Trip to Rio de Janeiro

I've spent the last few weeks in Rio de Janeiro. It is always odd for a northern hemispherite such as myself to spend part of the Christmas period somewhere hot and sunny, but a very good thing.

I went to see two football  matches, seeing Vasco de Gama nearly win the Brasiliero, only to draw with a Ronaldinho inspired Flamengo. Given that the Olympic stadium isn't in the nicer end of the city it will be interesting to see how the Rio authorities deal with that in time for 2016. I suspect there will be a bit of bulldozing to tidy up the short journey from the station to the stadium with scant regard for the locals, but we shall see.

Rio is an odd city. Naturally blessed with stunning beauty. It is hard not to enjoy yourself there because the Cariocas are incredibly friendly and always ready to party. Some districts, Ipanema, Lagoa and Leblon, are home to extremely wealthy people who would be able to afford to live in  Kensington or Knightsbridge. The shops that support this very smart part of the city are priced appropriately. Then there is a burgeoning middle class living in apartment blocks. Beyond that there are people living in sometimes extreme poverty.

Brazil is gaining new found wealth from the discovery of new natural oil and gas. What remains to be seen is whether that wealth transposes itself into an improved infrastructure, education system and opportunity for the masses or whether it ends up in the hands of corrupt politicians and international businesses.

I also visited the stunning Ilha Grande, Brazil's biggest island. It has no cars or roads, just mountains, treks and unbelievably ideallic beraches, like Lopes Mendes. Being there was dreamlike. So much so that while there I bumped into Goodbye Lenin and Edukators German actor Daniel Bruhl.

The last thing I did was go to see Jesus, Cristo Redentor, atop the Corcovado mountain. I'll leave you with some rather stunning views.

More racist Tories

When will the Tories learn that racism is bad, immoral and just plain wrong?

The St Andrews University student society burnt an effigy of Barack Obama. The conveyor belt continues.

When politicians and civil servants clash

The toppled head of the UK Border Agency Brodie Clark hit back at his former ministerial boss Theresa May today, claiming that despite her claims, he had never exceeded his authority. This amounts to a stinging attack and suggests that May misled parliament in claiming otherwise, to save her own skin.

Neutral civil servants hate being politicised or being pushed into political storms. I see their point. Secretaries of  state are there to carry the political can, not their servants. In a reversal of historical assumptions that the civil service is naturally conservative, their current Tory masters view their servants with great scepticism.

This row reminds me of one that rumbled on and on in the early days of New Labour's second term.

When Stephen Byers' Labour special advisor Jo Moore famously thought 9-11 a "good day to bury bad news"  the email was leaked and a political row erupted. The neutral head of departmental communications Martin Sixsmith got fed up and later said "Princess Margaret is being buried [on Friday]. I will absolutely not allow anything else to be". 


Sixsmith was eventually forced to quit over the row, together with Moore. 

After quitting the civil service Sixsmith made no secret of his unhappiness at being forced out. His autobiography was blocked, so he turned it into a novel, Spin, released in 2004, two years after he left his job. He has since written several books and contributed to Armando Ianucci's superb political satire The Thick of It. 


Has May created a spurned civil servant and in the process done the very opposite of saving her skin? Time will tell but it seems likely that she will only come out of this row looking worse. 

Tories hitting you in the pocket

Here is an example from 1974 that shows how the Tories have always made life more expensive:

Racist Tory weekly #9

Regular readers will know all about Southend Tory councillor Blaine Robin who was filmed attending an English Defence League meeting recently. He was suspended by his party pending an investigation. That investigation has now closed and Robin has been reinstated.

Worryingly for the Tories this shows that they are happy to be a party that borders on the fringes of such extremist groups, like the EDL. AS the party gets ever more anti immigration and anti European will such liaisons become more frequent?

This can't be what David Cameron had in mind when he tried to create a compassionate conservatism in 2005.

David Cameron is the new Ramsay MacDonald

At last nights tenth Aneurin Bevan Society lecture, Ed Balls likened David Cameron's economic policy to former Labour then national government PM Ramsay MacDonald. Piling austerity measures onto a struggling economy stifled and lengthened recovery from depression then and threatens to do so again.

Cameron won't end up with the same fate as MacDonald, hated for history by almost all in his party. At the moment Cameron is only riled by some of his party but not to the extent that MacDonald is by Labour people.

Balls suggested that the binding nature of the Tory Lib Dem coalition agreement, that prioritises deficit reduction over all else, is creating an inflexibility stopping the government from being able to change path. Further, their ideological attachment to shrinking the state means that whatever the economic indicators tell us, the coalition won't change policy.

Politically, Balls said, the Tories are fuelling cynicism and pessimism because they tell us that there is no alternative to their chosen path. That means we should accept that stagnation, falling living standards and rising unemployment are an unavoidable medicine we all have to endure.

If people believe there to be no alternative to their lives getting worse thanks to government policy that will only turn them away from politics. What is the point in voting if it doesn't achieve anything?

Progress of UK recessions

It doesn't have to be like that, argued Balls. Government is capable of making people's lives easier and managing the deficit at the same time. This is the Labour alternative.

The chart above shows the UK economy improving until the middle of 2010 when the Tories got in. Since then growth has been non existent. Without people in jobs, shopping, paying taxes and contributing to GDP as unemployment rises the deficit will get bigger, as demonstrated by the extra £46bn of borrowing under the Cameron-Osborne axis. This is simply because former tax payers and shoppers are now being paid benefits and are not paying tax or creating anything for the economy. Simple stuff.

Bevan understood that nothing was possible without power. Balls gets that too. He needs to get his message across to the country to ensure voters get it.

VAT hits the poorest hardest

The Tories and their Lib Dem pals would never admit it, but we all know that VAT costs poorer people harder than rich. As a flat tax, paying the same fee as a sales tax will always be a greater portion of a lower paid person's income than someone with higher earnings.

George Eaton at the New Statesman aptly demonstrates:




Spending patterns differ between people with different earnings. That was the riposte I received from both Tories and Lib Dems when debating this after the election. Their smugness shielded them from the reality.

Eaton's analysis of the ONS work shows that the poorest 20% of earners are spending the equivalent of 10% on their income on VAT. Thise in the top 20% pay just 6%.

The Tories are a risk you cannot afford. They cost you more. We're not all in this together.

The attack of the Trip Advisors

Last night's Channel 4 documentary the "Attack of the Trip Advisors" showed a ranged of disgruntled businesses who felt unfairly treated by customer review sites.

This probably strikes a chord with politicians who frequently complain about media attention, some fairly, sometimes not so. Social media has increased the intensity by widening the scope of people who comment and hold both businesses and politicians to account.

Recent complaints about the media from politicians include Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Liam Fox.

Hoteliers and restaurateurs complaining about social media review sites publicly airing criticism of their businesses strikes me as rather out of touch. In the past people would have had no redress if they didn't like the service. Now they can stop others from suffering the same fate. It also gives businesses more opportunity to rectify problems because they get feedback they wouldn't otherwise have had.

Hotels, restaurants, shops or politicians should be no different from each other. Feedback and being held to account should enable you to become stronger, offer a better service, closer to what people actually want.

For people in positions of authority, or business owners, social media can seem like the extension of the surveillance society. I'm sure there are unfair or unrepresentative reviews, just as there are in any situation. For the bigger brands and well known politicians there tends to be a critical mass where those that offer a good service tend to be highly regarded online. Those with customer service problems tend to suffer negative sentiment.

The hotels, restaurants or banks that tend to get it right tend to get good reviews. Most reviews are positive, with an average Trip Advisor score of 4/5. Politically most blogs are partisan, with each side attacking the other and defending their own.

I don't have a problem with it and I don't think anyone else should. All of those under scrutiny need to get with the times.

Nick Clegg calls for referendum on Europe

The big story of the last week has been the potential rift in the coalition between the anti-Europe Tories and the pro-Europe Lib Dems. Driving a wedge between his party and his location partners  Nick Clegg said to the Daily Telegraph: 

"For as long as I've been in politics, the Conservative Party has had a bee in its bonnet about Europe.

"I think eurosceptics need to be careful what they wish for. We as a country are massively dependent on a successful Europe for our own prosperity, British jobs, for money in people's pockets. Every step towards the exit sign will lead to lower confidence in the British economy.

Given that and how the media continually portrayed the Lib Dems as the only party united on Europe, in favour of great British participation in the EU and against a referendum on membership, many will wonder why Clegg was pledging a referendum himself just last year. 

This is not just a surprise for everyone who thought Clegg was against a referendum on EU membership but also highlights, if we really needed to do it again, the duplicitous nature of Clegg's "i'll do anything for a vote" Lib Dem opportunists. 

Remember that the same 2010 election was the one in which Clegg and his candidates personally signed pledges not to increase student tuition fees. No this. Voters will be left wondering what Clegg really stands for? It certainly isn't clarity or consistency.

Homelessness could rise

Housing minister Grant Schapps today launched his social housing "swap" scheme. What struck me about that was the obvious questions, isn't there already a swap scheme? There is indeed.

There is an acute housing shortage. In places like Islington there is a huge lack of family sized affordable homes. Private rents are the highest in London. Overcrowding is rife.  More housebuilding is needed, yet the Tory government has cut capital finding to build new social homes from £8.4bn to £4.4bn this year. 

The average age of first time buyers has now reached 35 because of high prices and a lack of credit from banks.

Fewer homes will get build while a return of right to buy will mean an ever diminishing supply. The problem will only get worse under the Tories. Worsening economics, higher unemployment, will this also mean more homeless people?

Racist Tory rumours

The Barnet Eye blog reports that a Tory Barnet councillor, John Hart "BA (Hons) MA" has been hauled before the borough's standards committee for allegedly making racist comments to constituents at the  Hendon and District residents' forum.

That sounds unwise, out of touch and very stupid. Why is it that there still seems to be a catalogue of Tories who believe this rubbish? Why is it that they think it is OK to spout such nonsense in public?

If he is found guilty, what punishment will the standards committee bestow on him? What about the Tory party? There have been far too many Tories caught making similar comments, who have apologised for being either misquoted, misunderstood or unaware that what they said is wrong.

It is time to draw the line and show that the Cameroons are different. Unlike many of the Tory party's representatives.

Should we have a referendum on EU membership?

Every time I hear a Europhobic Tory MP tell us how the country is crying out for a referendum on the UK's continued membership of the EU I wonder which people they are talking about. I really don't think most ordinary people worry about it that much.

Tory MPs are not ordinary people though and they are absolutely obsessed with the EU. The last two elections have seen a marked increased in anti-Europe MPs being elected for the Tories, making them a much more anti-party today than they were in the 1990s when the issue ripped John Major's government to pieces. That and the sex scandals.

Just after the 2010 election I appeared on a LBC radio debate. I sat opposite rather smug looking Tory and Lib Dems. They congratulated each other on how the coalition agreement was going to lead to seamless and untroubled governing. I thought otherwise. There is only so much you can pro-actively predict. I suggested then that something would come along, divide the coalition and the Tory party. That would be Europe.

They laughed at me.

How I laugh now.

Whenever opinion polls have asked people whether they want to pull out of the EU, as those Tories calling for a referendum do - this isn't about "choice", it is about going solo - they show a spit country. Today that shows 49% in favour of pulling out and 40% want to keep the status quo. Whether that result would stay the same once people were properly educated about the pros and cons of EU membership is quite another matter.

What we can be certain of is that David Cameron is going to have to waste significant political energy on the issue. This will eat away at energy better spent on fixing a rather broken EU and a creaking British economy. And for him, on trying to stop becoming an ever more unpopular prime minister.

Those anti-European Tories probably don't care about damaging their leader, because in their eyes, he betrayed them by signing up with the Lib Dems.

Crime up again under the Tories

In the 1980s and 1990s crime kept going up. At the time we thought it was just the way society was going. Then in the early 2000s crime started to go down. In the last year, crime has started to go up again. There is a common theme here:

1980s: crime up under the Tories
1990s: crime up under the Tories - peaking in 1992
2000s: crime down under Labour
2011: crime up again under the Tories

When I was growing up the Tories were meant to be the party of  law and order. How is that so when the reality is so starkly different?

Two polls, two stories

Opinion polls can't decide whether the Tories are unpopular or not. At the weekend YouGov, the most accurate at recent elections, put Labour and the Tories only three points apart. If that is so, Labour could be screwed. Unless things get a lot worse, which they look like doing.

According to Populus for yesterday's Times, Labour has romped to an eight point lead over the Tories, leading 41% - 33%. What does this all mean?

Polling isn't accurate. We know that already. We also know that the election isn't for several years. In that time Ed Miliband will or won't make an impact with voters. The economy will get worse and might, but probably won't get better again.

Economic pain and the unpopularity of the Tories and Lib Dems won't be enough for Labour. The big problem is that while people don't like government cuts and hate recessions because it means they get poorer and could lose their jobs, they might not blame the Tories.

Labour is to blame for the economic mess. That is what many will say. The Tories freely offered that line time and again, backed up by the Lib Dems. When they talk about the problems we face now, as things get worse, this is somehow related to a different global economic slump to the one we found ourselves in 2008/9. The Tory message has stuck and Labour hasn't been able to shift it.

Lots of voters still blame Labour. Until an alternative message sticks Labour's poll leads will look vulnerable, especially when boundary changes loaded in favour of the Tories come into effect. Labour is skint too. That means a decent election campaign is beyond the party as it simply can't afford the staff.

Both Labour and the Tories leave much to be desired in the eyes of voters. We have an unpopular government and an untrusted opposition both fighting to get heard. Labour has reasons to worry, as Mark Ferguson and Olly Parker outlined at Labour List, while the Tories do too, as outlined by Tim Montgomerie.

Does this mean Labour supporters should be depressed? Of course not. It simply means that there is everything to play for.

The unknown world of political lobbying

Today's newspaper headlines about attempting to uncover what is being painted as a "murky" world of political lobbying actually says something quite stark about politics. Lobbying isn't new and is a big money business. 


Every major company in the world employs lobbyists, as do all the major charities. Some of the biggest PR firms also have specialist lobbying functions, such as Edelman and Weber Shandwick. What these headlines reveal is an ignorance to the reality and perhaps a faux naivety about the level of business involvement in politics. 

A quick glance at the Association for Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the lobbying trade body for the UK lists 64 member companies and hundreds of staff. While it purports to "ban on any financial relationship with politicians" though clearly we can all see that the lines are blurred. What counts as a financial relationship? A politician might not be getting paid by a lobbyist but will be receiving information, briefings or hospitality. As a £2bn industry, the money has to be paying for something.


As someone who has lots of friends who work as both politicians and lobbyists I've been slightly surprised by the public's shock about this. I thought everyone knew. Clearly that isn't so. I've worked in PR for a number of years, before my recent move into advertising, and it was clear to me that the PR industry, often at the hand of the same companies that lobby politicians, was responsible for influencing journalists to write nice things about them. Yet I don't think most people realise this. 


There is a big difference between the rather unpleasant web of influence that Liam Fox and Adam Werrity's close working relationship through Atlantic Bridge has revealed, and that of companies or charities seeking to inform the policy making process legitimately through lobbying. 


When David Cameron predicted that lobbying would be the "next big scandal" he was right. Though I don't think he hoped it would afflict his own party. He then said he wanted politics to "come clean about who is buying power and influence." As that picture starts to reveal a rather sinister edge to his party, is he so sure he wants the public to know?


The public need to be educated about what actually happens. Politicians then need to decide whether they are happy to continue as they are. The more people learn about lobbying the less they may like. I hope that the legitimate side of lobbying that really does improve and inform government policy making, isn't thrown out with the bath water. 

Liam Fox and Dave the ditherer

Every day this week has seen a new litany of allegations against defence secretary Liam Fox. His boss David Cameron says that he is doing a "good job", as if that matters when he has been involved in some seriously questionable behaviour.

Today The Times details the people who have funded Adam Werrity's globe trotting trips to be at his chum Fox's side. The Guardian outlines how Fox and Werrity went to Dubai for Fox's official special advisor Luke Coffrey's stag do, funded by the taxpayer. When Fox is sacking thousands from the military, despite their service to the country, this is deeply offensive.

The big question that leaves a rather dirty stench around the whole affair is why was Werrity a health "expert" when Fox was shadow health secretary, then suddenly changed to become an "expert" in defence when his idol moved to defence?

There is so much circumstantial evidence that should worry Cameron. That this has now been joined by a litany of rich businessmen and foreign officials who have provided concrete evidence to firm this up means Fox has to go.Or the growing list of activities that directly oppose official Foreign Office policy in Sri Lanka that he has supported.



Cameron has spectacularly failed to show himself to be any better than his predecessor, Gordon Brown. Cameron made great political capital out of dubbing Brown a "ditherer". Given how long Cameron dithered over firing the corrupt media man Andy Coulson and now the questionable Fox, who is the ditherer now Dave?

David Cameron, Liam Fox, Andy Coulson: spot the difference

David Cameron is resisting rising pressure to fire his Defence Secretary Liam Fox. The allegations that Fox and his associate Adam Werrity had a rather unhealthy working relationship continue to dominate the news and to undermine Fox's initial claims that there was nothing in them.

Cameron is trying to divert us all by highlighting what (he believes) a good job Fox is doing. That is irrelevant when Fox has lied and broken the ministerial code. It also marks a distinct change of approach from former PM Tony Blair's management of scandals.

Under Blair and Alistair Campbell's rule, anyone who was making bad headlines for more than two days had to quit. It happened to Peter Mandelson despite him later being found to have done nothing wrong. Fox has whispered a hugely caveated apology, that he clearly felt no reason to give.

The question here is how long will Cameron hang on to a minster in Fox who is now responsible for more than a week of damaging headlines? Cameron has form, after employing Andy Coulson in the first place and then clinging on to him by his fingernails despite a growing storm around him about phone hacking.

What was Cameron's defence? At the time he said Coulson was doing a "good job."

We've heard this before. How many more times will a less than convincing Cameron utter them before cutting his losses with Fox?

London Olympic stadium farce

The London Olympic Legacy Company is no longer selling the 2012 stadium to West Ham. Cue sigh of relief to West Ham fans. Cue worry from Spurs fans. Cue a sigh of relief and worry from Leyton Orient fans. As a football whore I fall into the latter two categories.

Fans of none of the clubs want to watch football behind a running track. Spurs fans don't want to move to East London and Orient fans deserve better. Having a bigger club dump themselves on your doorstep and then give away thousands of free or reduced tickets to fill an overly large stadium threatens Orient's very existence.

The football authorities should know better. They got it badly wrong in letting Wimbledon "move" and become a new club, with a ready made football league place, with MK Dons in 2004. Letting either West Ham or Spurs move in just a mile away from Orient would be a disaster. Orient are a fantastic example of a community club, having won awards for their work with the locality.

Spurs are playing a game of high brinkmanship. They want to get as much money provided from the public purse for improvements to the Edmonton area to make their own Northumberland Park stadium project "viable". At the same time they don't want anyone else getting a helping hand. They are of course technically right that Newham's proposed £40m loan to West Ham looks very much like a "state aid" (government hand out) to a private company, which is banned by EU law.

The mayor and Olympic legacy company won't want an empty stadium to rot after 2012. That looks likely if a deal for West Ham to rent the stadium doesn't come through. That leaves the same problems, that will be unpopular with fans because the running track will remain and threatens the future of one of London's oldest clubs.

Throughout the whole saga nobody has successfully argued how a 60,000 capacity athletics stadium would be viable in London. I just don't believe there are enough people in London that would want to pay to watch athletics live more than once or twice a year.

The scramble for the Olympic stadium is a race that will have losers whatever the outcome:

• West Ham move in: Orient struggle, Hammers fans bemoan lack of atmosphere
• Spurs move in: Orient struggle a bit less, Spurs fans upset at move east
• Orient move in: Orient struggle in huge stadium
• Athletics only: huge, over capacity stadium rarely used, taxpayer loses

Racist Tory weekly: issue #7

Two updates this week. First up is an old "friend", Dover councillor Bob Frost, who posted that rioters were "jungle bunnies" on Facebook. This was enough to see him leave his teaching job, but not enough to get him kicked out of the Tory party.

He has this week been reprimanded and warned about his future conduct. Is that it? Someone who doesn't understand that sort of statement to be deeply offensive without having it explained to him doesn't deserve to hold office. It is insulting to the people of Dover that the Tory party are letting him.

Frost himself said, after the event:

"“Looking at the dictionary it would appear that the term jungle bunnies is pejorative and is a racist slur relating to African-Americans. I did not mean to use any offensive racist term and was referring to the urban jungle. As for the bunny bit it was originally ‘animals’ but I thought people might object to me calling fellow humans this so I chose something I thought was innocent and also cuddly.”


Can anyone really believe that?

Next up the one of the faces of the Tory become a councillor campaign. I can't claim the "scoop" here, that is the excellent Political Scrapbook's. Southend councillor Blaine Robin was called out and praised at a meeting of Southend EDL:



When will someone clear out this rubbish from the Tory party or does the leadership not care?

#cpc11 Cameron & Osborne have no plan B, sort of

The key messages of this week's Tory conference were that the government will stick forthrightly to its debt reduction plan. There will not be any loosening of the purse strings in an attempt to stem the nosediving growth figures.

That much was to be expected. The deficit reduction programme overrides everything else. It seems that it does even when the IMF, economists suck as Irwin Stelzer and the public think it is the wrong approach. Put simply, cutting government spending so sharply has turned off the life support to may parts of the economy. That  means companies lose income from government contracts, rising unemployment means government is paying to support people rather than having them pay taxes.

That George Osborne has allowed the Bank of England to enact another raft of quantitative easing today is very surprising. I'm pleased he did, but it is far from expected. Osborne's single track approach to our economic woes has been to focus on cutting spending and getting the deficit down. Nothing else. He hasn't shown much concern for collapsing consumer demand, so anything like this that seeks to stimulate is, isn't from his manifesto.

Politically this shows Osborne's weakness. While we've seen a show of confidence and strength from the Tories in Manchester this week, scratching the surface reveals a worried party. The Tories are worried that the economy won't get better by 2015. If that happens then nobody will thank them for their harsh medicine of austerity.

Their worries about popularity have led to U-turns on the NHS and now quantitative easing. In 2009 Osborne said:

"(quantitative easing)  an admission of failure and carries considerable risk"


You can see for yourself what Osborne thinks of his own policy on the Conservative Party website. At the very least you'd have thought someone would have thought to take it down to hide a bit of embarrassment before announcing their U-turn and show of weakness wouldn't you?