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Good morning and welcome to the Voice’s early morning roundup of news and views. It’s 5th November, an anniversary we can all remember, when Guy Fawkes didn’t quite manage to get his suggestions for MPs’ expense reform through Parliament. It’s also Art Garfunkel’s birthday – he’s 68 today.
Bloody betrayal raises fresh doubts about Britain’s campaign in Afghanistan
The Times carries the story most papers are leading with this morning.
The killing of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman raised fresh doubts yesterday about Britain’s mission in Helmand.
Senior political, diplomatic and military figures warned that public support for the British presence was in danger of collapse without a clear and freshly defined strategy.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has one of the more startling headlines I’ve read recently:
France: ‘Autistic Tories have castrated UK in Europe’
Sacré bleu!
Speaking to the Guardian, Pierre Lellouche, France’s Europe minister, described as “pathetic” the Tories’ EU plans announced today, warning they would not succeed “for a minute”.
Giving vent to frustration across the EU, which has so far only been expressed in private, Lellouche – who said he was reflecting Nicolas Sarkozy’s “sadness and regret” – accused William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, of a “bizarre autism” in their discussions.
Quel horreur! Mind you, I see Charlotte Gore’s point when she tweets: “a French Minister slagging off the Tories? Guardian Reader’s letters to Bush voters springs to mind.” Still – there’s a solution, since the Independent is currently running a story that says cannabis cures autism.
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
An interesting social experiment being carried out by a Lib Dem MP – and if it hadn’t been for Caron, I’d not have realised it was going on.
I guess the other thing to think about is that Jenny is getting the full State Pension whereas many women don’t qualify for even that paltry amount because they either worked part time, took time out to have children or look after elderly relatives. Some may have been badly advised decades ago and made decisions that it is now impossible to rectify because nobody will take responsiblity for the mistake.
I think Cameron will be a disastrous Prime Minister if he gets the chance: another Tony Blair but without the steel. His photo in the Guardian yesterday summed it up perfectly, something which Alastair Campbell has been mercilessly taking the mickey out of. It really is the most excrutiating photo of Cameron since That Bullingdon group shot. Here is a man who clearly puts more thought into his image than into his policies. The result is that both end up pretty laughable.
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
I listened to BBC reports of David Cameron’s speech on Europe with increasing bafflement as it appeared that the Conservatives set out a complicated set of policies that to my mind addressed all the wrong problems.
Granted, by many standards, and certainly by Tory standards, I’m a rabid pro-European. But here are two obvious flaws in the Conservative position.
No more treaties without referendums
So for each new treaty, the Tories will make sure there’s a referendum. Awuga, wrong question alert. Ask people if they wanted the Lisbon treaty, and most often what you get in answer is why they don’t like the EU – not a specific Lisbon based answer. And if they do say no to Treaty A, then what? It doesn’t give you any specific idea why Treaty A shouldn’t be ratified, but neither does it give you any other action to take. Result? Institutional paralysis.
On this point, I think the Lib Dem line that there should be another referendum on continuing membership of the EU is probably the best way forward. It does allow for a proper debate on broad principles, and there are clear paths to follow whichever way the vote goes. It does also allow the few of us on the “pro” side of the fence the opportunity to make the case for the EU and to spell out the consequences of turning our backs on our nearest neighbours. But referendums on each and every treaty is a big, pointless commitment.
A sovereignty act
Hmm, this one is a special example of wrong headed thinking. The Conservatives appear to have noticed that some countries with written constitutions have defined institutions whose job it is to manage constitutional change. Does a supranational treaty change how Ireland or Germany is governed? Then the Irish and German constitutions show a way to check whether that change is significant.
Britain has an “unwritten constitution” which means that when change is demanded, the process to manage it is also unwritten. So the Tory plan to fix this is what? A bit of tinkering around the edge, that’s what! And lo, those wrong problem sirens sound again.
What is needed to correct the problem of an unwritten constitution is… wait for it… a written constitution! And if, as part of that, you wanted to set up a process by which the constitution could be changed if necessary, or to test whether demands made of the nation or indeed new legislation were unconstitutional, then you could do that. But a bit more tinkering to rewrite small parts of our unwritten constitution is not the answer.
Well, that’s my view anyway – what did you think about the new Conservative line on Europe?
I took a few minutes out of my day at lunchtime to go and help fit the muffles to the clappers of the bells at Daybrook St Pauls. Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, and so the bells are rung half muffled, a glorious sombre sound as a mark of respect.
To achieve this, you put a thick leather strap on one side of the clapper of each bell. Each time the bells are rung, you get a loud dong and a quiet dong. You can hear some recordings of half muffled bells here.
To get up the tower, you have to climb a few turns of a stone staircase, making sure doors are locked behind you. You don’t want someone pulling the ropes below you while you are amongst the bells, because the bells are bigger and heavier than you, and could kill you. There was a tragedy in the 1960s in this very tower when a bell killed someone.
There are safety procedures – making sure people from the church know you’ve gone up and know when you’re due back; going up in pairs; locking doors and hanging keys from special hooks so you know people don’t have access to the ropes two floors below you.
But for all that, to physically get at the clappers you have to perform all sorts of acrobatic feats to clamber around the frame to get under the bells. At the church I was at, the bells are in two levels in an old rusty metal frame. And you have to remember that half of the apparently sturdy looking features of the tower are in fact bell fittings, which mean they’re well greased and ready to swing if you try and grab hold of them. Sliders, wheels and stays are all large features that you have to avoid. And above the frame, there aren’t so many things to hold onto to steady yourself. I have a reasonably good head for heights – high ladders to get at stage lights certainly feature in my past – but I still have to concentrate quite hard not to get the willies.
You’re not so high above the nearest floor – if you fell, it would not be so bad, apart from crashing through the bells and girders on the way down. But you can see out of the enormous windows and that gives you tremendous views across north Notts, from a perspective higher than the tower on the old Home Brewery building.
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Niles's Blog 