Take a bow, Michael Howard!

Yesterday James Kirkup, its political correspondent but in the Law and Order section, penned an article in the Daily Telegraph which must be of concern.

Between April 2006 and April 2008 offenders serving community sentences and suspended sentences were convicted of 121 numbers. In addition they committed 1,004 serious crimes, including 22 attempted murders, 103 rapes and 682 other serious or sexual offences. (A further 374 alleged offences by offenders in the community have yet to come to court.)

At 31st December 2007 the Probation service was supervising 242,720 offenders , an increase of 3% on the previous year, an increase of 6,000 in one year.

Let us hear for the defence:
The Ministry of Justice claims that the vast majority of such offenders had been committed originally for relatively minor offences, with no indication that they would commit more serious crimes while on probation.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of NAPO, the probation officers' union pointed out that many of the people they are dealing with have mental health problems or drug or alcohol addiction, and so further offending is unavoidable.

For the prosecution:
Is the situation that there are so many offenders, and so little prison accommodation, that there is pressure on judges and magistrates to use non-custodial sentences, and pressure on prisons to release offenders when they have served only a relatively small part of their sentence?

If the government and penal reformers ( and general do-gooders) wish to keep offenders out of prison, is it not incumbent upon them to provide resources in prison building and in dealing with offenders while in prison, to prevent this sort of thing happening. We are having "prison on the cheap" and "probation on the cheap".

While the argument that many offenders have personality defects, mental health problems or addictions is valid, that will not weigh very heavily with families who have lost loved ones or whose members have suffered serious assault. We ought to provide resources for better psychological and medical assessment of offenders, and more probation staff to carry the increasing workload.

We rightly search for good reasons for keeping people out of prison, - provocation, social conditions, childhood experience, etc. This involves expensive expert judgement. Why do we not spend similar attention to decide whether an offender is a risk to society if he may be given a non-custodial sentence?

In two years 121 murders occurred, which is about 10% of all murders, or about one per week on average. This is a sad reflection of the nature of society, and perhaps an even sadder reflection on our under-resourced penal service.

Well, they could be part of the big spend!

On October 22nd the Birmingham Post carried news of an expensive report on potential housing by Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners which had been commissioned by the Local Government Dept. The report will go forward to a public enquiry next April into housing and the Regional Spatial Strategy.

The three month study had been able to identify sufficient land in the region to build up to a further 445,000 dwellings, a quarter more than councils via the still surviving West Midlands Regional Assembly had felt was a maximum.

Reactions to the findings were not positive. It meant among other things building on green belt land in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. Assembly members were angry at what was seen as an attempt to bounce councils into planning for unacceptably high levels of housing growth. Birmingham, for instance, would have to build 10,000 more homes than already committed to.

Some assembly members felt that the recommendations were either unacceptable or undeliverable, or both. Others were appalled by the cost, at £210,000, which will rise still further with additional costs incurred by the firm attending briefing sessions to present the report to various groups and at various times. This is part of the government's consultancy culture into which billions of pounds are pumped annually.

One assembly member pointed out that the cost per page of the report was approximately £750.
Others merely recorded their views that the cost was unacceptable.

It seems that by one means or another the government will compel building of many extra thousands of dwellings in the West Midlands, and doubtless in other regions also, to reach the target which John Prescott had plucked out of the air, and in the process do damage to the green lungs of our communities, - the green belts.

Could the building be part of Brown's spendaholic solution to our recession, as the title suggested? Mercifully not. Even if he succeeds in driving rapidly through the enquiry process in the Spring of 2009, riding roughshod over objections, and even with the construction industry with spare capacity, it is difficult to see much happening before the election in 2010. By then, with good luck, he will be gone. Someone else will then have to clear up the mess.

Nothing very much to do, at a price

The Ananova website recently quoted Conservative sources as saying that there is a vast army of civil servants in Whitehall, 1,743 was figure quoted in early October, who have no duties to perform. The departments with most staff in this category were Defence with 830 or almost half, (why am I not surprised?), Work & Pensions with 368 and Foreign Office with 212.

They are paid as full time staff and the annual salary bill is in excess of £50 million a year.

The Cabinet Office claims that among these are people returning from career breaks, maternity or sick leave or merely waiting to be assigned to new full-time roles, and that they would undertake some duties until then.

A sum of £50 million is small in comparison with the vast amount of money wasted, as seems to be the destiny of the £12 billion spent on the NHS computer system, and these frictional costs could perhaps never be entirely removed.

But these civil servants are added to the vast number of advisers, communication staff (-spin makers) who are paid by us but serve the Labour Party. Finally there is the vast number of consultants who earn enormous sums doing what experienced civil servants should be doing.

In human resource terms this Government wastes in all sorts of ways, not least in waste of human talent.

But do they consult us?

I read recently that most councils, and that includes most controlled by Conservative administrations, pay salaries of members of staff to work full-time for their trade unions. In many cases they also offer free office accommodation for these staff members.

Do the staff members so permitted actually benefit the council? Indeed, does the council really know what they are up to, which could even be furthering the purposes of the Labour Party.

The argument usually advanced to justify the unions generally and also to justify the practice of full time paid staff release is that the council work force will be organised and can help negotiations and facilitate introduction of change. This may happen, but the arrangement can also reduce efficient operation. One council which recently entered conservative control, and decided to end the practice, seemingly found that absenteeism was reduced because those trying it on were no longer supported by a fellow worker.

In private industry companies may choose to do something similar. That is their right, so long as it is open and above board, and shareholders may object. Councils are not commercial businesses and they do not have shareholders, but the do have council tax payers who are struggling to meet inexorably rising taxes. Ought they to be informed and be able to express an opinion?

What about the teechers?

The Times newspaper reported recently on the academic quality of trainee teachers. These are graduates, if they wish to teach in England, and have achieved five good GCSE passes including English, maths and science.

However, it seems that they are struggling to pass numeracy and literacy tests. Last year 11,000 trainee teachers, or just over a quarter of all, failed to pass the literacy test, over 1,500 more than the previous year. In numeracy tests last year 20,000 failed at the first attempt, or approaching half. In ICT 4,000 failed the test. I point out again that these were all graduates.

The Training and Development Agency for Schools claimed that the average pass rate across all three subjects, English, maths and IT was 83%. Does this mean that on average 17% failed the test and didn't proceed?

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that past educational failure, including easier examinations and more generous grades, has produced ill-equipped graduates who will go on to fail the next generation of students!

Apartness again

The government seem to have reluctantly concluded that multiculturalism is not producing unity, with his eminence on "Britishness". This is good.

Now they have found a new source of division and seem to have espoused it. I refer to the recent announcement that they have accepted the right of Islamic courts to rule on family disputes and divorce. This would include decisions on money, property and access to children.

In essence, of course, under the Arbitration Act, citizens may freely air their disputes to any arbiter whom they both accept.

The objections here are firstly that at time when the Muslim community is to some extent "estranged" from the rest of society, it seems perverse to permit and encourage a religious or ethnic based legal service to apply to a narrow section of society. It sends out an unfortunate signal and encourages division. There should be no place for parallel legal systems at a time when we are trying to heal the divisions in society.

Secondly, while it is still theoretically possible for Muslim women to refuse to use these Sharia courts, they will come under great pressure to submit to a tradition which has accorded males greater rights than females, indeed still regards the testimony of men as worthy of greater consideration than that of women.

Stealth Tax number ... is it over 200 now?

We learned last week that there is likely to be a licence scheme for those who own houses and let them out. This "landlord tax" is expected to earn the chancellor £60 million, presumably when things get back to normal.

This is a quick reaction to a review enquiry carried out by York University which claimed that private rented property is often not of good enough quality, (although it had improved!). The enquiry recommended a registration scheme.

It seems aimed particularly at those who have bought property with a view to letting it. The Council of Mortgage Lenders estimates there are currently 1.2 million mortgages on property to let properties. As the proposal is that each will have to pay an annual £50 registration fee, £60 million will result, although given a likely expansion in government bureaucracy the government coffers will receive a net result much less.

The effect on landlords is to add to their current burdens which include gas safety checks, tenancy deposit schemes and energy performance certificates. Experts are predicting that good landlords will be increasingly driven out of the market, (and their properties bought at knock- down prices by social landlords - so that's alright then), but will do little to deter less scrupulous landlords.

It is early days, and we still have to learn what practices and to what degree would lead to a withdrawal of certification.

You would have to look a lot further to find clearer examples of the extension of expensive and ineffective bureaucratic control which will drive out good producers but have much less impact on those who cause the real trouble.

An end to economic competence

Since 1992 the BBC and other pro-Labour organs have repeated ad nauseam that it was not just the unemployment and house repossession which destroyed for ever the assumption of Conservative competence on the economy, it was even more how they presided over a major fall in the value of the pound sterling.

We have discovered that over the past few days Sterling has plunged much further and faster than it did in 1992. Unemployment is rising rapidly, as is house re-possession.

May we now conclude that the economic competence of NuLabour has disappeared? Or are there, as usual, special reasons why things are not as they seem?

Campaigning in Glenrothes

We have had the spectacle of not only the loyal Mrs. Brown canvassing in the Scottish seat, but now even the man himself.

Earlier in the year he was missing from important by-elections, and defended himself with the arguments that sitting prime ministers do not canvass in by-elections, - presumably they are too busy?

So why is he now, in the middle of saving the world, reforming the international banking system and preparing to splurge still more borrowed money into our economy, spending time in a by-election campaign?

I leave it to readers to suggest why Glenrothes has suddenly become, briefly, more important than the world economic order.

Two quotations for Brown to learn and Cameron not to forget

The first is from Milton Friedman:

"When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but he doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you."


The second is from Mikhail Gorbachev:

"We have tried to impose many things from above. Nothing ever comes of this. We must involve people in the process of government and the people will at once put everyone in their right place."

Interest rates in the future

Thee are siren voices calling for massive immediate cuts in interest rates. This, presumably to encourage consumers to buy, house owners to hang on to their houses, and small firms to pull through. All these are admirable objectives in the present climate.

What would the consequences be, in other respects? One would be to drive money away from this country as foreigners and even Britons took their funds elsewhere in search of safer and higher returns. The worrying thing is that despite our Sub-Prime Minister's constant reassurances that the country is well placed to weather the storm and his claim that public debt here is not excessive, the stock exchange is falling like a stone, and foreign money is leaving the country rapidly. Experts and foreigners have not bought Mr. Brown's message!

There would then potentially be a smaller pool to which the Government could sell its securities. So there could be an upward pressure on interest rates, at least eventually.

In the meantime sterling's value has fallen dramatically. This will be a boost to our exports, and it will make our imports more expensive and thus give domestic producers a better chance to compete with imports. It sounds good, but unfortunately, many of the things we import, such as raw materials, we may not be able to replace with home produced goods, and some will even be included in the goods we hope to export.

The most worrying thing is that the crash in stock prices and the collapse in sterling may go somewhere towards destroying the reputation of London as a financial centre. Brown's mismanagement and dash for debt-fuelled growth may have a serious longer term consequence for our economy. There are many financial centres, in Europe and beyond, who would be delighted to replace us. Three hundred years of innovation and experience may well count for nothing!

Statistics, use them or abuse them

Two items of statistics have caused debate over the past few days. As usual the Government has gone to much trouble to explain that as they do not fit the government narrative it is because they don't mean what they seem to show.

One issue was the crime statistics. Horror of horrors, serious crime seemed to be increasing, but never fear it hasn't. It was simply that the police forces were confused and in previous years some had put crimes in different categories to those of other forces. So we can relax. But if there is little control over how returns are completed were the figures really increasing in previous years although the government was claiming reductions.

What confidence can you have in any statistics issued by the Government if control is so slack. They have given the Police so many targets, surely they could cope with one or two more on recording crimes? (I am aware that there there is a whole range of attacks - from someone being pushed over, to fisticuffs,to kicking, to beer bottle in the face, to gun and knife attacks, and it needs careful definition to distinguish categories into which they should each be put.)

A second issue arose from the appearance of the head of the Civil Service, Sir. Gus O'Donnell, before the House of Lords Communications Committee. Asked to comment on the fact that the overall number of "communication staff" in government more than doubled between December 1998 and September 2008, Sir Gus attributed it mainly to the increase in political blogs and in journalist numbers.

Have the bloggers and journalists put in extra work, or have there been changes of definition - the men who drive the newspaper vans, sells on street corners or makes tea for staff redefined as journalists? Or is the explanation that most of the extra communication staff are really spinners or else counter-journalists?

The fact that the total figures increased from 1,628 to 3,158, and in all continuing departments significantly, suggests that there is a slight outside chance that the government may be engaged in presenting the news as they would like it rather than as it is. We used to call this spinning, but as our Sub-Prime Minister announced on accession that he too was a straight kind of guy and would be open and honest, it surely can't be due to a spinning ethos!

The flights

The so-called Independent newspaper has recently questioned with hints, nudges and winks, the trip made the Cameron family to Turkey this summer. (Do Mandelson's tentacles even reach this far?)

The facts are clear. A family connection offered his private jet and Cameron and family went to Turkey and on to Santorini for a brief Murdoch birthday celebration. The Camerons paid for their own lodging, except perhaps briefly after the party. Subsequently Cameron himself went on to Georgia during the crisis with the Russians. The Conservative party paid the full costs of this flight. At this point our Sub-Prime Minister was dithering, and Georgia needed reassurance that Britain was with them in their hour of peril. (Milliband himself went but after some days.)

This is rather different to our previous beloved leader, who flew to the West Indies, Italy, Egypt, etc., for holidays, and frequently managed to fit in an important? meeting with governments, to be able to claim that the trip was official. I am assuming that the Dependent also reported with nudges and winks on these trips.

Big brother has arrived!

Last Sunday the Sunday Times asserted that the government proposes to demand all mobile phone sellers to see the passport of anyone who buys a phone. Is there any doubt that the numbers of the passport and phone will have to be recorded, and the details included on the mega database they will hold of all citizens?

Mobile networks will have a record of all calls, and even in the absence of making calls the network apparently is able to locate the position of the phone. So, leave the phone at home, or lend it to someone else, if you don't want them to know where you are and have been. (Either could give you an alibi, but you will also have to use someone else's car or use public transport, because with the proposed satellite traffic charging scheme and trafficmaster cameras they will know where your car has been.)

One possible reassurance is that the scheme will be so complicated, and the problems so great, that it may never take place in the foreseeable future because of the state of the economy, and by the time it ever becomes a reality this lot will have been replaced by a government more concerned about personal liberty.

As usual, the two main concerns with the accumulation of required data are the security and the political hazards.

This government has shown itself unable to keep confidential data secure, - it is lost or mislaid on such a regular basis that we barely notice the sequence of bungles.

Secondly that the government will use the data for political purposes - when the Tories raised a medical matter with the agreement of the family concerned, Blair accessed and quoted publicly from the patient's record without any permission.

Get thee to a monastery!

Assuming that he is cleared of any non-offence that he did not commit, and is retained as shadow chancellor, how should George Osborn behave in future? Indeed how should any other shadow cabinet memberbehave , now that it is obvious why Mandelson was brought back into the cabinet?

The are now attacking Osborn for not declaring the "gift" of spending a few days at the Rothschild villa, a switch for a holiday for which he had already paid or declared! Should he have declared the cup of tea he had on the yacht? Should he not be able to visit long standing friends and accept brief hospitality without recording every item?

More seriously, it seems that with NuLabour smearing now in full operation, you can't even rely on your friends - they may have been suborned with money, threats or power. Now Rothschild's "friends" are apparently telling Osborne to "lay off with the accusations" or more revelations will come.

If Osborne is telling the truth, that he/they did not seek nor obtain a party contribution from the billionaire, what has he done that warrants attack despite all the efforts of the NuLabour machine? If you are staying with a supposed friend and he takes you to meet someone who might be interesting, what are you to say?

Perhaps this is another plus for NuLabour dirty tricks, that the top Tories must now be very circumspect, even towards long established friends. This could be quite a coup for NuLabour even if they do not succeed in removing Osborne.

Something very smelly has re-entered British politics, and it seems to have succeeded.

More of the same?

The Financial Services Agency, typical of NuLabour quangos whose effectiveness does not grow with the accumulation of power and resources as well as slavery to the EUSSR, has just asked for an increase in funding.

Since its set- up its staff has grown from 1,362 to 2,740 and its annual bill to over £300 million. Last year, according to the Daily Telegraph(18.10.08) average salary, including training and pension contribution was £77,000. The six directors were paid £490,000 on average. Lord Turner, the newly appointed chairman, in asking for more funds, claimed recently that "..we have been trying to do regulation on the cheap." He argued for more staff and more pay for them. All this fails to record the vast expense of banks and other organisations in trying to comply with the enormous increase in detailed regulation.

The higher salary bill will, of course, be passed on to the organisations regulated, which ultimately will mean that we all pay higher banking and other charges such as ISA fees. At a time when saving has been far too low and individual financial advisers have been forced out because of excessive compliance costs, it seems unfortunate to say the least that that customer costs will be raised yet again. To the shame of David Cameron, he agreed with the need for more spending by the quango.

Earlier this year the Treasury Select Committee concluded that the FSA had failed substantially in its regulation of the banking system, especially in the collapse of Northern Crock. Even I was concerned about a business plan which involved borrowing short and lending long. The Quango, according the select committee, had failed to allocate sufficient time or resources to monitor the bank. Hence, presumably the demand by Lord Tuner for more funding. The select committee nowhere suggests that the Quango needs more funds, merely that its allocation of resources was inadequate.

The real need is not to extend control more and more intrusively, but to do its present functions more effectively. The experience of the USA, which through the Sarbanes Oxley Act severely hampered its own financial system after the Enron scandal, still failed to spot the current crisis coming.

What is needed is a remit which concentrates on just a few identifiable and major problem areas, and a less cumbersome way of controlling the system than the laborious paper chase at present.

The FSA is a prime example of all bureaucratic organisations whose main aim from outside seems to be merely to expand its staff and salaries and to impose greater and greater control over individuals and organisations, again classic NuLabour.

Lies, damned lies and Brown statistics

In a strange sort of way you have to admire our Sub-Prime Minister, not so much an economic wizard as a statistical conjurer. Not for him constant definitions, to enable comparisons between years, not for him accounting standards, as he decides what can be left out of the accounts to suit his purposes, and not for him transparency which would reveal the true picture.

The latest example is the Budget debt position. He goes on relentlessly pretending that he has not broken his principle of debt not permitted to rise to more than 40% of GDP, and that debt is now lower than it was in 1997. Even if you accept the IMF figure which he likes to quote ,(where incidentally does the IMF get its figures except from him?) and his own definitions, the current situation is higher than it was in 1997, and this means leaving out of account billions he has pumped into Northern Crock, B & B and other banks.

The Office for National Statistics recently won a battle with him to include some of this borrowing. In the third quarter of 1997 the budget deficit was 42.9% of GDP, while by September 2008 it had reached 43.4%. The latter figure was released recently, but although he had advanced warning it does not suit him to quote this figure.

If instead of the quagmire of Brownian changing definitions you accept international ones, then under OECD principles over the 11 years it has not changed, at about 53%. On a Maastrict definition over the same period there has been little change, at about 48%. These two do not net out liquid assets, but if they are removed then we are currently just below the 1997 percentage which he claims. But these two also omit the long series of off balance sheet debt which he tries to ignore.

(To all the figures quoted, and perhaps doubling them, must be added the growing public sector pension obligation, now about £1 trillion, because the pensions are not funded but merely paid out of general taxation. They are not a debt as such, but they will require payment in the future.)

To be fair to him, in his alter ego as Prudence, he did between 1997 and 2001, when he was mostly using Conservative spending plans, succeed in reducing the percentage significantly. The problem was that Prudence turned into splurge.

There are indeed some countries with a higher percentage, but over the 11 years we have moved from 11th highest up to 8th highest of the OECD league table. It has also to be remembered that 1997 was only the fourth year of growth after recession and we have had a further 10 since, as he likes to boast.

We have just had the unattractive spectacle of weekly PMQ, in particular the six questions put by Cameron and the zero answers given by Brown. The debt to GDP, - Brown definition, was quoted yet again. It's about time that the Tories greeted it in future with the derision it deserves

The losers so far

The financial shenanigans over the past year have masked the fact that there are already losers.

The rate of house repossession is likely to be much more than twice this year what it was last year. In the vast majority of cases this will have been devastating, especially in the cases of losing jobs as well. Experts are estimating that in a year or two there will be over 3 million houses on mortgage with negative equity, or about 10% of all dwellings, whether rented, owned outright or owned on mortgage.

Unemployment could rise to somewhere between 2 million and 3 million, overtime will be severely reduced and incomes will be reduced enormously. It promises to be a time of great hardship.

Savers generally seem to have been protected, although their income seems set to fall as interest rates fall.

A further group will suffer, namely shareholders. If you think that they deserve no sympathy, that they are the wealthy who can afford to lose a little, think again. "They" include most of us who have savings which include equity elements, in unit trusts, investment trusts, ISAs, etc.
"They" also include those with company pensions, and those who have taken out private pensions. As the Tories have pointed out, those who were due to retire have pension pots not only raided for years by Gordon Brown but now savaged by share price collapse. In addition those with private pensions who have reached the age of 75 must convert their "pots" into an annuity stream immediately, despite the poor conditions.

The younger holders of equity backed investments may hope that they will lose income for a few years, but within perhaps 8 years things may have picked up again in share values. (We can't be quite clear, as we do not yet know what "permanent" damage the Brown mismanagement years have done.)

At the moment The (Brown) Economic Wizard is insisting that all the Government salvation investing in banks is paid back before other dividends are again paid. He doesn't admit it, but the EU Commission has made that stipulation. Experts think that full repayment of government investment will take perhaps 5 years. So those holding bank shares will have this additional medium term disadvantage. The interest on the Government held preference shares in the ailing banks is set at the punitive rate of 12%. I can only assume that the general antipathy towards bank shareholders is because of the (partly wrong) assumptions that Bankers have reduced us to this point.

The group of people most hit by all the above is the elderly who, unlike many younger people, had saved hard for some comfort in their retirement and who now will struggle to meet some of their bills in the face of a state old age pension diminishing in value because their pension has not kept pace with inflation. But there are not many votes there, - within a few years and perhaps sooner now, they will have left this life.

Overkill?

The BBC (gleefully?) reported that George Osborne has been accused of trying to encourage the wealthiest Russian to make financial contribution to the Tory Party.

Nothing wrong with this - it is out in the public domain.

But why did we have to hear it first from Nick Robinson in somewhat less than neutral terms, and then from Robert Peston, - yes the Business correspondent, accused recently of having contacts with the Government and obtaining information on a privileged basis?

Why was Peston wheeled out? It seemed to be only because he could give a character reference to Osborne's accuser, on his honesty and impartiality in particular. This is Peston's personal opinion, to which he is entitled, but it is another example of editorial objectives intruding into the reporting of news. It followed soon after a lamentable interview by Sarah Montague of a government spokesman on helping business through (the) recession. She did not probe at all aggressively and permitted him to a final statement with challengable assertions and criticisms of Tory proposals, which she followed with a demure "Thank you".

Osborne may have been a fool in consorting with Mandelson, - he is not in their league when it comes to smearing and media manipulation. He would surely have known that such a foreign donation, however small, would have been illegal, and even if he gave the slightest impression that was what he was about, then he should consider his position.

Keynes to the rescue?

Chancellor Darling now reveals Brown's solution to our problems. We shall go for broke (or should I say bust?) They will spend our way out of trouble.

The pain is obvious if taxes are raised, as well as being inflationary. Tax cuts, which would also imply huge borrowing, wouldn't allow us to have the big construction projects we can't afford.

So borrowing huge sums, in addition to the massive borrowing over the past few years, and an even bigger splurge than those of recent years, seem to be the best way out for Labour.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, however. Someone has to pay. In earlier years the lefties used to tell us that a larger national debt doesn't matter, since it need never be repaid so long as the annual interest bill is met. They are right, of course, except that for every £100 billion borrowed, something like £5 billion a year must be paid annually in the future, or about 1.5 pence in the pound on standard rate income tax. It would be more, of course, if the debt were ever partly or totally repaid.

By the end of the year on normal budgetary items government debt will have already expanded by much more than this. This is expenditure on the never-never, with repayment in the future. Add on the never-never hospitals and schools built under the Private Finance Initiative, which the government likes to omit from its "balance sheet" and the steadily mounting bill for gold-plated final salary public sector extra employees recruited under Brown, and taxes will have to rise much higher in years to come. Future wage earners will have a very large tax bill.

Macroeconomics, of which Keynes was one theorist, is wont to ignore effects which arise from the fact that extra spending and income does not arise uniformly through the economy. There could even be shortages and bottlenecks which prevent expenditure generating jobs in some industries.

Most of all there are lags. Projects will take months to prepare, design, cost and approve, and many months to complete. So reflation could be very small for a year or two. Similarly, looked at from a monetarist perspective, lower interest rates and the consequent expansion in the money supply may not come fully on stream for a year or two. Borrowers have to take stock and work out their needs one or two years ahead.

Some experts are predicting a brief recession. If so, some of the large increases in expenditure could be made when the economy is well on the way to recovery and may even contribute to inflationary pressures. The government could even be causing the next problem.

Finally, we have already seen splurge without reform, which drives up wages, but otherwise makes little difference in output or employment. If much of the new spending goes on creating still more civil servants with gold-plated pensions, then the future could be even bleaker.

Something must be done to keep the waste of resources as low as possible. The problem is to achieve this while allowing any change in the pattern of production now required. It is the fatal conceit of all on the left to assume that because theory has provided nostrums it becomes a simple matter of pulling appropriate levers to achieve determinate outcomes. The real problem is that they are dealing with people ultimately, who may not act entirely as they expect, and with information which is inaccurate. There is every possibility that the results of their actions will be inadequate or even counter-productive.

What are politicians paid for?

There is an interesting blog on Conservative Home today by Greg Hands.

He makes two points, essentially.

The first is that while much has been done to shore up the banking system over the past three weeks, there has been no debate in Parliament on the subject, except indirectly a three hour debate on fiscal rules in opposition time. This is in stark contrast with other countries where proposals have been debated in national chambers, especially in the USA.

It seems that in this country the Cabinet, principally the prime minister, can commit the country to huge sums and risk without our elected representatives being involved. I appreciate that some things may be confidential or liable to cause very divided reactions, but are Messrs Brown and Darling the fount of wisdom and talent, - they haven't been hitherto? I accept, too, that the Tories and LibDems offered their support in advance, but neither seems to have been involved in any way.

The second point he makes is that apart from a few periods such as PMQ the Commons has been generally empty. There have been only six votes on any topics at all, and none this week. On two days the sitting finished early due to a lack of contributions from the benches, not surprising when for much of the time there were only a handful of MPs there, - those on the govt. side and those of the opposition who had to be there. So in the two weeks after a recess of 75 days most MPs were absent. One of the things decided was that in 2009 there would be 145 days when there would be no sittings, perhaps two weeks longer than usual.

All this when the country is in crisis, and during a period when we had a positive diarrhea of new legislation. The missing MPs would doubtless claim that they were otherwise engaged, - in writing letters to constituents, to ministers and others, or having informal discussions in the tea rooms and bars.

When so much is enacted and decided, unless the whip is needed because the government or the opposition feel a risk or opportunity and drags them all in, decisions are effectively made by just a few members of the government. Did someone call it elective dictatorship? It used to be called parliament, because that was where they talked. What are we to call it now - homeworking?

Commercial or social?

We learn that Northern Rock is coming under fire for being too aggressive in repossessing houses from those who have defaulted on mortgages. They have denied this strenuously.

They stand accused of inflexibly pressing the repossession button too soon, and being twice as likely to evict as other lenders. In the first six months of this year 19,000 homes were repossessed, of which about half were by Northern Rock. (The Council of Mortgage lenders forecasts that by the end of the year 45,000 will have been repossessed, that is an increase to 26,000 in the second half, which was the total for the whole of 2007.) The recession is beginning to bite. Northern Rock report that mortgage arrears have jumped by nearly 60% in the past three months.

Any lender must be careful in repossession, and not just for the sake of those who become homeless. If 125% mortgages were unwisely advanced, there is a fair chance that the resale value will be well below the original value, let alone the value of the advance. Housing prices are falling, house sales are difficult, and the lender will lose in the event of trying to sell houses. It is in their own interest to explore ways of avoiding repossession.

There is, at least by implication, a suggestion that large lenders really ought to be more charitable towards small borrowers, especially at the bottom end of the market. Leaving aside the questions about poor savers or shareholders, and of short sighted borrowers, the question is to what extent commercial organisations should be social or charitable organisations. (Northern Rock may be unusual in trying to pay back a large sum of money to HMG in a strict timetable.

It is becoming clear that Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, very much involved with the US government historically, succumbed to pressure from President Clinton in 1995 to make more offers available to applicant borrowers lower in the income scale, and applicants inherently more risky. What followed, with sub-prime loans, was one of the main causes, if not the main cause, of our present difficulties.

Governments and charities are rightly concerned about the life chances of the poorer members of society, but the latter would be better served by other means than muddying the boundaries between political and commercial, or else everyone becomes poorer.

Do something, do anything!!

Cameron is coming under pressure from friend and foe alike for not doing anything other than criticising Brown's chancellorship and then offering Medium Term alternatives that would produce more stability.

"How would you propose to get us out of recession", he is being asked on all sides. It should be remembered that our economic wizard Bottler , now renamed "Prancer", is not even mentioning the "R" word. He is content to promise to do everything to solve the problem, as he has for some months now. He did at least promote a possible solution to the Banking breakdown, even if it was originally a Swedish policy some 15 years ago and brought to his attention by an astute City man last week.

The problem essentially is debt, both public and private.

Keynesian remedies, promoted by Boris among others, involve undertaking some large public building schemes. The problems here, apart from the fact that there is a very large, - the largest in Europe, black hole in the Budget, are that such schemes take some time to get off the ground and then the fact that earners are supposed to spend "all " they receive in another round of spending. The earners may not do that, unless you can change expectations, and may prefer to build up their savings instead. The impetus has to be maintained in a progressive way until business picks up confidently enough not to seed the stimulus, because if the stimulus is not maintained the whole process could go into reverse.

Keynesians could also recommend making credit easier for consumers, but given the large presence of debt how much of a gamble will they take? We are in the present mess because credit was too easy and people overreached themselves. Well, why not encourage spending by consumers from tax cuts? The same applies - Government debt, already large, will grow initially and consumers may save their higher incomes.

John Redwood is urging massive cuts in interest rates, which could persuade consumers to buy more and firms to invest in capital equipment and plant. This could offer a speedier response than public sector building construction in London, and if people believed that rates would be low for some time it could help the situation. Lower interest rates, however achieved, could reduce the income of those relying on savings and lead to them consuming less. Many older people would be in this category.

The real problem with depressing interest rates, as Messrs. Bush and Greenspan have discovered, is that it may reduce recession in the short run, - politically attractive, but at the cost of leading to longer term failure to permit adjustments in the economy. The bail-out of the UK economy which led to a £2.3 billion IMF loan in 1976 ultimately led to problems some three or four years later. Between 1974 and 1980 the pound lost nearly two thirds of its value.

In the old days of the business cycle, which Prancer thought he had abolished, far sighted Governments accumulated surpluses in boom times and were able to draw on these when downturn occurred. In the last cycle we have done the opposite, - run into debt during a boom, and therefore ill-prepared for the downturn.

The booms and slumps every 7 or 8 years arguably need some ironing out by government. Slumps were very distressing for those who suffered, but at least during the recession by some sort of Darwinian process the economy adjusted to new conditions. Trying to maintain everything while ignoring underlying changes and stopping adjustment can work for a time but may cause an even greater problem later.

In summary to quote the old joke, "If I was going to xxxxx, I wouldn't start from here." But we are here, there will be some suffering whatever we do. Somehow expectations need to be changed. Somehow a stimulus must be offered. But to remain Canute-like permitting no adjustment will only postpone a healthy economy, and will saddle future taxpayers with even more burdens.

How much unemployment?

Predictions as to what level the unemployment figure may reach in the coming year or two seem to be between two million and three million. "You pays your money and you...."

What is abundantly clear is that the true figure is much much higher:

There are signs that immigrant labour, especially that from Europe, is beginning to return home. Their jobs may not be filled, and the workers generally will not register as unemployed.

Since well before the time of Gordon Brown's chancellorship many unemployed have not registered but instead have received (bigger) benefits through other channels. In the peak period of registered unemployment, of about 3 million in 1982/83, there were also about 800,000 receiving benefit under incapacity allowance, and about 600,000 receiving loan parent allowance.

There were recently over 3 million on incapacity allowance, about four times as many as in 1982, and there were about 1 million on sole parent allowance.

Including those on job-seekers allowance now, there were upwards of 5 million out of work and on benefit. Benefits are not over generous, it could be argued, although where there are several dependent children thousands of pounds monthly are involved. If we add another 1.5 million to these figures, it is not difficult to see what will happen to the government's budget.

In place of income tax income from 1.5 million workers - if their average incomes were at average levels then their tax contribution could have been as much as £4,000 each year, and so upwards of £6 billion will be lost to the Exchequer. In addition, as they have less spending power taxes on purchase will fall dramatically. I have taken no account of the effect of reduced national income contributions, and other factors.

The conclusion has to be that welfare benefits will rise dramatically, and government tax income will fall dramatically. It's not rocket science to predict a massive hole in the Government budget.

How will they fill this hole? Not by increasing taxation, I suggest, at least until after the next general election - higher taxes on income will be resented and higher taxes on expenditure will tend to be inflationary. The likely recourse is to borrowing, - which is really deferred taxation. If banks make calls on money offered and the Government comes clean on off balance sheet borrowing, then Brown will have vastly exceeded his rule of thumb. In any cases, with gold plated bloated public sector pensions, there will be an increasing spending liability.

Brown has mortgaged the UK economy.

Better Regulation

The banking system, we are led to believe, will in future be subject to tighter regulation.

Good!

But if it is merely more hoops to crawl through, or greater political interference, we might as well give up. The City of London and financial services generally is one of our success stories, nationally and internationally, and if it suffers severe regulation it will cease to be a world leader. It needs to be creative. It needs to be innovative.

What sort of regulation does it need?

It needs to be watchful. Even people as remote from the action as I were concerned about some activities - the business plans of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, for instance. Personal debt and Government borrowing were spiralling. There was a false bubble of well being.
It may have been the slapdash regulatory framework brought in by Brown, with confusion of roles and responsibilities, and the loss of centuries of bank supervisory experience. Whatever the cause, and despite warnings by many more qualified than I, little was done to reign in the excesses.
Any new regulation does not have to be more burdensome, it merely has to be more vigilant and reactive. Bankers are probably now ruing the way they behaved, but where were the regulators?

It needs to be clear of political interference. The present turbulence, with unsound actions by many financial actors, might have happened in any event. What is clear however is that sub-prime mortgages, said to the ultimate cause of our troubles, would not have happened but for the actions of political leaders. Presidents Jimmy Cater and Bill Clinton ultimately drove US lenders into being social rather than economic units, as they were compelled to lend to more poorer people. Many of these borrowers were never going to be able to service their debts, especially if interest rates rose. President Bush eventually saw the problems, made worse by Alan Greenspan driving down interest rates to stave off recession, but Democrats had gained control of the legislature and thwarted his attempts. In this country with inflation benign, partly because of cheap goods from China and elsewhere, and low interest rates, a debt financed boom was permitted.
You do not help the poor by trying to make commercial organisations act like charities and ignoring the build-up of huge amounts of debt in a "You've-never-had- it-so-good" dash.

Yesterday's spectacle

The spectacle was, of course, that of Lord Mandelson in all his finery in the House of Lords.

We have become used to the government of the day using a peerage to reward or remove an MP and use his seat for an aspirant. We had even slept through Blair creating more peers in his first few years than Thatcher did in he whole period of office. It is an admittedly small gravy train, and some members of the professions in the Lords actually make significant contributions, but it is a dog's dinner.

But is a peerage, and therefore "democratic" power for life, appropriate for a party hack or for someone like Lord Mandelson, a failed MP, just because it suits the prime minister of the day? The PM already arguably has too much power in running the elective dictatorship via the whipping system.

Another question raised by yesterday is that of peers who are ministers in the cabinet but who are not permitted to appear in the Commons to answer questions and be accountable to MPs generally and thus to the electorate. What democratic right do they have to sit at the "high table" in the cabinet room?

The (usual botched) Blair constitutional change in this case has surely gone on far enough. We have a Prime Minister and cabinet pouring out ill-prepared bills which become laws which suffer one of two destinies - regular amendment and correction or else to languishing unused on a shelf somewhere.

The completion of the Lords reform cannot be permitted to continue much longer. How long can it go on being less and less representative of our society and being the personal patronage of the Prime Minister.

The question which reformers must resolve is not whether the Lords should have some elected elements. There are some who see election as giving the Lords democratic power as a dangerous thing, as it might challenge the governing party rather than being a general puppet as it is currently. Why not let it challenge the government? The US constitution is deliberately arranged to allow challenge and countervailing power, and the Senators are elected - there are no "jobs for life".

Does anyone really support the "jobs for the boys" present situation, with all its abuses? There are so many different conflicting proposals for reform that the status quo survives as a kind of compromise.

However a new fully democratic chamber is elected, - with what constituencies and at what intervals, our elective dictatorship must be challenged. The mother of all parliaments is no longer so admired, especially by us the electors. How much longer can we let it drag on as an incomplete reform but a tool of the prime minister of the day?

The best and the worst

Bottler Brown is full of himself. He has saved the world, now he is going to set up a new world order to prevent such chaos ever happening again. (I wouldn't bet on the latter as many experts suggest that the cause of the instability, in part, was the botched system he introduced for banking regulation which failed at its first test!)

To correct two of his most recent porkies:

1) The present banking chaos is not a completely world-wide problem. Some developed countries have had no problems with their internal banking arrangements. In this category are countries like Australia, Canada, and Sweden.

The world recession will surely hit them when it comes, but their banks are all still strong. None have been closed, none have been nationalised, none have needed vast sums of public money pumped into them. To disappoint the left, if this is the end of capitalism than capitalism in those countries seems to be thriving.

2) Even in those countries where there have been problems, the severity has varied enormously. The two largest sufferers have been the UK and the USA, and Iceland perhaps ought to be added. What these countries have are banking regulatory systems which failed. In the USA politicians in 1977 and 1995 compelled/forced the major mortgage lenders to lend to borrowers who were not going to be able to repay. In the UK and Iceland banking regulators slept through years when signs were becoming very clear that large skyscrapers of lending were being constructed on shaky foundations, business plans were being used which were bordering on the very risky. The problem was not one of insolvency but one of illiquidity. Borrowing short to lend long does not need much of an adverse movement before it becomes panic and disaster, as Northern Rock and B & B illustrated.

Even well designed banking supervision, overcoming the uncertainty and confusion of the UK system, can fail if the politicians encourage and indulge in too much debt or allow credit to become too easy.

It is to be hoped that the present crisis is moving towards resolution without further loss of jobs, income and wealth. At some point regulatory systems must be evolved which resist political interference and which produce heeded warnings.

We are soon to enter painful recession, if we are not already there. Sadly, unlike Norway which has accumulated budgetary surplus with which to meet the pressures of recession, the UK's public spending spree and then bank bailouts have left us with a higher debt to GDP ratio than anywhere in the developed world. Recession looks very likely, and we could not be in a worse starting position. So much for the other Brown porkie that we are well placed to meet the storm!

Palatial!

Papers yesterday were making much of the expensive council property in Ealing, London. In fact to accommodate a family of seven the Council is renting from the private sector a seven bedroom house.

It is estimated that with all other benefits the family is enjoying a total of £170,000 a year. The housing itself is costing more than the Kents are paying for luxury apartments in central London.

The (Conservative run) council, aghast at what its housing staff have done, have sacked two staff members although they protested that they had done nothing wrong, but merely applied the rules and found housing for a family in need."

If they are right, then there must be something wrong with the rules. In April this year the government introduced the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), which laid down details of appropriate property and maximum rents to be paid to landlords. In this way tenants and landlords can discover the maximum LHA available before they reach an agreement.

Is there any surprise that landlords fight for the maximum, and that weak controls over public money ensue that council housing staff do not fight very hard to obtain less?

It may be the case that the council has over-reacted in sacking two members of staff. The fault was perhaps not theirs but a silly system instituted by central government.

It's not much of a consolation to those struggling to pay council tax on limited means, or facing ever higher food and energy prices with a reduced post-tax income.

Now why did they do that?

Yesterday in the Commons we had the unusual spectacle of the Government whipping its MPs to defeat a Ten Minute Rule bill which had cross party support. They even ordered their ministers to turn up and vote against it. All this at a time when the Economy is at something of a cross roads.

So what was this dreadful bill? It was one promoted by Mark Harper, MP for the Forest of Dean, that in future all legislation should state whether it was introduced because of a decision by the EUSSR (- otherwise known as the European Union).

Seeing that bills already have to state that they are compatible with the Human Rights Act, it is difficult to understand why this could not be extended to ensure that every bill and regulation should state on its cover its EU origin. This was in the name of transparency and accountability. You might expect that there are regular cases where the Government would be happy to pass on the responsibility and any odium to the EUSSR.

What have they got to hide? It seems that MPs do not at present know the origin of legislation they are required to vote upon. What a farce, what a triumph for anti-democracy! We know that the European Parliament rubber stamps what is put before it. Now whips have prevented MPs here from knowing the ultimate origin of bills before parliament!

Many of us are becoming increasingly alarmed at the flood of legislation from Brussels which pours over us, having come from some dark impenetrable non-democratic process. When our own Government intends us to be in the dark, even keeping MPs in ignorance, we know that we are right to be concerned.

Who owns the nationalised corporations?

There are not many of them of them left now. Many of the former cases have been successfully privatised, with the result that they have become agents of enterprise and invention rather than the anti-change bureaucracies they used to be.

One of those left is the BBC, financed by taxation rather than consumer choice, and resisting all the controls to which other broadcasters must submit. I have written before that in its news broadcasts editorial politics frequently intrude, seemingly deliberately, to further the causes espoused by the organisation. I personally feel that there should be alternative radio news to enable listeners to receive a more balanced picture, but no other broadcaster has access to licence fees to enable this.

Yesterday The Mail on Line revealed that last year the BBC spent £81,000 of licence payers' money on a "bash" at Wimbledon. Guests numbering 170, were entertained in a marquee with generous hospitality of £18,281, with marquee costs of £53,528. A further £9,645 was spent on tickets, car parking, programmes and invitations.

The Mail also claimed that at the Glastonbury music festival £68,000 was spent on hospitality. What other events saw the BBC acting like some generous tycoon and buying public relations?

We know that last year the BBC also spent £3 million on first class and business class air flights. They do not seem to stint themselves either, apparently.

The defence from the Corporation is that it attends important events, which tennis lovers and music ravers might agree with, and provide less lavish hospitality than before. (Given that 170 guests and BBC personnel consumed £18,281 worth of hospitality at Wimbledon, as well as receiving tickets, it was generous provision. The BBC claims to have reduced such expenditure, so what on earth was the figure in former years?)

The BBC effectively taxes us to provide a large part of its income, - not available generally to other broadcasters, who will find severe problems as the recession develops. It is exempt from regulation that other broadcasters have to accept. It is (too) close to Government Now we hear that it is behaving like a generous millionaire in providing selected guests with elegant entertainment at public events.

It is to be hoped that if its hopes are defeated, and the Conservatives are elected to government, it may be reduced to competing with other broadcasters in the quality of its programmes rather than in the quality of its junketing.

Cost of Education - 2

Nearly two weeks ago Daniel Hannan, in one of his usually excellent postings on the Telegraph Blogs, included some startling figures.

He compared the current cost of education in private schools with that in state schools. The average cost for a "day" pupil, that is removing boarding costs, at a private school emerges as £9,069. There are no overt charges for state schools, but taking the total cost of state school education at £77.7 billion in 2007-08 and dividing by the number of pupils educated in state schools gives an average of over £9,000 per pupil.

There thus would seem to be little difference between the two in average costs, this despite the generally accepted smaller classes in private schools and better facilities. It is these differences which raise the fury among those on the left.

How can we explain this unexpected similarity in costs. Are teachers in private schools paid less, a situation they accept because they enjoy the ethos of public schools? I am not aware that there is any great difference, and some schools actually observe and use salary scales negotiated in the state sector.

Hannan suggests, and he is surely right, that it is the very high non-classroom costs in the state sector which keeps that state average up to the private level. We have another illustration here of the cost of centralised bureaucratic provision of various services.

Bureaucracies have levels - Whitehall and regional in the case of health, or local council in the case of education, which require compliance from the school or hospital. Instructions are sent down, and statistics and other material are sent up, the chains. Every link has the possibility of misunderstanding and even deliberate obfuscation, every link interprets as best they can what comes from above and summarises what is going up to their own advantage and protection.

It is not just the vast number of bureaucrats, who need wages, pensions and materials, it is also the cumbersome responses and late appreciation of what is happening. Resources are devoted to monitoring and compliance. All these are unnecessary in an organisation which has local autonomy. It is significant that large businesses have "solved" this problem as they have grown very large by divisionalisation and local autonomy.

If this analysis is correct, and there is plenty of evidence that it is, then as Hannan remarks, "...most of the education budget budget never gets near the classroom."

Those on the left are right to point out that class sizes, performance and outcomes do differ between state and private schools. The problem is that they would wish to bring the whole private sector under state bureaucracy. It is levelling down, at great cost, to serve some egalitarian ideology.

The better solution is surely something like that promoted by Gove and Cameron, - to have much more autonomy at local level, to have monitoring done by parents, and to have potential competition whereby good schools threaten bad ones and compel change in the latter.

Costs of Education - 1

The Daily Express earlier this month reported on costs imposed on education by parents and others seeking financial compensation for injuries to children. The compensation culture has extended even there.

The Paper surveyed 150 education authorities in England, of whom 131 answered the Freedom of Information request (- were the others concealing something?) Those replying paid out £1,765,790 in settling 399 claims in 2007-08. This figure does not include "defendant costs"in any cases the educational authorities decided to contest, which could take the figure over £2 million, despite the fact that many claims are not contested in order to keep costs down. There may be some "ticking bomb" claims still to be presented, as any school age injury claim runs out of time only when the "child" reaches 21.

The largest claim was for nearly £49,000 for a child in Bradford whose arm was burned on a radiator pipe. Bradford also paid out £4,000 for a child who hurt his wrist when a classmate pushed him out of a toy car. Derby City Council paid out £500 for a pupil who fell off an inflated space hopper!

Many of the claims are for bumps and scratches which used to be regarded as part of the process of growing up, and have been blamed on all sides as sheer greed. Those who claim seem to be indifferent towards the point that any money paid out has to be paid by others and could have an adverse effect on the education of other children.

Does George's offer not attract them?

"They" here is Bournemouth Council, and yes, we must admit it, Conservative-run.

This morning the Sun newspaper included an article to announce that Bournemouth are recruiting a Director of Transformation at a salary of £101,000, who will lead in the fight against saving money for the council. Recently the council apparently spent £70,000 on two granite dominoes.

Leaving aside the question of what the whole package will cost when the new officer is in place, - office, pension, national insurance, travel, etc., which could be well on the way to doubling that figure, the question is whether he or she will make a significant reduction in the expected budgetary shortage this year of £2.4 million. Presumably the Director will need staff to undertake work and report back, to arrange meetings and so on. If these are transferred from elsewhere in the bureaucracy, then it suggests that they were redundant in their previous posts, and represents waste in the past. If they are being recruited, then the bill will be even higher.

An even more worrying aspect is that the present Chief Executive, on an even higher salary presumably, was reported as saying, "In reviewing the management structure of the council I have concluded that we need to fill the post of the executive director to deliver business transformation and change....." Did the council make a decision on this?

Where is the leader of the council, or any of his elected colleagues? The only note of protest seems to have come from a Labour member of the council who suggested a major extravagance.

For a long time many have become alarmed at the growth of six figure salaries in local Government, and the apparent lack of concern on the part of councillors. This seems to be another example to annoy thousands of poorer people who are struggling to pay their ever-rising council tax bills.

George Osborne promised, when chancellor, to pay money to councils which reduce their rate bills by 2.5%. Somehow, it doesn't look as if Bournemouth will be in receipt!

What's rong with the EU?

Where do I start? No, let me re-phrase the question. What could improve the EU?

1) Introduce Democracy
There is a large democratic deficit. The parliament, the only elected part of the set-up, has little power. It rubber stamps countless pieces of legislation, with little time to debate any of them. Above all, no opposition is allowed. Perhaps our parliament is unusual in having a government and loyal opposition, and perhaps things do get heated, and perhaps the PM and cabinet do dictate to the Commons, but at least there is the prospect of electors being considered. The only way to get our interest would be to have a freedom of information act, but this would blow such a gale through the moribund gravy train that I cannot see it happening. In the absence of this, all MEPs should undergo the scrutiny of expenses which the Conservatives are imposing on themselves. There are too many on the wasteful gravy train. Why not compulsory referendums?

2) Repatriate fishing policy to those countries which actually fish, each in charge of their own waters. There would be no over-fishing, fish stocks would rise. Above all we would not have the ludicrous situation of good fish being thrown back into the sea because the fisherman are up to quota on that particular species.

3) Save costs - the regular shuttle from Brussels to Strasbourg, for the glory of La France, is a futile and wasteful gesture. Agricultural subsidies and price fixing to suit inefficient French farmers should be phased out.

4) The European Defence Force should be abandoned. Instead, NATO members should be told about their obligations.


There are many other things, but if most of the above were put right membership might be more attractive to British people. It costs something like £750 for every man, woman and child, now that the sterling Euro exchange rate has moved against sterling. We might be more prepared to continue with our payments and membership.

The Brown Broadcasting Corporation

(Previously the Blair Broadcasting Corporation - as suggested by a comment on this blog recently).

There are a number of websites which analyse documentary radio programmes, and TV programmes also, and record signs of bias.

What must be accepted, I think, is that editorial policy influences reporting. There are many examples, such as the refusal to call Palestinian fighters "terrorists" but rather "militants". This is so consistent that it must reflect editorial policy. Other examples could be be the use of slightly derogatory adjectives in introducing items about Sarah Palin.

The steady drip, drip, drip of these and many others could be conditioning listeners or viewers to the same values as the BBC, and do reflect a lack of objectivity.

Is there a wider bias?

Yes - it certainly seems to be the case that the BBC supports the EU, and also Republicans in the USA, both in the balance of time awarded to other positions and in summaries.

In part it may reflect the progressive philosophy prevalent among many intellectuals. The BBC seems to have favourites when inviting interviewees on radio and Television, - Menzies Campbell and Vince Cable, for instance, who are paraded at every opportunity, and certainly out of all proportion to the size of their party and their position in it.

There seems to be a preference for Labour over the Conservatives. In the dog days of the Major government, the PM or any minister was bound to be invited to comment on current problems, and was often interviewed on the telephone. There followed in the studio a rebuttal whtout evidence with no possibility for comeback by the previous government speaker. Since the change of government, the order has been reversed - first the opposition speaker, then a Government rebuttal to rubbish without challenge what has just been said. It happens so consistently that it cannot be a coincidence.

The style of interview tends to differ also, - aggressive with the Tories, matter-of-fact with NuLabour. The supreme example is the Marr programme, with an endless series of government spokesmen able to parade their views without serious challenge. There is also a kind of deference shown to Bottler Brown, - perhaps because at the least sign of challenge he will recite a litany of facts (well, at least facts as he pretends), and this may not make interviewing easy.

Is it bias? Yes, I think so. The BBC may not show the visceral aggression shown by Nulabour and other so-called progressives against the caricature of nasty Tories of the past, but there is a consistency which suggests a strong bias. This is supported by Robin Aitken in his book, "Can We Trust the BBC?" last year.

The bias may even be defensive. It is becoming progressively harder for the BBC to maintain its monopoly of the licence fee to maintain dominance in many areas of the media, and to avoid regulation like all other broadcasters. The Tories may be the party most likely to want reform. If they are elected, some of the self-indulgence at the BBC may be under threat from the possibility of a Tory Government.

Which is the radical party?

Each would probably claim it.

Since no-one seems to know what the Libdems stand for - they seem prepared to say what it takes to be successful in a particular constituency and given the opponents, and they hold mutually inconsistent policies at the same time, how would anyone know if they are radical? They seem destined to be a protest party, so we shall never know.

The Labour Party may be radical, but is it Nulabour (Blair) NuLabour (Brown) or Old Labour which we would consider? Since old Labour is generally reckoned to be unelectable, perhaps we should consider the two versions of NuLabour. It must be said that shortly before his departure Blair seemed to appreciate the need for massive change, especially with foundation schools and hospitals. Perhaps it was because Brown was really co-leader and held all the purse strings that Blair had not been able to think in radical terms. It could be that Blair's "Middle Way"' apparently nonsense, could have transmorphed into some kind of social market economy as practiced in Germany for 20 years after the war and leading to their miracle. We shall probably never know.

Brown seems to be not at all radical - following the same centralised bureaucratic approach which has got us into the current mess. Centralisation and Municipalisation have been with us so long that he seems unable to change direction. This was Cameron's taunt in his speech at the end of the conference.

Conservatives as radicals? It seems almost a contradiction in terms. Do they not wish to preserve or conserve? That is true, but what is it that they wish to preserve? In the case of Cameron what he is proposing in the social sphere is revolutionary in parts, - trying to make families function better in order to give children a better chance in life, encouraging charities, faith groups and others to encourage and equip those at a disadvantage and to found new schools, - something they have not done for up to 70 years, and trying to make the contacts between individuals and the local society personal rather than bureaucratic.

What they do this wish to preserve are admittedly well proven and successful principles from the past, - freedom from state interference and dictation, sound money and freedom under the law. Some principles are "new" - the state providing for but not necessarily controlling the main areas of life - health, education, law and order. Whether these principles are old or new, there could be major changes from the national bureaucratic and centralised system we have been familiar with. Decisions would be made near, with or by the citizen and by the professionals who are responsible for delivery, not by Whitehall, regional quango or even local council. This is a root and branch change, and surely meets the label "radical".

The approach of the present prime minister is "More of the same, Nurse" decided in London and applied bureacratically. This is the system which has failed children in education, patients in health care and old people in retirement and led people to be apathetic about politics and voting.

The Brownian system has had its day - it has pumped billions into such areas without reform. Rather with constant policy changes from London, often ill thought-out, and all the costs of compliance with central diktat, it has caused disillusion, exhaustion and demoralisation. It will require a radical change to restore the efficiency of earlier days. Cameron is offering us some radical changes. He seems to be the leader of the radical party.

Who has told the bigger porkies?

Tony Blair or Gordon Brown?

I don't mean the silly little stories - like Blair claiming to have seen Jackie Milburn play football, - Bl;air would have been under two at the time, or stowing away on a plane. I mean a calculated attempt to deceive, to gain political advantage by an untruth.

They were both guilty at times with the same lies, - detailing spending by pretending spending in a year was the accumulation up to that year.

Peter Oborne, in his book "The Rise of Political Lying, claims that NuLabour subscribed to various philosophies from which it developed the ideas of narrative and discourse, that it became so full of its own sense of destiny that it felt that truth was what it proclaimed to be truth. Blair was found out m any times, - most people feel that but for a senile judge of careful manipulation he and his small group would have been found guilty of lying to parliament and to the people over the "weapons of mass destruction". At the very least there were phrases at variance from those in intelligenmce reports. Very often he was "dug out" of pits by his loyal fixer, Alastair Campbell, by various means. Many of these are listed by Oborne.

Gordon Brown has his own way of avoiding the truth. He is able to reel off long lists of statistics in order to batter or deceive any questioner. Careful examination of each reveals that they are often not what he pretends. He has a series of different techniques, very often comparing data from two periods which were assembled on different bases, or ignoring other comparisons which demolish his case, - the classic example is his constant claim that our economic growth rate was the highest in ....., but in not allowing for the vast number of immigrants he neglected to mention that both out growth per hear and our productivity were falling and not very impressive. The fact that from early on he insisted on calling expenditure "investment" however current and wasteful it might be. Investment normally suggests a long term benefit, rather than a mere outlay.

Of the two Blair's porkies were probably bigger and more serious, but Brown's have been with us for 11 years now and collectively and incrementally may be just as important.

Would you trust either?
Which has done more damage?