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See BBC NEWS | Education | Results fiasco test chief quits and BBC NEWS | Politics | CSA chief resigns amid criticism

Today Jonathan Ford resigned as head of the National Assessment Agency, following a fiasco of English testing for 14 year olds, while Doug Smith, head of the Child Support Agency, resigned amid a prolonged and powerful attack by MPs on the “chronic, systemic failures” of management across the agency.

If these were merely the isolated failures of isolated agencies, then today would have been a simple coincidence. But they are not. They are part of a long series of systematic failures in public sector agencies. Over the last few years we have seen fiascos on passports, on CRB checks for school teachers, on exam results, and on the introduction of computer systems in many parts of the public sector. And, of course, we saw the fiasco of the Millennium Dome and the abortive UK athletics stadium.

It would be convenient to pin the blame on New Labour, but at least half of the failing agencies and systems were established by the Old Tories.

Rather, it points to a malaise in British politics which dates at least back to the Thatcher years.

The malaise is one of farming out the risks of untested policies to paid officials or unelected boards, making ministers accountable only for their intentions, and not for their results.

It was not always so. We may rather laughingly look back at the plethora of government departments, admirably satirised on Radio 4 in ‘The Men from the Ministry’ and later on television in ‘Yes, Minister’. But the old system of departments - for all its faults - made ministers directly accountable for the implementation of government policy. This - in itself - was probably enough to make ministers think twice before establishing systems which could not possibly work.

The Child Support Agency was just one such system. It was doomed to failure from the start, structurally unsuitable for the task it was required to complete, under-resourced and sent off to sink or swim by a government (John Major’s) that knew there was little chance that it would still be around to pick up the pieces.

So, quango heads have rolled. Doubtless others will follow. The public has already forgotten which minister it was created the mess. In this way, although they may have failed in their tasks, the quangos have satisfied their purpose - to take the heat off government long enough to survive just one more election.

See BBC NEWS | Business | Food industry slams obesity plans

The government, it seems are doing something right. Although doubtless flawed in many ways, today’s widely trailed White Paper on Public Health is a huge step forwards. As well as introducing a limited ban on smoking in some public places, the paper is to set forward a traffic light system for foods in supermarkets and propose the banning of junk-food adverts before the 9.00 pm watershed.

The manufacturers, of course, hate it. But the arguments they are advancing are a little - shall we say, undercooked?

Christine Fisk of the Food and Drinks Federation described the traffic light system as “simplistic”. And she said that “banning adverts is not the way to go.”

On Radio 4’s PM programme, Monday, I distinctly heard an industry spokesman expounding the importance of these advertisements to the financial well being of the industry, while in the same paragraph claiming that they have very little impact on purchasing.

If this is the case, somebody ought to rewrite the marketing strategy. The most elementary content analysis which any A-level media studies student could do makes it absolutely clear that a great deal of junk food advertising is targetted at children. Did I say ‘Content analysis’? Actually, the most cursory glance at the TV ads round tea-time should tell anyone that junk food companies are trying to get to the (in marketing jargon) purchasing decision maker (typically mum) through the kids.

If banning ads won’t make any difference, then how can it be bad for the food industry? Actually, it would save them millions in wasted investment.

On the other hand, if (as every other piece of evidence in modern society would suggest) it ‘pays to advertise’, then the food and drinks industry needs to swallow its objections and face the future.

It’s the most obvious kind of common sense to attempt to rein in the factors which are making us an increasingly obese nation. The fact that somebody was making money out of it is not a reason to hold back.

Rather than lobbying the government and complaining in the media, the instant-satisfaction brigade should think about making foodstuffs that are attractive, tasty and healthy. After all, the human race has been doing this for several thousand years. How hard can it actually be?

Boris Johnson sacked. See: BBC NEWS | Politics | Analysis: Johnson’s fate was sealed.

So, Boris Johnson is gone from the Tory front benches. The wheel of misfortune has turned, and the Conservatives have relapsed back into greyness.

The Editor of the Spectator’s career as a front bencher has been brilliant, brief and brusque. His talent for controversy made him easily the most popular Tory acquisition of the 2001 General Election. Not so long ago he was being tipped for leader. Two scandals later - one a Mellorite saga of private misconduct, and the other a major diplomatic incident between sub-urban and urban Britain - and he has become too great a risk.

Michael Howard was probably right to get rid of him. No politician can really survive a private and a public scandal in such a short period of time. But, as far as his party is concerned, this is a PR disaster. It brings back to mind Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken, and all the sorry stories of sleaze and misdemeanour of the last Tory government. Not to mention the then secret affair between John Major and Edwina Currie. Worse, it sharpens the question of why Howard did not either sack him or vindicate him for the Spectator article which attacked the entire city of Liverpool. Instead, Howard (to mix a metaphor) threw him to the lions to see if he would float.

Well, he did float, for a bit. Now, thoroughly waterlogged, he is being allowed to sink less he take the whole Tory boat down with him.

Just another episode in the British political saga of the eccentric who couldn’t hack it on the front benches, or the candle that burned too bright, too fast?

Not quite. It leaves the Tory party with a very substantial problem. Iain Duncan Smith was ditched (on the false allegation of sleeze) essentially because he was too boring. Boris Johnson was too flamboyant. Michael Howard is hardly a colourful figure. Oliver Letwin is so personally anonymous that (at this moment) I can’t remember what he looks like or the sound of his voice.

This was all illustrated a little more than a year ago when Mori asked people to identify who the members of the shadow cabinet were. The results were as follows (September 2003)

Base: 952 British adults 18

%

Michael Ancram 26

Charles Clarke 10

Kenneth Clarke 21

Michael Heseltine 11

Michael Howard 26

Oliver Letwin 19

Theresa May 24

John Redwood 15

Ann Widdecombe 24

None 2

Don’t know 38

Of course, John Redwood is back ‘in’ now, in a vague attempt to up the glamour factor. But the ultimate conclusion is that the Tories have nobody - except the rejected Heseltine and Clarke - who are able to command the public’s respect. And now, with the departure of Johnson, they no longer have anyone who can capture the public imagination.

See New Statesman - Culture wars

The re-election of George W Bush has prompted a flurry of news, magazine and broadcast articles agonising about the prospect of the rise of the religious right in Britain. The New Statesman, in the person of Cristina Odone, is particularly worried about the effect of the rise of evangelicalism in the UK. She is worried about the Alpha Course, which has attracted 1.6 million Britons (data - Christian Research), and its ‘propaganda’ campaign of 1,500 billboards, 3,000 buses and 290 taxi tip-up seats.

Odone also cites the eerie words of a British teenager who talks eloquently about how she attends the Christian Union at her school, doesn’t believe it is “right” to have sex before marriage, and regards the family unit as a sacred ideal.

To be fair, her cover story also highlights the growth of secularist fundamentalism: banning Christmas cards and changing ’spouses’ to ‘partners’.

But there’s a fundamentally mistaken assumption in all of these kinds of articles: that Christians in Britain will tend to be right-wing, and that evangelical Christians will be especially right-wing.

Did the people who write these articles ever actually visit a church? And did they perhaps not spot that churches were leading opponents of the war in Iraq? Perhaps no-one remembers the church-led Jubilee 2000 campaign. It was, after all, four years ago. But somebody ought to have spotted that Christians last week opposed the legalisation of super-casinos, despite extreme pressure from US capitalists.

The truth is that the Christian faith is not beholden to any political party or political viewpoint. British evangelical Christians are pro-marriage, anti-abortion, and in unthinking moments may tend to favour Israel as an idea. So far so right. But they also oppose the greed culture espoused by Margaret Thatcher, support the rights of asylum seekers, and run hundreds of charities for third world development. Which would put them on the left of the spectrum. And then, Christians believe strongly in the conscience of the individual, in grace, freedom and the equality and dignity of all people of all races. Which puts them in the middle of the political spectrum.

The game really isn’t worth playing. Christianity - even evangelical Christianity - has been around a long, long time before British or US politics coalesced into right and left. And it will be around long after the current politics has changed into something else.

In the General Election next year, no party will have the right to call on the unqualified support of the churches. But all and any parties can show an awareness of the Christian worldview. That - and putting up politicians of integrity - may make the difference in swaying the Christian vote.

See Reuters AlertNet - CWS Delegation to Middle East Finds Increasing Challenges for Region’s Christians .

Christians need to come out of the closet about the Middle East. We need to come clean about what we really believe, and be ready to relinquish the things we don’t.

Things that Christians don’t believe in include Arms Sales, Backing corrupt regimes, Condoning acts of violence against civilian populations, Deals for short-term political gain … (E, F, G, ….) oh, yes, and Oil. Oil is not part of the Christian gospel. Some of these things may be expedient, some of them may be necessary. But they are not ‘Christian’.

Things that Christians do believe include Atonement — bringing enemies together —, the Bible, Conscience … oh yes, and Evangelism.

Evangelism has become something of a dirty word, and Christians are getting to be ashamed of it. Somehow we’ve been talked into thinking that to go and have discussions with people of another religion is somehow wrong, whereas to go into their countries with tanks, mortars and attack-helicopters is somehow morally justifiable, and quite possibly (in an election year) the will of God.

Actually, the last words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels were ‘go into all the world and make disciples’. An exhortation to evangelism, not to invasion.

If Jesus Christ really does mean more to us than a symbol, we are going to have to make some choices.

The kind of people who have taught us to believe that ‘evangelism’ is something evil, a hangover from colonial days, usually seem to think it means going somewhere primitive, scaring some local people or possibly bribing them with Western goods, and then making them give up their age old customs and wear suits.

People who engage in cross-cultural evangelism in the 21st century don’t do that. Actually, it’s doubtful that the stereotype was ever true anywhere, but we’ll let that one pass. To Christians, evangelism is about passing on good news about peace with God. Right from the days of Paul, and certainly in modern times since Hudson Taylor, cross-cultural evangelists have adopted local dress, learned the local language, become part of the local culture. This is not an attempt to manipulate local people, or to slip in Christianity unnoticed, but to become a part of the community, to understand the people.

Christians in the Muslim world have always faced difficulties. Muslims don’t have a problem with Christians because they revere Christ. They don’t have a problem because (as George W Bush claimed) ‘we love freedom’. They have problems because they regard all Westerners as Christians, and therefore see Christians as people who eat defiled food, get drunk, and live promiscuous and immoral lives. It has taken many cross-cultural evangelists half a lifetime to prove by their own consistent lifestyles that this is not the case.

But consider again what ‘evangelism’ is - passing on good news about peace with God. The recent actions of the Western Powers in the Middle East would have made simply being a Christian a much more difficult and dangerous thing. It of course completely undermines any talk of good news or peace of any kind with anyone.

When a recent delegation of Christian leaders from the USA visited the Middle East, they found that the situation for Christians had indeed become markedly worse. But what were they expecting to find? Actually, probably that. Although American Republicanism appealed to a broad swathe of religious people in the USA, Christian leaders have known for a long time that what we are saying in the Middle East has been drastically undermined by what we are doing.

It’s time for Christians to stand up for what they really believe — or accept that religious words are merely a cover for a purely secular, political ethic. Christians can be people of good news about peace, or we can be people with bombs and guns and tanks. But — in the Middle East at least — we cannot be both.

Lord Falconer threatens regulation of compensation sector. See also BBC NEWS | Politics | Firms warned over accident claims

It was in August that Tory spokesman David Davis took a potshot at human rights legislation. He claimed that it was responsible for the ‘compensation culture’ which was growing up in Britain. Lord Falconer is today to weigh into the debate by at - one and the same time - denying that the compensation culture exists, and simulaneously threatening legislation if ‘No-Win, No Fee’ companies don’t voluntarily clean up their act.

Lord Falconer is merely echoing the ‘Better Regulation Task Force’ which in May dismissed the notion of a Compensation Culture as an Urban Myth, while at the same time presenting evidence for it. The story about the school that made pupils wear goggles to play conkers is merely amusing. But the large council that actually spent more than £2m of its £22m roads budget on tackling compensation claims in 2003-4 is proof positive that the compensation culture is no myth. Claims against schools have risen to £200 million a year, enough for 8,000 new teachers, while claims against the NHS rose to £477 million, the equivalent of 22,700 extra nurses. And then, of course, there is the rising cost of insurance premiums.

Both Wrong

Lord Falconer and David Davis are both wrong - but Falconer is on the right track.

Daytime TV - and the less popular satellite channels - are full of advertisements trying to persuade us to take our bosses to court. Then there’s the youngish people who hang around shopping centres with clip-boards asking anybody who will give them the time if they have had an accident in the last three years. None of these ever mention the human rights act, so it’s acutely unlikely that people who sign up with these companies are doing so out of a sudden desire to test out the limits of new legislation. Sorry, Mr Davis.

At the same time, given the amount of evidence, both in terms of companies that make their money by it and the hard facts of claim costs, to say that it is all just an Urban Myth seems a bit far-fetched. After all, if it is, who is paying the advertising costs? I suppose Lord Falconer doesn’t watch daytime TV and so the question has not struck him in that light.

Predators

Regulating the claims industry is not the path to take. Falconer is a lawyer, and sees this as a blight on the legal profession. A better approach would be to go back to daytime TV and ask the question ‘Who is being targetted by this kind of advertising?’ It doesn’t take much analysis to work out that the target audience is the same as for high APR car financing and consolidation loans. The message is a simple one: ‘you may not believe that there’s a large pot of money out there waiting for you, but there is and all you have to do is to contact our company’.

The outcome is also the same: people who are financially unsophisticated sign away their rights or future earnings to companies who will make disproportionate profits on the deal.

It is this kind of predatory commerce, which make its money by preying on the hopes and fears of the financially vulnerable, which needs our attention. The combination of hard sell advertising, bullying sales tactics, and an unfair division of either risk or winnings makes these particular companies unwelcome in our economy.

We can regulate on a sector by sector basis forever. In doing so we penalise genuinely beneficial legal and financial services alongside the sharks. It is time for government to turn its attention to the whole unpleasant spread of businesses that trade on false hopes and real miseries. And we should not be regulating these people. We should be eliminating them permanently from our economic life.

See BBC NEWS | Politics | Howard calls for refugee quotas

I have to say I was knocked over by Michael Howard’s latest policy. If the Tories were to win the next election (just so it’s clear we are deep into hypothetical territory), they would set a quota of 20,000 or so refugees a year that the UK would take.

Yes, this is the same Michael Howard whose own family fled from Romania to Wales as refugees in 1939. And it comes despite a promise from shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin that Tory plans would not include a cap on refugees.

20,000 may seem a respectably high figure. It’s more than we currently accept. But, of course, our current figures - we accept about half the proportion that France does - are artificially low after a wave of anti-asylum hysteria led in equal parts by Labour, the Tories and the media.

The notion is, of course, unworkable. If we can’t manage quotas in any other area of public life, how are we going to manage them in this one. We don’t know how many refugees are trying to get into Britain. We don’t have any control over who declares themselves for asylum and who is simply plugged straight into the sweat shops and the sex trade (although under Howard’s Way there would certainly be many more). We don’t control the routes by which they come in. In fact, we don’t even understand the routes, since we have closed off all legal routes for asylum seekers to enter Britain.

It’s also completely soulless. Are we really going to tell someone who has been tortured, raped, has seen their children slaughtered in front of their eyes and has paid every penny they have to get out of their mother-land which they love - are we really going to tell this person ‘Sorry, you are number 20,001 and therefore Britain is full.’

Michael, just stop it, ok? You have established your right wing credentials. At least now try to inject some common sense.

The only real winners from the quota proposal are the people traffickers. The vulnerable are their easiest prey. And we - if Michael Howard gets his way - will be making that prey a lot easier.

See: BBC NEWS | Politics | Howard: ‘Tories ready for power’

The Tories are ready for power, says Michael Howard. This of course is a truism. The Tories are always ready for power. Any power, any little thing that anyone wants to give them. But right now they don’t seem to be able to find the fuse box. In fact, they don’t even seem to be able to find the batteries.

Being ready for power is not the same as having a programme that will take you there, and, one year on from his leadership coup, Michael Howard still doesn’t have a plan that is different from the old plan. It’s perhaps just a coincidence that this is also the anniversary of the National Lottery - now the only thing for which the last Tory government is remembered. The Conservatives rolled the dice by getting rid of Iain Duncan Smith, but they might as well have picked a number out of the air.

One of the most fundamental rules of any kind of PR is that you never believe your own spin. You stay focussed on your goal, under-promise and over-deliver, and then let the surprised onlookers praise you while you smile in a British-sort-of-way and say ‘just doing my job’.

Michael Howard’s grasp of PR is clearly shaky. His party have produced a two-page dossier on his year one achievements. Successes in European elections, improved party finances, new offices, a new campaign director, and greater diversity among candidates. New Offices? They might as well have printed that they had ordered new deck-chairs for the Titanic. Success in Europe? Perhaps - but accompanied by the spectre of UKIP rising to challenge them in every constituency across the country. And if UKIP take an average 15% of the vote, or if they halve the Tory vote as they did in Hartlepool, then suddenly even the safest Tory seats are looking unsafe. A new campaign director? Is this seriously an achievement? And greater diversity among candidates. Hardly something which appeals to their core voters, who effectively prevented their first black MP from being elected when they squabbled over John Taylor in Cheltenham. How quickly we forget.

Publishing a dossier is an act of desperation. Self-praise never makes for good PR. And the spin machine of Labour quickly produced its own nine page dossier highlighting his failings.

But the greatest failing of Michael Howard does not need a dossier. It just needs a sentence. In a time of intense disillusionment with the government, the Tories have not improved their poll position at all during Michael Howard’s leadership. Nothing more needs to be said. We don’t need to question Howard’s conviction or consistency, as Alan Milburn has tried to. We don’t have to question his judgment. We just have to look at his results.

Yes Michael, you may think you are ready for power, but the lights are still off and nobody is home.

See BBC NEWS | England | London | Human smuggling racket ’smashed’ and BBC News | A Modern Slave’s Brutal Odyssey

People trafficking should be at the top of the world’s agenda. Along with modern slavery - unpaid labour under the threat of violence - it is the most widespread form of man’s inhumanity to man. Slave produced products include Chinese paperclips, carpets from India, Pakistan and Nepal, chocolate from the Ivory Coast, charcoal from Brazil, and sugar from the Dominican Republic (Source Abolish.

20 million people across the world (source UN) are subject to bonded labour. Up to 179 million children suffer under the worst forms of child labour (source ILO) An estimated 5 million women and children are trafficked every year (UN). A recent US Government report estimated 600,000-800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year.

As far as the UK is concerned, Home Office research in 2000 estimated between 142 and 1,420 women and children trafficked into the country each year - but this figure was based solely on reported cases - and trafficking is one of the most clandestine crimes, it’s victims by and large unable to testify.

See also BBC NEWS | Education | Compulsory language lessons fall

Only one in three schools in England make all pupils study a foreign language at GCSE level, according to a new survey commissioned by the National Centre for Languages. 97% of independent schools keep languages until 14, but only 30% of state sector schools. This figure has dropped from 57% just one year ago.

The reason? Since September schools in England have no longer been required to teach foregin languages to children over 14. Curriculum changes have simply led to languages being squeezed out.

I have to admit that I was more or less the worst at languages in my year at school. I scraped a B at O-level in French and a C in Latin. It wasn’t until I went to live in Belgium that I learned to speak French and subsequently Flemish.

But it’s a good thing that I did. When I went to work for Lucas Automotive as a senior manager, I got the job partly because I was able to conduct half of my interview in French.

Unless we only buy from ourselves, the Australians, the Americans, and a few others, and unless we only sell to these same markets, language learning is fundamental to our commercial future. As a German business man once put it to me, ‘if you want to buy from us, you can speak English, but if you want to sell to us, you must speak German.’

Britain can simply not afford to abandon language learning. It is time that government looked to the future.