LOCALSIM BILL - A BLUFFER'S GUIDE

Courtesy of Mr Conrad - no rights reserved:

A landmark ground-breaking epoch shifting game changer has been devolved to Big voluntary neighbourhood residents Societies under the coalition’s plan to flummox the country with bullshit.

The Localism Bill, published today, has brought the already-simmering lexicon of coalition verbiage and claptrap masquerading as community empowerment close to boiling point.

Under the plan, Secretary of State for REALLOCALNOTTHEIRLOCAL, Eric Pickles, said voluntary coalitions of PR agencies and spin doctors would be empowered to devolve game changing transformations and freedoms to all bullshitters, not just those paid by ministers.

‘I aspire to a centrepiece vision of blue sky-ness to restore civic pride and to place-shape a fairer, stronger army of vulnerable adults to foundation economic advancement through neighbourhood bureaucracies and resurgent pathways,’ he dribbled.

‘That way, nobody will have a clue what we stand for before the next election.’

Deputy double-speaker in chief, Nicola Clegg, added that the Bill was a radical shape-shifting enterprise in innovation that would provide the ‘tippermost’ multitudal enhancements to ward-level consumer-thinkers.

‘This Bill will fundamentally hoard efficient service programmes at community level by freedoming the power to act decisively, rather than dictating a centralist big government lease-back to build a stronger, fairer and more incomprehensible future for all,’ he blathered.

The Best a man can get?

On the back of last week's 'main de dieu' cheatery by Thierry Henry on behalf of a desperate French side the sponsors stood firm. No matter how hard hit by the loss of the Emerald pound Henry was their man and Gillete pledged firm faith in his continued ability to persuade men their Mach 4 is the best a man can get.

In the last 24 hours the collective karma of the trio of renowned sports stars who remorselessly and adroitly shape the balls of the sports in which they are champions in the bathrooms of the poor until they agree to upgrade from a Mach 3 have taken a tumble.

Gentlemen, Tiger Woods Roger Federer you guys took one hell of a beating from the unerring law of cause and effect. So whether it's a bit of domestic upset and car frappery or the unsanctified portals of the 02 centre, good fortune avails not when the plucky Irish have been cheated. Amends must be made and the replay must be allowed or else all could be lost...

Gandhiversary

On Tuesday I attended a very rewarding event on charitable Project Planning at the incomparable Bhavan Centre . Thanks to Wirya and all at CaVSA for an enjoyable day made all that much better for being sat next to Raj Jogia from the Pepperpot Day Centre in Ladbroke Grove.

Before setting off for lunch Raj observed my copy of Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra Volume IV sticking from under my bag. I always find members in seemingly unlikely situations to be one of the great joys of the practice With Raj as my mentor I helped myself to delicious seconds from the canteen. By the time we exchanged details the penny finally dropped that this must be the father of Hiren with whom I enjoyed two years in Dedicated Soka.

This coming hot on the heels of of a fantastic chance meeting Andy Mitchell also from the old West London Team F. I was homeward bound from Olympia' district's Sunday afternoon discussion meeting.

Andy was on his way down the Hammersmith Road to play a set at The Albion . It was fantastic to hear of his actual proof and learn he's now frontman for the legendary Yardbirds - very inspirational and I'll take courage from this - and we must meet up for a pint before too long!

Anyway, back to the plot - on firing up t'Internet this morning Google had marked the 140th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birth.

And it was 50 yards further down the road from the Bhavan at 20 Barons Court Road that he had his first (and slightly too expensive) London lodgings when training for the Bar. Ouch that was a long painful way to get somewhere.

So I draw your attention on this propitious day for World Peace, Kosen Rufu and non-violence to the Gandhi, King Ikeda website

President Obama will talk of it as a moment to reflect on non-violence

"Americans owe an enormous measure of gratitude to the Mahatma. His teachings
and ideals, shared with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1959 pilgrimage to
India, transformed American society through our civil rights movement. The
America of today has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent
social action movement for Indian independence which he led.""Tomorrow, as we
remember the Mahatma on his birthday, we must renew our commitment to live his
ideals and to celebrate the dignity of all human beings,".

And to think that had he been an SGI Member he'd have been a in the Young Men's Division for West Kensington!

QUANGO STATE ARTICLES - INCOMING ALERT

The Daily Mail is trailing today a forthcoming TaxPayers' Alliance report on the Quango State claiming a seven fold growth in costs since New Labour came to power.

So the headline figures are:

• Cost of quangos in 1997 = £24 billion
• Cost of quangos in 2009 = £170 billion
• Number of quango staff = 1.5 million
• Number of quangos = 994

Respondint to the article a Cabinet Office spokesman has reported figures for 2007/8 claiming a fall from 857 to 790 -

From what I read of public bodies some of these, such as our hardy perennial favourite and proud sponsor of National Chip Week the British Potato Council are concealed within the Russian doll for levy bodies that is the fantabulous Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board

There's a judgmental looking Daily Mail cut out and keep name and shame (you couldn't make it up guv) graphic above.

Quangos are the low hanging fruit for the state cull. Lack of accountability, overly protected (a freedom from deathblows that would make a Sam Rami zombie howl with rage) and an elect Quangocracy of state client patsies pulling in above board salaries for distributing unaffordable largesse.

A happy Pinaata Donkey to be festively bashed with impunity and self-righteous zeal. I think we understand the story.

However, there is a need for balance and a need to protect some useful state babies from bathwater oblivion. Some NDPBs have great track records in performing vital and useful services and functions of state at safe distance from the dead hand of central government control.

The spiralling education and health splurge all derived from No 10 having too much baleful control over schools 'n' hospitals to the detriment of local accountability and choice.

Many NDPS (not quangos, note) as we call them exist for perfectly valid sound reasons - we might go all 'elf and safety and political correctness gawn mad, but the Health and Safety Executive do a good job and as an organisation are by and large certainly fit for purpose.

Pernicious culture or otherwise, the legislation and fundamental principals behind HSE/HSC are sound. If matters offend common sense we have a duty to respond as individuals possessed of robust courage in the context of our community and a wider society and stand up against folly or simply plain ignore as the French do rather than whine and whinge as law abiding doormat victims.

If the budgets of local authorities - including councils, police and education
bodies - are included, the cost will soar to £300billion.

But please let's get it into perspective. Local government budgets are £130 billion. Unlike Central Government they have made real efficiencies of 10 % in the last three years. But given their responsibilities is it surprising they spend £130 billion? What so, how interesting? should be a natural response to a simple statement of accounts.


So if there is to be a final judgment day, a Rapture moment for the Quangos so be it and not before time. By all means let's make sure we separate the wheat from the chaff and that it's done with speed, decisiveness and elan.

But for the rest, let's have a 'What so, how very interesting?" attitude.

Robert Chote from the IFS writes in The Times about the scale of the black hole from yesterday's leaked Treasury public spending forecasts. It makes for essential reading.

"They suggest a tougher outlook than at any time since the last Labour
Government was negotiating its spending plans with the IMF in the late 1970s."

Pressing further he lays it bare. It's dispiriting. But then again, as with dismantling the stubbornly rickety Quango state, knocking over a rotting door that's barely on its hinges isn't much sport - satisfying though the respite might be!

The officially published Budget forecasts showed total public
spending broadly flat in real terms on average over the three years of the next
spending review: 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14. But the leaked documents show
that over the same period the Treasury expects debt interest payments to rise by
11.1 per cent a year, social security costs by 1.4 per cent a year and other
“annually managed expenditure” (such as public sector pension payments and
contributions to the EU) by 3.1 per cent a year.
If you take these increases out of the flat profile for total spending, you are left with “departmental expenditure limits” — broadly speaking, what Whitehall has to spend on public services and administration — falling by 2.9 per cent a year in real terms or 8.6 per cent in total after three years. (Our best guess until yesterday had
been cuts of 2.3 per cent a year or 6.7 per cent in total: gratifyingly close, but not quite pessimistic enough.) This comes on top of a 0.8 per cent cut during the forthcoming financial year that the Budget was upfront about.

In essence we are returning full circle but in a crazily expensive and wasteful manner.

"The figures will make grim reading for Labour loyalists. They imply that by 2013-14 three quarters of the increase in spending on public services as a share of potential national income that Labour achieved during the years of plenty would be reversed. If even half the remaining tightening were to take the form of spending cuts, that would reverse the rest."

The necessary spending cuts, tax rises and reductions in rising welfare will nullify all the billions thrown at the public sector in the decade of neglectful largesse

Wake up and smell the harsh fiscal coffee

Further to Simon another useful reality check from Hamish McRae in the Indy who sees the gathering storm as a race against time. Enjoy the phoney war while you can because there's no other game in town at the moment. When tomorrow hits, it will hit you hard is the message.

Armageddon hits public finances sometime after May next year but in the meanwhile we've got Christmas to divert ourselves with.

Again enjoy what there is to enjoy as we're going to suffer what there is to suffer as a fact of life. Since we've been bad girls and boys, and proven to have been naughty not nice with Miss Prudence, it's a stick of coal in the festive sack until 2020 at the earliest.

Unless there's some other way of saving £110 billion a year or three times the MoD budget that has escaped our wavering attention!

Hamish points to Vince Cable's Reform pamphlet which brings light on the unprecedented structural dangers inherent in redressing the stateflation bubble. Fuelled by seemingly enldessly rising tax revenues from financial services and rising housing market, the public sector expanded share of GDP rose a staggering 10 per cent in the New Labour decade.

Dr Cable's remedy suggests nine areas for savings to kick-start reform- how many are beyond argument?

> Zero growth overall for public sector pay (saving £2.4 billion a year), a 25 per cent reduction in the total pay bill of staff earning over £100,000 and a salary freeze and end of bonuses for the civil service (saving £200 million a year).
> Tapering the family element of the tax credit – saving £1.35 billion.
> A radical review of public sector pensions with the view to moving to higher employee contributions and later retirement ages. There is currently a £28 billion subsidy to unfunded schemes.
> Scrapping several major IT systems including the ID card scheme (£5 billion over 10 years), Contactpoint (£200 million over 5 years), the NHS IT scheme (£250 million over the next 5 years) and the proposed “super database” (£6 billion).
> Curbing “industrial policy”, including scrapping Regional Development Agencies (£2.3 billion annually) and EGCD subsidies (£100 million annually) and reducing (by at least half) the Train to Gain and Skills Councils budgets (£990 million together a year).
> Reforming the National Health Service, by reducing the centralisation and over-administration – starting by scrapping Strategic Health Authorities (£200 million a year) – by strengthening commissioning and with “supply side reform” – in particular tariff reform could save around £2 billion a year.
> Curbing the centralisation in education, by cutting national strategies and scrapping quangos – saving around £600 million a year.
> Reducing the amount of waste in the defence procurement process, including scrapping the Eurofighter and Tranche 3 (£5 billion over 6 years), the A400M (total cost £22 billion), Nimrod MRA4, the Defence Training Review contract (£13 billion over 25 years) and the Trident submarine successor (£70 billion over 25 years).
> Examining possible future public sector asset sales, including some aspects of the Highways Agency (land value of £80 billion) and intangibles such as spectrum, landing rights and emissions trading

How to move beyond this to decentralisation, democratisation is Vince's next question? He argues against salami slicing but for setting high and low priorities. No more 'ring-fencing' of the big budgets of health, education, defence and welfare and all spending to be justified, not assumed as a given and lightly trimmed around the edges.

He argues for the return of real powers to local government and restoring the link between locl tax raising and accountable expenditure. While we're at it, as well as abolishing the remaining Strategic Health Authorities, who not start the process of bringing health services back to local oversight as it had been in the past and is elsewhere in the world?

Dr Cable's prescriptoin is for 8% fiscal tightening over a five period.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail reports that the Treasury has been planning harsher medicine for 9.3% across the board cuts in the four years after 2010 since the last Budget.

We know that Permanent Secretaries in the major spending departments have been making battle plans for 10 per cent and more so it should come as little surprise.

Will there be any surprises left in store for Osborne's Emergency Budget 2010?

Dr Jenkins' Good Medicine

Simon Jenkins as ever concise and clinical in getting to the nub of the cuts in public expenditure and the infantilisation of the debate.

He makes the valid point that local government has been subject to 10% reductions over the past three years and that wherever accountability comes to Downing Street, the cash continues to splash, notably in education, health and regional government.

Dr Jenkins prescribes medicine that is avowedly 'crude but fair'. Taking out the big beast projects such as Trident and the I.D. database is one thing. We can sort of understand that even if the headline figures are as scarily meaningless in size as the billions burnt at the altar of bank stabilisation/nationalisation.

But the fundamental overbalancing of the state sector and the ability of the productive part of the economy to maintain the rope and wire trick to the tune of £720 billion by 2011. Jenkins comments on the recent interest in foreign precedents.

But with half of public expenditure going on wages, the coming year will have to produce something swift, clinical and big. The corridors of Westminster are now awash with Swedes and Canadians peddling advice from similar experiences, all of it radical. In an interview in the McKinsey Quarterly, the former Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, describes how he sliced 11% off every budget in the 1990s. The key, he said, was to be fearless, explicit and, above all, fair. No one should feel the victim of discrimination. In 2006 the Canadians likewise declared what amounted to a national emergency, slashing the national debt by a half.

Don't expect the political parties to have a straight conversation with us any time ahead of the election mind!

Thank Heaven for the distractions at home

After painful and bitter experience of trying to be a normal working human being, homo sapiens officiosus I have to fess that I just canna do it.

Robert Crampton's apologia in the Times was useful reading. To me homeworking is not the facility to do what you want with your daily browsing, Youtubing, Facebooking Spotify without IT department restrictions or the puritanical imperative to be seen to be hard at it, regardless of whatever is really going on. It's just the why do so many of us restrict our lives as wage slaves operating on terms that don't favour flexibility, fun or freedom. Probably because it's stable, regular and without the dread fear of trying to freelance your way out of a black hole in a bid to create abundance...

But all the same, the trouble with home working is that once reacquainted with what passes for the real world of work it's too late. You've seen through the curtian of looking good at all times. Futzing around on the PC isn't good. Internet addiction and the homeworker are bedfellows as is the propensity to be distracted but this is true of the work office also. It's just that you have co-workers to judge you. Homeworkers have to be more true to themselves and their inner environment.

So working through a list of civil service departments, agencies, quangos and public corporations (but only after my morning plough through the Politics Home and Epolitix newsletters) and the dread of a huge OJEU trawl of government tenders is hard going.

I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to be invited by the wonderful Dr Tuppy Owens the inspiration and leader for 30 years of the most remarkable charity ever the Outsiders to do some publicity research of top notch amusement value. Watch this space or come to the Troxy at Limehouse on February 10th 2010.

Wise Spending - A Guide to UK Public Sector Insurgency

This year HMG plan to spread out £620 billion in expenditure

Going through an audit and doomsday type update of central and local government organisations for Stone Tiger it's not hard to see why.

What can be quantified, no matter how ghastly, can be seemingly controlled.

So what have I learned. Well although English local government has seen early evidence of amalgamation with district shire councils being absorbed in Cornwall, Shropshire and Northumberland, in central government it's a different story.

Although the quango cull seems to have begun, much civil service function has been hived off to areas that can be kept clear of overall head count. However, it's not hard to see through the smoke and mirrors (a phrase deriving from the early days of the Ghost Train, precursor of carnival and theme park rides the world over).

We can still find our dear old friend The British Potato Council hidden with the other food levy boards inside the Russian doll which is the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board.

Although raised for obvious sniggers, this is a serious point for those losing concentration at the back of the room.

Especially given today's news that Lord Voldemort's desires for the New Labour Government to launch an insurgency operation agains the behemothic state sector it has developed and grown by the expedient of throwing countless millions in the Comprehensive Spending Reviews from 2000 onwards. (Goya's unsettling image of Saturn devouring his children comes to mind at this juncture.....)

Indeed, although we are protected by not one but two audit bodies in the shape of the NAO and Audit Commission, parallels with the aftermath of Iraq in 2003 are quite promising. And here I would draw your attention to Rajiv Chandrasekaran's account of Imperial Life in the Emerald City

One gets the feeling that back in these safe shores we've seen a fair few shytery Custer Battles type outfits in the consultancy and outsourcing industries palling up to win contracts that couldn't or shouldn't have been delivered. It's not the process of outsourcing that is largely at stake, but the need for the activity to be managed and ordered by or on behalf of the state in the first instance that has to be questioned.

Just think about everyone suddenly getting present to the post-Soham rationale for creating the Independent Safeguarding Authority...

Now the 'bonfire of quangos' has become such a lifeless trope promised by every contender to power. It simply never happens. The machine don't give a damn.

But with fiscal deficit looming, Whitehall delaying all it can until safely in pre-election purdah maybe there is some hope.

If only the people of this country could be liberated to smash, take back or destroy the wasteful apparatus of state machinery, in the wilful spirit of the liberated Iraqi people in spring 2003.

Do you think what I'm thinking?

Brown's is the new Black Dog

We learn of the Prime Minister's state of mental health in good time for the prolonged run up to the party conference season. And it's not an edifying national conversation.

The political class is merely a reflection of the environment in the same way our financiers and footballers are. A cursory glance at what the press deigns to publish into their behaviour as human being is a fearful record. In this we would see a world of deep, dark psychopathological symptoms running the whole gamut from city high flyers driven to infanticide to the captain of the South Africa bound England football team publicly urinating in lap-dancing joints.

But money, celebrity and power are involved and wielded. So in this case our common perception is that such people are successfully operating on a plane far beyond any ordinary level. And because of this fact we don't consider the immense anger, greed and stupidity exhibited when things don't go wrong.. We follow the money and the power because this is the true measure of success and failure in the reality that society has agreed.

That a politician of Gordon Brown's standing and experience should be suffering from profound depression is understandable. His own demeanour would have pre-disposed him to such suffering in any profession. But given a lifetime's heavy politicking, the incessant demands of the job, how could a post-holder not but exist in a state of perpetual jet lag and chronic circadian dysrhythmia?

Maybe in such cases it's best to be a dreamer. Last week on the Today programme there was a debate between Max Hastings and Dr Nigel Knight argued as to the effectiveness of Churchill as war leader.

Of course, but don't say it out loud, in time of war paranoid schizophrenia is nationalised. Having lived an inner fantasy life in which he saw himself as coming to the rescue of the nation, Churchill was well rehearsed for his final hour in 1940. And good thing too. What the time demanded was that England took action and fought, no matter what. The rational course then would have been a version of surrender and therefore lunacy.

In a famous essay psychologist Anthony Storr described the inner life of Churchill. In Storr’s view, “it is probable that England owed her survival in 1940 to this inner world of make-believe. The kind of inspiration with which Churchill sustained the nation is not based on judgment, but on an irrational conviction independent of factual reality. Only a man convinced that he had an heroic mission, who believed that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he could yet triumph, and who could identify himself with a nation's destiny could have conveyed his inspiration to others."

Orwell had it when he said: “In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

Maybe, for the time being, the nation has the Prime Minister it deserves?

What that war picture from Afghanistan means to me

I have a son, a seven year old called Josh who lives very happily in a town called Surprise, Arizona.

Like all parents or those who care deeply for someone in their life, the thought of seeing your children suffer or face harm is indescribable and unimaginable. The parents of Josh Bernard have witnessed the AP image of their son's death broadcast around the US press and the world.

Lance Corporal Bernard, aged 21 was hit in the leg by a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Lying on his side in great agony and unable to breathe, his assault rifle stands useless within his grasp; one leg has been blown clean off and the mangled remains of another emerging from a patch of red gore. We see two fellow soldiers in blurred action attending to him.

Understandably, Lance Corporal Bernard's family did not wish this harrowing picture to feature on the AP Wire.

However, I am glad that the image has been used. Not in the sense that it bolsters argument for or against the continued involvement of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Like all great pictorial documenation the judgment of the camera is simple. The truth is self-evident and before our eyes. Human beings in the twenty first century should not be committed to inflicting such suffering upon each other.

Josh Bernard was in the words of his father a shy, humble, unassuming young man with strong values of service and personal honour. Although the use of this picture has caused additional grief to their family, I hope that in time they will see or derive some personal benefit from sharing their loss with the wider world and the Josh they knew and loved.

Where does this leave me on the other side of the Atlantic? In heartfelt honesty, I would like my son to grow up in a world where young American men don't have to travel vast distances to kill and be killed by other young men.

Auden wrote : "To ask the hard question is easy"; never more so than in the globalised, intrinsically interconnected world of instant communications, information and response of today.

The responsibility lies on all of us to consider and take action as individuals, communities, and societies. Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances and background, what am I doing, and what are we doing for the sake of contributing to a peaceful world?

The 20th century and the first disastrous early years of this century have sign-posted where the answers won't come from. If we don't know the answers, we certainly know the dead ends.

The solution won't be more politics and more money, no matter how they are painted, where they claim to derive from or what hopes they are sold on.

The answer lies in our hearts if we did but know it.

Retreads - Why The Public Sector Buys Dud Stuff

Have just read the Joseph Rowntree report Database State

It's a brilliant piece of research into how we fell into the a public sector surveillance quagmire and holds out a rope to haul the state clear out of the mire.

Database State gives a short yet full analysis into central government's obsession in recent years with investing in IT programmes that rely on holding, storing and in many cases mismanaging our sensitive personal information.

It also recommends, using a simple traffic light system (red, green amber) based on compliance with international standards on privacy, anonymity and respect for human rights which among our existing national systems should be scrapped, changed or left alone.

So we could say it was the Blairs that funked it - being dined down the river by the IT lobby in that crepuscular interval after the dotcom crash and before Iraq. This was about the time they got to grips with the fact they were meant to be in control of events as well as the reporting of them. I remember seeing David Blunkett and his Home Office officials being dined by ID card lobbyits in Gran Paradiso that unlikely outpost of Italian charm south of Victoria Station on Wilton Road. And lo it came to pass...

But enlightenment has come. And the true nature of all government phenomena comes down to this. If you want to know how to sell to the public sector, just look to what has proved a recent palpable failure in the private sector and pizazz - flog it for all it's worth! Because THEY WILL BUY IT. THEY WILL IMPLEMENT IT. ON A NATIONAL SCALE. AND THE TAXPAYER WILL FUND IT. Yes, you see my dears. We all win in the end!


"Britain is greatly afflicted by government naivety in purchasing. Many departments outsourced too much of their IT in the 1980s, and now do not have people with the skills to manage complex procurements. One noticeable effect is that the UK public sector always appears to get sold whatever technology or methodology is just going out of fashion in the private sector: business process re-engineering, which was popular in business in the 1980s, arrived in government in the 1990s (contributing among other things to the London Ambulance Service disaster); PKI was the big fashion in the late 1990s but vanished with the collapse of Baltimore in 2000, only to resurrect itself phoenix-like as the identity management programme; and customer relationship management, which private firms are now starting to see through, is selling well in Whitehall and local government. Again and again, the state gets palmed off with private-sector retreads." (page 46, Database State)

So if this is the ultimate reality of public sector purchasing, what duds from the commercial world can we expect to see making the headlines in three or four years time? Answers on a postcard please!

Quangomania

So it's time for David Cameron and the Conservatives to spell out just how they'll deal with the steaming quagmire of public finances they expect to inherit it a year or two's time.

In the medieval world, the concept of a 'damnosa hereditas' or accursed legacy was well established. Why aspire to wear the heavy crown king when you could enjoy your wealth and leisure with some other chump serving as the political vegetable.

King Dave's approach to tackling public debt was heralded in the Independent's piece on Quangos. Essentially there's nothing much new to report to Quangophiles.

Cabinet Office aren't printing the full list of bodies in a single easy to digest publication but claim there are only 790 on the block compared to 857 in 1997 . We now think they are spending/wasting £35 billion of hard earned tax payers cash. We're not entirely sure what they all do to justify their existence. But the good news is that the British Potato Council is still levying benigthed farmers to pay for national chip week - the highlight of the national culinary calendar.

Dan Lewis from the Economic Research Council is right in saying these should be a 'tremendous reform opportunity' for an incoming administration. In business speak they are low-hanging fruit but in the past they have demonstrated the persistent and resistant powers of a leyandii bush.

The trick will be to arrive with a comprehensive and plan to determine which functions can be outsourced, privatised or abolished and what if anything needs to be created in their place. Sharing this with the transition teams would be helpful.

On the vexed issues of public sector salaries which Cameron touched upon maybe a ceiling to be set, especially with so many public officials earning more than the Prime Minister. Either that or double the P.M.'s basic. Try that if you like

Hat-tip to Raheem for the cheeky pay slip of Ofcom's Ed Richards- worth every penny of £417,581.

A slandrous headline. But we salute it's indefatigability!

George Galloway stoned in Egypt

Apparently some noisome Egyptian youthful ruffians threw shards and rubble at his mini-bus. Respect and nuff said!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5872129.ece

Horrible and Hidden History of Hammersmith

A mis-guided, off beat, off kilter 2 hour tour of my manor in aid of Elizabeth Finn Care

Date:	Sunday, January 6 & 13th , 2008
Time:	2:00pm - 4:00pm
Location:	Hammersmith Broadway Tube
	by statue of 3 naked men

I've lived in Hammersmith for five years and daily I'd walk past a blue plaque in Brook Green. The plaque commemorates the founding of the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association. I would notice it and barely give it a second thought.

Then I did. Having learned the history of Elizabeth Finn and her wonderful example of what a human being is capable of achieving by taking courageous, compassionate action based on deep wisdom, I've been inspired to give something back to my community in the form of a guided historical walk.

The two hour walk will take in a dozen sites of infamy and inspiration and a cast of heroes and villains ranging from Elizabeth Finn to Margaret Thatcher, Charles Dickens to Oliver Cromwell, The Clash and the Beatles to Gustav Holst and Joanna Lumley.

The walk will acknowledge the good with the bad, the beautiful with the ugly with the focus on the good guys winning.

Our walk will retrace a history of compassion, courage and wisdom that has pervaded Hammersmith and shaped the present.

Walkers will be encouraged (by fair means or foul) to donate £2.50 in aid of Elizabeth Finn Care which began in Brook Green in 1897 and whose legacy that it is never too late to care endures today.

The walk is repeated the following Sunday 13th from 2-4pm

Victorious Hearts

It's been an interesting few months of late in which I haven't related my activities, opinions or thoughts. Over the summer I decided to stay in London and focus on my determination to get the career I wanted by 1st September.

Having foregone the pleasures of flying to Arizona to see Josh and from there to Melbourne to catch up with Kerri and see her folks I kept committed to my goal of being an open, passionate and enriching person in my daily work. Supporting various Soka Gakkai activities including the boys Future Group and booking to attend and support the Young Men's Summer Course on deadline day helped keep the vision alive, as did my dogged attendance of Landmark Seminar in Action courses every Monday evening without fail.

With all this in mind I begin work for Monday as a public sector sales manager for an employee benefits company and am really looking forward to being totally open, passionate and enriching in what will be a brilliant and stretching work environment.

Meanwhile, spurred on by an excellent Young Men's meeting at Masaru's, greatly enlivened by the presence of Joe Dempsey I took myself to the Burmese Embassy at noon today in support of peace and democracy in Burma.


The quiet corner behind Curzon street's yawning arc was filled with Burmese people, Amnesty International banners and odds and sods like me out to show solidarity for the cause of peace against the face of selfishness and hatred. Having avoided most forms of political protest in my life, I soon got the gist of standing and listening and clapping when permitted. By the time we all knelt in unison for a minute's prayer for all those in Burma I was still feeling a bit of a spectator, glowering into the TV cameras scanning our faces. But during those moments of reflection, as I accustomed myself to kneel and hold the palms of my hands together as if before the gohonzon the feeling of presence and peaceful commitment to change won over my own doubts and fears.

When I chanted yesterday I felt great compassion for the military leadership for the poverty and life denying hopelessness within their own hearts and sought in my prayer to reach out and transform their own poison into medicine. Today, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Charles Street, Mayfair my prayer truly did reach out to all in Burma, that all may be free from their prisons to live lives of joy.

It's worse, he does it with girls as well

So farewell George Melly,
Trad jazz man, surrealist and raconteur;
Keith's mum thought you louche
and Keith enjoyed your Profanisaurus

Was saddened to hear that George Melly is no longer with us. My dad remembered seeing him do his trad jazz thing whilst on national service and took a strong dislike to what he perceived to be a stream of ungallantly gynecological ribaldry directed at the waitresses and serving girls.

As a regular of Shepherds Bush's top restaurant the wonderfully chintzy Polish palace 'The Patio' it was always a delight when a deathless hush descended on the bigos and borscht as George entered, his sheer presence reaching out in time and space in advance of his rugged physical form, eyepatch in place, a boozy boho Pirate on shore leave.

On one occasion whilst dining with bear friends George was accompanied by a most astoundingly good looking , tall black man. We immediately thought dark thoughts about how embarrassingly obvious this was, how does George hold court and get to sleep with men way above his league at his age and with his reputation until sober reflection suggested maybe this was just a jazz encounter.

At another time whilst dining with my brother, George came in with a good looking Aussie blonde number on the right side of her thirties, both pissed to the gills, smoking and arguing continuously. Well less arguing than drinking and eating through a miasmatic fog of cultural confusion and anecdotage.

As Haliwell's Companion to Film would have it: 'Sample dialogue'

"And then I went to meet Princess Margaret Accompanied with Robin Day"

"Did you say Robin's gay?"

"Robin Day!

"Robin's gay??" Repeat ad nauseam.

On a club toilet door in deepest darkest 50s soho was written the grafitti "George Melly does it with men" to which some scribe had appended "it's even worse, he does it with girls as well".

Seeing Melly naked was a sight not confined to a few. One of his party tricks was to take his clothes off, get down on all fours, and rearrange his genitalia to impersonate a man, a woman, and then a bulldog.

For a full life lived with no regard to outward propriety or petifogging moralising, as a staunch humanist, Surrealist, fly fisherman and contributor to the joy and gaiety in all senses of the nation, and for leaving the universe in a better place than as he found it, I for one will be knocking one back for George.

Food Pornography as London Takes It

Had the good fortune whilst returning from a prospective job interview to choose to return on the circle line via High Street Kensington for a varied walk home (the stop and search down of anyone suspected of looking Asian opposite the copshop on Shepherd's Bush Road is also worth avoiding), to stumble in finally to Whole Foods Market

Set in the old Barkers store along the road from the Daily Mail/Evening Standard offices on Derry Street the three floor food emporium invites shoppers to indulge a foodie shopping nirvana beyond compare. Or if we agree that comparisons are odorous, it makes the Waitrose at the opposite end of the High Street seem like Somerfield.

The range of cheeses alone would force Sarkozy, let alone Barosso to lower head in hands and despair over how to govern a country, let alone continent with such diversity of dead milk in unusual smells and textures. Ditto the opening bakery, deli counter let alone meat, chocolate, and fruit and veg hall downstairs. I felt like Yeltsin or Gorbachev in the late 80s, dumbstruck by the world of choice represented by an everyday US supermarket compared to the GUM stores of Soviet Russia.

I didn't have time or incliation to head upstairs for the restaurants and Bramley pub but I did leave with head a spinning at the sheer quality, range, freshness and immensity of all on offer, rigorously maintained by staff working to the orders of a cadre of Whole Food drill sergeants/commissars.

So in short it's like being inside the Chocolate Factory - a world of wonderment, fantasy and sustainable, feelgood excess on the edge of Kensington Church Street. I'll have to come back to the store and ruminate between times on what this means in a world of haves and have nots. On first impressions this seems a happy concept that is well run and has the potential to improve our understanding of how food should be presented, marketed and sold.

But it was still back to Brook Green's Tesco to pick up humble supplies for a ready steady cook £5 dinner (Black Farmer sausages with new potatoes, green beans, broccoli, carrots and onion gravy for those desperate to know).

Apols if Corn (Law)

Trawling for research on public sector information I came across the Better Regulation Executive's report 'Informing the Public in a multi media age'

The report suggests that all statutory notices local authorities and central government bodis (DVLA/DEFRA) are obliged to produce cost some £15 million in local government alone at an average of £35k. Some London boroughs spend some £110,000 in their local rags to let the readers of the Kilburn Gazette know which pubs are pushing for longer opening hours and why Mr Jones round the corner wants his kitchen extended in his Grade II listed maisonette.

Not good news for local newspaper ad revenues, but on the bright side you can see now departed Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden stream in high resolution

So far, so e-gov, so good. But what did appeal to the old was the following guff about Legislative Reform Orders.

Ministers can now make a Legislative Reform Order (LRO) to remove burdens arising from legislation (Section 1 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, LRRA) and make orders to ensure that regulatory functions are exercised in compliance with the Better Regulations Commission’s Five Principles of Good Regulation (Section 2 of the LRRA). The LRO must meet the preconditions set out in section 3 of the Legislative Regulatory Reform Act and cannot deliver highly controversial reforms.

LROs may be highly effective in streamlining recent legislation removing burdensome publication requirements such as, constitutional announcements e.g. the appointment of deputy lieutenants, Corn Law announcements, ecclesiastical announcements and similar less used elements of statute law, which no longer serve a beneficial purpose. Removing administrative burdens in this way will enable
departments that do not have a bill slot available to implement better regulation principles efficiently. Further work is required to identify more specifically those laws suitable for the application of an LRO.

Strewth, haven't they repealed the Corn Laws yet? What do these announcements have to say? Was it all a dream - will Sir Robert Peel awake in a shower in the style of Robert Duff from Dallas? As the popbitch board would have it - apols if corn...

Health and Wealth

As a sanctimonious recent ex smoker, having puffed my last Marlboro light during the occasion of Sara and Trevyn's wedding in St Mawr at the fag end of last July(during which occasion I also abandoned my digital camera I believe in the car of the game young driver who took the curvy road back around the estuary to Falmouth with an aplomb that plainly denied his inexperience) it still pains me looking into pub windows to think that those who want to light up are denied such a simple pleasure.

This happened twice yesterday alone, at the William Morris Wetherspoon in King Street where a game old bloke was rolling them up whilst holding court by the open window and taking the 220 down the Fulham Palace Road where a group of Aussies were having a relaxed drink accompanied by the ubiquitous white and gold packaged Marlboro lights.

Cigarettes and alcohol are such natural bedfellows as to be hendiadyic in their unity. Sitting around the pub with a pint and a cigarillo may not be the most productive or value creating way to pass an evening or a lifetime, but it's a judgment we as individuals should be free to make.

The weekend that I smoked my last was spent at my parents in Launceston. I heard on the Radio 4 midnight news that the guru of quitting Allen Carr had been diagnosed with cancer but was keen to have this fact serve as a springboard to further promote his life's work in combating nicotine addiction.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5229048.stm
Mr Carr says he sees his illness as a way to encourage more people to quit.

"Since I stopped smoking more than 23 years ago I have been the happiest man in the world. I still feel the same way," he added.

As a means of using problems as opportunities to create value I thought so good, so Nichiren Buddhist and was inspired to purchase his how to quit book from WH Smiths the next day, which I promptly gave as a gift, together with my final pack of 10 Marlboro lights to my brother.

And although life's pressures got Nick back on the smokes after a few months cigarette free, I think by taking that action I learned to lose my dependency on cigarettes. Finally I had a choice in the matter in that I, Jonathan Werran choose not to light this cancer stick which is in my mouth, because I Jonathan Werran CHOOSE not to light this cancer stick which has irresistibly lodged itself between my lips.

So it's been nearly a year on the wagon and I feel better for not having the compulsion to do something i don't really want to do. And yes, the ban in pubs is welcome in that the temptation to do something I really don't want to do that I know is harmful to me and my life is thereby lessened. And I won't come home reeking of smoke and piously throwing a smelly jumper into the laundry ruminating 'and to think I inflicted this to everybody in my environment once'.

As an ex-smoker I'll always be part admiring, part yearning to be amongst the outcasts smirting outside the pubs and clubs. But what worked with Allen Carr was the fact that he didn't judge. As a reformed 5 pack a day man he knew what habits drive people to depend on the fags and he encouraged readers to continue smoking whilst reading and absorbing his book. To reform your life, it's necessary to develop a greater understanding of your life as part of the deal.

Which is why, although there isn't much I liked about departing Home Office Secretary of State John Reid or anything he had to say, I admired his standing up for single mums and others for whom a cigarette is a meaningful pleasure in a pressurised life at the bottom.

The Economist carries a timely piece on the law of diminishing effects of increasingly shrill, strident and bossy government health campaigns.

That stridency may be pointless, even counter-productive. There is no reason to believe that those who ignore measured voices will listen to shouting. It irritates the majority who are already behaving responsibly, and it may also undermine all government pronouncements on health by convincing people that they have an ultra-cautious margin of error built in.

Such hectoring may also be missing the root cause of the problem. According to Mr Marmot, who cites research on groups as diverse as baboons in captivity, British civil servants and Oscar nominees, the higher rates of ill health among those in more modest walks of life can be attributed to what he calls the “status syndrome”. People in privileged positions think they are worth the effort of behaving healthily, and find the will-power to do so. More directly, higher status itself protects people's health, he argues, not just by reducing their propensity to behave riskily, but also by changing their body chemistry in ways that protect them against disease.

The implication is that it is easier to improve a person's health by weakening the connection between social position and health than by targeting behaviour directly. Some public-health experts talk of changing an environment where the worst choices are the easiest to make, especially for those without the time and money to seek out better ones—supermarkets crammed with ready meals, happy hours in pubs, roads too dangerous for children to walk to school. Others speak of social cohesion, support for families and better education for all. These are bigger undertakings than a bossy ad campaign; but more effective, and quieter.

In Nichiren Buddhism we believe in the concept of 'esho funi' - the oneness of life and environment. The implication is that if you think your life is worthless, devoid of respect and meaning , then your immediate environment, how you live, where you live and what you do or don't do will reflect this as accurately as an untarnished mirror. If, however, you are enlightened to your own supreme worth as an ordinary human being and awaken to your mission to live an active life imbued with supreme meaning, fulfilment and purpose hey presto - your environment will, as if by magic, beging to reflect the meaning you are giving it.

"If the minds of living beings are impure, their land is also impure, but if their minds are pure, so is their land. There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds. It is the same with a Buddha and an ordinary being. When deluded, one is called an ordinary being, but when enlightened, one is called a Buddha. This is similar to a tarnished mirror that will shine like a jewel when polished. A mind now clouded by the illusions of the innate darkness of life is like a tarnished mirror, but when polished, it is sure to become like a clear mirror, reflecting the essential nature of phenomena and the true aspect of reality." [WND, Volume 1, page 4]

Teaching everybody that their lives, just as they are and without any need for 'change' are deserving of the utmost respect and reverence, as in fact are all other living beings, human and sentient, is the fundamental purpose of Mayahana Buddhism. In the Lotus Sutra, Boddhisattva Fukyo (Never Disparaging) would show constantly total respect to everybody he met, bowing and praising them even if they were to throw sticks and stones at him.

“The heart of the Buddha’s lifetime of teachings is the Lotus Sutra, and the heart of the practice of the Lotus Sutra is found in the ‘Never Disparaging’ chapter. What does Bodhisattva Never Disparaging’s profound respect for people signify? The purpose of the appearance in this world of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, lies in his behavior as a human being” (“The Three Kinds of Treasure,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Volume 1 pp. 851-52).

So if we could judge a little less, be less insistent on always being right, turn down the volume of the incessantly unheeded shrillness (as of today ex Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's comments on the smoking abducted sailors in Iran being a case in point) and by our individual example show greater respect for ourselves, others and our environment, and it's a big if admittedly, then we might see society be enriched through happy, bodily healthy and spiritually wealthy people. Possibly worth giving it a try!

How To Prepare A Government

The wholescale change around the Cabinet table can only spell good news for permanent secretaries of the major Whitehall departments.

So bring us your tired, bring us your bewildered, bring us your confused recent appointees. Bring Kelly to Transport, Blears to CLG and Hain to DWP. Then have them encastled within their offices at the top with SpAds, PPS' and underlings. Have IT fix them up with usernames, passwords email accounts via GSIx and a departmental mousemat for good measure.

Give them a few weeks to settle down, wave them goodbye on their August hols to Cape Cod, Tuscany or the Dordogne. Keep things running in smooth order in their absence and on their return, ahead of the party conference season dust down all those great policy recipes that the departmental chef reaches for on such occasions. A national database, ID cards, return to the Gold Standard.

Wait a few years the mixed ingredients to rise. Look up from the gloopy messy mixture to the wider world to see if anybody out there in the general public has noticed or cared. Season to taste. Eat. Regurgitate. Repeat. Result.