The Spectator (Coffee House Blend) reports this evening as follows:
David Cameron told colleagues last week that he had been nervous about what sort of a speech Ed Miliband would produce this year. He’d done two very good ones for the past two years which had set the agenda for the autumn, the Prime Minister pointed out. So how was this last conference season before the General Election going to work out? Well, he didn’t need to worry too much about that as the Labour leader gave a poor speech last week and the Prime Minister gave one of his best speeches of his career this afternoon. First, the substance. Cameron announced the following: – The personal tax allowance will rise to £12,500, taking everyone on the minimum wage out of income tax. – The threshold for the 40p rate of income tax will rise to £50,000. – The Conservatives will protect NHS spending in the next Parliament. – Cameron will ‘get what Britain needs’ on freedom of movement (without any definition of what Britain does need). – A Tory government would scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights. The conference liked the bit about the personal allowance (the Lib Dems didn’t, accusing Cameron of being ‘shameless’), but they loved the bit about the 40p. But this wasn’t just a speech aimed at the core, though as James says, it seems to have given them more of an emotional connection to David Cameron than before. It was a speech that tried to tell floating voters that the Tories are now the ones occupying the moral high ground, not Labour. It was angry in parts: Cameron became unusually personal and emotional when he talked about his own experience of taking his son to hospital, turning furiously on Labour to say ‘how dare they suggest I would ever put that at risk for other people’s children?’. And he barely restrained himself from attacking and ridiculing Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, contrasting their pitch for government with his. He was unusually self-deprecating, joking about his verbal slips and the time he left his daughter in a pub. And when he talked about his own leadership, he tried to be humble, saying: ‘I don’t claim to be a perfect leader. But I am your public servant, standing here, wanting to make our country so much better – for your children and mine. I love this country, and I will do my duty by it. We’ve got the track record, the right team…to take this plan for our country and turn it into a plan for you.’ The question is whether the tax cuts and moral high ground-hunting in this speech will be enough. It may well be that voters are more annoyed by George Osborne’s two-year welfare freeze than they are impressed by what David Cameron had to say today. But if conference speeches could win elections…
Author: Brian Riley
A Letter & £1.50
Robert Lindsay (the new Green member for South Cosford) proposed the following motion at the Babergh District Council meeting on Friday 26th September as follows: “That a letter be sent to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government requesting that local authorities be given the power to introduce a levy of up to 8.5% of the rateable value on supermarkets or large retail outlets in their area with a rateable annual value not less than £500,000 and for the revenue to be retained by local authorities in order to be used to help improve their local communities.” It was seconded by (Conservative) Councillor Jenny Antill. It is nice to see conviction politicians crossing divides and supporting each other. Lindsay (unsuccessfully) fought Antill in 2013 for the position of County Councillor for Cosford. I could not support the motion. It is too woolly as to its effects on business (which ones will be affected – probably Tesco in Sudbury & Copdock and possibly Toys R Us) and it is seriously weak as to what “improve their local communities” means. Some people think it means supporting small shops in our High Streets but it could equally apply to street lighting or employing high cost temporary consultants to fill staffing gaps.
And then again there is the question of sending the letter.
Well, all a letter and £1.50 will get you is a cup of coffee.
The motion was shunted off to the Strategy Committee where it will take its turn to be researched and considered.
A Father Writes
Sarah Riley(my older daughter) has published her second book Technologies of Sexiness: Sex, Identity, and Consumer Culture (Sexuality, Identity, and Society). The authorship is shared with Adrienne Evans.
Sarah is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at University College Wales, Aberystwyth. Her research takes a social constructionist approach to explore issues of identity in relation to gender, embodiment and youth culture. She has published widely in journals including Feminism and Psychology, British Journal of Social Psychology, Sociology and Journal of Youth Studies. She co-edited Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and Doing a Qualitative Research Project (Sage, 2011). The current book explores the key cultural shifts which have enabled a “new sexualisation” of women. Neoliberal, consumerist, and post feminist media culture have shaped ways of understanding female sexuality, embodied by the figure of the choosing, empowered, entrepreneurial consumer citizen-woman, whose economic capital determines feminine success (and failure). Informed by older constructs of privilege such as class, sexuality, race and (dis)ability, this version of sexiness also constrains by folding contemporary femininity back into previous panics about youth, excess, “bad” consumption, and appropriate feminine behaviour. In Technologies of Sexiness, Adrienne Evans and Sarah identify how current understandings of sexiness in public life and academic discourse have produced a “doubled stagnation,” cycling around old debates without forward momentum. Developing a theoretical and methodological framework, they expand on the notion of a “technology of sexiness.” They ask what happens and what is lost when people make sense of themselves within the complexities and contradictions of consumer-oriented constructs of sexiness. How do these discourses come to “transform the self”? This book provides a framework for understanding how women make sense of their sexual identities in the context of a feminization of sexual consumerism. The authors analyze material collected with two groups of women: the “pleasure pursuers” and “functioning feminists,” who broadly occupy positions across the pre- and post-Thatcher eras, and the changes brought about by the feminist movement. As one of the first book-length empirical studies to explore age-related femininities in the context of what “sexiness” means today, the authors develop a series of insights into various “technologies of the self” through analyses of space, nostalgia, and claims to authentic sexiness. Technologies of Sexiness: Sex Identity and Consumer Culture is available from OUP: http://goo.gl/YPlDcL and at Amazon: http://goo.gl/0gLgqG
Education Tourism
A mother who forged documents in a bid to secure a school place for her daughter has been fined £500 and sentenced to 100 hours community service. In one of the first prosecutions of so-called ‘education tourism’,
Lura Pacheco was found to have submitted a forged tenancy agreement so that her 11-year-old daughter might attend a secondary school in Havering rather than Dagenham and Redbridge. Giles Morrison, representing Havering Council, said: “She wanted her daughter to get into a Havering school as these are generally better… It (the offence) is, I am told, something that Havering Council is very concerned with in the borough and there might be a number of prosecutions that might happen in the future.”
One would hope that that education chiefs in Dagenham and Redbridge would start to look at Havering and see what can be done to emulate their successes.
The fine and community service may seem harsh but they may be signs that things are hotting up in Havering. In 2008 a resident claimed £25,308 in housing benefit and council tax benefit, despite inheriting £44,821. But he received a sentence of just 20 weeks, suspended for one year, and was ordered to carry out 60 hours unpaid community. In June 2012 a woman who claimed to be a struggling single mum-of-two was sentenced to 15 months in prison after Havering Council uncovered her double life as a jet-setting wife of a London black cab driver. She admitted fraudulently claiming more than £165,000 in benefits over a 20-year period, despite living in an expensively furnished home and enjoying numerous holidays abroad with her husband. And last year a Romford man was jailed for six weeks for benefit fraud after illegally subletting his council house. More than £14,000 was involved. Meanwhile in a separate case, a Harold Hill resident was also sentenced to six weeks in prison, suspended for two years, and given a curfew from 7pm to 7am daily, for fraudulently claiming almost £9,000 in housing and Council tax benefit.
Still, £500 and a sentence of 100 hours community service for being too enthusiastic for the well being of your children does seem a tad on the strong side.
The picture is 1897 Bogdanov-Belsky At School Doors var” by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky – art-catalog.ru. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Give a Man a Fish
I could not resist sharing this:
The Great London Dock Strike
Last Sunday I attended Mass at St. Mary & St Michael’s Catholic church in Tower Hamlets. No ordinary Mass, however, this was celebrated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols and was a Thanksgiving Mass for Cardinal Manning in commemoration of the 125th Anniversary of the settlement of the Great London Dock Strike. Manning was a key player on resolving the Dock Strike as the following from Ben Tillett’s Memories and Reflections (1931) indicates “From the first the Cardinal showed himself to be the dockers’ friend, though he had family connections in the shipping interests, represented on the other side. Our demands were too reasonable, too moderate, to be set aside by an intelligence so fine, a spirit so lofty, as that which animated the frail, tall figure with its saintly, emaciated face and the strangely compelling eyes. I could not withstand this gentle old man, who touched so tenderly the heart-strings of his hearers with solemn talk about the sufferings of wives and children, or impress him with a summary of social needs and economic complexities multiplying in the prolongation of the Strike. I never look back on that meeting without a sense of nightmare, but there was a final judgment and the Cardinal won”.
Manning’s contribution to Catholic Social Action went on to inform Pope Leo XIII’s first social encyclical Rerum Novarum (New Things). Today such attitudes inform the campaign for paying people a Living Wage instead of the Minimum Wage. As might be expected from a visit by the Westminster Team the homily was spot on the button, very well delivered and engaging with the congregation. At the end of Mass, Cardinal Nichols took his place by the door of the church and like any other Parish Priest greeted people and exchanged kind words.
The Hidden Virgo
Once again, Shelley Von Strunckel hits the button dead centre.
Last week in the Sunday Times she wrote “Virgos often have a seriously proper streak. However that belies their molten sensuality within”.
Similarly, she wrote of the then coming week “… usually doing a disappearing act would be unwise. Now, however it is best, as it allows you to avoid difficult conversations until the full facts surface”.
Now I don’t know what difficult conversations there might have been but I was glad in any case to spend a few days in Bucharest. Meanwhile I shall contemplate and cultivate the molten sensuality within.
A Decent Pie at Last?
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph reported that a hospital canteen’s ‘fry-up’ pie had been described as a ‘heart attack on a plate’ (HAOAP).
A former government adviser called for ban on the pie crammed with bacon, sausage, black pudding and beans, with an egg on top, being sold for £1.50 at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. Prof Mike Lean, former government adviser, and chair of human nutrition at Glasgow University, said it was a “shocking” example of a meal, adding: “It should never be anywhere near a hospital. It is laden with fat, salt and without a vegetable in sight. There should be strict guidelines for all food sold in hospitals.”
Prof Mike Lean obviously doesn’t consider beans as a vegetable. Nor does he consider the therapeutic effect of comfort food like this. For me the real problem is how cheap is the food for it to be sold for £1.50. Can anybody make any money from a food product like this at this price?
For many people, the HAOAP is a treat not a daily staple. The Professor’s remarks also exclude the possibility that the calories etc., may be being worked off either on the job or in the gym. If a little of what you fancy does you good, then this might be just the right thing.
Meanwhile the University of Glasgow boasts a number of cafés whose offerings include baguettes, baked potatoes, breakfast rolls, confectionery, deli cakes, desserts , hot chocolate, flavoured latte, ‘food for later’ range of soups and meals to take away, full breakfast(s), home baking, hot & cold drinks, hot filling jacket potato suppers , hot pastry savoury snacks, individual brasserie-style meals, pizza , sandwiches, soya milk options , speciality coffees and teas – made to order. There are Vegan, gluten free and vegetarian options available, but I’m sure that a closer scrutiny of the Bills of Fare would show a reasonable selection of artery hardeners. I’m glad the Professor is a former government adviser and not a current one.
The original article may be found on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11054202/Hospital-canteens-fry-up-pie-is-heart-attack-on-a-plate.html#disqus_thread
Well Deserved Reserved Results
More of Suffolk’s 16 year olds achieved expected levels of GCSE attainment this year. Provisional results suggest an overall one per cent rise in the number of students getting five or more A*-C grades, including English and Maths. In Suffolk it means that 56% of the County’s year 11s got the expected level of attainment. In 2013, it was 55%.
Included in the schools making significant gains on last year is Hadleigh High School where 69% of students achieved five or more A*-C grades (including English and Maths), up 25% on last year. Everyone agrees that the results are a testament to the hard work and dedication of teachers, heads, governors, parents and, most importantly, students.
The photo is of Hadleigh High School students celebrating getting their GCSE results.
L-R: Tom Blomfield (student), Callum Smith (student), myself, Eric Watts (student), Cllr Lisa Chambers (cabinet member for education and skills, Mrs Gibson (Hadleigh High School headteacher, Cllr Mark Bee (county council leader), Sam Champman (student) and Annabele MacFarlane (student).
Meanwhile the Guardian reports today that figures from the ONS reveal there were 955,000 Neets (young people not in education, employment or training) aged 16 to 24 in the UK in the period between April and June, down by 20,000 compared with January and March, and 138,000 lower than a year earlier.
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