That Grandmother's grieving cry of anguish three weeks ago as the body of her grandson passed her by in Wootton Bassett, was more than a cry of a family's anguish at losing a young member. It signalled what will be a decisive change in public opinion (link).

In early July the Sunday Times carried a poll showing that one in five voters wanted troops out. Today's Independent reports that that figure has risen to one in two of the electorate wishing to see British troops leave Afghanistan.

Equally decisive for the Government trying to impose some politics onto this war is the finding that six out of ten voters do not wish to see any increase in troop numbers. Or, come to that, more equipment.

These findings come as the Government is at last stirring itself. Yesterday the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary both began to hint that talking with the so-called "sensible" Taliban should be part of the war strategy.

But that strategy would most likely work if there was a sustained period where the Taliban realised they couldn't win against Western forces. That does not now look like a likely option.

Negotiations therefore begin from a position of weakness. It will not take the Taliban long for their intelligence to relay back the results of polls in this country and it is this country that is important as a dressed up NATO campaign is largely being fought by the British and the Americans.

We are in Helmand Province where most of the war is taking place. NATO troops are dispersed elsewhere in areas where little fighting is reported. By expressing its unwillingness to send more troops now the Government is committing the country to a long war of attrition in Afghanistan - or an abrupt withdrawal.

The strategy has changed significantly over the last couple of months. From a policy of clearing the Taliban and moving on - with the Taliban quickly moving back once troops had departed - the Government is now committed to a clear and hold policy.

The aim is for, once the Taliban have been cleared, a series of development initiatives to take place in the "secure areas". But development takes time. If the Government is serious on this front, which I am sure is, it will have to commit our troops to remain in Afghanistan way beyond the election.

And here the politics at home kicks in. Today, four more bodies will be brought home and the now familiar news coverage will rightly gain high profile for the rest of the day. It is those coffins moving slowly through Wootton Bassett which is now driving public opinion on a war which increasingly the electorate believe we cannot win.

The Government is fighting on two fronts - the Taliban in Afghanistan and now public opinion at home. With the cost in lives of holding the first line, it is difficult to see how a Government will be able to defend a second line against voters in this country.

How can the BBC be saved? It certainly is not going to survive in its current form.

There are powerful commercial pressures who simply want a slice - and a growing slice - of the license fee. There's growing disquiet over the license fee poll tax. Why should poorer people pay an equal sum to richer people, especially as they are less likely to view BBC programmes?

If that wasn't bad enough, there's the digital revolution. The BBC was set up at a time when the means of broadcasting were very limited. Now there is almost no horizon to the possibilities of delivering programmes.

The BBC also contains the seeds of its own destruction. To justify the license fee it is compelled to put on programmes that attract huge audiences. Many of these programmes seem a direct attack on the public service broadcasting ethic which the BBC is there to enshrine.

Hence the pamphlet David Rees and I have just written - Auntie's Dying: Long Live Public Service Broadcasting.

Our main proposal is for the license fee revenues to go to the new public service broadcasting commission. This body would be the custodian of what we as a community might mean by public service broadcasting.

And they would make that ideal effective in the programmes that they would commission. We suggest that under this scenario, BBC Two and Four and Radios Three and Four and the World Service would survive. Most of the other BBC material would be broadcast commercially.

Commercial stations would be able to bid for public service broadcasting money so would individuals or groups.

David and I are part of the 2011 Trust which will celebrate 400 years of the King James Bible with, we hope, 400 major events testifying the impact this book has had on establishing the English language as a worldwide phenomenon. Under the proposed reforms the 2011 Trust would be able to bid for money to commission programmes celebrating this great event. We would then look for programme makers and outlets for our productions. Public service broadcasting would therefore be partly people driven.

The reform also envisages the provision of a great online library containing all the digital programmes commissioned under public service broadcasting. It would also pay for bringing previous broadcasts like the proms online so that users could choose what they wish to see when they wish to see, from a growing body of past public service broadcasts.

Some people have interpreted this as an attack on the BBC. It is, rather, a championing of Public Service Broadcasting, which the BBC was brought in to advance and on which it has a truly great record.

But that is becoming less so. The dividing lines are between those who will defend the BBC as an institution, and those whose loyalty is not to an institutional structure but to a hugely important cultural and democratic impact of public service broadcasting.

I think those who are loyal to the ideal, rather than the institution, will, in the long run, win.

For the sake of our culture and democracy I hope so.

A grandmother's piercing cry as the coffin of her grandson moved in front of her sounded of more than the anguish of one family. It heralded, I believe, the end of the Government's current strategy in Afghanistan.

The grandmother's cry, that was carried on the news broadcast two weeks ago, has done more than all the groups campaigning against the British strategy in what Neville Chamberlain would have called a "faraway country". The intensity and drama of the pain has made the bringing back of soldier's bodies a media and hence a political event of real significance.

What began as a politically thought out campaign to overthrow a Taliban government has become war that dictates the politics. Putting back the politics into the war is urgent.

Tony Blair managed, as usual, to confuse the issue. A new government that did not support or give cover to Al-Qaeda was required. The Taliban government was overthrown by invading forces.

This key issue of a non-supporting Al-Qaeda government was wrapped up in the most daring of liberal agendas. The war was also being fought for the equality of women; although that is a goal that is yet to be fully achieved in our own country.

The Taliban-enforced inequality is symbolically represented by the burqa. But what can those solider make of this kind of campaign when we allow such symbols to reign in some areas of our own country?

The most urgent task is to give our troops the very best equipment, including helicopters, pilots and more troops, but this must only be a holding operation.

Politics must now come into the fore. How much longer can we go on supporting a corrupt government who cannot even deliver order? Sooner rather than later we need to be talking to the Taliban.

There is a huge difference between our wish to impose a Western-type democracy of Afghanistan and of the political tradition of that country being able to respond positively. The one objective on which we should have majored is a Taliban that would attack Al-Qaeda as effectively as they have been fighting us.

We owe it to those Afghans who have supported us to take some time in letting them know that a change in policy might be on the way. They must be given the chance to make their own deals long before we cut and run.

Those chilling pictures of the South Vietnamese struggling to get on the last helicopters leaving Saigon are a reminder of how a withdrawal should not be accomplished.

Those who criticise this line argue that the front line in fighting Al-Qaeda is clearly drawn in Afghanistan. I agree with them. The debate, however, has to be how we defend that line.

How many more coffins will have to come home before the political class realise that our strategy is losing this very war.

The chief of staff should argue rigorously for resources. But it should be the politicians that dictate the politics of the wars. At the moment the two sides are playing out the other's role.

In other context R. H. Thomas wrote of nailing our doubts to an untenanted cross. That single piecing cry of pain from one grandmother has ensured that a growing concern about the war is now being nailed to that cross. It cannot be long before British politics responds to the sounds that nailing.

Some Birkenhead GCSE results are deeply disturbing - as some are in most other areas of the country. I do not believe this is because young people have suddenly become thick. Nor do I believe it is because the teaching profession has collapsed.

It would be sensible to consider a number of forces at work - the rise of chaotically run families would certainly deserve more than a mention.

But central is how schools are organised and what they are allowed to teach. The biggest cause of our present discontent lies here. The 1944 Education Act proposed a tripartite system of Secondary Education that was never implemented. Grammar schools flourished, but technical schools were notable by their absence.

A binary system should have centred on an expansion of grammar schools and a flourishing of pucker technical schools. Instead, grammar schools were frozen like Lot's wife and the vast majority of us were herded into secondary modern schools that, by and large, offered a watered-down grammar school education. Even Plato couldn't have made this system work.

Here is the route of our desperately poor examination results. We don't cater for different forms of excellence so this is where our proposed academy schools come in.

Our proposal is to close Rock Ferry, Park and Ridgeway High schools and open a new all boys academy and a new mixed academy. Both will offer courses that will lead to professional qualifications for professional tradesmen and women.

Of course there is much more to success than this. But academies, I believe, offer the chance to point our schools in the right direction. Up to ten days ago this was just a dream that a few of us shared with David Hughes, the sponsor of the new school. David is a North End boy who made good, and who now wishes to put something back in the town that gave him a start in life.

On Monday the Education minister signalled an amber light to the long process of establishing a new academy. Three days later, on the Friday, David and I announced in Birkenhead the opportunity to establish a new academy. We were generously supported by the Heads who have worked so hard to offer young people opportunities in the hopeless system in which Governments have insisted they work.

The next stage is in September when the minister will hopefully turn the amber light to green. This will be the first stage in the legal process that the idea can go out for consultation and discussion.

At the moment Labour and Liberal Democrat Councillors are behind the scheme being discussed in public, and for this discussion to be a serious event as part of a wide-ranging consultation process.

The council is anxious to get into that stage, but its plan goes beyond one new academy. Phil Davies, who is Wirral's Cabinet member for young people, intends that this great opportunity should be seen as part of a wider plan. There are some other plans that will be announced just as soon as Wirral have the legal right to do so. These plans centre on how all the schools in Birkenhead can develop radically so to improve the life chances, of not just the 30-40% who gain minimum leaving requirements, but of every one of our pupils.

These blogs will report progress as the discussion opens up.

The PCT is progressing well and building a new health centre to replace the old workhouse buildings on the St Cath's site. It is part of their aim to transform how NHS services are delivered to us. I was given a presentation of the scheme on Friday and I was thrilled to be told what is planned.

The local historical society asked for the most significant parts of the old building to be preserved and all of them will be. You can see how they have used that impressive gateway into St Caths as part of the new hospital grounds. The gatehouse is also being preserved.

There will be mega public expenditure cuts announced before too long. I am very anxious to get this major project approved and, as far as possible, the money allocated, before the cuts start to have an effect. I hope therefore everybody in the Wirral area is going to work hard to ensure that this very important development, which will signal the regeneration of the Church Road area, gets maximum support. Delays may lose Birkenhead a new centre of excellence.

The Government threatened what it liked to call the rebels that voting against them was a nuclear option.

The thumbscrews were applied. If the new clause blocking the Budget was passed Armageddon would begin.

From 18:00 that evening the Government would not have been able to collect taxes. Taxes so far collected during the current financial year under the temporary taxing powers granted to all Governments to get their Budget proposals through by August 5th would be annulled. The Government would be compelled to return taxes already collected in this financial year.

The threat worked. In the end only sixteen Labour members voted in what was our last chance to rectify a Labour Government increasing taxation for those on lowest income by abolishing the 10p starting rate.

But did the Government's response suggest Armageddon might occur in other, equally awful ways? The Chancellor maintained that there would not only be tax chaos but this would domino into the debt market. A gilt strike would occur, the currency would collapse and unemployment would surge.

Faced with such a prospect, an administration determined to survive would immediately have called a confidence vote on its tax-raising powers and this would have been passed long before Parliament shut up shop at 10 p.m.

But the Government's scenario assumes that it would stand idly by, feebly rubbing its hands, like some clapped-out Uriah Heep. Merely to accept that this was the scenario - and that Chancellor assured us there was no option two - suggests that the Government had given up the will to live.

That life might be ebbing away might be due to the state of Labour's heart. For while we were dubbed rebels, the term rebel can surely be applied to those at the heart of the Government who dared to think, let alone act upon an attack on the living standards of low wage earners.

The one golden threat that links together Old Labour, New Labour and just Labour has been a belief that on whatever else we might get wrong due to human frailty, we were in business to protect those who have least in life.

Whatever state we have been in nationally or locally, no matter how useless our Parliamentary candidates have been, Labour voters knew that we possessed a common DNA. We would go down fighting against all manner of odds to defend the position of those who had least - particularly those we keep mumbling on about when we talk of the decent hard working families of this country.

The abolition of the 10p was an assault on Labour's core value.

When the results of the next election are published, and the detailed surveys are completed on what made people vote which way, I cannot help feeling that the 10p abolition will be the issue on which poor and rich voters alike concluded there was nothing special about Labour - New, Old or Ordinary - to distinguish it from the other political parties.

By refusing to find the minutest fraction of the sums we shovelled towards the banking community, historians may conclude that it was not the rebels, so-called, but a Labour Government itself that pushed the nuclear button.

I was stung by John Humphrys' observation on the Today programme that those Labour members attempting to get justice for lower-paid workers who lost out with the abolition of the 10p starting rate of tax were rebels. In one sense we are, but not in the more profound sense.

The rebels are surely Gordon Brown and his then cohorts at the Treasury who overturned the most basic of Labour's commitment to the poor. The abolition of the 10p starting rate of tax raised most of the revenue to fund a 2p cut in the standard rate of tax.

Instead of Labour moving to ease the burden on those earning the smallest wage packets, it increased it to lessen the tax burden on the rest of the community. It is this injustice that Labour members will be trying to finally overturn in today's budget debate.

At the weekend, the Labour whips repeated to the press that they were very relaxed and confident about seeing off the amendment. If they were so relaxed, then Labour members could safely vote with their consciences.

The whips' campaign changed direction yesterday, claiming that the amendment was out to wreck the budget, and that if it was passed the government would not have the power this evening to continue levying taxes.

Rubbish. The government is raising revenue, as all previous governments have done, under a measure that allows its tax-raising powers to go on while a budget is being debated in parliament.

These time-limited powers run out on 5 August. So there will be plenty of time before that deadline arrives for the government to bring forward a full compensation package for the 10p losers, have the package implemented and gain tax-raising powers for the rest of the year.

The other line the whips are peddling is that hardly anyone gets letters about this issue nowadays, so the 10p injustice has subsided in the country. It is true there are fewer emails and letters, but can we be so sure that lower-paid workers have forgotten about the issue - or have they simply given up any hope of influencing Labour MPs to deal the justice card dealt to them?

I still get a small but steady stream of letters and emails on this topic. The sense of hurt and anger at the government has not subsided, if these communications are anything to go on.

The abolition of the 10p rate sent shockwaves through Labour's core vote. We will only know its longer-term damage when the ballot boxes are opened at the end of the general election. My guess is that it will count against us in a significant way.

The politics of today's amendment is about abating that anger. For the government, even at this late stage, to make a determined effort to make sure no 10p taxpayer is still a loser might just bring closure to the issue when people come to vote.

The number of 10p losers, on the most conservative of estimates, was well over half of Labour's vote at the last election. I find it incomprehensible that a government whose strategy is now to shore up the core vote is still intent on defeating the 10p motion tabled by a significant number of Labour MPs.

The News of the World this week carried a news story - I don't know why it has been resurrected - about assisted suicide, which involved me. The tale is as follows.

One of my great friends was Barbara Wootton - one of the most intelligent people of the last century. We would have tea regularly in the House of Lords where she was a distinguished Member.

On a trip to her barn outside Dorking she told me she had joined Exit. She was intent to take her own life if she became severely incapacitated.

Better still, from Barbara's point of view, she had persuaded more than one of the Lords, who was also a doctor, to prescribe the necessary drugs for her to carry out her objective.

At the time Exit was in the news. A daughter had come home and heard a terrible commotion upstairs in her mother's bedroom.

She rushed into the room to find that a representative of Exit was sitting by the bed with a woolly hat on eating a banana sandwich. There was a plastic bag over her mother's head. She pulled the bag free.

I told Barbara that surely she didn't want to have an end like this. She assured me that she would not, but she was a paid-up member of Exit.

I thought nothing more of this until I received a phone call from what were then called geriatric wards telling me that Barbara was a patient. I went down to see her. On being taken to the bathroom Barbara called to me that she was keeping a note in her handbag of the differences between hospital and prison, adding the list wasn't very long.

Soon afterwards she was transferred to a residential care home and on the occasions when I visited her I expected her to ask me to go to her barn and collect the prescription that had been given to her.

I knew what the consequences would be. I believe people have the right to commit suicide at the end of their lives. But I believe it proper that the law protects them by prosecuting those who help in this act.

If Barbara had asked I would have helped her by collecting those drugs. The consequences would be that I might be imprisoned and would lose my seat.

I believe that to be just. How else can people like Barbara be protected from people posing as close friends who might, for example, be main beneficiaries under her will?

I was not in this position. So that part of the question never arose. But I believe that the present law protects vulnerable old people from this abuse.

It was also protects them in another equally important respect. Once we change the law on assisted suicide old frail people - and perhaps frail young people - might feel that, as they were a burden, they should put an end prematurely to their lives.

It is very noticeable that no-one charged under the existing law has been sentenced. So the law acts wisely. It acts as a safeguard. And I believe that this status quo is better than any alternative on offer - including the latest attempt by Lord Faulkner to reform the law on assisted suicide.

I have no objection to MPs declaring their outside earnings; although I don't think the debate will unfold in quite the manner that some of the reformers believe. Let me wind the clock back.

Back in April the Government's side has girded itself up for another attack on the Tories. The campaign went we would stuff them over their part-time earnings.

The resolution was passed by the House so that details of earnings should be declared in detail from today. Linked into the motion was a clause compelling MPs to detail the amount of time they spend on gaining part-time earnings.

The aim, I thought, was to expose Tories who pick up large sums from the City but who do little work for it.

For reasons that I explained on Monday, this move will begin to change the sort of people that come into the Commons. It will make our form of representation less varied and much more uniform and drawn from a dying political class.

Yesterday in the House I returned to this subject and told the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, who is having a pretty rough time with the Bill, that I would not on principle fill in the time information, nor could I for practical reasons do so.

Here is what I said:

Source: theyworkforyou.com

He dealt me a get out of jail free card.

The Bill regulating MPs is slowly disintegrating and will be finished off by the Lords if the country is lucky. The clause setting up the body that will regulate our allowances will of course survive, and so it should.

The Bill is an attack on my conception of public service. When I came into the House I thought myself wonderfully fortunate to be representing a real place - Birkenhead - that wasn't chopped and changed with every boundary report as are most other seats.

I also viewed myself doubly fortunate in that I was going to gain a salary. I don't have private means, and therefore I don't have a private income. I saw my salary as giving me that private income which in the past had allowed people from privileged backgrounds to devote their lives to public service.

Practically all my public activities are about being a more effective MP. I write articles purely to try and win political debates. I produce books because they are on things which I think are important in our public life. Such a concentration might make me boring, and I accept that, but that is the state of play.

I deeply resented the aim of the Parliamentary Standards Bill which suggested somehow that all my working hours should somehow have been bought by the House of Commons and that, far from having the freedom I thought a salary gave me to pursue a public life, I have in fact been sold into some form of slavery where I have to account for every part of the day that couldn't be justified in a technical sense as parliamentary business.

Jack Straw is one of our most able performers. That he is in real trouble with this Bill suggests to me that it was not his Bill in the first place. It seems that because of his parliamentary skills, he has been landed with trying to get something through the House of Commons. Unfortunately there is still much more work to do on this measure.

Another day, another mess. Yesterday it was the Government's turn to bugger up Parliament.

Under the guise of bringing necessary reform to the payment of MPs' allowances - which is necessary and could have been quite a short Bill - the Government has introduced a whopping ill-thought-through constitutional landmine of a Bill. It would be serious if one thought such a measure would last any time at all on the statue book.

I along with Richard Shepherd divided the House on the second reading - and these votes show whether we agree with the principle of a Bill.

The Government emphasised to the point of tedium that this measure had all Party support. While we only gained a single vote in opposition to the measure, what was devastating for the Government were their numbers. They had only 290 odd.

Given that the Liberals seem to be voting with the Government, and the Government has 349 MPs, they ought to, on that score alone, have registered 412 votes.

Of most significance however was that not a single Tory voted for the measure. If there is a change of Government at the next election this absurd measure will be quickly on the exit chute.

The measure is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Parliamentary Committee that judges these matters has not even had a chance to sit on the Bill, which was published only last Thursday.

New categories of crimes are created for MPs and yet as the Tory spokesperson Dominic Grieve so effectively pointed out, the attempt of the Government to appear extra tough with MPs turns out to be nothing of the kind - although I'm sure that was not the intention.

Currently we have a fraud measure going through Parliament with sentences of up to 10 years. Why in this measure do we create a new offence for MPs but have only a one year maximum sentence?

I centred on the absurdity of insisting that MPs not only declare their part-time earnings - I'm all in favour of that - but having to give an account of the hours worked for these earning is not only demeaning, it is unpractical.

Start the clock . . . egg timers soon to become vital equipment for MPs to measure the time spent on second jobs

This impracticality was brought home to me just before the debate.

A banker asked to see me. He was anxious to discuss the feasibility of whether his village could collectively bid for Gas, Electricity and the other utility supplies thereby pushing down prices.

I immediately saw this was an idea relevant to the mutual of which I am a non-executive director in Liverpool - Medicash. After our meeting I wrote to the Chief Executive to see whether this might give Medicash an additional lease of life.

How do I time that activity? When was I carrying out my MP role and giving advice and at what point should I have clocked on for Medicash?

Of course I could make a return, but would it be honest and accurate? And should we have rules which discourage honesty, we have too many of them in the welfare state and we all know the consequences there.

More importantly, if moonlighting is to be dubbed an offence, why aren't the biggest offenders - Ministers - having to set out how much time they spend on their job as opposed to their duties as an MP?

I suggested we would all have to be given hourglasses so that we could give accurate estimates. But when would I start the hourglass when writing an article? When do the first thoughts come into my head?

The real aim of this measure of course is to drive out of the Commons MPs with other interests. We have no serious trade union leader, business leader, entrepreneur, musician and the only IT innovator - Adam Afriyie - has had to give up this role while he is on the opposition front bench.

This nasty little measure will change what we mean by being a representative in this country, converting it into membership of a very tightly drawn and declining political class.

To help dislodge the whole measure I will refuse to put in the hours worked for my part-time earnings, although I shall attempt to make an estimate for my website.

This will land me with a fine of up to £5,000, which I won't pay. I shall resist the bailiffs taking goods to that effect so finally I will be landed in prison.

I would prefer to spend time honourably with inmates in prison than with a Parliament cowered into submission by a Government that has given up any appearance of knowing the difference between its ear and its elbow.