Birmingham City Council's barmy economics

29th November

Yesterday Birmingham City Council announced that in order to reduce its spending it intends to close nine public swimming baths, which it says lose money, then rebuild six of them and finally, when they are finished, pass the running of them over to private firms who will then manage them for a profit.

This is utterly crazy.   Even if the various pools were not popular and well used (which most of them are), the idea that it is cheaper to spend money demolishing them, only to spend even more money rebuilding some of them seems devoid of all logic.  Further than that, if they acknowledge that private firms could run the rebuilt baths at a profit, why could the council not run them itself at the same level of profit and in doing so, defray some of the expense it had already incurred? 
As it is, the council plans to spend huge sums of money on this scheme, believing that in doing so it is somehow making a saving.  Having spent the money, it then appears not to have considered the fact that it will have paid for facilities it has no intention of making any money back on.

In a radio interview this morning, deputy council leader Ian Ward said that people these days wanted integrated facilities with gyms and cafes.  Maybe this is true.  Perhaps he is right, but if so, it is equally true that the existing facilities are popular and heavily used - perhaps he and his staff have not visited any recently.  Perhaps, in the light of his comments, they have also failed to notice the plethora of well filled gyms which already exist across the city.  They also seem not to have considered the fact that some of these swimming pools (and this applies particularly to the ones they do not intend to rebuild) are in socially deprived areas and constitute one of the main opportunities for a positive and healthy diversion from poverty.  Without the opportunity to spend time swimming, far more young people will be likely to fill their free time with petty crime and gang activity.

Of course, people in deprived areas do not pay much to go swimming.  Most are eligible for the 'Passport to Leisure' scheme which allows holders free access to council owned gyms, pools and other facilities.  It is hardly a wonder then, that the council loses money on swimming pools.  Did it ever really expect to draw a profit from them when it also has a scheme which allows those who use them most to use them for free?  Of course not, but that does not make the passport scheme in any way wrongheaded.  Free use of swimming pools for those who need them most but cannot afford them is surely one of the reasons public baths were originally built.  They are a service the council should provide for those of its citizenry who lack the means to use private pools, of which there are a number.

In planning to remove these public facilities from areas where they are most needed, one might begin to suspect that the council has decided that those who can make them no profit do not matter.  Then again, they don't plan to make a profit anyway.  They plan to give that away for free!

If the council really does genuinely want to save money on the running of swimming pools, it would be far cheaper for them simply to close them until better economic times than it is for them to spend millions demolishing them and then rebuilding some of them.  Perhaps it goes with the times to treat those who pay a lesser share of council tax with contempt, but if the council thinks that spending millions it won't get back is the same as spending less, it really needs its planning staff to go back to primary school and learn some basic mathematics.

A history lesson for Mr Major

Sir John Major, the former prime minister, said the other day that if Britain left the EU it would be disastrous for the economy.  Sage words, one might think, from a man who's sat in the top circle of government and who might be expected to know things like this from experience.

Hang on though.  This John Major is the same John Major who, nearly twenty two years ago, signed the Maastricht Treaty which allowed the EEC to transform itself in the the present cleptocratic, morally and financially corrupt EU.   This is an achievement he's always seemed rather proud of.  So perhaps he should have declared an interest before making his public prediction of calamity should the British People decide to declare that they never gave him a mandate to sign our sovereignty away in the first place.
It's not as if we were that comfortable about our membership of the EEC in the first place.  Ah yes - the good old EEC, which started life as a free trade arrangement under the Marshal Plan in order to help rebuild the shattered economies of Europe after the Second World War.  In its early days our own economy was fairly shattered and we probably would have benefitted from membership.  But Charles de Gaulle saw to it that we didn't get in when it might have been useful to.   The same ungrateful de Gaulle who had been sheltered and supported to the hilt by Britain during the very war the continent was recovering from.  Luckily though, we still had the British Empire to trade with so after a few hard years of austerity the British economy was rebuilt without the need to be part of the EEC.  As the Empire transformed itself into the Commonwealth we continued to enjoy a healthy and mutually beneficial trade with our established trading partners and things seemed very healthy.

Some of our politicians were still mentally living in the late 1940s though.  MacMillan was a keen devotee of EEC membership and so of course was Ted Heath.  Mac got knocked back but was still able to point to the economy and remind us that times had never been so good.  By the time Ted Heath was in the hot seat the world was changing and the time when it would have benefitted us to join the EEC was probably already past.  Heath hadn't noticed though.  Whether it was his love of sailing, his penchant for conducting orchestras while the economy sank, or the wretched business of trying half heartedly to confront the militant unions who Wilson had allowed to become over mighty, who is to know.  But his rosy spectacled view of the EEC ensured that while everything fell down around him, he lost none of his avowed Europhilia.

As soon as the opportunity allowed, Heath railroaded his country into membership of his long desired dancing partner.  The EEC promptly imposed quotas to dictate who Britain could trade with and by what factor.  Cheers in Downing St were matched a thousandfold by anger around the Commonwealth, where countries like Australia and New Zealand saw their export trade slashed by as much as a third.  Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long for a severe anti-British backlash to take root in many parts of the world which had once been coloured pink on the map.  The desperate search for new markets in the years following 1973 meant many of our best friends in the world turned to look away from us.  The painful memory of being kicked in the teeth and needing to find new friends has imprinted itself on the collective minds of many in the Commonwealth and is one of the strongest root causes of the anti-British attitudes that many people in those countries now espouse, along with the alternative views on our shared history which have accompanied this souring of attitudes.

Back in Britain, shorn of friends in the world and presented with new partners who looked down their noses at us as we all felt the heat of the oil shocks, the voting public grudgingly said 'yes' in a referendum on what was in any case a fait accompli (and which was widely rumoured to have been rigged, as well).  The youngest person to have had that dubious honour is now 56.

A little like John Major and Maastricht, Ted Heath was enormously proud of having chained us to the continent.  But then, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he thought of himself as a great man, so I suppose it was only natural for him to feel that everything he did was wonderful.  I wonder if Pope Paul VI agreed with Mr Heath's assessment of himself when he was presented with a signed photo of the prime minister as a official gift during a state visit.

Whatever the supposed merits of Ted Heath's tenure of 10 Downing Street, it remains the case that no-one under the age of 56 has ever has a say on whether they wish to remain part of the EU.  It is also the case that the EU of today is an entirely different beast to the EEC of 1975 in both name and nature.

John Major may look back on his years as prime minister with a sense of nostalgia, if not achievement, but that does not give him the right to make patently false claims in public.  On one hand, the percentage of our trade with non-EU markets (including many of our old friends in the Commonwealth) grows steadily year on year, and on the other, why on Earth would manufacturers and farmers within the EU wish to deny themselves business by refusing to trade with their established market in an independent Britain?  In his prophesies of doom, Mr Major is as deluded as Mr Heath was in the 1970s.  Leaving the EU will not bring us low as we were forced to bring our friends low under Heath.  It would give us our independence back and millions of people want to be able to say so.  Who is John Major to deny them that right?

Why I didn't go to dinner with Katie and Dan

Why I didn't go to dinner with Katie and Dan 

Recently, I received an invitation to dinner - very nice, one might have thought.  Of course, this particular dinner was due to be happening in London, which is some distance from where I live.  There was also a cost of £45, but that really didn't seem so bad, even when travelling costs were taken into account, considering that well known television historian Dan Snow was due to be at the same dinner and would be conducting a guided tour through the Imperial War Museum afterwards.  As someone who took my degree in history and enjoys good food to boot, this sort of thing would normally be right up my street, so to speak.  I decided not to go though.  'Why not?' you might be forgiven for asking.  It was simply this: despite the very reasonable cost of dinner and the opportunity to chat with the many erudite people who would be there, I declined because the invitation I received came from Katie Ghose, of the Electoral Reform Society, in whose cause the dinner was being held.

The ERS of course, is well known for its ongoing campaign for proportional representation.  Their cause has a great many supporters, and not just among the membership the Liberal Democrat Party.  I am not one of them though, and I think my argument on the matter has as much going for it as those of Angela Eagle, Polly Toynbee, John Denham, Lord Tyler, Nick Clegg's special advisor Polly MacKenzie and others who were due to be attending the dinner.
There are many who argue that our existing 'First Past the Post' electoral system is unfair.  They may well be right: certainly many people's votes count for little when a party they have not voted for wins in a 'winner takes all' style election.  Most of these same people, like the ERS, argue that PR is a fairer way to elect our representatives.  Democracy would be seen to have been done when a party received a representation in parliament directly proportionate to its share of the vote in a national election - each party would have been treated fairly for a change.  Fair enough, but is that the same as what most people in this country understand as democracy?  I would contend that it is not.  I think it is reasonable to suggest that most voters believe in a contractual aspect to their occasional shot at direct democracy.  They believe that in exchange for electing MPs, they have the right to expect those MPs to represent their views in parliament, along with expecting that they can call on their MPs to help them sort out their more intractable problems - in short: that an MP is there to represent his or her constituents.  This would appear to be confirmed by the number of emails most MPs receive.

The problem with PR, is that MPs elected under it do not represent constituents, but instead represent party machines which may be largely unaccountable to the public, except when approaching elections.  Parties are free to follow their own ideological ends, no matter how divorced from public opinion, secure in the belief that no MP who values his seat will dare vote against the party line, for fear of being deselected.  In such a situation, most MPs would instantly choose the whip's wish, which could ensure a sustained career, over a mailbag full of letters from voters begging them to vote against their own party.

Under our present system, listening to the views of constituents and voting against your own party is not without its risks, but as Gunnar Beck wrote in the Spectator recently in relation to Germany, where you have proportional systems, voting against your own party can be tantamount to political suicide.  The result is 'consensus' politics and a political conveyer belt.  The idea of representative democracy goes out of the window - voters only matter during elections.  At all other times parties are free to go on ignoring public opinion, confident that their spin doctors can get the public to give them enough votes come the next election to win it for them.  We might assume that voters would see though this, but when all parties can act that way, election spin might end up being the only thing which separates them.

Where PR in Germany has resulted in oligarchic Euro-mania in the face of public scepticism, in New Zealand, where I spent many years and maintain many close links, a mixed PR system has resulted in often overworked constituency MPs, alongside list MPs who are simply there to vote as the party directs and who are sometimes openly dismissive and often disdainful of public opinion.  They know that their value to their parties will result in high positions on party lists, meaning they have little need be accountable or appeal to the voter to retain their seats.  Those actually appealing to the pubic and thus electable for constituency seats will be lower down the list, to ensure the party yes-men and women will always get in.  A few list MPs do do constituency work alongside constituency MPs, but many do not.  This situation is doubtless mirrored in many other countries where parties have won the right to be proportionally represented.  I don't think this is what people in this country want from their democracy.

Now, I'm not trying to argue that parties here don't already do things the public don't like, or that our MPs always represent their constituents views - they often don't.  The difference is that most British voters can still expect representation by their MPs, regardless of who they voted for, and may hope to influence them when they feel the MP's party does not represent their interests.  I'm not sure that that would always work so well under PR.
So FPP may be far from perfect, but I believe in representative democracy.  Whatever Katie and co. think, dinners and museums notwithstanding, I don't think PR can necessarily deliver that.

Supervising the bad and the dangerous

Supervising the Bad and the Dangerous

Not long ago, the papers were filled with the case of Phillip Similane, the paranoid schizophrenic man who stabbed schoolgirl Christina Edkins to death on a Birmingham bus in March.  Similane, who had a history of violence and criminal damage, had been released from prison against a psychiatrist's advice three months earlier.  As always in tragic cases like this, fingers of blame were immediately pointed at the various agencies which should have been supervising him.  They were right of course - a dangerous man had been released into the community and he had certainly not been supervised sufficiently to prevent the needless death of an innocent schoolgirl.  Hands were held up and the usual statement that "lessons will be learned" was meekly trotted out.  How does something like this come to pass though? Similane's case is hardly an isolated one - in the past year thirteen people have been killed in random knife attacks in Birmingham alone.  Comparable figures can be seen in several other major cities across the UK as well.  Many of the killers have turned out to be people who were already on social services' radar.  How, the public must ask every time, can this keep happening when public agencies always claim to have leant their lesson from the last tragedy.  The sad reality though, is that no matter how much hand wringing is done and how many promises are made to learn lessons, even the best supervision cannot prevent such tragedies from happening.

Allow me to explain.  Most social work staff have personal caseloads of between a dozen and thirty individuals or families and only a limited amount of time to supervise them in. The time which can be dedicated to any individual case must necessarily be limited, especially when copious amounts of requisite paperwork are taken into consideration.  As someone who is often in the position of performing supervision on potentially dangerous people, I can attest to the fact that it can be extremely difficult to achieve.  If an individual fails to answer the door or keep an appointment, there can often be little option but to move onto the next case, as every other case must be attended to as well. If you cannot meet with your client, time constraints frequently mean that there will be no opportunity to meet again until the following week.  If a person insists on refusing to engage, there is often little that social agencies can do.  You cannot force someone to answer the telephone, any more than you can force entry into their house to check on them without a warrant.  If you suspect a mental health issue you cannot forcibly section them under the Mental Health Act either.  They must do it voluntarily.  The police, who also often shoulder blame, are the only ones who can forcibly subject anyone to a psychiatric assessment.  They are busy though, and generally require more tangible evidence than social workers' suspicions to take action.

In an ideal world we would provide 24 hour supervision, but reality means that only about an hour and a half can be dedicated to each person per week and even then, only if they choose to work with us. Even if they do keep appointments and seem to engage, there is often no way to observe what they do during the other 166 hours of the week.  Along with people who succeeded in finding the straight and narrow, I have also had clients who smiled and signed up for training courses, but later turned out to have been habitual burglars or muggers in their unsupervised time.

There are, of course, ways to try to regulate someone's behaviour.  Tags can be fitted and curfews imposed to limit mobility, but these are often notoriously ineffectual.  I recall one ex-offender I worked with whose door was fitted with a sensor, which would trip an alarm if it was opened after 6pm. She also received a telephone check each day at 6.05pm to confirm she was home. If she wasn't, she risked returning to prison.  Yet one day I saw her out with friends at 9.30pm.  I called her social worker next morning and was told that she had answered the curfew call and no alarms had been tripped.  She laughed as she told me she had simply climbed out through the window.  Another client subject to a curfew seemed to be fully committed to retraining as a plumber.  He turned out though, to be in the habit of inviting people to visit shortly before his curfew time and then holding them captive overnight under threat of violence, in order to extort money from them.  While these are not examples of random murderers, they do demonstrate the fact that outside institutions, people cannot be supervised 100% of the time.  Even the most engaging person may be hiding a dark and criminal side.

Not all ex-offenders are dangerous, but there are certainly many, like Phillip Simelane, who common sense says should have remained locked up.  The NHS though, is lacking thousands of the mental health beds it needs and lack of places in our prisons is axiomatic.  Managers sometimes have no choice but to move some of their inmates on before the next lot arrive.  When one of them then randomly attacks someone, there is justifiable public anger.  Who should take the blame though?  The support worker who tries hard to work with a person who refuses to engage?  The social worker with the overlarge caseload?  The police?  The prison or NHS manager who needs to find spaces for a steady flow of new occupants?  Or the person who opposes new prisons in his back yard?  I don't have the answer.  We just do our level best to help our charges to become responsible members of society.  When the inevitable tragedy happens, it will be one no-one could have prevented, but the public will still demand that lessons be learned.

Do we really need so many more houses?

This was originally a reply I wrote in response to a series of postings on a financial discussion website.  Afterwards I expanded on it slightly but ended up not submitting it to anyone.


It is often stated that in order to get the economy going again we need to build more houses.  This would stimulate the building industry again and provide homes for the many thousand presently on waiting lists for housing, we are told.  I disagree though.

The country doesn't really need many more houses - the simplistic solution that building more houses is the answer to all our economic and social woes is trotted out far too often, but it's not really true - there are literally millions of empty houses already.  It is true that building houses would provide short term economic gain for building firms but this tends to ignore the fact that construction is only a relatively small part of our economy.  What the country really needs is a set of serious policies on the part of government to halt the inexorable pull of the population towards London and the South East by creating or encouraging suitable economic conditions in the Midlands and particularly the North to encourage companies to relocate and new businesses to start up, thus creating the job opportunities and resultant domestic spending power which too many areas outside London are presently so lacking in.  Reinvigorating the Northern economy would bring many houses which are presently empty back into use and would substantially relieve the pressure in the south.

There are other factors though in the apparent scarcity of houses and high asking prices.

There are not really that many more people here than there were twenty years ago.  It is true that many people have come here from overseas but it is also true that many people have left Britain for other places as well.  Many of those who come here also return home again a few years later.
One thing that has really changed though, is the number of families which have broken up, meaning that two houses are often needed for the same number of people.  As economic factors are often a strong driver of family breakdown, more needs to be done to create better economic conditions for families.  Tax credits are all very well, but why not tax them less in the first place, which would also be less of a drain on the public purse?

Next we have the continued existence of the housing bubble, because it has been prevented by government action from deflating as it naturally would have done.  There was a period of madness in the late nineties and early years of the last decade, when people, duped into thinking that property prices would rise forever and never fall, were often prepared to pay ridiculously high asking prices for houses which were really not worth what was being asked.  The banks encouraged this with apparently limitless credit (temporarily paid for by a greedy trade in increasingly worthless assets), and irresponsible television programming encouraged the idea that buying and selling property as a commodity to be traded was a surefire way to get rich.  Estate agents (who make their money by charging a percentage of the sale price and therefore have an interest in overestimating values) also encouraged sellers to ask stupidly inflated prices for houses.  The couple next to me at the time put their house on the market for forty thousand pounds more than the previous house on the street had sold for.  The house needed some work but they couldn't understand why no-one was showing an interest when I spoke with them a month later.  They were asking what an estate agent had told them they would easily get.  Predictably though, a London based buyer bought it sight unseen for the price they were asking in order to add it to his 'portfolio'.  
When the economic crisis hit, many of us had been seeing the bubble for what it was for years.  It was difficult to understand though, when the true nature of much of the credit which had been available had been exposed, why more people did not then see the bubble for what it was.  The government, afraid that tens of thousands might be sent into negative equity of have their homes repossessed, put measures in place which sought to prevent this happening, thus keeping the bubble inflated.  This should not have happened though.  Prices for commodities go up and they go down - that is the nature of things.  Houses, when treated as commodities, are no different.  Negative equity is a terrible experience but many who happily paid far too much for properties which were never worth it should have only themselves to blame.  The ban on repossessions has also helped keep the bubble inflated.  There are thousands of houses which are months or even years behind on their mortgage payments but are still permitted to be seen as assets worth huge sums by their occupants.  In the harsh world of the natural economy, many thousands of repossessions would have taken place by now, which would have helped the bubble to deflate naturally.
If the bubble were to deflate back to where the natural economy would have it (as well as the Bank of England allowing interest rates to rise to what they naturally should be), asking prices and thus deposit amounts would naturally drop to the level that the real market (the people who have been properly checked and found worthy of sensible mortgage credit) can afford.

Then there is the culture of entitlement which afflicts our society.  There are huge numbers of people in this country who could rent a house privately but instead feel that it is their right to be granted a council house with subsidised rent.  Councils often do not help matters here by allowing people to make choices over their accommodation options which leave many buildings, particularly high-rises only partially occupied, while at the same time allowing thousands to clog up their housing waiting lists who should be being told that they are already earning enough to rent privately.  Despite the continual talk of rising rents, this is not true everywhere.  There are many places where rents have only risen in line with inflation for years.  Yet thousands of people with stable incomes insist that they would never rent privately and must instead be given a council property, thus falsely skewing the overall numbers of people apparently in need of housing in the statistics.
I know landlords who are desperate to rent out houses which are lying empty. I also know people who got onto the housing list years ago and say they can't get a house but will not consider private rental despite the fact that they are now working. 

Finally, of course, there are the second home owners.  As far as I am concerned there is nothing wrong with owning a number of properties which are then rented out to tenants.  We will always need landlords after all.  However, far too often over the last two decades, people with good city incomes have bought up houses in rural areas to use as weekend retreats.  This has had the twin results of reducing the availability of housing for local people and inflating prices to suit the spending power of wealthy individuals, as well as leaving many villages denuded of people during weekdays. This in turn has led to the loss of shops, post offices and bus services from many villages.  I am not sure what the solution to this problem is, but it is definitely a problem.  We need people in government to take it seriously and come up with a solution which rectifies it properly.

So yes, some houses will always need to be built, but in many ways, the apparent housing shortage and the inflated prices are symptomatic of deeper problems which need urgently to be addressed and overcome.

Rioters and looters one year on

I wrote this in  October 2012 after pitching it directly to an editor.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a very full week for news and my article didn't make the final cut.  That means it gets to here though, so there's a silver lining to everything.


Rioters and Looters One Year On

The riots in August last year shocked the nation, seemingly coming out of nowhere and lasting several days.  Naturally there was immediate speculation about the conditions which could give rise to the behaviour we saw.  After the family of Mark Duggan publicly disassociated themselves from the rioters, commentators rightly looked for other reasons for the rioting and looting, as it moved alarmingly from district to district, always a step ahead of the police.  A link between welfare dependency and the areas most affected was quickly established and for a little while, a light was focussed on gangs and the criminal nature of many of their members and associates.  As we watched people engaging in an orgy of looting and burning on our television screens, a realisation settled briefly over the nation: there was a whole class of young, 'tech-savvy' people in our midst who had no respect for people's property and possibly no concept of right or wrong.  The world of 'Shameless' was suddenly on the evening news!

  Depressingly quickly though, figures in the media started trying to assign more easily understood causes to the disturbances: they had been about poverty; about anger against government cuts; or anger at bankers' chicanery with our money.  By the time those involved started to be processed through the courts, the media position had moved so far that there was widespread surprise at the revelation that the majority had previous convictions and that many were under the age of eighteen.

  Unfortunately, as someone who works with 'problem' families and teenagers leaving care, these facts came as no surprise to me, nor to others who work in the same field.  I come into contact, daily, with people for whom the lines between right and wrong are decidedly blurred: young people who see nothing wrong with stealing and selling stolen goods; who see engaging in intimidating behaviour as fun and who understand 'respect' as little more than freedom from criticism.  Many of them come from broken homes, some having spent years in the 'care' system; frequently they have been excluded from school, most lack positive role models and most of them are utterly alienated from wider society.  Despite our efforts, few who I talk to have any real expectation, or desire for that matter, to work for a living.  To them, work is a 'mug's game' where the only thing to be gained is the responsibility of paying more bills.

  A corrosive link between high welfare dependency and criminal activity is easy to demonstrate.  Benefits are calculated to be sufficient to cover little more than essential costs, but in our consumer society young people experience huge pressure to possess the desirable items marketed to them everywhere they turn.  To obtain these things while living on benefits though, the choices are limited: either buy from catalogues with interest heavy payment plans lasting months, borrow from payday lenders and loan sharks to raise sufficient money, or choose the quicker options of either stealing or buying with the proceeds of dishonesty.  In housing estates rife with crime the local criminal kingpins are well known to residents and teens pressured by constant marketing know that speaking to these people can ensure a lucrative market for stolen goods or an equally ready supply of drugs to sell.  Peer pressure and a musical diet of 'gangsta' rap which glamourises criminal behaviour ensure that many are willing entrants into the world of crime, where moral scruples and respect of the rights of others are definite disadvantages.  Many drift into informal gangs and families are often unaware of their whereabouts, some being lied to, others criminally complicit.

  Since last year though, many people seem to have forgotten much of this and some recent media commentary has sought to identify the riots as part of a trend which has torn through Europe as populations take to the streets to show their anger at tough austerity measures.  Audience members in a recent edition of 'Question Time' apparently thought that government cuts had been the cause.
  A number of the young people I work with were involved in the rioting.  A year on, out of custody again, none of those I speak to seem to understand that there was anything wrong in their actions last year.  Unlike most British teenagers today, few of them seem to understand why they should not simply have or do whatever they want.  One describes the riots as the best time he has ever had.  It was 'cool', it was 'rocking', he says.  Others delight in bragging about what they or their friends stole or vandalised.  Many are proud that their 'crew' played a part in what was, for them, the memorable event of 2011.  Any concept that they bear any responsibility for the pain and losses suffered by their victims appears to be beyond them.  

  Those who seek to blame the riots on austerity, bankers' abuses or class envy are wrong.  The attacks were not on local government offices, banks or McDonald's outlets, the usual targets of anti-government or anti-capitalist rage.  Instead it was sportswear shops, jewellery shops and shops selling electronic goods or booze.  There was no political motivation, no reaction to austerity measures - for them it was all about having a perverse type of fun, grabbing the consumer goods they desired and taking the opportunity to attack police, who are seen as an enemy who seeks to prevent them from going about their 'business'.

  In Britain today we have large numbers of young people who have no respect for authority, no respect for the rights of others and no sense of personal responsibility, but who have a strong sense of entitlement and a desire to possess fashionable items.  They may have dropped below the media radar again but they are still there.  And while they remain forgotten, are allowed to fail at school, allowed to be left with a choice of poverty or crime rather than work and allowed to alienate themselves, they will persist in that state, to the detriment of all of us.

A possible lifeline for pubs

This is one I wrote in November 2011.  Restrictive covenants are not so much in the new now as they were then, but I think most of the other issues are as true now as they were two years ago.

A Possible Lifeline for Pubs

The decline in the fortunes of pubs over the last few years has been the subject of much debate.  Consistently, we are told that as many as twenty five pubs close down each week nationwide.  How many of them reopen is something less talked about, but it is hardly contentious to suggest that far fewer are reopened than closed.
The consternation over pub closures is not occasioned solely by concerns about employment and loss of local businesses.  Although many city centres are crowded with pubs and the loss of one or two makes little difference, in suburbs and rural areas the effect is often far more pronounced.  In these areas, pubs are more likely to act as social centres which provide important local facilities, whose loss can have detrimental consequences for the communities they serve.
The often pernicious role of restrictive covenants in pub closures has been highlighted recently and between August and September the government conducted a public consultation on the matter.  Under such covenants pubs which have been closed cannot be reopened, often in spite of local demand and offers from alternative operators, leading to the permanent loss of important community resources.  Using provisions proposed under the Localism Bill however, there may be ways of reducing the impact of restrictive covenants on communities.  A lessening of the effects of the covenants alone though will not prove a panacea for the pub industry: plenty of pubs are closing simply due to lack of customers.
Declining pub patronage is the most serious issue facing the industry, and it is hardly a new one.  For decades now, pubs have needed to add attractions such as gambling machines, live sports coverage and Karaoke nights to attract customers.  The situation now though is more acute than ever before.  So few people are drinking in pubs in some areas that many landlords find it difficult to make a living wage for themselves.  Many possible reasons are cited for this decline, notably competition for customers; demographic changes, cheap loss leading promotions by supermarkets; reduced spending ability; the smoking ban and a general change in drinking habits.
Some reasons, such as the development of areas where few people consume alcohol, may be difficult to overcome but solutions may be found for some of the other possible causes for the decline in patronage.  Changed drinking habits often now mean that people wish to eat at the same time as they drink or may not wish to drink alcohol.  The increase in the popularity of the so-called 'gastro-pub', at the expence of the old style 'corner boozer' is the result of this.  However, kitchens require staff who must be paid and with increasing wholesale food prices, increased food custom may not be enough on its own to save some businesses.
The biggest threat to pubs is competition from supermarkets.  For decades pubs have existed quite happily alongside off-licences, but the threat posed by the supermarkets is of a different order.  With their huge purchasing power and ability to subsidise promotions with profits from other unrelated products, supermarkets are often able to offer substantially discounted prices on alcoholic drinks, which severely undercut the cost of drinking in pubs.  Even without these 'loss leaders', the sheer convenience of being able to buy liquor along with the shopping gives supermarkets an advantage which pubs cannot hope to match.
Partly as a result of this increased ability to buy alcoholic drinks from sources other than pubs, many people are undoubtedly drinking more in their own homes, away from the supervision of staff or the unconscious 'peer pressure' created by the examples of other pub patrons.  This could in many cases lead to health concerns which would ultimately place more pressure on the resources of the NHS.  In the short term it may also be fuelling antisocial behaviour and criminal activity.  Presumably it is in the interests of society to address this situation as soon as possible.  How could this be achieved though?  There are advantages in having people drinking in licenced, supervised environments rather than unsupervised uncontrolled ones, but the present situation mitigates against this.

What possible solutions might there be then?  Increased regulation is always a possibility but this would be likely to hit pubs harder than supermarkets, whose product ranges are more diverse, although moves are being made to ban supermarkets from using alcohol as a loss leader.  Re-imposition of restrictions on the sale of alcohol on unlicenced premises might be favoured by some.  That genie is already out of the bottle though and it is unlikely that drinkers would willingly accept the loss of their ability to purchase liquor at supermarkets.  Other possibilities though, might be alcohol duty or tax.
Presently a substantial duty is applied to alcohol, which is collected by Customs and Excise.  The annual rate of increase in duty is set 2% above the rate of inflation, making duty on alcohol a valuable source of revenue for the treasury.  In theory though, a reduction in the duty applied to alcohol destined for pubs would allow them to serve drinks at a more competitive rate, or with a better profit margin, as long as supermarkets did not share in the reduction.  However, duty is presently applied at either the point of manufacture or point of import.  It could prove difficult and potentially costly to shift its collection to another stage of the supply process, as would probably need to be done if cargoes were to be separated according to their intended recipients and charged differently.

Nevertheless, a reduction in costs for pubs would allow them to offer cheaper rates which might lead to increased trade, thus safeguarding employment and valuable community resources.  If this would be difficult to achieve with differing rates of duty, could it be achieved through tax?
An easy way government might reduce costs for pubs would be to lower the rate of VAT applied to pub transactions but not those of supermarkets.  Although this would lead initially to a loss in revenue for the treasury, it might be hoped that tax generated by a boost in sales would quickly restore the lost revenue, at the same time as levelling the playing field and providing a lifeline to the pub industry.
There is precedent for varying the rate of VAT of course: some foods are zero rated whilst others are charged at higher or full rates.  If a similar principle was applied, VAT payable by supermarkets and pubs could be set at different rates.  The effect of reduced tax on sales was ably demonstrated last year with the temporary drop in VAT.  That example alone is sufficient to show the difference a reduction in VAT could prove for the UK's beleaguered pubs.
The pub industry should never be allowed to become a charity case, and certainly some counterproductive practices, such as pricing fruit juice more expensively than alcohol, are the fault of the pubs themselves and must be addressed.  Pubs are part of the landscape of this nation though and perform important economic and social functions.  We would all be that much poorer if we let them die at the rapacious hands of the supermarkets.  It is harder to reanimate a corpse than to heal a sick man.  The questions are though: is anyone ready to do what is necessary, and is it already too late?

Richard Dawkins' children's book - how he knows what's really true

One here which I wrote in September 2011.  Although the book in question is a couple of years old now, I think the overall content is as relevant now as it was when I wrote it.


Richard Dawkins' latest book will not achieve his aim.

Richard Dawkins, the well known evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist, has written a book.  This is hardly a novel thing in itself, except that this book, his latest attempt to persuade people to give up their religious beliefs, is intended for children.
Talking to Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight  last week he discussed the new book (The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True) and his reasons for writing it.  
As a scientist, Dawkins is concerned to present provable facts and observable reality.  For him this does not allow space for any notions of God, of course.  He compared religious beliefs to childhood fairy tales where children are taught to suspend their disbelief in unlikely events such as a pumpkin turning into a carriage.  His view was that fairy tales were colourful, enjoyable and often reassuring and as such were on the same level as religious mythology.  He stated though that truth always made the better story in reality.

Now, when it comes to evolutionary biology, there can be little doubt that Professor Dawkins knows what he is talking about and on one level, his wish for children to be well informed and taught facts rather than be corrupted by misinformation is laudable.  On another level though, his wish to influence people in how they should think is surely more dubious.  During the interview he stated that people who believed in creation were "stupid and ignorant".  He stated firmly that he saw only two positions which could be taken on what to believe, namely the right one and the wrong one.
Whatever the truth of that, this seemed a somewhat arrogant position to take: effectively it said (as the good professor tends to do) 'if you do not think like me you are clearly stupid'.   One might also ask what right Professor Dawkins has, regardless of his scientific expertise, to be the arbiter of the correct way of thinking.

Dawkins' consistent position over the years has been that science is the opposite of religious belief: a simple matter of fact versus superstition.  From his writings and interviews it is clear that he believes that a person can be religious only if he is blind to the fact of evolution.
As his example of the obviously nonsensical nature of religion he cited the biblical account of creation in only seven days which features light being created on the first day but the sun (the source of light) not being created until the fourth day.

There are problems with his view though.  Evolutionary biology is his speciality and it is natural to focus on what you know best.  However, in doing so he risks seeing only that which is most directly in opposition to his own subject.  During the Newsnight interview he talked of religious belief only in terms of belief in creation stories and seemed to see these as the fundamental basis of such belief.  
However, the biblical account of creation occupies only the first four chapters of Book of Genesis, which itself is only the first of sixty six canonical books of various lengths in the Christian bible.  Added to this, is the fact that English translations of Genesis always refer to seven days of creation, whereas in the original Hebrew account, the word translated as 'day' has a far more general meaning which can just as easily be taken to mean 'era'.  Although professor Dawkins may have been unaware of this, many Christians, perhaps the majority, are well aware of it.  Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly, an examination of the structure of Genesis strongly suggests that it was originally four distinct works which were later brought together as one volume.  Although the account of the creation is the first thing the reader encounters, it is only a very small part of it and is not connected in any meaningful way to anything else in the bible.  It is not until chapter twelve of Genesis that we begin to find material which leads directly into the other biblical books, meaning that for the majority of Christians in most westernised countries, the contents of Genesis 1-4 have little or no bearing on the rest of the bible and what they choose to believe.

Professor Dawkins also belittles religious people when he describes them as superstitious and ignorant of facts.  The vast majority of the parents he is concerned will infect their children with nonsensical beliefs have been through a western secular education system where, like him, they learned the basic principals of biology and evolution in science lessons.  Therefore, for the majority of religious adults (who according to census figures make up the vast bulk of the population) evolution is a fairly easy concept to grasp.  Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu parents are not exclusive groups living apart from society in caves.  They are normal people with normal jobs and normal life experiences.  Even if a proportion of them choose to reject the scientific information, most of those who do are not doing so from a position of total ignorance.
Given that most Christian and Jewish parents at least, would find little problem with accepting that God chose to use evolution as His means of creation, the problem Dawkins is trying to tackle is only likely to be an issue for a reasonably small proportion of parents, who in any case will be highly unlikely to buy his book for their children.  In many Christian households (and in all likelihood the houses of other religions too), his book will happily find itself alongside books on dinosaurs and prehistoric animals already sitting, with no sense of conflict, next to the children's Bibles.

In seeing science as naturally opposed to religion and labelling people who hold religious beliefs as stupid and ignorant, he also ignores the fact that many eminent scientists are committed Christians and see no such conflict.  Amongst these are Francis Collins, one of the world's leading geneticists and head of the Human Genome Project, and Sir John Houghton, Co-chair of the Scientific Assessment Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Even amongst my own acquaintances I know of a respected particle physicist and an award winning cancer specialist (who are also not mutually acquainted as far as I am aware) who are both committed Christians, as well as two biological chemists who are both Muslims.  Would Professor Dawkins suggest that any of these individuals are either stupid or ignorant of science?

No-one would seriously debate Richard Dawkins' knowledge and understanding of evolution or his status as a respected evolutionary biologist.  However, by trying to suggest that all religion is dependent on accepting divine creation as the explanation for the physical universe he is missing the mark considerably.  Allowing children a greater understanding of evolution may well have little or no effect on their religious beliefs.  Accepting the first four chapters of the book of Genesis is not the requirement for religious belief he thinks it is and if he really wants to try to disprove the existence of God he will have to advance well beyond the creation/evolution debate, just as most Christians outside the American 'Bible Belt' did decades ago.

The character of the looters

This is another take on the same subject matter, written at the request of a different magazine but not published in the end, also from August 2011.

Character of the Core Looters

Last week's events shocked many people deeply.  How could so many people act with such a lack of concern for property, people's livelihoods and even the revelation of their own identities?  Did these masses possess no moral compass or sense of right and wrong?
As events after August 6th became progressively less like the riots the media described them as and increasingly like planned, co-ordinated looting outings, 'boring' shops and premises were mainly left alone whilst shops selling shoes, fashionable clothing and accessories, electronic goods and alcohol were consistently targeted.  From Sunday on there was no visible political, racial or religious motive - the object was the acquisition of desirable items.
Thousands of people from many parts of society were involved: a teaching assistant, a university student and a boy of twelve to name but three.  Some were bystanders who were caught up in the excitement and and some were responding to notices on Twitter and Facebook.  Central though were gangs using closed blackberry and similar networks.  Who are these gangs and where did they come from?

As someone who works with deprived families and teenagers leaving 'care', I was not surprised to learn that around half of those so far charged are under eighteen, nor that many of the disturbances had occurred in or close to deprived areas.
In many, perhaps most, areas of high welfare dependancy, large numbers of teenagers and young adults are utterly disconnected from mainstream society.  Their sense of alienation is such that most do not see government, law or wider society as being in any way connected or relevant to them.  They are inwardly focussed and often resent influences which originate outside their normal frame of reference.  At the same time they are constantly bombarded by radio, television and internet advertising for fashionable consumer goods.  With few meaningful aspirations in their lives, these consumer goods, the very types of items targeted in the looting, often become the focus of their aspirations, the acquisition of them becoming a prime motivator.
Benefits do not stretch far and many welfare dependent families are under acute financial pressure, especially with rising utility bills.  It is often impossible for parents to afford the items their children demand.
The teenagers are often heavily influenced by American gang culture, which encourages disrespect for authority and frequently glamourises violent criminal activity.  Many have little or no respect for others but feel that they are owed respect, which is understood to be either freedom from criticism (which is known as 'disrespecting' or 'dissing' them) or being seen as tough and dominant.  
For many, work is an alien concept.  In many families neither parents nor grandparents have ever worked and there is a commonly encountered belief that working is 'a mug's game' which robs you of your valuable time in exchange for the responsibility of paying more bills  Those who work for low wages are regarded as naive and stupid.
A strong culture of entitlement exists amongst many beneficiaries, who are used to the state providing for them, leading to abdication of responsibility to outside agencies.  This in turn encourages teens to feel no responsibility for their actions: The state is expected to sort out any problems they cause.  Others must work for their benefit but they see no reason to do likewise.
Most of the teenagers I work with come with no concept of responsibilities, but all are aware of having rights.  To many however, their 'rights' simply mean a carte blanche to do whatever they like, refuse to accept criticism, to be subject to authority or to be held responsible for their actions.  Many are failing in school or have been excluded and many parents do little to encourage their children in education.  As many come from broken homes with absent fathers, with few positive role models for them to look up to, all too often the role model they choose is the one on the estate with the most fashionable clothes, the most money and the most dominant attitude.  All too often this is the local crime boss.
Crime is endemic in most deprived areas.  With benefits calculated as the minimum a person can be expected to live on, even moderately priced items are beyond the pockets of many. Often, crime is a way to fund the things benefits will not stretch to.  Influenced by gang culture and other local criminals, many teens see little wrong in taking up criminal endeavours themselves, allowing them to gain items they aspire to possess.  Many also say that in the absence of any facilities for them they see crime as way to have fun and escape the boredom many of them complain of.  A worrying number of these young people have no real sense of right and wrong.

Like other teenagers, most have a strong desire to belong to a group and gangs are often the obvious choice.  Once in a gang, pier pressure encourages them to join in the gang's activities..  This is often petty crime or vandalism but increasingly we are seeing violence, sometimes with tragic results, as with the murder of Yemurai Kanyangarara in July.  
Gangs can exert a very strong hold on members.  Many teens consider their gang (often known as their 'posse' or 'crew') as family and often attach little or no value to anyone outside the gang.

As gangs are often involved in criminal activity or behaviour they often encounter the police and many teenagers have numerous convictions against them.  The police are seen as an enemy who stomps on their 'right' to do as they please and victimises them for going about 'their business' (which often involves theft, vandalism, intimidation and drugs).  Most feel abused by any warning or punishment but many believe it is their right to be abusive to others    They resent the spectre of authority and often harbour a defiant resentment against those they consider wealthy or privileged, who they often believe treat them unfairly.  
Most know that as minors they will face much lighter penalties than adults but in any case, Young Offenders Institutes hold no terror for them.  Many of them have served sentences and it is seen simply as a fact of life.  Some have told me that they like YOIs as, if they behave themselves for a week or two, they are rewarded with the use of a playstation to supplement the television.

Most of the teens I encounter in this context are dismissive of any ideas of fairness or respect for others and they often cite politicians' supposed corruption as a justification for acting the way they do.  This is just an excuse though.  The real reason is that with no sense of right or wrong, and no sense of the wider community, they simply don't care.
It is exactly this attitude which characterised last week's looting.  People who do not care about the rights of others, who often cannot tell right from wrong and who see barefaced theft as no more serious than a walk in the park

Punishment of the looters and restoration of society's lost communities

This was written in August 2011, following the rioting and looting in many British cities.


Punishment and Restoration

Now that last week's disturbances have passed and those responsible have begun to be arrested and brought before courts, thoughts must turn to how the guilty should be punished.  Clearly mere slaps on the wrist are inappropriate for those who participated in such wholesale destruction and theft.  Iain Duncan Smith certainly thinks so, telling BBC Breakfast yesterday morning that he was looking at the possibility of suspending benefits payments to convicted looters.
Obviously it is important that the guilty are punished in ways which cause them to ponder their actions.  However, effective punishment may prove difficult to administer in many cases.  For a start around half of the guilty are below the age of eighteen, meaning most will be treated differently to adults.  In addition to this, stripping away benefits may be counterproductive and possibly even illegal.
What actions then could be taken which would suit the seriousness of the disturbances and satisfy public feeling?
Prison is always a possibility, but sentences would have to be of an appropriate length and early releases might well reduce punishment to the slap on the wrist category.  Those under the age of eighteen of course could be sent to Young Offenders' Institutes.  However, as someone who works with socially excluded young people, it is my experience that many young offenders treat YOIs as a fact of life and the threat of incarceration holds no terror for them.  It should also be asked whether our already overcrowded prisons and YOIs have sufficient free capacity to accept the numbers presently being arrested.
Prison aside, what else is there?  Obviously for those convicted who are working, fines would be easy to impose.  This is not generally as easy for benefit claimants.  Courts often find it difficult to collect the fines they impose if people refuse to pay.
As IDS has already suggested, benefits could be suspended.  However, the minister is not sure if this is legally possible without a custodial sentence.  Suspending people's benefit payments might well be counterproductive in any case, as this would surely drive many to commit crime in order to replace their lost income.  Suspension of benefits would be likely to result in hundreds of burglaries.
Eviction from council houses is another possibility and one which is already being used.  However it will not be able to address most cases, as attempts to evict families with children under eighteen could fall foul of the powerful Children Act 1989.
Confiscation of property is an option which might satisfy a public desire for repayment in kind, but taking private property might open a legal can of worms which is perhaps better left closed.
A more realistic option, and probably one which will see a lot of use, is community service orders.  These have the advantage from a PR point of view of giving something back to the community but one has to wonder how sufficient numbers of CSO placements would be found.  Perhaps some people might have punishment deferred and then do CSO service at a later date.

Punishment can only ever be one side of the coin.  The other must be the much more complex task of remedying the societal problems which have led to large numbers of young people with no sense of respect or the concept of right and wrong.
With such a complex task as this there is no one silver bullet which can be employed to turn these people into fine upstanding contributors to society.  Many have long criminal records and are unlikely to change their lifestyle or habits anytime soon, particularly as pier pressure will cause existing gang groupings to exist for the foreseeable future.  By no means all of these young people are members of gangs however and alongside the sense of alienation and lack of values, many do desire something better.  They often do not know how to go about achieving this though.  It is my experience as well, that even when they do want to change their lives for the better, many lack the personal discipline to carry on going to courses they have been enrolled for and maintain associations with friends who pull them down again.  The prime minister has announced a proposed programme of social reform but I for one will not hold my breath for any top down initiatives to work well.  In order to create the conditions where young people have a better chance of getting a proper education and going on to have successful lives, much has to be done locally and the financial cost will be considerable.  Local people must play a major part too.

The first thing which must be done is to rid council estates of the criminal kingpins who buy and sell stolen goods and sell drugs and who often become malign roll models for young people, particularly those from broken homes with no positive male role models.  Too often these figures are the focus of criminal activity and hold a great deal of power over people on their estates.  Cleaning up estates must involve not only clearing out the criminals who terrorise their neighbours but also improving lighting and making residents feel safer, with a regular and visible police presence.  Housing standards must be monitored and improved where necessary, allowing residents to start to take pride in their neighbourhoods.  Whether teenagers would be responsive to environmental improvements is another matter however.
Schools must also be improved and supported.  Many schools in welfare dependent areas find it hard to attract good teachers and pupils are often taught by a succession of supply teachers, which provides little consistency in their education and is far from conducive to achieving good results.  These schools need to be supported to attract talented principals and good teachers to create relevant, stimulating programmes which encourage respect and hard work as well as working hard to reduce the number of exclusions.  How long it will take poorly disciplined pupils who have an ingrained sense of abandonment and low expectations to respond positively to better schooling is harder to guess at though.
Neighbourhoods must be provided with appropriate recreational facilities.  Boredom is a major factor in much of the bad behaviour engaged in by young people but far too often councils have found it expedient to close down local leisure facilities.  These facilities must be reopened and upgraded, or built anew where they do not exist.  Attention to these places needs to be ongoing.  How will they be staffed?  How will facilities be managed?  How will young people used to non-engagement and gang culture be encouraged to make use of sporting and leisure facilities?  Could the involvement of existing projects such as the boxing gym run by Amir Khan be arranged?
There must be public education campaigns to spread information and help improve standards.  But will teenagers listen to messages from those who they have no respect for?  I don't hold out strong hopes of that particular miracle for some time yet.
Providing appropriate recreational and learning opportunities and facilities to enable adult learning and social activities.  Again though, how would these places be staffed and managed?  How long will it take people used to living in a climate of fear and violence to gain the confidence to use the resources which must be made available.
Outreach work must be extended back into these areas and cancelled programmes reinstated and properly funded.  At the same time the administration which often accompanies this work must be reduced to allow support workers to spend more time engaging with young people and their communities.  From my own experience I know this to be challenging work but the results can make a positive difference.  I have seen both boys and girls on the verges of gang membership gain new focus when someone took the time to sit down with them and help them make a plan for their future.  Not all of these will come to fruition but some will and I have seen a number of young people from former sink estates go on to become qualified tradesmen and in one case a local charities co-ordinator as a result of such intervention.  Will they find the right people to act as outreach workers though?
Ways must also be found to create opportunities for work and training.  Calls are often heard that there are no jobs to be had, but this excuse must be taken away.  Any opportunities created though must be safeguarded from being taken up by people coming in from outside the area.  How easily people who have never worked and who hold ingrained negative beliefs about work (as many do) will respond to job opportunities will remain to be seen, but it is important that people on estates see people they know gaining paid work and profiting by it.
All this and far more will need to be done for each deprived community if we are to save a sizable proportion of the younger generation from self destruction and whole neighbourhoods from constant fear.
In the past well funded housing action trusts have been very successful in transforming sink estates and the formation of further such trusts may be key to much of what will need to be done.  The accountants will baulk, especially in the present economic climate, but if we want to save those communities it must be done sooner than later.

The 2010 Edgbaston electoral result and by-elections

Another from November 2010 but I think most of the issues are still high in the minds of many of the same people, and for many of the same reasons.


What the Edgbaston Result Means for the Next By-Election

At the Conservative Party conference in October there was a lively discussion going on in many quarters about why the party had not done better in the election.  There was even a well attended fringe session entirely dedicated to the matter.  After five months of hand-wringing over the matter, the question of how the Tory party had not been able to capitalise properly on the unpopularity of Gordon Brown's government was still being asked.
I attended the fringe session and it was quickly evident from an observer's point of view that the majority of people in the room felt that on some level at least, the real problem was that the party leadership was out of touch with the party membership.  Numerous stories were recounted of campaign instructions being sent down from on high which seemed to have little understanding of local issues.  
The electorate had been more concerned about local issues in the 2010 election than it had been in other recent elections, and in many cases this was borne out by election results.  Many local Conservative associations had wished to reflect this in their campaigning but many seemed to feel that their local understanding had been brushed aside in favour of the centralised Cameroon vision.  One man told of extensive local opinion surveys that his group had carried out being disregarded and a central office idea of how the campaign should be conducted being imposed instead, which failed to address any of the issues their surveying had highlighted.  Many others in the room had apparently experienced the same thing.  There was a strong feeling among those present that the leadership did not trust the membership and that proper communication had broken down as a result.

Another thing which one or two people found cause to mention was the fact that the Tory party membership was far smaller than would naturally be expected for a party which had until recently been the main opposition to a very unpopular government.  This reminded me of a conversation I had had with a friend immediately after the election.  He had told me before the election of a dilemma he was facing.  His MP was very popular with her constituents and most people appeared to want to retain her.  However, as she was a Labour MP my friend knew that a vote for her would be a vote for her party as well and he desperately wanted to see a change of government.  By contrast, he did not want to vote Conservative, despite being keen on David Cameron being the next prime minister, as he had very little expectation of the local Tory candidate being as good as the incumbent MP.  In the end he decided to take a third option.  He chose to vote for the Impact Party instead.

Like me, he had read all of the campaign flyers which had been pushed through his door and he had found the three main parties' concentration on their leaders both tiresome and lacking in local relevance.  By contrast, the flyer from the Impact Party seemed to be concerned with issues which concerned him too.  Normally he would have left it at that but then the Impact Party candidate visited his office and they talked.  By this time my friend had decided, with some misgivings, to vote Tory, in order to get a change of government.  However, he found he got on well with Harry Takhar, the Impact candidate and although he knew that he had no prospect of gaining the seat, my friend ended up deciding to solve his dilemma by voting Impact, on the basis of using his vote to help prevent what he saw as a good man losing his deposit.  Since then I have met several other people who had taken exactly the same course.

Now this would be all very well if not for one thing.  Until quite recently Harry Takhar was a member of the Conservative Party.  However, his dissatisfaction with the very problems which were repeatedly brought up in the fringe session - direction and the disconnection between leadership and membership - had led him to leave the party and set up his own party in opposition.  This in turn had led to one hundred and forty six people voting for him in the election, in an electorate which was very closely fought on election night.   The seat was held by Gisela Stewart for Labour with a majority of 1274, far more than the number garnered by the Impact party but even then, the votes gained by Takhar were equal to slightly over eleven percent of this majority.  Had Takhar not contested the election, perhaps most of these votes, like that of my friend, might have gone to the Tories.  Perhaps even more pertinently, national polling had consistently been showing immigration and our relationship with Europe to be the public's biggest concerns, but these were subjects largely avoided by all three main parties in the run-up to the election.  In Edgbaston the BNP scored 1196 votes, a figure which comes close to equalling Gisela Stewart's majority.  If the Tory leadership had listened to what its grass roots members were saying and had addressed the issues which were concerning communities many of these BNP votes might have gone the way of the Tories.  Furthermore, UKIP polled 732 votes.  Thus it may be that by alienating party members and not addressing local concerns in its campaign materials the party lost Edgbaston, which analysts had identified as Labour's most 'at risk' seat.

This is why the leadership must learn to listen to its rank and file.  If information flows properly between them campaign instructions and materials can be better tailored to the need of electorates, and local issues can be targeted to generate maximum numbers of votes.  One size rarely fits all.

The general election is over of course but the issue is still just as important.  As the present case of Phil Woolas reminds us, by-elections are always a possibility and a number will occur within the space of any one parliament.  Although the Tory Party is now in a formal coalition, any by-election it can win and deny to Labour strengthens its hand in government.  Unless the leadership learns to trust its rank and file and listen to what it tells them about what the person in the street is saying, they run the risk of a resurgent Labour Party making by-election gains across the parliament which could affect the government's ability to carry out essential programmes of reform.  As a public backlash develops against spending cuts, the Conservatives need to be able to demonstrate a unified party which is ready and able to respond to the local issues of voters if it is to have any realistic chance to gaining further seats over the next few years.