Author: Anthony

The need for U2

I’ve just been watching an interview with U2 on BBC2’s the Culture Show. When I was a callow yoof, I used to get rather tired of musicians getting all political (this was under Thatcher, so there was quite a lot of it about). Just concentrate on the music, I thought.

But listening to Bono and the others talking about the moral necessity of debt relief just now, I realised how wrong I had been. U2 are the voice of the people, or as near as damn it. We have outsourced our political sensibilities to pop musicians. At least they wear cool shades.

What happened to Metro-Land

This blog was briefly called Metro-Land, but has now reverted to its former name, the Lewes Chronicle. (www.metro-land.org still works, as well as lewes.typepad.org)

It was renamed Metro-Land when my wife got a job in that part of the world, and we planned to move to Amersham, on the end of the Metropolitan line. However, due to a mismatch between the hours her employer needed her to work, and the hours during which reasonably-priced childcare was available, she had to withdraw from the job, and our move was cancelled (16 hours before the removal men turned up).

So, it’s been a weird couple of weeks, and our eyes are now open to the extraordinary cost of childcare. Our current plan – now our house is on the market anyway – is to move closer to the coast, probably to Lewes or Brighton, and for Jane to try and find some work in the media industry there.

A success for Europe, and about time too

The Swiss have voted to join the Schengen border-free zone, meaning that I won’t have to be woken at 2 a.m. to get my passport out when travelling from Brussels to Italy by train. More interestingly, the UK and Ireland are not members, even though the non-EU Norwegians and Icelanders are. Indeed, the UK & Ireland are the only countries in Western Europe not to be Schengen members now.

This may not be quite the right time, but is here the place to start a UK-into-Schengen campaign? I’m sick of having to find my passport every time I want to go to Paris.

Forward to the past

In the Spectator this week (use bugmenot), Peter Oborne writes:

The Conservative party has won all the great intellectual and political battles of the last quarter-century. It has defined – and continues to define – the public argument over the role of the state, the acceptable level of taxation, the nature of the economy, the power of trade unions, the scope of public services and the limits of the European Union.

That’s something that may have been true up till about 2001. With two stinging election defeats in the bag – and it must be considered a failure not to have hurt Blair more this time around – it’s hard to see how the Tories are still leading the debate on public affairs. After all:

  • The Government has backed the Live 8 event, and is focusing its G8 and EU presidencies on Africa and climate change
  • Taxes have gone up, but people still voted Labour in large numbers (or Liberal – where even higher taxes were likely)
  • The debate on the EU, for all its folly, has moved on a long way from empty seats in Brussels; and
  • The role of public services, particularly through SureStart, the New Deal and other initiatives, has changed and become much more personal than under the last lot.

Part of this is just the march of time, but a lot of it is Labour rewriting the DNA of social politics, just as much as the Tories rewrote the DNA of economic politics in 1979-97.

Cricket clips

Something to while away the hours until the footy season starts again. Sussex CCC have launched a new site, with free Windows Media clips of match highlights, and a desktop scorecard.