In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

—fold—

I start with some of the themes Sunny suggests, and add in some more. This is by no means exhaustive; just some things that interest me.

London

Firstly, I don’t think anyone who can’t beat Ken for the Labour nomination will be able to beat Boris. However, I’m not convinced that Boris will run again; it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion and it seems the main reason he would stay on is that there is no obvious heir apparent from the Conservative ranks, certainly not with with any significant profile. If the competition is between Ken and Oona, I would favour the former on the basis that he stands a better chance of building a broad coalition that goes beyond the Labour party. We will need to develop a narrative on the Conservative administration of City Hall, and I would suggest that it should focus on a lack of big ideas and not making the case for London in Whitehall and Westminster. Boris has also had a few bizarre flights of fancy – Boris Island Airport and the Boris Bus (especially its cost) – while scrapping ideas like Cross-River Tram that would have been beneficial to London.

When it comes to the Mayoralty, I have no idea who the LibDem candidate will be (although Susan Kramer is available). The choice of LibDem candidate may well indicate how London LibDems feel about the ménage à deux and whether they feel the Orange Book tendency has moved their party in a way with which they feel uncomfortable. We will have to determine whether attacking the LibDems for their coalition with the Tories is sensible, responsible and effective, and that may well depend on who the candidate is.

I am plotting an idea to set up a London political podcast. I will do a separate post on that as and when I have settled my ideas, but some of the ideas that have come out on that are important. We will need to look to the growth in Labour councillors and councils to be the starting point of a fightback against the Tories in the capital.

Wales and Scotland

We must avoid making this project too London-centric. Yes, it is being hosted in the capital and London has many millions, but we should look at the other devolved areas in Britain: Wales and Scotland. All three could learn from each other, but they may be particularly useful in working out a tack to take with regard to the LibDems. We also have to work out how we strengthen the progressive position at Holyrood and the Senedd, given that the former has extensive powers and it seems likely that the latter will be gaining similar powers. Alternate centres of power in Wales, Scotland and London may well be able to slow at least some of the damage I fear the current administration will bring.

The West Lothian Question

I think that progressives need to seriously consider the idea of English regions.

There is a lot of talk about devolution, giving power to the people and so on. We need to work out what that actually means. If we regionalised, we would see alternate centres of power. To give them meaning, they need powers substantial powers and we should consider the inclusion of policing, transport, housing, spatial planning and, potentially, health. I feel that counties are too small and too easily controlled by the centre to be able to effectively devise and implement policy.

Regions would mean the main parties would have to have some sort of meaningful regional structure. Much as I hope the regions would be able to stand up to Whitehall, I hope that meaningful regional structures within political parties would weaken the wearisome control from the centre to which so many people object.

I would hope that this would lead to the economic weight of the country shifting away from London and away from financial services and giving parts of England outside of London the opportunity to be something more than vassals.

We have spoken much about the sad state of local media. I merely raise the question as to whether regions would cause a re-alignment of newspapers, radio and television so that there could be meaningful coverage and scrutiny of politics and competition between outlets.

I reject the idea of and English Parliament as an answer to the West Lothian question out of hand (a Parliament for forty-eight million people isn’t much less unitary than one for sixty-one million).

We should emphasise that this would not create an extra layer of bureaucracy. There are already Government Offices for all the English regions along with Regional Development Agencies and Local Authorities Leaders’ Boards. This is about democratising those structures.

Ultimately, I think we have seen a flourishing of the London, Welsh and Scottish blogospheres that is indicative of better relations between citizen and state in those three areas and I want the same for the rest of England. This will mean addressing some of the mistakes and lack of ambition from the failed north-east referendum.

The LibDems

We should pursue a strategy of splitting the Social Democrats from the Liberals/Orange Book in the Lib Dems with a view to one side joining the Tories and the other Labour. We should make it clear that you cannot go into coalition with the Tories and call yourself progressive.

I think we should advocate that the cuts are being implemented too soon; that if they are going to do a zero-budget process, it has to be zero-budget across everything¹; that these cuts are also the political desire of the Orange Book and Tories; ensure efficiency where they are made; oppose the most egregiously unfair cuts; maintain support for industry.

That having been said, we need to work out how we can use social democratically-minded LibDems to control the excesses of the coalition.

Others

• Low pay. We must continue to support the living wage, consider the benefits of a citizen’s wage and ensure that the minimum wage is increased appropriately.
• Europe. As people will know, I am pretty pro-European. However, we should explicitly say that there should be no further integration for a couple of Parliaments to give the Lisbon changes and expansion time to bed down. We could expand to the relatively small countries of the Balkans when the time is right, but we will need to be in an economically strong position to welcome Turkey to the EU when the time is right. It should be made clear that member state of the EU have the right to nationalise, municipalise and deprivatise and that the principles of the free market should not prevent this (although I would retain the state aid prohibitions as they are).
• Co-ops. It strikes me that this is a movement to which we should reach out; surprisingly large, but often very local and potentially powerful for community organising.
• The BNP. We need to consider what’s going to happen next with the BNP and their fellow-travellers. I welcome their thorough trouncing at the recent election and I look forward to Richard Barnbrook being invited to pursue interests of his own choosing by the good people of Barking and Dagenham. However, I have three concerns. One is that we will become complacent about the BNP et al. and that they will be able to regroup. We must keep the pressure on them. A second is that the BNP’s problems may lead to more support for the EDL; while they are clearly not going to get anywhere electorally, they are violent. Thirdly, we need to explicitly oppose and combat the rising populist nationalism that we see in UKIP, sections of the Conservative party, sections of the media and, frankly, amongst people who should know better.
• Women’s rights. We must defend the right to abortion. I feel the likelihood of an attempt at restricting it in this Parliament is high and I feel there is a good chance it could be successful. I feel that we should also be looking at Norwegian-style rules for gender-balance in the boardroom. We should discuss the sex industry and the objectification of women.
• Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t want to belabour these subjects. For the moment, I want to set aside whether they were a good idea or not, and just look at the conduct of the campaigns. It is clear that there were mistakes and shortcomings. We should look at what they were, how they happened and how we stop them happening again. In order to do it properly, we must be able to do it without always going back to the morality of the conflicts. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider the morality of the conflicts; I’m saying it’s not the only issue.

I’ll probably do something on electoral reform in the coming days.

xD.

1 – Including the NHS and Trident. I am prepared to at least consider that (for instance) industrial promotion is currently more important than (for instance) fertility treatment. I am not saying that is the case, but that we should be prepared to consider it.

It’s quite interesting to see everything being co-ordinated – fire, police, ambulance, water board, gas board, Hackney council and the assessors all there, knowing what they’re doing and with a command centre set up to handle it all.

It seems the fire started in the Prophet, a restaurant in buildings on the corner of Tabernacle Street and Worship Street. It’s near the office, so I wandered down (fearless citizen journalist that I am!) to take a couple of pictures. The smoke doesn’t seem to be going upwards so much as along Worship Street, but it’s really quite dense; you couldn’t see the platform the firefighters were using when the smoke blew in front of it.

Click on any of the images for a larger version.

View Larger Map

xD.

Firstly, Gilligan says

Yet this would be no ordinary service. It would never be stopped by traffic or points failures.

That may be true, and it is some time since the Thames froze. However, the Thames is a tidal river. A very tidal river, it moves at speeds of up to 8 knots. Moreover, the tides do not occur at the same time every day. Altogether, this means that the Thames is fundamentally unreliable for timekeeping purposes as, from the point of view of the commuter, you have to leave at a different time each day to get to work on time and may well have a variable amount of hanging around (or extra work). If the Thames Barrier, in this or a future incarnation, is permanently raised and the Thames is no longer tidal, this could change.

Secondly, Mr Gilligan makes a somewhat simplistic analysis of cost/benefit for buses and tube extensions. Certainly, the numbers might be, prima facie, better for the river but it does not consider at all how well served riverside locations already are against the relative lack of provision in other areas.

Thirdly, Mr Gilligan, when not continuing his obsession with standing outside on moving vehicles ¹ makes an interesting admission:

Boris has sometimes been accused of lacking a big idea, an equivalent of Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge — something people can point to and say: “He did that.” I think a new TfL riverbus could be it.

I was rather under the impression that the New Routemaster was meant to be the big idea. Maybe Gilligan has gone off it, or realised that it’s either not going to happen or, if it does, will be suboptimal value for money.

I would add Mr Gilligan needs to be a bit more careful about his sweeping statements.

You only have to try it once to know why. In the morning rush hour, the traffic in Greenwich inches round the one-way system. The trains are slow and crowded. On the river, charging upstream at 30 knots (35mph), we are the fastest thing in a five-mile radius.

AsPolitical Animal and Boris Watch point out on Twitter, within five miles of Greenwich are trains (60mph), the Jubilee line (50mph), High Speed One (140mph) and City Airport (takeoff speed for a STOL aircraft ~160mph, although they don’t make many stops in London) (here, here and here).

xD.

1 – “On the open rear deck of the Cyclone Clipper, two newcomers to the service are grinning to themselves at the sudden surge of speed, and the glorious, if rapidly receding, views of the Royal Naval College. Inside, the more seasoned passengers have settled down with their laptops. There is a small buffet, and on the way home you can even get a massage.” I wonder how many people would be standing outside in today’s inclement weather.

Glad to see that Griffin has such commitment to his constituents that he is already looking for another job, and in another part of the country, and that he has such confidence in Barnbrook that he won’t let him run. One wonders if the BNP are doubtful about being able to win a by-election for the GLA, or have realised that Barnbrook is a pillock.

Sadly, I don’t think any of these are true. Nick Griffin is the BNP member with the highest (and probably least bad) national profile. He is logically their best candidate for Parliament, and presumably Barking is the place where they stand the best chance of winning.

This is, though, a case of putting a lot of their eggs in one basket; it will be hard for Griffin to run again in the NE (or anywhere else) as his track record is one of running away. There already seem to be some fractures around the BNP; a failure to achieve representation at Westminster at this point in time might make life very difficult for Griffin. And we can point out that he’s likely to sod off somewhere else when it suits him.

That happens to be about the cost of scrapping the WEZ.

Before Boris started axing them, there were 396 bendy buses in London. They are being replaced at a cost of £250,000 each, giving a grand total of £99,000,000.

And that’s before we allow for the £13m per year extra London TravelWatch thinks it will cost on those routes.

I think Simon Fletcher might agree with me.

xD.

Whether or not the Guardian read, let alone paid any attention to, my thoughts, I am very glad to see this:

Guardian Local planned to launch next year
Starting with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, guardian.co.uk is planning to launch a local news project in a small number of locations. At the moment guardian.co.uk is looking for bloggers – with journalistic qualifications “desirable” – to help cover community news, and report on local developments. The project will emphasise local political decision-making, and is scheduled to go live next year.

“Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010,” said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

Read more over at the Guardian. Now, I think there is a difference between the ‘local’ and ‘hyperlocal’ and the coverage I think London – the fifth home nation – needs. However, it takes the same line of wanting to build and support citizen journalism. London also needs better local coverage and, if coverage at the local level in London can be improved, we might be able to do the same for London level coverage.

xD.

This is not good. We will shortly only have two newspapers in London. Television and radio news for London is largely a joke, with the possible exception of the City Hall slot on BBC1′s Politics Show.

London has a population on the order of seven and one-half million. If it were an independent country, it would rank ninety-second out of two hundred odd, behind Burundi and ahead of Switzerland. In terms of GDP per capita, it would be third, behind Luxembourg and ahead of Norway. It is a population, financial and cultural centre. In other words, London matters. From the point of view of the UK, London really matters. What happens within London matters. The politics and governance of London matter.

However, there is no London polity. It is starting to develop on the internet, but the lack of coverage of London politics in traditional outlets (including, I would add, the Standard) suggests that the desire for coverage of the politics of the city is not yet there (or at least not yet recognised). Of course, it’s hard to see to what extent that desire exists, or to generate it, without that coverage. We find ourselves in a catch-22. I think that greater awareness of the existence of London as an important political entity below the national, UK level would be a good thing, for the reasons I describe above. Perhaps the development of some sort of London national sentiment would help, although that has historically required the generation of an imagined community through what Benedict Anderson refers to as print capitalism. Given that we need better and wider supervision of London governance in order to make the same London governance work, I think we have to use the inelegant principle that when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow; perhaps giving powers to London similar to those Wales had after the first devolution might be a start.

xD.

UPDATE 1550 – I’d like to flag up a couple of posts relating to the London Evening Standard by the Tory Troll and 853.

As Adam ‘Tory Troll’ Bienkov reports, the decision was handed down by a joint standards committee between the GLA and B&D council. Barnbrook put up a mendacious video saying there had been three stabbings in three weeks in LB Barking & Dagenham when there hadn’t and didn’t take the video down when its falsehood was pointed out to him by the police.

Barnbrook and the BNP try to capitalise on knife crime by making facts up and creating London’s Mothers Against Knives – a BNP front group that just coincidentally had a logo very similar to the actual Mothers Against Knives.

Otherwise, the remedial measures I think are rather appropriate. From the GLA, they are formal censure; a requirement to apologise on the GLA website and on his personal blog; to undergo training on ethics and standards in public life. From B&D, they are suspension for one calendar month without pay; requirement to apologise; failure to apologise leading to indefinite suspension. I’m sure that the press and blogs will cover it. The Evening Standard will, with a bit of luck, splash it on its posters.

I simply that is wrong in principle for anyone to be able to cashier an elected representative other than the electorate. Moreover, it makes it far too easy for aspersions to be cast on spurious grounds – and yes, I am thinking back to Ken’s mayoralty here. If an elected representative has to be removed, let there be a recall election, not a second-guessing of democracy.

xD.

There is no darkness but ignorance

Which strikes me as a pretty good motto.

On the plinth is the legend

This enclosure was purchased, laid out and decorated as a garden by Albert Grant Esqre M.P. and conveyed by him on the 2nd July 1874 to the Metropolitan Board of Works to be preserved for ever for the free use and enjoyment of the public.

From Wikipedia:

In 1848, Leicester Square was the subject of the land-law case of Tulk v. Moxhay. The plot’s previous owner had agreed upon a covenant not to erect buildings. However, the law would not allow purchasers who were not ‘privy’ to the initial contract to be bound by subsequent promises. The judge, Lord Cottenham, decided that future owners could be bound by promises to abstain from activity. Otherwise, a buyer could sell land to himself to undermine an initial promise. Arguments continued about the fate of the garden, with Tulk’s heirs erecting a wooden hoarding around the property in 1873. Finally, in 1874 the flamboyant Albert Grant (1830–1899) purchased the outstanding freeholds and donated the garden to the Metropolitan Board of Works, laying out a garden at his own expense. The title passed to the succeeding public bodies and is now in the ownership of the City of Westminster.

Apologies for the quality of the photos – camera phone!

xD.

De Gray set out a paradigm whereby metabolism causes damage, and damage then causes pathology. In this model, gerontology attempts to intervene in the first step – problematic because of the great complexity of metabolism – and geriatrics intervenes in the first step – problematic because damage has already caused pathology and is at best palliative. He sought to reverse accumulated damage before it became pathological.

Initially, this would allow for an extension of the useful human lifespan by perhaps thirty years. Once that first step was accomplished, refinements in technique would allow, excepting being hit by cars and so on, to continue for arbitrarily long periods, through the possibility of increasingly eficacious treatments before the eficacy of repeated cycles of previous treatments lost eficacy.

You can get a flavour of his speech from this TED talk.

Broadly, I would raise three problems with de Gray’s plan.

Firstly, the scientific. I can’t assess his science, but a number of people there raised fairly substantial problems with his paradigm and with the conclusions he drew from it. That is probably one for the peer reviewed papers.

Secondly, the technological. The very long, four-figure lifespans suggested depended not just on continuing improvements in the (speculative) set of technologies, bit that those improvements happened faster than people died because of a loss of eficacy as described above. The examples de Gray cited in support of his position were the motor car and the aeroplane. Unfortunately for him, the equally plausible alternative of the jet pack was raised: theoretically possible, desirable even, and can be turned into a prototype that can fly for half a minute, but can’t be turned into a production model (because the amount of fuel that can be loaded onto a human is finite and less than what’s needed for useful flight). Another example would be power from nuclear fusion, which has been ten years away for fifty years. It is a prediction based on little more than fiat.

Thirdly, the socio-economic. In answer to a question from yours truly about the cost of the treatments, de Gray was quick to observe, thousand-year life spans would have major effects on world society, meaning that we could throw much of traditional economics out of the window. If we do that, though, we throw political economy out of the window. Thus, de Gray’s assetion that the state would pay for its citizens to have these treatments is distinctly problematic as the state, as we know it, would not necessarily sill exist. Even if we accept that the state still exists in a recognisable form and that it makes economic sense for states to pay for these treatments, it does not follow that they will pay for them. As de Gray thought equality was a major issue, it’s worth going into at slightly greater length.

The basis from which de Grey works is that regenerative medicine is medicine like any other, albeit with remarkable effects. As we know from the current debate in the US, there are plenty of people who see taking money from them to pay for the healthcare of others as morally wrong. There are also plenty of countries that would like to provide comprehensive healthcare, but cannot afford it. De Grey provided no explanation of how we would roll out this treatment when we cannot at the moment give people with economic potential very cheap drugs – say, hydration salts for diarrhea – that would have similar economic benefits to the de Grey treatments but at vastly lower costs per dose. From the point of view of the state, it doesn’t matter whether a day’s work is done by a thirty-year-old or a three hundred and thirty-year-old. Given that states do not have to provide pensions or old age healthcare now, and that the mechanism by which they will be convinced to do so is absent, it seems as reasonable to conclude that arbitrarily long lives will remain the province of the wealthy as to conclude that we will enter this brave, new world. A nightmare scenario would be lots of people having access to these treatments but not making the necessary lifestyle changes. If we kept dropping kids every twenty or thirty years over a thousand year life, we’d very quickly overpopulate the planet.

I hope that de Gray’s science is more thorough than his statecraft.

Of course, if de Gray is right, I look forward to seeing you at the February 2317 meeting of Sceptics in the Pub London – assuming someone hasn’t already booked the room.

xD.