How can they "run" it, then?

The Conservative Home website today has an item by Tom Greeves on answers to parliamentary questions on health issues.

Anne Milton, Shadow Health Minister asked how many people received cognitive behavioural therapy in each of the last five years.

The answer given was, "This information is not held centrally."

Labour MP Ashok Kumar asked what was the average ratio of nurses to patients in each of the last 10 years in England, in the North East and in the Tees Valley respectively.

The answer given was, "This information is not collected centrally."

The name of the game is obfuscation, of course, so we may wonder if there is a difference between "held" and "collected". The answers were given by two different junior ministers, so it may just be a matter of vocabulary.

The upshot is shocking in either event. London, it seems, is not in possession of important data, and yet jealously claims to "run" the Health Service in minute detail. If they lack these details, how can they know what trends are developing, how well our money is being spent or where there are needs to be answered. Are they only interested in the targets they trumpet, - length of waiting lists, length of waiting, etc.?

National or local

We have a national health service and socialised medicine. It is supposed to be our crowning glory, and woe betide anyone who criticises it, let alone suggests alternatives.

Is it really national? We hear regularly references to a post-code lottery, of treatments available in some areas but not others, of payments required for prescriptions in some areas but not in others and of services available in some and not in others. There may be national standards, but even these are failed, as witness the troubles at Mid Staffordshire recently, and in various other places, and there seem to be many cases of a service which is good generally on critical illness and poor at feeding and cleaning old people and maintaining hygiene.

The problem is that our service is government financed and controlled, and also government provided. It is not difficult to see many advantages which could accrue if one of these were no longer true, - either commercial and competitive supply, or privately financed. The latter may be seen in Germany, with an insurance based service for everyone, the former is virtually every other country in the world except Cuba and the UK.

A development was highlighted on the Institute of Economic Affairs website yesterday. Without any central direction but with agreement, liberalisation is happening in India. The poor are being increasingly offered provision of a low cost effective service, as others are also. There is experimentation in delivery and costing. The provision is not producer-orientated, but patient led, and there is no vast bureaucratic army trying to run things from the centre.

So why are the poor not being left behind, - the usual warning by left-wingers? The answer is that where is a demand, and there is also freedom to explore ways of satisfying it, then supply will step in. It happens in the case of most goods, so why not in health? There is no "one size fits all, take it or leave it".

Over a period with rising prescription charges, and services hived off such as dentistry, chiropody,and nursing the elderly, it has become obvious that a taxation-financed system will always be under provided. What the liberalised service is India is showing is that private finance will supplement government provision, so that all gain.

So why must we have a monopolistic, monolithic, centrally and bureaucratically driven service. "It's to offer everyone the same". Yes, but they are not getting the same, and they could all get more if we could throw away the dictum that supply must be financed and physically supplied by the government. If we had applied this to food production, or electronic goods, or cars, we would long ago have had rationing of food and electronics and much more walking.

Does "National Speed Limit" mean anything?

Today I returned home to Shropshire from Sheffield, using good roads but all 'A' roads.

I didn't start counting how many variations there were to the rule "30 m.p.h in towns, 60 m.p.h on single carriageway, 70 m.p.h. dual carriageways and motorways.

In fact I saw every variation between 20 and 60 m.p.h, with bewildering changes. The standard on my journey was clearly 50, which required very regular signs to warn me, but there were intervals of 60 and also of 40, with no apparent difference in road conditions or danger.

It is frankly confusing, and hardly conducive to road safety when a driver spends much of his attention on looking out for unexpected signs. There were signs warning of cameras, although I saw only one on the whole journey, but each sign was a further one to distract from the road ahead.

Cynics are surely right to say that the object is to raise money for the government, and to pay for all the camera cars and fixed cameras. I would add that I suspect that there is a green motive behind trying to reduce speed, and also some control freakery. I can't otherwise explain the bewildering collection of signs I encountered.

If........

The Times today has an interesting page of graphics which among other things estimates the interest costs of servicing the growing National Debt. (This is the debt which Crash Gordon inherited and that which he has indulged in. )

The interest costs are as follows:
2009-10 £22.5 billion
2010-11 £36 billion
2011-12 £46 billion
2012-13 £50 billion
2013-14 £52 billion

(These are all based on the somewhat optimistic projections made by Brown/Darling - thus successive additions to interest which must be paid diminish because they expect the recovery to be rapid, with economic growth of + 3.5% in 2011-12, figures which few independents think likely.)

The Times illustrates the (opportunity) costs of these figures for the current year. The figure of £22.5 billion could have purchased 750 new secondary schools at £30 million each, or 45 new hospitals at £500 million each, for instance.

Perhaps the most telling graphic is the scale of estimates of the percentage decline in GDP this year. Last week Darling forecast that it would be -3.5%, while independent forecasters came out with figures between -3.9% and -4.5%. Darling's estimate is lower than all six independent forecasters, some distance.

The worrying thing is that in the first three months we have apparently achieved over half of Darling's forecast, and we still have three quarters to go! Already his promise of growth again by the end of the year and his -3.5% seem to be in conflict.

What if Darling's forecasts are found to be over optimistic? The Times figures above would have to be increased significantly. Extra national debt borrowing would result and higher interest rates would be needed, especially if we lose our credit rating. There would be a real possibility of going with the begging bowl to the IMF. They would require austerity measures to restore fiscal rectitude. Crash Brown's reputation would be completely in tatters!

Hero to Zero?

Is this a fair description of Gordon Brown, or Crash Gordon as one blogger calls him?

He is certainly near zero now, to judge by open criticisms in all directions, even from his own party. Hardly a week passes without a new disaster arriving, and even when he makes a good impression, such as the G20, observers quickly see through his conjuring tricks. Even spin, which used to give the government such an advantage, is finding its wheels coming off.

More and more people are buying the Cameron judgement of government mismanagement, especially as almost daily frightening new figures are revealed and exposed.

We know what caused his demotion, and apart from a world recession and the sub-prime poison, he was largely responsible for his own fall:

1) He acquired a taste for spending (public) money quickly, and couldn't stop, even when it was obvious that government debt was piling up. He persuaded himself he could ignore it if he could leave it off the balance sheet, but others were asking questions. There would little in reserve if the unthinkable "bust" did in fact arrive.

2) He made a quick decision to change banking supervision, without consulting people who could have warned him. The new system was not up to it. It didn't spot, or didn't tell him, that there were dangerous and risky practices in the banking system, and that consumer debt was very high. (He would not listen to monetarists that the money supply was large.)

3) He inherited a growing economy where growth had been steady for 6 or so years, and trading conditions where imports from China and elsewhere were very low and kept domestic inflation down, and oil prices which had not risen in line with expanded trade. He gained from an influx of workers from EU accession countries who were prepared to work in unpleasant situations for low pay. (His claim to have achieved high economic growth rates was because of this "sudden" expansion in the labour force. National output did rise dramatically, but the UK record on output per worker was by no means anything special, but somehow he chose not to mention this.)

So we had a chancellor who enjoyed very beneficial circumstances, and led himself to conclude that he was a genius. Was he a hero? Perhaps while prudence was around he was, but he had already set in train the very things that would bring him down, so at the very least the hero had significant blindnesses.

That 50p tax

The elephant trap set by Brown to divide the Tories, as well as delighting his own left wing, will according to experts produce little or no extra revenue for the government. Indeed, it could actually reduce it, for the reasons I gave yesterday. (When tax was last at 50%, in 1987, and the richest 1% contributed 14% of tax revenue, Nigel Lawson cut the tax to 40%. The result was that the top 1% contributed 23% of tax.)

The Tories know these possibilities, are natural tax cutters and are keen to keep our best talent here. (Top tax rates elsewhere include 41% in Ireland, 40% in France and Switzerland, 35% in the USA and 29% in Canada. People with saleable skills could be attracted to these, not only because of the higher retention of income but also because these countries are likely to be able to finance their work sooner than the UK will be able to.)

The economic case for reversing the 50p tax is strong, almost unanswerable. Then why do the Tories not come off the fence? The answer is that the public emotionally identify all top earners with the dreadful bankers, whom they blame only partly correctly as the cause of our troubles. The Labour left are also ready to attack the "toffs" at will. Neither groups accepts the wider economic benefits mentioned above.

The Tories thus have a dilemma. If they propose cutting the tax, they will be branded as helping the rich, and comply with Brown's strategy of creating an emotional dividing line. If they don't, they will have to wait until they are in power to reduce the tax and increase revenue, but by then many excellent brains will have "drained".

They are probably right to play the tax down. It is probably more important to get rid of this dreadful government, even if the recovery is slightly delayed.

A final word is that we may be looking at the wrong group to see where real damage will be done. As I pointed out, the day is coming when all earning over £100,000, many more in number, will be hit with larger disincentives. They will lose personal allowances on a progressive basis, with a much higher effective marginal tax rate over the initial personal allowances than even the 50p.

It could be worth the Tories protesting on their account.

Is it really that bad?

Cameron, in his budget demolition, made the claim that the present annual government deficits are a record.

Can this really be true? Brown's profligacy may have wasted more pounds than it cost to fight Napoleon, but surely that is a false comparison as a pound then was worth much more than a pound now, - there has been considerable inflation.

If all figures are adjusted for inflation and changes in the value of money, it remains true that the UK government will have gone further into debt in this recession than the various governments in fighting Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler all combined!

The National debt, which actually shrank a little while Prudence was around from over £300 billion, could reach 4 times that figure before any real impact is made on reducing it. This is a measure of Brown's mismanagement.

Scorched earth policy

It seems that Brown & Co. have discussed what remaining parts of the family silver could be sold. The assets include the Royal Mail and Land Registry. To grub a few more millions desperately and keep down the immediate borrowing figures very slightly, almost everything seems up for grabs.

This is entirely the desperate throw of a defeated government intending t0 inflict maximum harm and difficulty on political opponents who will replace them.

It seems that even the infamous, 50 pence tax on high incomes could have a similar effect, as many high earners will go to other countries, almost any as we are now are now among the highest taxing in the world. So some of the cream of creative people could be leaving and reduce the chance of a good recovery.

The next 10 or more years will be a period of austerity, possibly for the UK alone. It will be hard to reform wasteful public sector bodies when there is no money. Apart from the massive new borrowing there will be PFI projects to pay for and ever-increasing public sector pensions.

The comment on the Budget by the editor of the Wall Street Journal today, in a parody of the Title of the Budget - Building Britain's future, is "Burying Britain's Future."

The Brown/Blair legacy will be with us for many years to come, and present an incoming government with a much harder problem that that faced by the Thatcher government. One unanswered question is "Why do the Tories want to be the next government?"

It's a steady as you go, do nothing budget

I was tempted to call it a joke budget by a joke chancellor.

It is based on highly optimistic assumptions. It forecasts incredible increases in public borrowing. The only measures that could help to stem the massive public debt are small and insignificant - efficiency savings they told the Tories a year or two back to be unrealisable, a tax hike on highest earners that will produce little extra revenue because of legitimate ways of avoidance, plus the annual small attack on fuel and drink prices. (In March government income suffered the largest reduction ever recorded, - things are getting rapidly worse, and may explain why recently the Treasury has had to sell much more government stock than had been expected.)


It's almost as if the Chancellor is ignoring his projection of public debt. (These forecasts, of cumulative annual debts of nearly £700 billion over the next 5 years which will take the UK National Debt from 40% of GDP to may be as much as 100% in this time, seem to have mesmerised the Chancellor, because he seems to have done little to change all this.)

We may be relieved that he seems to have faced down G.Brown, because his spending parcels are small or have been already announced. Unfortunately, while he has accepted the 1970's dictum of James Callaghan that "we cannot spend our way out of recession" he seems to have subscribed to another, which says "We can borrow our way out of recession".

It is clear what he is doing - avoiding pain and passing the burden on to future generations. Our children, already facing the lack of power generation because of government dithering, the time bomb of pensions for an ageing population, a swollen public sector with over-generous pensions and PFI redemption, will be called on to face Brown's legacy as well.

But at least Tories will not have to face the false claim of "do nothing" in the future, as this will rebound on Brown and Darling.

A political budget

Darling's budget was devoid of any serious way of suggesting how the dire situation will be addressed over the next 5 or 6 years, other than to say that economic growth will miraculously recover over the next two years.

But it probably achieved its political purpose.

1) Vote for us for we are reassuring, recovery this year end, growth next and 3.5 growth the year after. We are not asking for any sacrifice - O.K. fuel and rink prices will rise a penny or two, but unless you earn more than £150,000 there will be little pain.

It's the snake-oil salesman.

2) If it doesn't work, and we don't get elected, then the mess will be for the Tories to sort out.

3) G.Brown has achieved the ambition of punitive taxation for the very rich, and the left will be happy, so generally the Labour Party will be least affected.

It's all politics

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, confidently an independent body which is as well informed and equipped as the Treasury, has thrown doubt on one of the proposals to deal (in a very small way) with the massive government debt which is being run up.

The institute investigated the proposals I have mentioned already - to have a new top tax rate of 45p on taxpayers with an income greater than £150,000, that is the top 1 per cent or so, and to reduce tax allowances pound for pound for all taxpayers liable for tax in excess of £100,000, who are considerably more. As all tax allowances will have been eliminated before £150,000, the two proposals are complementary.

Their conclusions are damaging to the proposals:

The higher top rate of tax will not generate the £1.6 billion announced by Mr.Darling last November, even if the extra administrative costs are ignored. The many reasons for this inclue the fact that the removed income will not be spent in generating VAT and other taxes for the government. In addition people can adjust their income for tax legally in many ways, - by emigrating, by working less hard, by increasing pension contributions, by converting income into capital gains or by retiring, etc.

The IFS suggests that perhaps as little as one third of the expected gains to the exchequer could result, and when still other things are taken into account the net result could be virtually zero.

The second proposal, affecting all people with incomes liable to tax up to £150,000, the IFS concedes could be more productive, but even here the added complexity could reduce the tax yield well below the expected figure, also of £1.6 billion.

Why, then, has the chancellor announced this policy, when it will contribute so little to many billions needed to plug the revenue gap for many years to come?

The answer must be, "politics". Labour's left wing are clamouring for blood. Some of the high earners will be the outcast bankers, and others will be their friends, and it chimes well with a redistributive party. Perhaps the party will accept other austerities if a large emphasis can be put on the undeserving rich, bankers and all.

If in a hole, order a review!

Perhaps still reeling from the jeering and heckling he received at the Anfield memorial occasion, the culture/sport etc. minister, Andy Burnham, made a major mistake.

When he arrived in London by train, he left his briefcase on the train. This contained documents with confidential information, and sparked an alert until a passenger on the train returning north handed the briefcase to police in Glasgow.

His offence mirrors that of several ministers before him, as well as civil servants, so he is by no means the first or worst offender.

His reaction was to follow the tradition of Tony Blair, to announce an immediate review of security arrangements, that is to kick it into the long grass until the noise dies down.

So are we to have the spectacle of the minister himself being grilled by a review body, with finger wagging and suggestions of how best to look after his luggage? Somehow I doubt it. This government likes to give the impression of activity, even when there is none. Here the desired impression is that "we shall learn" from this cock-up, even if nothing changes.

Overpaid and underworked

I have blogged more than once on the reduction in working load on MPs at Westminster, pointing to the rubber stamping of the 85% of laws heaped upon us by Brussels, and the devolution of powers and responsibilities to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Yesterday on his blog, John Redwood added a further reduction on loading. This is the vastly reduced debating time given to many government bills, which are "timetabled", that is with limited time for perusal and debate in the House of Commons.

John Redwood has unearthed the following figures:

Between 1947 and 1997 ( that is 50 years) there were 136 such timetabled bills, or an average of under three each year.

Between 1997 and 2007 (that is 10 years) there were 438 such bills, or an average of 44 per year.

Thus the executive have indeed been busy, some would say too busy, in an unending stream of legislation which has passed on to the Statute Book, often ill-digested and badly in need of tidying. Parliament, on the other hand hand, has increasingly been given insufficient time to debate and iron-out some of the anomalies and inconsistencies.

The result is that all the Brussels laws imposed on us and the domestic laws which have been limited in consideration time, have left all opposition MPs and many government MPs, little more than rubber stampers.

As far as Westminster duties are concerned, our MPs are becoming part-time workers.

May contain nuts

This evening's Panorama television programme will apparently show the results of some health and safety idiocy. Quentin Letts will illustrate the nonsense represented by much H and S thinking.

The preview details include:

The Grave Toppling threat;
There are, it seems, teams of specially trained 'topple testers' employed by councils around the country whop check that gravestones are not likely to topple. If they come across any which seem a threat they insert stakes and tie the headstones to them. Their work is completed when a warning notice or other signs are displayed around the ground.

Despite the fact that the Health And Safety Executive withdrew their guidance, because they feared that councils would overreact, over the past two years at least 118 councils have engaged in topple testing at a cost of more than £1.65 million.

The Noise Threat:
There is a fear that noise at work may impair the hearing of those working. The Noise at Work Act stipulates that if the average noise over the working day or week is above 85 decibels, then hearing protect must be provided.

This is to protect producers, rather than their customers, of course. In some situations, such as concert halls, the sound level is so great is to require either protective hearing protection or a restricted repertoire. There would otherwise be no symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler or Shostakovich. There could be a similar problem with pop music.

It seems that common seas has prevailed on this one and after discussions with the HSE professional musicians are safe.

There are other groups - 85 decibels is also reached in loud conservation and in heavy traffic, so there could be a problem of bus drivers and actors, among others.

"Unlikes attract, but...."

Yesterday Daniel Hannan, in his Telegraph Blog, raised the question of why certain prominent members of the Labour Party are regularly telling people not to vote for the BNP. After all, he points out, the BNP has no Westminster seats and only a handful of council seats across the country. Whenever the Labour leaders speak, the BNP gets free publicity.

I am sure that he is right about their present number of seats, but in a number of recent council by-elections the BNP has increased its vote, seemingly at a cost of reduced Labour vote. This may be the motivation which Daniel has missed.

Otherwise I could not better his suggestions that the two parties are not polar extremes but really at one extreme. (Do the far right and the far left almost merge to form a circle? Nazi Germany was called the party of National Socialism.) Certainly they share attitudes such as nationalisation, subsidies for industry and trade tariffs to protect British jobs.

Above all, I suspect that they share a dislike of liberalism, of the market and decentralisation, and they share a belief in strong central control to achieve planned objectives.

The Labour left call the BNP Fascists or Nazis, as they do any group which opposes. The name is emotional, and goes back to their dim youth

The names do not matter, they are slogans of their own party with which to beat others. In terms of attitudes the two parties have much in common at the extreme, so it could be that the supposed hatred is really a loathing of competition.

Does the end justify the means?

It is becoming obvious that many people knew about the spin excesses of both the Blair years and the Brown period.

Guido Fawkes has attacked the political lobby for being supine - accepting and reporting the spun message which the government wanted reported, of knowing what is to be announced before even most MPs and playing down what the government wants kept quiet.

Many members of the Labour Party similarly have acquiesced in untruths, and in the behaviour of the attack dogs who were set upon fellow members.

The motive in all cases was either self-protection, journalistic advantage or a belief in the cause.

All governments, of whatever colour, clearly try to cover up what they do not want generally known, even attacking savagely those who leek, and all want to present news in such a way as to give political advantage.

So Brown and company are not unique in this desire, even if the ferocity of briefings against their own colleagues to destroy opposition within their party is. We expect politicians to behave like this. They, after all, are the ones who kiss babies and pop up at all sorts of events in order to increase their chance of (re)election.

But is the use of the state apparatus and security police to arrest and threaten a member of the opposition who is embarrassing them by doing his duty ever justified, or spreading malicious and disgraceful rumours acceptable?

Buckets of whitewash!

Two more cases this week:

1) "Smeargate". Sir Gus O'Donnell (who, let it be remembered, wrote and published a book with one of G.Brown's loyalists) has decided that he will not institute an enquiry into how many people at number 10 knew of the impending smear campaign. He prefers to take the word of the minister most likely to have been involved. There is also the strange "The Prime Minister has been assured that no-one....". By whom was he assured?

If there is nothing to hide, why not merely reveal the recipients of the notorious smearing e-mail(s)? Or has the evidence already been (illegally) destroyed?

G.Brown's attack dogs have been active for so many years, most often admittedly biting fellow members of the Labour Party. Journalists hint, because they are afraid of the dogs, that dirty briefings are commonplace. But of course, McCavity the main gainer does not know anything about them.

2) The Damian Green affair: - the arrest of the first opposition MP for hundreds of years for doing his job, in fact doing what G.Brown had done and boasted about doing when he was in opposition.

The Home Affairs select committee this morning, - a committee with a built-in Labour majority, published their own report. (The timing cannot be coincidental, but was to take some of the sting out of the later report by the head of the CPS.) The select committee claimed that it was not politicians who were to blame, but rather the over-excited senior servants who called in the police with talk of "national security". The explanation of the CPS that what was revealed did not threaten national security, harmed no-one and in parts was in the public interest, surely is a reprimand for civil servants and their political masters.

Of course, Jacqui Smith, like G.Brown over smeargate, was not aware of what their underlings were doing and hadn't suggested anything. So she is quite innocent, and someone else's head will roll to save her.

Wherever the buck stops, it clearly stops well short of the ones who should be accountable, and buckets of whitewash will be used to ensure this.

Damian McBride - his future

Mr. McBride has lost very much - a fair income and expenses, a job he evidently enjoys and a position of power in Downing Street.

Where does he go next with his particular powers and gifts?

What inducements will he be offered to reveal what he knows or to keep quiet about what he knows? If journalists like Alice Miles, in today's Times, knew what he was doing over months if not years, it seems impossible to believe that others in Downing Street did not know. Even if he actually did his sinister work of briefing against colleagues and opponents "off his own bat", was everyone else in Numbers 10 and 11 blissfully innocent?

He was party to "dirty secrets" because he was at the centre of power, and it seems quite possible that he could implicate many of the people around him then. As he was engaged in doubtful work, he could have kept incontrovertible evidence in order to protect himself. This would be natural.

So could his financial future come from revelations and evidence for which newspapers will pay?
(Of course , if G.Brown were literally a gangster, McBride could already have been gagged by being located in the concrete foundations of some construction project. But quite apart from the outcry at the disappearance of someone as well known as him, nobody would suggest that politics however dirty would stoop to this.)

The question is how G.Brown will ensure his silence. Fraser Nelson expects to see McBride back in Downing Street after a few months. Perhaps he will be proved right, but a few months will not be enough for the electorate to forget what has been revealed and what protested by G.Brown. A well paid Trade Union job, like that of Mr.Whelan, perhaps? Some PR agency might be willing to lose some reputation and customers by employing him?

Time will tell, but Labour cannot afford to be too closely involved with him openly or the whole affair could re-open.

Time and MPs

Several people are now advocating a reduction in the number of MPs at Westminster.

I have already suggested that the existence of devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, etc, and the fact that the vast majority of our legislation comes from Brussels, supports this. In addition, sofa government at number 10 means that the governing party is involved only in obeying whips and voting what the executive has decided. (This may even extend to the Cabinet, where you might imagine there is some debate before decisions.)

We know that MPs are part time, many staying in Westminster no more than three and a half days a week , having a shorter day by virtue of a decision by the Blair government, and this year sitting on even fewer days than for a long time.

Now we hear many of those on select committees cannot even be bothered to turn up for meetings.

MPs will say in their own defence, are but we hold the Government to account, by asking questions, oral and written, which reveal things that the government is trying to conceal. (So do journalists, using the Freedom of Information mechanism.) "We have full case loads with constituents, and work hard at week-ends at events in the constituency!". They certainly do, opening shows, attending events, and seeing electors. The appearance at events and pressing the flesh is genuine, but it is largely the way to be re-elected. The same applies to the causes they fight.

Ah but electors have problems! They do, but many of these should be the province of the local councillors, and in many cases the MP will do no more than throw his or her weight at the local council.

So what is really vital in their work? It ought to be that they represent us in the decision making nationally. This is done increasingly in Downing Street and Brussels. Do they have any really vital work?

Has G.Brown any objectives?

David Cameron is quoted today as having said "This Government has been in charge for too long. They have forgotten what they are there for."

In one sense this is true - they seem to have run out of vision for our society and merely cobble together new policies/wheezes with remarkable frequency, introducing new ones even before the previous ones have been digested or settled down.

In another sense they know what they want, to remain in government at all costs and by all means. Their cause is the only good one, they believe, so anything is justified if it serves the cause. They were able regularly to re-write history under Blair and deny things they were recorded as having said, because of the need of the narrative, the cause.

The Conservatives also believe that their cause is the best one, and the LibDems for that matter also, and once in power will wish to continue.

Then is there any difference between the parties in what lengths they will go to to achieve and maintain power? I think that smearing may be the one area where the Tories will draw the line. This is an American (Democratic party) campaign tactic (- do you remember the attempts to discredit Sarah Palin?) which has been imported by Blair and Brown.

I can imagine poison between Tory MPs and easily envisage attempts to make Labour ministers seem incompetent, but I cannot imagine briefing against colleagues and opponents and spreading rumours about their personal life. I hope that the future will not show me to be wrong.

Who supplied Guido?

Guido is refusing to say who gave him the copies of the MacBride e-mails, and I don't blame him for protecting his source.

Perhaps if the case goes to court, and Nadine Norries one of the victims, is considering legal action, and Draper and MacBride are also engaging lawyers, we shall find out. Was it one of the mail recipients who was disgusted at the contents, someone in Draper's set-up or was it someone in Downing Street. All of these are Labour sources, of course, so it seems that the trouble maker was a disruntled Blairite, a supporter of a candidate to replace G.Brown as leader, or someone who genuinely wanted to bring these disgusting campaigning tactics to and end.

Perhaps we shall never know. It may be revealing that there seems to be no obvious legal attempt to force Guido to reveal his source.

Guido Fawkes could, of course, stir up trouble in Number 10 by hinting that his source was someone close to the PM, or someone on ther staff at Number 10. There could be an enormous bloodbath, with any sacrificial victims threatening to reveal all....

Where the blame lies

The behaviour of the police at the demonstration which led to the death of the innocent newspaper seller on his way home from work is to be investigated thoroughly

Until they report, the rest of us should not take sides.

On the face of it the police seem to have been heavy handed, to judge from accusations by protesters. Perhaps they were heavy handed, and perhaps late in the day they went in too strongly on the unfortunate man who died.

It will not absolve the police involved, but the question is why the protest was allowed. There was every chance that extremists would take over and cause violence, and by the end of the day many of the police had spent hours being spat at, and being pushed and shoved.

If the organisers of such protests are unable to guarantee a peaceful protest, then the protest should not be allowed. It's all very well accommodating the rights of some to protest, but what about the rights of workers in the area and their companies, owners of trashed property and the police themselves? Above all any protester caught wearing a mask is obviously considering breaking the law and should be detained as soon as possible.

They couldn't organise a p*** *p in a brewery

This is a constant refrain about this inefficient government which has wasted billions of our money on fruitless schemes and proposals and managed to mess up every IT project they have been involved in.

The most recent debacle is serious not so much because of a waste of money but because of the lives who will be involved. I refer to the on-off expansion of state money for sixth form expansion.

In January the Learning & Schools Council the government's quango, hatchet man and fixer, encouraged schools and colleges to plan for larger sixth forms, and recorded numbers expected in each school and college. Money was promised, - £100 million or £200 million?

In March schools received long letters, with the bad news included tucked away on very last pages.

The bad news was that student numbers were cut mysteriously by the L&S Council and money consequently reduced.

There may have been a problem, that many more wanted to stop on into the sixth form because of poor job prospects. This "problem" should have been evident by January.

Now we have the prospect of thousands of young people unable to find a sixth form place, having been promised one by a school or college.

The Government department which has been planning for all students to stop at school until they are 18 from 2011, is incapable of doing the sums for 2009.

I still think that the budget in a week or two will find the extra millions, - small beer with billions being borrowed. I expect McCavity B (that's Balls this time, not Brown) to pass the buck for the mismanagement. If I was the chairman or prominent senior official in the L & S C, I might start to look for another job, however

Small is beautiful, or at least to be welcomed

George Osborne, in a major speech on the economy yesterday, did some thinking out loud and suggested that the nationalised banks could well be broken into smaller ones on resale into the private sector.

In essence the argument is that if there several smaller banks, and one failed, for whatever reason, that that one could be allowed to fail. If you have only three huge banks, and one gets into difficulties then that cannot be allowed to fail.

Failure is important in a market system. In general it drives out the weaker, less profitable and uncompetitive units but (and here is an important point) the assets of the failed unit may be purchased and used more productively by the other or new banks.

One of the reasons for our banking failure was that the bigger ones were the result of merger and takeover of other banks, building societies, investment companies, insurance companies, etc. When individual account holders began to reduce their saving, and increase debts, because of the low interest rates available because inflation was controlled by massive cheap goods from overseas, the banks had to look elsewhere, and regulation was not up to seeing what they were doing.

The banks looked for funds from their investment arms and then increasingly from sub-prime mortgage-derived toxic bundles, with the results we know.

Each bank and building society should be forced to rely on its own secure assets and its own judgement of risk, in the knowledge that it will fail and not be bailed out if it deserts sound principles of lending. If they fail then they should be allowed to - depositors are protected by law. The main losers are the shareholders who should be able to monitor and influence policy. Bad practices will be reported on and share prices will fall.

There is a different question if a bank grows large by organic grown, but this should be a very long term thing as takeover is ruled out as a way to size.

saving money....

Potholes are in the news today - not least two articles in the Daily Mail which bemoan the state of our roads.

It seems that after a wet summer and then the coldest winter for 12 years, road surfaces have suffered. The main cause is, of course, potholes which have been inadequately filled, as if they can ever be more than a temporary repair.

The paper estimates that there are something like 3 million potholes across Britain, which at present levels of attention, will take 11 years to repair and a cost in excess of £100 million.

The costs can be high if you drive into one. The cost of a new tyre and wheel can be in the hundreds, and if you damage the suspension much more. We were fortunate on two occasions not to have lost more than a wheel and a tyre. The first time the local council challenged us to take our case to their insurer. On the second occasion we had photographs and statements prepared and they admitted liability very quickly. There may be a moral here!

It seems that 6% of all vehicles will suffer pothole damage every year. Last year's claims were £53 million, plus £12 million in administration. During the year 862,000 potholes were filled in, at a cost each of between £41 and £69 each.

The number of cases is rising, principally I suspect because these repairs are very temporary. One or two outside my home were filled in about three years ago. Within twelve months they were failing at their edges and they are now more or less as they were before the repairs.

The cause is that sheer expense of laying a new surface as compared with temporary filling. It is also due to relatively low priority of roads when a council is faced with demands from central government in other directions and also restricted finances.

We shall need an answer soon

George Osborne, in an interview this morning on the Toady prograame on Radio 4, was asked how he would deal with the huge and growing Budget deficits if/when he becomes Chancellor.

The newly frank nominal chancellor, Alastair Darling, recently admitted that the future UK government would have to borrow much more than he had forecast because his forecasts about the recession were too optimistic. He too, in the coming budget, will have to square a circle.

How can you fund extra government interest payments on a rapidly growing national debt? The highly respected and independent Institute of Fiscal Studies, today released a briefing paper on how the £39 billion needed annually to bring the Budget back into balance by 2015-16 could be financed. (Their assumptions about length and depth of recession and the speed of recovery are probably accepted by many experts, but if a major industry, say the City of London Financial Industry, does not recover very well, then the need could be much greater.)

As always, there are two broad approaches to finding massive increases in government expenditure.

The first, mainly supported by the left, would favour increased taxation. This will involve an increase per family on the average of £1,250 in their taxes paid. Given that many are already feeling a burden, especially but not entirely at lower incomes, this will be difficult. The whipping boys will be those earning high incomes, especially the bankers who are universal scape goats. One problem here is that with their good qualifications of various sorts, they could easily emigrate, and leave behind an even greater problem. The other problem is that there are relatively few of the highly paid, certainly not enough to avoid fairly modest incomes having much higher tax bills.

(Some taxes are not on incomes, but on spending of various sorts, and to increase these would be to cause prices to rise, and we do not want inflation in a period of recovery!)

The second broad approach is to make cuts in public expenditure, and this is generally supported by the political right. The IFS calculates that there would be a need to reduce public spending by 1.1 percentage points a year, meaning a five-year freeze in public spending in real terms.

Some areas are"sacrosanct" and protected, - health, education, law and order, environment, while others are in poor shape because they have been denied funding, e.g. defence. So where will it be possible to make cuts in real terms? Proposed victims will either not yield enough, e.g. quangos, databases, ID cards, while others offer some prospect but only over a longer time frame, such as social security, bureaucracy.

In the end, there is likely to be a mixture of the two kinds, but I would not like to be the next chancellor. A mixture of Brownian profligacy and recession has left a massive problem.

They don't seem to understand

They here means the MPs.

According to a slightly confused Daily Mirror article today, MPs have apparently voted themselves a huge taxpayers' subsidy for the food and drink consumed by MPs at Westminster.

We know that they have one of the best equipped wine cellars in London, and dine on food that is often epicurean. The Mirror claims that they want a subsidy of 41% on all operating costs, and a control on prices to a maximum of 5% in any year. At a time when food prices are rising more rapidly than most other prices - supermarket food prices on average are more the 18% higher than a year ago, this seems further evidence of all animals being equal but some being more equal than others.

At a time when people are losing jobs and homes, and when pensioners are being pushed to the breadline as savings income collapses, this seems badly timed. When are they are being discovered and outed for receiving thousands of pounds annually to buy and equip a second home, it seems perverse to ask for further subsidy on their eating and drinking at Westminster.
At a time when we are pumping more and more into a very generous MP retirement scheme, it really does sound like greed on the part of MPs.

Be careful

Dr. Eamonn Butler recently had an unsought acquaintance with the Law. (See the Adam Smith Institute blogs.) He gave an interview to Canadian TV journalists on the outcome of the G20 summit. At the end they all went out on to the street for him to be filmed walking towards the camera, the street being Great Smith Street, as his office is in the building which is the headquarters of the Church of England, that well-known subversive organisation.

Very soon a police car pulled up and officers confronted the group, demanded that they each prove their identity, and give their date of birth, height (!) and ethnicity, before issuing to each a copy of the Stop and Search form.

The police explained that they are required to do this whenever they see people behaving suspiciously on CCTV cameras. Could they not see the enormous tripod mounted TV camera, or did they view them as possible terrorists who did not have the wit to meet outside the view of the all seeing camera.

ON March 4th former Deputy Assistant Commissioner David Gilbertson issued a public letter expressing his concern about the 2005 addition to section of 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act which was quietly tacked on to an otherwise unexceptionable Act. It allows any police officer in England and Wales to arrest, that is to physically detain, handcuff and take to the police station for a DNA sample, any person for any offence, no matter how trivial and whether or not a power of arrest had previously existed for that offence.

Gilbertson points out that people can be and have been arrested for such offences as not wearing a seltbelt, dropping litter, shouting in the presence of an officer, climbing a tree or building a snowman.

Previously officers had to justify every arrest, and be aware of whether they had power to arrest for that offence, but this no longer applies. Soon the power will be extended to the pseudo police officers called PCSOs.

In a one-to-one situation there seems a real possibility of your word being rejected in favour of the arresting officer's. As they never seem to operate singly, the word of two officers will certainly override yours. Be care what you say, do not try to be clever and do not annoy or....


Dr. Butler has just published his book "The Rotten State of Britain". In it among other things he expresses concern about recent movement towards a "police state". How ironic that he should experience something like it at work! Damien Green, the shadow minister who was arrested and had home, and offices searched, in somewhat dubious circumstances, is still under threat of prosecution 5 months later. The role of civil servants and their political masters is not clear, but why is it taking so long? Did some of them go in too hard, and now they are hoping that we shall forget?

David Gilbertson has organised an official on-line petition, which he concedes will probably be ignored. If you would like to sign, the address is http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/

Where does it come from?

We can understand that when a country goes to the IMF for a bail out, as we did in 1977 and may again soon, the help is ultimately from donor countries. (As Daniel Hannan points out on his blog today with income tax rates so high it's often quite poor people in donor countries who are helping the other countries, but does the spending power go to the poorer members of the recipient country? Probably not, often it goes to producers who are not generally among the poorest. So it could be a redistribution from poorer to richer!)

What happens if all countries go in for fiscal expansion, which is what G.Brown wanted? Thee is no extra-terrestrial "bank" with intergalactic funds. There are some rich people in all countries with massive holdings of cash. If all this is spent across the globe, with no immediate expansion of output possible in all goods and services, the result must be inflation. The result will be a windfall gain for all gold producers and gold hoarders, and hardship for the poor in each society through rising prices.

Quite apart from the lunacy which says, "When in debt, borrow and spend!", the Brownian of credit expansion by everyone is a nonsense. Fortunately it is mitigated by the problem it is trying and failing to solve, an expansion of credit through a lack of confidence and a financial base from which to lend.

As wiser people have been suggesting, in our situation the need is not a flood of public money. The need is to sort out the hindrances to the flow of credit to business.

A Waste of Time and Money?

The G20 get together, I mean.

No such international summit can be entirely a waste of time. Someone said, was it Churchill?, it's better to jaw-jaw than war-war.

On what it has done for the world-wide recession, the jury will be out for some little time. It could even be that the recession will have ended, or be well on the way, before the provisions agreed in London begin to kick in.

Fraser Nelson. in today's Coffee House blog and with his usual penetrating analysis, demonstrates that much of what G.Brown said at the end of the summit, was not new, and most of what was new was half truth or not applicable until further meetings have been held to determine what the sketchy proposals really mean. There will be squabbles ahead, once they try to move beyond the anodyne statements.

The IMF will get further funds, which could help countries in Eastern Europe which are on the point of collapse, but who will contribute these funds and on what basis? Brown's phrase "money will be available" rather suggests the problem.

So what are the achievements?

- To give extra finance to the IMF, and allow it to create its own money in Special Drawing Rights. How soon will this happen?

- Agreement to bear down on tax havens (Watch out Lord Myners and Geoffrey Robinson!). Much progress has already been made. Many have already been identified and "approached", and some have conceded that there must be less secrecy, at least. Little new here.

- Agreement for an all pervasive monitoring and control of virtually all financial bodies. There is little new here, except that it seems that there will be some supranational body to look over national regulation to ensure "compliance" and the regulation will be tough. (This could mean that London's tradition of innovation will be ended, which is the objective of some envious and unfriendly governments, - pas de noms...)

If you think through the above, and the expected waffly "do all it takes to ", there is precious little here for someone who is likely to lose his house or job in the next few months. More than one attending government head has said of the G20 meeting that it will take years before decisions bear fruit. So it may be in time for the next recession!

A salutary lesson

- for Paul Leicester. According to the report in the Daily Mail yesterday, he was out in town celebrating his 18th birthday.

He found a mobile phone, rang the number of the last caller to it and told them he would take the phone to the Police Station the next day.

He did exactly that but when he arrived at the Police Station to hand over the mobile, he was rested for "theft by finding"the mobile. He was kept there for four hours, and had his fingerprints and DNA taken, and a photo for police records. He is thus a marked man, on the datafile! (I always understood that theft involves the "intention to permanently deprive", which hardly applies here. But perhaps in our looming police state this is another protection we have lost!)

Finally he was grilled by officers for 15 minutes about the alleged theft, and then allowed to go, apparently without charge. The police subsequently contacted him over the incident, and then announced that he did not wish to make a complaint against them.

The Southport College 'A' level student wants to publicise the incident, and pointed out to journalists that he would not repeat his promise to go to the police station, but merely tell the last caller that he could call for it if he wished. (I am not sure that this is a good idea. The"last caller" could report his retention to the police. Perhaps this happened on this occasion - this is one explanation for their absurd behaviour!

Who can blame him if he lost his sense of public spiritedness entirely? Who will be impressed by the actions of the police, who are already in low public esteem for not visiting sites of small thefts already, among their other failings?

...to give it away

For many people, government in the past 12 years has concentrated more and more power either in the government, or in one of its quangos. The result has been that regional planning bodies (unelected) can overrule local opinions on planning issues, local councils in many of their policies are acting as mere agents of central government and having to accept diktats from Westminster for whence comes the bulk of the finance. It is little surprise when people see voting in local elections as a waste of time. (I make no mention of the growing power over us by unelected Eurocrats in Brussels.)

For some people the all-intrusive government is seen in sundry databases or various cameras or other measures which record our behaviour or listen to our words.

Business complains about the mountain of regulation which weighs heavily on them and puts up their costs significantly. Teachers, police officers and nurses find themselves as unpaid data recorders of the government.

Within the next 14 months we shall have a general election. I want a government which has sought power in order to give it away, rather devolving it as low as possible where the people affected can influence what happens. I want policy which reflects the views of the people who know most and care most about their situation. If the policies differ between councils, so much the better, people will be able to move if they like the situation and policies elsewhere.

We have had devolution, for party advantage, for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but absolutely none for England.

I see little sign of meaningful devolution in NuLabour, and I would suspect what they say if they now campaigned for decentralising powerin a complete about turn . So it's between Cameron and Clegg. At the moment I would not know which one is more likely to trust the people as I want, even though I write on a Conservative Blog.

The purpose of the G20 jamboree?

It's clear why some are coming, Sarkosy to act like a prima donna and pretend that French power has not diminished to almost nothing, China to extend its political power world wide, etc.

Ostensibly its about solving the world recession by flinging even more money at it. There seems to be a major division on this one, so agreement will be reached only by including in the global total of splurge that which has already happened.

What of the other objectives?

One is reduce the number of tax havens where the rich can manage to escape tax demands from their own governments. What has this got to do with ending recession?

The final one is to increase and unify control over banks and other financial organisations. Among the statists who will be there, of left and right, this uses the recession as an opportunity to increase the power of government over its people. It does not seem to have occurred to them that part of the reason for the recession was a failure in regulation, not that we had too little but rather that it was badly applied. Add to that the fact that various governments created the circumstances, - in America by pushing the lending organisations into lending to those with no hope of repaying, and there and in the UK by keeping interests rates so low that people over-borrowed.

Of course, the two objectives above may be carrots to gain support from governments who are not hopelessly in debt like the UK is and the USA will be. It may represent two areas where most will agree, and the summit may then be pronounced a resounding success.

Most of all they represent extra power to government, and those who climb the greasy pole are always looking for this.