Richard Balfe’s call for the Conservatives to maintain the Union Modernisation Fund is utter foolishness:

"When the Government set up the multimillion-pound modernisation fund three years ago for unions to draw upon, the Tories criticised the fund as a payback to the Labour Party’s main source of funding. But they are now debating whether to continue with the fund if they form the next government.

To approve the fund would be departure from the days when Margaret Thatcher was leader and the Conservative Party was partly defined by its antagonism towards the unions. And by forging a relationship with the unions, it could ultimately threaten Labour’s exclusive ties."

This is a bad idea on a number of grounds:

1)  Political abuse of taxpayers’ money – directing taxpayers’ money to secure political advantages is disreputable and erodes public trust in politics.  Whether it is the Labour party channelling money to their donors or the Conservatives using the same fund to try and break Labour and the unions apart.

2)  Building up structural problems in the public finances – Our report (PDF) on a looming winter of discontent set out how, in the last year, public sector staff have gone on strike 100 times as much as those in the private sector.  The unions are holding government to ransom in the knowledge that, playing with other people’s money and with little accountability, politicians will often fold in the face of a strike.

Over the medium to long-term this is reducing flexibility and increasing wages in the public sector which will push up costs, make reform more difficult and reduce the chances of taxpayers getting good value for money.

3)  Bad politics – In the long term any political party that hopes to advance free-market policies and secure value for taxpayers’ money will often clash with unions attached to centralised, big government organisation of the pubic services and after big pay increases for their members.  If the Conservatives are really attached to ushering in a post-bureaucratic age and shrinking the state they are likely, sadly, to have to do so in spite of the unions.  Maintaining Labour’s bung to the unions won’t change that.

The Guardian reports that more parents now aspire for their children to go to university:

"The proportion of parents who would send their children to a private school if they could afford it has increased by nine percentage points in the past four years, according to research commissioned by independent schools. The proportion of Labour voters who would consider private education has also increased by 13 points, the study suggests.

Parents are worried about standards and discipline in state schools, private school headteachers claimed. The Independent Schools Council’s head of research said many parents appeared to be seeking a "haven of moral values".

The ISC commissioned Ipsos Mori to conduct a poll of 2,000 people, including 600 parents. Of the parents, 57% said they would send their child to a private school if they could afford it – up from 48% in the last poll in 2004 and 51% overall since 1997. Some 7% of pupils are currently educated in private schools."

As we’ve noted before, most of the big benefits of education at independent schools aren’t dependent upon greater resources but, instead, greater freedom for teachers and choice for parents.

Stephen Glover, writing for the Mail, laments the grip of inexperienced politicians on our public services:

"The irony is that the professional politician, fixated on power and on a limited but guaranteed financial reward, often turns out not to be a professional at all, but a bumbling amateur who struggles to remain on top of a brief. And that is why it is a certain bet that, with politicians like these, we will continue to read about one Government plan after another going wrong."

The solution isn’t to find politicians with different backgrounds but to avoid relying on them to deliver effective public services.  Instead, we should hand control back to civil society.

"Poor managers are to be sacked without receiving large payouts and replaced by staff from profit-making companies who would be paid with public money.

The NHS will retain ownership of hospital buildings and services but the private firm will "take over" the day to day running of the hospital.

Ministers believe the proposals will drive up standards within the health service."

This is good news and provides genuine accountability for hospital managers delivering poor quality services.  Ironically, the problem with this new initiative was well summed up by Alan Johnson when he set out the scheme:

"[He] admitted that too often, poor performance had been dealt with only after a serious problem had emerged, as happened with Britain’s biggest superbug scandal at Maidstone."

That’s the issue.  It isn’t good enough if the private sector can only come in once things have fallen to pieces so badly that it becomes a live scandal.  Thousands of patients will have been subjected to sub-standard treatment before the ‘story’ breaks.  The private sector will be asked to take over the most demoralised of hospitals and turn them around, which is a lot harder than building an effective organisation from the start.

Instead, private companies – and other organisations such as charities and co-operatives – should be offered a level playing field to compete with the current hospitals.  That pressure will either drive improvement in current hospitals or lead to them, slowly, being replaced.  Competition can improve standards before serious problems emerge.

The Telegraph reports on a new study by Reform which demonstrates that academic standards in maths have been falling in recent decades:

"GCSEs are "considerably" easier than tests sat 50 years ago as questions are simplified to make them more relevant to modern teenagers, it said.

Reform, an independent think tank, said the traditional emphasis on algebra, arithmetic and geometry has been dropped in favour of questions focusing on real-life situations. It added that pupils can now gain a good grade with fewer than half the marks needed in 1990.

Reform also claimed that the lack of rigour has led to fewer students studying maths at sixth-form and university – leaving the British economy vulnerable to competition from China and India."

Mathematics is so vital to such a range of disciplines and high value added industries, from engineering to the City, that we would be mad not to take such criticisms very seriously.  In light of that, the NUT trying to lash out at the messenger and the Minister blaming ‘culture’ is deeply dissapointing.

The European Parliament’s commitment to farce continues unabated.

The Sunday Times revealed yesterday that a dedicated train service to ferry MEP’s from Brussels to Strasbourg will be launched next month, whipping the 732 Euro parliamentarians at high speed between these two centers of EU politics. Each trip will cost the taxpayer in excess of £158,000, and in a show of solidarity with the people they serve, the fare-paying public will be banned, forced onto the much slower, considerably less comfortable regular "cattle truck" services.

The decision to provide a train for MEP’s exclusive use has the requisite ‘green’ justifications; MEP’s have so far flown between the two cities. Cost wise too, the move is unlikely to be any more expensive than the previous arrangement of reimbursing air travel. But such side-issues miss the point entirely: the real problem here lies in the traveling circus itself, the absurd system that sees the European Parliament split between three European cities; Brussels (home of the Parliament’s Committees), Strasbourg (the seat of the Parliament) and Luxembourg (where the Parliament’s departments and secretariat are based).

This ridiculous and expensive anachronism is defended in public on the grounds that this multi-national institutional structure reflects the multi-national nature of Europe’s people. Quite apart from the ridiculous notion that Belguim, France and Luxembourg represent the ‘diversity’ of 27 European states, this fallacy shields national governments from dealing with the truth; that the European Parliament’s traveling circus persists, by train or plane, only because France and Luxembourg fight furiously to maintain their involvement in the EU’s lucrative institutional framework. It is a wasteful and ridiculous system, but Luxembourg and Strasbourg are unlikely to relinquish their piece of the EU pie.

If such waste is built into the institutional structure of an organisation, waste will be in endemic in all areas of its activities. One positive institutional reform European leaders could make at this time then, is to bring an end to the division of key European institutions between nations, and consolidate them in one European city. MEP’s and their staff complain that the current arrangement is ludicrous, and if even MEP’s think a bit of subsidised travel is unnecessary, something must be seriously wrong with the system.