I prefer full memoirs to diaries. The diaries are excellent historical documents, and Tony Benn's are more extensive than anybodys, but I find memoirs more readable and they put things in better context. I found Alastair Campbells diaries a bit hard reading as well.

Another good book to mention is David Owen's memoirs, I've always rated him. I thought if we went for an elected President to replace the Queen's constitutional powers, it would be a good idea to have an older experienced politician with an element of international stature, and Owen would be the type of bloke I'd have in mind as President.

The Lord Patten of Barnes (Chris Patten). The best prime minister (in recent times) we never had. Surely a candidate for President also?

Yes, Patten would definitely be in that category. It would be good to have a London Mayor style election with the parties endorsing a candidate and some maybe standing as independents. As it would just be the Queen's consitutional powers it wouldn't really be a job for a current politician, more a former one with status (please NOT Blair)

Chris Patten was a good politician, intelligent and had a good public image. Major said in his book that he had him lined up to replace Lamont as Chancellor after the 92 election but him losing his seat squandered it. Another good potential Tory candidate for a President would be Ian Lang, quite a low profile politician but a good One Nation Tory.

Not sure who would be suitable figures from the Labour side. It's hard to find respected former Labour ministers.

I bet Paddy Ashdown would fancy being President as well actually.

Shirley Williams?

Have you read biographies of the big 19th figures? Gladstone, Disraeli etc? A world away from today's politicians.

That's an arguable point, but to put the two issues together in the manifesto smacks of populism to me (or even opportunism).

Do you have evidence for your claim?

There is plenty for it Graham as you well know. If you don't type "disproportionate crime rates race" into Google. It's not a argument I think you would seek to defend.

I mean are you really going to counter the assertion that "Gun crime is more prolific amongst young black men then young white men" ?

[url=http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/2010/march/warning-from-commission-over-disproportionate-use-of-stop-and-search-by-police/Googled and found this[/url

Yes, more black and Asian people are stopped and searched.

PS Can we not let this thread get derailed into the racism thread.

Let's leave it there then. The stop/search stats can either be seen as self fulfilling or reasonably and necessary policing measures in line with crime stats.

Just rest assured you are most likely (based on empirical evidence) to be blown up on a plane/train/major city by a muslim.

Tory manifesto tomorrow...

it will read,

'What ever Labours' is, only slightly better and we came up with it first'

For those who like a good read with a political slant, read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressle. If you don't understand the "workers" struggle after reading that, you never will.

Having re-read my initial post I realise that the point I was trying to make was in no way clear.

What I meant say was that Labours investment in building schools has been a huge lost opportunity to provide hope for a lot of children who have been through the education system in the 13 years that Labour have been in power and it's for these reasons.

I agree that school buildings themselves were in desperate need of rebuilding but what has happened is this. The schools (as well as hospitals and other Gov't funded buildings were all built using the Private Finance Initiative - PFi). A disaster as a policy and one created by the Tories, Labour railed against it in opposition but when in power put their full weight behind it because it is off balance sheet.

There are huge problems with PFi. It is more costly to create a building using PFI than it could be if a Gov't built it themselves, the Gov't doesn't own the building once complete and any (and I mean any) changes to the building itself has to be done at a price determined by the owners so the taxpayer gets ripped off whenever this is needed. The major thing about PFi is that the building is paid for "on tick" and the NHS and local authorities are legally bound to make the payments for the 25/30 year period in question which will eat into fronline service provision as the Gov't reduces its available investment in education and health to reduce its debt.

The thing is, even accepting that PFi was the way forward, Labour didn't have the brains to work out how to squeeze the most from the investment and I refer to the complete absence of a policy in training up youngsters leaving school by way of apprenticeships and learning a trade on these massive PFi schemes - instead labour from Europe was shipped in to do the work instead. This means that not only has a large amount of the money paid in wages disappeared out of the UK economy a vast swathe of young 'uns who could have been taught a valuable skill over the last 8 years or so have been denied the opportunity - an opportunity to offer something of value to householders etc now that this big ticket capital work work has essentially dried up. Youngsters who could have been trained through have nothing they can offer tradewise and are either on the dole, doing service roles or being shoved through the HE network (Blairs 50% into education) on courses of little value to employers while being saddled with the cost of tuition fees for god knows how long.

Spending money is easy when it's the taxpayers - the skill is in turning the penny as many times as possible while you're doing it and Labour have hideously let this country down on that count.

Really interesting post as I have never been able to understand this PFI stuff.

I note that you confirm that "all" schools and hospitals have been built using PFI credits. Can you explain how that was done using the £6billion National Academies Frameworks or how the £2billion P21 health facilities building programme also utilised PFI credits.

Also can you clarify that the planned £80million investment in Warrington high schools is to be via PFI credits as I thought that only applied to one of the sample schools (which I think is in Runcorn) whilst the remainder is to be centrally financed. Wasn't that how the new building works at Culceth High School financed also or was that via PFI?

I'm not really certain everything you are saying is correct but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Could you please add the current redevelopment of Birchwood High and pending redevelopment of Great Sankey to your list.

PFI doesn't fund all government investment, its just an option which provides quick money for an immediate project. It was a Conservative policy from the early 90s, its just got associated with "New Labour" as they used it most readily. The concept of funding government investment though borrowing is not a new one, they could have just increased the budget deficit by borrowing on the markets to pay for the hospitals/schools instead. The biggest charge against PFI is that it was supposed to 'harness the extra efficiency of the private sector' in public service provision but in many cases it turned out to be a mechanism for private contractors to milk the taxpayer and underdeliver. There were major concerns raised in the public sector a good ten years ago about the way PFI was going but they were ignored, just like there were concerns raised in the public sector about the growing amounts of waste and layers of well paid bureaucratic jobs which were draining money from the taxpayer to pay for a public-sector-management class to enrich themselves and get inflated pensions. Now the government has realised that those warnings were right, and the public sector is going to have to pay for it.

Simple truth is the public sector is, on balance, very poor at spending tax payers' money never mind private investment, and it's basically a hideously complicated employment scheme. The private sector would ravage them if given a chance, and deliver more value. Let's pray for a Tory government with balls.

I'm not an expert on PFI so I'm looking forward to the next instalment from Monmouth Wire.

Ooofffff

I don't buy this ideological argument that public sector = inefficient, private sector = efficient. There is good management and bad management which can happen in the public or private sector.

I also think the two sectors should be kept separate, don't try and get the private sector to deliver public provision. However I do think that the public sector should focus on quality not quantity. They need to get more decentralised and to a culture of trusting local management rather than building in constant layers of extra bureaucracy in the name of ensuring accountability and political correctness. Really the answers can be gained by asking the people at the cutting edge of the public sector what needs to be done, they all want to be freed from the excessive paperwork and bureaucracy which New Labour have brought in.

The global financial crisis let us not forget, was caused by bad private sector management, by the most highly paid elites of the private sector. They sanctioned the level of lending to poor risk borrowers and had no contingency for their plan failing, and when it did, the banks who failed had to fall back on public sector money, which is hardly an argument for the supremacy of the private sector.

I will be interested to see if this changes if the Tories win. Will they really want to let go of the control the government has over the management of the public sector in the name of audit and accountability? Not sure how much it is a New Labour thing as a 21st Century thing.

i for one,unlike your good self, am not enamoured by the prospect of fat dave and his bullingdon club buddy george taking us through the next stage of recovery in this WORLDWIDE recession,not so long ago they were telling us that they would have let the recession run it's course,now they seem to have all the answers without truly backing up how they will do it.
it's irony at it's finest know that multi millionaires can tell the public to expect a period of austerity whilst downing the pimms and champers in their oxfordshire mansions,i am disapointed in some things that this current government have done but find it staggering that when the rest of the world were scratching their heads on what to do brown and darling took action to which the others followed but the bulk of the english press chose to ignore this.
our economic growth is forecast to outstrip america,germany and many other leading manufacturing nations so they must have implemented actions that are beginning to work, to change governments now could be truly disastrous and your much maligned private sector would have nothing to get their teeth into anyway if the tory's get in and begin slashing at the things they are currently promising to protect.
being in opposition to government in this country must be the easiest job in the world you just disagree with the government on everything and say that you can do it better,the people who actually can be bothered to get out and vote will decide,i personally think it will be a close call.

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7541285/How-should-I-vote-in-the-General-Election-2010.htmlWho should you vote for?[/url

This is good.