Coalition to end in tears?

May13
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

An interesting piece by Vernon Bogdanor on the future of the Coalition has just appeared online. His main point is that both Coalition parties are having to look out for their increasingly restless grassroots: Tories pulling to the right, LibDems pulling to the left. And this destabilises the Coalition. The odds of it failing to reach 2015 intact must be steadily shortening.

It is clear that parts of the Tory party – both at Parliamentary and grassroots level – are making attempts to pull the party to the right, and are seemingly getting plenty of sympathetic media space in which to air their views. The evidence that Libdem activitists are trying to pull the party to the left is a little less clear. There is a clear attempt at differentiation, but that isn’t quite the same thing. READ MORE »

Posted in Politics - Tagged Coalition government, Conservatives, Lib Dems, Vernon Bogdanor

Beds, sheds, and regs

May13
2012 1 Comment Written by admin

She is looking forward to returning to Hyderbad, where the living conditions will be much better.

Amelia Gentleman, Guardian, 10/05/12

This is the payoff line for an extended article about poor housing in the private rented sector in Newham. The aim is to provoke a reaction. Conditions are so bad in our glorious capital – a global city no less – that someone would rather return to India which is, we had always presumed, at the very least a bit squalid. We should be shocked.

The article covers “beds in sheds” and headlines the instance of people found renting a walk-in freezer to live in. But it is mostly about overcrowded rented properties. And when they say overcrowded they really mean overcrowded. Sir Robin Wales, the Mayor of Newham, notes that the record case was 38 people, 16 of them children, living in one property.

We are still one of the richest countries in the world but we have people living in sheds, three generations of the same family living in a single room, or several unrelated adults sharing a room or sharing a bed. And paying considerable amounts of money for the privilege. And all this is happening only a few miles down the road from neighbourhoods in which investors are happy to pay multi-millions for properties they will barely live in. READ MORE »

Posted in Housing, Welfare State - Tagged Amelia Gentleman, Beds in sheds, Grant Shapps, Housing policy, Housing supply, Overcrowding, Private renting

The Queen’s Relaunch. The Coalition’s Speech … Oh look, Tractors …

May10
2012 2 Comments Written by admin

There was a bit of social media sniping yesterday that, despite David Cameron’s protestations to the contrary, the Queen’s Speech didn’t contain much of any substance to help the ailing UK economy.

That doesn’t seem to me to be entirely fair, for two reasons. First, there were some useful measures in the Speech – on banking or energy market reform, for example – that have the potential to make a difference to the performance of the economy. Second, it’s not obvious that the Queen’s Speech is the place you’d expect to find a menu of measures designed to stimulate the economy. If the Government wanted to get serious with the economy then much that it might consider doing can be achieved without the aid of new primary legislation.

So maybe we need to look back to the Cameron-Clegg relaunch event on Tuesday to get a better idea of policy action on the economy. After all:

The primary task of the Government remains ensuring that we deal with the deficit, and stretch every sinew to return growth to the economy – providing jobs and opportunities to hard-working people across Britain who want to get on. READ MORE »

Posted in Economics, Politics - Tagged David Cameron, Deficit reduction, Macroeconomics, Nick Clegg, Policy discourse

Bristol votes for an elected mayor

May08
2012 4 Comments Written by admin

[Originally posted on LSE British Politics and Policy, 08/05/12]

Bristol is unique. Those of us who live here are, of course, already aware of this. But the city’s less conventional approach to life attracted broader attention when it alone voted yes in last Thursday’s Mayoral referendum. Stuart Wilks-Heeg provides an overview of the outcome of this process. In short, it represents a major blow to David Cameron’s aspirations for a new era of dynamic city leadership. I want to reflect more specifically upon the Bristol result. Why did the city buck the trend? Clearly, what I have to say is to a large degree impressionistic. We will no doubt be offered more detailed post-mortems on the 2012 referendums in due course. READ MORE »

Posted in Bristol, Politics - Tagged Elected mayors

Housing challenges

May06
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

The other day I had to give a 10 minute summary of my take on the housing challenges we currently face.

I don’t claim any great originality in what I covered. But I thought it might be useful to set the points out here.

The next stage is to draw up some thoughts on what we might do to address these challenges.

Posted in Housing, Politics - Tagged Housing allowances, Housing Benefit, Housing need, Housing policy, Housing supply, Poverty and social exclusion, Social housing, Spatial segregation

Why an Elected Mayor is a bad idea

May02
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

On Wednesday 2^nd May we are holding a couple of last minute briefings on the arguments for and against a Directly Elected Mayor for Bristol. For the purposes of the debate I am giving arguments against the move to a Mayor. For the avoidance of doubt, that doesn’t mean that I am personally against the idea of a Mayor. But someone had to put the arguments against! Here is the text accompanying what I am planning to say – or at least I’ll say as much of this as I can fit in to the time available!

One of the key things that I would like to get across is that it is important that people vote, and that they vote on the basis of which model of local government they think should be used. We face profound questions regarding how best to govern the city so that it realises its potential. It would be unfortunate if people used the referendum simply as a chance to vote against the Coalition government or the Liberal Democrats.

Arguing against an Elected Mayor READ MORE »

Posted in Bristol, Politics - Tagged Bristol, Elected mayors

Jeremy Hunt and the limits of credulity

May01
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

David Cameron’s performance in the House yesterday in response to Labour’s urgent question about Jeremy Hunt seems to have split people. A large number of people thought he was an offensive and evasive bully. Tory loyalists thought he valiantly defended a minister whose reputation had been unfairly impuned.

This is just the latest installment in a very peculiar saga.

As John Rentoul reminded us on Sunday, there was never a golden age when Ministers were routinely doing the honourable thing: resigned at the first sign of impropriety – let alone illegality – in their department. But you have to ask quite what sort of evidence has to be in the public domain before Cameron would feel compelled to concede that maybe, just maybe, it was time for Hunt to go. READ MORE »

Posted in Politics - Tagged Conservatives, Credulity, David Cameron, Frederic Michel, Head of Legal, Jack of Kent, Jeremy Hunt, John Rentoul, Leveson inquiry, News Corporation, Probity, Sleaze

Pesky Libdems

Apr29
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

They’re not happy. The Tory Right are on manoeuvres. And the Lib Dems are in their sights. It seems that the grumbling and the finger-pointing are getting, well, a bit more pointed.

In yesterday’s Express Paul O’Flynn’s column argues: “not only is the Lib Dem presence in the Government damaging the country, it is now also doing potentially lethal damage to Conservative electoral prospects”. He goes so far as to conclude that it is time to end it all: “[t]he coalition is damaging Britain and damaging the Tories too. As the political leader of both, David Cameron cannot evade his responsibility for this any longer. He should bring it to an end”.

But perhaps the clearest statement of the Right Wing case against the Lib Dems was presented on Thursday in the Daily Telegraph by Liam Fox under the heading The Libdems are blocking Britain’s recovery. READ MORE »

Posted in Economics, Politics - Tagged #wreckonomics, Deficit reduction, Deregulation, Liam Fox, Lib Dems, Paul O'Flynn, Supply side measures

Grasping the big picture on housing

Apr21
2012 2 Comments Written by admin

Housing policy in England at the moment is a rapid succession of initiatives apparently designed primarily to catch the headlines.

Some initiatives are sensible, if modest. Some might make some kind of short term sense but are clearly not a sustainable long term basis for policy. Others make little or no sense now, let alone in the future. And current housing initiatives are often in tension with developments occurring as part of welfare reform or broader economic policy.

We sort of know this.

There are colleagues in the academic, policy and practitioner communities doing valiant work tracking the short and long term impacts of individual policy changes, such as the reforms to the local housing allowance. There are also useful monitoring exercises trying to sum the parts and make sense of what it all adds up to. But I still think we are not fully grasping the bigger picture. READ MORE »

Posted in Housing - Tagged Housing policy

A last minute briefing on #bristolmayor

Apr19
2012 Leave a Comment Written by admin

The debate over the desirability or otherwise of an Elected Mayor for Bristol is hotting up. Candidates for the role are now beginning to declare themselves, should the citizens of Bristol vote to move to the mayoral model.

Events to discuss the issues are now occurring pretty much every week.

The day of reckoning is nearly upon us.

Posted in Bristol, Politics - Tagged Elected mayors

Old School Genius - No doubt like many others, I’ve been... May 10, 2012
Old School Genius - No doubt like many others, I’ve been listening to plenty of Beastie Boys over the last few days. This track has been through the speakers a few times, for sure. Not as flashy as some of their stuff, but there’s something about the insistence and urgency of the backing track that makes it a classic of the early 1990s. A unique band. They’l […]
Powers for Elected Mayors April 24, 2012
Powers for Elected Mayors: Today @CentreforCities published a report, called Mayoral Manoeuvres, which examines the scale of the task facing the leaders of the cities where an Elected Mayor vote takes place next week. It’s strongly pushing the argument that mayors need to be governing at a metro level, as did last week’s Warwick Commission. It’s unfortunate […]
Just as pertinent today as it was back in the day (1986 …... April 17, 2012
Just as pertinent today as it was back in the day (1986 … 1986!!), except perhaps the core idea that ideologies are clashing - we see limited signs that anything other than market fundamentalism is on offer. […]
The challenge of taking leave April 17, 2012
Just received news of @nesta_uk ‘s recently published report by Laura Bunt and Charles Leadbeater entitled The art of exit: in search of creative decommissioning. The core of the report looks at eight case studies of decommissioning services in a range of policy areas, both in UK and elsewhere (Poland; New York). In the context of austerity, with many of the […]
The Warwick Commission Reports April 17, 2012
The Warwick Commission Reports: The @mayorcommission on Elected Mayors and City Leadership produced its final report yesterday. Perfect timing. It’s well worth checking out. Plenty of interesting material, although perhaps the arguments are now getting quite familiar. Its findings don’t entirely support the line the Government is peddling. […]

Coalition to end in tears?

Beds, sheds, and regs

The Queen’s Relaunch. The Coalition’s Speech … Oh look, Tractors …

Bristol votes for an elected mayor

Why an Elected Mayor is a bad idea

Jeremy Hunt and the limits of credulity

Pesky Libdems

Grasping the big picture on housing

A last minute briefing on #bristolmayor

The bod who did the typing …

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