This has gone way beyond Lord Myners vs Sir Fred Goodwin, writes Janet Daley. It has even gone beyond Government ministers vs private bankers. This is now an epic battle between Big Government and Big Business. The mud wrestling over who was responsible for the public relations catastrophe of one man's pension arrangements is not just a sideshow: it is a significant metaphor for the ideological struggle which will determine how the history of this economic cataclysm is written. And whichever side succeeds in composing the history will also win the right to run the world. JANET DALEYDaily Telegraph Yesterday, the CBI confirmed what has been evident for some time: that private companies are freezing pay, even slashing salaries, as they struggle to survive the recession, writes Ross Clark. Is the public sector doing the same? Like heck it is. Nurses, teachers and police officers will all be getting pay rises of between 2 and 3 per cent this year and next year, too. Life is even better for the top brass. Stung by the failure of its social services department to save Baby P from his abusers, Haringey Council decided to double the salary of its new head of children's services. Can anyone name a private sector post for which remuneration has doubled this year? The public sector loves to talk business, but it hasn't the first clue about how to do it. ROSS CLARKThe Times It seems that Nigel Farage has managed to obtain almost complete centralised power of Ukip, writes Robin Page. The party's own policies – such as opposition to GM crops – have been reversed without the membership knowing, including me. Stories from Brussels suggest that Ukip's MEPs have come to love the high life of gravy and status. The party created to fight centralised government, sleaze and corruption has become a mirror image of the body it professes to loathe. The grassroots of Ukip are good people, but their party has been stolen from them by their executive; and with David Cameron seemingly afraid to say the word "Europe", they have nowhere to go – unless lured by the false smile of the BNP. The figures, in so far as they can be interpreted, suggest that the standard army calculation of seven wounded to every soldier killed is, in the case of Afghanistan, more or less accurate, says Magnus Linklater. Between 2006 and 2009, when 138 servicemen were killed, 573 military and civilian personnel were categorised as wounded in action. Lance Corporal Beharry was complaining that the treatment of the mentally affected is left to voluntary organisations. Yesterday, Combat Stress, the charity that looks after servicemen and women suffering from the trauma of war, said that among those it cares for are some who endure the mental effects of war 14 years after the battles they fought. MAGNUS LINKLATERThe Times Suddenly, a new political consensus appears to have emerged for the chattering classes, writes Melanie Phillips. Its claim that Britain is turning into a police state is clearly over the top (and reveals no small ignorance of what terrors a true police state inflicts). Its alarmism over closed-circuit TV and DNA profiling pays scant regard to their usefulness in catching criminals. And there's more than a whiff of an underlying agenda to paint Britain as worse than the tyrannies and rogue states that threaten its interests, with a corresponding anxiety to downplay the terrorism threat against this country. MELANIE PHILLIPSDaily Mail The government faces the task of explaining to the eminent Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm why he cannot see his own file. Dr Hobsbawm, now 91, applied to see the documents in 2007, saying (perhaps with tongue partly in cheek) that the contents could help him correct his autobiography. Since Dr Hobsbawm is trusted enough by the Queen to have been made a Companion of Honour, he can hardly be regarded as a security risk. Undoubtedly we are entering a new political era, which will be characterised by higher taxes; by a bigger role for government; and by a national debate about how Britain can earn its position in the world, as its old dominance in financial services fades. The long period when City types, and their thinking, dominated public discourse - which can be traced back to the Nigel Lawson boom - is finally over. Surely this is a time for progressive not conservative politics. Jackie Ashley The Guardian I'm not a fan of the wigs, the gowns, the Temple and the Inns, the chambers system and the mysterious elevation by private wizardry of publicly paid professionals to the rank of Queen's Counsel. I'm instinctively with Dickens in seeing Chancery, indeed the whole courts system, as a dark, forbidding land, like ancient Sardinia, populated by tribes speaking strange dialects only too ready to fall on unwary travellers and divest them of all they have. Michael Gove The Times So Barack Obama is asking hard questions about what America gets from Britain. Granted these DC people may not have time for the cinema but do they even watch their own prime-time TV? What the Americans give in intelligence on WMDs, Britain more than repays in creaky reality television formats. An advert for Geiko, featuring an animatronic lizard with a cockney accent, is the most successful commercial on American television. When Henry Kissinger once quipped: "When I want to call Europe, I cannot find a phone number," he expressed a frustration about the lack of decisive leadership that has sometimes characterised EU affairs – and it's for this same reason that Gordon Brown finds himself constantly flying off to Brussels for meetings with European leaders. Roland Rudd The Independentent takes on big business
Full article: Is a form of state capitalism really what Gordon Brown wants? 
The clueless public sector
Full article: A business-like public sector? We wish UK independence
ROBIN PAGEDaily Telegraph
Full article: Why Ukip has just lost another member Remember the wounded
Full article: The human cost of war is hidden from us 
An overstated problem
Full article: Full article: Yes, Big Brother Britain is a menace. The irony is, it's the civil liberties lobby who are to blame In Brief
Secret files
Leader The Guardian
Full article: In praise of ... opening the files 
The new era
Full article: The parties must end this mood of confusion and drift My barrister prejudice
Full article: I'm guilty of a dark prejudice: lawyer-phobia Special relationship
Tom Leonard The Independent
Full article: Special Relationship: The love is still there, but I can't work out why No leaders
Full article: If Europe wants to be relevant, it needs an elected president
Monday, 2 March 2009
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