I care a lot about standards of care, so I have followed developments. 

First, the health minister told us that the Forum will ”“not be made up of the great and the good, but is actually being made up of frontline staff”.

Then, we were told by the Chief Nursing Officer that “the first meeting of the forum will take place in late February”.

So I asked the Department of Health who was actually going to make up the forum, given that it is due to meet very soon.  A press officer told me:

We will be announcing the membership of the forum in the coming weeks.

I have a legitimate interest in who is going to sit on this forum, not least because Cameron has already sought to politicize it by ordering, from a position of total ignorance, that nurses must organise their work in a very particular way; as I set out in detail here, the jury remains out on whether the “intentional rounding” Cameron is so impressed by will actually be beneficial to patient care in the long run, and it is the height of irresponsibility to seek to impose it in this way.

Why, then, can the Department of Health give me no information on who will sit on this forum?  What are they trying to hide?

PIRC research last year identified that at least £1.4bn of deferred bonuses payable were not carried as a liability or disclosed by Barclays in respect of 2010 and previous years. Barclays said that it was nevertheless complying with international accounting standards (IFRS) under which a liability to employees does not count as a liability.

That was contrary to the requirement of Section 411 of the Companies Act which requires amounts paid and payable to employees be disclosed, independently of whether IFRS or UK GAAP was used. It then became clear that this problem was common with other banks.

With today’s figures Barclays is now disclosing amounts payable in accordance with Section 411, even though it is not adjusting its profits or balance sheet for this. This reveals:

• The amount missing in 2010 was in fact £1.7bn, higher than PIRC’s estimate.
• For 2011 the missing sum is now £2.0bn.

That is, while Barclays are this year just about complying with company law by admitting to the £2bn liability in the notes to their accounts (page 33, Performance Management section), they deliberately omit these liabilities from their overall profit figure.

If these bonus liablilities are taken into account, and other IFRS quirks are ironed out, PIRC calculates that:

Barclays true profit for 2011 is only £2,914m, not the £5,879m IFRS number, nor the group’s own “adjusted” number of £5,590m.

This is important because the bonuses being paid out to Barclay’s investment bankers this year have been based on what now appears to be an over-inflated profits announcement.

Thanks to PIRC, Bob Diamond has a little more explaining to do.

In a piece for the Guardian last year he said:

There is no call for [foreign military intervention] by opposition leaders, a NFZ would be of little value as Assad is operating with use of small clans on the ground, and a carpet bombing campaign would not help the opposition.

The trouble is, a pro-intervention Michael Weiss, for the Henry Jackson Society, says exactly the same thing.

It would be extremely difficult given the lack of a safe zone, particularly now given the retaliation of Assad’s regime over Zabadani. It has to be said that while opinion is changing, perceptions of foreign intervention by Syrian rebels is split – this is a problem.

All this is fine, and Hasan can write about this until he is blue in the face, but a fact remains the same for him – in his own words - “The sad truth is, it is not our job to topple Assad.”

So no matter how long he spends on looking at the operational difficulties a coalition of willing nations would have, it’s all for nothing, since his first principles override reason.

Before, on my part, this was an accusation. But now he admits as such. He is romantically against western intervention because it doesn’t sit well with him.

In a new article, for the New Statesman, he writes:

Whether we like it or not, it is incumbent upon those of us who are instinctively opposed to western military interventions in the Middle East to answer the question: what would you do to stop Assad?

Let me tell you, Mehdi, when on the coalface, instinct is often all you have, but when you live the cosseted life of a second-rate commentator, shaping opinion for the rest of us, perhaps instinct is the very last thing you should appeal to.

The concerns he spells out are no different from those of us who are, albeit cautiously, pro-intervention. But one thing divides us from him: namely, that we listen to the people in Syria and the best information that leaves that country and enters ours. Further still, reason.

He has sacrificed these for simple instinct. On the Middle East, I honestly fail to see why he is listened to at all by anyone other than those on the fringes.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s pledge  to eliminate the budget deficit isn’t the main reason U.K. government-bond  yields are at record lows, say most analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

The Bank of England’s quantitative-easing program,  which has so far purchased a quarter of outstanding gilts, was identified as  the single biggest cause by a third of 27 economists polled. Just over a  quarter said investors fleeing other European bonds were driving U.K. rates  lower, while 22 percent said Osborne’s plan was the main reason.

The ‘safe haven’ cause is the one backed in Casenove Capital Management’s latest (to Dec 2011) analysis of its own performance, sent out to the owners of the funds it manages:

Heightened anxiety caused government bond yields to fall substantially during 2011.  The UK, the US and Germany continued to be viewed as safe havens, with 10-year yields falling to 1.96%, 1.81% and 1.83% respectively. The difference between equity and bond yields is a clear reflection of investors’ risk aversion. 

That was the picture as of December (the 1.96% low on UK bonds was reached on 29th December).  So it’s interesting to see what Matthew Vincent has to say in the FT about the latest position:

Vincent goes on to say that the switch to equities may be short-lived, especially with the ever-present possibility of chaos as a result of “events in Greece.” 

If we do see a sustained movement to equities over the next month or two, however, a concomitant rise in the UK bond yield would provide pretty good empirical evidence that Osborne has indeed been talking total bollox about the reason why they are currently so low.  (The yield on 10 year UK Bonds had already increased by 0.25% since the start of February to 2.23% at close on Friday.)

If yields do rise, it will be important for those critical of Osbornomics not to try to have their cake and eat it too, by blaming any rise in borrowing costs on UK economic policy, at least in the short term.  While Osborne is clearly lying about why rates are currently low as a justification for his continued austerity madness, proper economists should stick with the pretty obvious conclusion that – the effects of QE aside – what rate the UK bond rate continues to depend how much of a mess the rest of the world the big investors think the world is in.

Central to the interview is Aubry’s attack on Sarkozy’s scapegoating strategy:

Avec son interview au Figaro Magazine, M. Sarkozy commence sa campagne de 2012 comme il a gouverné depuis 2007: en voulant désigner des boucs émissaires - les chômeurs, les étrangers, les homosexuels, les professeurs, la gauche…- qui seraient les responsables de tous les maux du pays. Une nouvelle fois, il cherche à diviser les Français au lieu de les rassembler.

[Trans:  With his interview in Le Figaro, Sarkozy begins his 2012 campaign as he has governed since 2007: by creating scapegoats - the unemployed, foreigners, gays, teachers, the left - whom he would have us believe are responsible for all that is wrong with the country.  Once again, he seeks to divide the French people instead of bringing them together].

Sarkozy’s interview in Le Figaro (a key rightwing newspaper) does indeed reflect a lurch for the dog whistle, as he tries to shore up his vote against Le Pen’s Front National, which may not yet be surging but certainly isn’t retreating as a threat to Sarkozy even making the second round (assuming Le Pen makes it onto the ballot paper with the 500 nominations she needs).  His suggestion that allowing immigrants from outside the EU to vote would result in “des cantines scolaires hallal” (Halal school canteens) all over France, for example, gives us a pretty good indication of the votes he’s pitching for.

The Sarkozy interview is also notable for the quite bizarre idea that if re-elected he might put vocational education (formation professionelle) policy to a full referendum, and when the interviewer then follows up with two questions about whether other matters would need a referendum, it feels as though he’s mocking Sarkozy.  It’s so odd a move that even the Daily Mail has noticed.

Sarkozy may be getting desperate already, so it can be argued that it’s all easy enough for the Hollande campaign team, and that they can well afford (and need) to court the leftwing vote even at the expense of the few that might go missing as a result of their approach.   Even so, it’s good to see  Aubry, on Hollande’s behalf, calling out Sarkozy so directly on his scapegoating strategy. 

From a British left perspective, there is inevitably a sense of regret that the Parliamentary Labour Party lacks the confidence, as yet, to speak out firmly on the right side of the argument.  As I said back in July:

If Labour keeps on trying to scare the shit out people on things like crime and immigration, as a way of getting Labour votes, it’s making a big mistake; it’s really just doing the Tories’ job for them*.

Hopefully, as Hollande maintains his lead and goes on to become President, Miliband and team will learn that constant rightwards triangulation is less effective as a route to electoral success than doing the right thing.

*George Monbiot made much the same point  last week, claiming that only he and Charlie Brooker had realised what was going on (perhaps he’s just not reading the right blogs):

Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls “terminal niceness”. They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

I’ve written about it here.

It was slightly more detailed than the argument of how a central body can legislate for and fund something that is, essentially, bottom-up – you remember, the sum total of the boring “mutual moment” argument – but that wasn’t really what interested the journalists present.

An ITN reporter asked Lord Glasman did he feel Ed Miliband was leading yet. She was referring to *that* New Statesman article where he said, of the Labour leader:

he has not broken through. He has flickered rather than shone, nudged not led. It is time for him to bring the gifts that only he can bring. He should leave behind stale orthodoxies and trust his instinct that change is essential. He must show the kind of courage needed to steer the ship of state through uncharted waters. Now is the time for leadership and action. So far Ed has honoured his responsibilities but has not exerted his power. It is time that he did so.

So, 6 weeks into 2012, does Glasman think Ed is leading yet?

Short answer is yes. Glasman said he  is “really pleased with how it’s going” and that actually he was “a bit surprised by how much leadership Ed has shown”.

In the Statesman article, Glasman also pointed out that Labour, under Ed, ”show no signs of winning” the economic argument.

Does Glasman think that now? No, he says that Ed’s predator/producer intervention will really take off this year, and on the economic argument Ed is leading the way.

No matter that in November Jim Pickard for the FT pointed out, in a blog post entitled “Chuka Umunna tones down the producer-predator rhetoric“, that:

I’m now told that senior Labour figures are not using the words “producer” or “predator” anymore; instead the done thing is to criticise companies when they behave in “predatory” ways and praise them when they act constructively.

Bottom line: Maurice Glasman backs Ed again. Well, to be honest, he always did. In fact *that* New Statesman article ends with Glasman saying “I’m backing Ed Miliband.”

No changes, then.

incompetence in dealing with the NHS and incompetence in growing the economy & reducing unemployment is how Labour need to define this government. Not ‘out of touch’ but just ‘incompetent’.

Labour’s first line of attack does indeed need to be on the government’s incompetence, but it needs to stress that the government as a whole is incompetent precisely BECAUSE Cameron and his inner circle (Osborne, Letwin and a couple of others) are ‘out of touch’.

The image that springs to mind is a public school.  For convenience, let’s call it Eton.

Cameron is the head boy, sitting in his warm study by the fire with his chums, toasting muffins and talking high political principle.  Meanwhile, outside in the courtyard the megalomaniac prefects, of a lower social class than Cameron and chums – selected for their mix of brutality to those over whom they wield power and obsequiousness to their superiors - wreak havoc on the lower fourth, picking particularly on the weedy vulnerable ones.  Cameron is oblivious to all this. He would probably, you feel, disapprove slightly, but the study is warm, and Oliver’s brought sherry……

Within four months of the Tories coming to power. I set out this public school-like operational code of the government: a high politics/low politics divide, in which a lot of domestic policy is regarded by the inner circle as simply beneath them, and has been delegated in full to rabid freemarketeers like Gove, Lansley and Pickles.   This has been reflected not just in the NHS debacle, but also in Gove’s repeated blunders and Pickles’ obvious lies.  It is also reflected in Cameron now frequent lies at PMQs, and his developing ‘Flashman’ image.

To date, Labour has been too focused on identifying Cameron as heir to Thatcher to notice that the style of government is quite different.  Now, at last, it does look like they are adopting accurate line of attack, though probably still more by accident than by design. 

Well, the Labour ones have all come out . . . As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful . . . you just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is.

Now “riddled” does jump out from the page as an odd word to use, with its connotation of disease.   But the key point is that Livingstone didn’t put it in a page – he said it in an interview.

I suspect what is happening here – though it is impossible to know absolutely in the absence of a verbatim transcript/audio recording - is that Livingstone is trying, as a rhetorical device, to ”speak with the voice” of the type of hypocritical Tory that he has only just referred to in the interview, who “denounc[es] homosexuality while they are indulging in it”.

This type of rhetorical device is very common amongst politicians, who most often use it to try and display empathy with the voting public, (though Livingstone here is using it as a means of scorn).  Indeed I pointed out recently how David Cameron used it to show how touch he is with real people, but suggested - given that he used it with a wholly inaccurate term – that he was probably telling a lie.

Now clearly Livingstone’s team is not going to get into this kind of linguistic defence, and sticks with a straight “look at my record” statement.  So as I’ve got a book on my shelves that not many others are sad enough to have, I’ll just help out by quoting from another Livingstone interview – this from 1984 – which provides documentary evidence of the ridiculousness of the “homophobe” barbs now being chucked his way:

The removal of empire, plus great achievements in the liberalisation of censorship, divorce and gay rights, meant that the issues that dominated  the 1950s tended largely to be resolved in the 1960s. (Boddy M & Fudge C, Local Socialism, 1984, Basingstoke: Macmillan, p.262-3).

For Livingstone, the matter of gay rights was clearly sorted a very long time ago.

However, the idea that Ms Dorries may possibly have committed a criminal act, by reporting someone to the police in connection with a possible criminal act, does amuse me enough to offer up a quickie.

According to Liberal Conspiracy, Ms Dorries received a tweet suggesting that she had been “misleading” about previous police investigations.  Ms Dorries replied by tweet:

That is libelous and an outright lie. My staff have taken a screen shot and reported your tweet to the police.

The plot then thickens.  A blogger, Tim Ireland, comments on the Liberal Conspiracy piece, including:

The summary is that Bedfordshire Police have made it clear to this MP that libel is not a criminal offence, and not a matter for police.

Now, I don’t know whether Bedfordshire Police have said this kind of thing to Ms Dorries or not.   I could go through the links provided by Mr Ireland, but frankly I can’t be bothered.

But assuming for a moment that she has indeed been told previously by the Police that libel is not a criminal offence, then it does open up the question of whether Ms Dorries has opened herself up to prosecution under Section 5 (2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967:

Where a person causes any wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making to any person a false report tending to show that an offence has been committed, or to give rise to apprehension for the safety of any persons or property, or tending to show that he has information material to any police inquiry, he shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for not more than six months or to a fine of not more than two hundred pounds or to both.

If she has indeed been told that libel is not a criminal offence, but has then reported a person to the police on the basis that they have been libellous, she would, prima facie, appear to have met the “knowingly” and “false report” requirements of this offence, and the fact that any such “false report” has been made direct to the police would appear, necessarily, that police time has been taken up in attending to it.

Just to be clear, I am in no way advocating that she be prosecuted.  I’m just pointing out that she’s a bit silly.