I was invited as a guest on Saturday 28 August, on Radio 4 Saturday Live to discuss how miners and mining communities cope with tragic events including mining disasters. With some nostalgia and a few unpleasant memories of my 23 years as a younger coalminer, the interviewer understandably moved to the fantastic breaking news about the 33 Chilean miners trapped in a copper/gold mine.

Chilean miners

The joyful news that the miners trapped underground in the Chilean Atacama Desert were alive was a fantastic moment. Nevertheless the euphoria and new found optimism for their safe return must not divert their Government’s attention away from the Mine owners’ responsibility for the tragedy.

The Chilean miner’s and their union had been complaining for ages about lack of safe working practises and conditions at the mine. When the roof collapsed the miners tried to rescue themselves by climbing the emergency ladder in a ventilation shaft that should have lead them safely to the surface, only to find that the ladders were only fitted a third of the way up. The evacuation exit at the mine was clear for 48 hours after the accident, and the miners could have gotten out safe if the ladder had been fully in place. I have opened an online Facebook group, “Rescue the Chile 33”, if you have internet access please join and send a message of solidarity to the Chilean miners and their families.

I was very pleased to accept an invitation from the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament Alex Ferguson MSP to be a panel guest at this year’s Festival of Politics at an event held in the Chamber of the Scottish Parliament on Friday 20 August, 2010. The event was a Question Time format on the subject “how politicians and political institutions are seeking to engage with the public, in an age of increasing political cynicism.”

The panel of guests lead by the Presiding Officer included  Peter MacMahon, Assistant Editor, The Scotsman; Professor Charlie Jeffery, The Institute of Governance, Edinburgh University; YouGov’s President, Peter Kellner and myself representing Mr Speakers  Panel of Chairs, House of Commons. The session was chaired by Dr Ruth Fox, Director, Parliament and Government Programme, Hansard Society. 

It was similar to a TV question time format with the panel of guests seated in front of the Presiding Officer’s table with the audience sitting in the MSP seats in the chamber. The Chair  Dr Ruth Fox began with a 30 minutes of questions amongst the panellists, covering the wide gambit of subjects, before throwing it open to the audience inviting comments and questions of the panellists.   It was recorded on the Scottish Parliament’s webcast and can be viewed on the Parliament’s web site.

Some British charities have expressed a fear that there is a drop in donations to the Pakistan Flood Disaster, attributable to David Cameron’s unscripted criticism of Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, made in early summer during his visit to India. We must not allow concerns or criticism of the Pakistani Government to deny humanitarian aid to the millions of Pakistanis suffering in what could be the world’s worst flood disaster.

These floods are comparable only to the tsunami in Indonesia, 2004 and could surpass even that tragedy in water borne diseases and loss of life. The U.N. says that six million children are at risk of malnutrition, diarrhoea and pneumonia, as these unprecedented super-floods inundate Pakistan. If the sanitation crisis is not tackled immediately many millions of children will suffer from deadly diarrhoea and other diseases.

With further floods forecast getting life saving essentials to the flooded areas is a top priority to save millions of lives. To make a donation to the DEC Pakistan appeal, visit http://www.dec.org.uk or donate over the counter at any post office or high street bank, or send a cheque.  payable to DEC PAKISTAN FLOODS APPEAL and post it to DEC PAKISTAN FLOODS APPEAL, PO BOX 999, LONDON, EC3A 3AA

This ConDem coalition government started off abolishing Child Trust Funds, freezing Child Benefit, cutting child Tax Credits and we now know they were about to scrap free school milk for infants, until the Prime Minister and Downing Street overruled a Health Minister when the ghost of Maggie Thatcher (the milk snatcher) rose to haunt and taunt David Cameron into another PM veto.

This is the second time Cameron has overruled a Minister in as many weeks. First it was “parties for prisoners” and now “milk snatching”. Last week’s drooling adoration for the Banks and bankers contrasted very badly with David Cameron’s Health department’s attempt to end 70 years of universal provision of a daily free 1/3 pint of milk for all infants under five. The question from this “milk snatching” debacle is who actually vetoed the Milk Snatcher? Was it Clegg or Cameron? What discussions did the PM have with the deputy PM before the junior minister was slapped down and  overruled?

Obviously, all is not well inside this mongrel ConDem Coalition. Their obsession with indiscriminate cutting of all public services, including in spite of their earlier assurances the NHS and Armed Forces is neither creditable nor acceptable.

Last week Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper was told by an English appeal court that he would die in prison and would never be eligible for parole because of his conviction for murdering 13 women in 1980-81. Contrast the Ripper with the Lockerbie bomber Al-Magrahi who was convicted of murdering 270  victims by bombing a Pan Am flight to America; where 189 were American citizens, and the Scottish Justice Minister’s decision to free him and return him to his family in Tripoli.

American Senate

We should not ignore the American input to getting agreement with Gaddafi to drop his nuclear weapons ambitions or that, whatever was agreed by Tony Blair in a Libyan tent was with the full agreement of the American administration. Therefore the smell of red hearings is strong with some in Washington, but Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill do not come out of this smelling of roses either. What started in a Libyan tent ended in Greenock Prison with Al-Magrahi’s release.

The Foreign Office, Scottish Office and the American State Department, are different parts of this mosaic of conspiracy. The politicians Jack Straw, Kenny MacAskill, Alex Salmond, Tony Blair and George Bush have questions to answer. I will not hold my breath on that happening but we should not let them off the hook that the Senate Inquiry puts them on.

VAT is the most regressive tax we have. It damages middle and low income families and yet it is the first tax of choice, of this Lib/Con coalition government that is shamelessly using VAT as a precursor to their obsession to cutting public expenditure. The Labour Government passed legislation to cut the deficit by 50% in four years but only from 2011-2012 when the recovery to economic growth was secure and increasing VAT to 20% would not have happened under Labour.

Bus Pass

Cutting pensioners Bus Pass entitlement is cruel, punitive, uncaring and damaging to all rural bus travellers. Bus operators could go out of business and/or prices will escalate which will be devastating to pensioners. Cameron’s glove puppet and coalition partner Nick Clegg, didn’t flinch backing his boss when putting the boot into pensioners saying, “we’ve all got to pay more for our public services”. The Tories are doing what they always intended to do. Most pensioners expected it from the Tories but the real treachery and fundamental betrayal of pensioners has been perpetrated on them by Nick Clegg and his 57 Lib/Dem MP’s.  They sold the jerseys for the crumbs off the David Cameron’s table.  Every one of them elected on the promise of opposing the Tory cuts to benefits and the VAT increase.

Last Tuesday the House was sitting late after 3.a.m. dealing with the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. Yours truly was excused the late night sittings because I will Chair the Bill through its committee stages as the Coalitions’ Emergence Budget is put into law. Unfortunately the history of late night sittings is littered with examples of inebriated politicians who let themselves and their constituents down, with their lack of moderation and control of their drinking. Thankfully they are very small in number but the journalists who are prowling the bars on these occasions, some of whom  showing the same lack of restraint are always keen to report on the transgressions of others and get applauded by their editors for their, “Got them” reports. 

Reports that a new novice Tory MP was so drunk that he was rolling on the bar floor and missed voting for the Coalition’s Finance Bill did not endear him to his new bosses or the Tory Whips. The incident was made all the more bizarre when we were told that the offending MP’s name was “Reckless”. The new MP is Reckless by name and was reckless with his conduct. He rightly made a grovelling apology to his constituents, who will be disappointed but will forgive   his dalliance as a first offence, but his name is less forgiving and will not be forgotten by the diary columnists.

Osborne’s Emergency Budget is becoming more mind blowing by the day. The majority rightwing Conservatives in the coalition are cock-a –hoop at Clegg and his compliant Lib/Dems. Osborne and Cameron think of a number for public services cuts, then double it and smugly watch the accommodating Clegg and his Lib/Dems jump through Tory hoops, selling out the people who voted for him to oppose VAT rises; job losses and frontline public service cuts. 

Because of their Budget, unemployment is set to go up by 1.3 million; threatening a double dip recession. Clegg pathetically believes that now is the time to go for his referendum of PR. He believes that he can sell it to the people who voted Lib/Dem on the strength of his love-in with Cameron’s rightwing Tories.  

The millions of people, who see their jobs and security threatened by dirty coalition deals of self righteous and self serving Tory/Lib/Dems, should think long and hard before they swallow the poisonous Clegg/Cameron PR pill with its inherent electoral gerrymandering of the voting system.

Yes, let’s have a national referendum 5 May 2010, but not on a PR voting system  but a vote of confidence on the people on those who stole votes from Lib/Dems supporters and sold them for 30 pieces of silver to David Cameron.

Last week’s Tory budget takes our country back 30years. We are heading back to the dark years of the early 80’s when, for the Tories your unemployment was a price worth paying and when unemployment in this constituency was 30% in places.

When two of Mrs Thatcher’s favourite monetarist gurus, Lord Norman Tebbit and Sir Keith Joseph talked of the need for the unemployed to get on their bikes and leave their families to get jobs in Peter Pan’s never never land; when funding education was to be by Education vouchers (Pupil Premium), i.e. the money goes with the pupil resulting in low income community schools being deprived of core funding whilst private education get direct taxpayers funding per pupil on top of their tax exemptions.

Historically only the Tories have increased VAT and as I predicted the new Chancellor Osborne raised VAT to 20%. He froze wage increases and announced that pensions will go up with wage inflation (sic); brought forward the increase in the retirement age to 66 by 4 years and the Pensions Minister further announced that it could go up to 70 in 10 years. Child benefit frozen. Disability benefits cut. Public services, jobs and pensions savaged and whilst Osborne was setting this all out in his Budget, the trilogy of Lib/Dem treachery, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Danny Alexander sat with Cameron’s Tories and cheered.

Having watched the Cameron and Clegg road show unfold since the General Election, the central feature of their Con/Lib coalition economic policy has been to ignore the roots of the global Banking crisis, i.e. the American Banks and the subprime markets meltdown and say that it’s all the fault of Labour and Gordon Brown.

These Ant and Dec look alikes without the Geordie accent with their spurious rhetoric may have fooled the Tory tabloids but the people and certainly the millions of public servants who the Clegg and Cameron Con coalition have sought to demonise are not fooled by them. The cat was let out of the bag by the Local government minister, when he told the Commons last week that quote, “Those who need the most will suffer the most”

Poverty

“It is the duty of government to seek to improve the quality of life of its poorest citizen”. a quote from my maiden speech 8 July 1987. The quote finishes, “any government that does not do that is immoral”. We will read much about political morality in the week of the Chancellors Special Budget. During the election the Tories talked about tax breaks for married families. After the election Cameron and Clegg’s Lib/Con coalition are punishing families by cutting child benefits, working tax credits that will put millions more out of work. Blaming the poor for their poverty is disgraceful and punishing the poor for being poor is immoral.