The Bewilderness

No Hope Now: Labour's diminuendo fades beyond the dogwhistle

Electoral pressure does begin to work upon policy, be it ever so late for this government. Such adaptive behaviour is predictable since the ruling party faces that ultimate test of destruction: a general election. Faced with the possibility of defeat for the first time since 1997, there is a gradual tacking towards prevailing winds on the part of some ministers. So, ID cards are now voluntary, again, and perhaps not, if press releases from this administration are ever believed.

Mr Johnson even admitted the suggestion the cards would help combat terrorism was exaggerated as he accepted the Government should never have allowed "the perception to go around that they were a panacea for terrorism".

Instead, the Home Office is now concentrating on the cards being useful for youngsters to prove their age when going in to pubs.

This fractured cabinet has become an admixture of dangerous dogs and salvage operations. Alan Johnson manoeuvres for advantage with a climbdown from arrogance. Ed Balls seeks the limelight with his latest report where an economic emergency is vitiated by illusory promises from this last of the big spendthrifts.

He dismissed objections that the plans cannot be paid for saying that Labour could secure funding by being "deft".....

He also said that a £400 million reserve fund set aside in case the private finance initiative (PFI) scheme failed had now been freed up for other purposes.

Half of that money is to be contributed to the Government's social housing programme with the rest going on funding school places.

"I can do that and at the same time have the education budget rising," he said.

Anyone could get their budget to rise with a deficit of 12%, or as it has officially been renamed, bringing expenditure forward from the never-never.

The break-out by the triumvirate of the First Statesman, Brown and Balls uses a series of promises, twirling U-turns and smoke/mirrors for cash spending; the whole intended to outflank the Tories. Except the tired litany, the rehash of so many announcements and the vague assumption we all accept there was a strategy, does not really wash.

Labour should accept that it is No Hope Now as their weakest leader since Wilson twists in the wheezing tornados of his own spin, legs feebly kicking, eyes blackening and tongue gradually thickening as a scrum of Cabinet colleagues pull on his legs to hasten death. Should we consider all of the press conferences to be the ejaculations of a dying organism?

Dishonesty in the dire times of the depression

The clear danger signs are here that the temporary stimulus provided by the huge growth in government expenditure is already beginning to peter out. As one would expect from the huge force of debt arrayed against the thieves. They have plucked the goose so much that it is now spitting feathers.

The banking problems caused by debt have not been addressed: nationalise and then leave them to work out their own bad debts. The amount of lending in the country continues to dry up and it is feared that inflation will rise due to quantitative easing:

A continuing drought in bank lending, evidenced in the latest figures from the Bank of England, and the threat that spiralling public borrowing will feed through to higher interest rates and inflation, are judged by international economists to be mortal dangers to a sustained recovery.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which comprises the 30 most advanced economies in the world, added to the gloom, saying that Britain remained "deep" in recession and faced a "bleak short-term outlook".

"The recovery is likely to be slow and unemployment is expected to climb significantly," it said, adding that the Treasury could do "considerably more" to fix the public finances.

From a short-term perspective, politicians have confused short-term stopgaps with solutions, especially where the electoral cycle is causing deceit to be used as a hiding place for these problems. Such is the charge from David Cameron as dishonesty in dire times results in a levy on Labour's polls:

Mr Brown is likely to be dealt a further blow today when official figures show that the economy has shrunk even more than thought this year. The Office for National Statistics is expected to revise its figure for the drop in GDP in the first three months of the year to 4.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, a ComRes survey for The Independent will show that only one in five people trust Labour to decide where spending cuts should be made, compared with 31 per cent for the Conservatives.

As the current equilibrium is unsustainable, we may see either a crisis or a change in circumstances that demand public expenditure cuts before the election. Does Brown think he will be lucky enough to stave off this threat?

It's your right to whine for my money

Is there no U-turn that this shameless government will not indulge, helped by their handmaiden, the Daily Telegraph? At least, Brogan fences the slurry in, although it oozes and drips through the cracks in the fence. Now, casting my mind back, I seem to recall that targets, micro-management and huge public expenditure without gain are all hallmarks of one G. Brown Esq. So how can this 'target culture' be derided as Blairite? 

In an interview, Mr Byrne said: "We need a power shift from Whitehall ministers and civil servants that currently have the power and move it to citizens.

"We know the argument for public services has got to change so we have been developing a strategy that takes public services away from a target culture to giving people rights and entitlement to core public services."

What will this shift entail? Liam Byrne describes this latest stage of reform, and when did we never have a period of reform, as giving individuals a set of rights and, if they are not met, you get to complain.

Well, as a member of the public, I would like to demonstrate near Parliament, wear a "Bollix to Brown" T shirt and ensure that nephews could read. And I can complain to the people who buggered up in the first place. And what do people want when they complain? They want redress. If they can't get the rights, they get the compensation.

A new way of using your money to puff up Brown's largesse and promote dishonesty. Incentives to lie and cheat by crying that rights are infringed, to be bought off by gold, all helped out by that nice Mr Brown, who understands my needs. This is one last ditch effort to bribe the electorate at the expense of widening compensation culture and increasing something for nothing expectations.

Good thing the money has run out.

Commons reform: constitutional fail

Spin in haste, repent at leisure. It was clear that Brown's proposal for a new quango limiting parliamentary sovereignty would run into trouble. Thank god for Malcolm Jack, Clerk of the House of Commons, to point out the crappy consequences of further constitutional vandalism. The destruction of parliamentary privilege and curbing of free speech would achieve by default what monarchs were unable to. Was this what the executive hoped to slide in under the guise of reform?

We know that New Labour slime are devious enough to attempt the opposite of what the public demand. Under the camouflage of accountability and transparency, they would neuter the Commons for good and instill executive advantage in perpetuity. What care they for free speech or independent scrutiny.

Here's hoping that further voices raised will halt ill-thought reforms designed to bolster Brown's poll ratings: the very short-term consequences that have disfigured Boards up and down the land.

Grubbing and Greenery: Brown's new spinnery

Gordon Brown undertook a one hour interview, published in the Times, to set out his stall. Once again, the Prime Minister decided that he needed to get a message across in order to counteract the accusations of deceit, over his figures. The speculation that he appears to be in a minority of two (Brown and Balls) is now vindicated by this bizarre piece.

We all know that the Prime Minister believes in his in effable superiority over the people; his Platonic love for all demands that we are shepherded to the goal of social justice, against our will and with lightened wallets. Nobody was clear why Brown was not facing reality: putting cuts in place on public expenditure, to offset the widest deficit in the advanced industrial economies.

Mr Brown shows that he has no intention of restraining his attack on Conservative plans to cut public spending. While insisting that the Government will meet its target of halving the fiscal deficit in five years, he suggests that economic growth will be the way to cut debt and borrowing without harming the public services.

He insists that because Britain has both publicly and privately been investing more than other countries in the industries of the future — low carbon, biotechnology, digital communications and the creative arts — it has “huge potential” for growth and jobs in the future. He predicts that much of this will come from overseas companies whose investment in Britain has held up despite the recession.

He adds: “When you have growth and jobs you have less debt and less deficit and more resources for the public services.”

If I get this right, economic growth in Britain will be so fast, due to our Californian wizardry and foreign investment, that there will be no need for cuts. Does this mean that he does not accept the Treasury's projections, let alone the Institute of Fiscal Studies? This is desperate stuff from a desperate man, depending upon economic growth and greenery, to salvage his poll position (a great way of tracking political value for politicians, as an aside).

Turning to his other pledge, of popular control over public services, this steals the language of consumerism to enfold the culture of the grass, the snitch and tell on thy neighbour. You can look, in vain, for a dismantling of the quangos and a burning of the regulations. With some jiggery-pokery, Brown offers a consultation here, a new complaints process there, and some more quangos masquerading as ombudsmen.


Window dressing and fantasy from the Prime Mentalist. He is treating his policies like his female colleagues: put on for a no-show. 

Michael Jackson is breaking news

Michael Jackson is dead. News, certainly, but not exactly worth a newsflash on the BBC.

Public sector broadcasting is replaced by public celebrity broadcasting.

Sleazy BBC must have a lot to hide

The public thirst for transparency was never going to stop with Parliament. And does the BBC really think that it can duck criticism when MPs will attack with the zeal of the historically scarred. They wish to share the rod:

Days after MPs caused public outrage by blacking out details of their expenses, the BBC is refusing to reveal how much is spent on hospitality and gifts for its best-paid celebrities.

The corporation is to publish claims by senior executives, some totalling more than £1,000 a month, amid accusations that it is wasting millions of pounds of public funds.

Publication is being brought forward by several weeks to forestall demands for greater disclosure and could come as early as today. But BBC bosses will remove some of the most sensitive information about expenses, leaving them vulnerable to charges of “partial transparency”. They cite an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act that allows the corporation to refuse to disclose information related to its “journalism, art or literature”.

Let me guess: disclosure will reveal huge waste, contempt for those who pay the licence tax and all-round public sector parasitism. Then any support left for the Corporation may die away. Associating the BBC with sleaze would be a positive outcome.

Catching a breather as we enter World 2.0

From an advertising stance, and perhaps a political one following Iran, Twitter has reached the tipping point in terms of information flow and overload.

Just a couple of years ago, the speed of news was dependent on the rate at which someone could blog or a news outlet could publish a report online. Now, news is broadcast instantly via Twitter and the vast array of social networks. The only time I'm not inundated with the latest happenings is when I'm asleep.

Within this faster and instantaneous flow, brand management has become savvier, as the Domino's Pizza response shows. Even the dinosaurs are beginning to catch up.

Although not all advertising and marketing activities have shifted over to the internet, the entire industry is now imbued with the practices spawned by this wave of innovation. The current downturn is passing through a phase of consolidation, as providers catch up through analytics and metrics. Unable to grasp the crystal ball (as if I could do any better), they will again be hit by the next wave, whose impact remains unclear for now.

Business cannot afford a breather in World 2.0.

Optogenetics

A very positive development in the convergence between neural science and information technology is highlighted by the new science of optogenetics. Currently focused on animal models, this genetically engineers specific neurals cells in the brain so that they will react to light in engineered ways, stimulated by minute optical fibres. These practices promise possible new palliative methodologies for reversing the effects of age related cognitive degeneration, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other such cruel robberies.

So far researchers have only experimented upon flies, rats, mice, monkeys and worms. Tests on humans are at least five years off, but tinkering with the brains of mice has already suggested a new way to treat Parkinson's disease in people.

"This allows us to really start to speak the language of the brain," says Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and professor of bioengineering at Stanford University who is one of the pioneers of the method.

Optogenetics works by zeroing in on selected sets of the brain's interconnected nerve cells, or neurons. Some neurons are thought to control memory, while others handle speech and still others the motion of muscles. Neurons send out signals to other neurons in the form of electrical "spikes" -- tiny electrical zaps that encode information or control muscles.

Another technique that affords us greater insight in the mind and allows us to move from the gross manipulation of the brain to a lighter, more precise understanding.

From feast to famine in bandwidth

How long does a glut last? If you cast your mind back, you may remember that companies splurged on bandwidth and optical fibre on fantastical notions of data demand that were never likely to be met in a profitable timescale. That glut has now been reached and it looks like the feast of 2001 could turn into the famine of 2014 for transatlantic bandwidth.

During the dot-com boom, so many undersea cable delivering the Internet traversed the bottom of the ocean between the U.S. and Europe that bandwidth prices plummeted and providers of submarine cables filed for bankruptcy. But those cables may soon no longer be enough to satisfy the global demand for bandwidth between the two continents, according to research out today from TeleGeography. The research firm estimates that bandwidth requirements will grow 33 percent between 2008 and 2015, and trans-Atlantic capacity will be exhausted by 2014.

One suspects that bandwidth could follow the same fate as oil refineries: less investment to raise prices.