Ertblog

Election fever - but only the media and politicos are affected

The fevered speculation about whether Gordon Brown will call an early election is the best possible illustration of why the prime minister should not have the power to decide the timing of a British general election.

Britain had its last general election barely two years ago - and that election was a year early. Turnout was the lowest in modern British history. The two facts may not be entirely unrelated.

Other countries - and the Welsh Assembly and Scottish parliament - have fixed parliamentary terms. The Welsh and Scottish first ministers do not have the tactical advantage of calling an election for their own political gain.

True, prime ministers have occasionally been embarrassed by getting the timing wrong. Jim Callaghan famously made fun of the electorate by hinting at an election in 1978 and then said he was not going to the country. By the time the election was actually held in May 1979 the winter of discontent destroyed Callaghan's reputation and Margaret Thatcher swept to power. Nine years earlier, Harold Wilson called an early election and was surprisingly defeated. (A defeat allegedly prompted by a balance of payments deficit caused by BOAC's order for the first 747 jumbo jets.)

But doesn't Gordon Brown have a duty to ask the people for a mandate? No. We live in a parliamentary democracy. There is no need for an election when the ruling party changes leaders. It was clear in 2005 that Brown would become prime minister during this parliament. The people made their choice. We don't need to be asked the same question again.

Northern Rock: when queueing starts a revolution

Disclosure: I am PR manager for one of Northern Rock's competitors.

It's not been a good week for those of us who work in Britain's financial services industry.

The sight of a good old fashioned run on a bank shocked everyone who thought that Britain led the world in the banking regulation and management.

The fact that Northern Rock had to ask the Bank of England for an emergency loan need not have led to disaster. But the way thousands of savers immediately flocked to take their money out destroyed any hope chief executive Adam Applegarth might have had of saving his bank from takeover and dismemberment.

Some may think the British aren't easily frightened. Blame all those war films, and the image of the stiff upper lip. The reality is rather different. Roll back to another September weekend, seven years ago. We had mocked the French at the end of that Millennium summer for allowing their farmers to blockade the channel ports, causing havoc to British holidaymakers returning home. Yet two weeks later, British fuel protesters brought Britain to a standstill. Drivers made for the nearest petrol station, regardless of whether they needed the fuel, running them dry in hours. The only difference between the 2000 and 2007 queues was that this year's were literally a pedestrian affair.

I don't want to give the impression that the Northern Rock savers were acting foolishly or irrationally. Britain's compensation scheme for savers is inadequate. Savings over £2,000 are not completely protected. Any deposit over £35,000 in a bank or building society is completely unprotected. And after the failure of company pension schemes such as Allied Steel & Wire, and the Equitable Life saga, Northern Rock savers could be forgiven for not trusting calming words from politicians and regulators. Those queues forced the Government to offer to guarantee Northern Rock customers' savings and to improve the compensation scheme.

Few will remember that Britain's biggest building society, Nationwide, owes its current name to a mass panic by savers. Almost 40 years ago, the society, then called Co-operative Permanent, was an unwitting victim of a financial crisis hitting Britain's co-op stores and related businesses. Savers in the building society wrongly thought that Co-operative Permanent was affected and took their money out. The society's chiefs decided a name change was the only answer. Ironically, it was a report on the the BBC news magazine Nationwide that precipitated the crisis.

I worked for Nationwide for five years in the late 1980s as a management trainee and press officer. I experienced one saver's panic at first hand in the summer of 1988 after the Daily Telegraph reported that the society had lost millions on its then estate agency business at the height of the Eighties housing boom. I was asked to reassure a pensioner that her money was safe with Nationwide.

Finally, talk of Northern Rock's reliance on the money markets to fund its mortgage lending reminds me how different things were 20 years ago. Building societies relied almost totally cash coming over the counter from savers to lend to homebuyers. If that cash dried up, anyone looking for a mortgage would have a frustrating wait, which could mean losing the house you'd set your heart on. In Nationwide in Newport, we'd get a call from our Wales office at the end of the month saying head office had released more mortgage funds. We then had to go through the list of people waiting for a mortgage and choose the lucky ones to offer home loans. The old days weren't necessarily better, regardless of the events of the past 10 days.

The great Blue Peter cat scandal

"I think the feeling was that if we can't honestly name a Blue Peter cat, then really that is perhaps the last straw in this whole fiasco."

So said an unnamed BBC source in the Guardian about the latest case of alleged viewer deception at a British broadcaster. The article suggests that the name chosen for the new Blue Peter cat - Socks - was not the one that came top in an online poll and the situation was not explained to viewers.

I can't help thinking that is taking things a tad too seriously. How can anything this trivial compare with the thousands of pounds made from viewers calling broadcasters' premium rate phone line competitions?

Finally, I wonder who chose the name Shep for the famous Blue Peter dog of the 1970s? I don't remember having a say!