Dear BBC, Relax, just do it!

All this kerfuffle over whether or not to play almost 75 year old record this on this week's chart show.




Now to slightly change the most common line in another hit single that the BBC refused to play may be the BBC should "relax, just do it". Because all the publicity over whether they should or should not have played it on Breakfast this morning and News at One at lunchtime and no doubt this evening at six I shall hear another comment about the decision not to play it on the chart show (a five second excerpt will be played on Newsbeat during the show, however).

If they had just got on with reflecting the songs that people had been buying this week it would have been mostly a non-story. But all the debate about whether they should or shouldn't have played it:

• a) made more people buy it being aware it would land the BBC is even hotter water
• b) made people who aren't following social media aware of the campaign to get it played
• c) has actually turned it into a major political story and therefore unto the news pages rather than keeping it in entertainment

But no doubt that logic failed to hit people at the top of the BBC when the news editors sat down to talk about it. Because now the whole issue has far more coverage that it could ever have hoped for if simply things were let to take their course.

Thoughts of the death of Margaret Thatcher

There are some of us who owe our political existence to the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher. As with all political opponents I do not think she is the incarnation of all things evil, there were indeed somethings that she did which should be applauded. But it is in the areas that we disagree Poll Tax, student finance, sacrificing jobs for low inflation, some illiberal social attitudes etc that I learnt to fight my first political campaigns.

Whatever your view of the Falklands conflict, her decisive action 31 years ago this month was to liberate those who self identify as being British. She along with Ronald Reagan did a great deal to bring to an end the Cold War. Also she stood up to terrorism in Northern Ireland, signed into being the first all-Ireland agreement (which of course the Unionists objected to by resigning on mass) but it was a step forward toward the peace that Northern Ireland witnesses today. In fact on that last point she almost paid for her involvement in dealing with the Northern Ireland situation with her own life in the Brighton Bombing.

But going to University in a Conservative held seat and council it was natural that my first Lib Dem battles were to replace Thatcherism with social liberalism, making sure that nobody was enslaved by poverty which she seemed to want to create while letter the richest get more and more out of her. There were also many social issues on which the Conservatives took the conservative approach which I just could not and wound not agree.

So I took my stand and signed up to student politics, yes there was Militant Labour activists on campus but you also had to learn to deal with politics in the real world and on the doorsteps around me that meant telling those who lent their vote to Thatcher of the worse excesses of what the Conservative party were doing.

She has some amazing achievements and no matter how you look at her these can never be taken away. She will always be known as the first female Prime Minster of the UK. She will always along with a selct bacd of others won three General elections in a row.

So the Rt. Hon. Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS has passed away. There is going to be a state funeral, the necessity and merits of which are going to be debated long and hard over the coming days.

But whatever you think of her policies she overcame the misogyny of the 1950s to be selected then elected as the mother of two young children to the safe seat of Finchley. That was on her third attempt to be elected to Westminster she'd stood for Dartford in 1950 and 51 reducing the Labour majority on both occasions, did stand in 1955 having only just before given birth to the twins and narrowly missed out on selection for the 1955 Orpington by-election. She then became for many the surprise candidate who not only challenged Edward Heath in 1975 but out polled him though short of the two thirds of MPs required to win on the first ballot, then beat Willie Whitelaw in the second round.

So she most definitely was a shrewd political operator. Praising her for being such does not necessarily mean I applaud her method, nor execution, nor policies. But she was of her time, of her party able to push back so much of the glass ceiling that before her had precluded too many women from actively being involved in research, science, politics or business. She wasn't so much a feminist as a female who wanted equality because she was the best person for the job, knowing the costs involved for her and being prepared to pay them.

She may have inspired many to get involved in politics (though not all of us on the side she may have wanted).

Baroness Thatcher (Margaret Hilda Thatcher née Roberts) 1925-2013

Questions to the Prime Minister 21 Years Ago

It was 21 years ago that Margaret Thatcher was last called upon to answer questions as Prime Minister.

She already knew she was not going to answer another series of PMQs and unlike the usual fighting last one before an election there was the sycophancy from her side and jeers each time this happened from the other side. There was a planted question about how many she had answered, at the time the answer was "His question is the 7,498th oral question to which I have replied in 698 Question Times." There were two more tabled questions after that point,



Those who asked questions were:

• Alan Haselhurst Conservative MP for Saffron Walden since 1977, he is one of only two MPs who were called that day who are still members today. He was later to be Chairman of Ways and Mean (Deputy Speaker) under the various speakers of the Labour Governments from May 1997 until June 2010. He had previous been MP for Middleton and Prestwich during Heath's government 1970-74.
• Neil Kinnock the Labour leader of the Opposition at the time MP for Iswyn (1983-95) formerly Bedwelty (1970-85). As leader of the Labour Party from 1983-1992 he was the person who asked Mrs Thatcher more PMQs than anyone else.
• Dame Jill Knight Con Birmingham Edgebaston 1966-97 she was one of the two MPs who introduced Section 28 into the Local Government Act 1986
• James Molyneaux Ulster Unionist Lagan Valley 1983-97 formerly South Antrim 1970-83. He was the leader of Unionism in the House at the time. 
• Maureen Hicks the Conservative who had beaten the national trend by taking Wolverhampton North East off Labour in 1987, as her question points out after 40 years, but she lost it in 1992.
• Alice Mahon was the Labour MP for Halifax from 1987-2005 she would later be a regular rebel to the Blair Government and resigned from the party in 2009 as she was "sickened" by the smear tactics employed by the party under Damian McBride
• Donald Thompson had been the Conservative MP for Sowerbury from 1979-83 before boundary changes found him in the seat of Calder Valley until 1997. Having stood and lost Sowerbury in both the 1974 elections and losing Calder Valley to Labour in the 97 landslide his seat reflected the state of the Government.
• Rosie Barnes one of the remaining post-merger MPs who remained the rump of the SDP in the commons, along with David Owen and John Cartwright, having won the 1987 Greenwich by election and holding the seat 4 months later in the General election.
• David Wilshire Conservative MP for Spelthorne from 1987-2010 it was he upon seeing Jenny lives with Eric and Martin in an Education Authority resource centre that led to him with Jill Knight drafting the Section 28 amendment.
• David Winnick is still a Labour MP who was first elected for Croydon South between 1966 and 70 then returned for Walsall North in 1979, therefore spent his first 22 years in the House in opposition. It was he who in 2005 successfully proposed an amendment of 28 days detention without trail to the Governments 90 day failed proposal.
• Robin Maxwell-Hyslop who was the Conservative MP for Tiverton from 1960-1992 is the longest serving ever member on the Trade and Industry Sub Committee from 1971-92. He'd lost out in Derby North in the 1959 Election which returned Mrs M. H. Thatcher as a new MP in Finchley.
• Gavin Strang was the Labour MP for Edinburgh East from 1970-2010 who later was one of the 12 Labour backbenchers to support the SNP and Plaid Cymru call for an inquiry into the Iraq war. While the lady may not have been for turning from 2007-09 Strang said he was retiring, not retiring and then finally that he was retiring in 2010. He has the honour of being the last MP to ask Mrs Thatcher and PMQ.

Of this list only Donald Thompson and Robin Maxwell-Hyslop are no longer with us along with the Speaker Bernard Weatherill.

There was a mistake made the Speaker when he called Mrs Barnes before Mrs Mahon at which point Bob Cryer the MP for Bradford South stood up in anger. He was to killed in a car crash less than four years later aged 59. He started out as MP for Keighley from 1974-83, before taking the European seat for Sheffield from 1984-9 and returning to commons for Bradford South in 1987. His wife Ann later held the Keithley seat from 1997-2010 and his son John was MP for Hornchurch from 1997-2005 and since 2010 has been MP for Leyton and Wanstead.

It Is the Spirit of Iron not the Lady's Leanings that Impress

It must be Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, Nick Clegg has been talking about Thatcher. Last year ahead of Harrogate he said:

"When the right won out, the reality was brutal. I remember very distinctly this sense that we were being told we should all place money above morality; put profit ahead of people; that we shouldn't worry about selling out. Because, at the end of the day, there was no such thing as society. But I looked around me and thought: no, there has to be more to life than this. There is more to us than this. Justice, fairness, community. We weren't ready to give in to that soulless, unforgiving Britain. That dog-eat-dog, get-rich-quick, look-after-number-one Britain. We didn't want to live in Thatcher's Britain.

"The false idols of trickle-down economics worshipped by Tories and New Labour alike have turned to dust."

So turn to this year and what is this in the Spectator?

Age, he claims, has taught him the point of Lady Thatcher. And, indeed, he now seems to see her as something of an inspiration. ‘I’m 43 now. I was at university at the height of the Thatcher revolution and I recognise now something I did not at the time: that her victory over a vested interest, the trade unions, was immensely significant. I don’t want to be churlish: that was an immensely important visceral battle for how Britain is governed.

But hang on, some including the right leaning press have claimed this is in praise of all things Thatcherism but read on, Nick tells you that while in the 80s the vested interest was the Unions in the noughties it is something else.

"And what has now happened to the British economy? It has gone belly-up because, once again, we have allowed a vested interest to run riot." He is talking, of course, about the banks. "They represent a vested interest. This is what I sometimes don’t understand about the Cameron-Osborne act. A real liberal believes in genuine competition, a genuine level playing field and he is unremittingly hostile to vested interests." As Thatcher was to Scargill, so Mr Clegg intends to be to the banks. "What I find so striking is that the spirit — dare I say it — of the battle against the dominance of one vested interest, the trade unions, is exactly the same spirit we need now."

So it is not a return to Thatcherism, what it is is an admiration of the spirit that fought the vested interests to look out for the majority of the people and so it is again. I could not see Thatcher, or any of her successors taking on the banks, indeed we've seen how timid some of them have been in recent years.

And before Labour misinterpret and start to spin, let us not forget who was one of the first visitors to a Brown Number 10.

Change We Can't Believe In

So David Cameron has gone with the slogan "Year for Change" the day after The Times exposed just how little change [pdf link] there was in his list of candidates.

Yesterday it was revealed that of 167 candidates questioned by The Times 83 gave their idea of a political hero, 32 of which chose Margaret Thatcher. Indeed Mo Mowlam with 4 was double the number who had suggested the new 'change' hero of the party David Cameron was their hero. Of course the Cameron/Osborne urge to cut the deficit quickly and bugger the consequences to the workers is right up there with Thatcherite thinking at the start of her time of 'change'.

There was also a Populus poll of 36 sitting MPs and 34 prospective candidates, which did show that the new guard may have some hope, but the problem is that they will be backbenchers to the sitting MPs filling the cabinet spots if they form a Government. 16% of the MPs believed multiculturalism was a good thing whereas 52% of the PPCs did. That is better but only over half, and therefore hardly a sign of total change for our multicultural Britain. On gay couples having equal rights there was 35% of the sitting MPs in favour to 65% of the PPCs. However, on cllimate change it was the sitting MPs who were more in line with public opinion 27% of them believed it was man-made only 9% of the potential new members.

So the new intake will be less opposed to multiculturalism (but still the majority will think it isn't all good), less homophobic, but bigger climate change deniers than the Tories currently are.

There is change but not the seismic shift that Cameron tells us has happened. It's also hardly change that many should be believing in

Is This a Progressive Party?

The Conservatives seem to think that a few key placed, if misused, words can help the branding of their party. They have been using the words 'clean' and 'honest' in the Norwich North by election then they were far from transparent but successful. So they are repeating the mantra in Glasgow North East.

They are also attempting to use the word 'progressive' to describe their past, present and future. Though interestingly seeing as the Lib Dems don't do well in polling to come equal top of the parties with the Tories in one poll on progressiveness slightly above out voting intention level, with them well down is a telling sign.

Heck there is even a piece in today's Torygraph by Antony Sheldon who has an upcoming book called Trust which tries to highlight Cameron's progressive theme. He opens by saying that Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, the Marquis of Salisbury, Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are rare in Conservative history in being prime ministers who changed their party and the direction of the country. But what was the direction of their country at the times that they were trying to change.

Disreali was up against Gladstone and his reform agenda. Baldwin may well have introduced votes for women but called his first election to gain a mandate for a protectionist pact, failing to gain a majority. Of course Churchill was a great war leader but post war was voted out for not having the vision to help the people recover, and then in opposition opposed the establishment of the NHS, something that still causes division in Tory ranks just last week. As for Thatcher she was hardly the great social reformer, her reign from milk snatcher, to unfair taxation, supporting the apartheid regime, section 28, suppression of rights to protest.

One telling quote is this:

"Thatcher had been radical on economic reform and [David Cameron] was going to be equally modernising on social reform."

See the above, think and also watch the below. Is being as radical as Thatcher was on economic reform necessarily going to be a good thing for social reform? I for one dread to think what social inequality that can bring after the economic inequality of Thatcher's 'steal from the poor give to the rich' Dooh Nobir* strategy.



*For anyone not catching that it is Robin Hood in reverse.