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By Jack Straw ( view all posts) Have I missed something?
Last weekend the news bulletins were peppered by interviews with excited executives from some of the major retail chains, salivating at the prospect of an end to restrictions on Sunday trading.
It looks as though for certain these restrictions will be lifted for the Olympics.
In turn this will be used to justify the permanent end of any hours’ difference between Sunday and the rest of the week.
The case for lifting these restrictions during the Olympics doesn’t seem to me to stand up for a moment.
I was raised not far from Stratford, the site of the (amazing) Olympic Park.
As I saw for myself on Tuesday of this week, even the much-enlarged station there can barely cope. It will really struggle during the Olympics.
Having the big shops in the area closed for a few hours on Sundays will be a benefit.
As for areas beyond east London – I’m afraid I don’t follow the argument at all.
The Olympics may well affect levels of retail trade from day to day; just as the weather does.
But what affects it overall is how much money people feel they have, including any credit they think they can safely access.
So why are the big retailers peddling this tendentious stuff?
The answer is simple. They want an even bigger share of the retail cake, and, as usual, they are ruthless in its pursuit, regardless of the adverse effect on local convenience stores, some High Streets – and even more important , that Sunday is special.
Already there are claims about all the jobs these retail multiples will create. What they never do is net those figures off against the smaller (often family) shops which will shed jobs.
All stores can open for six hours on a Sunday. Is anyone seriously inconvenienced by this?
More people still attend church every week than go to football matches.
And whether people are believers or not, I think that our society is helped by having a rhythm to the week, not having every day the same.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) “GET out of my room. I’m sick of that subject. You’re all mad” was the response of a senior member of the White House staff when asked about the ‘special relationship’ the USA had with Britain.
This story was related by the BBC’s Justin Webb, reflecting on his eight years as their North America editor.
The White House was then occupied by President Bush, who really was an Anglophile. His greatest hero is Winston Churchill.
The President today, Barak Obama, had Churchill’s bust removed from the White House. His father was black, from Kenya – where the British white colonialists were notorious even within the British Empire for their racism.
He was brought up in Hawaii – the other side of the globe. He lived in Chicago, dominated by a huge Irish-American diaspora not exactly keen on the Brits. And he looks west, to Asia, more than he does east to Europe.
So what about the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States, about which we’ll hear so much this week during David Cameron’s visit to see the President?
Is the idea just bunkum, in the words of the Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee ‘potentially misleading’, or is there something in it?
The phrase goes back to a famous speech which Churchill made in March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, in which he called for ‘a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States’.
I doubt however that he’d use the phrase today.
The British Empire has gone. We are still very influential on the world stage for our size, but others are there too: China, India, Brazil, Japan, and the economic power-house of Europe that is Germany.
With each of these countries, at least as crucial to the US’s future as we are, the US has a distinctive relationship. The adjective ‘special’ may well be trotted out in mutual flattery by their heads of government.
As British Foreign Secretary I worked hard for a good relationship with the US (as I did with other countries). But, echoing that Commons’ committee, I think the phrase ‘special relationship’ is confusing, and patronising, and should best be avoided.
By Kate Hollern ( view all posts) I know I’m not the first and I certainly won’t be the last to ask the Coalition Government what on earth it means by fairness.
This week the Labour Opposition forced a parliamentary debate on the mess surrounding the government’s plan to cut child benefit. In the debate they highlighted irrefutable evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that shows the government’s proposals are ‘fundamentally unfair’ and for some families a pay rise at work will actually result in a significant cut in household income.
I wasn’t holding my breath but typically they got no answers from Treasury ministers.
At the moment because of tax credits a couple where one parent works and the other looks after the children are £59 a week better off.
It makes sense because as a result it pays to work.From next month they will be £14 a week better off on the dole – despite the government’s claims it wants to make work pay!
Less we forget, from April this Tory led Government are penalising almost half a million children with draconian cuts to child tax credit.
Middle income families are being hit by cuts to child benefit, hardworking families are being penalised by child tax cuts and women are being shut out of the legal system.
Where is that compelling vision for Britain painted by David Cameron when he said we were all in this together?
Is it any wonder that the prime minister’s guru Steve Hilton, the man who authored the statement ‘let sunshine win the day’, has fled to California in search of it?
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are also in the dock. And it comes as no surprise that Chris Saunders, his chief economic adviser has also resigned to ‘go travelling the world ’
Perhaps these two guys recognise that under this Coalition the future in Britain is not bright and it’s time for the rats who helped behind the scenes to con the British electorate to get off the sinking ship and swim off into the sunset.
Follow Kate on twitter: @cllrkate
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) A central principle common to all world religions is the idea that we should behave towards others in the way in which we would expect others to behave towards us. Christ devotes much of his teaching to this theme, building on the Old Testament injunction that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged”, and “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, are two of his most powerful, and enduring, messages about how individuals, local communities, and whole societies, should live peacefully, and happily, with others.
Given the key importance of these ideas to Christianity, why are some church leaders – in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in particular – not practicing what Christ taught, on the issue of people’s sexuality?
I happen to be, in the modern jargon, “straight”. It doesn’t make me a better person.
I didn’t choose to be straight. It’s how I am. It would be no different if I were gay.
I would neither be a better, nor a worse, person because of it. It would simply be how I was.
Because I am straight, I have a right to marry a woman. But if I were a gay man, or a lesbian woman, in love with another gay man, or lesbian woman, I can get to a half-way house with a “civil partnership”, but the law currently says that I cannot marry.
Some Church leaders say the law should stay that way, on the spurious grounds that the sanctity and importance of heterosexual marriage will somehow be damaged. How, why?
I know of no-one who is married who feels threatened by the idea that another couple, same sex, wishes to cement their love for each other by marrying.
Why should this not be a matter of celebration, rather than of prohibition?
And how on earth do these church leaders square their present stand with those biblical injunctions about treating others as you would expect to be treated yourself?
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) Wasting police time is quite a serious criminal offence. The maximum penalty is 6 months in jail.
Last Friday I thought I came close to being charged with this
The particulars of the charge would have been these: that I had inveigled a police constable, a PCSO, along with the commander of our large police division, Chief Superintendent Bob Eastwood, to waste two hours at a public meeting for no particular purpose.
There were witnesses, too – at least eighty were present, so an alibi would have proved impossible.
The meeting was a regular residents’ meeting – this time for the Brownhill and Roe Lee area of town, held in Holy Souls’ Church Hall on Whalley New Road.
Now in their ninth year, these meetings follow a familiar pattern. There’s a detailed printed report on the area, prepared jointly by council officers and police staff, put round before the start. Brief oral presentations are made by the Council Leader, the Chief Executive or Deputy, Mr Eastwood the police chief, the senior officer responsible for bins, litter, blocked gullies and similar delights, and by me. That’s followed by an open session with questions or comments from the residents. A full note is kept, and an action report subsequently sent to everyone who attended.
For some years after this cycle of meetings began in 2003 they were dominated by complaints about crime or anti-social behaviour. These days – as at the Holy Souls’ meeting – such complaints are a rarity. Indeed, at this lively meeting there wasn’t a single comment about crime.
There’s an easy explanation for this: the kind of crimes which really worry people, like house burglary, have fallen dramatically.
When, some years ago, Mr Eastwood was the inspector for the east side of Blackburn there might be fifty burglaries in a month. In contrast, in one month last year there were just twenty-five for the whole of his Division – Blackburn, Darwen, Hyndburn, Ribble Valley.
Joking aside, the police at the meeting were not wasting their time because they had no complaints to answer. Rather, that was a tribute to their effectiveness.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) I’ve a bright A’level student from a Blackburn school with me this week.
For the first four days of the week she’s been based in the House of Commons.
On Monday, there was a conference about the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry which I had set up in 1997. After that she had a front row seat in the Commons’ public gallery, watching the statement by the current Home Secretary, Theresa May on another of those recurring fiascos which go with the job, whoever is doing it. That was followed by a major debate on Iran, in which I spoke.
On Tuesday, it was a conference on the European Union at which I spoke, followed by a great celebration to mark the 90th Anniversary of the National Union of Students. It’s amazing how many former activists from the NUS (me included) end up in Parliament.
Yesterday she was able to watch the bear-garden of Prime Minister’s Questions. Today, there’s evidence from me about how Select Committees could be made more effective; then an important meeting with the Office of Fair Trading about car insurance.
Tomorrow she’ll spend the day in town watching how I do that end of my job as MP, including my constituency advice service.
She seems to be enjoying it all. I certainly would have at the same age.
I don’t remotely feel that I have been “exploiting” this student; neither does she.
But what if she was not with me for a week, but a couple of months; and if the “work experience” wasn’t watching how I do the job, but days spent stuffing envelopes, photocopying, filing, and making tea? And I didn’t pay her a bean?
That’s different, in my book. And the longer such a “work experience” went on, the more it would feel like exploitation.
I applaud the aim of government and employers alike to get long-term unemployed youngsters back into the habit of working, but both have to be really careful about what’s on offer, and how long it’s morally tolerable to expect them to do it for nothing.
By Jamie Groves ( view all posts) Figures released last week show that unemployment has risen for the 8th straight month, up 48000 to 2.67 million, the highest unemployment rate since 1995. Youth unemployment is up 22000 and women continue to be amongst the hardest hit. Yet before the last election David Cameron claimed to be a “compassionate conservative!” We don’t see any “compassion” from this Tory government as Cameron’s economic policies continue to rip-through the hearts of communities, particularly here in the north. And still they continue to blame everyone and everything else except themselves.
They blame the Labour Government for “reckless” spending yet the truth is for 10 years of that government the Tories actually criticised Labour, saying they would spend MORE if in power!! Only when the world recession hit, due to reckless bankers gambling, did they change their tune, ultimate political opportunism! They blamed the euro crisis and the royal wedding and even tried to blame the snow!! The fact is when Labour left office the economy was growing and unemployment was falling. Yes the deficit needs to be addressed but the reality is the Tories are cutting too far and too fast and if they continue this path, a path that has damaged the economy with no growth and no hope and doubled youth unemployment in 1 year, then the legacy left will be a “jobless generation” that this country cannot afford.
The truth is there is no such thing as a “compassionate Conservative” and like under previous Tory governments unemployment is rising rapidly again, which is NEVER a price worth paying.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) What Blackburn people started, Prime Minister David Cameron will finish. That, at least, is how things look after last Tuesday’s “motor insurance summit” at Downing Street.
I am clear that Mr Cameron has got the message loud and clear that the interlinked rackets, and just-legal wheezes which have driven motor insurance premiums sky high – and out of reach for some – have to end.
The Bill I introduced into the Commons last September, with all-party support, had four key proposals:
- To ban “referral fees” – the average £600 which is paid by the personal injury lawyers (and ultimately by the insurer) to claims management companies, recovery and repair firms, the no-fault insurers, and (I’m afraid) to some police and NHS staff for accident details;
- To cut in half the fixed fee of £1,200 which these lawyers receive for each successful claim of less than £10,000;
- To restrict “whiplash” claims to those few where there’s been a real neck injury for which there is objective evidence; and
- To stop insurers from penalising honest motorists, especially in the North West, for the fact that claims management companies are more active here than elsewhere.
The Government are already legislating to ban referral fees – not in as strong terms as I think is necessary, but I’m not cavilling about that. They’ve promised to cut the fixed fee. On Tuesday I understand much of the discussion at the “summit” was about whiplash. It’s not in the bag yet, but I’m pretty certain that action on this will follow. It needs to. On the face of it, the statistics suggest that people in England and Wales have weaker necks than anywhere else – including Scotland, which is obvious nonsense. It’s because our system is far more lax in allowing spurious claims. I want to see new rules on whiplash – no compensation, without good external evidence, if the crash speed was 15 mph or less; medical reports from doctors independent of the claimants.
Action on my fourth point will take longer; but three of four is good progress.
By Jack Straw ( view all posts) The man who did more than anyone to improve the lives of the poor in Victorian times held no public office; he was neither a Minister of the Crown, nor of religion.
He earnt his living by telling stories. Yet his “fiction” contained more truths than a dozen reports of Royal Commissions.
He was Charles Dickens.
The 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth fell on Tuesday.
Dickens lived in the south of England. But he travelled to the mill towns of Lancashire, and was appalled by what he witnessed.
The dreadful physical conditions in which children and adults were required to work in the cotton mills were, in his view, compounded by the hard-faced men who owned the mills, and controlled the towns.
His tirade against both is to be found in his shortest novel Hard Times, one of my favourites.
Written in 1854, his story is situated in “Coketown”, a thinly disguised Preston, which he’d visited earlier that year. His key characters, the industrialist Josiah Bounderby, and the school master, the wonderfully named Thomas Gradgrind were “utilitarians”.
People like this justified the unequal world from which they benefitted by claims that what mattered was the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” – ignoring the misery which unlucky individuals (thousands of them), like mill-hands, suffered on the way to the sunlit uplands for the fortunate minority.
Dickens had contempt for these people who knew the price of everything, but had no sense of value, nor fairness. “Now, what I want is facts” was Gradgrind’s refrain; anything else, beauty, truth, imagination, was dismissed as “fancy”.
Dickens’ extraordinary skill was in getting the Bounderby’s and Gradgrinds of the world to read his stories, and hold the mirror to themselves.
Gradually, there was an awakening, both by the workers through their trades unions, but also by many of the middle-classes, that conditions like those in Coketown were intolerable, and had to change.
But the wonderful thing about his novels is that they not only tell us about life when he wrote them, but about the human condition today.
By Damian Talbot ( view all posts) Chancellor George Osborne continues to show his true colours and prove that he really does love our bankers. In spite of public disgust at recently announced bonus payments being made – to the heads of now state owned banks – Osborne has said that they are necessary and justified, arguing that the bonuses were higher under Labour.
Even his own colleagues Deputy PM Nick Clegg and London Mayor Boris Johnson have expressed their discomfort at the sums being paid out at a time when day after day the unemployment figures rise. But it is clearly Osborne’s view that the bankers are doing a good job and that people like Stephen Hester (Chief Executive of RBS) are perfectly entitled to receive almost £1 million from the tax-payer owned banks.
Contrast this with the ConDem Government’s determination to demonise public sector workers for being ‘greedy’. How dare the people educating our children, cleaning our streets and working in our hospitals demand decent pay and decent pensions (don’t forget that the Tories opposed the minimum wage – now around £6 an hour).
But of course I forget, Mr Osborne lives in a different world to the majority of people in this country – with a personal fortune of around £4 million I doubt he’ll ever struggle to pay the bills at the end of the month!
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