to let this situation continue. Are they not ashamed? A good evening out in a smart bar can be spoilt by the visit to the toilets which often as not have flooded floors, no toilet paper and the locks broken.




I'm sure my native city is far from the only offender, British traditions in this area traditionally erring on the side of the disgusting. We could take lessons from the Germans in terms of providing public facilities and where severe fines are imposed by an active inspectorate on premises which fall below an acceptable standard.

I accept that the state of the 'loos' is just negligence but I am puzzled by what seems to be the deliberate policy of removing door locks. Do they expect to catch armies of graffiti fiends or maybe some homosexual tryst? God knows but I do find this to be another black mark on pub loos. I'm not particularly a retiring violet but nobody wants some guy blundering in and saying 'sorry mate' as you sit there with trousers round your ankles, hardly at your most dignified.

Anyway there is one site which clearly feels as I do!! They've had the good idea of giving red, amber and green flashes against the pubs visited by their readers, dependent on the quality of their toilets. Dark green is excellent, light green good, amber average, light red is bad, and - if you visit premises marked dark red - take a clothes peg for your nose, your own loo paper and anti nausea pills. I hope their name and shame policy has some effect!

What do we actually sell any more?

I was watching a Midlands News item today about the recession biting deeply and hitting , quote, "one of Birmingham's most important industries" which turned out to be conference centres and arenas. Which made me wonder, not for the first time, what Birmingham actually survives on these days.

This is a city spawned by the industrial revolution and its hallmark was that it made things that people wanted to buy. Birmingham made cars, one of the biggest manufacturers in Europe if not the world, until the eventual collapse in 2005 of Austin Rover.






We made motor cycles at BSA, short for Birmingham Small Arms, and its name gives evidence of our other major industry - we made guns. We made bicycles, jewellery, chocolate and glass. We had something tangible to offer, a disparate range of production items we could sell to the world.

We lost our major car plant in 2005, motor bikes to the Italians and later the far east years before that. Other industries simply became redundant but, it seems to me, have never been replaced. Everything the consumer wants - TVs, DVD players, washing machines, cars, bikes - all made in the far east or somwhere not in the UK

Now we seem to sell that intangible of intangibles - 'services'. We sell conference space and arena shows and all the peripheral stuff - the pretty girls and the razzmatazz that goes with it. We are a dependency economy, dependent on other companies outside the city - and many from abroad - seeing Birmingham as a market stall on which to lay out their goods. So we are Mr 10% - we take the commission for providing a pretty setting for other people to sell stuff.

In a current review of Birmingham, two of its industries are described as finance and tourism. Well forgive me, love my city though I do, I would hardly count on its future as a tourist destination and , even if it were the Rome of the Midlands, what sort of an industry is 'tourism'.? That's for the likes of Majorca and the Bahamas,with precious little else going for it, not a major city with a massive potential workforce.

It was announced this week that Birmingham has suffered more than most under the recession. Well I don't think that's greatly surprising. When you have what was once a major manufacturing city now vulnerable to the whims of other people's businesses because we specialise in service industries and entertainment, then in a recession those are going to be cut back pretty quickly.

I have watched the renaissance of Birmingham with some admiration and more than a little worry. The bars, restaurants and clubs which have sprung up on our canal side are very impressive and a joy to take visitors.




But I come back to where the money comes from? What is sustaining this growth of leisure and entertainment, these comparitively rich kids who come into the city and spend £25 on a meal and £4 on a pint of lager? Where does their money come from? And is this recession, now seen to be the worst since the second world war and counting, going to finally blow apart the apparent prosperity of Birmingham as a facade that cannot be sustained?

Mad Dogs and Englishmen!

Now assuming you are English, did you wake up this morning and remember it was St Georges Day? No nor me. We are incredibly underwhelmed in England by our national day, despite the efforts of a few to hold fetes etc, always highlighted by the BBC Midland News, ever desperate for a decent story, but by and large it seems to go by largely without celebration.




It seems to be part and parcel of the English languid approach to nationalism. There are more St Georges flags around when England play football than on our national day. There have been a number of theories put forward as to why this is, none of which totally convince. Some people have said its since England has become a multi cultural nation with more ethnic races who have no ties to our traditional saint (who wasn't English anyway). I think this is rubbish because I never recall St Georges Day having a very high profile when I was a child over 50 years ago either.

Maybe its because we have a sort of sense of general contentment about ourselves without having to go in for nationalist excess. That's the version I like anyway. I am happy that the English generally don't go for the overt kind of nationalism seen in the United States which can be so easily perverted to a political path by unscrupulous politicians when the Commander-in-Chief is also the President.

I'm told that St Georges Day is making a comeback, possibly because commercial interests are encouraging it, but maybe partly because of the devolution of Scotland and Wales, making the English think more about their Englishness than Britishness.

Anyway its all hypothesis. But despite the changes in the demographics of the nation there are still a few old English diehards left. I went for lunch at my local pub today which is where I realised it was St Georges Day, simply because one of the elderly regulars with whom I am on chatting terms and who usually shows up in his cardigan and flannels, turned up in a blue suit and panama hat, sporting a massive rose in his lapel and determinedly sat outside to advertise that he had remembered the day.

He was soon back in the lounge, complaining that the kids playing bowls were taking the mickey out of his hat. There aren't many of his ilk left, God bless 'em!

Cameron should be grateful he's on the opposite benches

Alistair Darling today delivered a budget in which he knew he couldn't win. The economic situation is dire, he was facing the inevitability of massive borrowing - £175 billion this year and £700 billion over the next 5 years. Total national debt will peak at 80% of Gross Domestic Product virtually double the 'top line' figure set by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor, and we will not be back in balance - at best - until 2018.




Could it be worse? Darling did at least attempt to boost the economy through job creation measures, desperately needed, but his hands were necessarily tied by the balancing act of trying to please everyone at a time when the piggy bank was empty and the need to borrow so much money.

The interesting thing is that criticism has mainly been that he hasn't committed enough funds to boost business, boost housing or benefit the poor. All this probably true but he was on a hiding to nothing. The criticism has come from business leaders and economists alike and it puts the Conservatives approach under the microscope.

David Cameron was able to manufacture some outrage and passion over the 'utter mess' Brown and Darling had made of the economy, and, of course, there were enthusiastic cheers for the sentiment from the Tory benches.




However let's stop a moment. Cameron may be getting his day in the sun at Labour's expense, sneering at Brown's claims during the good years that 'boom and bust are over'. But it's a good job for Cameron that no one really puts the opposition proposals under the spotlight until an election is called. So he and George Osborne can continue blaming Labour's mishandling of the economy with impunity.

But what is their solution? To sit tight, to save money, to not spend our way out of recession. The interesting thing is hardly any of the world's leading economists agree with them. Because that means deflation, a squeezing of commerce, no money circulating to get the economy moving again. And Cameron and his policies really should be put under the spotlight. But they won't be until they become possibly relevant, two or three months before an election.

So I advise David Cameron to cash in while he can. When his policies begin to be dissected, line by line, in the light of the world global crisis, my suspicion is that 'the great white hope' of our monied classes will begin to look horribly naked.

Britain pilloried again on child welfare

There have been three reports in as many years on the state of child welfare across the world, by UNICEF in 2007, Save the Children in 2008 and now the Child Poverty Action Group. In only one, the simplest in terms of expectation, did Britain come out anything like smiling and that was the 8th place in a world poll of Save the Children and they simply took the mortality rate of under 5s, the number of under 5s who are underweight and the number of infants enrolled in school.

In the other polls which asked far more wide ranging questions, Britain came bottom in the world in the UNICEF poll of rich nations (see below) and now, in the CPAG survey, a miserable 24th out of 29 countries in Europe. These are not figures to be proud of, particularly after 12 years of Labour government. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta were lower than the UK, and given our relative wealth, that's a pretty depressing set of nations to be lumbered with.




The CPAG has acknowledged, in fairness, that the British government is trying to tackle the problem through Sure Start, the Children's Plan and tax credits but says more funding needs to be allocated to the problems.

The issues that seem to have done for us are primarily the high numbers of children living in families with nobody in work and in bad environments, added to the poor rate of pick up on immunisation - a really serious worry - , the inability of British children to communicate well with parents and, another major problem, bad diet and consequent child obesity.

The Dutch came top of the list for child welfare, followed by the Scandinavian countries and Britain clearly has a tough job to get among the leaders, where a nation as rich as ourselves ought to be. Tax policy is clearly an issue, and the reluctance of New Labour to commit to a tax policy which meets the nation's social needs, instead trying to avoid Tory flak of being a 'tax and spend' party, is a majo factor.

We need to go back to basics, unlikely under the present lot, and determine how much we need to spend to provide the United Kingdom with the social framework it deserves, rather than how much can we afford to tax people without giving the Tories ammunition. Labour has simply fallen between two fences, neither satisfying the country's social welfare needs or satisfying the electorate that it is necessarily the sounder choice.

Of course there will be those who read the statistics and immediately blame one parent families and the breakdown of the family unit in the UK for much of this. But Scandinavia, which is frequently lauded to the skies, has almost abandoned traditional marriage as a precursor to raising children and most kids are brought up outside a traditional married environment. The difference is that state policy and high taxation has allowed more flexibility in the way children are targetted for benefit, regardless of the status of their parents.

It's not just the government, of course. There needs to be a substantial mind set change on diet, particularly among poorer families, on the provision of junk food for children. The statistics on child obesity make horrifying reading, and while the problem is growing across most socio-economic groups, it is among the poor that the issue is most significant. The common excuse that other foods are too expensive is simply not true and there is a fixed food attitude problem which needs urgent re-education if Britain is to make any strides out of this rather ignominious depth.

This week there is a budget and it is yet to be seen whether Alistair Darling will grasp the nettle and allocate the resources necessary to boost the well being of Britain's children to the degree required to drag us out of this rather shameful position. I'm not holding my breath.