Shot by both sidesI’m speaking at London Vegans on Wednesday night, at a venue in Holborn. More details on their website www.londonvegans.org.uk
Here’s the menu… www.shambhus.co.uk/lv If the prospect of hearing me speak about all things relevant to the political vegan doesn’t tempt you, I suspect the menu will! Tofu tikka massala and mint choc chip cheesecake. Or does the lemon and coconut cheesecake sound better?
Every day someone lands on my blog searching for Paul Simonon. Most days someone lands on here searching for “Paul Simonon handsome”. I’ve come to the conclusion the latter must be him, just checking the internet to make sure people are still lusting after him.
Another frequent search is “cos fashion”, ie people looking for the clothes store. That’s because I once quoted a line from “Do Nothing” by the Specials, “cos fashion is, my only culture”. I’ve just checked with the very helpful and somewhat addictive @GuardianStyle on Twitter to see whether it should be ’cause, coz or cos – the answer is, ‘cos. If you’re a pedant, there’s endless fun to be had here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide.
If you like seeing pictures of Paul Simonon you could always look at http://www.disneyrollergirl.net/paul-simonon-hot-hats/
The second of our Opposition Day debates today has just started, with Rachel Reeves speaking. I’ll be in the Chamber for some of it but I’m not planning on speaking. There is already a 6 minute time limit on backbench speeches, which will no doubt be cut further towards the end of the day. As someone who speaks quite a lot in parliament, I tend to be quite far down the pecking order to be called. I was last but one of the Labour speakers in the debate we’ve just had, and the only Labour speaker who was called after me was someone who’d missed part of the debate because he’d been taking part in an SI committee. So I probably wouldn’t get called in this debate which is already “full up”. My time is better spent in the office getting on with emails… but I will pop down for some of it later.
The motion is:
“That this House notes with concern that unemployment has risen to its highest level for 17 years, youth unemployment has now reached a record level of 1.04 million and the number of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for over six months has more than doubled since January 2011; believes that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast has choked off the recovery and pushed up unemployment and that it was a mistake for the Government to abolish the Future Jobs Fund; recognises that rising unemployment and the Government’s failing welfare to work programmes are leading to a higher benefits bill, which is contributing to the £158 billion of additional borrowing announced in the Autumn Statement; further notes reports that multi-million pound bank bonuses are set to be paid out this year, even in banks where the share price has almost halved; and in view of the most recent figures on unemployment, calls on the Government to take urgent action to kickstart the economy to promote jobs and growth and to reconsider its refusal to introduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses this year, in addition to the permanent bank levy, to fund 100,000 jobs for young people.”
An amusing moment just now in the food poverty debate. Laura Sandys, the Tory MP for Thanet, gave a plug for her new “Ugly Food” campaign, which encourages the sale and consumption of wonky carrots, ugly spuds, deformed tomatoes. Its slogan, she declared, is “Tasty but Imperfect. Just Like You.”
In the Commons however, “you” always means whoever’s in the Speaker’s Chair. Dawn Primarolo gave Laura her best Mary Poppins “practically perfect in every way” look… Oops.
More of the usual nonsense from the Tory benches at DWP questions today on health and safety legislation. There were three planted questions on the Order Paper, all asking what steps the Secretary of State has taken to reduce the level of health and safety regulation affecting business. This is despite the welcome he gave in November to the report by Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, which concluded “there is no case for radically altering current health and safety legislation” and that “the existing regulatory arrangements are broadly right”. IDS somewhat gave the game away – ie it’s all about scaremongering and pandering to the tabloids who peddle ‘elf and safety stories of dubious authenticity – in his answer to Tobias Ellwood, who had a mini-rant about schools chopping down trees in case children climbed them and teachers not being able to change lightbulbs until they’d been on the climbing a six foot ladder training course. IDS responded that such stories resulted from over-zealous interpretation of health and safety principles, and usually had no basis at all in law. In which case, why is he getting his backbenchers to bang on about changing the law?
Just arrived in the Westminster office after catching the train from Bristol. At 2.30pm it’s Work and Pensions questions, then at 3.30pm Chuka Umunna is asking an Urgent Question about executive pay, obviously with something to say about RBS bonuses. After that, at 4pm-ish, we’re into the first of today’s two Opposition Day debates, both on motions tabled by Labour.
I’m hoping to speak in the first debate, on Food Poverty. The motion we’ve tabled is this:
“This House notes that food prices rose by more than 4% over the last year and that more families are relying on foodbanks; expresses its dismay at Government delays to the Groceries Code Adjudicator and that the Government has rejected BIS and Efra select committee recommendations to give it teeth; and therefore calls on the Government to bring forward proposals for the Groceries Code Adjudicator early in the next Parliament to ensure fairness across the food supply chain; believes that the Adjudicator should have the power to penalise retailers for unfair practices and that third party organisations should be able report retailers; calls on the Government to work with the retail sector to provide more responsible, transparent price promotions and clearer unit pricing to offer genuine value for money for consumers.”
The second debate is on Youth Unemployment and Taxation of Bank Bonuses. I’ll stick the wording on here later, for now I’ve got to try and finish my speech for the first debate and get down to the Chamber for questions.
Last year I rather upset Tory MP for Hove Mike Weatherley by being less than enthusiastic about the Rock the House competition he was organising amongst MPs to promote live music and intellectual property rights, with the winner playing live in the House of Commons. The contest last year was won by a band called Angry Vs the Bear. I’m not sure who chose them; it was a panel put together by the organisers.
This year, in recognition of the Live Music Bill and the fact that it’s all well-intentioned and Bristol has a thriving live music scene – as the documentary plugged in this piece on Bristol 24/7 shows – I have decided to stop being a spoilsport and to take part. (In fact Bristol lays claim to having more live musicians per capita than anywhere else in the UK). I’ll be putting out a plea in the local press this week for bands to contact me. They can’t have a record contract, I think that’s more or less the only stipulation, apart from of course being from Bristol, and preferably having at least a Bez in the band from my constituency of Bristol East.
More info on the Rock the House website – www.rockthehouse2012.com
As you can see Mike’s contacts are mostly within the heavy metal world – Alice Cooper and Ian Gillan are patrons – but he’s also got Robin Gibb on board, and he wants it to cover a broad spectrum of music. It doesn’t have to be rock.
The basic rules seem to be:
- get your entries to your local MP by 16th March
- MP has until mid-April to decide who to enter into the competition. MP can do this by hosting a local Battle of the Bands type competition, with a panel of judges, or MP can take the easy route and just pick the one she likes. If it’s anything like the annual competition to choose my Christmas card pic I will spend an inordinate amount of time consulting my constituency office staff and then tell them they’re wrong and I’m having the one I liked in the first place.
I am rather worried I am going to be inundated with bands I don’t like and then I’ll have to choose one just to be polite, so please – get the entries coming in, especially if you’re exactly the sort of band that doesn’t think they stand a hope in hell.
Professor Higgins has been back in touch… In response to his/ her first email I sent a rather flippant reply: “I’m sorry, but I’m from Luton. That’s how people talk! Do you really think we should all sound like Jacob Rees-Mogg?” and got this back:
“You are confusing accent with diction. There is nothing wrong with the former, lack of attention to the latter is just laziness. It cannot be excused, especially in your case, by lack of education.”
Well that’s told me. I’m not sure he/ she is right though… Surely some accents are defined by the fact speakers drop various letters, as well as pronouncing certain vowels/ consonants in a particular way? Isn’t, say, Estuary English an accent just the same as Scouse or Brummie or Geordie accents are? Would Professor Higgins pull up a Geordie for poor diction too, or would the Prof just accept that’s the way they speak up there?
In Bristol there are so many incomers that it’s difficult to tell who is from outside Bristol and never had a Bristolian accent, and who grew up here but, either deliberately or unconsciously, dropped the accent, say, when they went off to university. You’re definitely far more likely to hear a strong Bristolian accent in the more working class areas, but that is of course partly because more people in those areas are locals. But there are definitely quite a few Bristolians from those areas who no longer speak with the accent, and going off to university seems to be a key trigger.
Then of course you have the influence of West Indian dialect… I meet Somali teenagers who have a bit of Bristolian and a bit of black Caribbean and a bit of Somali in their accents. I wonder what Professor Higgins would say of the black tendency to say ‘aks’ isn’t of ‘ask’? Is that just the accent, or poor diction, or just not knowing what the proper word is? And what is the problem of just letting them get on with it? Everyone knows what they mean… Isn’t that the crux of it – understanding each other? That’s what language is for, so provided we can understand what people mean to say and they’re not mumbling then isn’t every way of talking OK?
Having said all this, I am a complete grammar Nazi, as my staff will testify. Not on this blog, where it is I believe not only permissible but desirable to write in a colloquial style, but in letters to constituents and ministers woe betide the staff members who describes a matter as ‘concerning’ or ends a sentence with a preposition. They used to have post-it notes on their PCs saying “licence not license!” I’m also addicted to the @GuardianStyle Twitter account. I like grammar rules.
I could argue that speech is different, speech is about self-expression, and not conforming to society’s idea of what is ‘proper’. I suspect I’m being rather inconsistent though. I want my letters to constituents and ministers to appear educated and not semi-illiterate. Professor Higgins obviously thinks dropping ‘g’ at the end of a word falls into exactly the same category.
Here’s the Week in Westminster podcast if you want to hear it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b019q9k3
Bristol folk will be familiar with Dave Wood from the RMT, who writes for and to the paper about local transport issues. Here’s an extract from his latest email to me, which was a letter intended for publication. I’m not sure if it’s was published. He emailed it round to a group of local politicians and got a rather stroppy response from one of the senior Somerset councillors, who insists an ITA isn’t needed. He said we’re only bringing this up in Bristol because we’ve got elections this year. We haven’t! For the record, if it needs to be said again, I totally support calls for an ITA. I’ve been saying it for seven years, since I got elected.
“At a rail meeting in committe room 15 the Council House [last night], repeated calls were made for the four local authorities in the Bristol area to set up a Integrated Transport Authority ( ITA ) or at least take on the equivalent set of powers. That would allow them to regulate rail and bus fares and services, and although they do cost the taxpayer, the cities that have them tend to be more successful when it comes to lobbying the government for money. The general consensus is that none of the four local authorities had a officer who was sufficiently expert in the rail industry, Calls were made for one to be appointed to help push for better services. First Great Western Trains let themselves down by not attending this rail meeting.
Who ever takes over the next rail franchise for our area, they need to include in their franchise the reopening of the Portishead and Henbury Loop lines to a passenger service. All existing and any new planned station re openings must be served by a 30 minute train service to all stations in the Greater Bristol area. Bristol has a excellent rail infrastructure, that has been ignored and left to rot, this trend must be reversed and all taken out lines and closed stations need to be put back in and rebuilt. We urgently need a new rail body to secure rail electrification for our local railways, when the electrification gangs are here in 2016 putting up the overhead electric lines, we need them to carry on and electrify our local lines. By doing this we will save a third of the cost. Common sense should apply we must electrify our local lines in 2016 when electrification arrives in Bristol. If we miss this opportunity we wont get the chance again.
Concerns have been raised that particularly North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset councils may continue to resist a ITA. People are being urged to lobby their local councillors and MP’s particularly in South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset to support the formation of an ITA. People should also lobby their local Councillors and MP’s relating to the £200,000 pound saved on the successful Severn Beach line, this money should be reinvested in the line putting on a extra train early evening between Avonmouth and Parson Street station.”
I’ve been trying to watch the Danish political drama “Borgen” because so many people have been raving about it. I’m not, I confess, very good at watching programmes with subtitles. I forget I have to pay attention to the screen, and find myself wandering over to the kitchen area to make a drink, or thinking I’ll just put the washing on to dry, or wondering what’s in that unopened envelope on the table, or checking my phone, and then realising that I don’t understand Danish and can’t follow it without giving it my undivided attention. I am the worst person to watch films with, as I can never just sit there and get into it. I have to be doing something else too. The number of times I have been forced to watch “Paris, Texas” or one of those ‘Three Colours’ films and never made it past the first ten minutes. Nothing happens! Give me something to read while I wait for it to liven up!
Borgen does seem worth persevering with, although it annoyed me that a running theme is, yet again, a career woman – the Prime Minister – struggling to juggle her demanding job with family responsibilities and her husband getting sulky and her feeling guilty because she’s not home to see the kids before bedtime. Yes, this is true to life, but does it have to feature as a major aspect of every drama about a woman in a senior job?
In the West Wing Abbie occasionally gets stroppy with Bartlett because he’s let her down when he’s promised to be at a family function. In fact nearly all the characters struggle with the work-life balance thing. Leo’s wife divorces him, Toby’s marriage breaks up, CJ puts Danny on hold while she’s in the White House, Josh can’t keep a relationship going… It’s done with just the right degree of attention though; it’s a part of CJ’s life, not her main preocuppation.
If the Commons is anything to go by, it’s actually the men who are under the most family pressure. Oona King has talked about how her husband would have divorced her if she’d not eased off her workload when she was MP for Bethnal Green, but it’s usually male colleagues who angst about their partners not being happy with them agreeing to do things at the weekend, or going on an overseas trip, or not heading back to their constituency home as soon as we’re on a one line whip. We now have a lot more female MPs but you never really hear them saying that their husbands/ partners are demanding their presence. They don’t need anyone else to make them feel guilty about being at work rather than at home; they already do! Borgen is probably realistic in its portrayal of a senior female politician’s working life, but I just wish they could have spent as much time focusing on the politics – her day job – as they do on her battles to find time for her husband.
 | Paul Bemmy Down on Rock the House |
 | omar on Speakin’ proper (2) |
 | Andy Thorogood on Health and safety at DWP … |
 | Quietzaple on Ugly food |
| Quietzaple on Rock the House |
