Hoary old chestnuts

That Eric Pickles has got my dander right up again.

Not content with telling councils how to collect the bins or where to put railings, Mr Pickles is now moving on to banning local authorities from including non-Christian elements in any celebrations they organise in winter.

Yes, that's right, not just banning local councils from failing to include the Christian religion; but banning councils from organising winter celebrations which include anything other than Christianity. Apparently, local councils should not be free to decide to run events called Winterval, or Winter Lights, and must include 'Christmas lights, Christmas trees, carol services and nativity scenes'. Who died and made Mr Pickles supreme ruler of the universe?

Mr Pickles is Communities Secretary in the coalition government. That's the department responsible for local government. He is also a Conservative. I had thought that one of the things Conservatives shared with Liberal Democrats was some respect for local government, local decision-making and local determination. Apparently not. Has Mr Pickles really got nothing better to do than to micro-manage the bin collections, street furniture and Christmas celebrations of every council in the country?

The coalition government will shortly be steering a Localism Bill through parliament, aimed at reducing central control of local councils so that they can be freed up to get on with working for their residents rather than for civil servants in Whitehall. Does Mr Pickles have even a glimmer of understanding of the local freedom and local choice his government wants to promote? And if not, is he really the right person to hold the post he currently has? Or is he, as I suspect, more interested in grabbing cheap tabloid headlines and whooping up the readership of the Daily Mail into a frenzy, than in liberating local councils to represent local people?

Why should a religion to which only half the population of the UK adheres be given a monopoly by the Government on holding celebrations in winter? It's not even as if Jesus was born in December anyway; the church took the date over from a much older pagan tradition. And to be honest, how much is there in our Christmas celebrations that's religious anyway? There's nothing particularly Christian about tinsel, mince pies, snowmen, or tacky wrapping paper. Is Mr Pickles going to ban those too?

The urban legend of Birmingham Council's Winterval in the 1990s has been endlessly recycled by people whose favourite start to the day is harrumphing into their Daily Express about how Britain's gone downhill since the 1930s, to show that we're all going to hell in a handcart. It's supposed to have been part of a politically correct plot to obliterate Christmas. The fact that during Winterval "there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor sent a Christmas card with a traditional Christmas scene wishing everyone a Merry Christmas" is of course set to one side as it rather inconveniently gets in the way of a good story.

Under Mr Pickles, it appears that instead of local government run from the centre by politically correct box-tickers, we're going to see local government run from the centre by ignorant populists. I'm really not sure which is worse.

But then, what more seasonal at Christmas than another load of hoary old chestnuts from Mr Eric Pickles?

Royal wedding

It shows you're a political anorak when you hear that Will and Kate's wedding is going to be on 29 April, and your first thought is "What will that do to the timetable for the council elections?"!

Ralph's story

Project management

Surveying my desk this morning, I was reminded of this wonderful observation (source unknown).

“The typical project goes through 6 phases:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honour to the Non-Participants”.

So this is what we have come to, is it?

Airport security for my short trip to Jersey last weekend was intrusive enough, but I found this quite appalling. It appears we may already have let the terrorists win.

Absolute travesty

A Crown Court hearing at Doncaster has today dismissed the appeal of Paul Chambers against his conviction for 'menace'. In a moment of frustration when his flight was held up in January, he had posted on Twitter a message saying "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Since his arrest, he has been convicted, fined and lost his job as a financial manager. The costs of this ludicrous and disproportionate case have escalated with his latest bid to have the verdict overturned. The option of taking the case to the High Court will increase his costs still further. You can donate here. I just have.

Not your usual day at the office

I'd booked a meeting with my line manager at Party HQ for 3pm yesterday, but by the time I'd got to London KX at 2:30pm the building was effectively in lockdown mode. When I got to Westminster, I walked through the demonstration as far as the Abbey, then round to Great Smith Street, where I got a message (BlackBerry battery almost dead by this point) saying my meeting had been moved, so I cut through to the Abingdon Street car park and back through the demo again.

Between the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey it all looked fairly good natured and peaceful, so after my meeting, and with no BlackBerry battery left for calls or texts or email, I headed back to London KX and Ely, blissfully unaware of what was going on at Millbank, had a quick coffee in Tesco's while waiting for the 1855 bus, and got to Sutton just before 7:30pm. I got off the bus in the High Street and - as I'd told the family I would - headed straight for my book group (reading Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford this month, since you ask) and got back home by about 9:30pm.

Meanwhile, the family, having forgotten what I said about my plans, had been worried sick seeing all this kicking off on the television, and assumed that because I had not been in touch I was at the least incarcerated in Party HQ, if not injured or worse. They'd almost got to the point of ringing the hospitals and the morgue when I arrived home at about 9:30pm, to my total bewilderment at the reception I received.

Well said

Mike Smithson from Political Betting on Labour's response to the Woolas case.

Let's Do It

I can't imagine I'll see anything funnier this year (or possibly next, too) than Ann Widdecombe and Anton du Beke's Charleston last night on Strictly Come Dancing. Anton's choreography and performance were utterly brilliant, and credit to the old bird for gamely going along with it and giving it her best. There's a serious danger that I might actually end up liking her by the end of the series, and that would never do, would it?

Co-educational skateboarding in Afghanistan

I don't know whether this is a cause for optimism or sadness, but it's very moving nonetheless.

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Ask a silly question

The announcement that the cap on university tuition fees is set to rise to £9,000 a year is not exactly unexpected, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable.

There'll be a lot of synthetic rage from Labour, of course. That's Labour, who introduced the current system of tuition fees; who introduced top-up fees when they said they had legislated to prevent them; and who commissioned the Browne report which is the basis of today's announcement. I suspect they're rather hoping we'll forget that.

But just because your opponents are posturing like Vogue models doesn't automatically mean you have right on your side.

You can dress it up how you like. You can say it's not fees because it's paid back afterwards. You can say it's a graduate 'contribution' not a graduate 'tax', as if that somehow makes things better. You can argue that some students from poor backgrounds will get help.

But at the end of the day, many Liberal Democrat MPs signed a promise that they would not vote to raise fees in this parliament. And if they did that, they need to stick to it.

Of course, the problem with the Browne report into higher education funding is that if you ask the wrong question you get the wrong answer. Where we should have started was with a searching examination of what our current university system is there for - and only when we were clear about that should we have moved on to how to pay for it.

I've always been of the opinion that Tony Blair's ambition of 50 per cent of young people going to university was frankly bonkers. It's the sort of thing that's made it possible to get a degree in Casino Operations Management from the University of Blackpool (yes, really), or a BA in Applied Golf Management Studies from the University of Birmingham. I suppose at least with the first option there's a chance you might recoup some of your student debt at the blackjack tables.

As more and more young people are encouraged onto more and more expensive courses, the intellectual currency is inflated and the value of the degree (even assuming it's a sensible subject) goes down and down. Already burdened with the prospect of major debts on graduation, the next generation are going to find it difficult if not impossible to own their own home, or afford to start a family while they are still young.

Taking three years from 18 to 21 to complete a degree while living away from home is an expensive option, whoever provides it. Perhaps we should be looking at more flexible solutions, including OU style distance learning (I did my MBA that way ten years ago), or periods of study interrupted by periods of employment to save up for the next module.

Colleges of further education (declares interest - my husband is Deputy Principal of an FE College) have their part to play, working in partnerships or franchise arrangements with universities to deliver higher education modules locally. Perhaps some subjects really aren't suitable for university courses, and could be taught in other ways (surely we managed to turn out croupiers and groundsmen before they became degree-level subjects?).

And instead of shovelling more and more 18 year olds onto higher education courses of dubious merit or even ultimate financial worth, what about more investment in good solid locally delivered vocational education and training relevant to the needs of the local economy?

But if burdening the next generation with mortgage-style debts is the answer, Browne must have been asked a very silly question indeed.

Votes for prisoners

Not before time, the government is finally to abide by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, and lift the blanket ban on votes for prisoners that has been in place since 1870.

The Electoral Commission has already been thinking about the practical details of implementing this decision, which won't necessarily be straightforward. But I really don't have a problem with the principle behind the Court's ruling.

Imprisonment isn't just about punishment. It's about three things: keeping the public safe from people like serial killers and rapists who are serious dangers to life and limb; depriving people of their liberty as a penalty for the wrong they have done; and preparing them to join society again when they have completed their time in jail. Too often, it seems to me, we concentrate on the second of these at the expense of the third.

And deprivation of liberty doesn't mean denial of all rights. I did once meet a cab driver who was keen to persuade me of the merits of his view that prisoners should be kept merely as living stores of spare parts for surgery, but I suspect that's a bridge too far for most people.

The question, therefore, is not whether prisoners have rights, but which rights they should have, and which prisoners should be entitled to the right to cast a vote in elections, and which should not.

28 other European countries give prisoners the right to vote, as do two Australian and two American states. I'm not aware that the Dante's Inferno being foretold by those who oppose votes for prisoners has actually come to pass in those countries. The practicalities will naturally take some working out, but the principle is the right one.

That Was The Week That Was ...

Well, I've not often had weeks like last week, and I hope to goodness I don't have one again. That was the week in which:

• I worked ten times my contracted hours to make sure the party's East of England regional conference last Saturday was a success
• My kitchen was taken over for a week by my beloved offspring's (still unfinished) craft project - every available surface covered in painted planks and no room to make a sandwich or iron a shirt
  
• Every white blouse I own was ruined in an unfortunate accident involving burgundy-coloured gloss paint from above project, white spirit, and a U-bend in the utility room backing up into the washing machine
• We decided to get away from it all for a few days, and on Tuesday evening booked a five-day holiday in Marrakech starting this Saturday; only for OFSTED to announce on Friday morning that in three weeks' time it is inspecting husband's college where he's the College's OFSTED nominee, so we had to cancel our (non refundable) trip
• Husband's credit card was blocked, as it was on a list of cards at risk of having been cloned
• One of our dogs developed a very serious case of gastro-enteritis, and was admitted very deyhdrated and with epic D&V to the vet's on Sunday, where she's still on a drip
• Son's girlfriend's grandfather was admitted into intensive care on Friday, and passed away on Saturday.
  

Still, at least the weather was nice ...