What's Eating Me Now

Labour Conference 2011 Caption Competition

2011-09-27T11:49:00.000+01:00

A picture from today's Torygraph:

or alternatively: "Ed Miliband greets his old friend The Invisible Man".

Dear TUC

2011-09-14T09:33:00.001+01:00

According to the Torygraph, Britain's trades unions are planning to ballot their members on strikes in response to the government's desire to make public servants pay a bit more for their pensions. Apparently, two million of the six million public sector workers are to be consulted on "industrial action".

Firstly, I don't know why it's called "industrial action". None of these desk jockeys has ever worked in an industry and they are planning a day of inaction, not action.

Then, they have the temerity to suggest that they have a right to strike. No they don't. They are a minority of workers within the civil service (one third). They have the obligation to provide the education, health and social services that my tax pays for. If they have a gripe with their employment terms, take it up with your boss or get a new job.

My tax pays for their salaries and pensions. It even pays for some union officials to strut around government offices looking for excuses to disrupt the public. It's not asking much for some of MY money to be used by THEM to save for their retirement. They have had it too easy for too long.

The Great Edinburgh Tram Robbery

2011-09-05T14:53:00.002+01:00

Forty-eight years after the original Great Train Robbery, Edinburgh City Council are mugging the residents of Scotland’s capital for about £1bn to pay for the most expensive train set any child could ever wish for.

The Edinburgh Trams project started construction in 2008 and after many contractual and political delays is now scheduled for completion in 2014. What was originally costed at under £400m is now going to cost three times as much and deliver less than a third of what was originally promised in terms of route and capacity.

Hopefully a public enquiry, which itself is about 18 months overdue, will name and shame the culprits within local and central government as well as the contractors who are probably less than golden.

But what really irks me about the whole scheme is that it shouldn’t be built at all. Why does Edinburgh need yet another service for carrying commuters from the West of the city to the centre? There are already several buses that operate from the airport and its environs that work perfectly well. Adding trams to the mix is an expensive and unjustified option.

One of the Scottish Nationalist Party’s many mistakes was the cancelling of a rail link from Edinburgh airport to the centre. Although they were correct to cancel the particular Edinburgh Airport Rail Link with its expensive tunnels and additional trains, they were wrong to discount train travel entirely. Indeed the main reason for canning the Rail Link was that it duplicated existing bus routes… which is exactly what the tram link is also doing. But for some reason it is alright to spend £1bn on trams because it’s green.

But there is a better, faster and cheaper alternative: don’t spend £1bn on any trams and invest in the existing transport infrastructure.

The main line carrying trains in and out of Edinburgh from the north of Scotland, connecting to the central hubs at Haymarket and Waverley, passes 300m from the end of the runway at Edinburgh airport and about 1000m from the main terminal building. Compared to spending £1bn on trams or £650m on a dedicated link, it would cost low tens of millions to build a new station at the end of the runway and connect it to the terminal via a shuttle bus. There is already a road infrastructure in the vicinity and existing trains could carry passengers to/from the station. It should also appease the carbon counters, since this service will be quicker than road travel and would encourage less people to use cars and buses to get to the airport.

Which begs the obvious question: why has no-one suggested this to the councillors in Edinburgh? Are the residents of City Chambers so blindly devoted to their shiny trams that they are willing to throw £1bn of our money at a project that at best will duplicate an existing bus service. Of the £560m still to be spent on the trams project, a new station, signalling and associated services will leave about £500m to be spent on more worthy projects for the capital, or better still not spent at all.

Thankyou, Darling

2011-09-05T14:11:00.002+01:00

Alistair Darling's memoirs were unleashed on an unsuspecting and uncaring nation last week. At least the 'best' bits were. Well, I say 'best'. Most likely to cause a minor ripple of embarrassment, more like.

What did we learn from Old Caterpillar Eyebrows’ diaries? Gordon Brown had a bit of a temper and Ed Balls (by name and nature) ran his own shadow treasury department. Neither of these facts are startlingly new or surprising. Brown’s penchant for flinging Nokias almost earned him a place in Scotland’s cricket team. The fact that Balls spent yours and my tax on his own pet projects means that he has even less right to comment on the nation’s finances. Let’s not forget that he thinks the answer to the UK’s economic woes is to bloat the civil service still further rather than slim it down as the Coalition are trying to do.

Whilst Chancellor, Darling always insisted how well he got on with Brown and his cabinet chums. But once there was the opportunity to earn a few quid from the true story, he has been more than happy to re-write history.

Which tells us nothing we don’t already know: politicians lie, Brown was a nightmare to work with and Ed Balls should never be allowed near a calculator.

Still All Labour’s Fault

2010-10-25T07:25:00.001+01:00

Ever since the ConDems got into power, I have been constantly perplexed and bemused that they don't allude more publicly to the previous administration's culpability for the mess that the UK's finances are in.

Bob Crow was given airtime on the BBC this week, calling for the populace to take to the streets in defiance of these cuts, which he reckons are needed because of bankers' greed. Actually Bob, it was your party that bailed out the bankers and added significantly to the nation's debt.

Gordon Brown has spent the week in dour old Fife, working on his memoirs. His chief bean counter, Alistair Darling, was similarly silent and inconspicuous this week. And why not? Red Ed would not want either of those two around to remind us all why we are where we are.

And Postman Al, the new Shadow Puppet for Spending What We Don't Have, has accused Osborne of taking a reckless gamble with the spending review. At least it's a calculated and measured gamble, unlike those that Brown and Darling indluged in, which were all about buying votes and perpetuating their time in power.

The Chancellor and anyone else in power that needs to defend the need for economic changes just needs to remember this simple phrase: "It's all Labour's fault".

Spot the difference, again

2010-09-28T15:39:00.003+01:00

Forget David, here's Ed Miliband's lost twin:

A Taxing Problem

2010-09-08T23:19:00.002+01:00

Apparently, those astute fellows at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have managed to lose £2bn of tax revenue down the back of a computer server somewhere. And since this is the UK, where HMRC have only slightly less powers than the average deity, we the taxpayers are going to be expected to roll over and cough up the dough to pay for their ineptitude.

The increasingly inane BBC Breakfast wheeled in a “tax expert” this morning to explain what those of us unfortunate to receive a demand for £1,400 should do. Aside from returning the envelope smeared in excrement, which would be my suggestion, we are encouraged to plan to lose £100 per month of our income for a year. But don’t worry, said the “expert”, it won’t happen until next April. Whoop-de-effing-do.

But what the dopey presenters didn’t consider, and indeed what has escaped the attention of most of the media, is how did the government allow this much tax to fail to be collected?

Assuming it’s the fault of a computer system – and that seems to be what is being reported – then humans are involved somewhere. Computer software, especially mildly complex programs such as tax calculators for 30 million citizens, does not just write itself, deus ex machina-style.

A minister will have had an idea; a permanent secretary will have engaged with some internal stakeholders to kick off a project; consultants will have been appointed, following a rigorous process whereby the company whose CEO contributes most to the ruling party is employed; internal staff will be re-deployed from mind-numbingly tedious jobs to a position where they can obfuscate and stall the project as much as possible. And eventually an unfit-for-purpose system will be spat out, poorly-tested, over budget and several years late.

Since the system in question is only just now miscalculating our tax, it is safe to assume that it was not commissioned by the present coalition government: it is simply not possible to implement a new IT project in government in four months. So, it must have been a New Labour idea.

But not Alistair Darling’s: he became Chancellor in 2007 and the new software is only now being found out for getting the 2009-2010 tax year wrong. Which means it was probably instigated under the watch of the previous incumbent of No. 11. And since Gordon Brown was tighter than two coats of paint as Chancellor, evidenced by his penny-pinching with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can bet that the new tax computer was subject to a budget comparable to the cost of the average Daewoo. A second hand one. With high mileage, no service history and three not very careful owners.

Darling is still culpable though, since the new system would have been undergoing testing once he was thrust into the Chancellorship. Although it was probably too late at that point to polish the pooh that Brown had laid during his time at the Treasury.

The £2bn should be re-couped from the salary and pensions of all the ministers that were involved in unleashing the shambles in the first place. Now that Brown and Darling are on the opposition benches – that is so satisfying to type – they should be forced to forfeit a fraction of their stipend to make up the shortfall. A thousand quid from each of them each month should do. Which is a million months. Or 83 millenia. Plus interest. No wonder the country’s finances are screwed deeper than a Chilean miner.

Brown and Darling – still a danger to the nation’s financial health.

All Labour’s Fault

2010-09-08T23:17:00.000+01:00

Four months into the new coalition government and the liberal (with a small “L”) media seem to delight in their daily reporting of the cuts in public services that are going to be made.

However, the news reports are all wrong in one small detail: they need to be prefixed or suffixed with an appropriate phrase to describe why the cuts are being made. Examples might be “Because of the previous Labour government’s mismanagement of the economy and public finances for the last 13 years…”, or “Due to Gordon Brown’s total incompetence as Chancellor and Prime Minister…”,

So, for example, we have in today’s Torygraph “Bank of England's Mervyn King warns over inflation”, which should read “Bank of England's Mervyn King warns over inflation, due to Gordon Brown’s total incompetence as Chancellor and Prime Minister”.

“60,000 police officers 'could be axed by 2015' due to Government funding cuts” from The Daily Mail should of course read “Because of the previous Labour government’s mismanagement of the economy and public finances for the last 13 years, 60,000 police officers 'could be axed by 2015' due to Government funding cuts”.

And lest we forget The Grauniad, “Arts funding cuts will bring down the curtain on our theatre's golden age” is more truthfully “Arts funding cuts will bring down the curtain on our theatre's golden age, because of the previous Labour government’s mismanagement of the economy and public finances for the last 13 years”.

It’s a great game to play when you listen to or watch BBC News, or read a newspaper. Try it, you’ll love it.

Happy Days

2010-05-27T09:48:00.001+01:00

Two weeks into the new Con-Dem, Lib-Con, call-it-whatever-you-want coalition and I feel no need to be wound up about proceedings. Every Tuesday is worthy of a celebration.

Two weeks ago, Gormless Gordon got in his shiny, ministerial Jag for the last time to be driven to Buck House to hand in his resignation to Her Maj. Thirty minutes later, Dave got in his even shinier, newer Jag to be interviewed for the vacant position of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. “Yes, Dave, you seem like a nice chap, the job’s yours. And you went to Eton, so you’re a shoo-in.”, the Queen is alleged to have said.

Would a “proper”, single party government have been better? Maybe. Would a government unfettered by dampening down its policies to satisfy a minority partner be better? Probably. Would a government with a clear, UK-wide majority be better? Definitely.

But anything is better than having Labour in charge for another 4 or 5 years. Ex-PM Brown is now said to be “considering offers”, ranging from continuing his work as worst leader ever by becoming First Minister of Scotland to appearing as an extra in Holby City, although I think he is better suited to Grumpy Old Men. Labour are currently leaderless, unless you count stand-in boss Batty Hatty Harperson. I don’t. Her shrill posturing at Tuesday's opening of parliament sounded like someone who was reading punchlines from a third-rate comic’s discarded material. Which she was.

Long may it continue: the coalition implementing policies to reverse 13 years of oppressive, extravagant, wasteful government; Labour sitting on the opposition benches in a permanent “harrumph”, lead by (probably) one of the Miliband brothers, or hopefully the copywriters’ choice, Ed Balls.

Happy days indeed.

Silly Punt

2010-05-06T12:17:00.001+01:00

According to the Daily Red Rag, a Labour supporter has bet £5,000 on an outright Labour victory tomorrow. He stands to win £75,000 if his horse comes in (to No. 10). Here’s hoping he is wrong and £5,000 poorer in the morning…

Sood off, Gordon

2010-05-04T21:32:00.000+01:00

Step forward Manish Sood, prospective parliamentary candidate for North West Norfolk in Thursday’s election. In an interesting tactic to get himself elected and popular with his party, Sood is quoted as saying “Gordon Brown has been the worst prime minister we have had in this country. "It is a disgrace and he owes an apology to the people and the Queen”.

I’m not sure why Her Maj needs a consoling hug from the PM, but he could do worse than dedicate his final election broadcast to apologising for his ruination of the nation, sending under-equipped soldiers to fight unwinnable wars and for believing that employing a million extra civil servants is a credible alternative to creating a healthy economy.

Mr Sood is the most honest candidate in the election. And also probably the stupidest. He'd better watch out for low flying Nokias...

'kin 'ell

2010-04-29T17:22:00.001+01:00

The Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, is alleged to have said that whoever makes the cuts needed to bring the UK back on track will be so unpopular that they will be unelectable for a generation. Well, he's right isn't he?

We've had 13 years of profligate spending on 37 ministerial departments, 300 local councils, 900+ quangos, 3 devolved governments and the EU.

There are probably a million people who could disappear from the civil service payroll without affecting teaching, health, the military and any other front-line service.

That would save a bucket-load of tax through not paying for salaries, pensions and other costs, such as failed £12.7bn NHS projects. That tax would be returned to the economy, which can be used to re-employ the million former civil servants to do something useful. Who would then pay tax and spend money, thus perpetuating the cycle. It cannot happen overnight and will be painful for all involved.

However, this will never happen with Brown and Darling in Nos 10 and 11. Cable wouldn't have the guts or the vision to do anything so radical or creative, unless it is presented to him on an abacus.

The Tories could do it though. They are not afraid to be the baddies. They did it for 18 years, set up a very nice economy thank you very much and have watched while it has been systematically dismantled since 1997. Time to let them try again.

True Colours

2010-04-28T22:02:00.001+01:00

A few observations on Gordon Brown’s self-destruction earlier today:

His forced smile whilst listening to the woman, his on-mic remarks about her being a bigot and his botox apology were all more cringeworthy than watching an episode of The Office or Curb Your Enthusiasm.

“I misunderstood what she said” – so now Gordon is deaf as well as blind?

Are we all going to get a doorstep visit from the soon-to-be-former PM, apologising for his two-faced, mendacious treatment of the electorate?

Makes you realise that all those stories earlier in the year about bullying were spot on.

Dr Who and the Tories

2010-04-26T21:27:00.000+01:00

No, not the next episode of the long-running (and long in the tooth) sci-fi series - I’m more of a Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker man - but a warning from the previous Dr Who, David Tennant, that a future Conservative government would be bad for the BBC.

The left-leaning Tennant is afraid that the BBC will be broken up and the cash used to fund commercial television. But what Tennant doesn’t understand is that the BBC is as big a waste of public money as any of the other 37 government departments. I have blogged before about the multiple, parallel news broadcasts and endless re-making of programmes that the BBC has already made several times before (usually lavish costume dramas).

The Beeb should not be immune from the cost-cutting that is needed to bring government spending under control. Indeed, I would have thought that the lefties would be delighted that the licence tax, sorry fee, was spread out amongst more recipients.

Now I know the polls are nonsense

2010-04-26T21:24:00.001+01:00

A poll announced in today’s Torygraph claims that Gordon Brown, he of the deathbed grimace, has a more trusted smile than his would-be Prime Ministerial challengers.

Now, I am still having trouble with Nick Clegg suddenly being catapulted into the running as leader of the country, based on his performance in the two leaders’ debates (this is an election Britain, not the X-Factor), but I really struggle to fathom how anybody could misconstrue Brown’s rictus frown for anything other than a man with a bad case of constipation.

Then again, if the dimwitted respondents to these polls think that Nick Clegg should be Prime Minister, they will say anything to a pollster to raise a laugh.

Spot the difference

2010-04-13T21:37:00.002+01:00

Tory potential Education Secretary and Edmund ("Osmond!!" - say it like Brian Blessed) Blackadder:

Eff All

2010-04-13T21:19:00.001+01:00

“A future fair for all”, so says Labour’s alliterative election slogan.

To save everyone from the bother of having to wade through the non-document that is the Labour manifesto, I have a handy cut-out-and-keep summary:

Rebuild our economy: that we single-handedly destroyed through financial neglect and blind devotion to whatever the City did; the rebuilding will be financed by those least responsible for the destruction; those most responsible for the recession will receive bonuses and chairmanships of FTSE-100 companies, or in Geoff Hoon’s case, five grand a day for setting up meetings.

Reform and protect our public services: hire even more workshy layabouts that cannot get jobs in the private sector; pump billions more into making the government bigger and more expensive; and then act surprised when the country wakes up in 2015 to discover we have no other employer but HM Government.

Renew our politics: we’ve had 13 years of power with nothing to show apart from £165bn of debt, £900bn of unfinanced civil service pensions and some free porn for Jacqui Smith’s husband. The only renewal of politics the electorate wants is to see the back of inefficient, corrupt politicians.

At least Brown and Co are preparing for life after politics. As with many of the industries that have been forced to lay off workers who then find jobs in call centres, Gordon has been getting in some practice:

Fair for all? Eff all, more like.

Liberal Conditions

2010-04-08T17:09:00.000+01:00

In a speech about the Tories’ potential post-election budget, Nick Clegg appears to have caught the Labour of disease of talking in "could" and "would" language. (For those who don’t know, Nick Clegg is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a political party with as much chance of governing as my goldfish).

Clegg argues that the Conservatives would need to increase VAT to 20.5%, at a cost of £389 per family per year, to pay for other tax breaks that may (or may not) be introduced. Where the numbers are dreamed up is anybody’s guess, probably from financial genius and former paper-clip counter, Vince Cable.

Actually, increasing VAT is a good idea as it spreads the cost of taxation across all citizens, including those who don't or won’t work. It is also a tax you can choose not to pay, either by abstinence or by purchasing from a country with lower sales tax.

Nice shooting Nick, you got your foot first time.

Mr. Muscle

2010-04-08T17:02:00.000+01:00

Another day, another pledge from the government: no increase in the basic rate of income tax. Aye, right, as they say up here. The famous Scottish double positive, which always means a negative.

I seem to remember this pledge from Labour before: now we have new tax rates, increased NI and stagnant personal allowances - all of which equal tax rises in all but name.

I also remember the "pledge" on introducing Proportional Representation in 1997 and the other one about an EU referendum in 2005.

Brown's pledges are similar to that of a popular cleaning product: can be wiped away and leave a nasty, unnatural smell.

View to a kill

2010-04-07T21:37:00.005+01:00

If looks could kill...

Adam Boulton was lucky there wasn't a Nokia handy for Gordo to fling at him.

Ordinary People

2010-04-07T21:13:00.001+01:00

So, the man currently known as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has finally done the decent thing and handed in his 30 days notice to Her Maj. And rather than saying how he will turn the country into a safe place to live, with low taxation, efficient public services and a government that can be trusted, he has hit the trail by stating how “ordinary” he is.

He is an ordinary man from an ordinary town. Ok Gordo, if you are ordinary then you will have probably indulged in some of the following: drinking until you vomit, watching naked bodies on telly, driving too fast, staying up all night listening to loud music, taking an illegal substance, not handing in your homework on time, fiddling your expenses.

Apart from the last activity, Brown is far from ordinary: inability to apologise, stubbornness to the point of appearing to be a brick wall, a tendency to hide the truth behind statistics, failure to get on with his fellow MPs, selective view of the past, less than the average number of eyes. If that is ordinary, no wonder we are in a mess.

But I don’t want an ordinary person to lead the country. I want someone with a bit of character, vision, spirit, drive. A cross between Andy McNab, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Branson, with maybe a dash of Joanna Lumley to add sense and balance into the mix.

Brown is the last person to be allowed to run the country again. His brand of ordinariness has run the economy into the ground, saddled us with an immediate £170bn debt and a long term £900bn civil service pension deficit, and he has presided over an administration that has brought the whole business of politics into disrepute via expenses and lobbying scandals.

Time for an extraordinary approach.

Mass Debate

2010-03-31T06:06:00.001+01:00

I eschewed an episode of Top Gear on Monday night in favour of the “Chancellors’ Debate”, a televised argument between the current holder of the public purse and his two would-be successors. Well, I say two, actually there is only one.

Vince Cable, the self-titled Financial Genius, is alleged to have won the battle of the bean counters by virtue of his insightful commentary on the hindsight that he possesses. Cable produced applause from the audience every time he stated the obvious about house price inflation and easy credit. Unfortunately Vince, elections are not decided by clapometer, unless I missed a meeting. My former neighbour and I use to have conversations over the garden hedge about how unsustainable the economy was. But we were in no position to do anything about it. The Lib Dem treasury spokesman proved last night that his party has as much power as a flat double-A battery.

George Osborne, on the other hand, had Old Caterpillar Eyebrows on the ropes on a couple of occasions, eliciting such eloquent responses as “Er”, “Um” and the classics “the economy needs to be managed by people with experience” and “our economy is best placed to weather the financial crisis”, whilst glossing over the not insignificant matter of how he and his boss got us into the crisis in the first place through their inexperience and mismanagement.

Osborne is also the only one to have actually produced a concrete policy ahead of the election, which is the reversal of Darling’s planned National Insurance increase, a rise that will cost employees between £150 and £750 per year. Labour and the Lib-Dems say that the increase is needed – to fund Darling and Brown’s £178bn of debt, remember – and is not costed. Osborne retorts that the reverse will be funded from savings. I think that when the Tories finally get to see the books and the state of government on May 7th, they will find that they can fund this tax cut and many more from efficiency savings and cuts.

And not that Darling or Brown has ever worried about where their spending will be funded from. Billions thrown at failed banks, who have then rewarded themselves with 7-figure bonuses; billions thrown at two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but still not enough to fight the wars effectively; £12 billion on a failed IT system for the NHS; £10 billion on a vanity Olympics project. Who are Labour to preach on prudent economics?

What's Up Doc?

2010-03-23T06:33:00.001Z

MPs are supposed to have learned their lessons from the expenses scandal, or so Gordon Brown keeps saying. But Stephen Byers and other MPs proved this weekend that they haven’t, as the stories surrounding the latest trousering scam highlight.

Not only are they constantly using inventive ways to fill their nose bags, but when they get caught, the excuse is always "but it's within the rules and I have done nothing wrong".

Don't they know the meaning of propriety?

Watch your back, Darling

2010-03-18T20:51:00.001Z

Rumours abound that miniature maniac Kim Jong Il has had his finance minister jailed and subsequently executed. This is because the unfortunate holder of the treasury office in North Korea could not implement the crazy currency plans of his boss, resulting in spiralling inflation. Sounds spookily familiar: out of leader dreams up an economic strategy that results in hardship and mountainous debt for his citizens.

All I can say is, if only we could adopt the same job recognition scheme in the UK…

Three – a magic number

2010-03-18T20:50:00.000Z

The Red Rag today reported that government has spent nearly three-quarters of a billion pounds on internal re-organisations and renaming of departments. Which is £780 million pounds that wasn’t spent on defence capabilities in Iraq or Afghanistan, or new schools, or employing doctors and nurses, or keeping the streets safe.

But as we know from a couple of weeks ago, what can we expect from a former Chancellor and now Prime Minister who lied to the Chilcott enquiry about the level of funding to the military - he hasn't a clue how much money is being spent, or what on.

Now Brown says that maybe in 1 or 2 years after 2003, spending on defence was lower than he originally stated. In fact it was lower in three years, Gordon. Not only did he lie to Chilcott, but he can't even make a factually correct statement in his retraction of evidence.

And we wonder why the economy is up a certain creek without a certain implement when the man in charge can't even count up to 3?

How do you know the government is lying?

2010-03-16T22:00:00.001Z

There were a couple of contradictory news items today that demonstrate the mendacity with which Labour will fight the election.

First, The Standard reported that Gordon Brown warned that the Conservative Party “could” cut funding to Sure Start centres to the tune of £200m, resulting in a 20% reduction in services. As with the greens and their passive conditionals, Labour thinks nothing of using conjecture to create a negative yarn. The Tories have said no such thing, but why let that get in the way of a good scare story.

And then in The Times, there is a commentary piece on how citizens are being means-tested at one Sure Start centre and rejected on the basis of perceived class. Families who are deemed middle class do not meet the “reach” of Sure Start in Hackney and are being turned away. So we have a situation where taxpayers who fund this scheme are not allowed to make use of it.

To use a conditional of my own, what if we did away with all the outreach officers who make up these nonsensical rules and reduced the astronomic £183k salary of the Learning Trust’s chief executive? Maybe that would allow a fair system for all and not just Labour’s chosen few.

Cutting costs in public services does not have to mean reducing the quality, level or “reach” of the services; but it can remove unnecessary staff, red tape and bureaucracy from the equation. Who knows, it “could” even mean that 20% more Sure Start centres can open.

Laugh and a half

2010-03-10T22:25:00.010Z

Spot the difference:

And also:

Give me a break

2010-03-10T22:22:00.001Z

Actors in the “webuyanycar” and “gocompare” adverts – you need to take a long, hard look at yourselves in the mirror. You are at the bottom rung of the thespian ladder. And the foot of that ladder is just below the deepest part of the London Underground.

Mr. Brown goes to war

2010-03-10T22:18:00.000Z

So now we know that Gordon Brown thinks it was right for the UK to help the US to invade Iraq. Whilst I could wobble on about how us standing shoulder to shoulder with the Americans has not been reciprocated over The Falkland Islands, I won’t, as that is not the subject of this rant.

What miffed me about Brown’s appearance at the Chilcott enquiry – apart from the fact that the whole process is a waste of taxpayers’ money – is that the PM kept going on about how much extra money he had given the armed forces. At no point did any of the lame ducks who ask the questions think to ask if it was actually enough. Brown, as Chancellor, may well have given the armed forces more cash each year, but this in no way took account of the fact that the military was involved in two wars more than they had been since 2003. Even before Bliar made his pact with that old devil George Dubya Bush, the generals, air vice marshals and sea lords were struggling to finance the operations they were already involved in.

But the most astounding revelation – and which has not been commented on anywhere in the media – is that Brown handed over billions to the chiefs in charge of the war, and then blamed these same people for not procuring equipment quickly enough or in sufficient quantities. Brown doled out a staggering amount of money but did not bother to ask what it was going to be spent on. And this is the financial genius that is running the country.

That just about sums up Labour’s approach to economics: screw as much money out of the taxpayer as possible; then throw the money at every available cause without bothering to check that the money is going to be spent sensibly, or whether the outlay is required in the first place.

For “Snatch” Land Rovers, also read the £12.7bn NHS computer system, the Olympics, £178bn on bank bailouts and quantitative easing, high-speed rail, Trident 2 and anything else that Labour can financially mismanage.

Because we're worth it

2010-03-08T06:43:00.000Z

MPs are to get a 1.5% pay rise, taking their salaries to just shy of £65,000. To predictable outcry from some sectors of the civil service, the increase has been denounced, on the basis that if the average government worker is receiving nothing extra, why should MPs. Which is fair enough, until you realise that the 1.5% is based on an average of 15 other public sector groups’ increase.

But why should anyone in government, MPs or otherwise, be getting any pay rise? When most private sector workers are receiving nothing extra, or in some cases taking pay cuts or enforced reductions in hours, the government sector should move away from their position of having an automatic right to annual salary uplifts.

The next government needs to break this cycle of yearly rises without any associated improvement in productivity. But this is not helped when the MPs themselves feel that they are also justified in getting a raise, and the case is also subverted when party leaders try to water down proposals to reform changes to politicians’ expenses.

Bad Broadcasting Continues

2010-02-26T08:58:00.001Z

News today that the BBC is going to cease most of its “yoof” TV and radio broadcasting. All the programmes that have had millions spent on them in the past 5-10 years are deemed to have failed and will be closed. No news on whether the execs that green-lighted these doomed experiments will also be axed, but knowing government departments, of which the Beeb is one, they will be moved onto different projects where they can continue to waste our money.

How about trimming fat from BBC1 and 2, by reducing the reliance on "reality" TV and cookery programmes? How about rationalising the ridiculous amount of news broadcasting that happens simultaneously across TV and radio channels, but with different presenters, crew and studios?

The report also states that the BBC will spend only a fixed percentage of the licence fee on sports programmes. This is a coded message to say that they Beeb won’t be bidding to broadcast popular sports any time soon, but will continue to waste money on non-sports, such as darts and snooker, which are pastimes you partake in whilst supping beer, not athletic spectacles.

More importantly, can the licence fee be reduced in line with the reduction in services?

The changing face of Climate Change

2010-02-25T20:08:00.000Z

The backlash against the Great Global Warming Swindle grows with the news that the data that underpins the warmists’ theories is to be independently reviewed.

Whilst this is good news, I seriously doubt that the review will be very independent, and will probably follow the same line that has been previously adopted whereby someone else from the inner circle of the ecomentalists is wheeled in to “review” the data and draw the same conclusion.

The review is not due to be released until 2013 or 2014. In the meantime, can all the policies and taxes that have been dreamed up in the name of “fighting climate change” be put on the scrapheap? The EU’s Emissions Trading Scam, sorry, Scheme, springs to mind. As does the Labour government’s obsession with raising fuel and motoring duties in line with CO2 emissions. The UK should also stop subsidising alternative energy supplies until they are proven to produce electricity at the same rate and for the same cost as traditional energy sources.

None of this will happen of course: even though the game is up for the climate change proponents, politicians at all levels and in all territories are in such thrall to their nonsense non-science that nothing will be done to reduce the tax-raising opportunities presented by CO2 emissions.

Once, twice, three times a bailout

2010-02-22T06:58:00.001Z

The Tories’ latest attempt at making them the least popular government in waiting is to sell us back shares in the banks that were bailed out in 2008 and 2009.

We saved and invested in these banks all our lives; through Brown and Darling’s largesse and our tax, these same banks have been given billions to keep the banking system afloat; and now George Osborne would like to offer us shares in the identical institutions that we already own via Labour’s desperate attempt to resuscitate the economy.

Whilst ducking a mobile phone slung by his grumpy boss, Lord Mandlespin predictably announced that the Tory plan was “incoherent”. I wouldn’t call it that, but if Osborne does manage to persuade anyone to take up his offer, he should get himself a job as Director of Sand Sales, Middle East division.

Gordon – get a grip

2010-02-08T20:42:00.001Z

Another government minister has weighed into the row over John Terry, England’s former Wendyball captain and alleged philanderer. This time, Mike O’Brien, taking time out from wasting £20bn of our tax on the 2012 Olympics, has called on the England Wendyball manager, Fabio Madeupnamio, to rethink his “crass” decision to sack the skipper.

Labour is totally split over this issue: first we have Gerry "Expenses" Sutcliffe calling for Terry's head; now the Sports minister is demanding the opposite.

Gordon Brown needs to show some leadership in the Commons to correctly communicate the government's policy on footballers' private lives. Forget the Tories’ indecision over tax breaks for married couples or whether to cut public services this year or next. The UK is rudderless on this crucial subject and needs direction.

The PM must do this as a matter of urgency, as it is obviously a much bigger issue than £178bn of public debt, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a creaking transport system, inadequate health and education systems and 4m unemployed citizens.

Cash for snow

2010-02-08T20:40:00.001Z

My favourite raiser of blood pressure, the London Evening Standard, today carries the news that £20m of damage has been caused to the roads by the recent cold snap. I wondered how soon it would be before the taxpayer was landed for the bill for the snow.

We have been paying billions in fuel duty and carbon taxes for the past 20 years. This was all done in the name of saving the planet from CO2 emissions. Since this myth has now been dispelled, there should be plenty of money in the coffers to deal with a real climate threat, rather than one inferred from a dodgy computer simulation.

Except there isn't. Because it's all been spent on subsidising wind farms, paying carbon credits to the EU and employing thousands of civil servants to “manage” government’s fight against “climate change”.

Well, here you go: the climate has changed. It’s got nothing to do with CO2, and the predicted rise in temperature has actually seen a gradual drop over the past twelve years. Spend what we've already given you in green taxes on a genuine weather threat. Any attempt by politicians to strong-arm more money out of us to pay for the weather should be met with appropriate resistance.

Stop pulling our leg(g)s

2010-02-04T14:06:00.000Z

Sir Thomas Legg’s review of the MPs expenses system was unleashed on a mostly disinterested world this morning. This is the 3rd review into MPs expenses, after the ineffective one by the former disgraced speaker and the expensive KPMG one.

Between them, some MPs are being asked to repay just over a £1m in wrongly-claimed expenses. But I still don't see any MPs being charged for fraud, for that is what they are guilty of in a lot of cases. And I also don't see any change of the rules that will prevent them from nosebagging their way through the next parliament.

I also spend 4 or 5 days away from home, which is my choice. I get back in expenses only what I spend. I do not get a flat at my employer's expense; I do not get a free plasma telly; I do not get my garden at home tended to while I am away; and I don't get free porn, unlike Jacqui Smith's husband.

The whole system needs to be brought up to date and come under the scrutiny of the taxman, who would not tolerate any of the exaggerated claims we have seen in the past 18 months.
Despite what the denizens of SW1 think, MPs are not special. They have proven that consistently during this episode.

iSore

2010-01-27T22:35:00.002Z

Ok, so now we know what Apple has been doing in its labs for the last twelve months. Whereas the trend in technology since about 1950 has been towards miniaturisation, Apple has gone the other way and taken its svelte Touch product and grown it by about 600%. Step forward the “iPad”. Very original name, guys. Dom Jolly and his comedy mobile obviously had a huge influence on the design.

Re-launching a product that his company already produces for a cheaper price and in a much handier size, Apple supremo Steve Jobs claims his new toy is the third way between a mobile phone and a laptop. Which it certainly is for Apple, as it will cost a third more than any comparable device on the market.

Jobs described netbook PCs as “cheap laptops”, unlike the iPad which is a “very expensive iPod”. Just goes to show, if you put a fruit-based logo on a product and prefix its name with an “i” you can convince the world to open its wallet faster than a sprinter on steroids. Or in other words, put two things together that no-one has ever done before, and some schmuck is sure to buy it, in this case "i" and a tablet computer.

Wish I’d bought Apple shares in 1993…

Recession is in recession

2010-01-26T22:41:00.002Z

So, it’s over. The recession that has officially lasted 18 months (but has in reality been around for about 3 years) is now at an end. Last quarter saw a 0.1% growth in the UK economy.

0.1% growth? The only things I see growing are my council tax bill, utilities bills, fuel bills and shopping bills. So yes, some corporations are raking it in and "growing".

But me? My salary is unchanged. I still have to pay ever increasing bills. On top of that, the government keeps coming up with ever more inventive ways of increasing taxes and duties to pay back the £178bn of debt it has created and to fund £900bn of civil service pensions, not to mention Jacqui Smith's husband's porn habit.

Doubtless Brown and Darling will wobble on about how they have successfully steered us through the murky financial waters and that the Promised Land is now on the horizon. The fact that we shouldn’t have gone through the waters in the first place and shouldn’t have stayed in them for so long will soon be forgotten in a blizzard of good news spun out by this discredited government.

A statistical growth means nothing, especially an insignificant one of a tenth of a single percentage point. The country will not start to feel more confident until there is a change of Prime Minister, either from the incumbent party or preferably from a different one.

Good Service

2010-01-26T22:39:00.000Z

“There is a good service operating on all London Underground lines”. This is an announcement I hear about ten times a day on the tube.

No there isn’t. There is a normal service operating. What LU means is that there aren’t any leaves on the line, snow or striking tube drivers. No trains have hit scaffolding at Aldgate. No-one has pulled a passenger emergency alarm at Baker Street. None of the customers have decided to use a Circle Line train as a one-way ticket to heaven (or hell).

A good service would be one where trains arrive every minute, there is always a free seat, there are no rabid, ranting lunatics in the same carriage and where there isn’t a chav playing crap music through the tinny speaker of their mobile phone.

Rubbish

2010-01-21T09:04:00.002Z

I was under the impression that the colossal amount of money that I pay in council tax was used in part to pay for streets to be cleaned. Apparently not. As this government dreams up ever more fanciful ways to extract tax, MPs are now proposing that chewing gum, sweets and fast food be levied with additional duty in order to fund the cleaning up of the resultant litter.

This is typical New Labour thinking: rather than tackle the underlying problem, which is that there are elements of society who think that it is acceptable to drop litter on the street, let’s slap a tax on the affected products and dress it up as a solution. This also means that the Neanderthals who are prone to throwing rubbish onto the streets will have even less of a worry, because some government-employed minion will come along and clean up the mess.

Flippin’ Marvellous

2010-01-11T09:12:00.001Z

News just in that after several inquiries and the expenditure of a few million pounds on reports, the proposals to revamp the MPs expenses system will be watered down to the point where almost no changes will be made whatsoever.

This includes the practice of being able to “flip” between their main constituency home and their rented accommodation in London, which means that duck houses and expensive plasma tellies will still be paid for at our expense. Also, MPs will be able to keep any profits from selling a taxpayer-funded second home. And Jacqui Smith’s husband will be able to pull his plonker to his heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that it won’t be costing him a penny.

So much for MPs listening to the electorate’s concerns. Their day of reckoning is coming soon.

Dangerman

2009-12-22T17:28:00.001Z

An increasingly desperate Prime Minister is now using the politics of fear to attempt to win points from the Tories. He has announced that a Conservative victory at the next General Election would be a danger to the economic prospects of the UK. Whilst glossing over the not insignificant matter of how Labour would turn around the country’s finances, he is trying to portray David Cameron’s party as the potential creators of “an industrial wasteland” that would decimate public services.

Brown has shown many times over the last couple of years how massively out of touch he is with the nation. How he can stand up and announce that another party would be worse for the economy than his, displays the delusional nature of the man.

This is the man who "abolished boom and bust": time will tell - he inherited a boom and created the bust. There is no sign of a fresh boom.

This is the man who cosied up to the bankers and hedge fund managers, a bunch of people with an eye only on their next Porsche or holiday home, and not the best interests of the UK.

This is the man who has sanctioned the spending of nearly £200bn of our tax revenue to prop up banks, banks that have then used that money to pay themselves bonuses and not to finance the rebuilding of the UK economy.

This is the man who has permitted the civil service to expand to the point of torpor and allowed them to amass a £900bn pension deficit that is conveniently kept off the balance sheet.

This is the man who manages to find billions to spend on grandstanding projects such as the Olympics, climate change, ID cards and Trident, but can't finance equipment for the brave soldiers who fight in the two unwanted wars that his predecessor dragged us into.

Given that little lot, I can't see how anyone else could be a bigger danger to the economy than Gordon Brown and the Labour party.

To paraphrase Neil Kinnock’s rallying call from the 1983 election: don’t be ordinary, young, old or ill, otherwise the Conservatives will leave you by the wayside.

Or in Gordon’s words: “If Labour wins in May 2010, rejoice all ye who are scroungers, dole cheats, civil servants, bankers and hedge fund managers. The rest of you can get your cheque books out (although only until 2018 - credit cards accepted too)".

But of course Kinnock lost, too.

Mandy for Mayor

2009-12-21T17:18:00.001Z

According to the Daily Red Rag, Lord Mandelson wants to stand as a candidate in the next London mayoral election. If true, this is the best news that Boris Johnson has had for ages.

If the Inebriated Newt, Ken Livingstone, decided to run again, there are just enough deluded souls to the North and East of London to hand him a victory; but apart from a few of the Notting Hill set, I can't see anyone in London voting for Lord Mandy of Pandy.

Then again, if I was Bojo, I would be happy to hand back the shambles that will be the 2012 Olympics to the administration that so wanted it in the first place.

Christmas is bad for your wealth

2009-12-15T23:33:00.002Z

At least it is if you are one of the poor saps who contribute tax to the funding of the NHS. One of the administrative departments of the NHS, based in Southwark, has spent £2,500 on a Christmas tree to decorate its office.

This is wrong in so many ways that it is difficult to know where to start, but I will. Firstly, why is a manager given the authority to sign-off such a large purchase on what is basically a frivolity? Is the NHS so efficient and awash with resources that this sum of money can be afforded in preference to front-line services for patients? I think we know the answer to that one.

Next, how do you go about procuring a Christmas tree that costs £2,500? Allowing for the fact that Southwark is in London and therefore prices are higher than elsewhere in the UK, a decent-sized tree should not cost more than £100, and even that is outrageous. The tree is reported as “dressed”, so it must come with tinsel, baubles and lights, but even the most ardent spendaholic would struggle to waste more than a few hundred quid on decorations. So that leaves a balance of about £2,000 to deliver and set up the tree, which means someone is trousering a nice little earner.

But if this is a symptom of the spending patterns within the NHS, where Christmas decorations are bought for a minimum of 5-times their actual value, what does it say about the rest of the spending within the NHS? At a time when companies and households are trying to spend less, and when even the presiding party has woken up to the fact that the civil service might be a tad corpulent, it’s time for a full audit of the procurement process within the health department.

The NHS spends about £8bn per year on drugs: maybe that should be nearer £2bn? What about all the medical equipment? Then there are the IT systems, of which at least £12bn has been wasted on a national system for patient records. The total NHS budget is about £100bn, or should it be £20bn?

The Tory party has said that it will “ring fence” the NHS budget if it wins next year’s election. This cannot be justified in an economy where there is a £200bn budget deficit. If the NHS is wasting thousands on Christmas trees, how much is it wasting on core services? And how much are the other departments wasting? There is plenty of scope for reducing the deficit quickly, as long as there is political will to do so and cooperation from the civil service.

The next government needs to move on from Labour’s “think the unthinkable" and actually “do the undoable” – reduce the size and cost of government, whilst delivering better services.

Boilers, Broadband and Bingo

2009-12-15T23:32:00.000Z

Alistair Darling’s pre-budget report did little for relations between himself and Gordon Brown, but I’m sure his eyebrows will lose no sleep over that. Brown wasn’t exactly friendly with his former boss. Tensions between Prime Ministers and Chancellors are nothing new. Although in this case, when is someone going to point out that there is a common denominator: Blair and Brown don’t get on and run the country into the ground; Brown and Darling don’t get on and just keep on digging us deeper.

But Darling’s PBR did wonders for the Conservatives’ chances of being elected in 2010. Not only did the Chancellor fail to tackle public debt, but he also saddled most taxpayers with tax rises in the form of additional National Insurance payments. Darling should do the honourable thing and cross the floor of the Commons and sit with his natural party, the Tories. Not only has he helped them win the election, but his public school background will sit well with their breeding. At least that is probably what Gordon Brown is thinking, a man who was disabled at his local school, but thinks this is preferable to having your policies tainted by a private school upbringing.

And the winners out of last week’s mini budget are those wanting to scrap their old boiler, rural communities without broadband and those with a disposition towards fat ladies and little ducks.

Introducing boiler scrappage is a curious ploy, but he can dress it up as a green initiative whilst actually targeting the low-paid and pensioners; the reduction in bingo duty is obviously aimed at the Jeremy Kyle-watching layabouts who cannot get enough of this government’s handouts. And broadband is touted by Lord Mandy of Pandy as an essential utility, akin to water and electricity. It has also been described as a “human right”.

So it’s a human right to watch monkeys pull peanuts out of their bums? Or to announce on Twitter that it is cold/sunny/wet or what you had for breakfast? And the last time I looked, provision of broadband in this country was the responsibility of private companies. I resent having £6 taken out of my pocket each year to help BT and other companies to improve the nation’s broadband infrastructure. Darling appears to have forgotten that BT is no longer part of the civil service.

I commend this budget to the workshy, infirm and impressionable males wanting free porn. And please vote for me.

War, what is it good for?

2009-12-10T09:22:00.001Z

If the government is to be believed, they and us are currently waging many wars: there is the war on terror, which is physically costing lives in Iraq and Afghanistan; there is a war on benefits cheats, which is failing, as the number of people watching Jeremy Kyle increases every year; there is a war on drugs, which is obviously doing really well, too, judging by the number of people who go to the NHS with heroin addiction and end up with methadone dependence instead.

And the latest war that Gordon “Superman” Brown is fighting is against climate change. You would have thought that with his previous form with starting wars he can’t finish or win, he would know better than to take on nature. But the PM does not let little things such as impossibility, implausibility or lack of ability get in his way. Or the issue that the “science” behind climate change is not exactly rock solid.

The publication of emails from the University of East Anglia suggested that “scientists” were prepared to interpret their results in a manner that strengthened their argument for man-made climate change. There was a piece on the BBC news last night where a very large bar graph was shown, indicating the rise in global temperatures, but if you looked at the scale of the graph, the actual rises over the past two decades were about 0.1 degrees every 10 years. There are articles in the press every day about climate change that are littered with words such as “if”, “would”, “could” and “may”. I like to call them “green passive conditionals” – GPCs.

I doubt very much that there is a global conspiracy to propel climate change into the limelight and blame it all on overpopulation, meat eaters, flying, Land Rovers and cows. But it does seem that way sometimes. And I wouldn’t mind – quite so much – if there was any credible science behind the claims of the proponents of climate change. And by credible, I mean the empirically measurable, cause and effect kind of science that keeps buildings upright, aircraft in the air and that ensures 1+1 will always equal 2.

And talking of aircraft, the government yesterday gave the “green” light (forgive the unintended pun) on the third runway at Heathrow. Even though having more aircraft over London will generate more CO2, this will not matter as long as those aircraft are cleaner and there is a high-speed rail infrastructure to take passengers to destinations that normally require short-haul flights. So that’s great, the project is good for the planet.

Er… hang on, rewind. Notice how a couple of those green passive conditionals slipped into the government’s report? “As long as the aircraft are cleaner” – that stipulation will require all of the airlines using London’s airports to completely re-engineer their fleets to use less fuel. This is not cheap: a basic Airbus A319 costs about £36m; the current model Boeing 747 is about £150m. And that’s before they are redesigned to run greener, a project that will not happen overnight. And before all the airlines agree to swap their existing fleets, or at least the engines, for greener models, which the government has next-to-no power to force the airlines to do. It also overlooks the not insignificant matter that most airlines are running at a loss these days: the last thing they need is to replace their planes to satisfy the conscience of the green lobby (40,000 of whom are quite happy to use aircraft to jolly it over to Copenhagen…)

There was also a second throwaway GPC in the government’s statement: “a network of high-speed rail lines connecting the UK’s major cities”. Not only do we have a gratuitous misuse of statistics to justify an airport runway, but we also have the repeated announcement of Lord Adonis’ #1 Christmas present: a high speed train set. This is at least the 3rd time it has been announced this year. But not 1 inch of track has been laid. There has also been no planning as to where the track will go and which cities it will connect. It is a pure vanity project on behalf of Lord A, fuelled by vapour and propelled by steam. As I am oft to quote, it took eleven years to lay the 67 miles of railway between London and Dover for the Channel Tunnel High Speed Link. At that rate, it will take about 22 years to connect London to Birmingham, another 13 or so to get to Manchester and the same amount again – thirty-plus years – to get to Edinburgh. And that’s before they think about linking North-East to Newcastle or West to Bristol and Cardiff. The government thinks that by talking about something, it will magically happen. This is government by Harry Potter spells.

But not wishing to duck the issue of climate change completely, are there solutions that are less onerous than forcing us to kill Daisy the cow, exterminate every second-born child or give up our foreign holidays and cars?

Yes, and it’s called geoengineering. This is the appliance of science (remember that?) to combat a perceived threat from the climate, regardless of its cause. There are simple measures, such as planting trees and reflecting heat from roofs. There are also some Star Wars-y ideas that involve pumping sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the planet, or building machines capable of generating clouds from sea water, which again cool the air. These schemes are not cheap, but they do represent a return on the investment that the government is asking us to make in the name of green taxes. What would you rather see from your fuel duty? A waste of our money that is used to bail out banks, create quangos and provide civil servants with cushy pensions? Or, a machine that is capable of taking the waste products from mining and pump them into the air to cool the planet?
Geoengineering in itself is not the cure for climate change. But to use a GPC: what if climate change is not man made and cutting down on burgers, holidays and journeys to work does not cool the planet? Shouldn’t there be a Plan B? By all means let the climate change scientists beaver away at their models and predictions, but at the same time, let’s get some smart people like CERN and Intellectual Ventures to use some of those tax pounds, euros and dollars to investigate alternatives to disrupting the economic, social and labour fabric of society.

The Westminster Shuffle

2009-11-24T11:27:00.000Z

According to The Times, Gordon Brown has been approached by Lord Mandy of Pandy, pressing him to reshuffle the government so that Mandelson can get an early Christmas present of a new ministry. If it goes ahead, less than 3 months after the last rearrangement of the Titanic's deckchairs, then it is time for us to take to the streets and demand an end to this government.

There will be no benefit to the electorate in allowing this washed-up bunch of fraudsters a last chance to play at being Foreign Secretary, Deputy PM or Assistant to the Privy Seal.

In case the Prime Minister hadn't noticed, this country is on its knees: £200bn of debt; £900bn of unfinanced civil service pensions; rising youth unemployment; rising inflation; unwinnable wars causing daily death tolls.

This is not the time to be indulging in vanity to permit a few politicians the chance to run the "department of their dreams". If any one of the geniuses currently in charge of a government department would have done a better job elsewhere, the PM should have had the foresight and intelligence to have appointed them a long time ago.

The election is over, can we please just get on and vote?

2009-11-19T13:37:00.001Z

Yesterday’s parade of ermine and tiaras at Westminster (and that was just Peter Mandelson), highlighted that we have a dead government walking. Or lumbering towards an inevitable defeat. Most of the announcements were re-wordings of previous policies that still haven’t been implemented, despite 12 years of Labour promises and guarantees.

There was no mention of cleaning up the expenses system and parliament in general, at least not until the government was forced into a U-turn this morning by saying that this will now become a priority. There was no mention of how to pay for the new flagship elderly care bill – maybe OAPs will be shipped en masse to Spain to retire? There was no mention of how to reduce a £200bn budget deficit or how to finance an estimated £900bn of civil service pensions.

Six months is a long time in politics. But precious little will get done in SW1. If reports are to be believed there are between 33 and 71 actual days of debating between now and the end of May. That is next to no time to tackle major problems such as elderly care, the NHS or education. But it is plenty of time to implement a new expenses system and prosecute those who tried to buy duck houses and free porn from our hard-earned tax. And that would give us a clean system going into the election.

I would wager that most people intending to vote next May have made up their mind. There is little Labour can do to convince any sane person to give them another chance. The next six months are going to be wasted in Westminster because the government is tirelessly hanging on to their right to govern for the maximum 5 years. It’s a shame Her Maj (the real one, not Peter Mandelson) didn’t deviate from the script yesterday and announce that in the interests of her people, she was dissolving parliament forthwith and we could all have a new government for Christmas.

There are going to be six month’s of sniping, back-biting and murky revelations (and that’s just about Peter Mandelson). Can we please just draw a line under the tawdry mess and get the voting over with? It will save time and money that could be put to better use in sorting out the ruinous state that the country is in.

Stop the expenses scandal, I want to get off!

2009-11-12T16:03:00.001Z

How many reports on expenses does it take to change the attitudes of MPs? We (the taxpayers) have paid KPMG millions to produce one report; Sir Christopher Kelly is now spending a few million more to digest that and produce another one.

One of the recommendations from Kelly’s report will be the setting up of a quango to oversee MPs expense claims – the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. (You see what’s happening there? Not content with being caught with their hands in the till – or pants around their ankles in Mr Jacqui Smith’s case – they are creating yet more jobs for civil servants and cronies). But it won’t be independent, as the people working there will be appointed by the MPs themselves and you can bet that they will be ‘influenced’ to water down the proposals from KPMG and Kelly. The quango will also not start its work until after May 2010 and most of Kelly’s proposals will not take effect for 5 years, in order to give MPs time to adjust.

Time to adjust?! When any normal company implements a new policy, it usually happens within a few months and the employees get little say in the matter. MPs and unionised firms appear to be the exception, where toys are ejected from prams and the public is inconvenienced whilst ‘workers’ and employers decide who is going to back down first.

When are MPs going to accept that they are no more special than the thousands of people who travel for business every week and give up their plasma tellies and subsidised housing?

- Hotel or rented flats reimbursed at cost (less than £100 per night)
- Meals reimbursed at cost, limited to £50 per day
- No claims for those living within 50 miles of Westminster
- Travel to be via cheapest option from constituency, not a phantom home
- Porn and bath plugs not allowable

There, that didn't take £6m to work out, did it?

Santa Claus is coming to town

2009-11-02T13:45:00.000Z

…in the shape of Alistair Darling and the town is the City of London.

Alistair Darling is going to give the banks an early Christmas present to the tune of £30bn of additional funding to see them through this difficult time of year. Bankers not knowing where their next magnum of Krug, holiday to the Maldives or deposit on a bolt hole in Cornwall will come from, can sleep restfully in the knowledge that the 28m other tax payers will be providing for them this yuletide.

It is obvious that Darling and Brown are clutching at straws and are desperate not to be the last major economy to be mired in recession, especially as we are now 6 months from deciding which UK party will have the right to implement Brussels' edicts for the next 5 years.
The Chancellor would be better off writing a cheque for £1000 for every taxpayer, which equates to roughly £30bn. That way we would either spend the money, in which case retailers benefit through increased sales, as does the government through VAT income; or we would save the money, in which case the banks get the money anyway.

The Real C-word

2009-09-30T17:28:00.000+01:00

On hearing the news that The Sun is supporting the Tories in the can’t-be-called-soon-enough General Election, Lord Mandy of Pandy, Peter Mandelson is alleged to have referred to the newspaper as “c*nts”.

All I can say is: it takes one to know one.

Return of the Newt

2009-09-24T17:03:00.001+01:00

The Daily Red Rag has published yet another article by the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone (why is the Inebriated Newt still given the oxygen of publicity?)

He uses this diatribe to broadcast his tired, mixed-up views of congestion charging and emissions control. In a predictable response to yesterday’s announcement from the present Mayor that the Western extension to the London Congestion Charge may not be scrapped any time soon, Livingstone argues that the zone should be expanded to include punitive charges for large vehicles. What he doesn’t argue of course, is for the zone to be extended North or East into the heartlands of his core voters.

The CC is all about reducing traffic levels; if it reduces emissions too, then that may be a good thing, but since London gets as much pollution from Rotterdam, Paris and Manchester, we needn't worry too much about a few Tonka toys dropping off Tamsin and Tarquin.

And unfortunately, the CC has completely failed to reduce traffic levels. Traffic levels are up and jams are worse than ever. I walk from Fleet St to Charing X every evening, and can get there quicker than any car or bus. However, this is not caused by volume of traffic, but poor management of the traffic that is there. Livingstone failed to introduce any legislation to prevent multiple holes being dug up in the same area. Livingstone ordered the installation of traffic lights every 100 yards on main roads to help pedestrians cross streets at any opportunity, and to frustrate motorists out of their cars (and for cyclists to ignore completely).

Unfortunately, like the Treasury’s addiction to using road tax and fuel duty to bail out every other government department, TfL is now dependent on whatever income it can get from road pricing. This means the CC is being used primarily as a revenue source for a quango, rather than as a means of alleviating traffic. TfL is short of cash because less people are working in London. Therefore fewer commuters are using the antiquated, unreliable tubes and buses, so TfL need to steal some money from elsewhere.

If we take a reductionist view of the Congestion Charge and it achieves it stated (original) aim, then less traffic will drive into London and therefore less money will flow into TfL’s coffers. This means that TfL needs to look for another source of revenue. Their current thinking is to maintain the Western Extension, which Ken famously instated against public will purely to upset the residents of Kensington and Chelsea. The fact that he killed off numerous businesses at the same time was less important than sticking two fingers up to the toffs in West London. In which case, let’s extend the CC across the whole of London and make it equally unfair for all. That will raise even more money, which can be invested in CrossRail and keeping the existing transport infrastructure going.

Or how about reducing the extortionate prices charged to travel on the tube? That would encourage people out of their cars, who reason that spending £8 a day to travel into London is only a bit more than £5.80 for a return ticket on a cramped, hot, unreliable train. Air-conditioning and listening to Radio 4 in private, versus cattle-transportation conditions and being forced to listen to someone’s Nokia playing the latest atonal catawauling from the Top 40? No contest.

And as for Livingstone: you lost – get over it and leave us alone.

The Lib-Dems are the new Monster Raving Loonies

2009-09-22T17:13:00.000+01:00

The Lib-Dems seem to have adopted a new tactic in their campaign to not get elected or become the official opposition in 2010: announce radical, vote-losing policies that no-one in their right mind would support.

At yesterday’s conference session, their leader, Nick Doodah – can never remember his name – declared that anyone with a property costing more than £1m would be taxed annually at 0.5% of the value. This is so that the “low paid” can be removed from the income tax system completely, although in reality the money will go to those on benefits and other forms of income support. Wonderful – so someone who has paid attention at school and worked hard to buy their dream house, now has to subsidise the workshy. All very socialist; all very certain to consign the Lib-Dems to another period in the wilderness.

At the same conference, Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, announced that the much-needed and even much more delayed CrossRail project would get the axe if the Lib-Dems get into power. This is the Vince Cable who is held up as an economic guru, for his ability to voice the most loudly what most of us knew about the New Labour boom – it was a sham built on unrealistic house prices and over extension of debt. Cable was supposedly a “chief economist” for Shell, which probably translates to Assistant Clerk to Head of Logistics Supplies (Paper Clips) London (West).

What this country desperately needs after nearly 13 years of public sector growth in personnel and salaries is for spending on core infrastructure projects. It does not need backward-thinking 3rd rate politicians to spout on about re-distributing non-existent wealth or threaten to cancel upgrades to the creaking transport system.

However, none of this is likely, unless by some freak of politics Labour win a fourth term in government and steal the Lib-Dem’s ideas, as they tend to do with anything that is short-term and populist. What Cable and his boss appear to have forgotten is that they have as much chance of being in No’s 11 and 10 Downing Street as Laurel and Hardy. Although at least the latter pair were entertaining.

The C-word

2009-09-15T17:08:00.004+01:00

Like the S-word before it (“sorry”), the soon-to-be-replaced-one-way-or-another incumbent of No. 10 is now having trouble with another alphabetic conundrum. How to present the withdrawal of funds to government departments as anything but a cutback, or “cut” for short.

Brown and his cronies have spent their way through nearly 13 years’ worth of tax receipts and have little to show for it, unless you consider 1.2m additional civil servants and more than 630 new quangos to be good things. Where is the new rail infrastructure promised by John Prescott in 1997? Where is the world class education (education, education) system? Where are the clean, queue-free hospitals? Where is the healthy economy, complete with built in lack of boom and bust?

What we do have is an army of civil servants – 6m at the last count, 6 times larger than the Chinese military – most of whom have good salaries and final salary pensions. All of this costs a lot of money (your tax) and when combined with the £175bn lobbed at the banks to stop them from going belly up, there is not a lot of money left for the important things in life, such as trains, schools and hospitals.

The electorate has also woken up to the unfettered lavishing of money on government departments for little return and is now expecting the next administration to take a red Bic to all the non-jobs, quangos and unelected peers (watch your back, Mandy). All of which has provoked Gordon Brown to reverse his nonsensical talk of “Tory cuts vs. Labour investment”. Today he will announce that “Labour will cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut low-priority budgets”. Wow, four uses of the c-word in one sentence. There is no greater joy in heaven than a sinner who repents.

There is no mention of course as to where this application of the c-word will come. I would put money on Labour’s interpretation of cutting costs as involving consultants, feasibility studies lasting 12 or more months, a large bill and the ultimate decision that in fact the department involved actually needs more staff, not less. All very “Yes, Minister” as anyone who has seen the episode The Economy Drive will attest.

There was an interesting article in The Times last week, where the newly elected, independent mayor of Doncaster remarked that he “wants to remove PC jobs but doesn’t know where they are in his council”. And that sums up the dilemma that will face the next government: where to find the waste? Well, here are a few ideas…

Firstly, remove all of the unelected peers with ministerial responsibility that have been appointed in the last 12 years by New Labour. If someone has to run a department, they should be an elected MP who is accountable to a constituency, not a sometime TV presenter or favoured crony. Next, rationalise the number of government departments and ministers reporting into No. 10. Why do we need a Treasury and a Secretary to the Treasury, both as separate departments? Why are there such large departments for devolved parliaments in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland?

The culling of departments should also be accompanied by a culling of quangos. There are now 1,100 of them costing £60bn annually. And no-one knows that they are doing. There is no supervision or accountability (as evidenced by the “quasi autonomous” and “non-governmental” nature of the moniker). However, they are not autonomous as they influence policy and taxation, and they are governmental as they are funded centrally by the government. What, for example, do the Zoos Forum and the British Potato Council contribute? It is also typical for the head of a quango to be a favoured acolyte of the PM or a close friend of a senior minister, thus providing yet more jobs for the boys and girls.

The last axe should fall on anyone not directly contributing to a public service. Doctors, nurses, teachers, soldiers, sailors etc should be spared (although they should all contribute more to their pensions). Staff directly supporting these professions (IT and HR) should be audited for waste, especially those spending £12bn on unused systems (step forward the NHS). But departments that are tangential to public service and provide no direct benefit to the public should be closed down. This would include the Highways Agency, "a:gender" (look at their website), the Charity Commission and Efficiency in Government (surely they should be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act?), to name a few. There was even a Millennium Commission that was not wound up until the end of 2006, six years after the millennium dome fiasco.

And to think that all this talk of cuts was initiated by a slip of the tongue by Tory MP Andrew Lansley back in June. Back then he was vilified by Labour and given a fairly frosty reception by his own leader for daring to suggest that the civil service party might be over. Now it seems that his 10% cuts are the talk of the town. I also ranted about it at the time, suggesting that 10% should be a minimum target for cuts.

Although when I think of the c-word and Gordon Brown, it is a different word, and it includes the n-letter.

Gravy train comes off the tracks

2009-09-08T10:34:00.001+01:00

One of my earliest Blog posts was on the subject of MPs expenses. Way back in April 2008, when John Lewis lists were just coming to light but before the full Telegraph exposé of free porn, duck houses and “flipping”, I posited the idea that MPs should not receive £23,000 a year in tax free income. Since there are many thousands, if not millions, of workers who regularly work away from home and incur travel and living expenses, then maybe MPs could adopt a similar scheme for themselves?

However, that would have been far too sensible and, if implemented quickly i.e. last April, would have denied the residents of SW1 another year of trough-dwelling at our expense. It would have also denied the government the opportunity to appoint one of its favoured management consultancies and auditors to commission a report on how best to overhaul the expenses system.

In a “confidential report” from “financial experts KPMG” – not so confidential that the Daily Mail have seen a copy, and the dubbing of the producers of the report as experts is similarly the Mail’s reckoning, not mine – only those MPs whose constituencies are beyond a 90-minute commute will be able to claim, and only then for rent or hotel bills.

Well, dress me in a tutu and call me Samantha if that isn’t what anyone with a shred of common sense has been baying for since the profiteering abuse of the expense system was first exposed. Why did it require a report to be written, doubtless at a cost of several million pounds, to state the blinking obvious? The MPs system of expenses should reimburse only money paid out and should not be open to the kind of exploitation that allowed certain politicians to make almost £200,000 from selling a taxpayer-funded second home.

Anyroadup, hopefully now that someone who is respected by the government have rubber-stamped the kind of expense policy that is in place at most private companies in the UK, if not the world, then we can finally see some closure on this whole sordid topic. But it will deny me a rich source of material to comment on.

Uplifting Experience

2009-09-03T11:07:00.000+01:00

It was reported yesterday that the council in Rochdale pays some of its workers a “lift allowance” to compensate for them having to spend so much time waiting for the antiquated lifts to take them to the 10th and 11th floors. Since they spend so much time waiting for lifts, they waste precious time that could be more wisely spent in inventing new ways to consume council tax, or so the story goes. They are therefore rewarded for this lost time to the tune of two-and-a-half extra days of pay.

Leaving aside the fact that anyone could have dreamed up such a daft compensation scheme and also leaving aside the fact that anyone in a position of responsibility actually signed it off, here’s a radical idea for the lard-arsed top floor workers in Rochdale council: use the stairs! Not only will you get to work on time and save the council a bit of money, but you will also get fit.

The funny side of climate change v2

2009-08-28T12:41:00.003+01:00

I published this commentary about Greens and their inability to grasp the basic facts of life earlier in the week. But here it is again on my new blog home, but with the additional note that Greenpeace admitted yesterday that they do have a tendency to exaggerate their press releases, so as to get attention. Quelle surprise!

The supercomputer used by the UK Met Office to “predict” climate change allegedly consumes enough energy to power a town. Leaving aside the fact that the Met Office cannot even predict what day it will be tomorrow, how does it think that spending £30m on a computer will help to predict possible, potential weather that will affect us (maybe) in 25 years.

What is even more hilarious is that F(r)iends of the Earth have commented on the colossal use of power, stating that it is “ironic that a computer designed to stave off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution”. Oh dear. Computers do not stave off anything, let alone mythical meteorological patterns. Computers can tell humans as much useful information as they are programmed to. But computers do not change the weather. And given the Met Office’s track record this year, they can’t forecast it either.

Welcome to my new blog

2009-08-28T12:00:00.003+01:00

Ok, I'm fed up with the pants editor and general "what do you expect, it's free" attitude of blog.com, so I've relocated to blogger/blogspot.

What's Eating Me Today is henceforth What's Eating Me Now, because someone liked my blog name so much, they've already colonised here at blogger/blogspot.

It'll still be the same rants, rambles and general unloading of my soul. Sit back, put your stewardess into an upright position and enjoy the ride.