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owly on "Abolish the Commons - Mandelson for PM"

owly — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:38:08 +0100

There is indeed a convention that a PM must now sit in the Commons, but Labour have little respect for conventions when it suits them. The acid test Her Majesty would apply is could Mandelson command a majority in the Commons ? With the Labour Party in its current state the answer would probably be no.

As to Ian's comment what we need is a new Speaker (we get on middle of the month) and then we need a General Election. Only a new Parliament can 'clean up Parliament'. As a minister has observed, the 'stables need clearing; the problem is we are the stables'. That's why the public will not wear this discredited bunch stitching up the rules yet again. General Election now is what we need and want.

Ian Campbell on "Abolish the Commons - Mandelson for PM"

Ian Campbell — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:34:24 +0100

There is now a convention that peers cannot be PM but Mandelson could get away with offering himself as a caretaker PM with an 'immediate' election to be held in the Autumn, allowing the Labour party time to elect a new leader. In the meantime, the iterim govt could clean up Parliament.

Stephen Gash on "What's Cameron saying?"

Stephen Gash — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:35:26 +0100

Cameron, Brown, Clegg and the rest of the rabble still don't get it. They have forfeited the right to reform anything, at least not until after a general election.

MPs with the least workload are those in Scotland because the Scottish Parliament has taken control away from them. This is why Cameron, Brown, Clegg and the rest of the rabble oppose an English Parliament. What would they have left to do?

The gravy train has hit the buffers and the Westminster carriages are piling up on one another. Time to clear the tracks with a general election and a fully federal system of the nations.

BTW, the latest Populus poll has shown once again that English regions, at 15%, are the most unpopular option. What's the betting that Brown and Clegg still push for the regional carve-up of England?

G B H on "What's Cameron saying?"

G B H — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:07:10 +0100

Camerons ideas sound a bit too much like `Reaganism`, and what with Brown saying that he is already putting ideas forward, sounds as though the pair still want to reign supreme in a parliament of their own choosing, then everything will once again be put on the `backburner`. We should have a seperate body construct a new constition and do way with the title of `Honorable`, and have a General Election.

Thankyou for commentisfree

Toque on "What's Cameron saying?"

Toque — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:21:36 +0100

This sounds great:

"From the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities. From Brussels to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we must take power away from the political elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street."

What will it actually mean though? Not much I suspect. The actual policy is, as usual, thin on the ground. I'm not sure that I support a reduction in the number of MPs (unless it's all Scottish MPs). Why should England have even fewer elected politicians when we are already under-represented in comparison with Scotland, Wales and NI? The bottom line is that under Cameron it will still be up to Parliament, not Dan Hamman, Douglas Carswell, Ken Clarke and David Cameron, and certainly not the people (he still talks about 'giving away power' as if it is his to give, without any mention of public consultation).

abuelita42pj on "Jarvis describes ... what oD tries to do"

abuelita42pj — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:51:58 +0100

I like your side margins listing other readings from the same author or a different one working with you. It is similar to Eurozine only they list theirs almost within the beginning of the article. Theirs list other writings of the same topic by other authors which can be informative.

My "hangup" with blogging is the banter of conversations by two or three people that get off the basis of the initial article and bash each other for saying what s/he doesn't like. That doesn't inform the outside reader; it just takes up space. Could you eliminate those and keep the others that give ideas and/or opinions on the article's topic at hand? The NYTimes limits theirs by stopping after a certain amount of time or number of replies and draws what they consider the best of a group. This can lead to a bias possibly but it also eliminates conversations not applicable to the topic.

All in all I like the writings you send out and the ability to draw up a number of others on topics I am interested in. I just hope you don't downgrade the quality of your writings. THAT we all get too much of, esp. in newspapers.

Lan on "When pessimism turns to protest"

Lan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:04:17 +0000

The first institution that needs to be blamed for all this mayhem is the church. It is a great shame that Greece and Iran are the only theocratic Indo-European states.
The church in Greece has all the power.....there is no way any politician can oppose this powerful body. Unless people start dispansing with the church all together, and take away the money from it, there will be no real progress. Nowhere else in Europe can a person who claims to be an atheist get so much wrath.

JFox on "Avoiding the worst: International economic cooperation and domestic politics"

JFox — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:43:17 +0000

Tony:

I read Frieden as calling for more of the same, in contrast to what he sees as a retreat into protectionism.
My contention is that Free Trade in the version foisted on the world for the last few decades is already fundamentally protectionist. It has been a policy of the strong - rarely if ever of the weak. And it has failed to achieve what it says on the label.

The formal international agreements that underpin free trade tend to leave the signatories unable to address changes in domestic economic conditions - regardless of the will of the people and their governments. Are these agreements nonetheless good for us? Take NAFTA as an example - one of whose signatories is a middle income developing country - Mexico. Since entering the NAFTA, Mexico has witnessed a significant growth in inequality, very large increases in staple food prices (corn, beans, chiles) which has severely affected the poor, and a large and still growing trade deficit in agricultural products (against consistent pre-NAFTA surpluses). Mexico post NAFTA became Latin-America's number one producer of multi-millionaires - and of people living in impoverished circumstances. My point is that Frieden's case rests on a misreading of the way so-called Free Trade has worked in practice. We are not suddenly entering a period of protectionism, we have been living in a protectionist paradigm for several decades, and the recent emergence of "protectionist" policies that he observes merely exposes to view some of the pipework of the underlying neo-liberal model. I believe the model is not viable in the long term and that we need to look for an alternative way of administering economic life.

Your second question is puzzling. You will not find in my previous contribution here, or in anything else I have written, any suggestion that I oppose egalitarian policies. On the contrary. I do, however, believe that citizens often know where their interests lie better than governments, whose members are all-too-often drawn from narrow intellectual and economic elites. Where I also part company with Frieden is not in his call for social and economic justice at a time of crisis (how could I?), but in his faith in international rules and regulations, in other words in tying down nations to sets of unalterable principles that may or may not be in their medium and long term interests and that are not, by definition, sensitive to changes of circumstance or the evolving wishes of electorates. The call for rules seems to reflect a monotheistic view of the world, the idea that there can be only one theology, one answer to the challenges of human economic interaction and that this should be imposed on everyone by dictat from a supranational body. It is deeply undemocratic; and history shows that it is not the way western countries became rich. Fostering autonomy and maximum room for manoeuvre within a framework of international law seems to me the more viable and honest procedure; and it is in any case the one that the most powerful countries (and corporations) will adopt regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Jeremy

BigC on "New Labour, new British nationalism"

BigC — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:36:00 +0000

Bavaria and Westphalia do not have national football teams because they are not nations. Wales and Scotland have national football teams because they are nations. (Northern Ireland is not a nation but there is obviously some embarrassment involved in describing it as anything else). Britain is a state made up of 3 (and a bit?) nations so it is inappropriate for it to have a national team in anything.

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "Avoiding the worst: International economic cooperation and domestic politics"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:59:28 +0000

Surely the system has, as of present failures] no legitimacy. That explains the calls currently for a new order and system, which if taken candidly must begin with acknowledging the failures: a part of what this article could be about.

International trade and cooperation are unavoidable realities in a world that is global so that is not the basic problem. While it is necessary to be less hash on the positions for both, JFox appears to be driving at the moral dimensions and for that there is sympathy.

A sound and competitive world market and economy might benefit from positive liberal trends, but not rule out morals - equally an inescapable anti-protectionist instinct in nation states.

Tony Curzon Price on "Avoiding the worst: International economic cooperation and domestic politics"

Tony Curzon Price — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:00:23 +0000

I think you are too harsh, JFox. I read Frieden as saying that the last thing we need _now_ is a protectionist USA and Europe. Do you disagree with that? (You may be taking the brave view that a 30's style tit-for-tat contraction of trade is to be welcomed ... are you?)

He is also asking for egalitarian policies within countries because he agrees that the system we have had for the last 30 years has no legitimacy. Do you disagree with that?

tony

JFox on "Avoiding the worst: International economic cooperation and domestic politics"

JFox — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:28:51 +0000

What Jeffrey Frieden seems to be demanding is a return to what he calls "an integrated international economic order" - in other words to an order that has not only led to the current crisis but which, over many years, has signally failed to alleviate the conditions of extreme poverty and inequality that prevail both within and between countries. How discouraging, too, to see him trot out the tired theory of comparative advantage in defence of free trade. David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill hatched up the theory as a simplistic mind-game in which two imaginary countries produce two identical products. Having satisfied themselves that the game worked in their heads, this pair of benighted geniuses - and countless economists after them - blithely applied it to the world. Incredibly, this balderdash - for that’s what it is - remains one of the core arguments used by the powerful to force “Free Trade” upon the weak, even though, once forced, it paradoxically ceases to be free. Far from being irrevocably fixed, “comparative advantage” changes. Hence why centres of production move incessantly around the world in pursuit of cheap raw materials and labour. Free Trade chews up employees, and spits them out again when their relative price goes up. And its effect has been largely to concentrate wealth in the hands of an international elite of individuals, corporations and small geographical enclaves. Perhaps we should consider an alternative mantra for the organization of international trade: something like "let's make what we can and buy what we must". Look here and here for some factual correctives to Professor Frieden's genuflection at the altar of received economic opinion.

Mike Crahart on "New Labour, new British nationalism"

Mike Crahart — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:50:37 +0000

It's the one thing I like about Gordon, it's an attempt to wrest true patriotism from the sticky little fingers of the far-right. Of course their should be a British football team, it's absurd that there are different teams for the regions. The Germans don't have seperate teams for Bavaria, Westphalia & etc!

bartonseo on "Google's Attention Deficit Disorder"

bartonseo — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:08:11 +0000

I have to agree with TheCurlyOne, Page rank is broken. All page rank does is encourage search engine specialists to find more and more ways to get as many links as they can on as many sites as they can. Lots of links, no quality, got to love page rank.

He that roars the loudest isn't necessarily king.

Toque on "New Labour, new British nationalism"

Toque — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:05:46 +0000

I've added a more succinct view on this to A National Conversation for England (which OK readers are encouraged to engage in).