Ratko Mladic reminds me why we are in Libya

I'll always remember their faces when I told them about Bosnia. I once taught a group of boys, the majority of whom were Muslim. We had some fascinating conversations about foreign policy, particularly around the time they were going on the protest marches against Israel's actions in Gaza. They were in the middle of insisting that it was another example of the Christian world sitting back once again whilst Muslims are massacred.

I asked them to explain to me why then Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had intervened in Bosnia to stop the Christian Serbs killing the Bosnian Muslims. They sat, and they stared at me in complete incomprehension. I asked them the question again. Blank faces. It began to dawn on me that they had no idea what I was talking about. Bosnia didn't fit with 'the narrative', so they hadn't been told about it by those in their community who were (for reasons I won't guess) been fuelling their victim complex. It had simply been erased from history as an inconvenient anomaly. Or so I thought.

After the weekend they came back into class with triumphant looks on their faces. "Why Sir did the UK and USA wait until after so many Muslims had been killed before interveneing? Why did the West allow Sebrenica to happen?"

This conversation (and the faces of my former pupils) came into my head when I heard that Ratko Mladic had been arrested in Serbia this week. It was he and Radovan Karadzic who had led the Sebrenica massacre in 1995. It was three more years before the UK and USA intervened.

And this leads to the situation in Libya. It seems the mission has crept, in that the words of Barack Obama and David Cameron this week suggest they will not leave until Muammar Gaddafi is 'removed' as leader of the country. They call this 'removing the war machine' but many call it 'regime change'. The problem, of course, is that the West went into Libya without really understanding what would mark the end of the campaign. That gives useful fuel to those who question why we actually went into Libya in the first place, and why we are there but not doing anything about similar issues in Syria and Bahrain.

The facile answer is that we are in Libya because it has oil and Syria doesn't. (Bahrain DOES have oil but again probably not useful for 'the narrative').  I say facile because it is easy to say but hard to prove. The Arab League itself had asked the Western World to intervene in Libya and Gadaffi and sons had loudly proclaimed their intention to go "house-to-house" killing people in Benghazi.

This put David Cameron in an awkward position. If he believes in muscular liberalism then he had little choice but to intervene in Libya given from what Gaddafi was saying there was about to be a massacre in Benghazi. The trouble was that, had Kosovo and Sierra Leone been the last examples of liberal interventionism it would have been consistent to have also got involved in Libya. Alas, Iraq and Afghanistan had made it far more complicated.

Also making it far more complicated was the inability to understand the consequences of intervention. In one day a few weeks ago I read two articles in different broadsheets. One argued that getting involved in  Libya would be a recruiting tool for Islamic terrorism as we would end up killing Muslims. The other argued that not getting involved in Libya would be a recruiting tool for Islamic terrorism as we would be doing nothing about the killing of Muslims.

If you think that sounds ridiculous, let's go back to the conversation in my classroom over two and half years ago. The 6th form boys I was talking too said that it was as much a problem that the West was killing Muslims in Iraq as it was that the West allowed Muslims to be killed in Bosnia. Damned when we do, damned when we don't.

At the end of the day, there is a reason why most of Parliament (I believe it was less than 10 MPs who voted against) voted for intervention in Libya. It's because of one of the more impressive lines David Cameron has come up with so far. "Just because we can't do everything doesn't mean we should do nothing". We simply can't afford to be in Bahrain and Syria as well, so does that mean we let people die in Libya?

If we had we would have learned nothing from Sebrenica. And that, for me, would have been a worse crime.

Privacy laws leave a vacuum, causing "information-jigsaws"

Having revealed the fact that Sir Fred Goodwin - former CEO of RBS - had obtained an injunction to cover up details of his affair with a "senior colleague", Lord Stoneham then provided some information which, for those wanting to know what actually happened and who understand the way public companies are run, was extremely useful.

Let's look at the central part of what Lord Stoneham said.....

"Every taxpayer has a direct public interest in the events leading up to the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, so how can it be right for a super-injunction to hide the alleged relationship between Sir Fred Goodwin and a senior colleague. If true, it would be a serious breach of corporate governance and not even the Financial Services Authority would be allowed to know about it."

After he said it, the High Court was forced to lift the part of the injunction that was hiding Goodwin's name, allowing it to be released into the media. However, the name was unaccompanied by the name of the "senior female employee" not any details of the "alleged relationship". So, in the absence of this information we are left putting pieces of the jigsaw together, because an information vacuum usually has to be filled with something, and in the absence of facts, rumour is King.

But let's take a step back. Why do we need to know anything about the alleged relationship? Just because something is interesting to the public doesn't make it in the public interest, surely?

In the Sunday Times today, Dominic Lawson suggested that the idea that Sir Fred Goodwin's affair distracted him from running RBS properly is preposterous - if only he had been distracted he wouldn't have made so many mistakes Lawson said, and so the affair is irrelevant to the public interest.

But the clue comes in Lord Stoneham's use of the word "corporate governance", and that he felt the Financial Services Authority might want to know about it. Lawson's article didn't mention this, but it is important.

The "senior colleague" is not allowed to be named, but if they are a colleague then they were on the RBS payroll. For this affair to have had corporate governance implications the colleague would have likely been in either legal or compliance or finance. If she was a "senior colleague" she would have been high up in her department and responsible for advising Goodwin on actions he undertook as CEO. If that advice was compromised in any way it IS in the public interest as it could be said to have contributed to the downfall of RBS to the point where they had to be taken into State ownership.

Let me give you a hypothetical example:

In 2007 RBS (as part of a consortium) bought ABN-AMRO, the Dutch Bank, for over 3 times its book value. In the run up to the deal ABN-AMRO had sold its best asset (the LaSalle unit) to Bank of America - leaving RBS acquiring only the ABN-AMRO's underperforming London based investment banking franchise (which had plenty of bad loans on its books) and some smallish Asian operations. Added to this, the credit crunch started to hit in 2007. Put those two issues together RBS should have tried to amend the terms before the sale went through. But they didn't, and the rest...is now history.

So, why did Sir Fred Goodwin push through with this toxic deal? What happened to the trusted financial advisers within RBS? What happened to those within RBS paid to speak truth to power? Was Fred Goodwin in a relationship with one of those advisors? Was that the "senior colleague". If it was, then that is a corporate governance issue.

Ah, you might say, but surely the board needed to agree to an acquisition that large? Don't shareholders have to have a vote? What if the presentations given to try and persuade the board and the shareholders included this "senior colleague", helping the person she was allegely in a relationship with to continue to build his empire to an enormous size? THAT is also a corporate governance issue.

I am actually reasonably relaxed about the current privacy issue. I agree that everyone has some right to privacy. I do believe that if a footballer is earning money from endorsements from his family man image then an injunction to stop details of an affair emerging is not about privacy, it's about protecting those endorsements. I believe that if an actor famed for playing reliable family men uses an injunction to stop details of an affair emerging then that too is not about privacy, it's about protecting their career. But in the absence of ulterior motives I do agree they should have a right to privacy.

But if Fred Goodwin's affair led in any way to the State having to bail out RBS to the tune of as many billion pounds as it did, then it IS in the public interest, and privacy be damned.

"We got him" - but was justice done?

One of the reasons I love politics is that there is rarely a right answer. The question of whether Osama Bin Laden should have been captured alive at all costs and tried in a court of law is one of them. You would imagine it is a simple answer - yes - he should have a fair trial and the Western World should act as an exemplar of what to do with people who commit crimes. But, as with everything in global politics especially, it is far more nuanced than that.

Let's start with the members of Navy Seal Team 6 who performed the actual operation. In the UK especially we lack understanding of the chain of command (which is why many still want the person who shot Jean-Charles de Menezes in 2005 to be put on trial instead of the person or people who ordered him to do it). In the US they don't have that problem, and they understand that the man who shot Osama Bin Laden was aware of the need not to risk anyone's lives and had to make a split second decision on whether he or others were in danger.  We know wasn't armed and he didn't use his wife as a human shield (what WERE they thinking saying that?!) but he was retreating into the bedroom, and as far as the soldier know could have been getting a weapon. The only way to know he wasn't carrying a suicide bomb underneath his clothing was if he had been naked. In fact his clothes were bulky (which turned out to be money sewn into them).  As more information comes out of the US, it is becoming more and more clear that capturing Bin Laden was most probably a secondary objective, killing him the first.  But is that wrong?

First of all, and most importantly, you will hear many people talk about 'international law'. There is no such thing (yet). There are some agreed principles and an attempt at global governance through the United Nations but there is no binding body of law that covers all eventualities all over the world. So the argument that Bin Laden should have been tried under the principles of International law is not as applicable as many think. To illustrate the complications, we have an International Criminal Court (in which we attempted to try Slobodan Milosevic and are trying Charles Taylor) but it's jurisdiction applies from when it was created (April 2002) and it can exercise jurisdictiononly in cases where the accused is a national of a state party, the alleged crime took place on the territory of a state party, or a situation is referred to the court by the United Nations Security Council. Effectively, Osama Bin Laden could not be tried by this court.

So could the USA have tried him in one of their courts? Well, the National Defence Authorization Act that went through Congress recently effectively bars anyone that would be detained in Guantanamo from being tried on USA soil. There is little chance that Osama Bin Laden would have been held in a prison on USA soil as no state would have agreed to take him. So it would have been a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, the results of which would not have been recognised by many people.

But let's get away from practicalities and look at the reality. Holding Osama Bin Laden in captivity would have most probably unleashed a wave of terror the like of which we haven't seen in order to secure his release. The USA were never going to be prepared to risk that. Even retaining his body on land would make it a shrine and a focus for serious disturbances. Furthermore, the trial process would have dragged on for many years as it was a very complicated case. We are looking at someone, for example, who was for a fact armed and trained by the Americans in the 80s in order to help the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There are serious skeletons in Osama's cupboard, and many would not want them to come out. Finally, Eric Holder, the US Attorney General pointed out that it is a War on Terror and Bin Laden was an enemy combatant so the USA had the right to kill him.

The most important reality is that the USA wanted closure. Yes, it wasn't 'justice' in many peoples' sense of the word. There is a reason why people get tried in Western Courts in front of a jury of their peers and victims aren't allowed to decide on guilt or sentence, and in a way the USA was a major victim of Osama Bin Laden and decided to be the judge jury and executioner. We can certainly question this. But the Americans in this particular case felt that justice was done for the crimes Bin Laden committed, including the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the bombing of the USS Cole in 1998 and 9/11 most of all meant he should face the death penalty and in the long term the world is a safer and better place without him.

The irony of it all was that Al-Qaeda had been weakened beyond all recognition by the events of the last few months. They believed, and stated often, that the Muslim people wanted to live under Sharia Law and Islam wasn't compatible with democracy. Yet the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other places makes it quite clear that young Muslims especially really DO want to have some input into their lives and really DO want some form of democracy. Effectively then, all Al-Qaeda were doing were killing people who didn't share their view of how the world should be run, which is why more victims of Al-Qaeda were Muslims than those of any other faith.

The argument that killing Bin Laden will unleash a new wave of terrorism is irrelevant. It can be added to all the other explanations and excuses for new waves of terrorism which are likely to happen all the time.

On a personal level, I would have preferred if at all possible for the West to have shown the restraint and respect for justice as an example to everyone else of how to treat those who have comitted a crime. I do understand though why it just wasn't possible, or even advisable, in this particular instance.

The people spoke - and this is what I heard

It has been a fascinating fortnight in politics and I wanted to wait a little bit to see if there was any major fallout from last Thursday's referendum, local and devolved national elections before I made any comment.

First, here are the headlines..

1) The AV referendum vote was a resounding 'No'. I always felt that if AV was the answer we were asking thh wrong question. So it was that less than a third of a surprisingly high 42% turnout voted 'Yes' to AV. I do wonder what would have happened if it had been a choice between FPTP and AV Plus or AMS or a properly proportionally representative system. But we now won't find out for a generation. The Lib Dems blamed Ed Miliband for not pulling his Labour party together behind the 'Yes' vote. But Miliband did the right thing, more than half his MPs were voting 'No' so he really couldn't afford to push too hard. The fact that the 'Yes' camp had the burden of proof that FPTP needed to be changed and hid behind hogwash like 'it will stop expenses scandals' or 'it will make MPs work harder' instead of the real arguments, and wheeled out Eddie Izzard and Colin Firth against David Cameron is the reason the country voted 'No'. Does this mean the fabled 'progressive majority' doesn't actually exist?

2) In Scotland, the AMS electoral system - which was brought in for the sole reason that it would ONLY produce coalition governments - produced a majority government for the SNP. This was a fantastic result for Alex Salmond, who has grown into the role of Scotland's First Minister in ways nobody expected when he first took power in 2007. I do worry for him though. Firstly, he will have to hold a referendum on independence, and 2/3rds of Scots are against it, mainly because they know that should it happen they would have to pay for their own national defence and their share of the UK's deficit, which was hugely affected by having to bail out RBS and HBOS (and we all know what the 'S' stands for!). Secondly, Salmond won the election partly because of promises he made on having no tuition fees and free prescription charges among other things. He is an economist so will know there is an opportunity cost to these promises - in that some things will have less money. OR he will have to borrow a large amount of money and put Scotland in even more debt. It is quite possible the electorate didn't understand that. More likely is that they had little reason to vote for the others.

3) The local election results were surprisingly favourable to the Conservatives, unsurprisingly damning for the Lib Dems, and in my view unsurprisingly unrewarding for Labour. Labour increased their share of the vote by 11% but the Conservatives still won on share of the vote, although they lost 2% of their vote in 2007. The Conservatives also gained seats when it was believed they could lose as much as 800. . I believe Labour didn't do as well as they might because they haven't come up with a realistic alternative to the Conservatives' current course of action. Talking to a Labour activist the other day I asked what the alternative was, and he said "cut less" and I said "cut WHAT less" and he said "you know, just cut slower". Couldn't tell me what changes he would actually make apart from say he wouldn't do anything the Conservatives are doing - at which point I said, "yes, but what WOULD you do" and he went back to "cut less", and we were back at the beginning. I  believe that unless he is playing a canny long game, Ed Miliband is going to have to become far more of a leader than someone who seems merely to carp from the sidelines, because his followers have no idea where they are going.

As for the Lib Dems, they were almost obliterated, and are very unhappy about it. They have complained about the tactics the 'No' campaign used and they have complained about being a human shield for the Conservatives.  But here's a little story for you.

During last year's election campaign I happened to know the Conservative and Labour candidates in a particular constituency quite well. They finished up 42 votes apart and actually got on very well, with mutual respect developing between them despite clear ideological differences. The Lib Dem candidate finished third in this particular consistuency with over 16,500 votes, which is a considerable amount for a third placed candidate, and more than many seat-winners elsewhere.

During this campaign, the Conservative candidate was questioned about his pro-Israel fervour as a result of a leaflet produced by the Lib Dem campaign that assured voters he was heavily pro-Palestinian. Nothing strange there right? Well you'll be interested to know that the Labour candidate was also questioned about her Pro-Palestinian views as a result of a leaflet ALSO produced by the Lib Dem campaign assuing voters that the candidate was, in fact, a committed supporter of Israel.

The winning candidate noted that in her many years of politics it was the nastiest campaign she had been involved in, entirely because of the behaviour of the Lib Dem candidate. On further investigation it was found that the Lib Dems are particularly happy to fight dirty, something revealed by the press in response to the Phil Woolas case last year, where a Labour MP was stripped of his seat because of lies his campaign spread about the Lib Dem candidate in Oldham East.

The reason I'm telling you about this is because when the Lib Dems cry foul about others' campaigns, as they did about the 'No' campaign during the AV referendum (and I don't disagree - see this blog), they need to be careful as the stones they throw are all piled up next to them in their glass house.

The real issue for the Lib Dems is that when you are a protest party of opposition you can gain plenty by being all things to all people - as they famously were over issues like tuition fees, and in the example above, the Middle East peace process - but when you are a responsible member of a Coalition government you can't get away with that. Granted - there are plenty of Lib Dem Ministers who aren't very good at acting responsibly (HELLOOO Mr Cable), but to be fair to Nick Clegg, at the very least he has understood his collective responsibilities now he is Deputy Prime Minister (which is lucky because so unused are we as a country to coalition that it seems very few of the public or the media understand at all).

Ultimately - right now there is very little reason to vote for the Lib Dems. When they went into Coalition with the Conservatives they must have known that for the first year or two they would struggle in the polls. Given that the Coalition is front-loading the pain in terms of deficit cutting, there was always going to be protests and fightbacks and yes, the Lib Dems are bearing the brunt of it.

But if they have any guts they will stay the Coalition out until the year before the next election in 2015, then develop a programme of their own which takes into account this time that they MIGHT actually get into government, instead of the 2010 manifesto, which can only have assumed that they wouldn't. Should they do that, they could, with proven experience that they can govern a country, do better than the last election. But if not, we could be back to a two-party system again in the UK, and politics will be all the poorer for it.

Royal Wedding snub to Blair and Brown - ignoring democracy

The Royal wedding featured some masterful decision-making. Many touches from the day showed the Royal Household, and in particular the Royal couple, to be far more in tune with their public than any of us thought.

But the decision to not invite former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was unfortunate at the least, but at the most, at an event showcasing all that is great about our constitutional democracy - was profoundly undemocratic.

Our constitutional democracy elected Tony Blair's Labour Party into government three times in a row. Twice by a landslide. They gained over 40% of the vote twice during that time, something that may not happen again as we enter a three-party system that could possibly be here to stay. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown served this country for 10 and 13 years respectively, and whatever you think of some of the decisions they made, the fact that David Cameron, on entering 10 Downing Street, noted that it is difficult to argue this country wasn't a better place than in 1997 shows the importance of what they achieved. This should have been recognised on its' own.


But Tony Blair in particular is owed a massive debt of gratitude from the Royal Family, and for his work in that first week of September 1997 when he expertly managed and massaged the relationship between the Royals and the public during those dark days following the death of Princess Diana. His counselling of the Queen during that period led to her finally doing what was needed, returning to London and speaking to the people. His pleas to the public for patience with someone so heavily enconced in traditionalist distance  from her people, particularly when it comes to emotions, helped salve the dangerous sense of mutiny that pervaded at the time. William may have been 15 at the time, but he will know about this. He will also know that it was Blair who labelled his mother the "People's Princess", and he will know that he has been allowed to integrate with the people because of this to become what he was yesterday, and what his father was most certainly not back in 1981 - the "People's Prince". William should have made sure Blair was there, and I really don't think anyone would have argued.

As for Gordon Brown, he may not have ever won a proper election, and he may have been unsuited to the role of Prime Minister, but his work as Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years should have been recognised, and he WAS still the Prime Minister for 3 years.

In fact the almost total absence of anyone connected with the Labour Party was avoidable and simple fuel to the fire of those "republicans" who are against the monarchy and thus are likely to hail from the left of the political spectrum. The Royal household are supposed to be politically neutral. Well if that is so they were extremely careless with their invite list, because it ignored the last 13 years from 2010 in its' entirety, and that was wrong.

You're AV-ing a laugh aren't ya? The election system referendum.

In 1998 former SDP Party leader Roy Jenkins was asked by Tony Blair to lead a commission on electoral reform. It was asked to take into account four requirements: Proportionality of the relationship between votes and seats in parliament, the need for stable government, the extension of voter choice and the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies.

The commission suggested the 'alternative vote top up' system or 'AV+' which would directly elect some MPs by the alternative vote, then add a number of additional members elected from top up lists according to proper proportional representation. Nothing happened afterwards, in that contrary to Labour election manifesto promises no referendum was held in response to the commission's report.

But now we finally DO have a referendum being held to change the electoral system we use in this country, because the Conservatives had to promise it to the Lib Dems last May to get them to join the governing coalition. And yet instead of a change to AV+, which was selected as the best solution according to the conditions above by those that studied electoral reform, we are being asked to choose whether or not to change simply to Alternative vote.

 This is the 'fallacy of false choice' if there ever was one. This is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options. There are additional options, and if we had enough intellectual curiosity and if our politicians trusted us, we would be considering those options properly.

But the politicians don't trust us, and this has been shown by the paucity and mendacity of the current campaigns by both sides of the current referendum debate, in particular the 'No' campaign. Politicians will argue that they are acting in this way precisely because we in the UK public lack that intellectual curiosity. Yet I think it's because of the false choice before us, and that is a shame.

Let's start with the main problem facing the 'No' campaign. When studying the issue of electoral reform for AS politics students were faced with the task of weighing up the importance of "strong government" against other criteria. Strong government meant the ability of the governing party to make decisions and to legislate because they had enough seats to command a clear majority, negating the need for coalitions and granting them a mandate to carry out their manifesto commitments. The nature of First Past the Post (FPTP) makes it most likely that the winning party has over the 325 needed to form a government by themselves. 

The 'No' campaign has tried to use this to help their case, pointing out the difficult compromises and back-room deals that have bedevilled the current coalition government in the public's eyes. Yet therein lies the problem....we have a current coalition government and it was created by the FPTP electoral system. So there goes their main argument for no change.

So instead the 'No' campaign have been left clutching at straws. They argue that AV can let the candidate that came third in the first choice votes win the seat, and also that AV breaks the principle of one-person-one-vote that should lie behind every fair electoral system. They also argue that AV would mean parties having to speak more to extremist voters to attempt to secure their second choice votes. Finally they point to the massive cost of using counting machines for AV.  Let's break these down a little bit.

1) At the moment if you happen to be living in a "safe" seat for any of the major parties - but particularly for Conservatives and Labour then since the only votes that matter are those for the winner - a vote for any other party is a wasted vote. You cannot express your preferences in any way that matters and so the resultant vote count is not reflective of the peoples' true wishes. In AV you can vote for any party you like with your first choice vote as even if they don't come in the top 2 your 2nd preference votes count, then 3rd preference, meaning that every participant in the election will have more of a role. The first place votes will tell us more about the true choice of the country, and if it so happens that a lot of people have a favourite candidate but feel that if not them they would like to have someone else then with AV they have a chance to express that preference. If the result is that the 3rd placed candidate after the first round wins out, then that is the will of the people, and there shouldn't be a problem with that. It SHOULD raise political participation and voter turnout.

2) This issue is where the 'No' campaign are particularly distorting things. They like to use the example of someone voting for the BNP, them not winning, and then that person's 2nd preferences being counted and 3rd preferences and making a real difference to the outcome. They then argue that that person has 3 votes and, say, a Conservative voter only has one vote. Simply not true. If the first round result was 40% Conservative, 30% Labour, 15% Lib Dem and 15% BNP and 10% of the BNP voters' 2nd preferences were for the Tory and 5% for Labour the result would be 50% Conservative and 35% Labour and the Tory would win BUT remember that both parties had their vote counted twice as well - once in the first round and again in the second round. So everyone has their votes counted the same amount. Each round is like a round of voting, and in each round it is one person one vote. Some people will say "but not everyone will use all their choices and that's not fair". Yes it is, it's up to them not to use their choices.

3) Parties may decide to appeal more to extremists to secure their second preference. Labour may veer to the left to mop up any ultra-left voters and left-wing Lib Dems and the Tories to the right to mop up BNP and UKIP votes. This may have two consequences, both which could be regarded as positive. At the moment some people don't vote because they say that the major parties are "all the same" and are all slight variations of the centre ground. This might force them apart a bit to give voters a clearer choice. More importantly, if it is the presence of extremist parties that is causing problems (and given they are being used by both sides as the bogeymen in this referendum debate they probably are causing problems) then by actually daring to talk about the more controversial issues the main parties may 're-mainstream' some of the important debates. Think of it this way, the BNP got so many votes because none of the parties would talk seriously about the impact of immigration. That AV could force them to do so is no bad thing as good political debate isn't afraid of certain topics, but we in the UK have been afraid.

4) Apparently counting machines will not be used for AV. Should that be so then the claim that it will cost £130m for the counting machines is an outright lie. 

Meanwhile, the 'Yes' campaign have been spreading some rubbish of their own - in particular that AV would stop expenses scandals happening again and that since the BNP are supporting the 'No' campaign that should be enough argument against FPTP. This is a shame, because they would be better off highlighting the problems with FPTP as a system to help their case, but as I said before, they don't trust the public to listen.

1) Nick Clegg said that FPTP 'breeds the sort of complacency that led to the expenses scandal...If MPs feel no one is looking over their shoulder, is it no wonder some dipped hands in the till?’. This implies that the greater likelihood under FPTP of there being safe seats meant that MPs were more likely to be corrupt. Yet many MPs caught up in the expenses scandals were in extremely marginal seats, and the expenses scandal was down to not enough checks and balances in Parliament and the refusal to pay MPs a salary representative of their responsibilities and the skills needed. So whilst the expenses scandals happened under FPTP it was not CAUSED by FPTP - this is a logical fallacy.

2) The use of the BNP by the 'Yes' campaign is mendacious because whilst the BNP are against moving to AV it is absolutely NOT because they like FPTP - both are just as bad for them - although there are arguments both ways as to which would be better for them - under AV people may be more comfortable being able to put BNP as their 2nd or 3rd choice than they are to put them if they only have one choice. Probably the only way the BNP will win seats in the House of Commons is though the operation of full proportional representation through the list system - in which seats and votes are exactly aligned, so 5% of the vote gives you 5% of the seats. The BNP has seats in the European Parliament and in the London Assembly and the electoral system for both is the closed list system (Full PR). They are supporting the 'No' campaign because they think that AV doesn't go far enough, so this particular change is a waste of time. So yes they are voting against AV, but that DOESN'T mean that BNP support FPTP, and anyone who understands electoral systems knows that, so, given those in the 'Yes' campaign DO understand electoral systems, their use of the BNP involves a quite convenient bending of the truth.

I was speaking to a colleague the other day who was concerned who had the same problem as the BNP. They want electoral reform to a more proportionally representative system and AV isn't that, so they think they should vote 'No' as a 'Yes' vote would be a wasted opportunity for change as the change would be in the wrong direction. They don't want a 'Yes' vote for electoral reform to be seen as a 'Yes' vote for AV.

I reminded her of the problems of FPTP. That the Lib Dems received 23% of the country's vote but less than 9% of the seats in parliament. That in the Hampstead and Kilburn consistuency the THIRD placed candidate got over 16,500 of the vote and got nothing, but in Stoke -on -Trent the WINNER got 12,000 votes and won a seat. That the reality is that less and less people now vote for the two mainstream parties but the current electoral system means this isn't getting recognised in seats. That the result was a lessening of choice and a feeling of  votes being wasted that was reducing voter turnout.

The case for electoral reform is solid. It is even more solid now FPTP doesn't lead to strong government, which means there are literally no good arguments to keep it, hence the tactics of the 'No' campaign. . My feeling is that a 'No' vote will mean there will not be electoral reform in at least a generation. A 'Yes' vote will lead to AV in the next election and show that there is a real appetite for a proper look at the electoral system - or maybe just a re-reading of the Jenkins Commission Report and a chance to vote for AV plus.

So I advised my colleague to vote 'Yes', because of the symbolic nature of that choice - even though this particular choice is a false one.

All hail the 'Dogbo'

Should teenagers be allowed to go around jumping at people and threatening them without consequences? Do you think people should be allowed to walk around with a loaded gun that could go off at any time, and they would likely be unable to stop it shooting should it do so?

The answer to these two questions seem obvious. Yet dogs are allowed off their leash in public areas, free to run at small kids, jump up at them, threaten to bite people, and in the case of certain breeds of dog, be put in a position where they could literally kill certainly young children with their owners seeming to not care about any consequences. Why is this allowed?

I have no problem with dogs per se. I realise they provide companionship to many, and I don't even have a problem with the concept of someone owning a guard dog if they genuinely feel they need it to protect their property. But that's where a dog like that should stay, in that property - and if taken for a walk..on a leash, with a muzzle on.

Because whatever their owners say, many dogs have a natural tendency to be aggressive, fight and possibly kill. Some dogs are bred to do so, and yet somehow end up being owned by 14 year old boys who walk around with them off the leash in parks where there are little kids. Or owned by people who are then surprised when they maul their kids to death.

Some are literally used as weapons - such as the pitbull who was deliberately set on a rival gang member, which became the subject of a court case a little while ago. That's the point though. They ARE weapons, and they seem to be allowed on the streets and in parks and their owners feel it is a RIGHT of theirs to have them and let them walk free.

I'm not just focussing on pitbulls either, there are Staffordshire Bull Terriers, Bull Mastiffs, Rotweillers, Doberman dogs, the list is far longer than you think.

The other weekend I was in Osterley Park with my kids - both under 3. They were kicking a plastic football around when a massive Doberman came bounding up, baring its teeth viciously, took the ball and burst it. The owner then took over a minute to get the dog under his control. The owner was apologetic, and offered to pay for the ball - but I asked him why he let a dog like that off its leash with little children around and his answer? That it was a public park and a free country so he was within his rights to do so. I don't blame him for this, what he was doing was within the law. But that dog could have killed my children, and the man showed that should the dog have chosen to attack them he didn't have the physical strength to stop it, and so it should either be kept under control on a leash or taken somewhere where innocent members of the public are not around.

How many of you reading this have been out in  park, or on a jog, or just walking down a road, when a dog runs up to you, barking viciously, and then jumps up at you - only to have the owner do very little about it apart from tell you that "don't worry, he's only being friendly" or "he won't harm you" or, when the bite comes "I'm sorry, he's never done that before". No, but now he has, and that shouldn't be allowed.

When you actually say something to the owner they recoil in horror that you have got the cheek to question their right to have their dog off its lead in public. "It's a public area mate" they'll say, or, the case of many pit bull owners, something using more aggressive language, but all on the same lines of it being a public area and that they were perfectly within their rights.

Well I and my children have a right to walk around unmolested and unthreatened by anyone, man or beast, and that, I argue, is more important that your "rights".

So what's the solution? The government has come up with a "dogbo" which puts restrictions on the owners of 'problem dogs'. This was in response to the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which was a poorly drafted and implemented piece of legislation. This Act banned the ownership of certain breeds but also put sanctions on dogs of whatever breed that went 'out of control' in public areas.

The important thing to note however, is that it's not the dog's fault. It's about the responsibility of the owners. As far as I'm concerned, a dog attacking me is an assault by it's owner.  There needs to be complete responsibility for the owners. There also needs to be a way for these dogs to be taken for a walk off their leash without it affecting the innocent public. Specific areas to do so? Perhaps, but what is certain is that what is going on now isn't enough.

March for WHAT alternative?

It's on days like yesterday that I love my country. You look at the news around the world and see protestors against their governments' policies being shot, imprisoned, tortured and eventually silenced. Here, we had so many people filling Hyde Park today that the organisers stopped counting and no one is doubting there is a decently sized movement "for the alternative" to the Coalition's deficit reduction plan. It's not a national movement and it's not a majority - 250,000 to 500,000 people are about 1% and 2% of the voting population. It's a collection of interest groups who are affected or will be affected by the policies. But that doesn't make what they are saying any less important to hear. It's absolutely vital that people of this country have the right to protest and hold the government to account, scrutinizing their policies.

However, good though they are at articulating the problems with "the cuts", I'm still waiting to hear a coherent, economically sound alternative. It is extremely important that this arises soon.

For instance, until Ed Miliband actually explains HOW he would halve the deficit in 4 years (as would have been the plan had Labour been in Government) then his contribution to this debate remains the same knee-jerk children oppositionism that seems to see him blindly flailing around shouting "Thatcher! 80s! Ideological!", in a sure-fire short-term poll raising strategy that won't get him elected in a million years.

While we're at it, can someone explain why it is OK for the UK to be paying more in debt interest at the moment than we do on national defence, and why it would be OK to end up paying more interest than we spend on our education system - which would be the case in 2015 EVEN IF we clear the deficit (remember - we need to have enough surplus to pay off over a trillion pounds of debt which could take around 50 years). That debt interest has what is known in Economics as an opportunity cost. Every penny could be spent on something useful, instead - it is spent on paying off debt. And for those today who advocate that we simply refuse to pay the debts we have - are you seriously trying to bring down the entire world's financial system?

I would also be grateful if someone can explain how the 'Robin Hood Tax' would actually help reduce the deficit. I get the idea - it sounds wonderful - tax the rich and give to the poor. Lovely. Politically and socially wonderful. Trouble is - it will raise LESS tax revenue. People will leave the country (taking the jobs they create with them) or will do what they can to avoid the tax (I'll come to THAT in a minute) or work less (because it's pointless working hard as your pay gets taken from you) and there will be LESS tax revenue. This is the difficulty of setting up a tax system. FACT - when the higher rate of tax went from 60% down to 40% in 1988 the tax take ROSE and the amount rich people paid ROSE.  So, someone tell me how it would reduce the deficit please.

Now, tax avoidance. Again I think it is a very important point and, using the figures from UK Uncut and the TUC today it would raise £25bn if it was sorted out. But, as I address in a previous article on this site (click here) that is not likely to raise as much as it might seem. The Coalition government IS attempting to close more loopholes - particularly for non-doms, but it is right that a light is shined on this area as more should be done.

Then there is this notion that we should not be spending money on the wars Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. It's hard to get away from the fact that when the cuts are costing jobs it is a shame we are spending such a huge amount of money in Iraq and Afghanistan. But unfortunately we are there are we can't just walk away as we really do have to clear up the mess we made.

As for Libya, I find it interesting the amount of those protesting yesterday with signs saying things like "Hands off Libya". First of all - let's not forget that all but 8 (eight) of our elected representatives voted for the Libyan operation. Let's also not forget either that there was about to be a massacre committed there. I have discussed Libya elsewhere (click here and here), but I must ask the question...if there is a moral case against cuts do those morals take a backseat when money that might be spent on you is instead spent on saving peoples' lives?

Also there is the whole question of putting "protect the public sector" in the same paragraph as "concentrating on economic growth". Which one do you want? Let's put them together - can you get economic growth by protecting all public sector jobs? If so, how? There are three ways of getting income in this economy:

1) You receive money direct from the public purse in the form of benefits
2) You receive money direct from the public purse in the form of wages for working in the public sector, which you give back in the form of taxes and national insurance
3) You receive money from private companies which you give back in the firm of taxes and national insurance

It doesn't take much to see that the only way out of those three in which the UK purse gains more than it loses is 3) wages paid by the private sector. If we want sustainable economic growth we need to empower the private sector to pick up the slack on employment and therefore growth. The amount of resources devoted to the public sector causes something called "crowding out" where resources (financial, human, land, capital, everything) are diverted from the private to the public sector. Examples could include the fact that the increased borrowing by the government to fund added government spending could cause interest rates to rise, making it more expensive for private businesses to borrow money. Another example could be where an employee, instead of working for a private company, getting paid wages and paying tax to the UK is instead employed as, say, the "walking co-ordinator" for a local authority (and don't go on about "nurses and teachers" - it's not them being cut, but it may be the person who interviewed my mother-in-law for her own NHS job that she had been in for 20 years twice  in one year when she moved from 5 days a week to 3 to 4). Or it could be that a private company can't afford rent to move to a bigger office because a public sector organisation is offering a larger rent. The point is, protecting public sector jobs is not the alternative, the case for that is completely different.

Finally, there is scrapping Trident nuclear system. I can absolutely see the case for doing this, given the sheer amount we would be spending on something that, should we ever have to use it then we are basically at the end of the world anyway. But, my understanding of the international power system is that should we not have any nuclear capability, we will literally "lose our place" at the top table of international politics. Whether that is right or not, and whether we should care, is another thing. I do care, but I'm just one opinion.

Before I conclude, I must add that too much of the argument against the deficit strategy in built on an outright lie. The lie is that the financial position this country is in is all because of the banks and nothing to do with the Labour Government's economic policy. This is a convenient lie, as it allows people to say the banks should pay to clear up the mess. To be clear, at the end of one of the longest periods of continuous economic growth in our history, the UK had a budget deficit, rather than the surplus that could and should have been built up by a prudent government during the boom part of the economic cycle. I should also point out that to fund the structural deficit (that part of the deficit not caused by the economic cycle) that existed BEFORE the recession the Labour Party were happy to borrow from the banks, and that borrowing was, in theory, put to good use. As I have said elsewhere (click here), there is no reason why a coherent case can't be made to justify this risky management of UK funds, because a lot of spending was needed to clear up the mess left by chronic underinvestment in public services from 1979-1997 BUT that doesn't mean the lie should continue to be propagated that the trillion pound debt and £145 bn deficit was caused by the banks. It was caused by the feeling on the part of the Labour Government that the boom would never end then exacerbated by the depth of the bust when it did end, and that depth WAS caused by the banks. Again, Labour may be getting short term polling gains by not admitting their responsibility for the deficit but they simply won't get elected again unless they show they won't put the country in that position again.

In conclusion. It is extremely important in this austerity age to have this level of political debate and protest, and I am proud that we are having it. But please, somebody with some form of economic literacy, explain to me an alternative strategy that actually makes economic sense, and explain how it would be done. Because I didn't hear it yesterday and I haven't heard it yet.

Inflation isn't the problem. Stagflation could be.

We are about to see an example of how psychologically influential inflation is in the UK. There can be no other reason why the Bank of England could even be considering raising interest rates right now.

Recently (10th March 2011), the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to leave its Base Rate at 0.5%. This means the rate has been at an all-time low for 2 years now. But, like a swan, the serenity on the surface belies a lot of action underneath, and it is almost certain that this vote was very close and we're about to see some real action in the form of a rise in interest rates. But the fact that this might happen when we are possibly in the midst of a double-dip recession (should April's growth figure be negative then we are officially back in recession) shows the problem with the Bank of England's sole objective, to target inflation.

When teaching macro-economics, I am at pains to point out to students that when faced with an essay on policies to deal with a problem they must consider openly the cause of that problem. So, should they be asked to discuss policy options available in the event of rising inflation, they would struggle to get near top marks should they not point out the dependence of the corrective policy on what caused the inflation in the first place.

My view on this is that the causes of this inflationary spike cannot be remedied by raising interest rates. Therefore doing so could cause worsening unemployment and confirm the journey back into recession. I also suggest that the only reasons why interest rates would rise is because the Bank of England is too focussed on its primary aim (inflation stability) at the expense of its secondary aim - to support the government in meeting their targets for growth and employment. This may be because of the hold that inflation has on economic fears. Maybe the MPC thinks Britain needs inflation credibility more than anything. Well, I would like to control inflation too, but not at the expense of growth and employment at a time when we don't have enough of either. It's frustrating enough waiting for the Coalition government to come up with a strategy for growth without the MPC making it even more unlikely.

Anyway, back to causes. In this case, inflation is now consistently running at and over double the Bank of England's target - which is 2% (plus or minus 1% let's not forget) - for three main reasons:

1) The rising oil price
2) The rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%
3) The rise in food prices

The rising oil price

The rising oil price is a particular problem for the UK. It pushes up inflation because we import so much oil so business costs rise, pushing up prices and consumers spend more on the petrol made with it. It also can cause unemployment because as it pushes up business costs rational employers may look for other ways to cut costs, through firing or not hiring people. It can also cause a slowdown in economic growth and possibly cause a recession. Inflation is often caused by rampant economic growth, with a concurrent growth in employment. This time, we have inflation accompanied by negative economic growth and high unemployment. That is called 'stagflation' and the problem is that it's more or less here. Raising interest rates will do nothing to stop the rising oil price. The Government can reduce fuel duty on it - BUT they have to reduce the deficit, so they are stuck in a bind too.

The rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%

This automatically put prices up. Remember, inflation is measured using a basket of goods, weighted for the importance of the items within it. Many of those items have just seen their prices go up by the amount of the rise in VAT.  This was done by the Coalition government, again because of the need to raise tax revenue to deal with the deficit. An economist from afar who didn't know this happened might think that consumption had gone up, raising aggregate demand and so raising interest rates would help, but the VAT rise makes that connection different. Raising interest rates will do nothing to deal with the impact of this rise.

The rise in food prices

This has mainly been caused by extreme weather events in the major food producing countries. It has been exacerbated by speculators but they are not really to blame. The problem again here is that the rising cost of food imports  pushed up the costs of many businesses who then pass those onto customers in the form of higher prices, causing inflation. Again, rising interest rates will not stop this happening.

It would be nice to think that there was a simple answer to the economic ills of the UK. We have a massive deficit, massive debts, huge unemployment, a government without a recognisable growth strategy and now inflation. We need to deal with all of those problems and a rise in interest rates will probably make them worse.

For instance, the upcoming job losses in the public sector are supposed to be offset by job gains in the private sector. But the investment needed in the private sector for that to happen would need to be funded from somewhere, and a rise in interest rates will make that more expensive, and therefore less likely.

Many commentators feel that in the medium term there is more of a danger from deflation, in which case nothing should be done now to hurt growth.  I'm going to add my name to them.

Who is Keyser Soze? Saif Gaddafi.

Sorry to spoil the movie "The Usual Suspects" for you but I know who Keyser Soze was - Saif Al-Islam Al-Gaddafi. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" said Kevin Spacey's character, Verbal Kint, during the film. Well, I think the world has just woken up to the magic that has been played upon them by the son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and I must applaud both father and son, it was magnificent. 

Last May Gaddafi junior gave a speech at the London School of Economics (LSE) outlining his vision of Libya moving towards a "participatory democracy" and a "free society". Last week, the same man gave a speech in Libya promising  that his father's regime would fight to the "last man, the last woman, the last bullet." Among those taken by surprise by this ideological U-turn were Peter Mandelson, Prince Andrew and Tony Blair. But it wasn't just these three - whom we know to be more interested than normal in money and/or power. It was, for instance, the entire management team of the LSE. How did he do it?


The story is laid out in this week's Sunday Times - In 2003, Saif Gaddafi enrolled at the LSE to study for an MSc, following his father's decision (negotiated by Tony Blair through Saif) to renounce terrorism and dismantle nuclear weapons after the West had shown in their invasion of Iraq what might happen to the so called "rogue states". Senior academics at the LSE have commented that he seemed committed to liberal principles, asking questions about democratic theory and human rights then forming a foundation to lobby for reforms inside Libya and pushing for human rights abuses to be addressed. 


He then wrote a PhD thesis which was submitted in 2008 entitled ""The Role Of Civil Society In The Democratisation Of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?" and included, on page 41 - the following passage, which is rather relevant to his present attitude:

"Locke saw people as being able to live together in the state of nature under natural law, irrespective of the policies of the state. This self-sufficiency of society, outside the control of the state, was given weight by the growing power of the economic sphere which was considered part of civil society, not the state. The state is therefore constructed out of, and given legitimacy by, society, which also retains the authority to dissolve the government if it acted unjustly. Other writers continued with this distinction of civil society and government. The state kept its function of maintaining law and order that Hobbes had stressed, but was considered to be separate from society, and the relationship between the two of them was seen to be subject to laws that gained their legitimacy from society, not from the state. For example, Montesquieu saw the state as the governor and society as the governed, with civil law acting as the regulator of the relationship. The importance of law in regulating the way the state and society interacted was obvious to many writers who considered that a government that did not recognise the limitations of law would extend to become an over-reaching tyranny similar to that described by Hobbes in Leviathan."

(OR, you might say, similar to Libya under his father)

The financier, Nat Rothschild, threw a party for Gaddafi to celebrate his PhD and through him he met Peter Mandelson and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska - who was investing in Libya. Saif was also a front man for the Libyan Investment authority which set up a London Hedge fund which invested in a London Hotel, Deripaska's Russian Aluminum company, Juventus football club, Pearson (who own the Financial Times) and an Italian defence company. Through all this he met Blair again and also Prince Andrew - who hosted a Libyan trade function in 2007.

Politically he seemed committed to reform in Libya even up to last year where he claimed he wanted a "level of freedom like in Holland" in Libya and wouldn't take a role in his father's government unless he was democractically elected.

So what has gone wrong? Was the last 7 years just a conversion of convenience so that the West's eyes (and missiles) were turned away from what was really happening in Libya? Or was it internal pressure in Libya for him to change his focus. Or was it - as the LSE academic David Held suggested, that he has ditched his principles out of misplaced family loyalty?

I hope, to retain my faith in human nature, that it is the latter. I fear, because the motives and gains from it were so clear, that it was the former.

(Cue final shot of Saif Gaddafi walking off into the distance shaking off his fake limp and straightening out his deformed hand).

Does the 'Arab Spring' justify the Iraq invasion or provide further damnation for it?

The main question for me raised by the The 'Arab Spring' that has broken out across the Middle East is whether it proves the invasion of Iraq wrong or right.

Over the past few weeks I have heard from some that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the removal of the leaders of those countries and the ongoing attempts to do the same in Bahrain and Libya prove that eventually, the people of Iraq would have risen up against Saddam Hussein, so there was no need for an invasion on the pretext of humanitarian intervention.

On the other hand, I have heard from others that these revolutions prove that the people of the Arab World hanker after democracy, which means the liberal interventionists who joined together with the neo-cons in the early part of the last decade to suggest that the process of democratisation should be hurried along in those countries that were or could be a danger to the West were also right. This was based upon the 'democratic peace theory' that no two democracies have ever gone to war, which has been around since the days of Immanuel Kant in 1795 and quoted by Presidents Clinton and Bush during their terms.

I find holes in both arguments. On the one hand, Tunisia and Egypt are very different from Iraq. Although the respective dictators in the former two countries were surrounded by the usual infrastructure of fear (secret police, records of torture etc) they had no where near the amount of control that Saddam Hussein did, as proven by the short length of time it took to get rid of them. Such was the fear of Saddam in Iraq, and such was the fear under which his people lived, that an attempt at a revolution would have resulted in far more bloodshed and taken far longer. In fact, you can see a bit of this from what is happening in Libya, where Colonel Gaddafi seems far happier to spill the blood of the rebels, and where it also seems some of his popular support is holding, although how much of that is due to money and fear we can't tell.

The point is - The Tunisian and Eygptian armies both refused to protect the regimes by cracking down on their own countrymen (also happening in Libya to some extent - although Ghaddafi's tactic of keeping the army weak to reduce the chance of military coup means this is less relevant). As Bobby Ghosh points out in a recent article in Time magazine "Saddam, on the other hand, could always count on two armed groups whose ONLY reason for being was their loyalty to him: the Republican Guard, and the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam", which had proved themselves in putting down previous revolutions (e.g. the Shi'ites after the Kuwait War). Add that to the Ba'ath party infrastructure, the strength of the secret police and the way he allowed his people no cell phones, satellitte phones and internet access and there just wouldn't have been the apparatus for revolution. Ghosh quotes an Iraqi in 2003, who said ""If there were a million Gandhi's in Iraq, Saddam would send the Republican Guard to kill every one of them, and they would do it without any hesitation."

On the other hand, attempting to democratise Iraq in the name of 'democratic peace theory' was actually a misuse of the term. The problem with Iraq was two fold:

1) They were trying ot democratise a country surrounded by non-democracies - which many theorists argue actually INCREASES the risk of war. In 2004, Erich Weede said,  "Imagine the democratization of a nation located in the middle of a deeply autocratic area. Its democratization would generate a number of autocratic-democratic dyads and thereby increase the risk of war. By contrast, the democratization of a nation surrounded by democracies would certainly be desirable." This explains why democratising Poland (think about it's location) was so much easier than  Uzbekistan once the Cold War ended, and why Iraq has been much harder. There were no motivations for the surrounding autocratic countries to help Iraq's democratisation whereas Poland's neighbours saw a useful new friend and invited it in, politcally, economically and socially.

2) Like Eygpt, Iraq didn't have the infrastructure to become a democracy. No independent judiciary, no experience of a Parliament scrutinising a government's actions and no disinterested agents of social order - so, as Nils Petter Gleditsch, Lene Siljeholm Christiansen & Håvard Hegre pointed out in 2004, trying a forced democratisation of Iraq was only ever going to result in an unstable semi-democracy.

So, whether or not the Arab people want democracy is not the point - and certainly not a pretext for an invasion of a sovereign country, no matter how heinous its' leader is. Some argue now that the Arab people don't necessarily want democracy, but in fact just want a change in leader. We can all celebrate the changes and revolutions taking place if we want to, but I repeat again, we should be careful what we wish for.

In conclusion - Iraq, as I have found on many occasions whilst trying to teach politics - was a special case. There are major doubts the people could have achieved what has been and will be achieved in other Arab countries, but that doesn't make the invasion justified.

You want fair access to universities? - Train the teachers.

So the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), which is supposed to be 'promoting and safeguarding fair access to higher education' according to their website, have come up with yet more ideas that do nothing of the sort. Their new idea is to try and make the top universities offer places to students from poor-performing state schools on much lower grades than others. We're not just talking about AAB instead of AAA, they are talking about Cs. This craziness has to stop. If you want to have fair access to universities you need to train teachers in state schools to do the job they need to do.

1) Train teachers in how to teach  A-levels - there's a reason that 'A' stands for 'Advanced'. There is an emphasis on analysis and evaluation skills that students need to be specifically taught. They are not techniques that can simply be taught through the same spoon-feeding many teachers end up doing for GCSEs. They need to be explained, then practiced again and again by the students to make them repeatable, particularly on the vaguer A2 questions, where students have to work out what parts of their subject 'tool-box' to use. In my experience those who are excellent GCSE teachers may think they don't need to learn more about teaching to teach A-level.

2) Measure A-level results and act on them -  what gets measured gets managed, and given the emphasis on GCSE results to compare schools it is no surprise that management effort and concentration, and therefore teacher effort and concentration, is on GCSEs. This is sometimes at the expense of A-level teaching and sometimes at the expense of close scrutiny of A-level performance. I've seen great GCSE teachers take 3 weeks to mark A-level work if at all because it comes last on their priority list. I have no doubts about the importance of concentrating on GCSE results for the lower ability students to help them get the 5 good GCSEs that can get them a foothold in the workplace. But if you want to be engines of real social mobility, regardless of your political and educational ideology, you cannot get a poor student into the best university without good A-levels. By saying that students from poor performing schools can get in with lower grades you are saying that inadequate A-level teaching and focus is OK because you will socially engineer equality of outcome. Is that really the best long term solution?

3) Train teachers in helping students select A-levels - one of the great things about many comprehensive schools is that they offer, under the same roof, courses that suit all types of student. So, for those students who have a more vocational bent there are BTEC courses, and for those with a very academic focus there are the 'traditional' A-levels such as French, History and Maths. The BTEC courses have been a major factor in widening participation, allowing students to study courses in school that they are interested in and follow them through into higher education. But in the middle of vocational and 'traditional A-level courses' are those which the major red-brick universities, on whose back OFFA is climbing, see as falling too much in the middle. Universities such as Cambridge and LSE publish a list of these courses (which include A-levels in business studies, ICT and media studies for instance) which they do not regard as adequate preparation for universities. Other universities do not publish these lists but may be about to be forced to publish them. Whether or not you agree with this categorisation of A-levels, it exists, and every teacher (or at least every Year 11 tutor and Year Head and those in charge of sixth form) should know them. Never again should student not find out until their UCAS applications are rejected that their choice of A-levels automatically disqualified them from the universities they aspired to.

4) Train teachers in helping with UCAS applications - there is no reason why every teacher involved with sixth formers shouldn't be better trained in what makes a good UCAS application great. Teachers are involved all the time with writing subject references for the pupils, writing the actual UCAS references for the pupils and helping with personal statements. I would imagine that in most state schools they do this without any training. Given UCAS is a competitive process, isn't this letting their students down?

At the end of the day, there are loads of ideas for government intervention to try and solve the problem of inequality of access to universities. But why not try and offer equality of opportunity for students before you settle for equality of outcome. You can only, after all, get equality of outcome by offering inequality of opportunity (Oh, sorry, you go to a good school so your application doesn't get decided on merit).

There are many ways that do not cost a lot of money to solve this problem and I would hope this government don't get drawn into offering a politically expedient but shameful solution purely to assuage their tuition fee guilt.The answer is right in front of them.

Surely the teaching unions wouldn't argue against training their members to help students achieve their aspirations. Wouldn't they?

Egypt - "May God help everyone"

The words of Omar Suleiman, at the end of his terse speech announcing Hosni Mubarak's resignation as Egyptian President, could not be more poignant. I for one am praying for the people of Egypt - that they get what they want and that they are safe. Trouble is - they will probably need divine intervention to come out of this situation with either.

International Relations theory is dominated by the two main schools of thought, realism and liberalism. Both appear to accept that the international political system is anarchical. Realists believe that this anarchy neccessitates a self-help system in which states maximise their security and relative power position. Liberalists, however, believe that the best way to respond to anarchy is for states to co-operate, using international organisations and trade to create a situation where states have too much to lose if they enter conflict with each other.

As part of this, Liberalists believe in cosmopolitanism -  the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality - and a major part of that is democracy. This is why so many in the West have been so excited about what is going on in Egypt. From a military backed dictatorship we see the possibility of democracy emerging and it seems important to everyone that democracy is allowed to flourish.

Here is the problem though, and the best way to introduce how much of a problem it is would be by pointing out that George W Bush was a neo-liberal who also believed democracy and cosmopolitanism was best. Iraq after the 2003 invasion contained none of the institutions you need to grow a democracy from. There was no independent judiciary, no experience nor Parliamentary set-up where government could be held-to-account and scrutinized, and no distinterested forces for social order either (e.g. army and police). Hence the difficulties you see today.

The above three characteristics hold in Egypt too, and therein could lie a problem. We in the West could help them, but will they accept our help? Remember, we have (because of a realist belief that General Mubarak could serve our purposes in the region) supported the dictatorship they have shown to so detest for the last 30 years. So who would they trust?

Realists have spotted a further problem here. It's the "careful what you wish for" problem. If the Egyptian people get a free vote they could well vote in a government hostile to the West. This doesn't necessarily need to be an Islamist party such as the Muslim Brotherhood either, because there are new powers in the region that you don't have to be Islamist to get into bed with. Saudi Arabia threatened to replace every penny of aid that the US were threatening to withdraw last week, because they could. The US know that and the competing parties in what will hopefully be a peaceful upcoming election know that too.

Which is why need to turn to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hitherto banned in Egypt they have gone down the well-trodden line of working very hard on social projects to build up support all over the country - leading to them having something like 25% of the vote in their pockets already. This could grow should they offer a viable governing programme.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood what the Liberalists wanted? We don't know a huge amount about them. Knee-jerk realists argue that Islam is not compatible with democracy so the Muslim Brotherhood would go the same way as Hamas have done in Gaza (throwing opposition politicians off the top of buildings just doesn't count as allowing yourself to be held to account in my book).

BUT Indonesia has a thriving democracy and is a Muslim country, so we can't make generalisations. The Muslim Brotherhood have been making the right noises. Added to that, they will know the world is watching, and may want to show that Islam IS compatible with a fully functioning democracy. We will see. We certainly need to be careful about any interference in the election and need to work with whoever wins.

That leaves Israel. Binyamin Netanyahu started off making noises about putting his country on alert but was told in no uncertain terms by the UK and USA to tone down his rhetoric. The Muslim Brotherhood have promised to have a look at the treaty that Egypt has with Israel. They say they want to put it to a vote of the Egyptian people. They have never been able to vote for it before and for all we know Mubarak was essentially paid to support it instead of believing in it.

My advice to Israel is not to make the same mistake as I feel they have done with Hamas. Not negotiating with a group that don't recognise Israel is the wrong way round, you need to negotiate to persuade them TO recognise Israel. They should offer to work with whatever government is voted in across the Sinai border. The Liberalists in Israel should hold sway over the realists.

Whatever happens - Omar Suleiman is right - may God help everyone.

Forestry Commission sell-off - a Tactical Defeat?

I may be wrong about this, but I have a feeling we may be watching an interesting tactical move by the Coalition government in which they purposely float a policy for consultation that they know will be rejected in order to show they are prepared to listen and change course.

The aim according to the consulation is to transfer ownership of the 18% of land owned by the Forestry Commission to the private sector in order that they are "run more efficiently".

Many opponents fear that some of the most beautiful pieces of British heritage are to be lost to commercial developers who will make money from the change of those forests into, say, residential property. The Government argue that if the consultation is read properly people would realise that ownership would be transferred not to commercial developers but to 'community groups' and the Woodland Trust or the National Trust.

Where almost everyone is baffled (including a clearly unconvinced Damian Green (immigration minister) on Question Time this weeek) is why it is necessary. Announcing the policy, DEFRA argued it was about a 'new approach to ownership and management'. Green repeated this (from his notes) but, despite his responsibility as a Government Minister to support Government policies, he struggled to do so.

It has nothing to do with cutting the deficit.In fact, it could quite possibly cost money to do it. So there seems to be little reason to risk popularity over it.

Which has led me to think that this is an attempt at a minor tactical self-immolation on the part of the Government. Show the population you ARE prepared to listen. Show them a consultation is exactly that. Say that you have listened to the people and you are now prepared not to go ahead with this policy and you can look quite reasonable and decent for a little bit. Doing away with this plan to transfer ownership of 18% of our forests to into private hands won't harm deficit reduction so nobody loses.

Once that's done, full steam ahead with the next controversial policy. If the public or the opposition then say that the Government isn't listening to the will of the British people, the Coalition can point to this meaningless climb-down and say that's not true.

Simples!

Tony Blair and shades of Grey

Unlike most people who have an opinion on Tony Blair's autobiography, I have actually read it.

This is an important distinction that can now be made when discussing Blair, his actions, his decisions, his mistakes and his successes - we do actually have his view on it, his thoughts at the time and his opinions now. The distinction can be made between those who think that judgement can be passed after hearing only the case for the prosecution, and those who are at least prepared to hear the defence before deciding on guilt.

There is nothing I find more frustrating when teaching, thinking or talking about politics and economics than those who see only black or white. There are umpteen shades of grey, and I like to explore them all before coming to a decision on what I think. I meet far too many people who think, say, 'black' on an issue, read only 'black', consider only 'black', and talk only 'black'. They then consider themselves to have formed an opinion. I don't regard them as being capable of doing so properly.

This has two consequences for me. First of all it means that it may take longer for me than for most to form an opinion, because I insist on reading as much as possible of the different views on it before doing so. Second it means I can and will change my mind on an issue, and I don't see this as a weakness.If I read a view or see evidence which causes me to doubt my previous position, I feel it's not a problem to reconsider.

Yet far too many people I have come accross during my life, and especially my career in education, be they students, teachers, parents, friends - have their view of the world and that's it. It may be the same view that their parents have, or that their favourite teacher has, or that their friends expect them to have, or it may be one that they have developed through reading books and newspapers that lean hard to one particular point of view. What I have found in too many people is an unwillingness to consider that there may be another legitimate point of view. They won't read another point of view, they won't even consider any evidence, to the point of wilfully ignoring its existence, just in case they find themselves doubting the position they think they have to have.

I find this intellectually cowardly and immensely annoying, and I must emphasise that I find it happens on both sides of the political spectrum, whether people are talking about the UK economy, UK politics, or the Global economy and international relations (particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict).

I've been trying to work out for a while why this happens. Is it because people are lazy? Yes, some of them. Is it because they are scared, maybe of what their friends or parents or colleagues would think if they were showing signs of developing independent thought? Definitely happens. Is it because they are worried about what they would think of themselves if their convictions wavered? I think so. Is it because they 'know they are right' and everyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong but a wicked person? I have come across too many for my liking who are like this.

The problem this causes is that it weakens the standard of debate around the country, and around the world. It means that we don't develop the understanding of each others' points of view that allows conflict to be resolved through sensible discussion. It means in this country too many people sleepwalk into voting for a party because "we're a Tory family, or I'm Labour and I always will be" instead of thinking about which policies may be better for the country at the time, mainly because they have no idea what other party policies actually are. I've voted in 5 elections in my life, for 3 different parties, depending on what, after much thought, reading and debate, I think would be best for the UK. When I decide what I think would be best, I'm not "right", that's just my opinion at that time.

Even if you think you will never change your view of an issue, there is nothing wrong with becoming as au fait as possible with contrary views, if only to strengthen your ability to argue against them using other tactics than just repeating your point louder and louder every time, or resorting to personal insults because you've run out of sensible points to make. You might, just might, change the view you have. Don't be scared, it's OK to do so.

I started with Tony Blair's autobiography so I'll end with it. I'm fed up to the back teeth of people saying "I'm not going to read it - it's all lies" or "I'm not interested in what that war criminal has to say". He was there, he was responsible for our country's safety, he made a decision, whether you think he is a hero or a war criminal it is important you read his views and the evidence he saw and used to make his decisions.

I've changed my position on the Iraq War many times - with different views on whether it should have happened (I think it's difficult to argue that the management of the aftermath has been anything other than a disaster). I've gone from the gung-ho - "let's kill them there terrorists" -  to the doubting - "why is regime change necessary there but not in places like Zimbabwe where people are dying but there's no oil" -  to "wouldn't the world be a worse place in 2011 if Saddam was still there?" to "really, given he was no danger to us, haven't we just contributed to a lot of muslim deaths? No surprise it's been such an effective recruitment tool".

Throughout my oscillations I relied on newspaper articles, books, films, interviews with those involved - all of these written with one bias or another. Tony Blair's autobiography is just another piece of evidence, which has obviously been carefully written with a view to the fact that he will be answering questions on this issue for the rest of his life. In it he quotes from UN inspector reports, from the UN security council resolutions and from conversations he says he had with different figures around the time.

He will have been just as selective in the information he provides as anyone, but the difference between him and others who have written about Iraq is that it was actually Tony Blair that was there. He made the decision, and we all sit in judgement of that decision, and to judge we need to hear from him.

The same people who talk about civil liberties and people being innocent until proven guilty tend also to be those most likely to decide that they have no need to read what he says. Well, until they do, they are not in a position to judge him or his decision.

As for me, having read extensively in preparing for an A-level Global Politics course and for my general interest in politics, I'm of the opinion that it was a war entered into for honest motives, but using seemingly dishonest means to persuade others of the case.

I'll read the Chilcot report too, and so will people who supported the Iraq War, no doubt, should the Chilcot report come out in favour of the decision to go to War. Should the Chilcot report come out against the decision, I'm sure those also against the War will read it. Sad that it won't be read by everyone whatever it says. But true.