Lamb to the sluaghter

We have had the unedifying spectacle of Norman Lamb changing his mind. Norman Lamb is the Lib-Den MP for North Norfolk and right-hand man to Nick Clegg. You might have read in the papers, or seen on tele, that he is against Lansley's plans for the NHS. My advice is do not believe a word he says.

He represents a district which is having local elections and the Lib-Dems are doing very badly. He has now worked out that the NHS is a major stumbling block for the Lib-Dems. So how he is now against the plans. As Mr Clegg's personal adviser he did not tell Mr Clegg that the plans were wrong and would be unpopular before. Also he voted for the bill in the House of Commons so how has he suddenly realised that he would be willing to resign his position over it.

Let us be clear he is really in favour, even his objections seem to be about speed not the fundamental idea. It is not even clear to me he has any views at all on the subject, he will just go along with the bosses unless it threatens his popularity with his own electorate. It is important to remember he was once a lawyer, this means that he will argue for any case his client wants, whether he believes in anything is totally irrelevant.

He voted for the rise in student fees despite having signed the pledge but argued that Simon Wright, who used to be his gopher, should vote against the rise because he had a big university in his constituency so it would be sensible to allow him to vote against. Mr Lamb who did not have many students in his constituency did not have to worry.

What we see in Norman Lamb is a many with no values and no principles, when in opposition it was easy to get away with it; he could promise anything to anyone and nobody would know what he really was going to do. My guess is that the government will tinker with Lansley's plans, make it sound a big deal and Norman Lamb will cheerfully vote for the plans without a moments hesitation. This will of course be a few months after the local elections.

Arsenal & English football

I have not blogged for some time but the takeover of Arsenal has inspired me. What is left of the English premier league except that it is played in England. How many English managers are there? How many English players are there and who owns the club? I find it odd that so-called English premier teams have any English fans. But is it not symptomatic of the English disease. We no longer own anything, manage anything are, most of the time, produce anything. We are consumers and heavily in debt, as individuals. The government and the experts keep going on about the national deficit but ignore the private debt because without it we would be totally screwed.

I am sure many of the fans will be pleased if they think the new owner will pump money into the club but does it make sense to support a team which is just an excuse form some rich man to have as his play thing. If he is lucky he will make money out of it but it will be the suckers at the turnstile and in the pubs who are paying him. We had an outcry when Krafts bought Cadbury but with football teams it doesn't seem to matter. They bring players from overseas, not giving local players a chance to develop, they employ foreign managers and still don't succeed. We wonder why we do badly at international football, well why would a foreign manager of a premiership club ever consider the needs of the national English team.

There are a number of points, do we not train enough English managers, there are not that many premiership clubs, are our footballers not good enough and why don't English billionaires want to own football clubs. We don't train people to manage things which is why somuch of industry is owned by foreign companies.

There was an item on the news today about Longbridge. It is producing cars again, even one's designed here BUT and it is a big but, the only other thing we do is assemble them, everything else is done in China and the whole thing is built in China.

When is Britain going to take education and training seriously, especially with repect to manufacturing industry.