UK Local elections- What the polls really say and where the parties really are.

Britain had a pretty foul, cold winter. An early but phoney spring broke out briefly in March and April has been grey, wet, sometimes windy and generally depressing. No wonder therefore that for must humans in the country the local elections are generating little interest. Politicians and politics have joined bankers,estate agents,lawyers,and now the rich in the "not to be trusted " sin bin.
Class, wealth and being "out of touch" have been dangerously hyped and unscrupulously used by in the run up to these elections but few are bothering to watch or listen. Many push the "off" button as soon as a party poltical broadcast flits onto the screen. Whether it is Tory toffs (Cameron and Osborne) or Labour intelligensia (the two Eds)buying a cheap sausage rolls nobody believes that these people actually know one of the pastry from the other. People aren't stupid and simoly see it as another besuited publicity "man of the people" photoshoot. They may as well just not bother. These elections are little ro do with the issues, latest bananaskins and mishaps .It's not that these things don't matter and don't need attention. They do but this time around it's mainly about pure maths. This is why while Cameron & co should and need to be stirred there is no reason yet for them to be shaken.

Today's poll for the Sunday Times gives Labour 40% of the vote, Conservatives 29%, Lib Dems 11%, UKIP 10% and the rest 10%. Bad headlines for the Tories but not a disaster.

Firstly there is a cyclic movement to local elections. This time round one would expect the Tory gains made at the height of Labour's unpopularity to be reversed anyway. Add to that the fact that any government two years into a five year term and carrying out tough policies can expect to be unpopular. Recent displays of ineptitude, repeated public relations failures and a lack of a big vision for Britain all compound but the situation are not its rockbed. The loss of around 700 seats is a predictable outcome more or less whatever the party did unless it were overwhelmingly popular and did not take money out of anybody's pockets.

With three years to go to the May 2015 election, the Tories can shrug off current polls and media excitement over them for at least another year. Ideally by summer 2013 they would be able to see some tangible results from their early robust efforts to rebalance the economy and remove the annual current spending defecit by lowering government spending while growing the private sector. The timing problem is whether this massive shift financial and cultural shift can be done in three years or even five. Amongst other things, getting rid of people involves heavy one off up front payments which increase rather than decrease government spending. It will be a close call. If things aren't looking too good by this time next year the Conservatives may be able to swallow hard and let the unpopularity run through until May 2014, just a year before the election. Real General Election campaigning will begin from the end of the summer holidays 2014. For the Tories this will present the additional problem that their coalition partners the Lib Dems, will incrasingly peel away in an attempt to disassosciate and differentiate themselves from the government. A formal split could happen in the autumn of 2014 . This might actually benefit both. The Conservatives could then enunciate their own policies, sharply showing the gap between the two and what might have been since 2010 if they hadn't been encumbered with the Lib Dems. They would go on to paint the picture of what could be achieved by a second term from 2015-2020. For their part, the Lib Dems would be able to claim that they had never had their hearts in the coalition all along and that had managed to water down some of the excesses which unrestrained Conservatism would have brought down upon the electorate and that they would do the same if in a future coalition with Labour.

The other thing about today's poll which will keep the Conservatives off the valium is pure arithmetic. To them UKIP with its 10% is what the far, far left, even Communists, would be to Labour. That brings the significant right to 39%, just 1% adrift of Labour. On the right the extremes have this 10% visibility in UKIP while on the left they are mainly hidden within the left of Labour so do not form a separately identifible polling group.

The reality therefore is that the two main left and right groupings are much closer than this poll suggests. They are pretty much neck and neck.

Despite this explaination, the Conservatives should pay attention and start to understand why so many of their natural membership has graviated right to vote UKIP. The reason is simple. They are unimpressed with David Cameron. They know he is constrained by trying to keep the Lib Dems in unwilling formation for another three years but they feel he is giving away too much to keep them there. Indeed many suspect that in reality his thinking is very close to the soft left or nearly Lib Dem edge of the party. On many occasions on a range of issues including the EU,immigration,and benefits abuse he has talked tough but acted soft. He has also failed to manage areas where policies overlap and conflict. The high profile tightening of airport passport checks while reducing Border Agency manpower is just one of these and it's beginning to bite him and the unfortunate Mrs May.

The other and much more fundamental concern about the party and its leader is the lack of perceived dynamism and a vision for a brave new Britain which would exite and motivate voters. The constant grey and dismal repetitive focus on schools and hospitals,schools and hospitals, schools and hospitals ,while topical is not going to set the electorate or even MPs on fire. Those are things they take for granted. What is needed is exciting substance, some real things to go for to clearly put blue water between Conservative and Labour offerings. Labour aren't winning at the moment. They haven't got to do very much and can even get away with urging their old disastrous recipe which brought us here,-more borrowing and spending. The Conservatives are simply losing and need to come out of their box fighting.

It's not today's polls the Conservative party should be worrying about. It's the lack of direction and rallying points to get the electorate to do anything but stretch, yawn and kill the alarm clock on election days between now and the big one in 2015. That's fundamental. A bundle of losses on Thursday isn't.

Footnote: The only really interesting contests this week are Boris Johnson v Ken Livingstone for London Mayor and Labour v SNP for control of Glasgow. Both of these are far more significant than the hundreds of results elsewhere. A Boris win would show that being a toff isn't fatal and a SNP win would punish Labour for decades of introverted self interest and taking Scotland for granted. Each would in its own way reassure that under the general apathy, democracy is alive and well when it matters.

Heathrow Immigration,- What's REALLY going on?

Suddenly over the past few weeks inbound immigration queues (The UK unusually in the world has no outbound imigration checks) at London's Heathrow, and Terminal 5 in particular, have gone from generally reasonable for the volumes of traffic into a country with immigration problems, to unacceptable. Queues once well contained within the large hall now run to and even beyond its extremeties. This is hardly the welcome people, including its own nationals, should expect in a country so high in the world's economies.

What's gone wrong and what's really going on?

Consider this scenario. The root causes are very simple.

The major factor is an inevitable and utterly predicatable pincer movement between the UK Borders Agency cutting back on staff as part of the UK's overall austerity measures on the one hand and the stiffening of pasport checks on the other. Throw in unspoken hostility to the spending cuts by both management and unions, each for its own reasons and and there's more of the picture. add to that almost contempt for a the way Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Agency was forced out of office when relaxations of checks last year were discovered to have let a few undesirables in and there is a toxic politician-led mix.

Taking the Mr Clark's departure first, there were obvious risks in allowing staff to relax checks for most passengers so that the inbound flow worked well and staff had more time to use their well hned skill and intuition in identifying and weeding out those the UK did not welcome. The upside though was an increased rejection rate and staff feeling empowered to get on with the job and use their experience positively.It was too good to last though.

Inevitably the baying media will from time to time discover that a few who should have been kept out slipped through. That will happen with any system. 100% success and border integrity will never happen in a democratic non police state and politicians just have to stand firm and say so and make no apologies.

That unfortunately is not how politicians work almost anywhere in the world.

Faced with hysteria in the press, instead of correctly telling them their fortune and supporting both the policy and the Border Agency management and staff who have the near impossible daily task of minimising mishaps, Theresa May at a flick of a switch went into auto-politician mode, ducked the flak, and left the unfortunate Mr Brodie to take it. As result he is now spending more time with his family.

Next came the kneejerk stiffening of entry requirements. Nobody was to be cheerily waved through. Everyone from small children to returning supervised school parties and war veterans back from trips to Normandy had to be checked against the list of terrorists and other undesirables. Even with all the staff goodwill in the world that would have meant more staff or much slower throughput rates. The former was unacceptable under the sledgehammer type approach that every department must take its share of the pain equally and that there can be no distinction between the good, the bad and the ugly spenders. The UK, like any country, needs to welcome 99% of its visitors and returning nationals. With a small minority of exceptions they contribute to the economy and are good for everyone.

In this sad saga ,the management and staff goodwill factor was already absent when further manpower reductions took place through the winter. There was a feeling that before long the chickens would come to roost without any need to talk about active industrial action. All people had to do was to stand with arms folded and wait. The " We told you so " day would surely come. And so it has. The continued exits of often long serving skilled staff with good noses for who's who and who's up to what amongst the lines before their desks have now converged with the seasonal increases in passenger numbers and the inevitable has happened and will continue happening until the crescendo of horror stories from the waiting queues and their unacceptability as the Royal Jubilee and the Olympics become terminal for the Home Secretry or even her superiors. Followers of UK politics will know that the Government needs something to be going right just now and this certainly isn't.

Minster Theresa May is therefore reaping the results of her own lack of courage last autumn, a lesson politicians everywhere need to learn although few actualy do. She has played into the hands of the unions (the last thing she or the Government would ever have wanted) and got herself into a hole from which only two things,- and maybe both,-can extract her. She can either bring back selective checking ideally based on random but unpredictable staff intuition . Alternatively she can quickly ramp up staff numbers again while trying to avoid a return to old inefficient inefficient working practics. The likelihood is that, faced with Olympic Rage, she will have to do both and then have to go back to start sorting it all out again from a worse position than the one she started with as she has lost the confidence of all the people who could be helping her get it right.

The industry meanwhile is saying just one thing: "Do something". Politicians often find that difficult. Most aren't used to jobs involving hands-on "Doing something" and accepting real accountability for it.

UK's April Showers-Lots of them. Time for the weekend.

The UK has lurched this week between rain, just grey and shine. Last month's faux summer has long gone and this looks more like the reality and pretty much reflects the national mood as well.

First the shine. Just as it looked a little better and as if Britain's unwanted and ungrateful long term guest, Abu Qatada,might be on his way back to Jordan where he has long been invited to assist the police with their enquiries a mixup over what did and did not constitute three months slammed on the brakes again and Mrs May took a header into the brown stuff. Clearly the advice from the Home Office functionaries, whose prime purpose must be to keep her out of such a place was either deficient or recklessly ignored. Seemingly advice from other quarters urged a day or so's caution too but the lady ship of state sailed on. Tnere had been enormous pressure for a good news story to come out of the Government to offset all the nonsense about pasties, granny taxes and wealthy donors to charity wailing that they couldn't now divert some of their income tax into causes they rather than the Treasury preferred, be they cats' homes or art sanctuaries seldom open to Joe Public or more useful things like medical research. Possibly driven by this and the desire to be the Minster who came up smelling of roses, Mrs May announced proudly the the national guest was back inside prior to taking a one way trip to Heathrow. "Not so fast" said his lawyers,-We've still got a few hours to lodge an appeal" so appeal they did and the whole plan is in danger of embarrassingly unravelling. Like Mr Qatada's quarters, it gave an open goal to the Opposition front bench and one which Mrs Balls/Yvette Cooper naturally found irresistable, much to the squirms of Mrs May. Oh dear.

Next came the Brighton meeting of the EU's finest on the subject of the powers of the European super-court in Strasborg. Dave had promised tough action to rein it in, show that national courts and parliaments are boss and put a stop to the nonsense of Euro power extending into every legal corner on the back of human rights law never intended,-at least by Britain,-to have this effect. Sending Ken Clark along to invoke such tough action was never going to produce anything involving fisticuffs. As result this very expensive south coast out-of season Awayaday achieved nothing other than nice warm , comfortable and totally ambiguous weasel words which pretty much allow EuroPower to also sail on unimpeded and therefore inevitably grow. For those who grew up in university Union bars or rugby clubs one can only quote the immortal song which went something like:

"Enough, enough I( in this case the more conscious EU member states)'m satisfied" followed by..
"And now we come to the sorry bit, ho hum, and now we come to the sorry bit, there was no way of stopping it, ho hum, ho hum..."

And why is there no way of stopping it? Simple. The whole apparatus is run by unelected, highly paid burocrats whose future lies only in it taking over more and more powers, not less nd less. In theory the Members of the European Parliament are there to rein these folk in and give the whole thing democratic legitimacy. On day one of their appointment they, many of them rejects from or no hopers in their home political hierarchies, may ernestly believe this and be determined to fight the good fight. Once they have done their induction tour of their impressive new surroundings and been taken through the prodigous list of claimable expenses appropriate to matching high class restaurants and hotels, any thirst for rocking the boat quickly disappears. With that the will to challenge the grey army who spend their lives dreaming up ever more and ever more expensive mind numbing rules and restrictions on the normal functioning of human endeavour disappears. Game over. The artifical creation rolls on. Pending a giant of European leadership who really does say "Enough, enough" and a way of stopping it,(could this eventual saviour be a woman?)the monster will grow and grow

Finally on the sporting front,at the 11th hour and 59th minute, knowing that here is something which probably is unstoppable but for they will be able to blame the unfortunate Government, Ed Minor and Mrs Balls, both full of righteous rectitude, demanded that the Government should pull the British drivers out of the Bahrein F1 contest this weekend. True, the Bahrein Government's handling of the protest movement has been extremely unpleasant, but the fact is the British Government is not driving in the race and decisions on participation are nothing to do with it. If it were to get into this quagmire, what would happen to the Olympics? There are far less pleasant countries taking part in those and some very undemocratic leaders may well be in town to watch their national teams, or to just enjoy the IOC's hospitality. What would we do about those? Late July through to the end of August in London could become very quiet

Again,back to the Union bar. Songs about activities on the planking, crossing or in the rigging come to mind. The UK really does need its two day break this weekend.

UK's Easter week. Unhappy bunnies but the chance to celebrate a National disaster. Titanic sails to the rescue!

The Easter holiday week came up trumps for a true to form British Bank holiday yet again.The freak warm weather of March had fired hopes that a stay at home Easter might be wonderful and enable everyone to say they had helped save the planet by not taking to the air or even car. Too bad. That’s not the way things turned out but that's OK as it enabled a retreat to normal grumpiness.

The country,-and especially its rulers,- had a bad run in to the Spring break. The government public relations machine had gone absent and all sorts of banana skins were being slipped on. The British whinge factor had wound itself up into a noisy whine and the Gummnt was to blame for all manner of evils like taxing grannies (always an emotive subject even though here no state pension only grannies were affected and on the whole most grannies didn’t do at all badly in the Budget. Nobody seemed to worry much about grandpas) and for recommending unwise virgins to fill their petrol tanks so as to mitigate the effects of a possible looming tanker drivers’ strike. It wasn’t bad advice to anyone unable to figure out things for themselves and in reality probably spiked the union's guns and averted an Easter walkout but there was no credit for that. The media itself hasn’t of course come to the aid of Her Majesty’s Government. Nothing to do with it being miffed at the past year’s spotights on some aspects of its behaviour and integrity of course.

For those for whom normal grumpiness wasn’t enough, teachers had the offer of a whole Bank Holiday at one of their two union conferences. Where better to be rather being with ones’s family and even having some good relaxing fun, than at a union conference? It’s no coincidence that those who can’t wait to immerse themselves for a whole long weekend in such a gathering tend to be those to whom anything veering anywhere near the least unsociable edge of the pink, never mind the blue zone is unthinkable. No surprise therefore that there were calls for a people’s revolution and opposition to all change of any kind, especially the weeding out of their weeker brothers and sisters who blight the whole lifetimes of successive generations of children. It was“ No!” to everything. This is from people entrusted to give the nation's children a quality education. Scary, but what can one expect from a union conference hall on a wet Bank Holiday?

Elsewhere on the miserabalist scene the Olympic spirit is alive and well. It includes demands for extra money for turning up to work and even more for a few bits of flexibility and purchased “goodwill”. National enthusiasm for this event is patchy enough anyway and the usual grumps, “Think of all the schools, hospitals and libraries we could have for the money” are doing their disgrunted rounds amongst the less enthusiastic.

INFORMATION FOR FOREIGNERS: Forget pomp and circumstance, leading the world or invading you,thrusting for business etc, British politics are obsessed schools and hospitals. Many major political announcements are made not in Parliament but in carefully selected schools and hospitals with equally carefully selected staff and pupils or patients momentarily in the background. Visions of the future, economics, transport and suchlike gain very little traction. If schools and hospitals aren’t top of any politician’s agenda they may as well pack up. The other agenda now being heavily pushed by the union-dependent Labour party and its even more dependent leader, Miliband Minor, is the old favourite of class warfare. It’s a dangerous and thoroughly divisive theme and its perpetrators well know what they are doing. It is cynically deliberate and amongst other things undermines any ethos of success being desirable or even deserved unless those involved are footballers, pop stars, talent (?)show contestants or lottery winners. Those are considered OK and praiseworthy. They deserve the loot. People who have worked hard for their wealth, or whose families have historically earned it are beyond the pale and are to be scorned. All good for the socialist cause but not for igniting a burning passion in people to do well in life.

Out in the Shires all sorts of things are making them see red,-or blue. Incinerators have joined high speed railway lines,(or even low speed ones if they inconvenience bats or newts), new roads, local coffee shops, all kinds of development and indeed almost any change to anything. Who cares about the future needs of the growing population? “Say No To....” campaigns are the thing. These are particularly vociferous in areas inhabited by large numbers of bored corporate early retirees to whom the opportunity “to be somebody” again is too much to resist. Sadly many have forward vision limited at best to the extent their future life expectancy. Fighting to retain even the inadequate past is more exciting than promoting things they will probably never see. The best of the visionary Victorians were determined to leave legacies for future generations. They designed and built capacities way beyond their immediate needs. They understood the need to do that. Too few of the UK's older generation who have a heavy responsibilty and duty in that respect currently have any interest in the long term or using their vast experience of life to enrich it. It's much more satisfying to be grumpy and fill in the next word on those “Say No to....” banners.

Amongst all this gloom though the cavalry is at hand. A real break in the clouds. It’s the celebration of another Great British Disaster,-the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Move over Dunkirk, the Charge of the Light Brigade, Gallipoli and other favourites. Right now the Titanic is the Big Thing. Bookshop windows are decked with countless different tomes and magazines, TV reporters have scoured the land for “ My great grandfather/mother was on/just missed/ couldn’t afford the ticket/was nowhere near but knew someone who was on, the Titanic.” Night after night television programmes scour the wreckage for more “new“ angles, most of which look remarkably and often ghoulishly familiar. Fred Olsen Line have risen and hopefully will not sink to the occasion They have a commemorative voyage on the Balmoral. Another ship,-from New York,-will tonight meet it at the site of the original sinking. Will an iceberg again spoil the party?

The UK has a lot to look forward to this summer,-the Royal Jubilee, the usual June absenteeism generating social and sports fest of horse racing, tennis and rowing, its footballers not winning in Europe and of course the Olympics once all its operatives have been bribed not to down tools. There's a chance of almost no work being done at all in some quarters. There’s lots to be grumpy about and if all that isn’t enough there’s always “Schools and Hospitals, Schools and Hospitals” to fall back on.

A Night to Remeber?-Titanic memorial cruises close on the disaster site. Are they alone?

Two cruise ships on Titanic memorial trips ,one from Southampton and the from other New York ,are closing on the site of the disaster so as to be on station exactly 100 years after the dramatic meeting of the White Star Line's newest pride and joy with an iceberg. Meticulous planning is required to ensure success. The shipping companies are confident.

What,we wonder,is meanwhile happening at the HQ of Icebergs Plc? Can they deliver?