Next general election outcome – Best one for proressives?

As a Social Liberal I’ve always looked upon Labour as being to the right of me (and far too authoritarian) on the UK political spectrum. However, it seems, if polls are to believed, that Labour are likely to be the largest party after the next election. Should that be the case, and Labour does not have an overall majority, then I’d prefer them to be dependent on the SNP to form a government. In my view a Labour majority government would change little that’s wrong with our broken political system and they’d simply hand power back to the Tories who’d reverse anything they'd done which was progressive. That’s assuming Starmer’s Labour Party does anything progressive, of course!

Now yes I know, the SNP have been doing a pretty good self-destruct of recent times so there’s more than a possibility of them coming unstuck at the next election, but bear with me.

Labour and the SNP just don’t get on and there’s a child-like my dad’s bigger than yours relationship between them. Having said that it’s debateable whether the Lib Dem-SNP relationship is any better i.e. very school playgroundish. However, despite this my view is that Starmer stuck with the SNP may well be in the interests of progressives as they’d certainly hold his feet to the political fire and blunt the right-of-centre agenda that a Labour-led administration would seemingly be tempted to push on with.

But why not a Labour administration dependent on left-of-centre Lib Dems I hear you say? Well, having been a Liberal and Lib Dem member since 1980 I think the Lib Dems, who’ll likely have a new crop of inexperienced MPs, need a spell as a left-of-centre opposition to a Starmer-led administration. However, they should in such circumstances, be a constructive opposition which backs either a minority Labour or Labour/SNP administration but ONLY when it does progressive things. I’m recalling here Charles Kennedy’s ‘constructive opposition’ approach.

Looking at the present political landscape it can often be a bleak view for radicals, progressives and Liberals as our politics in general has been dragged predominately centre-right; a direction Starmer seems content to follow. The trouble is we don’t know much about Starmer’s political history as there’s not much of it to look at. Yes, he was a prominent part of Corbyn’s Labour leadership but then under his leadership Corbyn was chucked out of Labour.

Labour is ‘popular’ not because of what it stands for (because we really don’t know what it stands for) but because the Tories are so desperately unpopular. But a telling point for me is that right-leaning voters seem to like Starmer, Reeves and Streeting and I guess that’s because they say things that Tory voters can warm to? So I think it realistic to say that Labour won’t be a radical or progressive in government. They’ll just try to be more competent and that shouldn’t in any way be difficult based on the madness that has emanated from No.10 over recent years.

Starmer says he won’t reverse Brexit, that he’s not keen on electoral reform and he seems to be rowing back on much of what he said he stood for when he was running to be Labour leader. On that basis radical and progressive policies will need to come from parties that are progressive of instinct i.e. SNP, Lib Dems and Greens.

So, should we end up with a Labour-led government propped up by the SNP, with the Lib Dems as a radical/progressive opposition then I think such an outcome would be interesting. Will it happen? Not if the SNP continues to shoot itself in the foot it won’t, but just imagine Starmer waking up each morning and having to do battle over pretty much everything with the SNP. Surely he’d be forced into all kinds of progressive areas, especially with radical Libs giving him grief too, that he’d rather not pursue. It could just be the major shake-up our broken political system really needs.

 

 

Is Australia retaining the Ashes a surprise?

To me no. I always thought they would as they have a stronger squad of players. Yes, England have some outstanding cricketers but not as many as the Aussies; they are the current Test World Champions for a reason.

For my money it has been a mistake to have Bairstow as the England wicket keeper as he’s clearly not the best keeper that England can call upon. Ben Foakes is the best and he should be the England’s keeper, end of. If Bairstow plays it should be for his batting ability.

I’m no fan of England’s Kiwi-born Captain but he’s clearly doing a better job than Root who was only really captain as no one else could be found to do the job. Making your most able player captain has never been the way to get the best from whoever the best player is, nor indeed for the team as a whole.

Having said that I expected the Aussies to retain the Ashes, I also have to say that Cummins, to me, does not look to be a leader/captain and I would suggest that he is the Aussie’s Root i.e. a top player who should not be their leader.

There’s no doubt that ‘Baz Ball’ has made for more exciting cricket and Test Cricket needed it, but at the end of the day the team with the best players should, in most cases, be the winner and so it has proved. The fact that the first 4 Tests of 5 this match series have looked so close is probably because the Aussies need a better captain and the unfortunate loss of Nathan Lyon to injury. Without those two problems I feel the Aussies would probably have won more easily.

Some rail journeys take too long these days

According to Northern’s website Southport to Manchester Victoria by train takes on average takes 1 hrs 35 mins, that’s a fair bit longer than the Manchester – Southport Club trains of some years ago.

I recall my old friend and Southport resident David Tattersall telling me about how much better the rail service between Southport and Manchester once was and I guess there are many other examples out there across the UK where rail services are slower/less frequent than they once were.

I also recall David telling me about the former Club Trains aimed at business people who say worked in Manchester but lived in Southport. When I looked up such trains I came across a web site called Railway Wonders of the World https://www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com/manchester_club.html  and this detail about the former Southport Club Train:-

‘The Southport express follows close on the heels - or, I suppose I ought to say, the wheels - of the 4.55 to Blackpool, passing Dobb’s Brow Junction five minutes later, at 5.19 p.m; but no reduction of speed is needed here, as the Southport train takes the straight line on to Hindley, where it diverges from the Liverpool line to the left to get through Wigan. The passage through Wigan, which is approached by extremely sharp curves, must not be made at more than 30 m.p.h. and, with such a load as this, 27 minutes from Manchester proves to be none too great an allowance for the distance of only 16¼ miles. Rising grades follow to Gathurst, but after that all is plain sailing, and there is a fine straight stretch across the level marches of West Lancashire slightly in favour of the engine, which enables a speed of over 60 an hour to be maintained for some miles, especially if any time has been lost on the congested and difficult earlier stages of the run. St. Luke’s, 32½ miles from Manchester, is reached in 47 minutes, and the main station at Chapel Street, ¾-mile further, at 5.51 p.m.’

So the Club Train expresses took less than an hour end to end. OK, it’s not really a fair comparison as Northern’s trains stop at most stations along the present route but it does make you wonder whether an average of 1 hr 35 mins isn’t just a bit too slow in 2023.

 

Northern Class 150 DMU at Buscough Bridge St - Southport-Wigan-Manchester LIne

It’s not that long ago that government put the Southport Line down to be electrified but then had a swift change of mind even before the dust had settled. Yet, of course, this is an obvious route to be electrified as modern electric EMU's can have quite a turn of speed and with battery technology developing at pace electrification need not be along a whole route.

During my time as Sefton Councillor (1999 – 2015 – 7 years of that as Council Leader) I tried to get anyone who’d listen to think about improving Southport’s northern and easterly transport connections because the Town has long been held back by poor and slow public transport links except, of course, via Merseyrail towards Liverpool in the south.

The barriers I tried to tackle back then are still there today and apart from a lot of political chatter about re-connecting the Burscough Curves, a project OPSTA and others have been championing for 40 years, nothing of note has happened. No Burscough curves, no electrification, no direct train to Preston and elderly diesel trains on the Southport – Wigan – Manchester route in the slow and environmentally unfriendly category.

The Club Trains of previous generations may well have been aimed at wealthy business people who, nowadays, may well be making that same journey via their high end German car. But, unless we seriously grapple with public transport being in the slow lane we’ll never get those drivers out of their cars, our roads will continue to be congested & polluting and the likes of Southport will continue to be held back.

 * This piece was also reproduced in the September 2023 edition of OPSTA's Connexion Magazine

 

 

Hornby inspire Family days at 

Maghull's Meadows Library

 

Meadows Library, Maghull, will be hosting two family days on the 10th and 11th August as part of their National Lottery funded Frank Hornby project.

 

10.00 am-4.30 pm Thursday 10th & 10.00 am-1.00 pm Friday 11th

 

Families will be able to see and take part in a variety of activities including: seeing a working 'O' gauge Hornby railway layout, Meccano displays, large scale Meccano to build, watching a film about Hornby on Merseyside and taking part in a Hornby inspired walk.

 

At 2.00 pm on Thursday 10th August, Lady Anne Dodd will unveil a Frank Hornby locomotive nameplate which once graced engine 86414. The plaque was originally unveiled by her late husband, Ken Dodd, at Lime Street Station on 20th November 1986.

 

The nameplate, which was created to mark the 50th anniversary of Frank Hornby's death, is on loan from the Hornby Railway Collectors Association, and will be placed on display in the Hornby Heritage Centre following the family days for all to see.

 

The project seeks to raise the awareness of this a visionary in toy development and manufacturer's ongoing connection to Maghull. In the autumn the Library will host a festival of talks further exploring the Frank Hornby legacy.

Taking children out of school for holidays damages their future prospects

Why do parents do it? To gain cheaper holidays will probably be the most obvious reason with the fines, issued by local authorities, being too low to make a difference. That government finds it necessary to impose fines at all for taking children out of school is so very sad.

So it’s all about money it would seem

We only have one childhood and one chance to be at school and often parents will fight to get their children into what they think are the best schools. Yet some of the parents, who have done such fighting, will then take their children out of the school they picked, outside of school holidays, and in doing so seemingly be prepared to risk the downside of their children missing out on lessons. This is an odd contradiction to me; surely the point of getting your children into the best possible school should mean you want them to be there as much as possible, excepting illness of course.

I’ve heard the ‘reasons’ for family holidays outside of normal school holiday weeks. Obviously money is the biggest one, but I’ve heard people say it enables important family memories to be made or that the children will soon catch up on the missed schooling. I take ‘memories’ to be a rather poor excuse but the catching up one deserves some consideration.

Children will soon catch up?

Firstly, I would suggest that for all but the brightest of children catching up will be a challenge as schools teach to a curriculum which fits the school year, so missing one or two weeks should be looked upon as, at best, a challenge and, at worst, putting a child’s education on the back foot. But isn’t there a knock on challenge for schools and teachers? Don’t they have to try to address the missing weeks in a child’s education to give them an opportunity to catch up? Tough enough when a child has missed school because of illness but surely not a sensible additional pressure on our schools/education system when creating obviously avoidable absences.

Surely the fact that government found it necessary to bring in fines for unauthorised absences is evidence enough that missing schooling is a problem which needs to be avoided? The fact that the fines are too low to stop it is an issue which government needs to revisit.

The problem as I see it is one of parents wanting cheaper holidays and then convincing themselves that it will not be a big issue for their children. The fact is that for other than the brightest of children it will be an issue.

I don’t recall ever being taken out of school for a holiday and my Dad managed Thomas Cook travel agent shops so could probably access cheaper holiday deals more easily than most folks. We did not take our youngster out of school for holidays either, I might add.

Doing it because others do?

My final thought on this knotty issue is that once families look at other families doing it they see it as acceptable so do it too. The bottom line is that children don’t gain an education whilst they’re away from school and surely we all want youngsters to have the best education possible. On that basis there are no good reasons but there are excuses which some parents can comfort themselves with and even use to try to justify what seems to me as the indefensible.

Children need to be in school