A considerable white elephant

In answer to a question from MP Jeremy Browne, it was revealed in parliament that the total expenditure on travel by ministers and civil servants in the old Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and its replacement was as follows:
ODPM
2002-03 £2,500,200
2003-04 £2,893,167
2004-05 £2,976,065
2005-06 £2,636,968

These were their expenditure within the UK, amounting to £11,006,400. In addition over the same period they had overseas expenditure of £1,366,321, making an overall total of £12,372,721.

These figures do not include the general running costs of the department, nor, of course the cost of Mr. Prescott's country house or croquet., or the continuing waste on regional governments which were never legal. (Neither do they cover such costs as replacing the plaque on his office door!). They cover the travelling and subsistence costs.

Apart from knocking down some reasonably good quality houses in Liverpool and saddling all councillors with the ridiculous "Standards Board", we have to ask whether it was money well spent. The answer is clear, demonstrated with a downward poking thumb. The office and department was created to suit the talents of Mr.Prescott, with eventually relatively little responsibility.

We might wonder why it was necessary to travel abroad on a remit which was very domestic. The answer is, of course, that various international conferences needed the expertise and contribution of Mr. Prescott, especially on climatology and global warming.

The successor department, Communities and Local Government, spent rather less in the one year for which figures were given, 2006-07. Domestically they spent £2,163,825, while abroad they spent £104, 722, slight reductions on Mr. Prescott's largess.

So long as they all had a good time at our expense!

Democracy - 2008 style!

How many people have voted for the European Union Treaty? - one, GB, and he was almost absent at the time.

How many days will be given to debating it? The 20-25 days promised was like the Referendum promise itself - not worth much. The Government (GB) has reduced it to 12 days, and pushed this through parliament with a three-line whip. (The sheep mostly in Labour and Libdem colours meekly did as told.

How well does anyone know what the treaty contains? - Very few - an English translation was not available until quite recently, and a deterrent in the document means that you need to follow up references to previous treaties.

What changes are possible? - none! - not a single word, comma, full stop. It is a "take it or leave it situation". "Do you want to go even further into integration, or do you want to have all the opprobrium of the rest of the EU heaped on me?"

Is there a free vote? - what do you think?

So really only Gordon has voted, and democracy suffers another of the thousand cuts which will kill it. And the BBC, the biased broadcasting company, sees nothing amiss and nothing to report!

Sleaze and cover-up

There can be few people who feel that Derek Conway has been treated unfairly, however much sympathy they may feel for him. The sheer scale and the cynical way in which he benefited his family surely demand no less. "Fraud" is the word which comes to mind.

I hope, however, that the Speaker, Michael Martin, will feel a certain responsibility in this. In 2006 he used a clause in the Freedom of Information Act, - a general clause to cover cases which arise and which are not covered in the Act, to block the availability of information about people employed by MPs.

His argument was that "disclosure of the names of MPs' staff would be likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs."

The result has been that wrong-doing like Derek Conway's is much more difficult to expose. Conway could have gone on for much longer, but for the fact that someone discovered the case and leaked the information to a newspaper. How many other "Conways" are there?

The fact that MPs are quite happy to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and enjoy an immunity in this and other areas denied to other representatives such as councillors, is a stain on the notion of transparency and on democracy itself.

The LibDems have announced this morning that they will publish details of all staff employed by LibDem MPs. The Conservatives are in favour of greater transparency. So far New Labour, with its overall majority, has not indicated any desire to change.

What do MPs have to hide? Are they concerned that there will be greater scrutiny and thus the need for proper records, and that some cosy arrangements may be examined.? The question is to what extent they are accountable to us, the electors.

What do the crime statistics prove?

The Government thinks either that we are stupid and will believe any statistic they produce, or that we live with split minds - one half knowing that crime is going down and the other half believing that our streets are dangerous or threatening.

How does the Government know that crime, or at least some kinds of crime, could be said to be falling? Two sorts of statistics are available:

Reported crime.

This means crimes which are reported to the police. The problem, of course, is that no-one knows how many crimes of some sorts are not reported. Violent crime is probably well reported, except possibly rape or light assault or bullying, but what of minor crime? Minor crimes tend to be reported if the victim can claim from insurance and so needs a crime number, - a number which will be issued over the phone before a police visit, if any.

There are plenty of jokes of the type, such as, "If the police are too busy to send a constable, or lack transport, just say that you are going out with your illegal shot gun to sort things out and you will have them swarming to your door." A lot of us, or people we know, have experience of reporting crimes, to find that the police do little or nothing. We are discouraged, don't bother to report crimes unless we want to make an insurance claim and do not want to get involved in reporting crimes. In addition, for shops with regular burglaries after several insurance claims may find that their insurance companies will not offer cover any longer, or only with very high premiums or very expensive conditions attached.

The result is that for petty crime at least, there will be an unknown element of under-reporting.

Crime Surveys:

Every year a sample of citizens are asked questions about their experience of crime. If the sample is large enough, this should produce a good indication of the level of crime.

Here again there will be some under-reporting. Crimes involving a victim or perpetrator aged less than 16 will be excluded from the sum. So called "white collar" crimes are also excluded.

The result is that while there is a possibility of exaggeration, from faulty memory or deliberately to try to force action by the authorities, there is also some under-reporting. Even if sampling is carefully controlled, it could exclude the shopkeeper whose shop is regularly broken into.

When the politician quotes a figure showing that crime generally, or particular categories of it, has diminished, do not accept the figure without a health warning. There are lies, damned lies and statistics!

who pays the piper calls the tune?

A week ago the Foreign secretary, David Milliband, defended the European Union for having consulted the British people by a dialogue with various worthy organisations. He mentioned the NSPCC, One World Action, Action Aid, Oxfam and "a commission of bishops"

Daniel Hannan in a blog soon afterwards promised to find out if the first four have received any funds from the EU, but he did find out about the august body of bishops. Their full title is Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community."

The Bishop's group declare their objectives to be:
to monitor and analyse the political process of the European Union
to inform and raise awareness within the Church of the development of EU policy and legislation
to promote reflection, based on the Church's social teaching, on the challenges facing a united Europe.

Hannan quote another (ecclesiastical) blog site which reports that the Commission is "a Roman Catholic-led ecumenical body which is financed by the European Union to produce reports singing the praises of said union with all glory laud and honour."

The view of such a body is hardly likely to express views of the rank and file citizens of this country.

As for the other four NGOs, Hannan is aware of a meeting in Brussels for 500 "representatives of civil society", most of whom seemed to be EU funded NGOs. He has been in correspondence since with the European Commission, as yet without success, asking which NGOs were receiving EU finance.

If all the bodies concerned are taking the EU "shilling", how valuable are their views? And if Millband and others like him are reduced to quoting them, are there no objective judgements on the EU which are favourable to the Treaty.

One with memory problems replaced by one with sight problems?

The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, James Purnell, made his debut on Sunday on the (Labour) friendly show with Andrew Marr. Yes it really was James, this time not air-brushed in in his absence.

He was mazing, even claiming that Britain had now reached full employment. "We have the lowest unemployment rate for 30 years." Only 30 years? If we have reached full employment it is the lowest level ever!

There are two problems.

1) His own department last May published figures showing that among all those of working age, 5,236.810, or 14.3% were not currently working. Of the 14.3%, 11.6% fell into three categories - on Job seekers allowance, on incapacity benefit (7.2 %, or half), or lone parents.

So unless Mr. Purnell knows of some miraculous improvement since last year, which a publicity hungry Government mysteriously forgot to publish, he is likely to be telling a porky.

The 14.3% is, of course, a national average. For some large centres the figures are higher - 24% in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, 23% in Blackpool, and 20% in Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham. Have they employed all these since last year?

2) His own department are presently introducing schemes to help back to work a significant number of those at present on incapacity benefit. There seems to be a recognition that employment could be pushed significantly higher, that is that unemployment is much higher than the number registered as unemployed.

For these two reasons, and probably others, such as the fact that it is difficult to define and measure full employment, he was guilty of telling a lie. Unless he was extremely badly briefed by his new department, he must have known that the labour force could in theory be much larger, and that many people in the 14% qualify for benefit in other ways and so do not technically join those registered as unemployed.

In the time of the Thatcher Government, the Labour opposition made the regular complaint that some people did not register for unemployment benefit because they were not qualified to claim. The real level of unemployment they often calculated as double the official measure. They may or may not have been right, but Mr. Purnell is certainly wrong to claim that the only unemployed now are those registered as such. The number of those unemployed could actually be trebled at least from the numbere of registered.

Mr. Purnell, if you carry on in this vein you are likely to lose all credibility.

What is the purpose?

There is pressure on the independent schools, whether from Government diktat or from a very narrow focus by the Charity Commission on the meaning of charity, doubtless at the behest of the Government. The next target could be faith schools, while grammar schools seem to be seen as an affront at worst and an embarrassment at best, even to leading Conservatives.

The cause is, of course, the consistently better results achieved by pupils at schools not controlled by the state or local authorities.

You would think that the Government would use this to ask what are the differences between the two sectors - general state and selective/independent, in order to learn lessons to improve the poorer performing.

Instead, the pressure is on to reduce or hobble the independent sector, presumably on the grounds that their students should not out-perform, or as they would say, in order that they should not have an unfair advantage.

The important question the becomes:
"If they haven't found a way to improve ( that is real improvement as compared with dumbing down and cosmetic improvement) poorer performing schools, what are they hoping to achieve by attacking the well performing schools?"

Do they honestly think that if they succeeded in closing all those schools they do not directly control, and dispersing their staff and students into the remaining schools, that somehow education in this country will be improved?

There will always be poorer performing schools, if assessment is objective and correct. There are all sorts of reasons for this, which need not be repeated here. We have had increased funding for education which seems to have achieved little so far, to judge by the on-going rapid series of new measures which seem to lead to indigestion in the system.

What is required is a new culture. Whatever else this involves, it must ensure that there is both a large measure of freedom for practitioners - especially head teachers and their staff, and that there is accountability to "customers", ie local families and others, such as employers. We have for too long tried the monolithic approach imposed from above. It is surely time to try a more devolved approach allowing for local characteristics and needs.

Porkies and half truths - 2

Duty Free
In the (pre-election) budget of 2005, and quoted in extravagent newspaper headlines, Gordon Brown announced, "I have today written to the European Commission proposing that a tax free limit on goods brought into the UK should rise from £145 to £1,000."

"Good old Gord!", several people from Kent and other regular travellers to stock up must have thought, especially when he repeated it in his 2006 budget.

When he failed to repeat his statement in 2007, or reported on any reply he had had, channel crossers might have been forewarned.

It has now emerged that his proposal has been met with a more modest increase, to only about £320, and this has been delayed until December 2008. This was agreed by the EU finance ministers.

Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it was not just a pre-election half promise. It shows, however, that in this as in most things now decisions affecting entry into this country by British citizens are made in Brussels.

But there is a porky resulting from all this. Labour recently claimed in the House of Lords, that Brown was expressing a mere "aspiration". Does this mean that in the Brownian New Labour world all budget statements are mere aspirations? All the others have been relentlessly forced through.

First they burned the books, and then....people

Daniel Hannan, MEP, in a blog on the Daily Telegraph site yesterday, recorded that he and others were shocked on Thursday by the behaviour of the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering.

The President became exasperated by procedures adopted by eurosceptic MEPs, employed in support of their protest at the failure of countries to hold referenda on the Treaty/Constitution. He accepted that everything they did was in accordance with the rules laid down.The measures included requests for electronic voting and a record of how people voted, and the right to make a speech of 1 minute to explain.

The prospect of 24 or so eurosceptic MEPs each making a one minute speech was too much for Poettering, although as Hannan points out the whole effect would have been to prolong the session by no more than half and hour. Mr. Poettering immediately contacted the chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, and asked for an immediate ruling as to whether he could suspend the rules of procedure at his own discretion, if he felt that time wasting was being employed.

In time, doubtless, the rules will be altered to give Poettering what he wants. There is little doubt that there is an intransigent intolerance of any opposition to the EU establishment and the grand project. Kathy Sinnot, an Irish disability rights campaigner was summoned for disciplinary action. He offence ? - wearing a tee-shirt with the word "REFERENDUM" on it.

We have a a largely unelected and unaccountable controlling establishment in Brussels. The only vaguely democratic part is the European Parliament, even if it lacks real power. If this one elected body attempts to stifle views not attractive to the controlling body, then we could be on a slippery slope.

"First they burned the books..." The Nazis began by trying to control dissentient voices and ended in unspeakable horrors. No-one is suggesting that the EU will descend to this. They have, however, shown a complete disregard for whistle- blowers who were concerned only about injustice, and they have used funds to subvert (they would say educate) young minds in all countries to comply with their dream. Now they have tried to silence dissent.

We are accustomed to sleaze, cover up, lies and spin by our elected betters, but this could be an altogether more sinister and undemocratic threat, even if it will never go even half way to the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Totalitarian may be strong a word, but the development is worrying all the same.

Some are more equal than others

It merged from an innocent question in the House of Commons last week, from a Conservative MP asking why he was unable to send his tax return "on-line", that some people's tax returns have a higher level of security than others, and that the higher security returns cannot be posted on line.

The list of those with high security doubtless contains members of the Royal Family, and it certainly contains all MPs, as the answer to the MP's question admitted.

At a time when HMRC is beginning to force us to post our returns on line, - after September each year the returns must be on line, and there is no choice, to hear that our data has a lower level of security is worrying. We have observed the casual way in which Government departments use and lose data, so this is all a major concern.

We can accept that the tax affairs of members of the Royal Family could be a magnet for all sorts of hackers, but what have the MPs to hide? (After recent scandals, often revealed only by investigative journalists, it is difficult to justify.)

Above all why were MPs not told of the arrangement previously?

Slimming down the police force

It has been suggested that a Home Office report due out next week will reveal a fall in the number of serving police officers. A reduction of 1,000 officers has been suggested. The Association of Police Authorities are warning that the number of reductions could be 6,000 over the next three years, while Chief Police Officers are suggesting that an extra 7,000 are needed, merely to maintain what they are doing.

Why this may happen is clear. The Comprehensive Spending Review last autumn cut the requested rise in police spending from 8% to 5%. As much of the police spending is on staff, - estimates vary, but it is at least 60% of all spending, there was always going to be a problem. Spending on PCSOs, Police Community Support Officers is "ring fenced", and therefore not reducible, and as PCSOs are "cheaper to employ" it is understandable if police forces attempt to deal with a funding problem by replacing retiring constables with support officers.

So we have classroom assistants instead of more qualified teachers, and we may well have more police support officers doing duties in the community, when most of us want a fuller police presence on our streets.

This is no criticism of classroom assistants or support officers, but they are generally less well qualified, and in the case of support officers have had less training and have fewer powers.

It seems that this Government wants to have teaching and policing on the cheap. It is little wonder that we have a Home Secretary afraid to walk at night in London!

Green threats

Ofgem, in a recent report, commented on a fairly recent rapid rise in fuel prices confronting consumers. It seems that a consequence has been an even more rapid rise in the number of houses disconnected from their energy supplies. This is quite apart from the large number of elderly pensioners who risk dying because they are trying to economise by reducing their heating.

This is a sad state of affairs. The old age pension, even backed up with means-tested benefits, does not provide much protection from fuel bill and council tax rises. It is much less than the minimum wage level, but even so may lead some to pay income tax. While the present Government may claim all sorts of achievements, the evidence on pensions is shameful. Pensions were never adequate, and they have increased at the miserly CPI inflation rate for several years, when the real level, something like the older RPI has been increasing more rapidly. Indeed, experts have calculated that prices faced by pensioners, and which take much of their income, have gone up by over 5% in several years and once or twice by as much as 8%.

With pensions rising by 2% and relevant prices rising by 5%, pensioners have been impoverished.

But there is another twist. Energy companies point out that about 50% of the fuel price rises are the result of higher costs imposed by the Treasury, and especially so-called green taxes.

There is a logic to the green taxes that many would want to agree with, - they encourage us to conserve scarce resources or encourage us to reduce the use of goods which cause harm to the environment.

The problem is that the Blair Government rushed through these taxes in a very dramatic way, without consulting industry and without considering the social consequences.

For those on very low incomes the energy taxes reach them, as it does everybody, in high prices passed on by producers.

It is difficult to see pensions and benefits being given a boost in a time of financial stringency like the present, and it is difficult to see how the poorest could be exempt from the effect of the taxes. The worrying thing is that experts have calculated that recent proposals on the environment by the EU will add at least a further 15% to electricity bills.

If we do not wish to see the growing elderly population dying earlier because of poverty, then there must be a concentration on them and other poorer people, either in aid to reduce their energy consumption, or in their incomes, or both.

"I didn't know...." Labour after Hain

Aside from trying to smear everyone else in a very dishonest way ("The Tories are stopping new legislation on controlling MP dishonesty because they will not talk to us.") the standard Labour reaction to Peter Hain's departure seems to be, " It was only a late declaration of legal donations. It was a mistake, but an honest mistake."

Last year over 28,000 people were prosecuted by the DWP, his old department, for failing to declare income, some were prosecuted for fairly small sums of money. Were some of these guilty only of honest mistakes, - not including spouses income, honestly forgetting some, or being too busy, or thinking that the small part-time job was not worth recording? If so, I can't imagine they were able to get away with it.

You are fined if your tax returns are not in on time. There are no exceptions, seemingly.

Try telling the police officer "I'm sorry, I forgot this was a 30 m.p.h. area", or, "I was busy and in a rush and didn't notice the 'No Parking' sign."

If there are laws, then we expect them to be enforced on all of us, from the humblest to the minister of the crown. Otherwise there is injustice. And ignorance of the law is no excuse.In addition, we expect those who frame the laws to be aware of the laws they frame.

We make no mention of the rather dodgy think tank, which seems to have been deliberately set up to conceal ultimate donors, which threatens if it does not break the law on the need for identification in the name of transparency.

The biggest and newest stealth tax?

This week the BBC reported a calculation by the Local Government Association, from 100 draft council budgets, that council taxes are set to rise about 4% this year on average. One council is actually reducing the tax, a few are maintaining it, but at the other extreme several are bringing in a rate increase of 5%, which is the maximum permitted by the Government.

Why are they doing so? There is an increased immigrant presence in some areas, all are grappling with the more generous free travel for pensioners and the the disabled, there are pressures from social care budgets and more elderly people within communities. Government Departments are also shifting costs and responsibilities to councils.

Councillor Ken Thornber, Leader of Hampshire County Council, - one of those setting a tae increase of 5%, pleads, "We are being asked to do more and more every year by central government with less and less."

The table at the top, produced by the BBC, shows the increase every year in council taxes with changes in the Government inflation rate CPI.

It could have been more. What was also reported this week by the BBC was a report from the Audit Commission on charges levied by councils. Council Tax raised £22.4 billion in 2006-07, but it could have nearly 50% higher. Councils raised £10.8 billion in charges, of which £2.3 billion came from social services - residential care, homecare, daycare and meals, and £2 billion from education, meals, fees, etc., while £1.5 billion came from roads and transport services, including parking, public transport and congestion charges.

These charges have risen by 31% in five years, including parking and congestion charges by 75%, much more rapidly that council tax. (The charges on social services has risen very little.)

These charges seem to have been a calculated and deliberate intention of central government, and well and truly deserve the title "stealth tax" There are others in the pipeline - rubbish bins, for one, dressed up in the name of conservation.

One of the canons of taxation is that taxes should be transparent and obvious. We have a prime minister, who as chancellor broke that cannon over and over again. The cost is not just to us, but to democracy.

The penalty of failure

Last November, just after HM Revenue and Customs came under the spotlight for losing 25 million personal records on CDs, members of staff started receiving their annual performance bonuses, in fact by the end £19 million was paid to them, averaging £8,000 each for 220 senior staff and about £453 for 38,000 of the remaining 90,000 staff. The total paid represented an increase of 70% on the previous year's £11 million! (It should be added that about 80 passports a month are still going missing!)

Their record of seven data breaches since April 2005 should surely have raised questions, even if the recent major loss of child benefit records was too recent to enter calculations. It raises the question what exactly they have to do to miss their bonus in a particular year.

In August 2007, it was announced that the CEO of the Learning and Skills Council was to receive a bonus of £36,000 because "he and the organisation had exceeded their targets." The Council is widely regarded as a complete and utter waste of money. Companies who make use of personnel trained by the Council or one of its contractors, regularly have to retrain the personnel, and many firms are now having nothing to do with the Council. This seems another organisation in the public sector with such low or vague targets that they cannot fail to meet them.

BBC staff recently received bonuses totalling £20 million, despite severe criticisms from many directions, complaints about programmes and criticisms of waste.

The most outrageous example may be DEFRA. The number of staff earning more than £100,00 has trebled in the last five years to 25. When in November 2007 it was announced that senior staff had received £7 million in performance bonuses over the years 2006/07, some people were shocked. The Department, in effect us, has already been fined £63 million by the EU for the shambles it made in paying out Farm Payments from the EU, in not meeting deadlines, and the Government is clearly expecting further fines, as it has set aside £292 million to cover possible fines. The money will almost certainly be cut from the DEFRA budget, so there will be further costs on us. (One cost may already be the Foot and Mouth epidemic at Pirbright last summer, when it was revealed that routine maintenance at the very important site had been reduced in an effort to save money!

The senior official behind the payments debacle was removed from his post, although for at last six months continued to receive his salary and even received a £21,000 bonus to drawing up the appalling scheme originally. The minister who shares responsibility for the shambles, Margaret Beckett, was removed from the Department and rewarded by being made Foreign Secretary, - a promotion! She and the Department had been warned at least six months before it started that the payments scheme would not work!

The Department is also responsible for the environment, including waste, recycling, floods and coastal erosion. We have had ample evidence to see gross failures in these other areas also. There is no need to remind you of skimped maintenance on drains and brooks which led to flooding of people's homes, nor to the fact that DEFRA had cut the budget of the Environment Agency.

Bonuses in the private sector are paid to those who make decisions or show commitment, and whose incomes could slump if the organisation performs badly. In the public sector there is no such risk. Indeed, it seems that mediocre performance can trigger generous bonuses.

A BBC spokesman, defending the bonuses, admitted, "...bonuses are part of staff's contractual entitlement". In other words they are not performance bonuses, or incentives, but merely extra salary. The term "performance bonus" is to deceive, but we are no longer deceived.

How careless of them

Shortly before Christmas 2007, (a good time to bury bad news?), no fewer than 9 NHS trusts admitted breaches of security rules. The BBC estimated that hundreds of thousands of adults and children had suffered the loss of their personal details.

The Trusts were:
City and Hackney
Bolton Royal Hospital
Sutton and Merton
Sefton, Merseyside
Mid-Essex Care Trust
Norfolk and Norwich
Gloucester Partnership Foundation Trust
Maidstone & Tonbridge Wells
East & North Haertfordshire

Some were old records, some were subsequently re-discovered, but it is possible that some records could have been needed urgently by hospital staff. There is a strong suspicion that the admissions would not have come to light but for the recent HMRC massive loss of CDs and subsequent Government enquiries as a consequence.

And now the MOD is concerned at the theft of a laptop containing details of 600,000 individuals.

Yesterday on the CentreRight blog Liam Fox revealed that it is much worse. In 2007 68 MOD laptops were stolen, in 2006 66, in 2005 40 and in 2004 no fewer than 173.

In fact there seems to be an epidemic in Government departments generally. In 2007 the HMRC lost 44 laptops, as well as the CDs, and there is strong suspicion that there were losses in the Home Office and DWP also.

How can civil servants be so careless, and how can departments let laptops with important personal details be taken out and left carelessly.

All this illustrates what computer experts have warned us about - the bigger the data files and the more people who have access, the greater the likelihood of security breaches.

Surely they can't persevere with our personal ID cards and database now, can they?

Is any comment necessary? An old joke.

A Conservative and a Socialist are walking down the street. They come across a homeless man. The Conservative reaches into his pocket and gives him his business card and tells him to turn up at nine o'clock on Monday morning for a job. He then gives him two crisp ten pound notes to tide him over the weekend. A few yards later they come across another homeless man. The Socialist, having been impressed with the actions of his Conservative friend, gives the homeless man directions to the local benefits office then reaches into the Conservative's wallet, takes out two ten pound notes and keeps one of them as an administration fee.

It occurs to me that there is too much truth here to make the story funny!

Get your act together!

We have had a boost in health spending. No-one doubts this. If we had continued to increase spending at the pre-1999 rate until 2004 we would have spent £34.3 billion less on the NHS than we actually have. This then is the measure of the boost in spending.

The five year increase was calculated by the Taxpayers Alliance in a recent investigation. They used data from the World Health Organisation and statistical techniques pioneered in the British Medical Journal. They considered the period 1981-2004, the final year being the last year for which data were available. They calculated a measure known as "mortality amenable to healthcare", to produce the number of deaths which could have plausibly have been averted.

Two startling conclusions emerge.

1) If the UK had achieved the average level of "mortality amenable to healthcare" in the other countries they studied, - Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain, then from 2004 spending there would have been 17,157 fewer deaths in the UK.
This figure is tragic for the families concerned, but it is five times the number of deaths from road accidents and two and half times the number from alcohol.

2) The steady improvements in mortality have been at the same rate since 1981, under Thatcher, Major and Blair. There is thus no doubting the proposition that the boost to spending between 1999 and 20004 has produced little impact on mortality.

It may be that in the fullness of time if the higher spending is maintained, - at the moment there are cut-backs because of government debt, and a much fuller degree of reform of the ancient, monolithic, centralised and bureaucratic structure of the NHS takes place, that we narrow the gap with European results. In the fullness of time they will have progressed further, of course.

At the moment, while New Labour can point to "achievements" - reduced waiting times in some areas at least, there is no discernible difference in mortality rates. The major beneficiaries of the spending seem to have been the extra bureaucrats employed and some members of the medical profession. This was predicted at the outset, and will continue so long as the service is producer- led and London controlled.

Who's confusing whom?

The Spectator "Cofffee House Blog"pointed out on Saturday that we are being subject to confusing, not to say dangerous, pressures.

On the one hand newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Mail, and even some energy suppliers have been offering free or very cheap low-energy light bulbs. In addition the EU has declared, and DEFRA will enforce in the near future, the illegality of conventional filament bulbs. We shall have little option, once our present stocks of conventional bulbs are exhausted. (We shall probably have to replace some fittings which will be too small to accommodate the low-energy bulbs.)

On the other hand DEFRA prints the following advice for anyone who breaks one of the new bulbs:

"Vacate the room and ventilate it for at least 15 minutes. Do not use a vacuum cleaner, but clean up using rubber gloves and aim to avoid creating and inhaling airborne dust. Sweep up all particles of glass fragments and place in a plastic bag. Wipe the area with a damp cloth, then add that to the bag and seal it. Mercury is hazardous waste and the bag should not be disposed of in the bin . All local councils have an obligation to make arrangements for the disposal of hazardous household waste."

Odd that our nanny state with its concentration on health and safety, so that it warns us that peanut butter may contain peanuts and soup when heated could be hot, prints no warning on the new light bulbs. Or does the saving of energy override all other considerations? Or are the Government merely covering their own backs, like the peanut butter and soup makers?

Porkies and half truths - 1

This is one of a series which comments on claims made by Gordon Brown which vary from downright lies to statements that are dishonest unless they are qualified.

1) "Inflation now, at 2.1%, is lower than when we came to power."
Do I need to comment? Everyone has rumbled him. He is comparing unlikes. The 2.1% is the price index he chose to use - CPI, for whatever reason, which seriously underestimates the real rate of inflation. It omits most housing costs, including Council Tax and energy!

Economists calculate that for some groups, e.g. pensioners, their effective inflation rate could have been as high as 8 or 9 percent. For everyone, the rises recently would be better represented by the RPI, which has been over 4 %

The CPI was not published in 1997, but someone has recently calculated from data available that in 1997 it would have been 1.6%. If he had compared like with like, inflation is higher now. He claimed the reverse by comparing unlikes.


2) "We have had years of unbroken growth, in excess of the growth rates of our neighbours in Europe."

Again, it depends what you compare. If your compare our national output, then it has grown, but a large part of the reason is the vast inflow of foreign workers. He can't take much credit for this.
If, however, you compare changes in output per head of population over the 10 years, then our performance has been, to say the kindest, very average.

In fact. our productivity, or output per worker, used to lead Europe, but now we are well down the league. It is most definitely not that the foreign workers are lacking in skills or commitment. Rather it is that they have found work very often in manual jobs where it is difficult to boost productivity by investing in capital goods.

Liberal Democrat Housekeeping - an example

North Norfolk District Council has raised much indignation in Norfolk by sending bailiffs to forcibly remove property belong to 500 ratepayers and business tax payers who cannot or will not pay their rates. The Council is not so much controlled by the Liberal Democrats as dominated by them, having 30 seats out of 48.

This seems a little high handed, but perhaps this comes at the end of a long process of letter writing and warnings. It is debatable whether their action is more or less acceptable than taking court action.

What is less acceptable is that rates demanded for a band have risen from £572.13 in 1997 to £1281.81 in 2007, a rise of 124%. This increase is way above the national average of about 100%.

Some reasons for this excessive increase could be:
- that last November councillors awarded themselves a pay increase of 28%
-that their spending on self-congratulatory publicity has risen to£600,00, an increase of 22% since 1997
-that they spend £2.5 million on its own propaganda, an increase of 166% since 1997

The total of uncollected rate and tax is £616,000. To raise that amount in public auction of second hand goods means that the rate payers will have to pay a good deal more to replace the goods.

There is an old saying, "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." Perhaps democracy will be reasserted, and the LibDem Council will have shot itself in the foot?

The European Union - some recent masterpieces

Lest any reader imagine that my failure to comment on the decisions and doings of Brussels is because I am entirely happy with them, let me mention a few things which have emerged.

1) It has now emerged that EU law that citizens from within the union who are eligible for Government payments on leaving their country are still entitled to receive them from their home country in their destination country within the EU.
So in the past year 50,000 expatriates who have emigrated to warmer climes have received £9 million in winter fuel allowance, even though they live in a much warmer country!

2)The EU has recently classified disability scooters with snowmobiles, jet skis and racing cars, with the result that there has been added a £300 import tax! Can you believe it?

3) It seems that 16 EU member countries have now signed up to a declaration on the importance of EU's flag, anthem and motto, which will be attached to the EU (non-)Consitution.
Bottler Brown pretends that the recent treaty itsn't a constitution because it does not mention the flag and anthem. But they are being attached. Is there a difference?

4) It seems that the EU has budgeted to spend the sum of £7.2 billion in the UK over the years 2007-2013 from the Structural and Cohesion Fund. Open Europe has done a full study and among other things has concluded two things. Firstly that poorest areas receive disproportionately less - the poorest 20% of areas have received about 10% of the spending.
Secondly that the schemes are hugely bureaucratic, and with very large administrative costs. They cost the UK about £670 million a year from our grant. That seems to be about half of what we are allocated. (Perhaps they could make a start by avoiding all those driver-distracting blue signs which try to persuade us that they are kind in letting us have back a tiny proportion of our money.)

By the way, over the same period our contributions to the EU will be about £71 billion. So they give back about 10%, or after the administration about 5%.

Real democracy?

Towards the end of last year the Swiss Canton of Obwalden held a referendum. More than 90% of the 33,755 resident voted to introduce a flat income tax rate of 1.8%.

By the decision Obwalden will become the first canton to adopt a flat income tax rate. The first SFr10,000 ( about £5,000?) is exempt from tax, to benefit those on low incomes.

There is competition among the cantons to set lower tax rates, in an effort to attract wealthy individuals and companies from neighbouring countries and Western Europe generally.

Just imagine that we had local democracy, that Telford & Wrekin could set its own tax rates by popular vote. There is little doubt that if we did not have to pay the huge costs of massive central Government, bureaucracy and quangoland, let alone the European union, we would all be better off, even if we had to buy in services from outside.

Direct Democracy is an idea whose time is coming ever closer, after the experience of the past 10 years. It would be revolutionary and liberating!

More trouble for Peter Hain?

On Tuesday a Special Adviser in the Department of Work and Pensions, sent out a press release from his Department of Work and Pensions e-address. There is nothing unusual in this. Special Advisers, jobs for the boys appointments paid for the by the tax-payer, have mushroomed over the past 10 years, and they probably send e-mails in great quantity.

This one was different. It was headed, "TORIES AIM TO DESTROY FINAL PENSION SCHEMES."

Taking as a starting point David Cameron's comment that the very overgenerous pension scheme which MPs have voted for themselves, a scheme which he would seek to make less generous, the writer went on to proclaim, "The Conservative Party plans to get rid of public sector final salary pensions..." This, he claimed would send signals to employers and their employees that Conservatives "don't care about them and are prepared to reduce their income in retirement." So, "if you are in a final salary pension scheme don't ever vote Tory or they would destroy it."

There then continues analysis which hints that many workers in the private sector are in final salary schemes, despite the Thatcher Government running them down (- no mention of pension raids by a certain Mr. Brown).

The whole analysis is partisan and biased, not to say dishonest, and the special adviser concerned is acting more like a mouthpiece for the Labour Party election campaign than an expert adviser.

Worse still, he is breaking the terms of his contract and Code of Conduct which stipulates that Special Advisers must not "use official resources for party political purposes" and must "act in a way which upholds the political impartiality of civil servants". "Briefing on purely party political matters must be handled by the Party machine."

Of course, Peter Hain will be unaware of this, as he seems unaware of everything else that is happening around him.

(This is of course not the only subverting of public funds to Labour Party purposes. We already know of even Cabinet Ministers using their annual £10,000 communication allowance to campaign for the party and for their own re-election.)

Worrying....

Yesterday we learned two pieces of information that lead us to believe that inflation is a real threat.

Wholesale food prices are rising at a record rate, in fact the highest rate since records began in 1992. In twelve months they have risen by 7.4%, or more than three times the rate of the CPI, which the Government insists on using. Grocery prices have risen by some 12% over the same period. (Behind these figures are the poor harvests last summer in some crops, and increasing world demand. World demand is also contributing to higher energy prices.)

U.K.factory gate prices, - that is prices before delivery and distribution costs, are also rising at a rate not seen for 17 years. They rose 5% in December 2007 alone. Factories have had to cope with an increase in the price of their raw materials of 11.2% in 2007, so there is little surprise.

Behind both indexes is the decline in the value of sterling against other currencies - anything imported may be the same price in foreign currency but will now cost (us) more in sterling. The decline in the value of sterling may be due partly to recent falls in interest rates, but as we have been running deficits for a few years of some magnitude it is more likely that the cause is a debt financed import binge by us

Some imports are also increasing in foreign currency prices, reflecting world shortages. These may also be magnified in prices we pay because of high taxes, for example on petrol were the tax is partly a percentage and rises with increases in the crude petrol price.

So our competent ex-chancellor has taken us back towards the situation in the 1970s, when we had "stagflation", a situation with both inflation and economic slowdown, when usually we would think of these as opposites.

The implications are many, but here I offer three.

1) The picture may be slightly more cheerful for exporting firms. Our exchange rate has declined, which means that our exports will be cheaper in foreign currencies, (except in the U.S. dollar, which has declined almost as much.)

2) For most of us, especially those whose pension or wages the Government is trying to control to less than 2% in order to try to control any wage cost element in inflation, there will have to be some belt tightening. Our real income, allowing for inflation, or our living standard, will fall. If we cut back on less essentials, the economy may decline even more. (One thing is certain, with inflationary pressures in the system, we can expect some public sector unions to decline offers of 2% each year over three years!)

3) Lower interest rates could stimulate the economy by making borrowing and credit cheaper, (although to some extent we are in the mess currently because we have lived too much on credit for many years), but if there is any inflationary pressure cutting rates could reinforce it. Lower rates may also cause sterling to fall further, as lenders decide to take their funds out of this country and need to change them from sterling into some other currency.

There are some optimists who feel that energy prices have peaked and will fall, and that consequently inflation will fall, aided by better harvests this year. They may be right, but if they are wrong and rates are cut we could see a further decline in sterling.

Who would want to lie on the bed of nails called the Monetary Policy Committee? Mervyn King the Governor, already seemingly the "fall guy" to deflect attention from Government failures over the Northern Rock fiasco, could well come under political fire over inflation/recession as well. As usual McCavity Brown will absent himself.

We told you so....

Is anyone surprised that a new black hole has been found in funding for the Olympic games in 2012?This time it relates to overestimates on the value of land sites made originally.

The London Development Agency has admitted that the proceeds from sales of land after the games could be much less than the "at least £1.8 billion" originally estimated, in fact could be as low as £800 million, that is less than half and leaving a shortfall of £1 billion.

The reason for this is that the original forecast was that land prices in East London would rise by 16% a year. A number of experts are questioning the figure, suggesting that 6% or 8% is a more realistic figure as prices now seem to have peaked.

The LDA was to have received priority, in receiving £625 million from the sales, to reimburse the cost of buying the land. The Lottery Fund was to have received its £675 million back in installments, and there was to have been further money to the LDA to cover site costs, and to the London Mayor.

On the current more pessimistic (realistic?) assumptions, there would not be enough to meet all costs and also refund the Lottery Fund. Arts and culture, and other sport, which have already had their budgets squeezed because of earlier Government "raids" on the fund, are not pleased.
London taxpayers may have to dip into their pockets, and those of us in the rest of the country who resent the concentration on London will also probably have to pay extra. By 2013 onwards, when the chickens come home to roost, we could well have a new Government to clear up the mess.

Today Conservatives and LibDems will probably vote against government plans to promise yet more funds to finance the Olympic games. Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, is quoted to have said yesterday that the Conservatives would vote against allowing the £675 million to be released from the Lottery Fund.

There could be ructions

The publisher Constable are due to publish a new book by David Craig in March on the subject of Government waste.

It details in passing how Government spending has cost the average household an EXTRA £50,000 since 1997.

He predicts that by 2009 civil service pensions will have risen so much that people working in the private sector will be paying more each month to finance the pensions of civil servants than they will into their own pensions.

The reasons are not difficult to see - the size of the civil service has swollen in the ten years, and especially in the Brown spending years, civil service pensions are all generous and are all final salary and indexed, and they are subsidised. Those in the private sector, whose employers have had to switch from final salary, partly because of Brown's raid on pension funds, might react with some anger when they discover the facts.

Fair Votes

In most recent General Elections Labour has gained proportionately more seats than their vote share suggested. In 1997 to have the same seat outcome as Labour, the Conservatives would have had to obtain 6.7% more votes nationally, in 2001 the Conservatives would have needed 8.3% more, while in 2005 they would have required 6.4% more votes.

To put it another way, in 2005 if the two parties had enjoyed the same number of votes, Labour would have gained 111 more seats than the Conservatives. The reason is not difficult to explain. In general it is because Labour held constituencies have a smaller number of electors than Conservative ones. It reflects the fact that the Conservative power is largely in England, where the average constituency has 70,000, while in Wales constituencies have 56,000 and in Scotland 65,000.

This arises because there has been a reduction in population in inner city areas and industrial areas.In 1945 the membership of the "Commons" was raised from 615 to 640, and it was also decided that a revision of constituency boundaries should take place during every parliament.
The first routine change took place in 1955, and 270 constituencies had their boundaries altered.
The result was anger among MPs and in 1958 the new Boundary Commission was tasked with a redistribution of constituencies every 15 years.

Redistribution can cause an upset and cut across loyalties and friendships, admittedly, but fairness demands that the bias be reduced by more frequent adjustments. With computers it should be possible to undertake the exercise every parliament, basing changes on recent population and building changes.

A radical alternative advocated by some is the adoption of a system of Proportional Representation of some sort, then seat numbers would relate to votes cast, whatever the distribution of population. (Though would we want to continue with the constituency sizes which means that English MPs have to "look after" 20% more electors than their Welsh counterparts?)

The LibDems are advocates of P.R. , but then they have most to gain from it. As the small party of three, they would be almost permanently in Government, and requiring some of their policies to be adopted (i.e policies voted for by a small proportion of the population) each time they entered a coalition Government. PR would produce no overall majority often, to judge from the countries where it is used.

A second objection to PR is that consistent Government can become unstable, with shifting coalitions, as the two larger parties seek to entice the third party, or fourth, or..., into coalition.We could have regular "chops and changes"with some policy changes before they have even had a chance to work out - a kind of perpetual musical chairs.

Thirdly, P.R. tends to weaken the link between MP and constituency, if there is any link at all, as when a list system is used to adjust for variations in local voting. Transferable vote systems, may have local MPs, but they have to be large enough multiple member constituencies, to make sure that every party having a threshold vote has an elected candidate. Any why should 5% qualify, but not 4%, to have an MP.

For all it's disadvantages, it seems better to persevere with the "First Past the Post" system, but make it fairer by having greater equality in constituency size, by regular revision.

The mother of democracy

This week the Government used its power to guillotine debate and exclude opposition topics. The occasion was the telescoping into a single (short) parliamentary day the report stage and 3rd reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. This bill covered a number of areas where previous legislation was felt to be wanting. The Conservatives had wanted a second day, or a late night session, but these had not been allowed.

In the event there was time to consider only Government amendments, and even then a number of MPs could not record their views on what was proposed. Thus some speakers who wished to contribute to the debate on the blasphemy law changes proposed, or those on incitement to racial hatred. were prevented by the fall of the guillotine.

The opposition amendments, on prostitution, pornography and sex offences, personal data, orders on violent offenders, nuisance on NHS premises, and others, were excluded without debate because of the time limitation.

This curtailment, in a building called parliament (which has something to do with speaking?) will almost certainly mean the need for future change when the inadequacy of the discussion becomes apparent. The elective dictatorship of the sofa at number 10, once again saw Government MPs meekly filing into the division lobbies in obedience and opposition MPs filing in in frustration that their "case" had not even been heard.

All this happened in the mother of parliaments, where MPs are frequently as impotent as the members of the House of Lords. It is to be hoped that the latter will be reformed and given greater authority, perhaps by being entirely elected, to challenge and check the dictatorship.

Otherwise we seemed doomed to ill-considered legislation which needs frequent amendment when it becomes apparent that it was entirely partisan or ill thought-out and ill drafted.

The unspeakable chasing the unchallengeable?

Two days ago a Home Office Spokesman answered a parliamentary question asked by David Ruffley, a Conservative MP.

Mr. Ruffly asked first, how many charges had been made, how many convictions, how many cautions and how many fines had been made since the 2004 Hunting with Dogs Act.

The answer was three prosecutions, one each by three constabularies in 2005, resulting in three fines and one caution. In 2006, there were 11 prosecutions unde taken by four different police forces, resulting in five convictions, five fines and no cautions.

With various anti-hunting groups still very active, the above seems a very low number of legal actions taken by the police at a time when the number of people hunting has risen and the number of supporters has risen even more.

Is this because the police have been occupied on other things, filling in forms and conducting Health & Safety investigations (- charging across open countryside may be dangerous), or they have insufficient staff or enthusiasm?

Is it because Hunts have become completely law-abiding and no longer chase foxes with dogs?

Is it because the Hunts have become more "canny" in exploiting various loopholes in some ill-thought-out and badly drafted legislation?

Or is it a mixture of all three?

Assuming that the "anti" groups are just as determined and committed, the implication is that the whole parliamentary process which produced the act was a profound waste of parliamentary time. To judge from the reported increased support for hunting, the process was counter-productive.

But then, many of us suspected that the whole point of the legislation was Labour Party unity.

You have your inflation, I have mine...

Gordon Brown has a hard task to try to persuade MPs to accept a similar "pay policy" to everyone else.

Old age pensions, public sector pensions and public sector pay will increase by not more than the inflation figure he chooses to use - the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).

No-one is deceived that the figure he uses will generally be lower than the index that was used for many years, the RPI (The Retail Price Index), which includes many items in its calculation that are omitted in the CPI, - especially energy and many housing costs, including Council Tax. He was very dishonest recently in comparing the RPI under the Tories with the CPI under his own dispensation, but that is the kind of trick he uses regularly.

Quite apart from the fact that MPs are concerned about their living standards, - they know that accepting an increase based on the CPI will mean a reduction in their living standards, some of them are expecting to retire or be retired in two or three years. Their pensions, as with the public sector generally, are indexed and based in their final years of salary.

It's all the more odd then, that the Communication Allowance, - public funds to allow MPs to contact voters and campaign for re-election, at present £10,000 annually, is tied not the CPI apparently but to the RPI. Their salary, if Brown gets his way, will increase by 2.1%, but their campaign allowance will increase by slightly more than double that.

The anomaly we may perhaps be prepared to live with, in order to have regular communications from our MPs. But those on pensions or public sector wages, both constrained to a CPI miserly increase despite massive energy and Council Tax increases, will probably look unfavourably on our political masters if they get their nose in the trough even further and award themselves significant salary increases for us to pay for.

Another one who forgot/didn't know/left it to others

We pass over the Peter Hain mess, leaving it to two bodies to investigate thoroughly.

We hope however, that they may be able to throw light on two questions:

1) Why was it necessary for Hain to spend approaching £200,00, that's not counting any help "in kind" that he may have received, and why did he spend it knowing that it would take him months after the election to collect a large sum of money to cover expenses? Did he have an early intimation that he would come last in the election, and decided to "go for broke"?

2) What exactly is the Progressive Policy Thinktank? It has published nothing, apparently has no staff, and can be found only from a solicitor's office which is its registered address Is it a coincidence that it started about 12 months ago, apparently, just when it was announced that the "Cash for honours" police enquiry would not lead to a prosecution and as the deputy leadership campaign was imminent? It has all the appearance of a body set up to funnel money anonymously to Labour party figures. Why does Durham ring a bell?

Can you believe anything he says?

With a great fanfare, the Prime Minister promised free health checks for all. If we could afford this, bearing in mind that the NHS is working flat out and the Government is cutting back, it could save the NHS plenty of money in the future. Spend a lot more now, and save even more in the future?

All is not so simple as it appears. It seems that for the moment, and the Prime Minister forgot to mention this, initial screening will be restricted to the over-60s. Not only that, when doctor's salaries were last over-raised, the actual salaries to be achieved eventually were to pay for screening for diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Many doctors have embraced this fully and routinely screen at least the elderly.

So why did the Prime Minister announce as future screening something that it already happening, and why did he imply that it would be for all age groups when there is little prospect of this larger screening taking place?

The short answer is "Spin", or if you prefer it "deceit".

PS. Reports on the proposed screening have used the word "mandatory". Did he really suggest this, and we are going to arrest citizens and frog march them down to the surgery?

Not very good at estimating, are they?

According to a Times report this morning, Parliament was told yesterday that yet another Government IT project is running massively over budget. This time it is the C-Norris project for the Prison and Probation services. Estimated to cost £244m, the latest updated estimates are for £512 m , or more than double.

As a consequence only the Prison Service data will be included, and at best the Probation Service will have a "read-only" access. Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said "The Government's central aim of providing end-to-end offender management is in tatters."

What this means is that offenders will not be tracked through post-custodial supervision, at least not in a way which works seamlessly with their prison records. Given the number of ex-offenders who have been "lost", this borders on the frightening.

Political Correctness+Hypocrisy = Jack Straw?

Today's Daily Telegraph reports that Ian Murray, J.P. has been censored and required to retrain (to submit to nonsense?) as the result of refusing to sit in a case in June 2007 involving a Muslim woman charged with damaging her council house.

It could be that Mr. Murray broke the terms of his employment by refusing to deal with the woman because she was wearing a niqab, which covered her face but for the eye holes. Common sense would seem to suggest that he was right. How was he to know that she was indeed who she claimed to be, and not some impersonator, and how was he supposed to form a judgement on her veracity when one of the most expressive parts of her was covered. It would not be difficult to imagine the whole justice system breaking down if there were more than one accused and perhaps also witnesses, all wearing the same all-obscuring veil? Are we to consider all-women courts, juries? Would police women have to photograph accused at charging, and then privately lift the veil to confirm that they were indeed the person charged?

Mr. Straw himself was once on record as saying that he required women so clothed to remove their veils when they attended his surgeries. So it is seems a little strange, to put it mildly, that he should rubber stamp the decision made to reprimand the magistrate, along with the Lord Chief Justice. Doubtless they were legally correct, but it must surely be overdue to review the relevant statutes to see how justice could be done while respecting religious rights. In the end, the lady was found guilty, after giving her evidence from behind a screen so that male members of the court could not look upon he unveiled face. Would that apply to male members of any trial jury? If so the implications for justice are considerable.

Wait for the howls of protest!

Cameron's speech tomorrow may well contain much more, but certain sections of the press will pick out the "hard-hearted" Tory policy requiring those on benefit who refuse an offer of a job to lose some of their benefits.

It seems that they may be about to propose a three strikes purge on benefit cheats, as part of their "tough love" policy. Those who from medical examination would have little difficulty in working will be transferred from Incapacity Benefit of £81 per week and put on to Jobseekers' Allowance. This in itself will mean a £20 per week cut in benefit, and an incentive to seek work.

Those on Jobseekers' Allowance who turn down a reasonable job will lose a month's benefit. If they turn down a second job they will lose three month's benefits. A third refusal would debar them from the benefit for up to three years.

Two things have to be said. Firstly that those with real disabilitites will not be treated in this way, although there may be a difficult area between these and some temperamentally disinclined to work. Secondly those transferred to Jobseekers' Allowance will lack qualifications, including literacy and numeracy, and experience. Jobs available to them will be poorly paid. The state would have to support and encourage them to be better equipped.

Cameron refuses to believe that all the 500,000 under 35s on incapacity benefit are unable to work, the 5000,000 is in fact 30% more than in 1997. Claimants of Incapacity Benefit have risen by 120,000 since 1997, so it would seem that it is the younger claimants who are driving the number upwards. He is aiming to encourage 200,000 from Incapacity Benefit into work, about 7% of the present total of 2.6 millions. This is a fairly modest target, perhaps just a beginning.

When the howls of protest come it is well to remember two things:

1) Peter Hain , the Work and Pensions Minister, claims that the Tories are being dishonest, as within the present scheme claimants must take up reasonable job offers or lose benefit for six months.

2) In 2000 a panel under Professor Layard wrote a report "Full Employment", with a foreword by Tony Blair suggesting that claimants who refuse offers repeatedly should lose some or all of their benefits. This was not only right but also efficient for the economy.

We look forward to to the Cameron Speech and the mindless howls!

Second Thoughts?

The debate about the failure to backdate the pay increase for the police rumbles on.

Anne Widdecombe added her tuppence worth in her Daily Express article of January 2nd. I hope that I am not misunderstanding her when I summarise her argument as, 'Since there is so much evidence of the police abandoning ordinary citizens threatened with youth mob pressure, and prosecuting motorists because they are easy targets, do they really deserve the award?"

Her viewpoint is shared by the Donal Blaney Blogsite four days earlier. "Years of victimising motorists, politically correct posturing and ineffective criminal investigations have come home to roost." It seems that motorists may be prosecuted, even imprisoned, for smoking, eating or using mobiles while driving. He points out the case we all noticed - of the motorist who left his car engine running to help defrost his car, and promptly received an on-the-spot fine! Donal feels that public sympathy for the police has declined.

The website of "Reform", while acknowledging that certain crimes have declined since 1994, - burglary and car crime, for example, refuse to give the police credit for this. They feel that private initiative has been largely responsible - more cars now have alarms than in 1994. They claim that, "Evidence ...suggests that police performance has not risen in line with pay increases" in the recent past. (The same could be said of productivity in the NHS.)

How far are the police culpable? Is their performance in solving the many crimes which concern people their fault, or is it the target led culture in which they operate? Or Health and Safety considerations, or political correctness? Is it the administrative burden, form-filling and general paperwork, which has been heaped on them?

The police are in a different situation to most workers, - they cannot strike or take other industrial action. Their salaries are determined by an independent panel, and they expected that any ruling would be honoured in full. There is little doubt that if the police had more contact with the public, and acted as the public wished, then they would still stand high in the opinion of the public, and the government would not be able to ignore the award made from the date it was due.

(Perhaps it really is time to devolve control of the police, to make them more responsive. The argument for electing chief constables, so they are directly accountable to ordinary citizens, seems to be gaining strength!)

Why are they so silent?

Two days ago the blog site "Gateway Pundit" included some very interesting facts about Venezuela

It seems that on average 33 Venezuelan citizens are murdered every day, or approximately 1000 per month. So in the last three months 3,000 were killed in Venezuela, while the figure for Iraq was 1498. As an ordinary citizen you are at twice the risk in Venezuela, - the two countries have very equally sized populations - 27.5 in Iraq and 27.7 in Venezuela. In the first two days of 2008 there were 63 violent deaths.

The situations may be more complicated than we know, although they would have to be very important to explain a double murder rate. Those who commented on Pundit's message, especially the "Anonymous" who commented first, supply more alleged facts, especially the great increase over recent years in deaths resulting from "resiting the authorities".

Perhaps the socialist heaven is going the way of others and becoming repressive, that it is struggling to assert control against external (and we all know who will be blamed as an external force) subversion.

We just do not know, perhaps we shall never know the truth of much of what is happening.

However if the figures quoted for Venezuela are out by a factor of four, so that deaths for the last three months are 750 murders rather than 3000, they are still significantly high.

Why has there apparently been a deafening silence on BBC news broadcasts about the casualties in Venezuela, and a prominent reporting of as few as 6 in a day in Iraq?

There seem to be two possible explanations:

Either the reported deaths in Venezuela have been largely invented, or news control from there has been total.

Or the BBC is showing its preferences again - reporting in full detail anything which attacks the Americans however tenuous the evidence, and be sympathetic to "progressive" or left wing regimes.

I would like to hope that it is the former, but given the bias obvious elsewhere in the BBC.....

Is any comment needed?

That is an increase of 100.6%





Ask any pensioner how much old age pensions have risen in the same period!

Worse than I thought

In the last message posted, - on the NHS, I little dreamt, that within hours the position might appear even worse.

Today, the BBC reports the thoughts of Gill Morgan, the "NHS Confederation Boss", who said she thought that the NHS, while having the same set of values throughout, now has a complete split in philosophy" among the four constituent parts - in England a principle of choice being driven, using outside organisations, in the name of improving service, in Scotland a more "collectivist model", in Northern Ireland more integration between health and social care, and in Wales closer contact between the NHS and local government. All this is because Health and education are the most important devolved powers. Ms. Morgan expects the differences to become greater with time.
The conclusion seems to be that there is no National Health service, but four varieties.

Also this morning, The Daily Telegraph reports some thinking of the Government to save billions of pounds from the budget of the (four?) health services. In some there is perhaps some sense, but there is also great danger. "..instead of going to hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out 'self care', ... to meet Treasury targets to curb spending"

Among other things being considered are

Sufferers from arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves.

Patients will be encouraged to monitor their own heart activity, blood pressure and lung, capacity, using equipment installed in their home.

Medical information to doctors could be by remote means - telephone or computer.

Patients could administer their own drugs to manage pain, and assess the significance of any changes in their condition.

Using relaxation techniques could relieve stress and thus avoid "panic" visits to emergency wards.

This is obviously early "Blue Sky Thinking" (see an earlier message), and good sense will lead them to see that the world is much more complicated, and patients are very different and with many who would be unable to cope with the "Brave New World".

There are problems, with patients abusing the system by not turning up for appointments, fetching a doctor out at night for nothing, and asking for prescriptions for items which they should buy over the counter. These may be difficult to solve, but making doctors even more remote and inaccessible than they are now certainly will not deal with much of this. And there is waste on a truly great scale.

When I was young, you could see your doctor either morning or evening. He would call to see you if you were not able to visit him, and if you were very ill the consultant would visit you in your home. We are a much wealthier country now, especially during the last 10 years according to Government spin. Why are we to be denied to face to face contact with our doctor, valuable even more if he has a good "bedside manner".

When was it "Nulabour" claimed that they should be elected , and that there were just 24 hours to save the NHS? All this is a terrible indictment of their stewardship.

A conditional health service?

Gordon Brown has apparently sent a New Year message to NHS staff warning that we may have to change our life styles in order to qualify for health care entitlement. The new requirements to be laid on us will, it seems, be included in a a formal NHS "constitution".

The principle of free universal health care has already been eroded by doctors stipulating conditions on patients who wish to have treatment, and N.I.C.E. has emphasised "self-induced" illnesses. His proposal seems to be an attempt to formalise this and extend it.

Leicester City Primary Care Trust was given permission last year to require smokers to give up smoking before elective surgery for hip replacement and heart conditions. Doctor's have pointed out that obesity complicates and adds risk in various procedures. Where will the list extend, - dangerous sports, rejection of dairy products, sun bathing, misuse of dangerous tools, etc.?

We assume that such conditions would not apply to emergency treatment, that our G.P.s and A & E would strive to save our lives, whatever our lifestyle choice.

The motive for Gordon Brown's initiative may be one of social engineering, to lead us to better health and longer lives, despite our own preferences. Alternatively, it may be simply to save money for the still inadequately financed NHS, which seems to be the intention of the N.I.C.E, as it helps to create postcode lottery for patients by withholding permission for some drugs, or making the decision one for the local PCT.

It has to said that our payments for welfare are in a mess. National Insurance was designed originally as regular contributions towards our retirement pensions and health care. It soon became a candidate for tax raising, and could now be added to the standard rate of tax to simplify tax calculations. It is a tax, despite its name, and a redistributive tax.

In any other situation involving a provider and a payer a contract would stipulate conditions to be met by both sides. Why should that not apply here? Why do we stump up with no choice, but have different benefits according to life style? Should there not be some reduction in premium if we are to be denied certain benefits? If the system were privatised, then private life and health and insurance would be tailored. (For many better-off folk opting out would be a vast improvement, but ideologically this would not suit others, but we are straying here.)

If we are to have a health service "free at the point of delivery", (socialised medicine), then post-code lottery (especially over borders with Scotland and Wales), and refusal to supply are breaking the principle. If I, through my life style, prejudice a good outcome from treatment, is this not my choice? For a bureaucrat or medical practitioner to send me away in my pain or discomfort, by imposing conditions is a new kind of waiting list.

(I hasten to add that I am a non-smoker and non-drinker. I probably don't take enough exercise
of the right kind, and thereby add risk to my health. Will this count against me, or is it only the easily viewed manifestations of a lack of self-discipline that will count?)