Dear the BBC; please don't make me buy that song.

I suspect there are two sorts of people buying Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

The first are folk with a genuine, passionate grudge about Mrs Thatcher, who honestly are delighted she has died, and want the whole world to know. I think the whole thing's a bit distasteful, perhaps a tad puerile, but if that's what they think then fine, and of course they have a perfect right to both think that, and buy a record that expresses how they feel, and tells the world that a number of people feel the same.

The second are folk who don't have that visceral dislike of Thatcher, but are not great fans, find the whole thing quite funny, and are joining in , in the way folk hiss the villain at pantomimes (or indeed boo the Chancellor at the Paralympics). Again, nothing especially wrong with that.

But if the BBC ban playing the song on the basis of 'taste', then there will be a third group of people buying the song; advocates of free speech, who don't think what can be done and can't be done should be decided by what one group in society think over the views of another. People like Fleet Street Fox. Or me.

I don't want to spend the money. Or indeed be associated with that party going haters.

So, if the song makes the top 5 come Sunday, please play the song BBC.

UPDATE

Seeing tweets like these, which i suspect are accurate...

Strikes me as the worst of every world; still offends those who are offended, pisses off anyone who believes in free speech. A ludicrous BBC decision, if true

I could argue the case that this is Transport in London politics related...

..but really I've just put this up because it's beautiful. A video map of London showing Oyster card touches in and out over the city during a single day. Quite something.





H/T Oliver O'Brien

How the pundits are becoming more influential than the politicians

This was my piece in the New Statesman yesterday. It appears to have turned into an Owen Jones love fest which wasn't really my intention, but hey, it's nice people are reading it and commenting. It's also currently the second most read thing on The Staggers. so much for the Mrs T media frenzy...

"I think Owen Jones has more influence on politics nowadays than any other Labour frontbencher. He’s everywhere".

So tweeted Iain Dale the other day in a conspicuously non-partisan piece of commentary. Now, Iain was referring to the ubiquity of Owen and his ability to pop up anywhere, anytime. But I was reminded of this tweet when I was reading Bagehot in the Economist this week, who opines on the inability of a typical backbench MP (let alone frontbench spokesperson) to have any affect on policy, or indeed on government. Bagehot cited the Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston as a fairly typical example of the issue.

"In an effort to mollify Dr Wollaston, party bosses offered her a junior, unpaid job in the government, which she huffily rebuffed. In an institution that prizes loyalty above usefulness, this was a serious blot. When she then criticized the government’s complicated NHS reforms and rebelled in a vote on Europe, the stain became ineradicable. Three years into her political career, she finds herself more or less written off by her bosses. She will never be allowed anywhere near health policy. 'Maybe I was naïve', she laments. 'But I thought the whole point of being an MP was to scrutinise legislation and improve it'.”

And so it seems to have come to pass that if you really want to be out there, agenda setting and driving policy, you’d be better off campaigning on issues and popping up in the media at every conceivable opportunity, rather than being an elected representative of the people. In the Lib Dems, for example, Julian Huppert (MP for Cambridge) has been consistently fighting for and voting for Lib Dem policy  on justice and security (on which he is an acknowledged expert), tuition fees and NHS reform. Yet Julian has been on the losing side on every one of those issues. Contrast that with another unelected Lib Dem who finds himself at the heart of policy making, not just in our own party or even in the coalition government, but even plonked in the leader of the opposition's office dictating legislation. Step forward Hacked Off’s Evan Harris.

Of course there are exceptions to the influence wielded by backbenchers – witness the much tweeted- piece on welfare reform by Labour MP Simon Danczuk, or the select committee work of Andrew Tyrie or Margaret Hodge. But the former seems very much the exception – and the latter about marking others homework more than anything else.

Now, I don’t decry Owen Jones and Evan Harris for furthering their beliefs from outside parliament – far from it, I take my hat off to them as they force parties to adapt to their tune, rather than vice versa.

But when elected politicians are seen as having little or no influence on policy – and you can make more headway pushing your agenda from the TV studios in Millbank than the green benches over the road – it’s little wonder that folk outside the bubble may still be interested in politics, but have little time for Westminster.

The lady's not for jumping...

At the risk of over Thatcherising the posts on here - here's one last Thatcher mention. A video from a foreign TV Station where they interview world politicians - and ask them to do one particular thing. Apparently everyone acquiesced - until they asked the British PM...

Quite an insight into Mrs Thatcher





h't to @kunaldutta

All the front pages of the papers in one image

h/t @nicksutton . Click to enlarge

4 Prime Ministers; 1 US president ; 5 Statements on the Death of Lady Thatcher.

We have four living PMs/Ex PMs; here is what each has said today on the death of Lady Thatcher. Plus I now have added Obama's statement as well; Click each to enlarge.

Dennis Stevenson; what he said before it all went pear-shaped

In 2000,  the company I worked for published a book called ‘ Creativity Works’ and I helped organise the launch (which included a reception at No.11 – oh la la). The book covered interviews with a series of business leaders on why they thought creativity mattered in business, and how it could make a difference. With a foreword by Gordon Brown, interviewees included Martha Lane Fox, Terry Leahy, Charles Dunstone…and Lord (Dennis) Stevenson.

Not surprisingly, the Dennis Stevenson interview included reference to the Halifax (well before the merger with BOS) and his appointment of Andy Hornby. With the benefit of hindsight and in the light of the report from the Banking Standards Commission, it makes fascinating reading, especially his views on mergers. Here’s an extract....

“ Let’s switch to the Halifax, which is a mature business in a mature industry, but which I would say I believe is also behaving in a brave and creative way. Our strategy is to treat consolidation – mergers and acquisitions – as guilty until proved innocent. We think it has destroyed value on both sides of the Atlantic and the opportunity cost is huge at a time when we ought to be changing our business strategy. This is so obvious it hardly bears saying. Yet because pressures towards aggregation are so strong, it is the only real game most other banks are playing. So we are definitely swimming against the conventional tide.

Secondly we are saying that this is an industry which has been badly, or at best averagely, managed all over the world. So another part of our strategy is to transform the quality of the management in this business and thereby transform the performance. The first sight of that was to hire Andy Hornby, at the tender age of 33, to run all of what most people know as the Halifax. Was that creative? It was certainly brave because putting someone in charge of 20000 people whose average age is several years older than he is, is not the most obvious thing to do.

And the third part of our strategy is to become a venture capitalist in our own industry, which means seeing the new technology as an opportunity, not a threat. It is about being brave enough to take advantage of the opportunity that has been given to us to put our money and our expertise into a new area, and so to increase our market share. So we have invested £2billion, not in new divisions but in totally new ventures.

The Halifax strategy is radical, it’s bold, and it breaks the mould, and if creativity means doing something differently, I suppose it is creative. Creativity is also partly about having the courage to do what other people might not see as obvious.”