Uganda

Off to Africa next week and have been reading up on the country - very interesting - do you know a referendum abolished political parties in the 80s!

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Civilisation IV

Have been playing this classic strategy game over the Christmas break, particularly a rhyse and fall mod which mimics real history! First time I played Russia starting in the 1600s - shame I thought reckless expansion across the continent was what I was supposed to do! I also managed to bring the first world war forward by about 100 years!

This time I'm in touching distance of finishing a whole 500 year epic as the Netherlands - with only one city in Europe I thought I was screwed so I ventured out tocolonise south Africa, Australia and south America - now I'm winning! And almost finished!

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EU-US Relations

Just Reagan excellent memo about how institutional relations can be strengthened by Obama and the EU to create much greater harmony between the two richest greatest powers in the history of mankind - Europe and the US! I will post the link later.

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Excited!

Meeting a very important person tonight!

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How Britain should tackle its recession

How Britain should tackle its recession

Spending our way out will not work. Targeted tax cuts would help but they must be properly funded. Future generations must not be burdened, writes George Osborne

 

Future generations of rich people he means......  I'm sure I saw a report the other week that the generation of people who are proving the most consistently out-of-the-workforce are those who lost their jobs permanently in the last recession.

 

That's quite a powerful thought - that recessions mark their scar on our economy by marking those communities and individuals caught up in it permanently.

 

I'm no fool - I know there will be downturns as surely as there will be upturns, but any evidence that people are deterministically marked by their experience surely runs counter to our radical idealism that everyone needs an opportunity to fulfil their potential.

 

If that is so - then HOW we deal with a recession is not as simple as cutting taxes so that rich people can get back on with the job of making money - instead it becomes a complex task of supporting individuals, investing in communities and education and steaming ahead with plans for infrastructure which will see us ready to work again at the earliest opportunity.

 

SH

RE:

I think Cameron’s speech was a failure and the reason is because I actually like him and wish he was in the Labour Party. Normally when I hear him speak I acknowledge how good he is and have found myself agreeing with him.....

Today – nothing – I was bored, and disagreed with almost everything he said.

Now, if I’m typical new labour, and his appeal to me represented his move to the middle ground, then today represents his move back to the Tory fold – a move I never expected him to make...

As Andrew Neil put it – “That was a Daily Mail Speech”

SH

RE: Cameron

If you’re watching the daily politics show – Nick Robinson has just talked about what’s in Cameron’s speech and he could be screwed.

 

Apparently just like Tony Blair showing that he changed Labour into New Labour he can change the country too, David Cameron is going to use the same argument – he can’t prove he would be a good PM, but look at what he’s done as opposition leader.

 

Except – for me, the conservative party has not changed – there was no clause four moment – they’re still unchanged – his record isn’t as great as they think it is

 

Cameron

I’m watching BBC Parliament right now, and they are showing Cameron’s emergency speech from yesterday and a couple of thoughts occur to me.

 

What was going on inside Team Cameron that made them think they had to do this.  Is he wanting to signal the graveness of the situation and his mature responsible attitude to it (read “Dunkirk spirit”)?

 

Or was he aware that the momentum was building back to Labour and he needed to put himself in front of it?

 

Maybe he was worried that none of his front bench would be capable of getting headlines from the conference yesterday and he was the only one capable of doing that?  That’s got to be a worrying thought.

 

Finally, he’s a decent chap and thought the honourable thing to do for the markets was signal how there will be no political wrangling in this country?  I believe this one is true, but so are the others.

 

He stood up and backed-up George Osborne, and that can only be because Osborne has taken a knock after being quoted in Gordon Brown’s speech.

 

In other words, he’s become the only national heavy hitter in his team, he knows it and it’s going to start taking its toll on him.

 

And finally – normally when I see Cameron do something unusual like this, I think “clever boy” for grabbing the initiative and swinging it his way.  Yesterday he was desperately trying to bring the initiative back to him and he looked weaker for it.

 

How good does it feel that for the first time in ages, Labour is setting the direction?

 

Dominic Grieve is speaking now.... good grief.....

Tories and their 'A' divide

Tories are attacking the disparity between rich and poor areas in the numbers of students who go on to study A Levels today.

 

It's a bit flawed and their response is a bit empty really: "Giving parents more control will help to improve opportunities for children, particularly those from deprived backgrounds" - erm, not really.  The reality is kids in Knowsley and the West Midlands don't do A levels for all number of reasons, but probably not because their parents aren't involved in the running of the local school....

 

I could be really cruel and say that the Tories would never know this because none of them have come from poor areas......

 

BUT - I want to congratulate them on one thing.  Every year we see a repeat of the same old tired formula - record results and the Tories criticise them and complain about falling standards, thus on what should be a day of joy for students and parents they bring clouds of doom - no clear winners with that strategy.

 

Instead Tories are trying this new attack line, which I think touches on a much more pertinent question and avoids running down the thousands of young people who slogged their guts out for months watching Wimbledon, sleeping in and doing six months of revision in the last two days.  well, that's how I did my A levels....

 

SH

unreconstructed Tories

I'm going to join in the clamour of people complaining about Policy Exchange's latest pamphlet which suggests we should give up on towns in the north, build additional housing in London, Oxford and Cambridge and basically manage the decline of towns like Liverpool.

 

For me, it is a real sign of how unreconstructed the Tories are - no sense of what regeneration is for, and an unswerving belief that the market can fix all ills - never mind that throughout the eighties, there was never any private investment in the north and it's only since 1997 that a new public investment paradigm has allowed the creation of markets up north which, "fuck me", nobody knew existed.....

 

SH