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| What’s Rotten for Obama in Denmark It’ll be hard to unite the world in Copenhagen when you can’t unite your own country. (Or, at least, your Senate.) feeds.nytimes.com |
Grouches of the season | Peter Preston If there's one thing worse than a Christmas e-card, it's having the real ones delivered by a 'postie'Is your lifetime glass half empty or half brimming full? Does the cup of woe run over without Wogan, or fizz at the thought of a Chris Evans future? Are we crocked in Copenhagen, or travelling hopefully on to our next adventure? Count me in category two: but sometimes, just sometimes, the old geezer in me has to start spouting. Three times this Christmas, as it happens.Here's my first gift of the season: Dear Granny Smith, a book by Roy Mayall – a "letter to you, me, to all of us, from a British postie". Sorry, a British what? Suddenly, the people we used to call postmen have transmuted into the indie, sarnie and luvvie class. A whole Panorama on Royal Mail's travails passes with Vivian White constantly mouthing the "ie" word. "Why are our posties so disaffected?" Creepy ridiculous.Postie Pat seems affable to the point of nausea. Posties, in turn, are loyal, lovable servants of the community traduced by gradgrind managements. How can we be horrid to them? The postie always rings once, unless he doesn't bother to ring at all – and just shoves a collect slip through the door.Meanwhile – second grouch – I'm on an excruciatingly slow local train from St Pancras while a few snowflakes fall. "We're sorry for these delays," says a disembodied apologist as full carriages sit and shiver, doors open, at Elephant and Castle. "We are waiting for a relief driver so that we can move forward on our journey to Sutton." Move forward? Happy prospect! On yet another "journey"? X Factor crooners, like Strictly come prancers, go on "incredible journeys". Finish bottom, and they must find other ways of "moving forward" with their disappointed lives. But between despair and Loughborough Junction, none of the jargon quite fits. It's more marketing speak when they should be telling the relief guy to get a move on – or at least shut the bloody door.It's the Christmas card catastrophe that really seals it, though. Once I could fill two home shelves and a sideboard with proper cards, true inheritors of the British tradition (circa 160 years old). Now one shelf and a coffee table covers the lot, some peremptorily signed (the we're-still-here message) and some holding pages of warm scrawl from old friends far away. Where have the rest gone, though? On to the internet every one, flashing tidings of electronic joy.Here's Bob on behalf of Britain's editors and Rodney from that Brussels institute; here's Suzanne from the World Film Collective; here's Unicef; and the BBC Trust – "Light up your Christmas", it says – with a curious side message: "The BBC accepts no responsibility for this email." And that's the haul of a few short hours. Every day the pile of digital silt rises higher (along with an injunction to buy "Europe: the ideal gift from Eurostar").Now of course it's nice to be remembered – or at least to be on a list where one press of a button reaches 10 or 20,000. It's better to be stored on some memory stick than stuck in a hole of forgetfulness. But what else can you say for fake cards delivered via a laptop screen? You can't put them on the sideboard. You can't thumb them and feel togetherness. You can't even find them 10 minutes later, sunk amid the ancestral ooze of non-seasonal, Viagra-charged spam.Ah! A new PR reindeer-spattered effusion, just arrived, tells me they're sending this mock-up to save cash they can send to the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund: so there's no real pretence that this is any sort of "card" at all. Just another device to keep posties moving forward on their fantastic journey into a land where their services aren't required at all; one where bankies don't accept checkies any longer in the wasteland of cyberspace.Marketing & PRChristmasPeter Prestonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Is a Labour-Tory coalition unthinkable? Only until you think about it | Martin Kettle Seeing Britain's problems through the prism of a hung parliament could convince the Tories and Labour to do the dealThe leaders of the Labour and Conservative parties came through the door of No 10 together and stood side by side in front of the microphones in the spring sunshine."We have a brief joint statement to make," they said. "The election is over and the people have spoken. Neither of our parties has received a mandate to govern alone. The country nevertheless faces urgent economic and social challenges. This is no time for the uncertainties of minority government. Throughout the campaign we experienced the public's burning desire for a break with the politics of the past. We shall therefore form a government of national unity, with an agreed programme, to serve for a full parliament. We shall invite other party leaders to work with us to put the national interest first. We are all in this together. Thank you."In all the many articles that have already been written – and all those that will soon be written – about the possibility of a hung parliament after the 2010 general election, one significant option seems perversely unexplored – the big one: a deal between the two largest parties. That's right, between the Conservatives and Labour. Merely to state this possibility is doubtless to invite derision, and worse. For many on both sides a Conservative-Labour deal is in every respect the politically unthinkable.It is nevertheless worth asking and answering, calmly, one simple question: Why not? The question deserves to be taken seriously for three main reasons. The first is that British elections are becoming increasingly fragmented. Votes and seats are shared between more parties than before. No large party can today count on automatic 40%-plus support as both Labour and the Tories once did. Inter-party deals have become common in the devolved authorities and local government. The trend would become more pronounced under a reformed Westminster electoral system.The second reason is that some of the ancient differences between the main parties have blurred. This is sometimes misrepresented as "the parties becoming all the same", which is untrue. Nevertheless, some of the extremes of the past have been abandoned and some of the differences of today are more nuanced and pragmatic. Like football fans, British political parties retain a tribal culture, but the parties, like the football clubs, have learned they must adapt or perish.The third reason is that, on occasion, needs must. There are practical arguments why, in some circumstances, an arrangement between the biggest parties might be the most viable option. A government of this kind might also do a good job, and might even be popular, too. Opinion polls certainly suggest as much.In other European countries, the two major parties have often done this in circumstances well short of outright national emergency. Germany has twice been governed by grand coalitions, including from 2005 to 2009, while three German Länder are governed in this way. Germany has not collapsed – rather the opposite. The Netherlands has been governed by a grand coalition since 2006 and Austria since 2007.But in Britain? Even today, we reflexively assume that the Labour and Tory projects are irreconcilable. Both parties are themselves coalitions already. Labour, in particular, is sustained by an oppositional not a governmental ethos. Neither party leader could hope to deliver on a deal. Big beasts in both parties would wreck it. The extremes would be empowered to revolt. The parties could not be put back together. These are all very serious practical objections.Except that coalitions of this sort have existed and in some respects succeeded before, here as elsewhere. The two major parties of left and right came together three times in the last century, governing for a total of nearly 14 years – more on some calculations. The first was the Liberal-Conservative coalition formed in 1915 at the height of the first world war; the second was the national government formed in the wake of the economic collapse of 1931; while the third was the coalition formed by Winston Churchill in 1940 under which the second world war was won.Wartime is different, many will say – rightly, of course. But how different? The national government reminds us that coalitions are not peculiar to wartime. A more accurate reality is that grand coalitions of the two main parties are formed when there is a perception of national emergency, whether in war or peace, in which single-party administrations seem incapable of taking necessary actions on their own. This perception is heightened when, as in 1915 and 1931, the governing party is already in a minority, as would be the case in any hung parliament, too.The only important question, therefore, is whether 2010 may be such an emergency moment. Looking at the economic prospects depicted in Gordon Brown's implausibly rosy new year message, this may seem alarmist. Looking at them in the cold light of day, after the loss of the Brown government's majority and through the prism of a hung parliament, however, it could seem very different.With the economy struggling and the markets in panic as they grasped how hard it would be to govern without the necessary majority, the pressure for an effective government – a government with an assured majority committed to do necessary but unpopular things – would be very great, not least from the media. It seems innocent to assume that either Labour or the Tories would automatically turn first to the Liberal Democrats in those circumstances – or that the Lib Dems would necessarily deliver. The big parties could calculate that they would be better off in a marriage of convenience with a historic enemy they respected, from which they could withdraw with dignity when the moment was right, rather than to embark on a more permanent entanglement with a Lib Dem party which at bottom they each despise.The more one looks at the evolutionary dynamics of British politics, the more serious the grand coalition option may one day become. Is a Labour-Conservative deal really unthinkable? Only until you start thinking about it.LabourConservativesGeneral electionGordon BrownDavid CameronWinston ChurchillLiberal DemocratsMartin Kettleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Number of Homeless In Somalia Increasing As Fighting Widens Thousands of civilians have been displaced by growing conflict in Somalia www1.voanews.com |
Haiti earthquake: US sends 4,000 more troops The US has redeployed the extra soldiers and marines to join 12,000 Americans already helping relief effort. telegraph.co.uk |