If it’s Monday it’s probably home office questions. And if it’s home office questions it is definitely identity cards.
This week saw the birth of a new argument for them. Normally we have to make do with “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear.” But Andy Burnham from Leigh broke new ground.
He wanted the sort of scheme they favoured in Bulgaria before the Wall came down. It is not enough to make people obtain cards: they should be made to carry them too. Why? Because “in these uncertain times, [it] might help to give people a greater sense of security.”
That was new. Stupid, but new.
In Burnham’s defence, it was a thoroughly modern argument. He sees cards as almost a form of therapy. They will make people feel good about themselves.
Let’s be sensible. What can government really do to make people feel secure? Ross Cranston asked about the home office’s active community unit – one of those New Labour innovations that does good work while sounding a little sinister.
David Blunkett replied, boasting of the money the government is putting into Cranston’s Dudley North constituency. But that missed the point.
Before the 1997 election I reviewed books making the case for each of the three main parties. (The Liberal Democrat one was written by William Wallace.) The only thing they agreed on was that the urban redevelopment of the fifties and sixties had been a disaster because it wiped out established communities.
So it easy for government to destroy communities and less certain that it can build them. Blunkett’s money will be welcome, but his talk of cross-cutting reviews and modern legal frameworks reminded you what a dead hand the state can have.
Still, it is good to see the Labour front bench acknowledging the role of the voluntary sector. Until now the party has been obsessed with encouraging intervention by professionals, not recognising that their flourishing is often a sign of the failure of community.
This is one area where new Labour is more liberal than old Labour. There are many on the back benches who still do not trust the voluntary sector because it threatens a loosening of state control.
No wonder the likes of Ross Cranston want us all to carry identity cards.
The Commons was in recess.
Last Thursday Anthony Steen from Totnes was grumbling about degrees in golf course studies. We don’t blame him.
Imagine what three years in academia would do to a promising golfer. He would emerge with a dissertations called “Towards a post-Lacanian semiotics of matchplay” and want to put bunkers in the middle of the green. Why is there only one ‘correct’ way round a course? In what sense is a score of 68 ‘better’ than one of 84? And what about caddies’ rights?
Remember this when Charles Clarke says things like: “The future of this country depends on having a highly educated and highly qualified population, able to deal with the economic and social challenges of the future. That is what our competitor countries are doing, and that is what we have to do.”
Because quantity counts far more than quality in higher education these days. There are a minority of universities which compete for the best students, and which the best students compete to get to. The rest scrabble are to fill all their places.
Hence those interminable listings in the newspapers over the summer. Hence degrees in subjects which annoy traditionalists like House Points and Mr Steen. Hence young people crammed into underfunded institutions where they have to work from photocopied handouts because the library cannot cope and are taught by underpaid lecturers on short-term contracts.
Politicians are certain that all this generates economic prosperity, but there is little evidence to support them. (You may find Alison Wolf’s recent Does Education Matter? useful in writing your essay.)
Meanwhile in the real world, everyone has to have a degree for fear of being left behind. It is not that having a degree guarantees you a good job: we all know people who are greatly overqualified for what they do. It’s that if you don’t have a degree, you never get an interview.
One effect of this has been to extend adolescence into their twenties for many young people. (We suspect a plot by the manufacturers of baseball caps). Another has been to make it politically impossible to fund higher education from taxation. So when they finally do venture upon adult life they have a huge debt around their necks.
Which, unless you are a golf professional, is a horrible burden to carry.
Hide behind your newspaper. Leave a bag on the seat next to you. Turn off the lights and pretend you are out.
Too late. It’s Kim Howells.
“Did you see the Turner Prize nominees? Cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit, that’s what I call it. And that rap music. For years I have been worried about these hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiot rappers come out with. Idiots like the So Soled Crew are glorifying gun culture and violence. And that folk music. For a simple urban boy such as me, the idea of listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell. And that Robbie Williams. In saying that piracy is a “great idea”, Williams is doing the work for international gangs involved in drugs and prostitution who find music piracy an excellent way of laundering their profits. And the royal family. I’ve never understood the attraction of royalty. They’re all a bit bonkers. They choose very stranger partners, they’re not managing the modern world very well. And those Welsh films. That paranoia about not being defined as Welsh or the idea that there is some kind of racial purity about it is just fascism really, I hate it and I will do everything I can to prevent it.”
It’s not the quality of Howells’ views that offends: you could make a case for any of these opinions. The problem is their quantity and his belief that they are of interest to everyone.
Being a minister in the department of media, culture and sport only encourages his pub bore tendencies. Monday brought questions on school sports, local radio and Birmingham’s bid to be European Capital of Culture. None of them trivial subjects, but not the sort of thing that government could or should be too involved in either.
Even the exchanges on gangsta rap failed to enthuse anyone. Angela Eagle spoke knowledgably about Grandmaster Flash, Ms Dynamite and Missy Elliott, but you were still left with the impression that pop music is not a subject for grown ups.
George Burns once said it is a shame that the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxis and cutting hair. With Kim Howells, one of them has finally got into government.