Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, spoken in 1976:

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step."

Were you listening Gordon - not just everyone now, but even a former prime minister, as well?

Why pay for the dog if others have to bark?

The Daily Telegraph reported last week that civilians are being used by the police to investigate serious crimes, including rape and murder. Hundreds of such investigators, who have come from other walks of life, and after minimal training, are being used in all 43 police forces in England Wales.

The newcomers may be very intelligent and quick learners, - many were recruited initially for clerical and reporting work in police stations in order to relieve officers from the administrative burden and allow them out into the community! Some are retired officers, but presumably with new tricks.

According to critics cited by the newspaper, the main reason for all this is to save money. These civilian investigators cost less than a fully trained officer.

So we have community support officers, without full police training and powers, and now "Dad's Army" and civilian investigators, all "on the cheap".

Meanwhile there are fully trained officers spending a large part of their week shuffling papers and filling in reports, often to meet ridiculous targets.

The moral seems clear.

To Refer or not to Refer?

The SNP, in minority control of the Scottish parliament, are proposing a referendum of views of the Scottish people. (Polls have shown that the support for independence is going down, and is at most 30%, despite all the contrivances of the SNP government.)

The Limpdems, Tories and Labour so far have all pronounced against the proposed referendum.

Is this because it is so designed as to be advantageous to the SNP? People would be invited to choose between four options - the present situation, the recommendations of Callan report, fullest possible devolution and finally full independence.

As the government has worked against the status quo by blaming Scotland's current ills on a botched devolution and perfidious England, so effectively people have been deterred from choosing option one.

The rest plays nicely into the hands of the SNP, -the very least they can achieve is the Callan proposals, but every vote for options three and four could lead to a call for greater than Callan.

This, I assume, is the objection of the other parties. They have been out-manoeuvred. The only problem is that their rejection of any referendum is likely to paint them into the position of being anti-devolution.

I would have to say 1-0 o the SNP. Pity the rest of the people do not get to express a vote!

The causes of failure?

A committee under the speaker is suggesting that political parties should be made to declare some characteristics of applicants rejected as parliamentary candidates, in particular what percentage are women, disabled or members of ethnic minorities.

No it is not 1st April, it is 26th November. We have to ask, "Why?"

Wouldn't it be better to ask the backgrounds of all applicants, accepted and rejected, if you wish to embark on a social engineering politically correct investigation?

What will it reveal, in any case, almost nothing which matters in selecting a good candidate? If I were selecting a candidate, I would want to know how well he/she communicates, deals with questions, understands party policy, how long a member of the party, and other political activity earlier in life, willing to live in the constituency, and skeletons in the cupboard, etc, etc. None of this is likely to be revealed in collecting these politically correct measures.

Someone from one of these groups who has been rejected is probably not rejected because of these declared characteristics but because it was felt that they did no meet the many other attributes.

We have now plunged into the Harman political correctness so far that we are in danger of selecting poor candidates because few women, or handicapped people or minority ethnic groups membershave applied that we have to scrape the barrel to put one on the final shortlist.

Surely the sorrect decision!

The Tories are likely to propose that after-school detention should in future be immediate and not subject to a 24 hour notice.

There are at least three reasons for this:

It is now possible for schools to reach parents by text or phone to give them notice that their child will be late home. There is now no need for a letter to be sent.

If the arrangement causes difficulties for parents, as they are ultimately responsible for the behaviour of their offspring they can hardly complain.

The punishment should be as soon as possible after the "crime" for it to have a salutary effect.

So far head teachers seem to feel that the change is a good idea.

Good fpr the new court!

Our highest, and newest court, ruled today that the OFT has no power to intervene in cases where aggrieved bank account holders feel that their bank has exploited them over overdraft charges.

A contract was opened between them and the bank when they opened the account and they agreed on things like overdraft limits and penalties. Both parties entered the contract willingly.

Perhaps the account holder forgot to read the fine print, or perhaps it was too fine, (there may be a need for the OFT to make sure that fine print is no t too fine in future.)

There is absolutely no reason why the OFT, which is about free trade, should try to break contractual agreements simply because one party did not read the rules they agreed.

The OFT could do many things to promote competition between banks in an effort to reduce overdraft charges, and certainly if all banks are operating the same charges, but trying to intervene retrospectively is surely not the way.

Bending the rules?

It has been reported that police are arresting people with the objective of adding DNA samples to the national database. The Human Genetics Commission has recently added its criticism of the practice.

Given the difficulty of having your DNA removed from the database when your innocence is established, this is a serious escalation. The estimate is that of the 5 million profiles presently on the database, perhaps as many as 1 million are innocent and should not be there.

It goes right to the heart of whole idea of such a database. A few serious offences have been "solved" by use of the database, but there are questions about what general contribution it has made.

If an offender is deemed to have "paid his price" to society when his punishment is over, he will be punished by his record in any case. Is he to be further punished for the rest of his life by being on the register? If some innocent people are on the database, is there a case to require all citizens to be on the database, perhaps with the DNA to be taken at birth?

DNA technology has come a long way, but it is not without problems, and can make for "lazy" policing and the charging with offences of people for whom their DNA was there for entirely innocent reasons, or even because of mistakes in taking samples or recording profiles.

Targets and achievements

The Daily Telegraph yesterday reported the results of a survey of 1,000 hospital and community nurses by the Nursing Times.

In reveals that in A and E departments 40% of nurses claimed that colleagues are adjusting times of arrival and departure of patients to meet the four hour target. Of the respondents, 10% said that they had been asked to falsify the figures in this way.

Even the NHS official data show that many patients are being transferred to a ward, corridor or observation area in the last ten minutes of the four hours.

The Department of Health stressed that misreporting or manipulation is a very serious offence, and require immediate and robust investigation.

What do they expect? For many people the out-of-hours service is not good, and so A and E is the immediate recourse if they have a problem. The A and E service is overloaded and has peak demands which cannot be met with the staff available. In many cases they are dealing not with accidents but with social problems such as binge drinking.

The problem is with the armchair decisions made in remote Whitehall. Hospital staff have to cope on the ground. While they may have slacker periods, they also have long periods, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings, when there are so many serious cases that targets are meaningless. We even had the cases of patients waiting outside in ambulances, to delay the recorded time of arrival.

Now or later?

The positions of the government and main opposition on economic recovery have converged slightly.

The government now accepts that there is urgent need to deal with the national debt problem.

Government and opposition see growth as the most acceptable way to achieve a reduction in the problem.

There is, however, a profound difference in suggested timing. The government wishes to reduce the deficit slowly, halving it over four years,and allow debt to rise of course, while the opposition are conscious of a loss in our credit rating and subsequent higher interest rates, so wish a significant cut immediately. So both see a false step as causing a major problem.

Action now may have a slight edge:

- The public have been prepared to expect action, and will accept it for a year or two.

- Reform is badly needed in the public sector, and this adjustment could occur early as part of the action.The 1980s saw a short sharp contraction which permitted major adjustments which had been needed for some time.

- Action will stop drifting and dithering, will send a strong message to everyone, including the important creditors.

- The Canadians went through such a process in the early 1990s with great success.

- Business and industry can be encouraged in other ways - reduced red tape, guaranteed loans, easier credit, etc.

- Some economists are concerned about the possibility of inflation, especially if sterling depreciates. A tight control will lessen this risk, and also that of another asset bubble caused by low interest rates.

If G.Brown prevails, and action is deferred, it is to be hoped that his Queen's Speech window dressing of all sorts of extra expenditures do not occur, or we could have find bottle necks and capacity constraints that lead to inflation and an eventual dreadful and severe adjustment.

The new religion

There seems to me, at present not committed to either side, that the global warming issue is showing signs of intemperate behaviour, at least on the majority side.

I read Lord Lawson's article in the Times this week, and found what I expected - an intelligent discussion on the significance of the Copenhagen Conference. Lawson is slightly sceptical of the more extreme pronouncements of the global warming "advocates" . (Did Prince Charles actually say that by 2017 it will be too late to reverse any damage? This is my question, not his.)

Lawson's position is the same in mine in general. Release the data for statisticians or other unbiased analysts, so that the rest of us can judge the foundation of the forecasts! We are waiting to be convinced, especially as a few brave dissenting climatologists are beginning to question some of the assumptions.

Is support of the certainty of man-made global warming a new religion?

Yes, if you read some of the comments on Lawson's articles. Vituperative, abusive, dismissive of his honesty, - choose what adjective you like, they read like religious fanatics attacking an atheist, or perhaps like a medieval inquisition.

Man-made global warming is a new religion, and questioners are regarded in almost in the same derision as holocaust deniers.

The problem for the liar...

Ben Bradshaw, the media, etc minister, is conducting a campaign against the Sun newspaper particularly and the Murdock empire generally.

He is talking about the Tories doing unnamed deals with the Sun, with Bradshaw apparently apparently trying to reduce any influence the paper might have in the forthcoming election campaign.

I have no knowledge one way or the other about a deal, but it does strike me that there may be a little sour grapes in NuLabour having lost the support of the Sun, etc, on which they had relied for so many years.

If you have had support because of a deal done, then you suspect that anyone else must have behaved in exactly the same way.

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said, "The problem for the liar is not that nobody believes him. It is that he can't believe anyone else."

Self interest or common sense?

The Daily Telegraph today, in its business section, reports some interesting or even encouraging statistics about pay, in the private sector obviously.

Over half of all employees in the UK have agreed to a deterioration in their pay recently. Nearly 30% have worked unpaid overtime or worked longer hours without extra pay. Roughly 15% have accepted a pay freeze or taken unpaid leave, and a further 7% have taken a pay cut or not asked for a pay rise.

Often the initiative has come from the employer, - for example BT offering to pay 25% of normal pay to any employee who takes a year's (unpaid?) holiday, or alternatively a one-off payment of £1,000 to switch to part-time working. Car manufacturers also had various schemes.

Often it is to save jobs for when the recovery comes, or the market picks up, to remain in employment even if it is costly to the employee.

Unfortunately workers in the public sector, with "safe" jobs and with very good pensions paid for by workers in the private sector, are not showing the same restraint. The Communication Workers in their dispute with Royal Mail actually included pay rise as part of their demand, and other unions are also asking for positive pay increases. The end result for these groups could well be delayed but inevitable job reductions and imposed pay cuts.


The self-restraint and loyalty to employers is admirable, but there is the concern about what happens when the economy begins to recover. If those who have born sacrifices try to make up their losses quickly, employer's costs could rise, and thus prices, and hold back recovery. In addition if there is any inflation, and we know that VAT will give it a boost, any extra green taxes, or any attempt by strong unions to get bigger pay increases because of increased taxation, there could be an inflationary boost which would lead to higher interest rates and job losses. The recovery could be nipped in the bud.

Thinly disguised as objectivity

Ed Balls, the head of Children, etc, is bowing to teacher union pressure, and to his own prejudices, in deciding to replace SATS tests for 11 year-olds with teacher assessments.

These assessments will be externally checked (moderated?) and will published as part of the child's measure of progress, counting equally with any other (if any) national tests.

So what is the purpose of these assessments? (Balls and his supporters really should see little point in them, given that they want children to move seamlessly to a secondary school determined by the local council, by a lottery or other means?)

The only point left is surely the league tables which reflect on the quality of the school and of that of the teachers making the assessments! Why do we need this? If there is any choice between schools for parents, why not simply ask the teachers how good their school is?

In the end a system like that in Germany would seem to offer something better. The child's marks for everything done of an academic nature are aggregated each year into an annual "mark"in each subject. (This overcomes the pressure of the final 11-plus exam or SATS test, by spreading the assessment.) There could be outside monitoring on a sample basis.

On the question of the quality of the school, if there were genuine choice at either primary or secondary level, parents would soon discover which schools and subjects were good and which bad. Parents and offspring would "vote with their feet" and poor schools would be revealed by low rolls, and good ones with waiting lists.

(This, I think, is part of the rationale for Michael Gove's proposals for education, with the notion of freedom to set up new schools outside the LEA if present state schools are not fit for purpose.)

The corollary is, of course is that heads and staff now relieved of a great burden should be freer to give time and thought to individual pupils, and to discuss individual pupils with colleagues and with parents.

A hung parliament?

If the most recent poling result is to be believed, the Tories have only a six point lead over Labour.

If this were to be the final result, then it is not even certain that they would have more MPs than Labour, because of the advantage Labour has in unequal constituencies.

If this happened, the LimpDems would have a real problem - should they support a largely discredited government, which is what Clegg's latest statement seems to suggest, or should they side with the Tories?

They could be in some difficulty, whatever they do because they will insist on a commitment to proportional representation, which either of the others will only pay lip-service to. Then the LimpDems are committed, because to go back will precipitate another general election which could squeeze them.

If the Tory poll lead stays at 6%, or less, we could be in for interesting times.

What could change?

The poll is one, so far, with this result, and further ones may not be so encouraging for Brown and Co.

If it does stay, and people recognise that the last thing we need is weak and divided government, this could cause a switch to either of the main parties. If Cameron blots his copy-book or Brown agrees to step down in favour of a younger charismatic leader(please, not a Blair clone), then almost anythings could happen.

It is likely that the parties could develop policies, as opposed to postures, which make voters more inclined to them. At the moment the Tories may be in a better position in this respect, but it could be that Cameron's lack of eurosceptic emphasis over the EU recently has already damaged him and them, - hence the poll result.

Expect volatility in the polls from now on, as the parties strive and as voters try to digest and weigh up what they are being offered gradually. Unless you are a risk seeker, it's probably too early to put any money on a particular result.

It's guaranteed...

So G.Brown's new idea is to guarantee qualities of public service - you will have one policeman come down your street every day or you can claim compensation/sue, etc., or treatment within 18 weeks, or the school selected for you will win highest status....

Where will it end? Presumably because central top-down targets have failed, and the Tories's "power to the customer" seems a winner, Brown & Co. have had to come up with something else.

Will anyone buy it? Those who in the past have had the temerity to claim/complain/seek redress have often found that legal and administrative wheels grind very slowly, in fact so slowly that it will be too late before you hear the result - you will have died/recovered despite the problem, the school is still the sink it was but it's too late for your child anyway.

If you were compelled to shop at a particular supermarket, and the service became poor in some way, how long would it take to correct, - possibly a few weeks, but perhaps months if the government or supermarket could prevent you going elsewhere. Monolithic monopoly public services are much more difficult to change.

If there are other supermarkets nearby, changes (for you) would be quick, - you would go elsewhere on the next shopping day. If most consumers had had the same poor service, the managers would have to act promptly or they would finish up with few customers, little profit and job losses.

Brown doesn't get it. The way to drive up standards it not to set complicated targets from London, or urge people to claim/complain/sue. Rather, let them vote with their feet and the good providers will drive out the bad very quickly, or be copied by the very bad.

Democracy at work!

Now we know who they are?

Two unknowns have been not quite democratically elected, - by 27 out of 500 million, in a behind closed-doors fudged appointment, to be president of the council of the EU and high representative. Both will be able to speak for all 500 million of us, and one of them, Baroness Ashton has never been elected to anything and has no constituency.

Irrespective of their views, which a large majority of the voters in this country to do not support, they have no democratic mandate for anything.

I have always been committed to the idea of full cooperation in Europe, but I am afraid that the EU has now become almost comical in its so-called democracy. I have ceased to be a Lisbon Treaty/Constitution opponent and become a supporter of Britain's exit. I want no part of such a travesty which a relatively small number have engineered over us all.

Gordon contra mundum

The OECD has recently added its voice to the number of organisations warning the UK that its public debt position is now so bad that immediate action will be necessary to avoid sliding into real economic decline. They follow the IMF and credit agencies such as Fitch and Standard & Poors., and a number of economists, yours truly included.

All these use UK government data, - what else could they use? As Cameron said, even if we succeed in Brown's declared aim to reduce the annual deficit by 50%, we shall still have a situation where the ratio of debt to GDP is at about the level it was when Dennis Healy had to be bailed out by the IMF in the 1970s, after an earlier Labour economic failure.

The latest government monthly budget deficit, for October, is the worst ever for that month in peace time, and double what it was in 2008. We may be coming out of recession, but our national debt gets ever larger, and makes the chancellor's forecast of £175 billion for this financial year look a serious under-estimate.

G.Brown, with his crude Keynesianism, differs. He can still promise greater spending and debt. He really is going for broke, and we could be bust.

Perhaps we can hope that in his December statement, delayed in the hope of good news I suspect, that the Chancellor has read some of the statements of the bodies I mentioned at that the start, but I doubt it somehow, with G.Brown standing over him.

No, Sir Hugh, you couldn't be more wrong

Sir Hugh Orde, chief of ACPO, the association of chief constables, on the Toady programme today contributed to the "defeat Cameron and Co" attempts of recent days.

He claimed that Chief Constables will resign on mass if the Tories are returned and pursue their policy of elected Police Commissioners. " We do not want political interference with our independence!". He is wrong on two accounts. At the moment they have political interference, - from Whitehall, dictating much of the way they behave, and what the Tories are proposing is not political interference but democratic interference, which is very different.

The Commissioners would not be party stooges or appointees, but people who have a personal democratic mandate from voters of all political persuasions. Their function will be to represent the public, even pressurising the chief constable in the direction the public wishes, because that is the only way the commissioner will be re-elected. The Commissioner would have little incentive in interfering otherwise.

I have little doubt that there would be overnight changes, with officers actually spending a minority of their time in the police station and much more time out meeting the public and learning much in the process.

I have no idea who our Chief Constable is. Our force is an amalgam of three or four county forces. I do not even know who his deputy in our area is. They are remote and inaccessible. We seldom see a constable, except speeding by in his car. I do not blame the police. They are operating under political interference.

Part of the problem is the size of forces, (And Sir Hugh this morning suggested making them even larger by further amalgamation) and their remoteness and unaccountability.

There is one problem I foresee with the Tory proposal. If forces remain in their present large size, and the area is part rural part urban, then the sheer number of voters in the urban areas will tend to impose urban needs on the commissioner, to the detriment of the countryside which has already suffered enough. The implication is that forces should be smaller and the areas more homogeneous.

Sir Hugh advocated further amalgamation to a few regional forces on the grounds that modern threats, such as terrorism, drugs, organised crime, etc, require bigger units. Here I agree with him. Such criminals do not respect police area boundaries, and policing requires huge resources at times.

The answer to this is surely to have smaller forces for "ordinary policing"- theft, disorder, motoring offences, etc., where local contact and knowledge is essential, and a parallel regional or national squad for the more serious crimes. (It could have local offices like the FBI in the US to liaise with local forces.) We already have this in some respects. Why not admit that this is a useful reform of the police?

Under the carpet?

Many have pointed out that despite Brown trumpeting it over months until recently, the Queen's Speech contained no mention of legislation on MP's expenses.

After comments overnight, the government machine is now trying to defuse the situation with various vague promises.

As the Tories and LimpDems had supported the government throughout, and had both supported Sir Christopher Kelly's recommendations fully, perhaps Brown & Co saw no mileage in pursuing it.

Others seems to have suggested various possible conspiracies.

Sir Ian Kennedy, recently appointed, had expressed opposition and publicly promised to backtrack on Kelly. Did he threaten or persuade Brown to drop Kelly quietly?

Was there mutiny in the ranks of some sort, perhaps with threats of a putsch to replace Brown? Were some honourable members threatening to take legal action in order to avoid exposure, de-selection or having to pay back?

Kelly apparently proposed discontinuing part-time MPs - several sit at both Westminster and a devolved assembly/parliament. Did some or all of these put pressure on Brown?

The truth may out. On the face of it, it does seem strange. Brown had made such an issue of the whole affair, nominating an independent board, defending himself with the promise of Kelly, that to omit it suddenly defies explanation. Surely it was not mere incompetence?

Defintions

Public sector deficit:
The annual deficit is the extent to which the government spends more in various ways than it receives in its various kinds of income - largely taxation. The figure has been rising for a few years from a few billions of pounds to a figure for 2009-10, just before the election?, approaching £200 billion.

This figure has grown as more people are out of work, or have left the country, and so pay less income tax. Company tax has fallen as profits declined, and VAT receipts and stamp duty as people buy less. Conversely government outgoings rise, not least because the extra registered unemployed will qualify for benefits.

The National Debt:
The debt is the accumulated deficits, less any reductions from surpluses. (G. Brown, while still admiring Prudence for 2 years , reduced the debt, but then blew it all). The debt is essentially government securities held in this country, - by individuals but mostly by corporate bodies, and overseas by similar groups. These holdings are to provide a return large enough to overcome any perceived risk, or for legal or accounting reasons, such as to provide banks with a cushion if they run short of cash or liquid assets.

There is also a potential or contingent debt because of the huge amounts to be paid when the Personal Finance Initiative costs have to be found. These are in effect long term i.o.u's which G. Brown loved when chancellor because they gave extra credit to the government without it appearing as an item on debt or deficit.

The government, of whichever political colour, over the next few years has to get to grips with the problem of debt which has risen so high that it is in danger of offering too much risk to foreign potential creditors. They may fear currency depreciation, which means that the same sterling amount will return to them less in their own currency subsequently.

It is refreshing to see that G.Brown seems at last to have recognised the problem, as the Queen's Speech promised a law to reduce our annual deficit by half within four years.

Who will enforce this law if the government fails, is not clear. Will it prosecute itself? It is window dressing design to catch out the Tories.

Even if the next government succeeds in halving the deficit to about £100 billion annually, over four years the debt will have grown by perhaps £300 billion, even if rapid growth follows. This means that the government's payment on interest will eventually be increased by perhaps £10 billion annually, until it can bring us back towards surplus, which means perhaps two pence on standard rate tax which will already be much higher because of previous debt.

Brown is right to aim for at least a 50% reduction, although passing a law will do little to achieve this, but it has to begin soon or creditors may make things much worse.

Averages!

An "average" is a means of representing a group of values by a single figure. In doing so it will give some sort of central tendency, but say nothing about the broad range values, that is, about its distribution. So, for instance, a group where all the value are 50 (very equal), will have the same average as a group where half are zero and half are 100 in value (- unequal).

There is a further complication, because there is no definitive idea of what figure should represent "central tendency". We normally use the word "average" to indicate the result when all values are added together and divided equally among the number of cases which produce them. This is the Mean. Otherwise the central value could be the middle one - when all are lined up in order and the central one in ranking is taken. This is the Median. Alternatively, we could take the most popular value encountered. This is called the Mode.

In most large data sets, which tend to have a "bell" shaped pattern and the highest point in frequency corresponds broadly to the middle value, there may be fairly small differences between mean, mode and median. but in distributions of values which are not symmetrical or equal about the central value, the three measures may give different results.

Today, on the Institute of Economic Affairs website, Len Shackleton illustrates the problem over the "gender pay gap". How does male pay, in general, compare with female pay? We leave aside the obvious Harman ploy, to try to include all workers, part time and full time, as there would obviously be a larger gap between male and female worker's pay, as women tend to dominate part time jobs and lower pay.

Comparing full time workers only, we find that using the Mean, the normal understanding of average, the pay gap between men and women fell by 1% to 16.4% in the year to April 2009. Using the Median, because the Mean value is distorted by a few very high earning most male workers, the fall was from 12.6% to 12.4%.

(If all workers, part time and full, were lumped together, the gender difference fell from 22.5% to 22.0%. Clearly for polemical or political reasons Harriet Harman would prefer to lump workers together, as this (falsely) shows the largest gender gap.

Which measure do you quote? It depends on your political purpose.

Shackleton ends with amusing results. If you consider merely those working in the public sector, surely those jobs most within the government's control, then the median measure of the gender gap has widened in each of the last three years, and the mean measure widened in each of the last two years.

This suggests that Harman, in attacking the private sector which has reduced the gender gap to very small proportions, is attacking the wrong target!

Prison failure?

There is apparently a new phrase in the penal lexicon - "resettlement overnight release" (ROR).

We have accustomed to lower sentencing, easier and earlier parole, and so on, often with disastrous results. Now we have a new idea - allowing a prisoner out in his final year, for up to 100 days to do community service, in periods of up to 30 days.

In 2006 governors approved 3,813 licences for such release. in 2007 it was 6,914, while in 2008 it was 11,599. The idea is catching on! (There have been some well-recorded instances of prisoners using the period outside to commit murder and rape, as well as threatening, but a prison spokesperson claimed that the scheme actually reduces re-offending.)

The scheme is intended, so it is claimed, to help with resettlement with family and community after final release. The suspicion is, taken with all the other measures I mentioned, that it is really to reduce to pressure on over-crowded prisons. Currently the prison population is about 1,000 below the operational capacity of over 85,500, but there are peaks, and new arrivals do not necessarily correspond in number with releases.

If the suspicion is correct, and it is held widely outside Labour and prison management circles, it suggest that yet again we have evidence of "weak on crime, weak on the causes of crime".

Correct in most circumstances

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

Is fear too wrong a word? We are angry about what the EU will do next without our agreement or consent? We are deeply suspicious of all the databases the government is constructing, all the supervision and all the regulation of our activities. So many laws have been enacted that we feel that we could be arrested for doing things we have done for years openly and honestly. The government is taking more and more of our money in local and national taxes and spending them for us.

Perhaps fear of government is a little strong, but we have surely reached the point of anxiety?

Does the government fear us? Certainly, in the way they cover up and try to spin their way to a different position. The Blogsphere has brought to light things they have tried to conceal. Democracy and freedom cannot prevail while knowledge is withheld. Let's make things more open, stop them going back on the freedom of information act, holding inquests in private, having private investigations into government behaviour.

It's only a symbol

Opinion is that the likely new President (of the Council) of Europe will be not be the regular guy Mr. T.Blair, but Herman Van Rompuy, the prime minister of Belgium recently.(Does Belgium have a parliament again?)

He is unknown to me, and to many, but it seems that he is an arch federalist who wishes to demote present states and nations to insignificance, and promote the EU into everything. He is a non-entity outside Belgium, but is the preferred candidate of Merkel and Sarkozy, who want a "little man" who will not overshadow them on the world stage. A little late perhaps Angela and Nicolas!

They are probably right, that he is safe and works quietly, unlike T.Blair, but he is determined to increase the powers of the EU. He is determined to remove all national symbols and flags, reinstate Beethoven's "Ode to Joy as the overall anthem, and also EU car number plates and identity cards.

They are symbols, which affect national pride, and will annoy both some europhiles and all eurosceptics. If Mr. Van Rompuy, or anybody else, applies these policies quickly I can see civil disobedience. We are being asked to swallow too much. There may even be a majority of our citizens already who want total or partial withdrawal. Vainglorious policies like these will swell the flood.

And now for something different

I don't blog about the EU very often, - I find it so dispiriting. Here is the first of two.

Dan Hannan has recently made a powerful speech commenting on the trading relationship of the UK with the EU.

He answered the europhile claim that as 50 % of our trade is with the EU, we cannot afford to withdraw.

He made two points:
1) We export more to the rest of the world than we do to the EU. We import more from the EU than we do from the rest of the world. The figures, I assume, are aggregate figures on the trade (visible) account. We thus have a surplus on our trade with the rest of the world, and a deficit on the trade balance with the EU.

2) Other former members of the short-lived EFTA, that is short lived in its greatest membership, all without exception sell more to the EU than we do.

The conclusion is that the EU needs us more than we need the EU. In general terms the economic benefits of membership are slight or negative, especially when account is taken of the "red-tape" costs imposed on us by Brussels. Of course, the europhiles try to claim that there are significant other benefits.

"You can't be serious?"

The talk of the government or its crony, the FSA, arbitrarily intervening to re-write employment contracts of banks by changing the payment conditions, is probably politicing.

Nothing much will happen until after the election in any case, especially if bankers and banks decide to challenge through the courts. I suspect that this is either a vote-raising gesture, or more likely part of a piece trying to persuade the public that it is the evil banks, and the rest of the world, who are responsible for the G.Brown's debacle in the UK economy. In other words a blame-deflecting process is in hand here.

The policy is so asinine and dubious that it is difficult to believe that it is truly meant.

It is stupid for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it lacks objectivity and rationality. What is the "fair" level of bonus/salary for a greedy banker who is a member of a team, and success a group effort. It is irrational because it cannot be determined what is appropriate - merely a number plucked out of the air. It is stupid because banks are quite capable of finding ways round this, - forbidden bonus partly covered by fictitious promotion, all found travel to overseas branches at leisure, share options, etc. etc. Would we have more agency or self-employed people in banks?

It is worrying. We have had incomes policies before, with maximum percentage increases for everyone, but this is a single person incomes policy. Legally it can't be done retrospectively, to interfere with a legal contract made between consenting adults. It is doubtful how the government can interfere even in new contracts, without all sorts of distortions. The interference would be by the FSA, who are answerable to no-one.

We would have Boris sounding off, about the City and British financial expertise draining away abroad, and one of our few world-leading industries in ruins. Do we want this (draining away)?

By all means let's do away with all bonuses - in the BBC, where there is no competition but a virtual monopoly, and in the civil service, in both cases where bonuses are paid regardless of performance. Or am I right, it's the beastly bankers who are the ideal scapegoat who can get the public off the government's bank and buy the government's narrative?

Do clothes matter?

It seems that Speaker Bercow is to be present at the Opening of Parliament wearing a morning cost rather than the full traditional robes of the Speaker. If he thinks that the morning coat seems more modern, well perhaps it is, but only slightly. In this he is extending his principle in daily dress in the chamber, - formal graduate dress of suit and gown, but no degree hood.

So we shall have the Queen and her husband in royal majesty, but a speaker looking like a 19th century undertaker.

Does it matter? The answer is that it does. The pomp and antiquated dress emphasises on this one occasion how far back our democracy goes, just as the queen's garments and crown emphasise something about our history. Even the lines drawn by the dispatch boxes to keep protagonists more than two sword lengths apart, and the concept of loyal opposition which the EU cannot understand, are also part of the great reminder.

Serious legal cases involve judges with archaic gowns and wigs masking their individuality also serve to remind of the hard-fought principles on which our legal system depends.

The Speaker likes to be thought a moderniser, but surely once a year we may be reminded of what lies behind the whole ceremony. Keep up the good work, Black Rod and others!

"I apologise for what others have done"

Gordon Brown will, apparently, this week apologise to the hundreds of thousands of children virtually deported from orphanages and care homes to Australia in the middle of the last century. Many of them are probably dead by now. The child Migration Programme was indeed a black period in our history.

The fact that he will apologise, something he struggles to do normally in a meaningful sense, is because his "apology" is coordinated with that by Prime Minister Rudd in Australia.

Those victims who are still alive in Australia deserve to have their plight acknowledged, and especially those who were abused and badly treated over there. (At least this is better than the ridiculous suggestion that we should apologise to all slaves before 1850, or to the Irish for a potato famine in 1848. There may be descendants who still feel aggrieved, and they may even be pleased to see the haughty English grovelling, but they are not the real victims, who have long since died.)

But can anyone really apologise for that for which he has no personal responsibility? G.Brown is presuming to speak for the nation in expressing contrition. But he is (we hope) merely a temporary office holder, not head of state, and he had absolutely no part in the forced migration. During much of it he was not even born.

It would surely be far better to apologise for those things for which he is responsible, - sale of our gold bullion at rock bottom prices, destruction of our pensions, bankrupting our economy with unaffordable spending, sending troops to Afghanistan under- equipped for a war, politicisng the civil service, reneging on a promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution, etc., etc.

If he could somehow bring himself to admit his own failures, his stature would be increased . That he can't suggests that his choice of things to apologise for is dictated by political considerations, and recognised as such.

Surely not more money for GPs?

Yes, it is true. Half the health care trusts in England are offering monetary bonuses to doctors for prescriptions for antibiotics they do not write out. (How is it proved, as it is something which does not occur? If I have a blood test for anaemia, could my GP claim that he had not, after reflection, given me a prescription for an antibiotic?)

Doctors should know that there are some conditions, e.g viral or fungal, where antibiotics are inappropriate. Worse, over-prescription has reduced the potency of some antibiotics over the years, as bacteria mutate. Is the payment to compensate the doctor for having to explain to a patient who is demanding "a pill" that there is nothing? Are we patients so overbearing?

Is a payment likely to make doctors prescribe even more, to promote income?

They have paid bonuses to doctors to keep their patients out of hospital, or to use generic medicines which are cheaper. Now, in a kind of mad logical extension they are paying doctors not to write prescriptions!

I am reminded of Jim Hacker discussing an empty new hospital with Sir Humphrey, who has just claimed that the hospital is working very efficiently. When Hacker points out that there are not yet any patients, Sir Humphrey suggests that patients are the obstacle to smooth running and so.....

What the figures mean?

The green shoots are here - unemployment rose by only 30,000 in the three months ending in September!

Believe it if you like, but the figures reveal only that 30,000 more people have registered as unemployed. You would need more information to be sure that fewer people lost their jobs than in the quarter before:

- it was a summer quarter, with peak demand for temporary staff - catering, leisure, agriculture, etc. How many took casual jobs?
- how far was it due to migration - Britons and recent immigrants leaving, because of poor prospects
-how many simply dropped off the radar because they had no entitlements?
- how many managed to register as unfit?

Probably the main reason was none of these. There has been a significant rise in part-time employment, - people willing to undertake anything to avoid the stigma of unemployment or the poverty of benefits. There are now nearly a million people in part-time work, an increase of 40% on the number 12 months ago.

Whatever the reason, the number of economically inactive people, without work for whatever reason, during the quarter rose by 41,000 to 8 million. These figures, which include the 943,000 young people - a record number, illustrate our problem. The smaller increase in unemployment may be a sign of hope, and played as such by the government and its supporters in the media. They should recall how they used to accuse the Thatcher government of concealed or unreported unemployment. The same is still true, and part-time work and incapacity benefit are concealing a large part of the true picture.

Many economists were surprised by the small increase.

European Union - what next?

The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution will involve massive changes in all the member countries. There will be a considerable extension in the number of areas where the EU has taken over from national governments.

In competition rules, customs union, monetary policy (in the eurozone area), commercial policy, and in marine and biological conservation the EU has exclusive legislation rights.

In other others there will shared competence, where national governments may enact legislation so long as the EU has chosen not to act, or the national government may add. Under this heading come international aid, R & D, agriculture and fisheries, environment, transport, energy, the environment, social policy, the internal market, etc.

In other areas the EU may support, coordinate or take complementary action. This covers health, tourism, culture, education, sport, civil protection, industry, etc.

The EU is now also the catalyst/coordinator on national economic and social policies, the development of a foreign and security policy and defence policy.

This seems a full list of dominance. So what areas remain for Cameron to "defend" by means of a referendum? There are still some where the EU wishes to make a common policy, and which will require a further treaty.

They are:
- Common Taxation throughout the Union.
- European Army
- European foreign policy (after all, there is to be a high representative, with embassies, etc.)

As I hinted in an earlier posting, we could also be awkward and uncooperative. In the 1990s the French under Chirac defied the EU in refusing to import UK beef during the BSE crisis. In the end, after several years the French did give in, unpunished, but had gained economically and politically and gave notice to the EU.

In an interesting article in the Spectator this week, Fraser Nelson, quotes this example, and suggests that temporary disobedience could increase power, not merely isolate as europhiles love to suggest.

No one is quite sure of the consequence of a British Bill of Rights, which would claim supremacy of British Law over the HR Court at Strasbourg. Our legal system could again become different, and in many people's eyes better.

The ultimate sanction we have is to withhold money. The EU would pressurise us, and use legal means, but would they risk driving us out, if Cameron set up a referendum and revealed feeling here? They would prefer our membership and money, - we are one of the largest net contributors, and would not wish to drive others to rebel.

Until we are in the USE, we have some leverage, and we are in a position, if the public wishes it, to scupper further integration.

Until the recent treaty, and all the underhand and disgraceful subversion of democracy, I was emotionally in favour, even though as an economist I am not convinced that there is any great economic benefit now. I have always felt that EFTA was a much more attractive economic proposition than the sclerotic, corrupt and dishonest EU.

Glaasgow NE - the result

There is jubilation in the Labour camp, that they have (comfortably) held on to one of their safest seats, (with about 20% of the electorate voting for them!). There is disappointment for the SNP, that they ended well short of beating Labour.

The Tories saved their deposit and gathered 5.2% of votes cast, which means that just under 2% of the electorate voted for them. As they had not stood there previously, it is difficult to see whether or not they had made any progress. The BNP came fourth, Solidarity fifth, so both will be disappointed, and both lost their deposits.

The most disappointed party must be the LimpDems, who received only 474 votes, which made them as marginal as the Greens. Their share of the vote was 2.3%, and they lost their deposit. This vote share means that only 0.8% of the electorate voted for them, or less than one in a hundred.

The general conclusions must be that Labour are relieved, but given that they were supported by less than 20% of the electorate, who could be relied upon to put a cross against even a monkey with the word "Labour" indicated, this is not a ringing endorsement. (Labour had pulled out all the stops, including more than doubling the number of postal votes.)

The other point to be made is that voters were massively uninterested, despite the postal votes, and the turn out at 33% was a record low for a Scottish by- election.

There is hope yet..

This morning, surprisingly, the Toady programme gave air-time to an Australian academic who doesn't entirely subscribe to the new religion of Global Warming.

To my mind, he defended himself admirably, mainly because he was arguing from facts. I missed part of the grilling, but he was claiming that we have had short periods of warming and cooling, for well over a century, and in the 1970s many forecasters were warning us of a mini ice-age which was soon to hit us.

Perhaps his most interesting finding is the small amount of extra CO2 which is actually man-made. The vast amount is from volcanoes, according to his reckoning.

This may not be a complete rebuttal to the eco-doomsters, who don't seem to want to argue on the basis of facts, but if he is right then we still have the two questions - is the climate warming, and if so is it man made?

The question is also highlighted by the findings of a Bristol University Study, that the earth is absorbing much more of the greenhouse gases than had been thought, and the CO2 in the atmosphere has remained constant at approximately 50% of emissions despite the massive rise in industrial and other emissions.

The findings from Bristol, and from other studies, do not mean that we may ignore the emission of CO2, but it does question the easy assumptions which are leading to a lemming rush to impoverish everyone. We need facts, even those which are inconvenient.

Accountability without power?

Alarm has been raised by developments which have reduced the power of school governors almost to nil, except possibly in the case of appointments, where they have an input.

A recent study by Warwickshire University has found that governors are becoming powerless. The recent announcement by the government that they are considering reducing the size of governing bodies, means that the threat to remove local power is real.

Oddly enough, the emergence of academies, the flagship of Blair and Cameron policies, has seemed to accelerate this process. The academies are free of local control, which has been wrested away by Westminster. In addition, under the current rules the governors of academies may have only one parent governor. It should be said that Blair may be horrified by this, and Cameron and Gove certainly are. The latter want power transferred downwards to the local community, not upwards to Whitehall.

Just short of murder?

Many people were shocked at the news that a teenager, in fact aged 16, who had been found guilty of raping a seven year old boy had been sentenced to a three year community order and within eight days proceeded to rape a five year old.

It was revealed that the offender has Asperger's syndrome, and deserves some sympathy. Having said that, he also had a history of sexual assault. Once again, the victim and the community have been valued less than the offender, however.

The decision to give a non-custodial sentence by Judge Adrian Smith surprised both the police and legal authorities. Given that the offence is little short of murder, in some ways equally as devastating in its long term effects on victim and family. A community sentence which gave freedom to re-offend, was arguably not in the best interest of the offender either.

Prison authorities, in making judgement on parole applications, frequently make mistakes which result in appalling consequences. It is very difficult to predict how the offender may behave in all sorts of situations which may confront him, so they have our sympathy in an impossible task.

Surely here, however, a period for medical reports on a criminal might have helped. Could the prosecution not have made an appeal?

As things stand, in most people's eyes, the judge made a terrible blunder. Apart from to his conscience, is there no way he is answerable? Doctor's can be struck off for mistakes, and similarly other professions. Why not judges, by a panel of other judges if we are worried about political or democratic interference? Could he not be demoted, to less serious cases, or placed on probation?

LloydsTSB - getting smaller and smaller

Just over a year ago LloydsTSB were encouraged into a merger with HBOS. Lloyds was then a sound if boring and staid traditional bank. HBOS was riddled with toxicity, and doomed.

Why did the merger happen?
In essence because the government wanted it to happen. They supplied cash and waived the merger through the Monopolies Commission. Is it cynical to see that the prospect of the loss of a major bank in Scotland and many jobs/votes, was their motivation? It was also a cheaper solution to the government than Northern Rock had proved to be.

The bank's motives were to become a major player by merger, - in fact to become the largest group in the UK. They were greedy and ambitious.

Now the consequences are evident. The new group has been told it must sell over 600 branches, and major elements in the group.

There will also be major job losses, partly for operational reasons and partly to improve the share price when the bank divests. The chickens have come home to roost.

Our credit rating - a second view

Earlier in the year Standard and Poors, an index which gives a rating to governments and companies who may invest overseas, left us with a triple star rating, but commented that any further deterioration and we could lose it.

Now Fitch, another rating agency, has made almost the same point. Record levels of government debt could lead them to downgrade us. In between the IMF has made similar comments. Fitch has described the UK as the most likely sick case in the developed world.

So we have been warned twice that we cannot afford to accumulate more government debt, and our rating could drop because of the increased risk of serious economic failure. If the rating is reduced, interest rates will have to rise as compensation, and servicing the debt will make government finances more difficult and expensive. It would also hinder the the recovery from recession, as higher interest rates make borrowing more difficult.

Fitch suggested that the next government upon taking up office will have to deal with this crucial issue.

Here then, G.Brown, the saviour of the world economy, is at odds with experts whose very existence requires them to be impartial and honest. Brown still thinks a Mad Keynesian Spree is required. He is at least consistent with his belief that we were best placed in the world to come out of recession!

Those, including George Osborne, who saw that the problem was not a mere banking crisis, but rather a credit and debt crisis, may be relieved to hear support for their views. They however, whether sooner or later, will have to deal with the massive over-indulgence in debt.

Blame the schools it's easy!

A recent Home Office report concluded that weak discipline at school is partly to blame for half of young people turning to crime. A study of young people over four years aged between 10 and 25 found that 49% had committed at least one offence, including robbery and burglary. Children as young as 11 admitted taking class A drugs.

A failure to deal resolutely with the trouble makers while at school was held to be a major factor. A lack of discipline is a major problem, especially in alienating young people from education. According to a survey of members of the NASUWT union 50 minutes of teaching time are lost on average every day because of bad behaviour.

Part of the problem is the government and local authorities, who require suspended students to be reinserted in school in school in a matter of days, with no "treatment" while they were away. There are no sanctions, and staff suffer regular abuse and violence.

The report does also admit that home conditions are important in determining the process to crime. Single parent families or families with a step parents present are more likely to push a child into crime or drugs.

The problem of discipline begins long before a child is at school, and the problem will only be solved when it is solved here. The government has made one or two half-hearted attempts, so they seem to recognise the problem.

Tough no longer

T. Blair famously said that he would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Sadly on this, as with many things his words were impressive but the delivery poor.

A recent government study has concluded that the main causes of crime are indiscipline in school and poor parenting at home. Nothing seems to have changed here, although the government has admittedly tried a number of initiatives.

When children arrive at schools aged five with no social skills, no interest in reading and writing and some still in nappies, you know the battle on causes has been lost.

In some ways, because it is within their power, government attention to crime can only be described as weak. Part of this is because the prison service and the probation service are underfunded.

Prison sentences are getting shorter, parole easier and earlier to obtain and early releases not properly supervised, with dire consequences. Police are off the streets, and their observance of targets often lead them to attack minor crimes rather than time-consuming crimes. ASBOs have been given out to little effect, except to increase the "street cred" of those receiving them.

Now we learn that cautions are being used increasingly by the police, and even in the case of serious assault.

Since 2000 thousands of serious offenders, - those who committed burglary, mugging and violent attack, have had their wrists slapped, thus avoiding court and jail.

Between 2000 and 2008 2.2 million offenders were given cautions. Worryingly over 550,000 have been given at least two cautions, - 105,000 on three occasions and 51,000 on four occasions or more.

Last year, far from tightening things, the Home Office said that repeat cautions were acceptable so long as they were for trivial offences and with at least 2 years between offences. (Over the eight years 23,500 have received four or more cautions in a single year)


Most worrying was that reported by a Panorama programme recently, that in 2008 some 39,000 cautions were handed out to people who committed actual bodily harm.

For several years government spokespeople have claimed that people are safe to walk about, with the implication that many elderly people are acting irrationally by staying indoors out of fear. The above figures suggest that they are rational! We really do have a problem on our hands.

When you bear in mind how many "have a go"heroes have come near to prosecution, or even taken to court, for merely trying to defend themselves or others, and the vigour with which minor transgressions, such as speeding, parking and the like, are prosecuted, we clearly have not been sufficiently tough on the crimes which bring fear.

Lot's of activity but no progress

Christopher Booker in his column in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph commented on the "ministry of silly names". The countless acronyms which appear and then disappear is something we have all noticed.

There are overlapping quangos, with different names. There are are two with the initials FSA, - did someone forget or was one to have been re-named?

Booker points out that the DTI became BERR, and is now BI& S. Similarly the Education department became CSF. Somewhere agriculture became lost in DEFFRA.

Each time there is a change, name plates on doors and names on notepaper have to be changed, of course, so it is a costly exercise to keep the cabinet on their toes.

What it all signifies is a governing party which must always be doing something, so the result is often chaos and confusion. More importantly they like to be seen to be doing something.

Given the record of constant changes of personnel and titles, there is plenty of action.

But it's all like a rocking horse, - plenty of motion, but no progress.

No surprise here, then!

The name of the new Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has now been announced. It will be Sir Ian Kennedy.

A distinguished civil servant perhaps, and academic, accountant or lawyer?

No, whatever other qualifications he possess, it is his nearness to the Labour Party which causes concern. He is a close friend of Alastair Campbell, and one who has mixed with Blair, and who was intended to be a government adviser shortly.

So there's no surprise there, then. It will be interesting to see which parts of Sir Christoper Kelly's recommendations he unpicks.

For the benefit of the country....?

The Conservative leaders obviously believe that G. Brown is contemplating calling a general election in March 2010, rather than the expected May or June. So the Tories are making preparations on that basis.

Why would G.Brown do this? Surely if he waited until June the green shoots would have blossomed into plants by then, and he could claim to have led the country out of recession. Or despite his bluster has he begun to doubt that there will any sort of recovery even by June?

The suspicion is that the budget figures will be so bad as to destroy an already severely damaged reputation for economic competence. So if he went to the country early he could dodge having a budget until after the election when someone else might have to deal with the mess.

He would sell it to the country as being the best time for the county, but Brown never does anything for the benefit of the country, - everything is for the benefit of his party and himself.

Whatever his reason, the Tories have evidently picked up several signs, and are seriously making themselves ready.

What a situation, with such jockeying, if there was ever a doubt about fixed term parliaments surely this is the conclusive argument in favour.

Confusion at the centre?

Banks and bankers are the scapegoats for politicians and others.

Those in power, however, are expecting contrition to change too much.

The banks were responsible for the credit crunch. The reason was that private saving was too little and the banks had inadequate capital to back lending. Interest rates were low and the government encouraged people to borrow ever more to finance an asset bubble and a life-style above that dictated by their incomes. They deposited too little

The politicians are now demanding that they lend more, to help the housing market and to promote economic recovery. We hear stories of small businesses unable to obtain finance, but RBS chief saying that they cannot find enough applicants for the money they have to lend

At the same time the Regulator is demanding that banks build up their capital in order to be able to finance (future) lending with greater security.

There's a conflict here surely!

Now we have Lloyds, encouraged into an unwise marriage with HBOS just over a year ago by the government, (could it have been Scottish votes which led to this?), and now Lloyds are trying to raise funds by a rights issue while forbidden to pay dividends to increase their capital and to avoid the expensive government toxic asset insurance scheme. This is all taking place while Lloyds are under sentence to sell off over 600 branches, admittedly by the direction of the EU regulator.

Most people feel that there is a shortage of funds for lending, and economic recovery will need this. The various actors in this - Treasury, FSA, and EU regulator have the banks in an internally contradictory straitjacket.

Surely the changes in banking regulation could take a back seat until the economy recovers sufficiently to deal with a bewildered and labouring banking system?

Would Cameron dare?

Most people are agreed that Cameron's new objective, once Prime Minister, to negotiate the repatriation of a few competences from the EU to the UK, is a dead duck.

There is no way that the EU will agree to repatriation of any functions - partly because if he succeeds others will wish to, and "the project" will be doomed, the United States of Europe an unrealised dream. Tthe very act of cherry-picking from a past treaty is anathema.

So assuming that Cameron is genuine, and that this is not merely window dressing to gain election success, what does he do when his efforts are frustrated? (Personally, I think that he is genuine, that he feels that giving away power has gone too far, although he wishes to remain within the Union.) The only thing which disquiets me is his rejection of a referendum for at least six years, by which time everything will have bedded down.

He can do three things, which all lead inexorably to the same end:

1) Report his failure to the British people and invite them to express their views in a referendum.

2) Show our displeasure at the treachery which landed us in this position, by individual acts of rebellion, unpunished by our own government, and acts of UDI by our government in the areas where we want power back - social, legal, financial control. How would "they" react?, - fine us? How would they enforce their decision, by invading us, withholding the small grants we get? This would put us on a collision course, with brinkmanship leading either to getting our way or leaving.

3) Enter discussions with them about leaving. Again there would be threats, promises as usual - "Well we'll let you have your way for 5 years, but then you must submit."

In the end, they need us more than we need them. Our withdrawal would cause chaos. Economically the benefits are finely balanced. Our gains would be freedom and self-determination, and greater economic efficiency.

I wish Cameron well, but his hopes will never be realised. I, like many other members and supporters, have a difficult decision next May/June. Do we withhold our vote, or vote for another party, and lead to to hung parliament which Labour/LimpDems will run with some Tory europhiles, which is a vote for the EU in its present form? Or do we give Cameron the benefit of the doubt, and hope that when his approach to the EU is rebuffed he finds some backbone and bloody mindedness which is all the EU understands?

What else could he do?

It was damage limitation. Cameron's focus is on winning the election.

His "new" position on Europe, - no referendum for at least five years, is to do what Tory leaders have been doing for years, that is avoiding splits in the party.

The balance was between losing some members/voters now, and some undoubtedly will leave, and risking a split which could cost the election.

The europhiles will not be pleased by the talk of repatriation of powers, but they probably realise that Cameron is almost certain to be defeated on this. The eurosceptics will not be pleased at what they will see as meek acquiescence.

Cameron, who has more to lose from alienating the eurosceptics, - he may have to placate them if he becomes PM. He could use his only lever - to be bloody-minded and unpopular - to hold up any further treaties, and alternatively to threaten the doomsday card of referendum and complete withdrawal. The first would be a minor irritation and delay, the second would be a major threat to the whole "project".

For the moment, at least publicly, there seems to be no major dissension, except by MEPs Hannan and Helmer, but I expect a loss of membership and poll strength. UKIP are licking their chops with relish, so there could be a bumpy ride and a Cameron government with a much smaller majority, if any.

Bi brother gets nearer

The European Commission is intending that all cars, presumably beginning with new ones. will have an EDR (Event Data Recorder) fitted, to monitor car speed application of brakes, use of indicators and horns. There has already been a £5.5 million project, called veronica, to evaluate the idea.

They will sell it to us, although it will be compulsory, as a way for insurance companies and the police to decide fault, and also to check that all safety devices working. The equipment will cut in whenever there is a sudden change of speed and operate for a few seconds either side of a collision.

There is likely to be resistance, because the units will cost in the region of £500, and because of the intrusive possibilities. How long before a radio link is installed to warn the authorities that a collision has occurred, and why not eventually propose that since some collisions occurred at level speed the units should be on all the time with the ignition. Perhaps the car location and car charging equipment could be used, and then they would have a complete picture of where we are at all times, as well as how we are driving.

Why do they need it? Most of the information is already ascertainable in other ways, and for small bumps insurance companies prefer a knock for knock equal guilt assumption as it saves time and removes no-claim bonus.

Thee are 30 million of so cars on our roads in the UK, so installing this equipment could cost as much as £15 billion. In these straightened times, it must surely be a non-starter.

Democracy - the disappearing hope

We knew that the present lot in Westminster do not care much about local government and local wishes - they virtually run the broad sweep of local government policy by ring-fencing some of their grants to local authorities and by setting all sorts of requirements.

They tried to make the regional development bodies into massive (over)planning bodies with enormous power. This seems to have been rejected now as secretly they are introducing legislation which will downgrade heritage in planning matter when it stands in the way of "wider social, economic and environmental benefits".

So the historic building could be demolished, the green-belt invaded, if someone in London so decrees.

But worse, they are also to set up a new quango to speed up planning decisions. The Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) will be able to override any local protests.

Much of this is, of course, to enable us to meet the target of having thousands and thousands of wind generators installed around our villages and towns, or new power stations, with very little local power to oppose. If you can't carry the local community, ignore them.

The IPC is, of course, yet another quango - unaccountable, unelected and uncaring (- at least as far as local people are concerned.

What happened to local democracy?

The vengeance of Sir Ian Blair

Interviewed on the Toady programme this morning, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner was given an easy ride. He is, after all, of similar outlook.

There was much to disagree with him in what he said, but his biggest affront was his rejection of voter input into policing decisions would reduce the independence of the police chief.

He doesn't get it, does he? The reason why the police are held in such low esteem by much of the public is precisely because the police and especially their leaders are so distant and unaccountable.

The transfer of authority to some distant centre by amalgamation of forces means that voters feel even more powerless and ignored.

They also feel ignored at the closure of local police stations where they could at least have spoken to the desk sergeant. The absence of police on the beat, or their replacement by the less impressive and less effective Community Support Officers, means that in small towns and villages it is possible to walk about for weeks without seeing an officer. Above all the failure of police to turn out or attend small crimes, or even more serious ones, means that juveniles create havoc and older people feel too afraid to leave their homes.

The fault is not just with the chief constable. He is handing down orders from the Home Office, and asking his colleagues to record everything on paper, to attempt risk assessment before turning out, and arresting only offenders who contribute to targets and who will not require too much police time.

Well Sir Ian, for my part, if the police are ever to regain the respect they once had, it will only come about if they police the community in the way that the community wishes.

The independence of chief constables should exist for only the methods of policing, not the objectives. The sooner we have locally determined policy the better, and not just one councillor on some distant police committee.

How to try to win a debate

Dr. Nutt feels himself badly done by, - sacked by the Home Secretary for attacking government policies in public.

His position really says, of course, "We have the facts and therefore we should dictate policy!" The politicians, on the other hand, say "Thank you for your facts, but we shall make the policy."

This is a battle which they must resolve.

My point here is that Dr.Nutt spoke about the danger of dying from cannabis smoking, or why else did he talk about being killed from horse-riding in a year.

But the harm from cannabis is not just that of dying - cannabis like tobacco can kill people with lung cancer, it is also about long term impairment. A member of his committee later discussed the difference made by cannabis in the incidence of schizophrenia. He was quoting a doubling of the chance of contracting it after a few years. More years of constant smoking can increase the risk six-fold.

I do not have the figures, but to fail to talk about the mental illness associated is surely to try to win an argument on a false basis. I am sure that only a few equestrians die each year, and even fewer smokers of cannabis, but although people are killed in riding accidents and some are confined to a wheel chair for life virtually none contract schizophrenia from the accident.

No science has the wherewithal to weigh up the pros and cons of lung disease and death on the one hand and the brain disease on the other. Neither has the politician, but the issue is a political one and politicians must resolve it.