Cllr. Gavin Ayling

In the past, readers may remember that I was largely supportive of the Campaign for an Elected Head of State — Republic.

My reason is relatively simple: Activities carried out at summits or meetings of the European Council of Ministers are carried out for the United Kingdom of England and Wales by the Prime Minister in the name of the Head of State. This means that no-one can carry out any checks or balances on what the person in charge of the largest party in parliament does on our behalf. Since 2005 the de facto Head of State has been chosen by the MPs representing the party voted for by less than 40% of the voting population.

But my support never progressed to membership because of views expressed in Republic that I did not agree with. They were against monarchy per se (which I am not) and were keen for the Royal Family to be made to work like ‘normal’ people. Whereas my gripe is with the hole their presence causes in the constitutional robustness of the country.

I mean how can anyone complain about the Royal Family costing each of us under 70 pence each per year when the European Union is estimated to cost us approximately 50 pence per day?

But following Sunday’s revelations that Prince Charles may take a more active interest in the games that politicians play, my support has evaporated entirely. The non-interventionist Queen has overseen gross attacks on her own power and the power of her Ministers by the European Union — if the next King intends to redress that balance, and provide a little, sensible, check and balance, he is fulfilling his constitutional role. Suddenly the need for an extreme overhaul of the Head of State is removed.

Of course Republic don’t agree and are now livid that the King may want to ‘interfere’ in his Kingdom’s running without being elected. But hang on, isn’t the Prime Minister effectively unelected? Isn’t the present situation much worse? Wouldn’t we be better off having an interested and politically independent Head of State than either of the alternatives: an apathetic Head of State or one elected due to the emotions of a small proportion of the electorate?

The electorate are imperfect and make God-awful decisions some of the time — I am excited by the prospect of actually having a Head of State again.

Elect the Lords

That said, I still think we should Elect the Lords!

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I am obviously delighted that Barack Obama won and, no, I wouldn’t be saying that if the Christian fundamentalist had won.

When he ceases to be President Elect, and when he becomes President-proper, I shall be counting the days that Guantanamo remains with innocent people imprisoned. I would be delighted if my count got no higher than one; I cannot imagine what those people are going through (especially if, had they had a trial, they would have been found not guilty) and I would not wish any more time in those conditions…

That said, I expect it would take some time for this to be complete so I shall personally give him a year.

Why should I say anything when others do a better job. See what Money Marketing have to say about the yacht.

Guthrum has a post which mentions a warning all the way back in March 2008. Watch the Channel 4 warning:

I was reminded last night that I was on the committee that approved the continued use of advisers for our Council investments. Obviously with responsibility the Council must retain some money for use in emergencies and for day-to-day expenses and overnight this money is invested in special markets.

I am advised that our advisers told us “several months ago” it would be an idea not to invest in Icelandic banks. I understand, from the grapevine, that neighbouring Brighton & Hove received similar guidance.

It is for this reason that Adur do not have exposure to Landsbanki or its subsidiaries.

It was not that long ago that the BBC appeared to be heading for trouble. For the first time since the BBC was created the renewal of its right to levy the license fee appeared to be under threat. With the Andrew Gilligan affair in 2003 the BBC appeared to have reached an all-time low. And even with the relatively recent issues surrounding fairness of phone-in competitions, the BBC is having a renaissance.

I recently checked my Virgin Media’s hard drive to see which channels I had recorded television from. There was one programme not from the BBC — and that was a football match on Setanta. The hard disk shines a light on the quality of the BBC’s programming at the moment and shows, actually, that its content is great while that of its competitors is apalling.

To be fair, my opinion is not enough to justify the tone of what I have said. But a completely unscientific straw-poll shows that the only non-BBC viewing of anyone I know has been of football — Sky Sports during the weekend and on Thursday last week for domestic and European football and Setanta Sports.

The BBC has excellent programmes including Eggheads, The Tudors, Only Connect, The Story of Mathematics, Bruce Parry’s Amazon, Harry and Paul, Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo, Heroes. And that’s to ignore the improving output of BBC Radio 4. This with BBC HD (the only HD channel on Virgin at the moment) and, most importantly, BBC iPlayer (which I am now smugly using on my Nokia N96) make the BBC a force to be reckoned with.

In 2003/2004 when the BBC was preparing for the renewal, things needed to change and many people questioned the value for money of the license fee. In fact, I carried a link on this blog to a campaign to remove the privileged position of the BBC. But it’s done good. It is now amazing value for money.

The reviews have worked and the BBC deserves praise. I still hate the bias of the BBC’s news and reporting, but the bias appears to be in favour of the party I support now, rather than in favour of the party I do not, so it’s difficult to summon quite so much concern… how terrible of me to think that!

One final thought for Robert Peston: Tonight’s BBC Four programme, The Greed Game was an excellent piece of work. It explained, clearly, how and why the credit crunch came about. It was, if you’ll excuse the gushing, the sort of programme that the BBC was made to make. Robert Peston’s name has become synonymous with the Credit Crunch as his excellent reporting has clarified the whole issue for the masses; this programme made sense of an extraordinarily complex subject. My only question is why, with his clearly great grasp of finance, he works as a relatively low-paid journalist!

… but not at Maths: