Cameron’s war on two fronts: could Labour be in within a year?

In 2010, facing the most unpopular Labour leader in a generation, the Conservatives scraped to a position as the largest party. David Cameron deftly evaded a challenge to his leadership by aligning with the Lib Dems then, but now faces its biggest challenge yet. The narrative that the problems Britain faces are due to excessive spending on public services is losing traction rapidly in Britain and Europe. And a growing number of Conservatives are drifting to parties of the right that have succeeded in courting disaffected Conservative voters.

On the economy, the Conservative narrative has not wavered. The Tories inherited an appalling economic legacy from a Labour government which had spent beyond its means on things like pensions and public services, the remedy is a sharp dose of austerity for all. The public resent Labour’s plan to spend its way out of trouble, and if austerity has failed to put money back in the pockets of working Britons, then Britain has at least outperformed the profligate governments of Italy and Greece.

However, all has not gone to plan. The Office of Budget Responsibility report in 2010 told the public to expect the economy to be recovering rapidly by now, at a very respectable 2.6% a year, as the economy rapidly transitioned to high-tech manufacturing. CPI inflation was projected to be under control at 1.6%. Austerity has begun to fall out of favour even in major European economies such as France, and Britons are failing to feel the benefits of confident bond markets. Profligacy also does not tell the whole story in Europe – unreformed southern economies are at least partly to blame.

More damaging however, is that the public suspects that the government is out of touch with the needs of ordinary people. The public clearly see the economy as the central issue, but the government has managed to get itself bogged down in issues over pasties, free labour for Tesco’s and Greggs, and House of Lords reform. They suspect that David Cameron and George Osborne do not, and indeed cannot, comprehend the concerns of ordinary people. David Cameron may do his shopping in Sainsbury’s on a Friday or Saturday night, but for those shopping in Sainsbury’s Basics, that is not much of a consolation.

That David Cameron has failed to seal the deal with the British public is clearly of concern to Tories, many of whom believe that the PM is being punished for not being Tory enough. Rural Tories cite the drift of disaffected Tory voters to UKIP, and argue that Cameron needs to do more to woo the Tory base. Although Cameron has been radically Eurosceptic, they still feel the need to go further, and would also like him to drop some of his more small ‘l’ liberal policies in favour of more traditional Tory policies.

Labour is also resurgent. Ed Miliband is also beginning to find his feet as a Parliamentary performer, winning back trust from Labour voters who felt that Labour had shifted too far to the left under Brown. Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful politician for a generation, is said to be considering a political comeback. Labour will also take strength from Francois Hollande recasting the fiscal compact in Europe to place an emphasis on growth, as opposed to merely austerity.

The Conservatives were made the largest party by the electorate and allowed to form a coalition government on the mandate that they would fix the economic mess, and restore the economy to growth. The Tories will be unable to fight the next election and win on the platform of having ensured that the country has not suffered the same fate as Greece. Cameron desperately needs to put money back in the pockets of working Britons, restore integrity to our public life, and tackle its perception of being out of touch.

Will he be given a chance, though? Prominent thinkers on the Tory right such as Tim Montgomerie are calling for Cameron’s government to ‘walk and chew gum’ at the same time by appealing to disaffected Conservative voters whilst espousing metropolitan values, but Cameron has already struggled to balance his backbenchers with the Lib Dems, whose vote looks to be in terminal decline.

Cameron’s attempt at a broad, encompassing narrative with the British public with the ‘Big Society’ has proven to be a dud, and he is not likely to have the luxury of time to turn things around. Conservatives are notoriously ruthless with leaders who fail to win elections, and Cameron has shown a poor record thus far. It can only be so long before Tories begin to murmur about the prospect of Cameron and his chums in Cabinet being electorally toxic. The new Tory intake is impressive, and looks to contain a few potential future party leaders.

Could the unthinkable happen – could Cameron and Osborne be gone by the end of the midterm season? At a time when Cameron desperately needs to produce a plan for jobs and growth, he is facing unprecedented pressure from his own party to look inward, and will face the prospect of presenting a nuanced position to the electorate and carrying his party with him at a time when austerity is losing traction at home and across Europe. The last few weeks may not have been the Tories finest, but it could get a lot worse yet.

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Boris Johnson’s tribute to the lost art of political truth-telling

In an indecorous campaign full of truths, half-truths, and utter piffle, Cartergram has witnessed some pretty desperate things. Ken’s tax scandal. Poor starving Holloway Road pauper Boris Johnson’s “chicken feed” salary of £250,000 a year. Johnson calling Livingstone a “fucking liar” when squeezed into a small lift together. However, today, high priest of bullshit theorizing Boris Johnson exposed something even worse, something that shakes to the core our very assumptions about politics.

In a campaign where secrecy has been so paramount that Boris based his campaign headquarters in the offices of a mobile phone company no-one uses, Lord Boris of Johnson threatened to derail his long running campaign to install a cable-car across the Thames by admitting that he won’t be publishing an LGBT specific manifesto for the campaign. “You’re going to be amazed,” said Boris of the long-awaited manifesto two days ago. “The best thing you can do is devour it. It’s going to be good.”

While Cartergram was eagerly awaiting eating his fluffy pink penis-shaped manifesto two days ago (amidst rumours that Boris was planning a fur-skinned tome for the lezzas), it now looks as though he will only be able to guess at how good Boris’ phallic magnum opus was ever going to be. While throwing a blanket over the issue is a risk to appease Boris tired and weary staffers, more accustomed to knocking on doors and glitzy receptions at City Hall than positioning Boris as a viable choice for LGBT voters when he repeatedly cut funding for Pride, it probably will not matter with Ken facing a more uphill battle to regain the mayoralty than facing Anthony Worrall Thompson and his half-pound of concealed onions on Ready Steady Cook.

Ken’s chances of not winning the mayoralty would have been increased, of course, had we known what Boris’ plans were for Pride celebrations (with World Pride this year), putting the Greater London Assembly back in the Stonewall employers index, and adopting a zero-tolerance policy towards homophobic and trans-phobic hate crimes. These issues, alongside reversing cuts to LGBT organisations imposed by the Tory government may now have to wait. After all, there are cable cars to build.

Done with ownership?

The news that EA is killing off Rock Band for iOS at the end of May concerns me.

Not so much about the game itself – I don’t actually have it (Though its pretty inexcusable that the game is still for sale, with no indication whatsoever that you won’t be able to play it in a month)

However, if we continue down this road towards all content being streamed and in the cloud, surely this kind of thing is going to happen more and more often.

There is something quite visceral and quite tangible about the idea of ‘owning’ a product. I don’t want to rent my possessions. I want them to be mine.

I accept that DLC has its benefits. I like that my copy of FIFA now has the latest squads updated, that there’s a tie in for Euro 2012. However, I also like the fact that even when EA do stop updating the game, it will remain mine.

I won’t be able to get a game online (I’ll need FIFA 13, or whatever for that), but I will still be able to plug the game in and play against the XBox.

Will I be able to say the same of any media product I consume in 20-30 years? Will I ‘own’ anything? Or will they all require a third party to be usable?

iBooks, Kindle, Spotify, they’re all new fads. Its possible that none of them will be around in 40 years, and that what we end up with is a more restrictive version of what we have now.

If you’re “done with ownership,” you might do well to ask whether, in forty years you’ll have anything really left.

Ten Things You Need To Know Today

I’m going to start curating a super-quick catch-up of the day’s main news talking points, with links to elsewhere. There will be an LGBT/queer politics focus to this, but I’ll include some mainstream stories too.

Let me know if this is something that you like/appreciate. So, here goes:

London mayoral race should be decided on politics, not smears

I read with interest Dan Hodges piece in the Telegraph today. I’m sure that we would both agree that, in some ways, I wish it wasn’t Ken that was running as the Labour candidate for Mayor.

Ken is at times, antagonistic, unperceptive and unsympathetic. Ken has a habit of stubbornly ignoring the wider good for the sake of settling personal scores. As Dan rightly points out, Ken is “graceless, but frank.”

Where Dan’s argument comes unstuck is when he accuses Livingstone of “wish list” politics:

The mayor cannot set the price of the Oyster card independent of the train operators. He cannot restore the EMA. He will not convince David Cameron to hand him responsibility for the benefits system or London’s health service.

For Dan, this neatly segues into an argument about the Mayoral office needing to “unify [the] capital and give a voice to all its citizens.”

Counter intuitive as it may sound, London doesn’t need a regional statesman to unite and defend the interests of the city, as Birmingham or Manchester does. It is already the overwhelming centre for wealth and job creation in the UK.

Londoners needs its mayor to work on the areas that really matter to them – cycling, congestion, air quality, public transport, housing and more. Instead of focusing on these issues, the right has yet again decided to channel its reserves of mock indignation into a smear campaign.

It would be a shame to see it work, when there is so much important work to be done.

An Open Letter to Dr. Julia Gasper

I have never been able to comprehend the mindset of people like you that say I have a “choice” in being gay, and post on their blog that I should be thankful for straight people for giving birth to me.

Setting aside the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence which suggests sexuality, can you think of a sane reason why I would deliberately choose to be gay if I wasn’t?

I can’t.

I’m thankful for the UN Convention on Human Rights. It’s one of the most important documents ever written. If I have anything to be thankful for, it is that.

The UNCHR says that even before I am born – before I even had a chance to “choose” my sexuality – I was blessed with equal, inalieable rights. The UNCHR sets out a vision of a world where I am free to live in freedom from fear.

You seem to believe that there is some sort of conspiracy where ‘gay activists’ are pursuing a politically motivated agenda to gain … well, what they could have anyway if they just ‘chose’ to be straight.

Maybe you think that we want to take over the country, and run the UK as some sort of gay junta. Maybe you envisage rainbow flags flying over Downing Street and judges being made to wear Spandex.

The truth is, we actually have no such desire. We don’t want to destroy the things that have made the UK great over the last 400 years.

Yes, like you, we believe in our ancient universities, an established Parliament with the oldest political party in the world, and the institution of marriage.

We are not the enemy.

The enemy would be a Britain where we backslide into intolerance. Back into riots in Brixton. Back to a society where a party can use the word “n*gger” on an election poster. A society where hate crimes against gay people are on the rise.

That is not the Britain that we know and love. I don’t want to live in a UK where discrimination is the norm. And make no mistake, whatever pseudo-scientific bullshit you’ve been reading, what you are saying recently is discrimination.

It is unacceptable to expect me to express thanks to straight people for the act of giving birth to me when you wouldn’t expect straight people to do the same. That is discrimination.

It is unacceptable to deny me the right to adopt a child, regardless of whether I could ‘choose’ a same sex partner, when you wouldn’t deny that right to a straight person. That is discrimination.

It is unacceptable to justify discrimination by suggesting that there is a link between homosexuality and paedophilia, and that there is a conspiracy to hush this up. That too, is discrimination.

I’m not an “activist” Julia, I’m a Briton. And more importantly, I’m a human being.

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France can’t afford more Sarkozy

France is of key strategic importance within the Eurozone. As one half of the Franco-German alliance at the heart of Europe, it has a key role in setting Europe’s policy direction.

It is for that reason that I find The Economist‘s half-hearted endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy in the upcoming French presidential election so troubling.

Sarkozy is a man that has run out of ideas, at the heart of a government that has run out of steam. His grasping desperation in courting the far-right, protectionist, anti-Euro vote in recent days is indicative of this.

Sarkozy banked his reputation on austerity returning France to growth, and has been proved wrong. France lost its AAA credit rating, the bond markets have got jittery, and unemployment has risen.

The Economist makes much of the worrying signals about the worrying lack of reform-minded talk emanating from Mr. Hollande‘s campaign. Hollande, for instance, plans to spend 20bn Euros over 5 years, impose a 75% top tax rate, and reverse Sarkozy’s rise in the pension age from 60 to 63.

However, Sarkozy has rarely mentioned the need for reform on the stump either – he has chosen to focus his campaign around right-wing FUD issues such as immigration and security. Sarkozy has chosen to frame economic issues in terms of debt, not reform.

Sarkozy has failed to tackle the issues around France’s labour code, and shows little sign of doing it now. French unemployment has risen from 7.5% in the first quarter of 2008 to 9.8% now, a rise comparable with Italy and Spain.

As Gregory Viscusi points out in this Bloomberg piece from today:

France has 2.4 times as many companies with 49 employees as with 50, the threshold at which firms must create three different worker councils, introduce profit sharing and submit a restructuring plan if they fire workers for economic reasons.

Sarkozy’s solution for this is even more austerity – he has blamed France’s declining competitiveness on rising real wages, and would be able to impose tougher austerity measures as he wouldn’t be seeking election next time round.

Under Hollande, France would be able to begin to rebalance its economy around technological innovation, speed and flexibility of production, and quality of goods. Most importantly, Hollande would renegotiate the fiscal compact so that it includes an emphasis on growth would allow national governments flexibility and challenge Germany’s naked-self interest pursuit of austerity.

Across Europe, right-wing governments are failing to persuade ordinary voters that austerity and debt-reduction are the solutions to this crisis. They’ve had a taste of the medicine, but are failing to see the benefits. That Sarkozy’s response to his record being challenged has been to pander to right wing voters is perhaps the most telling thing of all.

Here’s to being a nomad

Dublin
Dublin (Photo credit: Steve-h)

Although I’m supposed to be a member of the go nowhere generation, I’ve actually spent most of today tuning my CV for a role in Dublin.

Just to clarify, I don’t live in Dublin at the moment.

As a single person, I’m more than happy to move between cities and countries. After working in Japan, I don’t feel like it would be impossible to adapt to anywhere.

The right job would be a major factor, as would income, affordable housing, cost of living and space. My ideal destination would be Brighton, as I’ve got a lot of friends down there, and its very relaxing in the summer.

I wouldn’t be suprised if a lot of people my age feel the same way. If jobs are hard to come by in one city, the potential of a job lined up in a city with lower rents must seem appealing.

What, then, is stopping us from taking this path?

Even if, if worst comes to worst, you leave behind your social and professional networks and are laid off six months later, there is nothing at all to stop you coming back. Or looking for a job there.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened to me in Brighton. My landlady was laid off, I couldn’t afford the rent on my own or the deposit on a new place, so here I am.

Our networks are more decentralised than they have ever been. I have friends in London, DC, Tokyo, New York, Brighton and the south of France. I’m able to stay in touch with them easily.

Moving to another city, at least in Europe, offers the opportunity to experience a different culture – and maybe the difference between a small town and a big city.

As a young, single guy, I don’t feel any shame in chasing the opportunity. Building a new social life in a new city is easier than it has ever been. I could see myself moving to a new city every 5 to 10 years, even if jobs were plentyful.

Employers need to play ball too though. Employers struggling with the paucity of the local talent pool would be wise to look at resumes submitted by people from out of the area – even if it means providing a relocation package.

A couple of thousand spent on relocation costs could be money well spent for any employer if they’re able to pick if talent that is simply unavailable in their local area.

Since graduating, I’ve lived in London, Tokyo, Brighton and Cambridge, and I’d happily start all over again somewhere else. I only get to do my twenties once, after all. If nothing else, I simply refuse to be part of “Generation Stuck”

 

Social Scorecard: Innovate CV

Make more placements
Make more placements (Photo credit: duncan)

I’m really proud of the work that I did in helping Innovate CV do to get off the ground in social.

Innovate’s story will be familiar to a lot of you who work in a client facing capacity in social marketing.

The first meeting: “But we’re in recruitment – what do we say?”

Working for an agency – this is an interesting one. Trying to convince the client they have something to contribute!

My response?

There are a generation of young people leaving university now in the UK who have not received any proper careers training or advice. My advice to you would be to own that generation – be the helping hand they need.

Since then, Innovate have tightened the value proposition even further, to:

Here to help you get a better CV. For free.

Responses to questions like that should be short. If it can’t be summed up in a sentence, and doesn’t offer real benefits, it’s probably not going to work.

Three years on – from a standing start – Innovate CV are flying – 16k likes and 4,000 Twitter followers for @Adam_InnovateCV.

But, that said, there are areas for improvement.

The biggest problem is engagement.

Engagement is super low – a mere 0.006%.

If I had to give three pieces of advice, it would be this:

Be provocative - at the moment, I feel like I’m being asked to engage, rather than provoked to. Does it feel like there is an urgency that I respond? That I add my name to the stream? Do I feel compelled to lean forward and type? These should be the litmus tests.

Be timely – Innovate could do more work on latching on to news hooks. I understand the reluctance to do politics, I really do but everyone recognizes that there is a real human crisis in recruitment now that cuts far beyond statistics. How can you latch onto the stories that people are really talking about?

Be inclusive – I’d love to hear more from Innovate CV’s users. At the moment, it feels a bit like it is building bridges between the recruitment community and candidates. This is fine, but it would be great (and help engagement) if users felt like they were supporting each other, rather than competing with each other.

These are just a few ideas – there are lots more, and I’d love to hear some of yours!

 

Making a Child Theme

WordPress dashboard interface
WordPress dashboard interface (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, I ran into a bit of a bug on my WordPress blog. I’m blogging about it, so you can avoid doing the same.

When logging into WordPress today, I noticed that WordPress was asking me to update to 3.3.2.

Everything was going fine, until I tried to access my site, and it threw this error:


Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_theme() in ...

Ah. WordPress updating had broken my theme.

It turns out that a fix had been released for the theme, but this would mean losing my unsaved layout changes.

In the end, I bit the bullet and updated the theme, losing my changes.

Here’s how to stop something like this happening again

Install a child theme on your WordPress.org blog. Even if you don’t plan to use it right away.

A child theme will inherit the functionality of your existing theme – but, crucially, allow you to modify and add to the functionality of the parent theme.

If you change the parent theme – say, by updating it – the modifications on the child theme will still be saved.

To make a child theme, log into your site via FTP and create a new directory in wp-content/themes. This will house your child theme.

Now, create a style.css file:


/*
Theme Name: Example Theme Child
Theme URI: http://example.com/
Description: Child theme for the Example theme
Author: Your name here
Author URI: http://example.com/about/
Template: XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Version: 0.1.0
*/
@import url("../THEMEDIRECTORY/style.css");

You should enter the directory name of the parent theme (e.g. twentyten) on the “Template:” line, and enter the correct theme directory in the “@importurl” line too.

Now, upload this file into its new directory.

Now, in your WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes and activate your new child theme!

It’s important to note that there should be no other CSS rules above the import rule. If you do put other rules above it, it will be invalidated, and the CSS will not be applied.

However, any CSS which you put below this point will supercede the CSS in the parent theme!

This is a good thing because it means that any time your “parent theme” gets updated (this will happen often if you’ve downloaded from the likes of Themeforest or Github), you won’t lose your layout changes!

Regardless of whether you are planning to update your theme in the near future, this is good housekeeping and maintenance for your WordPress blog.