WELCOME WEEK BEGINS!

WELCOME TO ALL OUR NEW MEMBER AND THOSE JUST HAVING A QUICK LOOK!THIS IS OUR LIVE UPDATE OF HOW THE FAIR IS GOING.COME AND SEE US IN THE SOCIETIES FAIR!OLD MEMBERS YOU MUST REJOIN, AND IT WOULD BE ACE TO SEE YOU!WE HAVE BADGES, SWEETS CHOCOLATE AND KEY RINGS!NO PRESSURE IF YOU JUST FANCY A CHAT, PLEASE COME ALONG.UPDATE: (13:30) Well we promised a live update on how today was going!!It has been a bit difficult because we have been so busy, only now have we got five minutes to give you a quick update on how we are doing!!As you might have guessed it is going extremely well, on our mailing list we have already had 70 people sign up!! And we have managed to register 20 NEW members, lets hope the afternoon goes just as well!Could possibly more students come this afternoon, as they manage to get themselves out of bed!!Its coming to the end of our first day at the freshers fair and we have exceeded our expectations, signing up over 25 members and over 100 on our mailing list. We look forward to another successful day tomorrow where PPC for Edgbaston Deidre Alden will be helping us recruit more members!!And don’t forget, old members do need to renew their membership from last year, especially if they want to take advantage of discounts on future events.

BUCF

DAY TWO

Today we signed up a fair few more members and we also had Deidre Alden visit our stand, she spoke on a range of issues and will hopefully also be attending our welcome event on Sunday 7th October.

FRESHERS

This week we will be at the Freshers society fair on both Thursday and Friday from 10 til 4.  If you’re interested in joining or just want a chat come along and there will be soemone there to speak to.  We also have loads of posters and key rings to give away too!!!

Northern Rock weakens Cameron…

     

Gordon Brown has been strengthened by Northern Rock and David Cameron weakened.

For the first time since the 1860s people queued up outside a British bank to recover their savings. If continued the confidence crisis that was specific to Northern Rock could have spread, and could have led to a collapse in credit and a recession.

Thankfully it didn’t. Under political pressure the Bank of England guaranteed savings. All of a sudden people stopped queuing, Northern Rock’s share price gently climbed and people began to deposit. Crisis averted.

Having presided as Chancellor over ten years of uninterrupted growth, the people looked to Gordon Brown when the Rock began to wobble. And after yet another crisis Brown was able to reassure.

Terrorism, rural plagues, great floods, economic crises? Is there anything that the Celtic warrior Gordon can’t defeat? It appears not. Gordon Brown feeds off crises. He chews them up, absorbing every last bit of political nutrition. High in the polls he waits for another crisis to eat.

Both the Guardian ICM poll and the Sun Mori poll indicate that Brown gained from Northern Rock. Asked specifically who they would prefer to handle a similar crisis in the future, 54% said Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling whereas 22% said David Cameron and George Osborne. Clearly the Conservative’s attempt to blame the Prime Minister for Northern Rock was futile.

Besides, as David Smith points out in The Times, it wasn’t sensible for Cameron to attack the Government for building economic growth on a mountain of debt. In fact Government debt at a smidgen over 38% is lower than the 43.6% it was in 1997. And 94% of extra consumer spending between 1997 and 2006 has been driven by rising income, not by credit.

While most people may not be aware of these figures, there is a general feeling that the economy is performing well and that Northern Rock was an isolated and momentary blip. And so Cameron’s criticism of the government’s economic competence seemed too general, unnecessary and opportunist.

Northern Rock strengthened Brown and weakened Cameron, reviving the possibility of a snap election.

Who are we?

   

Yesterday’s ICM poll makes bad reading. Of course, one poll means little, but if ICM’s findings are the beginning of a trend then we could have a very serious problem. I would point out two significant figures:

David Cameron’s approval rating amongst Conservative voters is +25. Firstly, +25 is a low score. It suggests that voters who voted Conservative in 2005 are not happy with Cameron’s positioning of the party. That said, as the party changes it’s inevitable that support amongst Tory voters should fall. If anything +25 isn’t low enough.

What is disappointing, however, is David Cameron’s wider approval rating of -8. This shows that Cameron is failing to reach out beyond Conservative voters.

If this is the case, it suggests that Cameron has changed the party enough to irritate Tory voters, but nowhere near enough to attract new voters. This is a changed situation since the spring, as the ICM poll indicates.

For the first eighteen months Cameron’s leadership resulted in a sustained poll lead. A commitment to maintain Labour’s level of investment, and a shift on to education, health and quality of life issues, was the basis for the improvement. ICM suggests that as the Conservative poll lead narrowed, so to did their lead on these particular issues.

In January, ICM polled the Conservatives one point ahead on Education, and only 1 point behind on health. Other pollsters put them above Labour on health for the first time ever. Now Labour has a lead of twelve points on Education and thirteen points on Health.

On tax and public services the Conservatives have lost a three point lead to a Labour lead of twelve points. And on the environment, the Conservatives have lost a three point lead to a Labour lead of five points.

Regardless of whether this indicates a lurch to the right, it does show that the progress Cameron made on key centre-ground issues has been reversed.

The danger now is that people simply don’t have a clue what the Conservatives are about. As a Conservative member, do you even know what we’re about? I bet you don’t.  

REFORM!

                                    

Michael Howard was not entirely right when he proclaimed “Prison Works!”.

If prison works, why does the UK have both the highest prison population and the highest re-offending rate in Western Europe? Prison can only be said to work when both these are reduced.

On the latest figures, two-thirds of prisoners re-offend within the first two years of release. Shockingly, three quarters of offenders aged 19 to 21 were reconvicted. And since 1997 the figures have worsened.

This is pretty unimpressive for a government that claimed re-offending was one of its “core priorities”.

Take for example, drug addiction. Research tells us that 60% of all UK prisoners have used hard drugs within 12 months prier to sentencing. This equates to some 48,000 prisoners. Yet  only 4,700 in-prison drug rehabilitation placements are available, therefore increasing the likeliness of re-conviction.

Take for example, the literacy level of the prison population. Research suggests that 80% of prisoners have writing skills and 50% have reading skills equal to or below the level of an eleven year old, compared with a national figure of 13%. Yet access to educational facilities is highly limited.

Over half of prisoners are sentenced to terms of six months or less. In such cases the verdict delicately hangs in the balance between community service and a custodial sentence. However six months inside without access to correctional facilities is enough to ruin future prospects.

In such cases the prisons themselves have become a cause of crime.

And what is more, the public seem to be more liberal than they used to be. A recent poll by ICM showed that only 42% agree that prison works, and a slight majority thought that no more prisons should be built. Perhaps this is a grudging acceptance that we can’t just keep building more and more prisons. With the UK’s prison population exceeding 80,000 for the first time, attention might be re-focusing on rehabilitation and even alternative punishments.

One wonders what Sir Robert Peel would do. I’m sure the father of the Conservative Party would be irritated by the sparse and uneven coverage of educational and medical facilities in prisons. It irritated him in the 1820s. The number of people imprisoned for minor offences would irritate him too, as it did when he was Home Secretary. Instead he advocated secondary punishments like the whip.

I’m sure Peel would recommend his personal favourite the ‘Treadmill’, for all the populist, irresponsible, pathetic Home Secretaries who have put their own interests before those of the penal system.

David Cameron should be just as irritated.

Too late to call, not that he ever intended to…

     

I remember blogging that Brown had no intention of calling an election this year. He allowed the speculation to continue anyway, thereby turning the heat up on the Conservatives.

Instead of calling Brown’s bluff, the Conservative leadership panicked. Policies were spun out one after the other in what was widely interpreted as a shift back to comfort zone issues.

I suspect that most people would now be hard pushed to say what the Conservatives are about. And if this was Brown’s intention then I suspect he’s been successful. I also suspect that weeks of infighting have seriously weakend Cameron.

That said polls have narrowed of late, leaving a margin of error that could result in either a Labour majority or a hung parliament. This pushes the prospect of an autumn election even further away.

But what if Brown keeps the speculation up? As a ploy to keep the Conservatives in a state of panic, it’s worked devastatingly well so far. Therefore why not allow the speculation to continue for the next six months before finally deciding not to call an election.

We can learn from the last few months though. Brown, even when Labour was a good eight points ahead, cautioned not to speculate on an early election. He is unlikely to do so in the near future, and so David Cameron should use his conference speech to launch a true liberal conservative agenda.

In my previous post I tried to explain why the Conservative party will never win an election if it campaigns on tax cuts, immigration, Europe, or the family. And whereas Michael Ancram perhaps has age as an excuse for thinking that we can, there is no other excusable excuse.

Immigration is probably the best example of what not to talk about. To understand this, one has to understand that voters are hypocrites. The right will often say that immigration appears in people’s top three concerns. This is true. However, whenever a politician talks about immigration the response is negative. This is a particularly acute problem for the Conservatives. The answer, like it or lump it, is to pretty much ignore the issue.

The Conservatives will have to understand the public inside out if they want to win a general election. To do so will require a much less simplistic, and perhaps a much more inconvienient study of public opinion.

Mosques, Madrassas, Imams.

Many Moderate Musilims probally we as concerned if not more with the Times report last week on how the extremist Deobandi sect has managed to infiltrate nearly 50%  of our mosques. The acticle concerned me greatly. For too long the Government has cowered in the face of the extremist minority of muslims in this country. The problem is that this Government has done nothing to try and bring back many Musilim institutions back into the fold of mainstream liberal Islam. Islamic schools remain able to teach a curriculum of their own choice, and are nto inspected rigorously enough by an overly emascualted OfSDTED, who are shakled by the PC dogma.

Only today in on the BBC website a teachers’ union has critised the Government’s blind backing of Faith schools. Christian, Islamic, Buhddist i do not care, religion only has one place in a school and that is in a balanced RE lesson, where all faiths are disscussed and compared aswell as athiesm and agnosticism. The State’s job is to provide childrten with the tools to learn, not to be indoctrinated. Now you may feel the use of that word is abit hyperbolic but if a school only teaches one faith as many do, then it is not presenting a balanced and accurate picture of Britain. I actually like religion playing a part in schools, i went to  a CofE school, but i cannot justify saying its ok to have Cof E schools but not Islamic ones, so i would rather say no to all of them.

Returning to the point of increasing extremism in our Mosques, many moderate muslims are angry and fustrated at the inertia of this Government to act and clamp down on this isolationaist sect. Moderates often face the huge brunt on the islamaphobia it whips up in the press and gebneral pubolic and often do not share any of the values these dellusionals proclaim as true.  This Government has allowed many foreign Immams to enter Britain, and these have trained home grown immams so the Government’s plan to have more British Muslim Clergy is flawed because guess who trained them!

These people despise our way of life completly, from the arts, to women’s rights to political freedoms. we need to act now to stop this ideology spreading further. the Government needs to take harsh measures such as rigorous inpsections of Islamic educational centres, it needs to foster better links with Mosques and it needs to take action against those who preach a sermon of hatred.

This isn’t Pakistan, nor will it ever be, i do not want to live in a country wherre an increasing minority despise it and us for our culture and values. This issue trancends party politics and needs a cross party plan so we as a country can really stand united in the face of this threat. at the moment this isn’t possible and i cannot see DC comming out anytime soon proposing any policies to deal with this.

now is the time to act and reclaim Islam for the moderates where it truely belongs.

The Young Radicals, and what we owe them…

            

“I never meant to say that Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”

Some might use Michael Ancram’s recent comments as proof of how timeless John Stewart Mill remains.

I think this might be too harsh. Ancram is not stupid. He’s probably a clever guy, and certainly cleverer than me. It’s his political judgement that has let him down.

Though perhaps we should try to understand people like Ancram. Imagine how exciting the 1980s would have been for the Tories, high on the Lawson boom and champagne (champagne imports trebled). These were young radicals, overturning the post war consensus, rolling back the state, liberalising markets, and transforming the political economy. They were doing what they always dreamt of. No wonder Ancram looks back to the glory days for guidance.

Of course, this is not an excuse for younger party members. No, young members who listened to Ancram and thought he made sense, really are stupid.

Why else would you be obsessed with tax cuts, immigration levels, the nuclear family, and Europe? You know who you are! And it’s not normal for people under 30.

Allow me to bring you up to speed: In 1997 our party suffered it’s worst defeat for 165 years. Labour changed it’s name to New Labour. Under their new leader, Mr Blair, Labour accepted the achievements of the 1980s and capitalised on the failings. By doing so they captured the centre-ground, thereby leaving the Conservatives to the right of opinion. Clever Mr Blair. The Conservatives would need to move to the left to win an election ever again.

What part of that are you finding difficult?

Perhaps you fail to understand that when John Redwood appears on TV talking about tax cuts, people worry about their local schools and hospitals.

Perhaps you fail to understand that Europe is not, just not, an important issue.

Perhaps you fail to understand that people find immigration uncomfortable to talk about.

Perhaps you can’t see how people might be turned off by Iian Duncan Smith, particularly Iian Duncan Smith lecturing the country on marriage.

If the Conservative Party continue in a rightward direction, we might boost our share of the vote, but crucially, not in the right places.

The youngest of us should question why we lost three elections, and why we might lose the next one, and the one after that? And why Labour continues to be the main beneficiary of the consensus the young radicals helped create? We owe them that, at least.

OLD OLD OLD

Michael Ancram the FORMER (key word) deputy leader has warned us all today to not loose our “soul” in favour of vacuous new policies.

Well thank the lord he did so as otherwise I think we might have won an election!

He has suggested we return to “core” Tory issues such as civil partnerships, leaving the EU and slashing taxes. Oh I think the electorate may have just nodded off.

These are the policies we have had in the past and lost election after election on. When William Hague put the anti-euro campaign at the heart of his agenda WE LOST. When Michael Howard put immigration at the top of the list WE LOST and as for IDS I don’t think I can remember his election campaign.

The party has chosen change by electing Cameron and now needs to support him. The old voices must remain disciplined. The party according to the public lacks a direction, we that’s because those right of the party keep undermining the new message.

The issues he wants us to return to will not win votes, labour has taxed and taxed and still won elections, people want to see good public services and realise they have ot pay for them.

Now is the time for Cameron to lay down the law, he has been disappointing lately I want to see some good well thought out policy announcements soon so we can really sing to the rafters about what we now stand for. Any lurch to the right and we’re doomed.

Non-Courses Report coverage…

     

Labour Students have linked to BUCF, and are also critical of the TaxPayers’ Alliance Non-Courses report. 

Tom Marley, Chairman of Birmingham University Labour Students, blogs in response to slipts within the CF over the issue. Read here.