Though Cowards Flinch

Today’s budget day played out an old ritual. One man with a red bag of office will reveal what he has decided the nation will spend and how it will raise taxes to finance this.

This is the way it is done, and this is the way it seems always to have been done, ‘democratic politics’ is played out around his decisions. The Labour Party will go into the election on the basis of these decisions and the Tories will oppose them, offering some half revealed alternative package deal.

The voters will, for once, have a yes no decision to make on the package in a couple of months. But what if you agree with some of the buget and not other parts, what if you agree with the level of education expenditure but not the level of naval procurement. What if you would prefer the top rate of tax to be 55% not 50%.

Tough!

Its take it or leave it.

There has to be a better way. If phone voting can be used to decide trivial issues like who should leave Big Brother, why can the public not have a say on the important issues that affect them.

It would be quite possible to put up a website with say half a dozen key questions
Should the top rate of tax go up 5%, down 5% or stay the same.
Should VAT go up by 2%, down, 2% or stay the same.
Should health expenditure go up 5%, down 5%, or stay the same.

Provided that the government had previously decided on the overall level of borrowing it is quite simple to count the votes and decide on a consensus level of taxes and expentitures. I show this in the talk I will be giving to the BCS conference next month.

If such a democratic budgeting system were introduced, and if there were provision for citizens initiatives on what questions were to be included in the vote, politics would change. Campaigns would arise focused around specific changes to the tax system that benefited different social classes.
These are questions that directly affect peoples pockets, and would provide a motivation for greater democratic engagement.

In Germany the new Die Linke programme drawn up by Lafontaine commits to this sort of budgeting.

There would of course have to be all sorts of provisions to protect against fraud, but we know how to make mobile phone voting secure, anonymous and verifiable. The Handivote system is one example.

All quiet on the Canterbury front

It appears that the University of Kent’s UCU branch has won a decisive reversal of the university’s decision to get rid of staff members in the Biosciences department. It was originally alleged that the university management “could find no role” for these staff, despite the excellent rating students gave the department.

Now, the following statement has been released:

“The University and UCU have had further constructive discussions in relation to the future of the School of Biosciences and have agreed upon an acceptable resolution of the matters in issue between them. This successful conclusion to the discussions indicates a renewed spirit  of constructive partnership between management and UCU, and both parties are committed to entering into a Redundancy Avoidance Agreement for the future.

“As a result, the threat of compulsory redundancies has now been lifted from UCU members in Biosciences, and UCU has therefore cancelled the planned ballot of its members on taking industrial action which was to commence on Friday 26th March 2010.”

This seems like a comprehensive win for the UCU, which was strongly backed by a student-led campaign that had planned a march on the Canterbury campus in the run up to the strike. Management have been forced into a climbdown, made evident by the tenor of the rhetoric the Vice Chancellor used to announce the redundancies, which asserted that the decision was already taken and that local and national UCU had been “informed”.

Please note, tomorrow’s staff/student march has been called off by the Students’ Union.

I think it was a mistake to call off the march, myself. Having been helping out the local Socialist Students group on and off campus, the momentum was clearly building in a way that was not anticipated by the fairly weak and ambiguous wording of the Kent Uni SU motion to oppose the cuts. A demonstration of unity and a celebration of success wouldn’t have been out of place. But my happiness for the lecturers whose jobs have been saved makes up for a minor quibble.

Socialist Students and other interested groups on campus, and amongst the people of Canterbury, will be watching the situation carefully, in case management attempt either to move against a different department or to re-announce the cuts whenever students are preoccupied with exams or summer holidays. In the meantime, there’s plenty of work still to be done on other campaigns, such as Youth Fight for Jobs and supporting PCS and other local unions.

In the last two posts I’ve covered the Conservative-led Local Government Association’s draft ‘General Powers of Competence’ bill, which will give local authorities carte blanche to do whatever they want, irrespective of the effect on their local populations, and irrespective of current statutory duties imposed upon them.

My focus has been on how this is a deliberate, underhand preparation for the whole sale destruction of public services provided by local authorities, along the lines proposed by Barnet ‘Easy Jet’ Council, but not yet possible under current law.

In this final post in the series, I want to focus on the wider constitutional implications of the enactment of this proposed legislation.

The implications for British democracy as we know it are huge.

As I explained in the first post, the LGA’s draft bill is modeled closely on the provisions set out in the Human Rights Act 1998.  The most controversial aspect of the latter legislation was that it was seen as a way of handing over legislative power to Brussels, as it aimed to “give further effect” in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights.

By and large though, the Human Rights legislation has been ‘passive’ in that it is something against which other primary and secondary legislation is measured.

The proposed General Powers of Competence legislation is quite different in this respect, and this is why it is so shocking to see the draft bill so closely modelled on the Human Rights legislation.  The proposed bill, if enacted, will empower local authorities to undertake all kinds of actions which are out of keeping with current legislation, with no sanction whatsoever other than a wholly ineffectual ‘declaration of incompatibility’.

The legislation, in one fell swoop, will have a greater impact on parliamentary sovereignty than the Human Rights Act could ever have, because local authorities will be in a position to ignore the express provisions set down for it by parliament.  Instead of parliamentary powers being lost to Brussels, they will be lost to town halls up and down the land, and with huge consequence for the very people parliamentary legislation has been enacted to protect.

This is not to say that the devolution of real power to local authorities is of itself a bad thing.  Nor is it to say that I am in favour of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty simply because it is the (unwritten) constitutional norm.  I would love to see real powers devolved to a local level, and for the UK governance in general become more decentralised, while at the same time becoming more democratically legitimate through the absorption under elected local authority control of all those public service functions which have been removed, especially utilities and the health service.

But this secretive process by the LGA, in cahoots with the Tory leadership, is not the way to do it.  

If we are to move towards a situation where local authority elections really do make a fundamental difference for the way a local authority is governed, then there needs to be a proper public debate.

It might even be debate Power 2010 would want to participate in, because it really would be about fundamental shifts in how power is exercised in the UK.  As it is, I think it’s unlikely they’ve even noticed this draft bill, let alone its ramification, so busy have they been.

There should be a proper opportunity for political parties and activists to come to terms with the changed locus of power, with the consequent need to select to best candidates for local office rather than seeing council membership of the preserve of  either the MP wannabee or the middle-aged, parochial dullard/worthy.

At the moment, the Conservatives are seeking to sneak through a wholesale change in the powers of local authorities for the narrow political purpose of massively reducing public services, or making them available only to those who can pay.  

This cynical move by the Tories masks a much greater constitutional question, which they would rather we didn’t ask until it is too late.

Yesterday, I set out the plans by the Conservatives, in the event of their forming the next government, to fast track new legislation giving local authorities ‘General Powers of Competence’, and how the Tory-run LGA has already produced the draft bill which, amazingly, gives this legislation exactly the same weight as the Human Rights Act, and is closely modeled on it.

So why exactly are the Conservatives so keen to give a piece of legislation, that hardly anybody has heard of and even less care about, exactly the same constitutional weight at the Human Rights Act?

The legislation is quite complicated to read, but the principles are simple enough.

The new ‘General Powers of Competence’ will allow local authorities:

to do anything which it considers likely (whether directly or indirectly to a) the whole or any part of its area; or b) all or any persons resident in the area.

The only things it can’t do is raise money by taxation, make laws, or do anything which existing laws expressly prohibit it from doing.

While this seems reasonable enough at first sight, the important point is that local authorities will, under the new legislation, be allowed NOT to do things which are currently required of it under different sets of existing legislation, as long as it considers it to be beneficial to its population.

That is, the judgment on what is or is not beneficial is wholly that of the local authority, and not that either of parliament or the courts.

And because the new legislation is in the same constitutional bracket as the Human Rights Act, there is absolutely nothing that parliament can do about it if local authorities decide to abuse their new ‘flexibilities’. 

The most that can be done is that the high courts can make a ‘declaration of incompatibility’ between existing statute and the use of the General Powers of Competence, but such a declaration is in no way legally binding, and will not force local authorities to reverse their decisions.

When I first raised (in September) the prospect of massive reductions in services via this mechanism of local authorities simply no longer undertaking current statutory duties, the draft bill was not available, and nor was there much real evidence of what the Tories might be planning at local level.  I admit I was going to a large extent on gut instinct, suspicious about the Tories’ strange commitment to what for many is obscure legislation, and hardly an election manifesto front pager.

Six months later, we have the draft bill, which exceeds even my expectations in the way it provides absolute carte blanche for unscrupulous authorities to slash services which to date have been both brought into being and protected by statutory duty – ranging across a wide number of areas from pollution to homelessness; they have become statutory duties precisely because there is a recognition through the parliamentary process that they are needed to protect people, especially the more vulnerable.

But as importantly, we have very real evidence of the way the Tories are planning to exploit the new legislation as soon as it becomes available. 

Here, for example, is Barnet ‘Easy Jet’ Council’s website setting out why it has not, in light of a judicial review in the high court, been able to cut the live-in warden service from its sheltered accommodation:

The reasons given by the court were:

that although the Council’s consultation was “robust and substantial”, the Council did not have ‘due regard’ to its duties under the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 when it made its decision to withdraw wardens

that when carrying out an impact assessment on how the decision would affect disabled persons, the conclusion reached was not in the circumstances, reasonable.

That is, the council wanted to do something that the courts decided would be outwith both the DDA Act and the duty to carry out a proper impact assessment.

Here, tellingly, is the report on the reaction of the new Tory leader of Barnet Council to the judgment:

Barnet Council has had to drop plans to allow residents to pay a fee to jump the queue with planning applications as this would flout current regulations, The Times has learnt. And, after a High Court judgment last month, the London Tory-run council has had to rethink plans to cut the number of live-in wardens in sheltered housing.

Mike Freer, who stepped down as council leader last week to stand as a Tory parliamentary candidate at the next general election, has pioneered the new approach to give residents a choice about services — in some cases by paying for them.

Lynne Hillan, his successor and former deputy at the council, says she is determined to carry through his proposals, which include incentives for recycling and other top-up fees.

Ms Hillan, who has discussed the plans in depth with the Tory leadership, is now pushing for changes to the law to give councils more flexibility.

She told The Times: “Councils do have powers to impose some charges but there is no flexibility.

“We are now pressing the Tory leadership to introduce new laws if they win power to allow councils to implement their initiatives” (my emphasis).

Tory councils, or at least those in like in the forefront of the drive towards the mass reduction in what councils do, know exactly what this new legislation is about.  In this case, the new legislation can be used by Barnet council to ride roughshod over the DDA, simply on the basis that ‘it considers’ its actions will be beneficial to their area, with this presunably justified on the basis of cost-cutting (and lowered council tax).

To put it another way, Barnet council will simply be able to forget about its duties to older, vulnerable residents, because it can.

The legislation is not about the power to ‘innovate’ at all, much as the Cameronian rhetoric would have us believe (and has had the naives at the New Local Government Network believe).

It’s not about ‘benefit’ for local areas.  It’s simply part of the rightwing Tory masterplan to roll back the frontiers of the welfare state. 

(In part 3 of this series, I’ll be looking at the broader constitutional and democratic issues that this proposed legislation brings with it, including an effective end to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.)

For months now I have been warning anyone who will listen about the darker motives behind the Conservative commitment to enacting new local government legislation if it comes into power in May. 

Unfortunately, no-one’s been listening. 

Local Government Minister John Denham couldn’t even be bothered to reply to my letter, even though I pulled rank as a Labour leader on a local authority, while the New Local Government Network think it’s all a lovely idea:

There are positive elements in this [Conservative] paper [on local government] which should be welcomed, including…… developing the ‘power of wellbeing’ introduced in 2000 into a wider ‘power of general competence’ as a way to remove any doubts about the right of councils to act.

Now, hidden deep in the bowels of Tory-run Local Government Association, is the draft legislation which it expects its new friends in government to enact as soon as possible after May, and I’m inviting people to wake up and smell the danger.

Because, in a step which may seem utterly perverse from a party which bangs on about what terrible damage the Human Rights Act 1998 has done to our country, the key sections of the draft act are modeled closely on – you’ve guessed it – the Human Rights Act 1998.* 

Only this time, instead of enshrining in law what might be considered fairly basic rights of individuals to a fair trial and whatnot, this act enshrines in law the right of local authorities to do whatever the fuck they want to do if it saves/makes a few quid, regardless of the real effects on their local population. 

The new legislation will have the same legal status as the Human Rights Act.  Yet its massive implications – not just for residents of the local authorities who will use it most unscrupulously, but also for the whole constitutional relationship between parliament and local government – are being smuggled through the legislative process with barely a whisper of discontent or hint of proper scrutiny.

I’ll be back tonight with more detailed analysis, but please, take a look at the bloody thing first.

* The explanatory notes with the LGA’s draft legislation are quite clear:

Clause 3 requires legislation to be interpreted as far as possible in a way which is compatible with the power of general competence. This applies to all legislation, whenever enacted. Clause 3 does not affect the validity, operation or enforcement of any incompatible primary legislation or of any incompatible subordinate legislation, if primary legislation prevents removal of its incompatibility. The drafting of clause 3 is based on section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Clause 4 allows the courts to make a declaration of incompatibility where they find that primary legislation is incompatible with the power of general competence. The continuing validity and enforcement of the legislation is not affected by such a declaration, and a declaration is not binding on the parties in the proceedings in which it is made. The drafting of clause 4 is based on section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (my emphasis).

I don’t normally bother defending other leftish bloggers, because they’re generally quite capable of looking after themselves.

But I thought I might say a word or so about the weekend’s assault by the right-wing blogosphere on Will Straw at Left Foot Forward not just because it’s unjustified, but also because I think the way it has played out has been instructive about the current state of the blogosphere, and how it may just be starting to change for the better, unlikely as that sounds.

First, there’s the ‘substance’ of the assault.

Will Straw banged out a quick post, probably before going off to do something more interesting instead, around Saturday lunchtime.  It wasn’t the most exciting post ever, and I suspect was a bit of a weekend filler.

It was about what he considered to be a discrepancy between Cameron’s commitment on a bank tax and Grayling’s earlier view about a transaction tax.

The right-wing blogosphere was on it in minutes, setting about Will for what they thought was his failure to distinguish between the two types of tax.  Will responded promptly enough with an update to say that he knew perfectly well the difference between the two taxes, but that his point was perfectly valid.

He’s right that his point is perfectly valid (even if it’s not crucial in the scheme of things).  He made it perfectly clear that he was talking about ‘the principle’ in his original piece.  More importantly though, was the fact (at least according to this BBC report) that:

David Cameron has announced plans for a new tax on banks – even if other countries decide not to do so.

Logically, if Cameron is saying the Tories will impose the tax even if it’s unilateral,  there’s an acceptance that an international agreement on such a new tax would be better.

So Will is quite justified in pointing out that, while Grayling argues that one tax can only work if it’s international, Cameron’s arguing that the other tax should be imposed unilaterally.

It’s not the most convincing argument in the world, I agree, but it’s not factually incorrect, and there is nothing to suggest that Will hadn’t clocked the difference between the two taxes when he wrote the post.

But the right-wing hysteriosphere is having none of that.  They smell blood, and they’re in there – comment after comment of vitriol at LFF, and quickly followed up at Iain Dale’s blog with an invitation to readers to heap more scorn.  Read the comments and they become ever less connected to the matter at hand, and more hostile and personally abusive, mostly around the fact that Will’s dad is Jack Straw and that he once took drugs or something.

Is it really therefore any surprise that Will closed the comments on the thread?  I assume what he saw for moderation was more of the same, and worse, and that they fell outwith the comments policy on the site. 

This of course is manna from heaven for Dale’s trolls, who then go into overdrive about how he’s avoiding comments etc. etc., even though he comments on Dale’s site to justify his (perfectly justifiable) position.

And that’s the storm in the teacup, of no interest to anyone outside the tiny proportion of people who make up the blogosphere.

It is, though, an interesting reflection of that blogosphere. 

First, there’s the simply bullying.  As I’ve said, Will doesn’t need looking after, and reacted quite appropriately by turning off the comments and going off and doing something better.  I’d do exactly the same if people come over here and offer the same level of abuse.  I’m pretty thick-skinned – I’m a Labour councillor, I have to be – but it’s just not worth the hassle, and of course Iain Dale’s own comments policy makes it quite clear that he’ll do the same, though he doesn’t offer Will Straw the courtesy his policy suggest he might:

If your post is insulting to me or other people posting in the thread I reserve the right not to allow it through. Persistent abuse of me, the host of this blog by way of spurious allegations or name-calling is liable to result in a ban, either for a period of time or permanently. You may disagree with me, but there is a limit to my patience if my hospitality is abused.

Second, and more importantly, there’s the incest.  

If I’d written something along the lines of Will’s post – and it is the kind of rapid fire, top-of-the-head thing I often batter out – no-one in Dale/Fawkes would have batted an eyelid.   Mostly of course that’s because TCF doesn’t get read as much as Will, but even if it were noticed by these people, they probably wouldn’t bother because the correction of what they consider falsehoods is far less important than whose putative falsehoods they are. 

In this case, they’re those of one of the biggest left-leaning blogs around, and so the ‘points’ scored by an attack on it, however unjustified the attack in actuality, are much greater than they’d score from a more justifiable correction to a less blog-important figure.

In short, the target for attack is more important than what the attack’s about.

Fortunately, though, the blogosphere is starting to change. 

New bloggers are emerging who are less interested in getting invites into the inner circle of blogincest, and more with examining what’s going on in the real world, and – as a proxy – what the mainstream press, more important in terms of readership and influence by far, is putting out for circulation.

Thus, we have have Giles Wilkes commenting on a piece by Johann Hari which, well-meaning though it is, is ruined by the fact that he thinks £25bn per year from stopping tax avoidance will pay of the whole of the national debt in seven years, whereas in fact it will pay off a tiny proportion of the £1.3 trillion (ish) debt.  As Giles point outs out, it’s pretty important not to mislead the public in a national paper into thinking that just catching a few Ashcrofts and squeezing their pips will pay off our debt.

Did Iain Dale notice that, even with the steady source of sources he enjoys?  Course not.  Did Paul Staines?  Nope, don’t think so.  Would they have highlighted it if they’d spotted it.  Unlikely, I suspect, because Johann Hari’s not in the incestuous blogosphere. 

The conclusion?  Giles Wilkes is a better, more relevant blogger than Iain Dale and Paul Staines put together and multiplied by the ratio of debt to deficit.

And in our own small way, TCF is focused on what’s going on in the real world, exposing stupidity and wrongness where we see it.

And I just have a suspicion – based on what decent bloggers like Giles and Paul Sagar are saying about their readership numbers –  that blog readers are starting to notice that there are good, interesting, relevant bloggers beyond the big few – the big few who are becoming increasingly self-referential, and – bit by tiny bit – increasingly desperate to defend their territory and a status based more on their longevity than their quality.

This morning, for example, Iain Dale’s just a little bit narky that he’s not been invited to the blogparty (and of course, he doesn’t mention that Left Foot Forward has been invited).

Tom at Freemania points out Moody’s latest judgment on how countries are coping with their deficits.

Pierre Cailleateau of Moody’s says:

Preserving debt affordability at levels consistent with AAA ratings will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion… the severity of the crisis will force governments to make painful choices that expose weaknesses in society.

Thing is, Pierre Cailleateau of Moody’s said almost the exact same thing three months ago.

In those countries whose debt has increased significantly – and especially those whose debt has become unaffordable – the need to rein in deficits will test social cohesiveness. The test will be starker as growth disappoints and interest rates rise……In 2010, the ongoing crisis will further test such fortitude. We are closely monitoring signs of economic rebound as well as of political and social tension as early indicators of the sustainability of fiscal efforts.

Tom thinks Cailleteau makes a ‘commendably frank statement’.  Well, the message at least is consistent: “bugger the social consequences, it’s debt affordability that matters.”

When I suggested the possibility that to great a focus on fiscal deficit at the expense of social need might lead to ‘social cohesion’ problems, I was accused of encouraging race riots.  I wonder if Pierre Cailleteau will get the same.

Today at TCF we will mostly be exposing attempts of authorities to justify odious policy choices with the aid of completely ridiculous arguments.

First, there was Dave setting out how the US policy on gay people in service is ‘justified’ by the argument that the end of the cold war meant the Dutch army allowed gays into their ranks, and this meant they became no good at fighting. 

Problem is, as Dave points out, he’s factually wrong as well as stupid.

And now here’s Home Office Minister Meg Hillier justifying her decision to imprison children on the basis that she’s really protecting them:

[W]ith children being detained I’m faced with a number of options.

One is that we just stop it altogether, but then we would have children, I think, with a very high price on them, because we’d actually be saying say if you have a child you will never be detained to be deported and I think that it would raise the risk of child trafficking and put a very high price on a child, so I’d be very reluctant to go down that route

(Daily Politics, BBC 19 March 2010.)

I can’t improve on the End Child Detention Now blog’s caustic commentary on this nonsense:

Hillier’s comment was clearly intended to create the impression that either:

a) destitute single asylum seekers would place orders for small children to be trafficked half way across the world by criminal gangs with forged identity papers (and no doubt matching the false ‘parents’ DNA and blood group;

or

b) they would somehow borrow or adopt children who had already been trafficked into the country (with neatly forged ID documents etc) for, as Meg said, a ‘high price’, the minute some empty-headed government decided to follow the soft-hearted Swedes, Australians and Canadians in not locking up children in detention centres.

Because of course these governments foolishly gave into the pro-children/pro-human rights lobby, and we all know there are containers full of trafficked children just waiting to be delivered to failed asylum seekers for large sums of money in Toronto, Sydney and Stockholm!

Quite simply, this is a ridiculous statement from Meg Hillier. 

It’s so far from a being a sensible justification that you almost have to admire the gall in coming up with it.  

When I set out in a previous post how wrong the government was to lock up children, I assumed any defence she might make of it might be on the grounds that the care afforded to children outside prison was even worse than in prison.

That would have been wrong-headed enough, but this justification defies belief.

(The above piece was written before I saw this similar piece at Open Democracy by Clare Sambrook of  End Child Detention Now.)

On the surface, the Telegraph reports of £18 million in state funds going to Unite, and its predecessors Amicus and TGWU, from the Labour government seem pretty damning. I was outraged; unions are not there to be funded by the State, and taking such funding compromises unions. Their bureaucracies could thence rely on State aid as insulation from having to fight for and fight to keep members’ dues.

There is also the question as to whether or not the unions like Unite have been feeding this money back into the Labour Party. If that could be proved to be the case, then it’s all the more reason to get rid of the current morons at the top of the Labour Party; first the scandal of private donations from millionaires, and cash for peerages, now this.

Lest people forget, if any of this were true, the government was not just using State money to stay in government through a funded political machine. They were using it to retain control of the Labour Party, which is a much greater offence, so far as I and many other socialists would be concerned.

Reality is not so simple, however. There are several funds which have channelled money to the unions, (e.g. Partnership at Work, the Union Modernisation Fund and the Union Learning Fund) and none of them are to do with political donations. The amount gathered from each member for a political fund must be stipulated, only money from the political fund may be used for political activities and money from other accounts may not be used.

That is the law. No one has said that the law has been broken, and the Guardian’s disingenuous chart (shown right, courtesy of Iain Dale) is simply a case of attempting to secure a guilty verdict by very dodgy inferences. All the accusations of money laundering – of this money passing through Unite or the other unions en route to Labour – are silly.

A fair contention, however, is that there is a moral case to answer. A Labour government is channelling money directly to the unions – for admittedly benevolent, non-political purposes. But presumably – as well as reaching difficult to organise workers, and coaching people to get qualifications and training – this bolsters the prestige and attraction of the trades unions. Union Learning Fund projects, for example, seem open only to union members.

Higher union membership means more money for the Labour Party. Or does it?

Actually I don’t think this moral case holds up. Since every member of a union chooses whether or not to pay into the political fund, people who don’t want to support Labour can benefit from these programmes. There’s also the numerous cases of unions which have political funds that don’t contribute to Labour – such as the National Union of Teachers, the RMT, University and Colleges Union or the Fire Brigades Union.

The actual programmes involved, through which all this money is channelled, break down the moral case further still.

On a political level, programmes like Partnership at Work were not designed as vehicles for left-wing policy – they were the opposite. Their whole purpose was to suppress open conflict in the workplace. It’s my view that this type of thing directly led to a harmful increase in the pressure put on staff, in an environment free of the danger of industrial unrest.

On a practical level, programmes like Dignity at Work had the support of employers, employees, unions and the State – and these channelled large sums to educate on and prevent workplace bullying and other issues which are not just Left issues, since bullying affects productivity. Similarly with the Union Learning and Union Modernisation Funds.

Far from being bungs to union allies, this money was to serve a purpose that was not so crassly ‘political’ as is being made out and which gave little succour to “the Left”, unless we’re to recycle and adjust Harold Wilson, “Socialism is what unions do”, regardless of what they actually do.

By all means, people should object to unions being used as the vehicle for such policies – and I haven’t made up my mind yet, though I’m leaning towards a separation of unions as agitational bodies of workers from educative and training bodies paid for by the State. They can object to the specific policies as being inefficient or poor uses of money. But they can’t reasonably object that this money is a bung to union allies of a Labour Party.

The last refuge for such an accusation is whether all the money allocated for these purposes was spent on what it was supposed to have been spent on. The suggestive comments in the media – and the near-hysterical comments in the Right-blogosphere – betray ignorance over just this. So audits should be done, and we should see how it was spent.

None of it will have found its way into the political funds; I take that as a given. If it has, an offence has been committed and the guilty individuals responsible should be punished – but I doubt union officials are so stupid.

It is more believable that money left over may have been spent on more general concerns or union administration not necessarily relating to the projects mandated by the specific aims of these funds. To allay concerns, turn over the books. Open government is our friend. What is not acceptable is the high pitched screeching before any facts are known.

Socialisation, liberalisation, unionisation, social engineering. These policies, in the Dutch army, led to the inability of the Dutch to defend Srebrenica against the invading forces of the Republic of Srpska.

For retired General John Sheehan, formerly Supreme Allied Commander Europe, this is a fancy way of saying that allowing gays to serve in the military is a Bad Thing. Part of his testimony can be seen below.

Leaving la-la land for a moment, I’ve no idea how 400 Dutch soldiers were expected to fight off the invasion by 15,000 soldiers of the Drina Corps, without serious air and artillery support – which wasn’t forthcoming.

That’s the military reality of Srebrenica.

Sheehan says that the end of the Cold War saw Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg decide that they would no longer be called on to pursue “active combat” operations. This led to the policies I quoted from his testimony at the start of the article.

Except there’s a few problems: the unionisation of the Dutch armed forces took places in 1966. The removal of all discrimination against gays in the Dutch military occurred in 1974. Nothing to do with the Cold War, nothing to do with Europe going soft.

In fact, had the Soviets come pouring across the Elbe, there would have been gay men and women under the command of SACEUR General John Sheehan, fully anticipating active combat operations and not peacekeeping.

How inconvenient it is when you can’t find the facts to fit your bigotry. Ah never mind, just make them up!