In Tony Blair’s day, New Labour were the masters of spin – at their most effective when they did it so convincingly that we didn’t even realise the facts were being spun, or else we were led to believe that we could see through the spinning, when in fact that presentation was the intention all along.

Now, it seems, that’s all gone. Yet, oddly, it hasn’t been replaced by the honesty and straightforwardness we were promised – an honesty many would say was incompatible with politics – but rather by terrible attempts at spinning.

Take the Henley by-election: Instead of pointing out that this is a Conservative seat and virtually ignoring electoral defeat, the omnipresent ‘Party Sources’ are mumbling about victory being secured if Labour keep their deposit. They’re saying that anything over 5% is some kind of win. Oh, brother.

And all the while, Harriet Harman is squeezing out plans to support ‘positive discrimination’ – another bizarre New Labour oxymoron. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination – whether or not it’s positive or negative depends on your standpoint. Is selecting a member of an ethnic minority to balance out a sea of white faces still ‘positive discrimination’ if you’re a serial killer, or does this only apply when we’re handing out things perceived as rewards?

The same propsals also, apparently, ‘ban ageism’ – the government pretended to do back in October 2006, as covered on this very site. I note that Ms Harman is bounding about stating that doctors should only refuse treatment to elderly patients on clinical grounds – not on the basis of age. Three points: Firstly, doctors are already required to do their best for patients, regardless of age. Secondly, is age not part of the clinical picture any more? Thirdly, does this mean that twelve year olds should be openly prescribed the contraceptive pill? We wouldn’t want to be discriminating purely on the basis of age.

Ageism goes two ways. Why is it that this government consistently pretends that ageism only represents discrimination against the old, just as they pretend that racial discrimination only represents discrimination against ethnic minorities?

And let’s not forget that much of the economic policy underlying the NHS is based on QALYs – Quality Adjusted Life Years. That is to say that if an operation costs £30,000 but will lengthen someone’s life by 30 years then the cost per year gained is £1,000. Such measures in and of themselves discriminate against older people – an 80 year-old’s life far less likely to be extended by 30 years than a 20 year-old’s.  The same treatment is less likely to be cost effective in the 80 year-old purely because of their age. Is this to be overlooked in future? How is NHS rationing to take place now?

I sincerely hope that this is a crappy proposal put forward to distract us all from Labour’s impending Henley hammering. It’s not the best of ideas, because it shows Labour in a bad light, but perhaps not quite such a bad light as being deeply unpopular.

On the other hand, if this is a serious attempt at law-making, then we’re all clearly doomed.

» Image Credit: Original image created by Graham Richardson, modified under licence

Every indication appears to suggest that Brown is going to give in to the current demonstrations on fuel pricing and – at the very least – further delay October’s increase in fuel duty. This will be unfortunate but necessary damage limitation, and will spin well for, ahem, ‘hard-working families’.

If Gordon had made this announcement as part of his disastrous round of mea culpa interviews a couple of weeks ago – as I said he should – it would’ve worked to move on the news cycle exactly when he needed some movement, it would have been a pre-emptive strike against this kind of protest, and it would have played well to the public at large.

Instead, Mr Brown has decided to hand the press to his critics. The fact that the police decided to intervene earlier today only served to make the protesters more angry, and increase public sympathy towards them.

This is yet another relatively simple political situation for Brown’s team to handle, yet they appear to have failed to manage it effectively.

Many political pundits are already saying it’s impossible for Gordon to win the next election. If he doesn’t get a grip soon, I’ll start believing them.

» Image Credit: Original photograph by Rama, modified under licence

I’m being paid to share this remarkably inspiring celebrity-filled video with you – featuring everyone from Tony Blair to June Sarpong, and Stuart Rose to Annie Lennox. Getting all these people to contribute seems quite an impressive achievement, and I hope you enjoy watching.

Today, new fertility laws are to begin their passage through the House of Commons, with a number of important debates about the current draft text coming up.

Some MPs are unhappy about the lack of a specific mention of fathers in the part of the text regarding suitability for IVF. The current draft has only a provision to ensure that their is an appropriate and stable family environment in which a child can be brought up – the presence of a father-figure is not specified, which is intended to be a correction to a current anomaly.

Currently, fertility legislation states that a father-figure must be identified. However, more recent Equal Rights legislation has superceded this requirement, allowing lesbian couples to have children using bank sperm. It is therefore proposed that the text of the fertility bill should be changed to reflect the reality – failure to correct it would mean that the current state of affairs would be reversed, with lesbian couples unable to have children once again.

Iain Duncan Smith is one of the prime Parliamentary opponents of this amendment. Earlier this week, he told The Observer:

Without fathers, boys join gangs and teenage girls become pregnant

This is obviously something that Mr Duncan Smith believes strongly, as it seems unlikely that he would want to use small-minded, bare-faced mis-truths to offend large swathes of the population who have grown up without fathers unless he had a very good reason to do so.

He surely wouldn’t express such an ignorant view of the causes of teenage pregnancy and urban crime unless his belief was so strong as to think that the end was justified by any means.

And I’m quite sure that he wouldn’t want to leave himself open to accusations of ignorance unless this was a matter which he felt was of critical importance.

Curiously, though, he didn’t believe in the role of fathers strongly enough to support the Employment Bill in 2002 – a Bill which gave fathers far greater entitlement to Paternity Leave.

Nor was his conviction such to compel him to bother to vote on the issue of children conceived through IVF knowing their natural fathers, back in 2004.

And nor did he believe it strongly enough not to vote in favour of the War in Iraq – a war which has left hundreds of British children without fathers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi families fatherless.

If I didn’t know better, I’d suggest this was thinly veiled homophobia from an MP who doesn’t want lesbian couples to be allowed IVF.

Of course, Mr Duncan Smith is far above that, and the fact that he’s voted against Equal Rights legislation time and again lends no weight to the argument: He’s just thinking of the kids.

Of course.

» Image Credit: Original photograph by Steve Punter, modified under licence

The music industry may find that convincing consumers to pay for legally downloaded DRM protected music is about to get a whole lot harder this autumn, as Microsoft has decided to use its immense tech industry muscle to make an utter mockery of the whole business.

In the wake of iTunes making a huge amount of money from selling DRM protected music, Microsoft desperately wanted to get in on the act, and so set up its own competitor – MSN Music. However, somewhat predictably thanks to the ubiquity of the iPod, the draconian restrictions of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure format, and the complexity of the whole system, Microsoft failed to make much of an impact, and so is now closing down it’s MSN Music store.

However, in a move that looks purely incendiary and vindictive, it’s also taking the servers used to validate the DRM licences offline (as reported – with relish – by Googler Mark Pilgrim).

Essentially, if you’ve ‘bought’ music from the MSN Music store, in a few weeks’ time you’ll find that any major change to your PC setup – be that changing devices, buying a new portable music device, or even upgrading Windows – will render your music unplayable.

So, having taken your money, Microsoft seem to no longer care whether the product works any more.

This leaves us with a huge number of unanswered questions, the most pressing of which would seem to be: Will they begin taking the same approach to old versions of software, and stop running software validation servers? Whilst MSN Music and Microsoft Software may be different beasts, it doesn’t seem unfeasable to suggest that this approach to licensing isn’t the corporate philosophy.

Most tech-savvy individuals have been aware for a long time that something like this could theoretically happen, but I’d be willing to bet that many thought that Microsoft was trustworthy enough to continue to allow you to access products you’ve paid for. This no longer seems to be the case.

It’s the strongest argument yet against DRM, and – for that matter – against buying any Microsoft product. If you’re running Microsoft Software, who knows if the next install will work or if the Validation Servers will have been taken offline?

» Image Credit: MSN Music screenshot by Luke ‘Duke’ Newcombe, modified under licence

Gordon Brown’s disastrous round of interviews on Sunday morning merely added fuel to a fire which had already reached an unprecedented temperature at the heart of government. Each and every interview was a complete and utter shambles. Gordon should not have done them. They were a mistake, and they highlight the underlying problem of Brown’s occupation of Number 10 – bad advice.

Either Gordon or his team have failed to realise that Mr Brown is a completely different creature to his predecessor. They need to understand that to succeed as Prime Minister, Mr Brown urgently needs to stop attempting to use Blairite media tactics to tackle Brownite problems.

Gordon is, without doubt, a poor communicator – the public speaking antithesis of Tony. He does not come across with clear, crisp soundbites. He does not portray empathy. He emanates boredom, surliness, and arrogance. A round of mea culpa interviews in the face of electoral defeat was not the right call.

Agreeing to appear on every political programme going made him look desperate. He should have agreed to a single, exclusive interview, probably with Andrew Marr (his is the show which gets both the most viewers and the most dissemination through other media outlets, and that which has the host most sympathetic to Mr Brown).

He should have done the interview on his turf – get Marr to come to Downing Street, and conduct the interview surrounded by the trappings of power, helping to reaffirm Mr Brown’s position as the Prime Minister: He may have had an electoral battering, but he’s still in charge, still working hard for the people, and – ultimately – still in Downing Street. The pilgrimage to the BBC studios made him look unnecessarily weak, and levelled him with his opponents.

No programme in its right mind would have denied this relatively straight-forward rider when trying to negotiate potentially the most politically significant TV interview of the year. Everyone wanted him, and the programmes could – if necessary – have been played off each other. The neutral surroundings would also have helped to get other broadcasters to play the exclusive interview, as it wouldn’t be so clearly exclusive. Or, alternatively, the interview could have been pooled as a further rider.

Yet the surroundings would have only improved a bad situation – Mr Brown’s alienating nature is a bigger problem. He needs to be coached in how to talk to the electorate. I’m sure this is something his team is working to tackle, but drastic solutions are urgently needed.

Firstly, he needs to be banned from using the phrase ‘global economy’. He’s forever talking about it, and it is utterly meaningless to the vast majority of people. I hear nobody in the real world complaining about the state of the world economy – I see teachers striking over pay, people complaining about the rising cost of food, and increasing concern about petrol prices. To communicate effectively with the country at large, Mr Brown needs to frame discussion in these terms – something David Cameron does excellently, and to great effect.

Secondly, he needs to stop talking about himself. That’s a Blairite tactic, which worked brilliantly for Tony as he had the personality to carry it off. Brown doesn’t possess the necessary connection with voters to manage this – he needs to be the professional, distant leader. He needs to let go of the details, lead with big ideas, and communicate these in a commanding way. He’s a leader who needs not sell the ideas to the people, but rather allow the people to see the benefits of the results. Fewer attempts at personality, more attempts at policy. More of the Stalin, less of the Bean.

And that brings us to the other great failure of this interview: The distinct lack of policy. In his single exclusive interview, Mr Brown should have been armed with an arresting announcement – something along the lines of freezing fuel duty increases to help the poor, or even a major reshuffle of the cabinet since ‘the voters have told us things aren’t working’. Pretty much anything would have moved the news cycle forward, and taken the focus away from Mr Brown and the disastrous election.

This approach would have left him open to accusations of being reactionary, which is why I’d favour the former approach rather than the latter. A reactionary reshuffle would probably play well for the Conservatives in terms of painting the Government as ‘panicked’, but a freezing – or cutting – of fuel duty would be such a populist measure that it would be difficult for the Conservatives to land a meaningful punch. With oil prices rising, revenue from fuel duty is rising unexpectedly quickly anyway, so it wouldn’t leave much of a Budgetry hole.

All of these factors represent basic tactical errors, whether on the part of Mr Brown himself or his surrounding advisory team. Either way, this whole electoral defeat – and many of his other ‘crises’ alike – could have been handled much more effectively.

The fact is that Mr Brown could make for an excellent Prime Minister. He’s vastly more intelligent that his predecessor, appears to desperately hunger after ‘doing the right thing’, and he’s deeply principled. All he needs to do is to learn to keep his hands off the details, make snappier decisions (accepting when he gets them wrong), and learn how to better his personal presentation.

In short, he needs better advice.

» Image Credit: Original photograph from the World Economic Forum, modified under licence.

Labour have been hammered across the country in local elections and have lost the Mayoralty of London. Coverage of this result has reached saturation point, and I’m not sure that there’s much I can add.

Last year, with respect to Mr Brown, I predicted

If he continues to crash his way through crisis after crisis, announcing ridiculous policy after ridiculous policy, then the next government of this country will be Conservative.

He’s doing the media rounds tomorrow. In the face of multiple political crises, a failing economy, and an historic election defeat – really, what can he say that will change anything? I expect he has a half-baked plan to announce something impressive to move along the news agenda.

Like much that Mr Brown does, I fully expect it will fail.

It was with deep regret that I learned on Friday evening of the death of one of radio’s greatest dry wits, Humphrey Lyttelton.

I’ll always remember him as the wonderful host of one of Radio 4’s best shows, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, though Radio 2’s The Best of Jazz was the soundtrack to and from the journey to many of my own music lessons in my youth.

His is one of those friendly voices which has been ever-present from my earliest years to the present day: It a voice I shall greatly miss.

May he rest in peace.

It is reported that Rail Tickets are to be simplified into three new types: Advance, Off-Peak, and Anytime. Any simplification of over-complex ticketing is to be welcomed, but I’m confused.

Let’s consider the options for a simple return journey, with no changes, from Manchester to York, leaving at 10.57 on 30th April, and returning at 17.58 on the same day. All of these options are for the same couple of trains.

Single Ticket Outbound: Student Getaway C (£3.75), TPE Standard Advance Single D (£3.95), Student Getaway B (£4.75), TPE Standard Advance Single C (£4.95), Student Getaway A (£5.00), TPE Standard Advance Single B (£6.25), TPE Standard Advance Single A (£6.60), Standard Day Single (£12.85), TPE First Advance Single B (£16.00), TPE First Advance Single A (£17.00), or First Day Single (£25.70)

Single Ticket Inbound: Student Getaway A (£5.00), TPE Standard Advance Single B (£6.25), TPE Standard Advance Single A (£6.60), Standard Day Single (£12.80), or First Day Single (£26.30)

Return Ticket Choices: Saver Return (£15.25), Standard Day Return (£15.65), Standard Open Return (£17.80), or First Open Return (£51.40)

To summarise, there are fifty-nine different ticket combinations for the same return journey, on the same two trains.

The cheapest option for this return journey is actually to buy two singles, at a total cost of £8.75 – which would get me exactly the same seats on exactly the same trains as a £12.80 return or singles costing a total of £25.70.

Also note that a Standard Day Return is cheaper than one Standard Day Single – so if buying the ‘standard’ tickets, you’re better off buying a Return ticket for a Single Journey.

When you start to contemplate longer journeys, or journeys involving changes, things become unmanageably complex – especially when you consider that ticket splitting is an issue (which I’ve deliberately omitted above).

Bizarrely, this ‘simplification’ retains all of the above fares. There will still be fifty-nine different ticket combinations available, but now through an extra haze of only three different ticket names. Progress?

» Image Credit: Original creation by Tom Goskar, modified under licence

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