It's All About the Money

The General Election is finally upon us but judging by the media, anyone would think that campaigning only started this week. The truth of the matter is that many activists, like myself, have been campaigning since before Christmas. Across the country, evenings have been spent in meetings or at home preparing leaflets, envelopes or the letters to go in them. Weekends have been spent meeting the public in the street, or posting leaflets through doors. However, now the real work begins.

Over the next few weeks I hope to try and blog regularly to give an impression of what it's like, as an activist, campaigning for local and national elections. I hope that you'll get some opinion, some insight and a feel for our constituency. I will try not to make it too dry. ;o)

So, the beginning of 'day four'. Where are we at?

Last night a group of us headed down to Salford Arts Theatre for a local 'Question Time' style debate. On the panel was the sitting Labour MP, Hazel Blears, Conservative candidate, Matthew Sephton, Liberal Democrat front-runner, Norman Owen, local journalist, Pamela Welsh and local TUC secretary, Alex Halligan.

There is a lot of ill feeling in our constituency (Salford and Eccles) towards the Labour party and Hazel Blears. During the summer of last year, it transpired that Hazel Blears had 'flipped' her home in order to avoid paying £13,000 in tax. She was far from the worst offender but has come out of this side of last year's expenses scandal very poorly. At the time, she showed up on TV waving a cheque, which she said would pay back the tax she had avoided. The reality of the publicity stunt was that the cheque was meaningless. Had she sent it to the Inland Revenue, they would not have had a mechanism to accept it. In addition, £13,000, the amount which seemed so insignificant to Hazel, is close to what many people in Salford get paid in a year. Thus, she came across as arrogant and effectively set herself apart from her voters. The only worse response would have been to stick two fingers up at the public on live TV. She followed this up by stabbing her party leader in the back and consequently losing her cabinet position. She saw an opportunity to progress her career and it back-fired. Needless to say, she is not a popular woman.

The event itself was very worthwhile and aside from a group of hecklers, served to genuinely engage the public. I think it was clear by the end of the meeting, that Hazel had done little to change the minds of those present, which is good news for our campaign! The event also served to confirm my worst fears about Labour and TUC politics.

Frankly, I have never seen so much ass-kissing in public. Throughout the event, the TUC panelist sucked up to Hazel at every opportunity. And the same was true in the opposite direction. There is a lot of back scratching going on and it couldn't have been more clear that the two organisations are in bed with each other if their representatives had stripped off right then and there! The TUC donates a significant amount of money to the Labour party, which in turn gives them a lot of power. I'm not saying the TUC dictates Labour party policy necessarily, but I do believe the Labour party is afraid of pissing off the unions for fear their funding will dry-up. Whether intentional or not, this will ultimately influence the behaviour of the party. At this point, you might be wondering what's wrong with that? Well, put simply, it's a conflict of interest. How can a government act in the interests of the nation when they are worried about their funding?

This is not a problem that is unique to British politics. It is a topic that featured in American politics time and again. Allowing unlimited donations to political parties and candidates means that it becomes possible to 'buy an election'. No-one really likes to admit it, but people are generally more impressed by a glossy full colour leaflet than by something produced in black and white on a Risograph, regardless of content. In also means that you can put more feet on the ground, stage more events and sometimes enables you to be more visible. Big money allows parties to campaign more aggressively over a much greater area and makes it more difficult for independents and smaller parties to compete. It's unfair and, in my opinion, undemocratic.

I think Lib-Dem policy puts it best:

"Politics should be a battle of ideas, not marketing budgets. No-one should be able to buy influence or buy an election. We will take big money out of politics by capping donations and spending throughout the electoral cycle."

Snow Business

Sub-zero Britain

After a chilly and snowy build up to the Christmas period, the weather has continued to bite. Here in Salford we had a six inch fall overnight on Monday night and daily sub-zero temperatures mean that is still lying now, five days later. The amount of snow combined with low temperatures are virtually unprecedented and conditions are causing chaos across the UK. I am fortunate that I am able to work from home, but millions of others have had to stay off work because they can't get there safely, or because their kids are home and they have no childcare. Yesterday was the first we had been out in the car since Monday and the short drive to the supermarket was easily the most terrifying drive of my life. Many roads have not been gritted or cleared of snow. Only the very busiest of routes around our area are completely clear and that is mainly due to the volume of traffic.

Snow in Salford - 4 days after initial fall

Of course, there are many other countries cope annually with conditions similar to, or worse than this. Consider the nations that sit much further north than us, like Scandinavia and Alaska. Even in Scotland, six inches of snow doesn't present too much of an issue. So why is the snow presenting so much of a problem for us now?

Firstly, the reality is that for the most part, England doesn't have to deal with this kind of weather on a prolonged basis. The usual snow fall here is a light dusting that melts quickly. This means that most councils don't have the infrastructure to cope with the conditions. It's a problem of resources, not a problem of will. Therefore unfair to compare Salford with Stockholm or even Strathspey! Of course, this lack of experience results in another problem: what few resources are available have not been used to their best effect.

Around our area tonnes of grit has been dumped on main roads over the past week and none has been used on any side road. In addition, it seems that the grit has been spread on top of lying snow - basically that the snow has not been cleared first. What happens in this situation is that snow turns to very slippery slush. This will be cleared by moving traffic. However, in a lot of cases, because side roads are not safely passable and because there is a lot of lying snow (and then slush), the traffic simply isn't enough to clear the road. Gritting on top of lying snow is therefore a false economy. The snow must be ploughed first for the grit to have the best effect - namely preventing the formation of ice. In addition, I think that it is reasonable to expect the majority of side roads to be ploughed, even if they can't be gritted. Clearing the roads of snow will make conditions easier to cope with and will therefore enable more traffic to get onto the main roads. The policy of only treating / dealing with main roads and ignoring everything else is bizarre and always be doomed to fail in these conditions.

Having said this, I do not blame my local council, or indeed any other local council. Decisions about where and when to grit and how to manage winter resources are being made by people who have little knowledge and experience of these specific conditions. If I were to point the finger at anyone, it would be squarely in the direction of central government. It has been clear since Tuesday that this situation has the scale of a national crisis; it is certainly of much greater significance than the so-called flu-pandemic, yet, the 'big freeze' has prompted very little public response. In my opinion, central government should have had plans in place to deal with disruption on this kind of national scale and should have begun issuing advice to councils and residents before the snow even fell. Had a few simple steps been taken in the early stages of this 'crisis', I suspect that large scale and ongoing disruption could have been more easily avoided. Local roads would certainly have been much safer!

Snow in the Highlands of Scotland.

Happy New Year!

It is just a few days into 2010. What remains of Christmas and the holiday period is quickly waning; the turkey has been eaten (or frozen) and soon even the deccies will be coming down leaving nothing to cheer the cold January nights. Still, at least the nights are getting shorter.

Tomorrow the daily grind will recommence so before I pack away the ghost of Christmas past into its cardboard boxes and plastic crate, in true New Year stylee, I'll take a moment to reflect on 2009 and make promises to myself for 2010.

So, what of 2009? My first intention for 2009 was to blog more. I think it's fair to say, without risk of disagreement, that this is one resolution successfully achieved with 48 posts against 6 from the previous year! However, they say promises are made to be broken, and my intention to lose weight and be more active fell decidedly flat! Sing Live has robbed a little bit of my time and there's the OU degree, which is in its penultimate year, so it can be tough to keep up with all the comings and goings of life and still find time for being active. Losing weight, it appears, is always going to be a battle for me. Maybe 2010 will bring a bit more success in these areas!

And so to the New Year. I'm already trying to avoid thinking about all the things I have on my plate but there a hand full of things I particularly want to achieve. I intend to try and keep up the blogging - lets aim for at least 50 blog posts in 2010! My OU course this year is creative writing, so I should be writing everyday anyway. Most of this will be in my notebook / journal because I love the feeling of writing by hand, but if I can get into a good writing habit offline, it should reinforce my blogging habits! Next on my list of priorities is to get better at looking after my money. Thanks to my marvelous Mum, who has paid for carpets for our house (we have never had carpets since moving into this house three years ago!) the last of the major spending on our home is pretty much done. This should make money a bit easier, but it is time to start paying off the credit card and doing some saving as well. It would be nice to have a little pot of Christmas money for next year so that gifts don't end up coming out of two months salary, which is always a bit crippling! Of course, having not achieved it in 2009, I am also aiming to be more active and to lose some weight in 2010. I'd like to lose a stone (that's only 1lb every four weeks so it's not beyond the realms of possibility!) and I want to use the Wii to be more active. I'll aim to use it once a week to begin with but really I want to be on it everyday that I can find the time. Finally, my softer goals. I want to visit my friends Mel and Sven in Belgium at least once this year. It would also be great to visit Anders and Jennifer in Sweden, and I'd love to see Mieke from the Netherlands this year too. I would also like to get deltafleet.com back up on the net and finish the deltafleet story, so look out for that too.

So there we go... no small feet to achieve all of that, but hopefully some, if not most of my goals can be reached. But as I said before, promises are made to be broken! ;o)