Could Labour win again?

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I’ve just caught up with David Miliband’s article, which is refreshing because it’s about ideas rather than the brain-dead media obsession with Brown’s personality. I liked this passage:

With hindsight, we should have got on with reforming the NHS sooner. We needed better planning for how to win the peace in Iraq, not just win the war. We should have devolved more power away from Whitehall and Westminster. We needed a clearer drive towards becoming a low-carbon, energy-efficient economy, not just to tackle climate change but to cut energy bills.

But 10 years of rising prosperity, a health service brought back from the brink, and social norms around women’s and minority rights transformed, have not come about by accident. After all, the Tories opposed almost all the measures that have made a difference — from the windfall tax on privatised utilities to family-friendly working.

Now what are they offering? The Tories say society is broken. By what measure? Rising crime? No, crime has fallen more in the past 10 years than at any time in the past century. Knife crime and gun crime are serious problems. But since targeting the spike in gun crime, it has been cut by 13% in a year, and we have to do the same with knife crime.

What about the social breakdown that causes crime? More single parents dependent on the state? No, employment has risen sharply for lone parents because the state has funded childcare and made work pay. Falling school standards? No, they are rising. More asylum seekers? No, we said we would reform the system and slash the numbers, and we did…

That’s a start. It’s nice to see a Labour bigwig express some regrets. But he doesn’t go far enough. No serious mention of the decision to go to war in Iraq, for example (just regret that there wasn’t more planning for the aftermath). No appreciation of the fundamental weaknesses of Labour’s approach to the public services — in particular its crazed obsession with ‘targets’. And then there’s the government’s innate authoritarianism, its insistence on detention without charge or trial, its determination to have an ID card system and its relentless extension of the powers of surveillance. Miliband’s willingness to admit to weakness and maybe even of error is a welcome change, but it looks like pretty feeble stuff to me.

Now if there were to be a putsch that unhorsed Brown, and if the new leader were really to make a clean break with the past in relation to the above list, then it would pull the rug from under the Cameroonians, and might even cause the electorate to rub its collective eyes in amazement — and interest. But I can’t see it happening.

Sunder Katwala (Secretary of the Fabian Society) has some critical comments on the Miliband article.

On the beach

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Nice piece of literary fantasy in his week’s Economist, which has been wondering if Gordon Brown has a future.

He decided to ring Downing Street. No, his chief of strategy told him, there had been no outbreaks of agricultural disease that might require him to convene a COBRA emergency meeting. No, they were not expecting any abnormal weather that would oblige him to rush back to London. Try to relax, prime minister, the strategist said.

He tried. He went down to the beach and made a sandcastle, carefully planting a miniature Union Jack on top of it, endeavouring not to think about the perfidy of the voters in the Glasgow East by-election and the deluded nationalism of his Scottish countrymen. Finally he rolled up his trousers and waded into the surf, looking out moodily across the grey and choppy waters. His mind flitted between love, fate, betrayal, the decline of North Sea mackerel stocks and the Icelandic cod war of 1958. For a moment, he felt at peace. He loosened his tie.

Horseman pass by

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We made our annual pilgrimage to W.B.’s grave today, partly because it’s an excuse to visit a beautiful (and IMHO under-rated) part of Ireland, but also because Drumcliffe is a lovely churchyard lying, as it does, at the foot of Ben Bulben.

By Church of Ireland (i.e. Protestant) standards, it’s an extraordinarily well-preserved and maintained churchyard, with fascinating name juxtapositions, as here:

And just along from Wagner, what do we find?

Call that a camera…

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Michael Dales is the first of my Camvine colleagues to bag a Google StreetView car…

Yesterday on my walk to work I spotted someone stood on top of their car erecting upon it what looked like a ship’s superstructure. I had my suspicion as to what this might be, so I went to have a chat with the guy, and my guess was confirmed – it was the Google Streetview Car!

Maybe we should start a Googlecar Twitchers club?

Hard Times

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TV presenter Carol Vorderman felt forced to leave Channel 4 quiz show Countdown after she was told to take a 90% pay cut, her manager has said.

Agent John Miles said Vorderman, 47, had been told the series survived the death of host Richard Whiteley in 2005, and could “easily survive without you”. Vorderman, a co-host since its 1982 start, said she wanted everyone “to know the truth” about her departure.

A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: “We never comment on presenters’ salaries.”

Vorderman, who is reported to earn in the region of £900,000 a year from the show, announced she was leaving on Friday.

Mr Miles said his client had offered to accept a pay cut of one-third, in line with a 33% budget cut being imposed on the show by ITV Productions, which makes Countdown for Channel 4. But he said she felt she was left with no alternative but to leave after she was told to take or leave an offer of 10% of her current salary, and given 48 hours to decide.

Aw shucks. The poor dear — offered only £90k for standing up and breathing. Still, the show must go on. Apparently.

Dave gets his bike back

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From BBC NEWS:

Conservative leader David Cameron has been reunited with his stolen bike after it was found dumped.

The bicycle disappeared outside a Tesco store in Notting Hill, west London, near Mr Cameron’s home, on Wednesday.

The Sunday Mirror said it had used the contacts of “local community elder” Ernest Theophile, 60, to find the bike. It was found in a nearby side street, minus its front wheel, but with Mr Cameron’s helmet and lock still on it. He said it was great to have it back. The Tory leader told the newspaper: “Thank you very much indeed. I’m very surprised to have it back, it’s incredible. I never thought I’d see it again.

“It’s priceless to me. I’ve done over a thousand miles on it and three sponsored bike rides of 250 miles each, so it’s like an old friend. It’s fantastic.”

He added: “I’m surprised they didn’t take the helmet – you’d think they would get something for that on eBay.”

And, in case you’re wondering, eBay finally got around to removing the spoof auction of the bike.

Randy Pausch RIP

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Randy Pausch, the popular computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon whose appetite for life was only sharpened by a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer in September 2006, has died.

Pausch’s inspirational “Last Lecture” a year later, titled “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” was posted to YouTube and became an unexpected sensation, viewed millions of times. It evolved into a best-selling book, and Pausch used his sudden celebrity to be an advocate for both cancer research and savoring life. Randy Pausch died this morning at his home. He was 47. In the “Last Lecture,” he said, “I mean I don’t know how to not have fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there’s no other way to play it. You just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I’m clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us.”