The following is the text of a speech I gave the other day to a meeting of the Campaign Against Political Correctness in Dudley:
INTRODUCTION
I’ve said it before and it’s got me into trouble - and I will say it again.
Enoch was right.
I know we are talking about political correctness and political correctness wasn’t really invented in Enoch Powell’s heyday.
Nevertheless, and in the context of political correctness, Enoch was right.
But I don’t intend to talk about immigration this evening. We’re here to talk about political correctness.
And in this context, I want to argue that there is nothing more PC – and, as a result, nothing more dangerous – than the way the politically-correct establishment has succeeded in destroying our national sovereignty.
(This was videoed and can be seen on YouTube)
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
I am delighted to have been asked to talk to you tonight. I don’t get out much these days.
Having mentioned Enoch Powell in an article in the Express & Star, there aren’t that many people who find me socially acceptable any more.
I don’t mind. I’d rather that than give up the right to free thought – even if, partly thanks to political correctness, free speech is now illegal.
Political correctness is the scourge of our time. It distorts reality and it is used as a form of social engineering by people who think they know better than us what is good for us.
It is often insidious. It often happens when you don’t even notice.
About 15 years ago, when I was still editor of The Birmingham Post, I drove into work one day and noticed all the posters advertising the city’s Christmas lights.
And I noticed that not one of these posters mentioned the word Christmas or contained any religious symbols.
We investigated whether this was a deliberate policy. We found that it was. We ran a story “Birmingham cancels Christmas” which the council hated.
Interestingly, they made the point that they had adopted the same politically-correct advertising the previous year – and nobody had noticed.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the point. Nobody noticed. They cancelled Christmas and we were too busy getting on with our lives to realise.
If they’d got away with it for a few more years, you can be sure there would be no mention of this great Christian event in Birmingham today.
Even after the council’s first failed attempt to abandon Christmas, they didn’t give up. You will remember their attempts to rebrand the festive season as “Winterval”.
I hate, loathe and despise political correctness in all its forms.
Though the idea that one might hate, loathe or despise anything is – almost certainly – in itself an offence against political correctness.
We know all the stories.
Everything from the girl who was refused a job by the Environment Agency because she was “white English” not “white Welsh, Scottish or Irish” to the latest nonsense that says one company director in every four must be a woman.
Each example of the tyranny of political correctness makes our blood boil and is another turn of the screw which limits, prohibits, confines and denies us our freedom.
Most examples are the stuff that make grumpy old men like me seethe, spit and throw things at the TV.
Anti-racist mathematics.
Bed-and-breakfast landladies stitched up by gay rights activists.
Conservative Party all-women shortlists.
Not a day goes by without another example.
On Monday it was the ruling that a Christian couple who have already successfully fostered many children may no longer do so because of their views on gay sex.
Yesterday the European Court of Justice flew in the face of common sense by making it illegal to favour women when it comes to the cost of car insurance – and at the same time penalising men over pensions.
Women are safer drivers, so they merit lower insurance premiums; men die earlier so their pensions won’t be as costly. The insurance industry knows this and prices accordingly. But sex discrimination laws apparently make this illegal.
Today comes news that in Essex, a specialist team is to be employed to remove a pensioner’s rubbish after health and safety experts ruled the local dustmen – should that be waste executives – might injure themselves on his wheelie bin.
Everywhere we look, political correctness is changing our world.
It moulds our society, our government and our lives.
IMMIGRATION
I do not intend to talk about immigration. I suspect most of you know my views on that subject and, with every day that passes, I am more than ever convinced that what I said was fair, reasonable and in line with the – suppressed – views of the majority of people.
If the price of discussing this is to be labelled “racist” then it’s a price one must pay.
I do not believe I am a racist.
I do not believe it is racist to warn that uncontrolled immigration will change – has changed – this country dramatically.
I do not believe it is racist to evoke the name Enoch Powell – the first, and almost the only, politician of note prepared to stand against the tide.
ENOCH ON EUROPE
So I shall again evoke the name of Enoch Powell. In the 1970s, he was one of the few politicians willing to stand out against the tide of politically-correct opinion running in favour of the Common Market.
Here are a few quotes. He said:
It would “strip the British Parliament of its historic right to be the sole source of legitimate power in this realm”.
He said this country would be reduced to “a province of the new super-state of Western Europe”.
Membership was “a renunciation of Britain’s parliamentary and political independence. The question of Britain and the EEC isn’t a question of the price of butter. It’s a question of the national existence and independence of Britain itself.
“The whole business of food prices and the Common Agricultural Policy is a specimen on the degradation of Britain from a nation to a province.
“In small things and in great things alike, there is no future for the British people that they will find tolerable except as a sovereign, self-governing nation state.”
HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DISTORTS POLITICIANS’ JUDGMENT
I think he was right and I want to look at the way political correctness has so clouded and distorted the judgment of politicians that our country has given away its sovereignty and independence.
We are run by alien institutions – the European Union, The European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.
Our politicians chose to give away our sovereignty.
I contend they did so for politically-correct reasons.
And the destruction of our national independence is perhaps the ultimate example of the insidious process of political correctness at work.
Let’s go back to the days of the Common Market.
Do you remember that expression?
It referred to a free-trade area where countries could co-operate with one another freely and happily.
After Europe’s long and bloody history of wars, a free-trade zone was a good idea.
It’s quite understandable and worth supporting the concept that the destruction of barriers to trade would create a better understanding and peaceful co-operation between countries which had so recently been at each other’s throats.
When we had our referendum on the subject of a Common Market, very few people suggested this would lead to the creation of a European super-state.
But you only have to look at how the name of this entity has evolved to see how its ambitions have insidiously grown:
Common Market; European Economic Community; European Community; European Union.
We allowed this to happen. Our political leaders, our opinion-formers, our universities, our civil servants, our journalists.
We allowed this to happen.
We allowed the Common Market to become the European Union. We let it take on the trappings of a superpower.
We are still letting it happen.
And I contend that the reason for this is that being pro-Europe rapidly became the politically-correct position to adopt.
In 1976, left-wing Socialists like Tony Benn opposed Britain’s entry. A decade later, Europe was as a means of imposing Socialism even on Thatcherite Britain.
And there have been plenty of Conservatives willing to go along with this conspiracy.
What was once a noble attempt to prevent the countries of Europe going to war with each other has become the unthinking default position for the politically-correct establishment classes in this country.
Europe has, of course, been embraced by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Tories, who might be expected to assert this country’s independence and sovereignty, have been dogged down the years by leading figures who have chosen to adopt the politically correct position of supporting the EU.
THE SINGLE CURRENCY
In the late 1980s, Nigel Lawson as Chancellor and Geoffrey Howe as Foreign Secretary brought down Margaret Thatcher because of her Euroscepticism.
If you recall, Lawson created the recession of the early 1990s by refusing to devalue the pound.
He did this by manipulating interest rates, thus slowing down the whole economy. And his whole aim was to maintain an artificial price for the pound against the Deutschmark.
The reason for this was to prepare Britain for entry into the European exchange rate mechanism, the forerunner of the single European currency, the imaginatively titled Euro.
This led in the end to the political disaster and economic triumph of Black Wednesday when John Major, Norman Lamont – and his aide David Cameron – were humiliatingly forced to abandon the European exchange rate mechanism.
They were victims of the collective belief that to be “good Europeans” we had to abandon our economic sovereignty and hand it over to Brussels.
Luckily for us, the markets saw through all this and refused to allow our misguided politicians to get their own way.
And the greatest achievements of Gordon Brown – perhaps his only achievement – but an achievement nonetheless – was to stop Tony Blair repeating the same mistake.
If we were in the Euro today, our recession – bad as it undoubtedly is – would be far worse.
One of the saving graces at the moment is that British manufacturing has had a modest revival.
This is because of the weak pound. The pound is, in my view, under-valued against the Euro but that is no bad thing.
It means companies like Jaguar can sell their cars at competitive prices abroad. Indeed, someone told me the other day that Japan now regards this country as a low-cost manufacturing base in the same way we used to think of China.
Look at poor old Ireland. Having struggled for years to free itself from the British imperial yoke, what happens?
They hand sovereignty over to Brussels and after the illusory Celtic Tiger disappeared in a puff of smoke, they are stuck with the Euro. They can’t devalue.
They are stuck with an unrealistic exchange rate and their economic crisis will be long and dismal. Entirely as a result of believing the Euro propaganda.
Thank goodness the politically-correct view of the Euro did not prevail here.
It wasn’t for want of trying.
Tony Blair was desperate to be a good European. He thought it marked him out as a progressive, liberal socialist.
That’s why he signed us up to the disastrous European convention on human rights.
I don’t think there’s any doubt he would have signed up to the Euro as well had Gordon Brown not refused to play along with him.
The point, though, is that, since the early 1980s at least, it has been politically incorrect to argue against ever-increasing union across Europe.
FRUITCAKES, LOONIES AND CLOSET RACISTS
Sceptics and opponents of the EU have for years been marginalised.
David Cameron called UKIP members “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” and that is the attitude of the majority of our mainstream metropolitan elite.
There have always been politicians willing to oppose the EU’s ever-increasing influence on our lives. But the strength of the Coalition of Lib-Dems, Blairites and pro-Euro Conservatives has ensured they remain marginalised.
The politically-correct position is hard to oppose. This is especially so because what might be called the organs of the state are so rapidly Europhile.
I could go on ad nauseam about the way the BBC opposes Britain and the British at every turn.
The point is, though, that it is still the most influential medium that we have. It is not all-pervasive and it does face competition.
But if it were not a Government mouthpiece paid for by its own dedicated poll-tax, it would have been broken up and sold off years ago because it enjoys an entirely unwarranted monopoly position in our media.
I should add, incidentally, that the vast sums it now spends on its website and internet presence are astonishingly anti-competitive. Its millions are partly to blame for the demise of a daily Birmingham Post and the decline of all our regional newspapers.
The main point, though, is that political correctness dictates it is racist, xenophobic and basically nuts to believe that this country’s laws should be determined by the people of this country through their elected representatives.
GEORGE ORWELL
We have come a long way since we joined the Common Market. We no longer think of a free trade area. We talk of a Union – the United States of Europe.
I am constantly reminded of George Orwell’s 1984. Three great powers: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are constantly at war.
In this world, you are not allowed to think for yourself. If you have an unacceptable opinion, you are subjected to political re-education.
The Ministry of Love is in charge of the thought police.
The Ministry of Plenty deals with food shortages.
The Ministry of Peace fights the wars.
The Ministry of Truth keeps everyone subdued by its constant diet of propaganda.
And, all the while, big brother is watching you.
In Orwell’s world, thoughtcrime is an offence. Just as it is today.
He was writing of a world which was the logical extension of the totalitarianism – fascist and Communist – of the 1930s and 1940s.
Life is not as bad as Orwell imagined. We do have some freedom. I am free to express my contempt for the politically-correct world we live in.
But those freedoms are limited and circumscribed. If I was not careful, I could find myself accused of some sort of thoughtcrime.
There are so many ways of inadvertently committing a thoughtcrime offence. Jokes are among the worst.
I might refer disparagingly to female linespeople, for instance, suggest there might be something not quite right about gay marriages or, as the rugby commentator Brian Moore did, make a joke which apparently disparaged disabled people.
Thoughcrime can destroy people’s careers.
Rousseau said “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”.
We are not slaves. We are free men (free persons). But we are constrained by the diktats of the politically-correct elite.
The pressure groups, politicians and pundits who tell us what we may and may not think and say and feel.
Political correctness is a deliberate policy used to deny us freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
Political correctness is not just a joke or something for grumpy old men like me to get cross about.
It has become so all-pervasive it colours everyone’s judgment – we are all afraid of thinking, let alone saying, something which could offend the thought police.
Thanks to political correctness, it has become almost impossible to have a real debate on the great issues of the day.
One example, as I have said, is how we have handed away our sovereignty – and with it our national identity – to Brussels while the politically-correct thought police have stifled and silenced dissent.
It is dangerously insidious process. It takes time. That doesn’t mean it isn’t winning.
Each small victory for political correctness leads on to the next and the next.
It has to be challenged at every step. I don’t know whether it can ever be halted.
I hope it can. But it won’t be easy.
You have to be courageous or foolhardy to stand up for any belief that runs contrary to the politically-correct mainstream.
Luckily, the English are bloody-minded enough to give it a go.
You wouldn’t be here tonight if you were not bloody minded.
Congratulations on your bloody-mindedness.
In an interview with Al Jazeera this week David Cameron declared: “I don't believe an In/Out referendum is right, because I don't believe that leaving the European Union would be in Britain's interests.”
The incredible arrogance of this takes your breath away.
It is the epitome of politicical correctness. Mr Cameron won't let us have a vote because he assumes we will vote in what he regards as the "wrong" way. He doesn't trust us. He doesn't trust democracy.
I’ll finish with another quote from Enoch Powell:
“Of all the silliest sayings, one of the silliest is the saying, ‘You can’t put the clock back’
“If course you can put the clock back and you often do. If a clock is showing the wrong time, you put it back or forward, whichever is necessary, without the slightest hesitation.
“If a mistake has been made we ought to put it right if we can.
“We ought always to be on our guard against those who whisper in our ear, ‘It’s done now and it can’t be undone’. Those are commonly the voices of cowardice or indolence and sometimes of downright evil intent.
“The mistake Britain made in becoming a part of the European Economic Community is not irreversible.”
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Just don't fall ill
Is anyone really shocked to discover the National Health Service betrays Britain’s elderly?
The report by NHS Ombudsman Ann Abraham details ten cases where patients have been neglected, left hungry, without water, in squalor and in pain.
As anyone involved with the sordid saga of Stafford Hospital could confirm, these are not isolated incidents. Shabby treatment is commonplace.
Surely the time has come for us to accept the NHS is not the magnificent social benefactor we like to think it is.
Free health care – or, at least, care which is free when we need it – is a wonderfully humane ideal we all enjoy. The last thing we want is to be reaching for the credit card in the middle of a heart attack.
On the other hand, the very nature of the NHS leads its vast army of employees to see themselves not as the servants of their patients but as their masters.
The NHS is an organisation whose principle aim is to care for the welfare of its own staff. Second come politicians who claim credit for pouring our money into its ever-open maw. The patients come a poor third.
Horror stories of maltreatment at the hands of the NHS are legion.
After Ms Abraham’s report, the finger of blame has been pointed firmly at nurses whose duty it is to tend to the basic every-day needs of their patients.
Nurses do, indeed, deserve much of the blame. According to an old-school “angel” I was talking to the other day, what many modern nurses lack most of all is compassion.
There is little fellow feeling for the human beings they are supposed to be looking after.
My friend said she recently held the hand of a very sick man who was on his last legs. He smiled wanly at her and said: “Do you know, you are the first person in this hospital who has showed me any sympathy?”
It is not all the fault of nurses, though. The whole of the NHS culture needs to change.
Because we patients do not pay directly for our treatment, NHS staff see no need to treat us as customers who pay their wages.
They think they are doing us a favour by deigning to minister – however half-heartedly – to our needs.
At the start of the fifth inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal, his second as chairman, Robert Francis QC said he’d already heard “many stories of appalling care”.
As he listened, “the question that went constantly through my mind was, why did none of the many organisations charged with the supervision and regulation of our hospital detect that something so serious was going on, and why was nothing done about it?"
After his last inquiry, Mr Francis said: "The deficiencies were systemic, deep-rooted and too fundamental to brush off as isolated incidents."
The terrible truth is that the “systemic, deep-rooted and fundamental” deficiencies at Stafford Hospital can be found throughout the NHS.
In some cases, our hospitals kill patients who should survive. In others, they cause pain and humiliation.
Yet still we regard the NHS as some kind of totem, to be worshipped and protected from every attempt at change or reform.
One terrible day, each of us will fall into its clutches. When we do, of course we want happy, well-paid and well-trained staff to care for us.
The Government’s plans to reform the NHS, by giving family doctors the money to buy services, may help. Perhaps they will refuse to send patients to the most inhumane and degrading hospitals which will, as a result, be forced out of business.
Somehow I doubt if it’ll work like that. GPs are part of the problem. Every time I see my own doctor’s BMW with its personalised number plate, I think we must be paying him too much.
I never get a chance to discuss this with him, however, because it’s almost impossible to get an appointment in less than three weeks’ time.
Perhaps he thinks that, by delaying it so long, the patient will either be cured of their ailments and won’t need to be seen at all or they’ll be dead.
The report by NHS Ombudsman Ann Abraham details ten cases where patients have been neglected, left hungry, without water, in squalor and in pain.
As anyone involved with the sordid saga of Stafford Hospital could confirm, these are not isolated incidents. Shabby treatment is commonplace.
Surely the time has come for us to accept the NHS is not the magnificent social benefactor we like to think it is.
Free health care – or, at least, care which is free when we need it – is a wonderfully humane ideal we all enjoy. The last thing we want is to be reaching for the credit card in the middle of a heart attack.
On the other hand, the very nature of the NHS leads its vast army of employees to see themselves not as the servants of their patients but as their masters.
The NHS is an organisation whose principle aim is to care for the welfare of its own staff. Second come politicians who claim credit for pouring our money into its ever-open maw. The patients come a poor third.
Horror stories of maltreatment at the hands of the NHS are legion.
After Ms Abraham’s report, the finger of blame has been pointed firmly at nurses whose duty it is to tend to the basic every-day needs of their patients.
Nurses do, indeed, deserve much of the blame. According to an old-school “angel” I was talking to the other day, what many modern nurses lack most of all is compassion.
There is little fellow feeling for the human beings they are supposed to be looking after.
My friend said she recently held the hand of a very sick man who was on his last legs. He smiled wanly at her and said: “Do you know, you are the first person in this hospital who has showed me any sympathy?”
It is not all the fault of nurses, though. The whole of the NHS culture needs to change.
Because we patients do not pay directly for our treatment, NHS staff see no need to treat us as customers who pay their wages.
They think they are doing us a favour by deigning to minister – however half-heartedly – to our needs.
At the start of the fifth inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal, his second as chairman, Robert Francis QC said he’d already heard “many stories of appalling care”.
As he listened, “the question that went constantly through my mind was, why did none of the many organisations charged with the supervision and regulation of our hospital detect that something so serious was going on, and why was nothing done about it?"
After his last inquiry, Mr Francis said: "The deficiencies were systemic, deep-rooted and too fundamental to brush off as isolated incidents."
The terrible truth is that the “systemic, deep-rooted and fundamental” deficiencies at Stafford Hospital can be found throughout the NHS.
In some cases, our hospitals kill patients who should survive. In others, they cause pain and humiliation.
Yet still we regard the NHS as some kind of totem, to be worshipped and protected from every attempt at change or reform.
One terrible day, each of us will fall into its clutches. When we do, of course we want happy, well-paid and well-trained staff to care for us.
The Government’s plans to reform the NHS, by giving family doctors the money to buy services, may help. Perhaps they will refuse to send patients to the most inhumane and degrading hospitals which will, as a result, be forced out of business.
Somehow I doubt if it’ll work like that. GPs are part of the problem. Every time I see my own doctor’s BMW with its personalised number plate, I think we must be paying him too much.
I never get a chance to discuss this with him, however, because it’s almost impossible to get an appointment in less than three weeks’ time.
Perhaps he thinks that, by delaying it so long, the patient will either be cured of their ailments and won’t need to be seen at all or they’ll be dead.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
What was it Enoch said?
Today's news:
More than three million migrants came to Britain under the previous Labour government, campaigners claim.
Migration Watch UK said official figures to be released on Thursday will show for the first time that net migration since Labour came to power in 1997 topped the three million mark.
Sir Andrew Green, the think-tank’s chairman, said: “The sheer scale of what has occurred is changing Britain fundamentally and irrevocably and in ways the majority of the population did not ask for, were not consulted about and did not wish to see.”
Read more: http://www.expressandstar.com/uk/uk-news/2011/02/22/labour-let-in-3-million-migrants/#ixzz1EgbnQyvd
More than three million migrants came to Britain under the previous Labour government, campaigners claim.
Migration Watch UK said official figures to be released on Thursday will show for the first time that net migration since Labour came to power in 1997 topped the three million mark.
Sir Andrew Green, the think-tank’s chairman, said: “The sheer scale of what has occurred is changing Britain fundamentally and irrevocably and in ways the majority of the population did not ask for, were not consulted about and did not wish to see.”
Read more: http://www.expressandstar.com/uk/uk-news/2011/02/22/labour-let-in-3-million-migrants/#ixzz1EgbnQyvd
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Steamed up about free speech
Speech isn’t free in this country. You never have had the right to say anything you want. And sometimes it’s extremely expensive indeed.
Sky football commentator Andy Gray knows the high price that can be paid if you speak your mind, even in private.
But imagine you’re no more than a devoted steam railways fanatic and you find yourself with a legal bill of £335,000 as a result of something you wrote in a newsletter distributed to 413 people.
That’s what happened to Tom Watson and Richard Corser when they were involved in publication of an article in a newsletter for the 400 members of the 6024 Preservation Society.
The society is dedicated to preserving an old Great Western Railway steam engine called King Edward I. If you’re a steam buff, King Edward I is one of your pin-ups.
It was built in 1930, at a cost of £7,500. It ran for over 30 years hauling services such as the "Cornish Riviera Express", "The Bristolian", "The Inter City" and the "Cambrian Coast Express" sometimes travelling at over 100 mph.
It was withdrawn from service in 1962 and sent for scrap. It was rescued by the preservation society and moved to the Birmingham Railway Museum in Tyseley in 1989.
It was back on track the following year and has been hauling excursions ever since, largely thanks to the enthusiasts of the 6024 Preservation Society.
Unfortunately, they fell out with their chairman Steve Underhill. Luckily I don’t know the details of the dispute so I can’t run the risk of repeating what turned out to be a libel.
What I do know, however, is that Mr Underhill took exception to what was published in the society’s newsletter, “The King’s Messenger”.
It was so bad, he sued Mr Watson and Mr Corser for libel. And, instead of sitting down and coming to a sensible compromise, the two sides headed for our learned friends and the High Court.
This was a potentially disastrous decision for both sides – the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.
A nasty squabble turned into a fully-fledged legal battle with the preservation society promising to back Mr Watson and Mr Corser.
In effect, the society put its ownership of the steam engine on the line. On the other side, Mr Underhill risked penury.
One side had to lose and the loss was bound to be devastating for somebody.
The train buffs argued that whatever they may have said about Mr Underhill was privileged because the newsletter only went to its own members.
Mr Underhill’s lawyers discovered it had also been sent to 13 people who send in photographs of the steam engine and were not members of the society.
As a result, the society lost its claim of privilege.
So then it was faced with arguing over the libel itself and, at this stage, the society threw in the towel, apologised to Mr Underhill for whatever it may have said, and agreed to pay him damages of £7,500.
Mr Underhill’s reputation was restored and the money he received was reasonable, given that only 413 people read the original allegations in the first place.
The society, on the other hand, was presented with a legal bill for a truly staggering £335,000. It has been forced to sell the engine to one of Britain’s richest men, Investment manager Jeremy Hosking.
To be fair, a hearing in the High Court is never a cheap option. Our learned friends like to think of themselves as taxis for hire but they tend to be taxis to the moon.
It is hard to imagine why either side was prepared to risk so much for so little. Admittedly, Mr Underhill emerges without a stain on his character and it does matter when someone is unfairly maligned in print.
Even so, the risk was enormous. He says: “Had my lawyers not believed in my integrity and agreed to fight this case on a ‘no win no fee basis’ after my own funds and those of my partner had run out, I would have been left with no means of removing a dreadful slur on my character.”
Had he lost, Mr Underhill, not the society, could be facing the massive £335,000 bill.
He might well say that, as the injured party, he would never have lost – but the law is a lottery. Just because you’re in the right doesn’t mean the law will come down on your side.
This country’s law courts are routinely used as a libel casino by the rich and famous from around the world.
It would be a pity to close off this opportunity for our flagging economy to earn some foreign currency.
But small societies and ordinary people must remember – the law is for the very rich and the very poor only. It is not for the likes of you and me – never has been, never will be.
If you find yourself in a serious dispute, my advice is try rock-paper-scissors. It’s cheap, there’s always a clear winner, and the result will be as fair and just as most decisions in the High Court.
Sky football commentator Andy Gray knows the high price that can be paid if you speak your mind, even in private.
But imagine you’re no more than a devoted steam railways fanatic and you find yourself with a legal bill of £335,000 as a result of something you wrote in a newsletter distributed to 413 people.
That’s what happened to Tom Watson and Richard Corser when they were involved in publication of an article in a newsletter for the 400 members of the 6024 Preservation Society.
The society is dedicated to preserving an old Great Western Railway steam engine called King Edward I. If you’re a steam buff, King Edward I is one of your pin-ups.
It was built in 1930, at a cost of £7,500. It ran for over 30 years hauling services such as the "Cornish Riviera Express", "The Bristolian", "The Inter City" and the "Cambrian Coast Express" sometimes travelling at over 100 mph.
It was withdrawn from service in 1962 and sent for scrap. It was rescued by the preservation society and moved to the Birmingham Railway Museum in Tyseley in 1989.
It was back on track the following year and has been hauling excursions ever since, largely thanks to the enthusiasts of the 6024 Preservation Society.
Unfortunately, they fell out with their chairman Steve Underhill. Luckily I don’t know the details of the dispute so I can’t run the risk of repeating what turned out to be a libel.
What I do know, however, is that Mr Underhill took exception to what was published in the society’s newsletter, “The King’s Messenger”.
It was so bad, he sued Mr Watson and Mr Corser for libel. And, instead of sitting down and coming to a sensible compromise, the two sides headed for our learned friends and the High Court.
This was a potentially disastrous decision for both sides – the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.
A nasty squabble turned into a fully-fledged legal battle with the preservation society promising to back Mr Watson and Mr Corser.
In effect, the society put its ownership of the steam engine on the line. On the other side, Mr Underhill risked penury.
One side had to lose and the loss was bound to be devastating for somebody.
The train buffs argued that whatever they may have said about Mr Underhill was privileged because the newsletter only went to its own members.
Mr Underhill’s lawyers discovered it had also been sent to 13 people who send in photographs of the steam engine and were not members of the society.
As a result, the society lost its claim of privilege.
So then it was faced with arguing over the libel itself and, at this stage, the society threw in the towel, apologised to Mr Underhill for whatever it may have said, and agreed to pay him damages of £7,500.
Mr Underhill’s reputation was restored and the money he received was reasonable, given that only 413 people read the original allegations in the first place.
The society, on the other hand, was presented with a legal bill for a truly staggering £335,000. It has been forced to sell the engine to one of Britain’s richest men, Investment manager Jeremy Hosking.
To be fair, a hearing in the High Court is never a cheap option. Our learned friends like to think of themselves as taxis for hire but they tend to be taxis to the moon.
It is hard to imagine why either side was prepared to risk so much for so little. Admittedly, Mr Underhill emerges without a stain on his character and it does matter when someone is unfairly maligned in print.
Even so, the risk was enormous. He says: “Had my lawyers not believed in my integrity and agreed to fight this case on a ‘no win no fee basis’ after my own funds and those of my partner had run out, I would have been left with no means of removing a dreadful slur on my character.”
Had he lost, Mr Underhill, not the society, could be facing the massive £335,000 bill.
He might well say that, as the injured party, he would never have lost – but the law is a lottery. Just because you’re in the right doesn’t mean the law will come down on your side.
This country’s law courts are routinely used as a libel casino by the rich and famous from around the world.
It would be a pity to close off this opportunity for our flagging economy to earn some foreign currency.
But small societies and ordinary people must remember – the law is for the very rich and the very poor only. It is not for the likes of you and me – never has been, never will be.
If you find yourself in a serious dispute, my advice is try rock-paper-scissors. It’s cheap, there’s always a clear winner, and the result will be as fair and just as most decisions in the High Court.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tales of the riverbank
“If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by,” according to the Japanese proverb.
And so it is with Andy Coulson, the ex- News of the World editor who claims he was ignorant of the phone-tapping activities which yielded him some of his exclusives.
Mr Coulson resigned from the job when the scandal broke but got taken on at an exorbitant salary by David Cameron who claimed he was giving the newspaperman “a second chance”.
Now Mr Coulson’s past has come back to haunt him and I maintain what I have said before: either he was a lousy editor for not knowing how his stories were obtained or he has not been telling the truth about what he did know.
Neither incompetence nor a cavalier approach to the truth is something you would wish to see in the Government’s head of communications so it’s not surprising he’s finally gone.
You could say it was “incredibly stupid” of Cameron to employ him as it was “incredibly stupid” of Mr Coulson to think he could evade all responsibility for his newspaper’s illegal activities.
A few years ago Mr Coulson engineered my resignation as Tory candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis by insisting I sign an apology which said I had been “incredibly stupid” to mention the name Enoch Powell in an article about immigration.
I had said Powell was right to warn that uncontrolled immigration would change the country dramatically. I would not sign Mr Coulson’s statement of apology and chose to resign as a candidate instead.
Having been sitting on the riverbank ever since, I cannot help but feel a frisson of schadenfreude when I see the body of one of my enemies go floating by.
And so it is with Andy Coulson, the ex- News of the World editor who claims he was ignorant of the phone-tapping activities which yielded him some of his exclusives.
Mr Coulson resigned from the job when the scandal broke but got taken on at an exorbitant salary by David Cameron who claimed he was giving the newspaperman “a second chance”.
Now Mr Coulson’s past has come back to haunt him and I maintain what I have said before: either he was a lousy editor for not knowing how his stories were obtained or he has not been telling the truth about what he did know.
Neither incompetence nor a cavalier approach to the truth is something you would wish to see in the Government’s head of communications so it’s not surprising he’s finally gone.
You could say it was “incredibly stupid” of Cameron to employ him as it was “incredibly stupid” of Mr Coulson to think he could evade all responsibility for his newspaper’s illegal activities.
A few years ago Mr Coulson engineered my resignation as Tory candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis by insisting I sign an apology which said I had been “incredibly stupid” to mention the name Enoch Powell in an article about immigration.
I had said Powell was right to warn that uncontrolled immigration would change the country dramatically. I would not sign Mr Coulson’s statement of apology and chose to resign as a candidate instead.
Having been sitting on the riverbank ever since, I cannot help but feel a frisson of schadenfreude when I see the body of one of my enemies go floating by.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
What happens when you speak for England
Why has Dudley South MP Christopher Kelly found himself ridiculed at the hands of his own party?
The answer is that the Conservatives decided to bully him because he put his country before his party.
The newly-elected 32-year-old had the courage to stand up to intimidation from “Flashman” Prime Minister David Cameron and defy the Government whips over their decision to hand more of our dwindling sovereignty to the European Union.
Mr Kelly, who is well known as a Eurosceptic, was one of 37 Conservative MPs who tried to strengthen new laws to make it clear that ultimate power rests with Westminster not Brussels.
Yet having defied his party, Mr Kelly found himself branded a cry-baby and accused of being more frightened of his father than he is of his party leader.
Mr Kelly’s father is Chris Kelly, the owner of Keltruck, the highly-successful truck business which is headquartered in West Bromwich and famous for the huge flag of St George which flies proudly next to the M5.
There was so much nonsense in the weekend’s attack on Mr Kelly it’s difficult to know where to start.
But, of course, any young man starting out on a Parliamentary career is liable to be shocked when his leader warns him: “You’re making a bloody terrible mistake. It will do your career and reputation no good at all. And you can bloody well forget about being a minister.”
Nobody wants the boss to behave like the public-school bully Flashman when they’ve only been in their new job a few months.
It would have been a shocking and very upsetting encounter – yet Mr Kelly went ahead and voted with his conscience anyway.
This is, never forget, what Mr Cameron promised us we’d get from our MPs under his regime. He declared months ago that Tories would put their country before their party.
That’s what Mr Kelly did. And his reward? Ignominy.
Someone in the Conservative Party Whips’ office deliberately went to the papers with a twisted tale of how Mr Kelly’s encounter with Mr Cameron had left him in tears.
To add salt into the wound, they invented the story that Mr Kelly was too scared of his father – a long-standing supporter of the Conservatives – to toe the party line.
Mr Kelly says: “For the record I did not cry or even come close to crying. There is footage of me in the Chamber completely dry-eyed sat close to my colleague Bill Cash MP as he concluded the debate at the very time it is alleged that I was 'in tears'.
“The whole story is utterly bizarre. I always vote according to my conscience and what I believe is best for the residents of Dudley South – nothing else. I will always put my country first.”
We could do with more MPs like that and we could do with a Prime Minister who respects political differences rather than bullying and intimidating his own supporters while bending over backwards to accommodate his opponents in the Liberal Democrats.
It may be the animosity towards Mr Kelly is personal as much as political. He seems to be the subject of a malign campaign against him which, among other things, seeks to attack him through his relationship with his father.
It’s only natural that the MP shares some of his father’s views. But he is his own man and, as I understand it, he rarely if ever consults his father before making a political decision.
Mr Kelly is far more likely to consult his constituents and his conscience. And this is what he did over the EU legislation.
Alas, his noble deed has been swamped in the filth of day-to-day political reality. It wasn’t enough for the Government to stamp on the poor man, it has gone out of its way to humiliate him even to the extent of publishing lies about him.
Politicians of honour and integrity are thin on the ground these days. Mr Kelly has discovered the hard way that putting your country before your party is the ultimate crime among the sleazy greasy-pole-climbers and slippery placemen who run our governing party.
The answer is that the Conservatives decided to bully him because he put his country before his party.
The newly-elected 32-year-old had the courage to stand up to intimidation from “Flashman” Prime Minister David Cameron and defy the Government whips over their decision to hand more of our dwindling sovereignty to the European Union.
Mr Kelly, who is well known as a Eurosceptic, was one of 37 Conservative MPs who tried to strengthen new laws to make it clear that ultimate power rests with Westminster not Brussels.
Yet having defied his party, Mr Kelly found himself branded a cry-baby and accused of being more frightened of his father than he is of his party leader.
Mr Kelly’s father is Chris Kelly, the owner of Keltruck, the highly-successful truck business which is headquartered in West Bromwich and famous for the huge flag of St George which flies proudly next to the M5.
There was so much nonsense in the weekend’s attack on Mr Kelly it’s difficult to know where to start.
But, of course, any young man starting out on a Parliamentary career is liable to be shocked when his leader warns him: “You’re making a bloody terrible mistake. It will do your career and reputation no good at all. And you can bloody well forget about being a minister.”
Nobody wants the boss to behave like the public-school bully Flashman when they’ve only been in their new job a few months.
It would have been a shocking and very upsetting encounter – yet Mr Kelly went ahead and voted with his conscience anyway.
This is, never forget, what Mr Cameron promised us we’d get from our MPs under his regime. He declared months ago that Tories would put their country before their party.
That’s what Mr Kelly did. And his reward? Ignominy.
Someone in the Conservative Party Whips’ office deliberately went to the papers with a twisted tale of how Mr Kelly’s encounter with Mr Cameron had left him in tears.
To add salt into the wound, they invented the story that Mr Kelly was too scared of his father – a long-standing supporter of the Conservatives – to toe the party line.
Mr Kelly says: “For the record I did not cry or even come close to crying. There is footage of me in the Chamber completely dry-eyed sat close to my colleague Bill Cash MP as he concluded the debate at the very time it is alleged that I was 'in tears'.
“The whole story is utterly bizarre. I always vote according to my conscience and what I believe is best for the residents of Dudley South – nothing else. I will always put my country first.”
We could do with more MPs like that and we could do with a Prime Minister who respects political differences rather than bullying and intimidating his own supporters while bending over backwards to accommodate his opponents in the Liberal Democrats.
It may be the animosity towards Mr Kelly is personal as much as political. He seems to be the subject of a malign campaign against him which, among other things, seeks to attack him through his relationship with his father.
It’s only natural that the MP shares some of his father’s views. But he is his own man and, as I understand it, he rarely if ever consults his father before making a political decision.
Mr Kelly is far more likely to consult his constituents and his conscience. And this is what he did over the EU legislation.
Alas, his noble deed has been swamped in the filth of day-to-day political reality. It wasn’t enough for the Government to stamp on the poor man, it has gone out of its way to humiliate him even to the extent of publishing lies about him.
Politicians of honour and integrity are thin on the ground these days. Mr Kelly has discovered the hard way that putting your country before your party is the ultimate crime among the sleazy greasy-pole-climbers and slippery placemen who run our governing party.
Monday, January 17, 2011
U-turn? They don't want to
Why are our High Streets turning into ghost towns populated with charity shops? Why are more and more people shopping on line? Why are HMV closing 60 shops?
One reason is that local authorities have spent the past ten years waging war against motorists to the point where it’s too expensive to shop in town centres.
The last Government wanted us all to travel by bus or metro. It ordered councils to do their best to stop us using our cars to get to the shops or the office.
Parking charges soared. Some councils just wanted the money.
Others deliberately made parking expensive because they thought it was the “green” environmentally-friendly thing to do – as if forcing the local greengrocer out of business was somehow going to save the planet.
Apart from encouraging the success of out-of-town shopping centres like Merry Hill – where parking is free and motorists are positively encouraged – the councils didn’t achieve much.
More than 100 local authorities lost money on car parking charges in the year 2008-9 even though motorists forked out a total of £1,338 million. Wolverhampton’s traffic wardens made a profit of only £18,000.
High parking charges deter shoppers. Stores don’t make any money so they close, turning High Streets into wildernesses of charity shops.
Eric Pickles, the local government secretary, has now announced an end to the “war on motorists” and given councils the freedom to develop their own parking policies.
In theory, this means parking charges could be cut. The Black Country councils have already said they will look again at the whole question.
Wolverhampton Council obviously knows charges deter shoppers otherwise it wouldn’t be offering an hour’s free parking in Market Street and School Street throughout January and February to attract more people to the struggling markets.
Could the whole city centre get free parking and enjoy a boom in business? Don’t bet on it.
Councils will claim they can’t afford to reduce revenues at a time when the Government is axing their grants.
In the long run, it would pay them to revive their dying town centres by encouraging visitors.
Lost revenue from axing parking charges is a small price to pay if it leads to busy shops and buoyant business rates income.
But that’s a bit far-sighted for most local authorities, alas.
For years, motorists have been a favourite target for Governments wanting to raise money.
One small example this week was the case of Michael Thompson, who had to pay a £175 fine, £250 costs and a £15 victims’ surcharge for warning fellow motorists of a police speed trap.
The poor man simply flashed his lights at oncoming traffic, advising drivers to slow down. This, supposedly, amounts to “wilfully obstructing a policewoman in the execution of her duty”.
Surely he could argue he was trying to prevent the crime of exceeding the speed limit.
What this case proves, though, is that it will take more than an announcement from Mr Pickles to bring a cease-fire in the war on motorists.
For instance, less than a year ago, Birmingham Council adopted a new 34,000-word policy document announcing a clampdown on parking and promising “lower standards”.
The council is pledged to cut long-term parking spaces in the city centre and Sutton Coldfield; limit parking spaces for new developments; impose ever-higher prices for long-stay parking; use SMART cars fitted with CCTV to police parking offenders; introduce more bus lanes; and expand pay-and-display beyond the city centre.
The report says: “Whilst the Council cannot directly control car ownership, polices for charging for, and the supply of, both on and off-street parking can influence parking demand, parking space turnover and, ultimately, car use and ownership.
“Parking policies seek to restrain unnecessary car travel, especially for local trips within the city, and reduce the need to travel or at least encourage the use of more sustainable travel choices.”
Had all this nonsense been announced a decade ago by some newly-elected right-on, politically-correct New Labour local authority, you might not have been surprised.
Yet this is official policy of a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats.
In some cities it’s even worse. Next year, Nottingham will be the first place in the country – so far – to impose workplace parking charges.
The tax will be £1 per space per day “to begin with” and you can be sure it the price won’t go down.
The excuse is that the money will pay for more trams.
Try telling that to the businesses in the city which will have to fork out hundreds of thousands of pounds but still can’t get their lorries in and out of Nottingham.
It would be marvellous to discover that, thanks to Mr Pickles, our councils realised the car played a vital role in encouraging prosperity. Without visiting motorists, our town centres will become impoverished wastelands.
Cynics, though, may wonder about the timing of his announcement. It came on the day that rises in VAT and fuel duty sent petrol prices soaring.
Maybe Mr Pickles was just trying to divert attention away from the fact that motorists are still the Government’s favourite tax target.
One reason is that local authorities have spent the past ten years waging war against motorists to the point where it’s too expensive to shop in town centres.
The last Government wanted us all to travel by bus or metro. It ordered councils to do their best to stop us using our cars to get to the shops or the office.
Parking charges soared. Some councils just wanted the money.
Others deliberately made parking expensive because they thought it was the “green” environmentally-friendly thing to do – as if forcing the local greengrocer out of business was somehow going to save the planet.
Apart from encouraging the success of out-of-town shopping centres like Merry Hill – where parking is free and motorists are positively encouraged – the councils didn’t achieve much.
More than 100 local authorities lost money on car parking charges in the year 2008-9 even though motorists forked out a total of £1,338 million. Wolverhampton’s traffic wardens made a profit of only £18,000.
High parking charges deter shoppers. Stores don’t make any money so they close, turning High Streets into wildernesses of charity shops.
Eric Pickles, the local government secretary, has now announced an end to the “war on motorists” and given councils the freedom to develop their own parking policies.
In theory, this means parking charges could be cut. The Black Country councils have already said they will look again at the whole question.
Wolverhampton Council obviously knows charges deter shoppers otherwise it wouldn’t be offering an hour’s free parking in Market Street and School Street throughout January and February to attract more people to the struggling markets.
Could the whole city centre get free parking and enjoy a boom in business? Don’t bet on it.
Councils will claim they can’t afford to reduce revenues at a time when the Government is axing their grants.
In the long run, it would pay them to revive their dying town centres by encouraging visitors.
Lost revenue from axing parking charges is a small price to pay if it leads to busy shops and buoyant business rates income.
But that’s a bit far-sighted for most local authorities, alas.
For years, motorists have been a favourite target for Governments wanting to raise money.
One small example this week was the case of Michael Thompson, who had to pay a £175 fine, £250 costs and a £15 victims’ surcharge for warning fellow motorists of a police speed trap.
The poor man simply flashed his lights at oncoming traffic, advising drivers to slow down. This, supposedly, amounts to “wilfully obstructing a policewoman in the execution of her duty”.
Surely he could argue he was trying to prevent the crime of exceeding the speed limit.
What this case proves, though, is that it will take more than an announcement from Mr Pickles to bring a cease-fire in the war on motorists.
For instance, less than a year ago, Birmingham Council adopted a new 34,000-word policy document announcing a clampdown on parking and promising “lower standards”.
The council is pledged to cut long-term parking spaces in the city centre and Sutton Coldfield; limit parking spaces for new developments; impose ever-higher prices for long-stay parking; use SMART cars fitted with CCTV to police parking offenders; introduce more bus lanes; and expand pay-and-display beyond the city centre.
The report says: “Whilst the Council cannot directly control car ownership, polices for charging for, and the supply of, both on and off-street parking can influence parking demand, parking space turnover and, ultimately, car use and ownership.
“Parking policies seek to restrain unnecessary car travel, especially for local trips within the city, and reduce the need to travel or at least encourage the use of more sustainable travel choices.”
Had all this nonsense been announced a decade ago by some newly-elected right-on, politically-correct New Labour local authority, you might not have been surprised.
Yet this is official policy of a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats.
In some cities it’s even worse. Next year, Nottingham will be the first place in the country – so far – to impose workplace parking charges.
The tax will be £1 per space per day “to begin with” and you can be sure it the price won’t go down.
The excuse is that the money will pay for more trams.
Try telling that to the businesses in the city which will have to fork out hundreds of thousands of pounds but still can’t get their lorries in and out of Nottingham.
It would be marvellous to discover that, thanks to Mr Pickles, our councils realised the car played a vital role in encouraging prosperity. Without visiting motorists, our town centres will become impoverished wastelands.
Cynics, though, may wonder about the timing of his announcement. It came on the day that rises in VAT and fuel duty sent petrol prices soaring.
Maybe Mr Pickles was just trying to divert attention away from the fact that motorists are still the Government’s favourite tax target.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Global politically correct freezing
Here's a quick New Year quiz. What are the politically correct terms for the following:
1.Black Coffee
2.The black economy
3.Ladies and gentlemen
4.Happy Christmas
5.Christmas tree
6.You’ll just feel a little prick
7.Three Little Pigs
8.School pupil
9.Baa baa black sheep
10.Blackboard
11.Bouncers
12.Brainstorming
13.Yankee and Zulu
14.Fireman
15.Hairdresser Sarah Desrosiers was found not guilty of racial discrimination by an industrial tribunal but still had to pay Bushra Noah £4,000 compensation for hurt feelings. Why?
16.Why was Deva Jynarasiri forced out of his job as a Postmaster at a Post Office in Nottingham and thrown out of the Liberal Democrats. Why?
17.In 2002, Steve Thoburn announced that his newborn son Jay weighed 3,790 grammes. Why?
18.Gangland boss Colin Gunn is serving life for a double murder. But he recently won a human rights case. What was his claim?
19.The Government paid undisclosed damages in compensation to a group of prisoners for invading their human rights by forcing them to stop taking drugs while they were in jail. How many prisoners were involved?
20.Who said: Earlier on today apparently a woman rang the BBC and said that she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t”?
21.Why is Ewen McCallum, the chief meteorologist at the Met Office, white faced?
22.Last year we endured the coldest winter for 31 years. In the autumn of 2009, what did the Met Office predict?
23.What was the name given to the e-mail scandal involving Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which suggested he was falsifying statistics on global warming?
24.They are the world’s largest source of CO2 emissions. They also emit methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than CO2, and more than two-thirds of the ammonia which causes acid rain. What are they?
25.When did the River Thames last freeze over?
26.Britain’s sunniest month, with 383.9 hours of sunshine, was recorded in Eastbourne, Sussex, one July. Which year?
27.The lowest daily temperature in Britain had been recorded on three occasions, in 1895, 1982 and 1995, twice in Braemar, Aberdeenshire and once in Altnaharra, Highland. How cold was it?
28.Experts claim 2010 was:
The hottest year on record
The coldest year for a decade
The wettest year for 30 years
29.In September 2007 the frozen North West Passage across the Arctic Circle was opened up for the first time in recorded history because of global warming. When did this recorded history begin?
30.In 1999, Indian scientist Syed Hasnain gave a phone interview to a reporter from the New Scientist. Nine years later, what he said became central to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming. Two years later, everyone admitted it was all bollocks. What was the claim?
And the answers are:What are the politically correct terms for the following:
1. Coffee without milk
2. The hidden economy
3. Men and women
4. Happy Holiday
5. Festive tree
6. You’ll just feel a little scratch
7. Three Vertically-Challenged Swine
8. Learner
9. Baa baa happy sheep
10. Chalk board
11. Ejection technicians
12. TGE (thought generating exercise)
13. Yellow and zebra
14. Fire-fighter
15. She turned down Ms Noah for a job as a hairdresser because she refused to work without wearing her headscarf.
16. Because he put up a notice telling customers they should speak English in his shop.
17. In 2001 he was convicted of selling vegetables using imperial measurements only. He was initially convicted and given a six-month conditional discharge.
18. He said it was disrespectful to be called by his surname, Gunn, only and demanded that prison officers called him Mister Gunn.1
19. 98
20. Michael Fish
21. He promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009
22. A milder than average winter.
23. Climategate
24. Cattle.
25. 1814
26. 1911
27. -27.2(C) -16.96 (F)
28. The hottest year on record
29. 1979 when satellite monitoring started. The Northwest Passage was open in 1903 and used by the sailor Roald Amundson and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Arctic patrol made regular trips in the early 1940s.
30. That climate change would melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035.
1.Black Coffee
2.The black economy
3.Ladies and gentlemen
4.Happy Christmas
5.Christmas tree
6.You’ll just feel a little prick
7.Three Little Pigs
8.School pupil
9.Baa baa black sheep
10.Blackboard
11.Bouncers
12.Brainstorming
13.Yankee and Zulu
14.Fireman
15.Hairdresser Sarah Desrosiers was found not guilty of racial discrimination by an industrial tribunal but still had to pay Bushra Noah £4,000 compensation for hurt feelings. Why?
16.Why was Deva Jynarasiri forced out of his job as a Postmaster at a Post Office in Nottingham and thrown out of the Liberal Democrats. Why?
17.In 2002, Steve Thoburn announced that his newborn son Jay weighed 3,790 grammes. Why?
18.Gangland boss Colin Gunn is serving life for a double murder. But he recently won a human rights case. What was his claim?
19.The Government paid undisclosed damages in compensation to a group of prisoners for invading their human rights by forcing them to stop taking drugs while they were in jail. How many prisoners were involved?
20.Who said: Earlier on today apparently a woman rang the BBC and said that she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t”?
21.Why is Ewen McCallum, the chief meteorologist at the Met Office, white faced?
22.Last year we endured the coldest winter for 31 years. In the autumn of 2009, what did the Met Office predict?
23.What was the name given to the e-mail scandal involving Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which suggested he was falsifying statistics on global warming?
24.They are the world’s largest source of CO2 emissions. They also emit methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than CO2, and more than two-thirds of the ammonia which causes acid rain. What are they?
25.When did the River Thames last freeze over?
26.Britain’s sunniest month, with 383.9 hours of sunshine, was recorded in Eastbourne, Sussex, one July. Which year?
27.The lowest daily temperature in Britain had been recorded on three occasions, in 1895, 1982 and 1995, twice in Braemar, Aberdeenshire and once in Altnaharra, Highland. How cold was it?
28.Experts claim 2010 was:
The hottest year on record
The coldest year for a decade
The wettest year for 30 years
29.In September 2007 the frozen North West Passage across the Arctic Circle was opened up for the first time in recorded history because of global warming. When did this recorded history begin?
30.In 1999, Indian scientist Syed Hasnain gave a phone interview to a reporter from the New Scientist. Nine years later, what he said became central to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming. Two years later, everyone admitted it was all bollocks. What was the claim?
And the answers are:What are the politically correct terms for the following:
1. Coffee without milk
2. The hidden economy
3. Men and women
4. Happy Holiday
5. Festive tree
6. You’ll just feel a little scratch
7. Three Vertically-Challenged Swine
8. Learner
9. Baa baa happy sheep
10. Chalk board
11. Ejection technicians
12. TGE (thought generating exercise)
13. Yellow and zebra
14. Fire-fighter
15. She turned down Ms Noah for a job as a hairdresser because she refused to work without wearing her headscarf.
16. Because he put up a notice telling customers they should speak English in his shop.
17. In 2001 he was convicted of selling vegetables using imperial measurements only. He was initially convicted and given a six-month conditional discharge.
18. He said it was disrespectful to be called by his surname, Gunn, only and demanded that prison officers called him Mister Gunn.1
19. 98
20. Michael Fish
21. He promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009
22. A milder than average winter.
23. Climategate
24. Cattle.
25. 1814
26. 1911
27. -27.2(C) -16.96 (F)
28. The hottest year on record
29. 1979 when satellite monitoring started. The Northwest Passage was open in 1903 and used by the sailor Roald Amundson and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Arctic patrol made regular trips in the early 1940s.
30. That climate change would melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Pickled red-herring
What is the point of making voters in a dozen cities up and down the country elect Lord Mayors without dismantling the whole local government system and starting again?
Eric Pickles, the Cabinet Minister responsible, is determined to foist these small-town Boris Johnsons onto us whether we want them or not.
Yet there is no sign his alleged reform, supposedly giving great power to elected mayors, will be of much benefit to the cities which get them.
The guinea pigs for this grand scheme are Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield.
In his generosity, Mr Pickles is prepared to let other cities go for elected mayors as well.
Wolverhampton, for example, could have one if it really wanted but I don’t hear the crowds clamouring at the gate to be granted this special privilege.
Apart from a few professors of local government and professional politicians, I don’t know anyone who wants elected mayors. It’s not exactly a burning issue down the Ferret & Firkin.
Even if elected mayors were a good idea in theory, they’re pretty pointless without wider changes.
Take Birmingham, for instance. It has 120 councillors costing the taxpayer £2.6 million in allowances and expenses.
It also has a Chief Executive on £233,000 in salary and pension contributions not to mention the other 13 officers who pick up six-figure salaries.
What’s going to happen to that little lot if an elected mayor takes over? You won’t need 120 councillors for a start. The London Assembly gets by with just 25 members.
Admittedly the capital has a layer of local authorities beneath its Assembly but then it is much bigger.
The Pickles dozen would be quite capable of functioning efficiently with a quarter of their existing councillors.
Actually they would do an adequate job on a quarter of their councillors without the additional fuss of an elected mayor.
The cities certainly won’t need all their councillors when the mayor has the power and takes the decisions. There won’t be anything for the average councillor to do so why not get rid of them?
Mr Pickles has no plan to cut the number of councillors. He says councils could do so if they wanted – but can you imagine that happening? Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
Equally, why would councils need chief executives and senior officers when an elected mayor and his cronies are in place?
Mind you, they won’t come cheap. Boris Johnson bags £140,000 a year and doubtless these smaller-city bosses will demand something similar.
One of the assumptions behind the plan for elected mayors seems to be that it would increase democracy and improve the quality of the people who run our cities.
What are the options in Birmingham?
Sion Simon would have us believe he gave up his place as Labour MP for Erdington so he could run for mayor of Birmingham – a decision he made even before there was officially a vacancy.
He could be challenged for the Labour nomination by the veteran group leader Sir Albert Bore.
Mike Whitby, who has been council leader for the last six years, must be in with a chance but Tory leader David Cameron says he wants someone outside politics to do the job.
That means ex-lawyer Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, must be in with a shout. He was briefly in the Labour Government but somehow managed to avoid joining the party.
Apparently the suggestion is he stands as an Independent. But would the other parties give him a free run? And, if they did, where’s the democracy in that?
Before they can vote for any of these potential candidates, the electors must first decide if they actually want elected mayors.
Without real reform of the whole system, it must be questionable whether it’s worth it.
Will mayors really have any clout? Most Governments – including this one – talk about devolution and localism but when it comes to parting with cash or power, they decide Whitehall knows best after all.
Councils are told how to spend their money. It goes on schools and social services mainly. That won’t change.
And what is the point of supposedly powerful mayors being kings of their little castles when the Government is also setting up Local Enterprise Partnerships which will cross council boundaries?
Mayors won’t want to see their influence diluted by dealing with these new quangos.
The Coalition is feverishly trying to paper over the cracks emerging from its decision to axe development agencies like Advantage West Midlands by introducing LEPs.
These supposedly business-led bodies will die of neglect if elected mayors take over the big cities.
What self-respecting captain of industry would want to devote time and energy to them when the mayor of the biggest place on the map is too busy to be bothered?
No doubt all this is the result of Mr Pickles’ time as leader of Bradford Council, where he manipulated a hung council to ensure the Tories clung onto power.
The one-time “Beast of Bradford” thinks he’s giving us radical reform. Sounds more like pickled red herring to me.
Eric Pickles, the Cabinet Minister responsible, is determined to foist these small-town Boris Johnsons onto us whether we want them or not.
Yet there is no sign his alleged reform, supposedly giving great power to elected mayors, will be of much benefit to the cities which get them.
The guinea pigs for this grand scheme are Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield.
In his generosity, Mr Pickles is prepared to let other cities go for elected mayors as well.
Wolverhampton, for example, could have one if it really wanted but I don’t hear the crowds clamouring at the gate to be granted this special privilege.
Apart from a few professors of local government and professional politicians, I don’t know anyone who wants elected mayors. It’s not exactly a burning issue down the Ferret & Firkin.
Even if elected mayors were a good idea in theory, they’re pretty pointless without wider changes.
Take Birmingham, for instance. It has 120 councillors costing the taxpayer £2.6 million in allowances and expenses.
It also has a Chief Executive on £233,000 in salary and pension contributions not to mention the other 13 officers who pick up six-figure salaries.
What’s going to happen to that little lot if an elected mayor takes over? You won’t need 120 councillors for a start. The London Assembly gets by with just 25 members.
Admittedly the capital has a layer of local authorities beneath its Assembly but then it is much bigger.
The Pickles dozen would be quite capable of functioning efficiently with a quarter of their existing councillors.
Actually they would do an adequate job on a quarter of their councillors without the additional fuss of an elected mayor.
The cities certainly won’t need all their councillors when the mayor has the power and takes the decisions. There won’t be anything for the average councillor to do so why not get rid of them?
Mr Pickles has no plan to cut the number of councillors. He says councils could do so if they wanted – but can you imagine that happening? Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
Equally, why would councils need chief executives and senior officers when an elected mayor and his cronies are in place?
Mind you, they won’t come cheap. Boris Johnson bags £140,000 a year and doubtless these smaller-city bosses will demand something similar.
One of the assumptions behind the plan for elected mayors seems to be that it would increase democracy and improve the quality of the people who run our cities.
What are the options in Birmingham?
Sion Simon would have us believe he gave up his place as Labour MP for Erdington so he could run for mayor of Birmingham – a decision he made even before there was officially a vacancy.
He could be challenged for the Labour nomination by the veteran group leader Sir Albert Bore.
Mike Whitby, who has been council leader for the last six years, must be in with a chance but Tory leader David Cameron says he wants someone outside politics to do the job.
That means ex-lawyer Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, must be in with a shout. He was briefly in the Labour Government but somehow managed to avoid joining the party.
Apparently the suggestion is he stands as an Independent. But would the other parties give him a free run? And, if they did, where’s the democracy in that?
Before they can vote for any of these potential candidates, the electors must first decide if they actually want elected mayors.
Without real reform of the whole system, it must be questionable whether it’s worth it.
Will mayors really have any clout? Most Governments – including this one – talk about devolution and localism but when it comes to parting with cash or power, they decide Whitehall knows best after all.
Councils are told how to spend their money. It goes on schools and social services mainly. That won’t change.
And what is the point of supposedly powerful mayors being kings of their little castles when the Government is also setting up Local Enterprise Partnerships which will cross council boundaries?
Mayors won’t want to see their influence diluted by dealing with these new quangos.
The Coalition is feverishly trying to paper over the cracks emerging from its decision to axe development agencies like Advantage West Midlands by introducing LEPs.
These supposedly business-led bodies will die of neglect if elected mayors take over the big cities.
What self-respecting captain of industry would want to devote time and energy to them when the mayor of the biggest place on the map is too busy to be bothered?
No doubt all this is the result of Mr Pickles’ time as leader of Bradford Council, where he manipulated a hung council to ensure the Tories clung onto power.
The one-time “Beast of Bradford” thinks he’s giving us radical reform. Sounds more like pickled red herring to me.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
The night of the living dead
The good news is the economy is growing nicely, spending cuts are not as bad as feared and the Chancellor is talking about tax reductions for big businesses.
The bad news is that nobody's noticed and small businesses are still going to the wall with the Government mainly responsible for the bankruptcies.
Economists tell us they see green shoots of recovery springing up everywhere but most business people think it still feels like bleak mid-winter.
That, I fear, is because economists look at trends over months and years while businesses look at what happened yesterday and the day before.
Official statistics show a drop of 17 per cent in company insolvencies. That sounds like good news, even when you discover that 58 per cent of all winding-up orders come from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Alas, the taxman has been bailing out hundreds of companies for a couple of years under its “time to pay” scheme.
The taxman has been holding off asking for the money. It’s now telling companies to pay up the money they owe.
Unfortunately many of them are “zombies” – they look as if they’re still alive but as soon as they have to repay their debts, they’re dead.
True the economy isn't as dire as it was two years ago when the banks looked like they might disappear completely, taking the entire capitalist system with them.
For an economist looking at his graphs and charts, that means things are improving.
For ordinary businesses, it just means utter destruction has been replaced by a never-ending fight for survival.
The Christmas spending binge may be a bit better than last year – but only because the increase in VAT to 20 per cent on January 1 will encourage some people to buy sooner rather than later.
It means sales in the New Year will get off to a slow start. On top of that, public spending cuts are only just starting to bite.
Job-losses in the public sector, we are told by the Office for Budget Responsibility, won't be as high as forecast.
They'll still be huge. Birmingham Council, for instance, announced this week it was axing 7,000 jobs.
To judge the scale of that, remember there’s only one private sector company in the whole city employing more than 7,000 people in total – and that's RBS bank which is actually owned by the taxpayer as well.
And when councils or Government department wield the axe, they start with their private-sector suppliers.
There are thousands of small firms which rely on work from the public sector for their livelihood. That work will, in many cases, dry up completely.
When it doesn't, they face a serious price squeeze. Either way, it makes for grim prospects.
Confidence, we are repeatedly told, is the key. If only businesses had the confidence to expand and consumers had the confidence to spend, all would be well.
But faced with tax rises, spending cuts and the turmoil in the eurozone – where entire countries are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy – it's hard to feel positive.
The Coalition Government is taking heart from the latest surveys saying the economy will carry on growing next year.
It is a vindication of Chancellor George Osborne's decision to get his cuts in as fast as possible.
However unpleasant they may be, at least it means we won't go the way of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and even Spain by begging for help from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.
No wonder that, according to one of the many hilarious WikiLeaks we have enjoyed recently, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was worried about the inexperience of Mr Osborne and David Cameron.
Mr King is probably right they hadn’t “fully grasped the pressures they will face from different groups when attempting to cut spending”.
Even after the cuts, total Government debt will carry on rising until 2015 when it’s due to hit a staggering £1,300,000,000,000 (we’re talking over a trillion).
The Governor knew we needed to stave off national bankruptcy – but that's no consolation for small businesses.
Already they can see a drop in demand, consumers switching to cheaper goods or saving rather than spending. Even big corporations are now sitting on money rather than investing it.
It doesn't make good economic sense to save when interest rates are low. Savers lose out whereas borrowers get money on the cheap.
But everyone’s nervous. We don't like debt any more. We want cash for a rainy day. It's called lack of confidence.
I was talking to a businessman who does corporate finance deals. He says things are looking up. Investors have money and companies are looking to expand.
To prove it, he told me about one big deal he's working on. The company involved thinks there's a lot more work it can land in the New Year and wants a cash injection to help it grow.
This was excellent news, I thought. At last, signs of life in the economy.
What does the company do? I asked him. He told me: They're insolvency experts.
Welcome to the night of the living dead.
The bad news is that nobody's noticed and small businesses are still going to the wall with the Government mainly responsible for the bankruptcies.
Economists tell us they see green shoots of recovery springing up everywhere but most business people think it still feels like bleak mid-winter.
That, I fear, is because economists look at trends over months and years while businesses look at what happened yesterday and the day before.
Official statistics show a drop of 17 per cent in company insolvencies. That sounds like good news, even when you discover that 58 per cent of all winding-up orders come from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Alas, the taxman has been bailing out hundreds of companies for a couple of years under its “time to pay” scheme.
The taxman has been holding off asking for the money. It’s now telling companies to pay up the money they owe.
Unfortunately many of them are “zombies” – they look as if they’re still alive but as soon as they have to repay their debts, they’re dead.
True the economy isn't as dire as it was two years ago when the banks looked like they might disappear completely, taking the entire capitalist system with them.
For an economist looking at his graphs and charts, that means things are improving.
For ordinary businesses, it just means utter destruction has been replaced by a never-ending fight for survival.
The Christmas spending binge may be a bit better than last year – but only because the increase in VAT to 20 per cent on January 1 will encourage some people to buy sooner rather than later.
It means sales in the New Year will get off to a slow start. On top of that, public spending cuts are only just starting to bite.
Job-losses in the public sector, we are told by the Office for Budget Responsibility, won't be as high as forecast.
They'll still be huge. Birmingham Council, for instance, announced this week it was axing 7,000 jobs.
To judge the scale of that, remember there’s only one private sector company in the whole city employing more than 7,000 people in total – and that's RBS bank which is actually owned by the taxpayer as well.
And when councils or Government department wield the axe, they start with their private-sector suppliers.
There are thousands of small firms which rely on work from the public sector for their livelihood. That work will, in many cases, dry up completely.
When it doesn't, they face a serious price squeeze. Either way, it makes for grim prospects.
Confidence, we are repeatedly told, is the key. If only businesses had the confidence to expand and consumers had the confidence to spend, all would be well.
But faced with tax rises, spending cuts and the turmoil in the eurozone – where entire countries are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy – it's hard to feel positive.
The Coalition Government is taking heart from the latest surveys saying the economy will carry on growing next year.
It is a vindication of Chancellor George Osborne's decision to get his cuts in as fast as possible.
However unpleasant they may be, at least it means we won't go the way of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and even Spain by begging for help from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.
No wonder that, according to one of the many hilarious WikiLeaks we have enjoyed recently, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was worried about the inexperience of Mr Osborne and David Cameron.
Mr King is probably right they hadn’t “fully grasped the pressures they will face from different groups when attempting to cut spending”.
Even after the cuts, total Government debt will carry on rising until 2015 when it’s due to hit a staggering £1,300,000,000,000 (we’re talking over a trillion).
The Governor knew we needed to stave off national bankruptcy – but that's no consolation for small businesses.
Already they can see a drop in demand, consumers switching to cheaper goods or saving rather than spending. Even big corporations are now sitting on money rather than investing it.
It doesn't make good economic sense to save when interest rates are low. Savers lose out whereas borrowers get money on the cheap.
But everyone’s nervous. We don't like debt any more. We want cash for a rainy day. It's called lack of confidence.
I was talking to a businessman who does corporate finance deals. He says things are looking up. Investors have money and companies are looking to expand.
To prove it, he told me about one big deal he's working on. The company involved thinks there's a lot more work it can land in the New Year and wants a cash injection to help it grow.
This was excellent news, I thought. At last, signs of life in the economy.
What does the company do? I asked him. He told me: They're insolvency experts.
Welcome to the night of the living dead.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
I counted them all in... errr...
The Government is finally cracking down on immigration – and if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
The Coalition's first stab at it is aimed at cutting the number of "skilled migrants" we welcome to these shores.
But there are two snags: the numbers don't add up and they're aiming at the wrong target anyway.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, told us this week it was time Britain did something about mass immigration.
She complained: "Over Labour's time in office net migration totalled more than 2.2 million people – more than double the population of Birmingham.”
At last, you might think, a politician is doing something about the big issue that dare not speak its name.
But look at the numbers and you discover Mrs May is actually doing little or nothing to reduce the 196,000 people a year moving to this country.
Please note, by the way, that the figure of 196,000 is not the total number of immigrants, it’s the net figure. In 2009 we saw total of 567,000 immigrants – but that was offset by 371,000 people who left this country.
These are official Government figures so, inevitably, they can’t be trusted. It’s pretty much guesswork.
As a Commons committee pointed out the other day: “Until exit checks are implemented in the form of e-Borders, it is not possible to count individuals out of the country, and so figures on the inflow and outflow of migrants cannot be matched.”
Mrs May is reducing the number of “skilled workers” allowed into this country without a job offer from 14,000 to 1,000 – a big cut, you might think.
This is for people of “exceptional talent” – footballers, nuclear scientists, ballet dancers and the like.
At the same time, Mrs May is increasing from 13,700 to 20,700 the number of people welcomed into this country if they already have a job offer.
Taken together, it would appear she has cut the total number of skilled workers allowed into the country from 27,700 to 21,700.
It’s only a cut of 6,000 but, at first glance, it seems like a modest step in the right direction. But that’s not the whole story.
The Government has imposed no limit at all to the number of people allowed into Britain under “intra-company transfers”.
That means thousands more people are exempt from any limits at all if their employers want to move them to Britain – more American bankers, for instance.
Last year, intra-company transfers added another 22,000 people to the immigration numbers.
This shows Business Secretary Vince Cable has won the first round in the alleged battle to curb immigration. He was lobbied hard by the CBI and other employers’ organisations which said industry needed the ability to move staff from one country to another without let or hindrance.
Mrs May has put a couple of limits on these transfers. They must earn at least £24,000 a year to be allowed here at all and, to stay longer than a year, they must be paid at least £40,000.
But few companies would want to move low-paid staff around the world anyway, so these limits are just window-dressing.
At best, Mrs May has cut immigration by 6,000; at worst, because of intra-company transfers, it won’t be reduced at all.
Either way, few people are bothered about the temporary importation of highly-skilled individuals who may well be of benefit to the British economy.
What we have is a minor adjustment to an almost irrelevant group of people masquerading as a bold new initiative to tackle immigration.
Mrs May’s plans will do nothing to meet David Cameron’s pre-election pledge to cut immigration by at least half, to “tens of thousands” a year.
The real numbers are in three categories which, so far, Mrs May has not dared to touch: students, family members and EU citizens.
We are told there’s nothing we can do about migration within Europe. We have open borders and anyone can go anywhere.
We could do something about it – but our politicians refuse to do so. They would rather be “good Europeans” than good Britons.
As for family members, the Government could change the rules on arranged marriages and the ability of one immigrant to bring over a large number of relatives.
It won’t because it’s afraid of falling foul of human rights laws – yet “family reunification” accounted for 48,000 immigrants last year, 64,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2007.
That just leaves students. Mrs May has already said she wants to cut the number supposedly looking for education below degree level.
The numbers are staggering. Last year, according to unreliable Government figures, 311,135 students came to Britain bringing another 30,170 dependents with them.
How many “students” were on bogus courses or dropped out and disappeared? No-one knows.
Meanwhile universities, desperate to boost their income now British students must mortgage their futures to get an education, have found a champion in Vince Cable.
He won’t let the Tories do anything drastic.
So will the Coalition get tough on immigration? It doesn’t seem likely. Rather like the statistics, on this issue the Government doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.
The Coalition's first stab at it is aimed at cutting the number of "skilled migrants" we welcome to these shores.
But there are two snags: the numbers don't add up and they're aiming at the wrong target anyway.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, told us this week it was time Britain did something about mass immigration.
She complained: "Over Labour's time in office net migration totalled more than 2.2 million people – more than double the population of Birmingham.”
At last, you might think, a politician is doing something about the big issue that dare not speak its name.
But look at the numbers and you discover Mrs May is actually doing little or nothing to reduce the 196,000 people a year moving to this country.
Please note, by the way, that the figure of 196,000 is not the total number of immigrants, it’s the net figure. In 2009 we saw total of 567,000 immigrants – but that was offset by 371,000 people who left this country.
These are official Government figures so, inevitably, they can’t be trusted. It’s pretty much guesswork.
As a Commons committee pointed out the other day: “Until exit checks are implemented in the form of e-Borders, it is not possible to count individuals out of the country, and so figures on the inflow and outflow of migrants cannot be matched.”
Mrs May is reducing the number of “skilled workers” allowed into this country without a job offer from 14,000 to 1,000 – a big cut, you might think.
This is for people of “exceptional talent” – footballers, nuclear scientists, ballet dancers and the like.
At the same time, Mrs May is increasing from 13,700 to 20,700 the number of people welcomed into this country if they already have a job offer.
Taken together, it would appear she has cut the total number of skilled workers allowed into the country from 27,700 to 21,700.
It’s only a cut of 6,000 but, at first glance, it seems like a modest step in the right direction. But that’s not the whole story.
The Government has imposed no limit at all to the number of people allowed into Britain under “intra-company transfers”.
That means thousands more people are exempt from any limits at all if their employers want to move them to Britain – more American bankers, for instance.
Last year, intra-company transfers added another 22,000 people to the immigration numbers.
This shows Business Secretary Vince Cable has won the first round in the alleged battle to curb immigration. He was lobbied hard by the CBI and other employers’ organisations which said industry needed the ability to move staff from one country to another without let or hindrance.
Mrs May has put a couple of limits on these transfers. They must earn at least £24,000 a year to be allowed here at all and, to stay longer than a year, they must be paid at least £40,000.
But few companies would want to move low-paid staff around the world anyway, so these limits are just window-dressing.
At best, Mrs May has cut immigration by 6,000; at worst, because of intra-company transfers, it won’t be reduced at all.
Either way, few people are bothered about the temporary importation of highly-skilled individuals who may well be of benefit to the British economy.
What we have is a minor adjustment to an almost irrelevant group of people masquerading as a bold new initiative to tackle immigration.
Mrs May’s plans will do nothing to meet David Cameron’s pre-election pledge to cut immigration by at least half, to “tens of thousands” a year.
The real numbers are in three categories which, so far, Mrs May has not dared to touch: students, family members and EU citizens.
We are told there’s nothing we can do about migration within Europe. We have open borders and anyone can go anywhere.
We could do something about it – but our politicians refuse to do so. They would rather be “good Europeans” than good Britons.
As for family members, the Government could change the rules on arranged marriages and the ability of one immigrant to bring over a large number of relatives.
It won’t because it’s afraid of falling foul of human rights laws – yet “family reunification” accounted for 48,000 immigrants last year, 64,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2007.
That just leaves students. Mrs May has already said she wants to cut the number supposedly looking for education below degree level.
The numbers are staggering. Last year, according to unreliable Government figures, 311,135 students came to Britain bringing another 30,170 dependents with them.
How many “students” were on bogus courses or dropped out and disappeared? No-one knows.
Meanwhile universities, desperate to boost their income now British students must mortgage their futures to get an education, have found a champion in Vince Cable.
He won’t let the Tories do anything drastic.
So will the Coalition get tough on immigration? It doesn’t seem likely. Rather like the statistics, on this issue the Government doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
You've got to be cruel to be kind
The Government plans to make the long-term unemployed get up in the mornings and go to work. And if Archbishop of Canterbury condemns it then common sense tells us it must be a good idea.
He thinks making the work-shy get off their backsides will drive them to despair. But whenever Governments come up with a sensible plan you can be sure Establishment figures will be rushing for the barricades.
As if Archbishop Rowan Williams didn’t have enough trouble in his own vestry, he’s set himself up as the champion of unemployed.
Caring for the poor and dispossessed is, of course, what the Church of England is supposed to do. The Archbishop may think he’s being true to his calling.
But if he really wants to help the needy then giving them money to stay at home watching daytime TV is not the way to do it.
We have the deserving poor. For them, a life on benefits is a daily humiliation. They desperately want to work and they should be given every help to succeed.
We also have the undeserving poor – people think a life on benefits is theirs by right.
Why should they give up “Bargain Hunt” in exchange for some grotty job which doesn’t leave them any better off than they are sitting around doing nothing?
And we all know there are some people on benefits who actually manage to do very nicely thank you – because they claim benefits and work in the black economy.
Sadly, our welfare system has been distorted by such people. It’s no longer a safety net to catch people when they fall, it’s a cosy blanket to wrap everyone up and keep them warm.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith is talking sense when he argues that a life in work must be made more attractive than a life on the dole.
It cannot make sense for the taxpayer – or to people on benefits – to discover a life of idleness pays better than a bit of hard graft.
The Archbishop says: “People who are struggling to find work and struggling to find a secure future are, I think, driven further into a sort of downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair, when the pressure’s on in that way.
“And quite often it can make people start feeling vulnerable – even more vulnerable as time goes on – and that’s the kind of unfairness that I feel.”
He is right to say the five million people on out-of-work benefits are not “wicked, stupid or lazy” but he’s wrong to claim they are being penalised simply to save money.
Actually, those suffering from uncertainty and despair must do so from having no hope, nothing to look forward to and nothing to do.
Being stuck at home all day with no money and nobody to talk to isn’t much of a life.
Getting out and about, working with other people and re-learning some self-discipline must be a good first step on the road back to real work.
That’s not a punishment, that’s a benefit. For most people, it would restore some of their pride, give them a new purpose in life or, at the very least, a reason to get up in the morning.
Ambitious young students give their services free to potential employers for weeks at a time just to get some experience and so they have something extra to offer when it comes to real job interviews.
The same must apply to people who are out of work for a long time. At least if they get their hands dirty doing something socially-useful, it shows they’re trying.
True, there is a shortage of jobs at the moment. But there is also a surplus of imported foreign labour because so many Brits can’t be bothered to take the work that is on offer.
Of course, if Iain Duncan-Smith’s plans succeed, it will save us all billions of pounds. But that’s not the only reason he’s right.
Living on benefits is hard and not much fun. But for some people it’s become a way of life. The Archbishop should recognise that sometimes it’s necessary to be cruel to be kind.
He thinks making the work-shy get off their backsides will drive them to despair. But whenever Governments come up with a sensible plan you can be sure Establishment figures will be rushing for the barricades.
As if Archbishop Rowan Williams didn’t have enough trouble in his own vestry, he’s set himself up as the champion of unemployed.
Caring for the poor and dispossessed is, of course, what the Church of England is supposed to do. The Archbishop may think he’s being true to his calling.
But if he really wants to help the needy then giving them money to stay at home watching daytime TV is not the way to do it.
We have the deserving poor. For them, a life on benefits is a daily humiliation. They desperately want to work and they should be given every help to succeed.
We also have the undeserving poor – people think a life on benefits is theirs by right.
Why should they give up “Bargain Hunt” in exchange for some grotty job which doesn’t leave them any better off than they are sitting around doing nothing?
And we all know there are some people on benefits who actually manage to do very nicely thank you – because they claim benefits and work in the black economy.
Sadly, our welfare system has been distorted by such people. It’s no longer a safety net to catch people when they fall, it’s a cosy blanket to wrap everyone up and keep them warm.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith is talking sense when he argues that a life in work must be made more attractive than a life on the dole.
It cannot make sense for the taxpayer – or to people on benefits – to discover a life of idleness pays better than a bit of hard graft.
The Archbishop says: “People who are struggling to find work and struggling to find a secure future are, I think, driven further into a sort of downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair, when the pressure’s on in that way.
“And quite often it can make people start feeling vulnerable – even more vulnerable as time goes on – and that’s the kind of unfairness that I feel.”
He is right to say the five million people on out-of-work benefits are not “wicked, stupid or lazy” but he’s wrong to claim they are being penalised simply to save money.
Actually, those suffering from uncertainty and despair must do so from having no hope, nothing to look forward to and nothing to do.
Being stuck at home all day with no money and nobody to talk to isn’t much of a life.
Getting out and about, working with other people and re-learning some self-discipline must be a good first step on the road back to real work.
That’s not a punishment, that’s a benefit. For most people, it would restore some of their pride, give them a new purpose in life or, at the very least, a reason to get up in the morning.
Ambitious young students give their services free to potential employers for weeks at a time just to get some experience and so they have something extra to offer when it comes to real job interviews.
The same must apply to people who are out of work for a long time. At least if they get their hands dirty doing something socially-useful, it shows they’re trying.
True, there is a shortage of jobs at the moment. But there is also a surplus of imported foreign labour because so many Brits can’t be bothered to take the work that is on offer.
Of course, if Iain Duncan-Smith’s plans succeed, it will save us all billions of pounds. But that’s not the only reason he’s right.
Living on benefits is hard and not much fun. But for some people it’s become a way of life. The Archbishop should recognise that sometimes it’s necessary to be cruel to be kind.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Not with a bang but a wimper
Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament and now, 405 years later, David Cameron has done the job for him. At least no-one was hurt.
The European Court of Human Rights has decreed that prisoners in British jails must be allowed to vote in elections and, six years after that decision, we’ve caved in.
We’re told David Cameron is “exasperated and furious”.
As a response, that’s as pathetic as having to share our armed forces with the French.
As a betrayal, it’s even worse.
The Prime Minister came to power promising to scrap the legislation, imposed by Tony Blair, which created the human rights industry in this country.
Labour signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, something we had resisted doing for decades.
It was originally drawn up to save less happy lands from dictatorship. It aimed to defend the sort of human rights violated by people like Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy and, of course, Hitler.
Mercifully, we have never suffered that kind of evil Government so we never had a need for laws which enshrined our basic human rights – we had Magna Carta in 1215 and it served us well enough.
But in their desperation to be “at the heart of Europe”, Tony and his cronies gave us human rights which, in turn, gave every terrorist, murderer and whinger an excuse to take the Government to court at our expense.
Before the General Election, Cameron and Co pledged to scrap the human rights legislation and replace it.
Their plan for a British Bill of Rights would probably have been no great improvement but it was a start.
That plan has now been dropped. Instead, we must admit that British sovereignty no longer exists.
Our Parliament has decreed several times to ensure prisoners can’t vote. Yet one European Court ruling and elected representatives become irrelevant.
Mr Cameron’s decision to cave in proves our Parliament might as well not exist. Our
laws are made by unelected foreign institutions we have no control over. It’s as if we had surrendered to a foreign power.
It is disgusting that prisoners, people who have committed serious crimes, should have a say in choosing how we are governed.
One of the many offensive aspects is that the Government has caved in as a result of a case brought – with Legal Aid, of course – by a mad axe-man.
John Hirst killed his landlady with an axe. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He got out of jail after 25 years.
While he was inside, he discovered a desire to vote. Having taken the Government all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, he is out of jail and able to celebrate.
This vile specimen had the effrontery to post a YouTube video where says: “Well, I’ve got the joint, I’m going to celebrate. I’ve got the bottle of champagne and I’m going to celebrate because last night it was announced that prisoners have now got the vote, which I’m really chuffed about.
“I’m now going to celebrate for the 75,000 prisoners who will be getting the vote. That includes murderers, rapists and paedophiles. All of them will be getting the vote because it’s their human right to have the vote.”
Thanks to an assortment of judges, many from some of the farthest-flung corners of Europe where human rights have only just been invented, murderers, rapists and paedophiles may yet decide the course of British politics.
This, in itself, is a staggering betrayal by Mr Cameron. It shows, among other things, that he is the willing victim of his coalition with the Liberal-Democrats.
They, in fairness, actually believe prisoners should be allowed to vote – though they kept pretty quiet about it before the election. They also believe in Britain being run by Europe.
Now they’ve got their way – another case of the Lib-Dem tail wagging the Tory dog.
The people who now make British laws are the European Court judges. Among them are human rights expert Ganna Yudkivska, from the Ukraine; university lecturer Nebojsa Vucinic from Montenegro; and Khanlar Hajivev, president of the supreme court of Azerbaijan.
Did you vote for any of them? No, nor me.
I’m sure they’re all honourable and learned. But what do they know about this country? Indeed, what do they know about democracy and the vote?
David Cameron is guilty not just of the usual politician’s double-dealing. He is guilty of betraying his country.
He has surrendered to a foreign power without the least resistance.
This is not just about whether 70,000 convicts should be allowed to vote. It’s about who runs Britain.
If we concede defeat to the European courts, we can be as “exasperated and furious” as we like but he has submitted to an unelected foreign dictatorship.
The only consolation is that when prisoners do get to vote, even they will realise it’s not worth bothering if our Government can’t be bothered to run our country any more.
Guy Fawkes thought we needed a massive explosion to destroy Parliament. David Cameron’s done it with a damp squib.
The European Court of Human Rights has decreed that prisoners in British jails must be allowed to vote in elections and, six years after that decision, we’ve caved in.
We’re told David Cameron is “exasperated and furious”.
As a response, that’s as pathetic as having to share our armed forces with the French.
As a betrayal, it’s even worse.
The Prime Minister came to power promising to scrap the legislation, imposed by Tony Blair, which created the human rights industry in this country.
Labour signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, something we had resisted doing for decades.
It was originally drawn up to save less happy lands from dictatorship. It aimed to defend the sort of human rights violated by people like Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy and, of course, Hitler.
Mercifully, we have never suffered that kind of evil Government so we never had a need for laws which enshrined our basic human rights – we had Magna Carta in 1215 and it served us well enough.
But in their desperation to be “at the heart of Europe”, Tony and his cronies gave us human rights which, in turn, gave every terrorist, murderer and whinger an excuse to take the Government to court at our expense.
Before the General Election, Cameron and Co pledged to scrap the human rights legislation and replace it.
Their plan for a British Bill of Rights would probably have been no great improvement but it was a start.
That plan has now been dropped. Instead, we must admit that British sovereignty no longer exists.
Our Parliament has decreed several times to ensure prisoners can’t vote. Yet one European Court ruling and elected representatives become irrelevant.
Mr Cameron’s decision to cave in proves our Parliament might as well not exist. Our
laws are made by unelected foreign institutions we have no control over. It’s as if we had surrendered to a foreign power.
It is disgusting that prisoners, people who have committed serious crimes, should have a say in choosing how we are governed.
One of the many offensive aspects is that the Government has caved in as a result of a case brought – with Legal Aid, of course – by a mad axe-man.
John Hirst killed his landlady with an axe. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He got out of jail after 25 years.
While he was inside, he discovered a desire to vote. Having taken the Government all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, he is out of jail and able to celebrate.
This vile specimen had the effrontery to post a YouTube video where says: “Well, I’ve got the joint, I’m going to celebrate. I’ve got the bottle of champagne and I’m going to celebrate because last night it was announced that prisoners have now got the vote, which I’m really chuffed about.
“I’m now going to celebrate for the 75,000 prisoners who will be getting the vote. That includes murderers, rapists and paedophiles. All of them will be getting the vote because it’s their human right to have the vote.”
Thanks to an assortment of judges, many from some of the farthest-flung corners of Europe where human rights have only just been invented, murderers, rapists and paedophiles may yet decide the course of British politics.
This, in itself, is a staggering betrayal by Mr Cameron. It shows, among other things, that he is the willing victim of his coalition with the Liberal-Democrats.
They, in fairness, actually believe prisoners should be allowed to vote – though they kept pretty quiet about it before the election. They also believe in Britain being run by Europe.
Now they’ve got their way – another case of the Lib-Dem tail wagging the Tory dog.
The people who now make British laws are the European Court judges. Among them are human rights expert Ganna Yudkivska, from the Ukraine; university lecturer Nebojsa Vucinic from Montenegro; and Khanlar Hajivev, president of the supreme court of Azerbaijan.
Did you vote for any of them? No, nor me.
I’m sure they’re all honourable and learned. But what do they know about this country? Indeed, what do they know about democracy and the vote?
David Cameron is guilty not just of the usual politician’s double-dealing. He is guilty of betraying his country.
He has surrendered to a foreign power without the least resistance.
This is not just about whether 70,000 convicts should be allowed to vote. It’s about who runs Britain.
If we concede defeat to the European courts, we can be as “exasperated and furious” as we like but he has submitted to an unelected foreign dictatorship.
The only consolation is that when prisoners do get to vote, even they will realise it’s not worth bothering if our Government can’t be bothered to run our country any more.
Guy Fawkes thought we needed a massive explosion to destroy Parliament. David Cameron’s done it with a damp squib.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Tories suspend S Staffs party
The Conservatives have suspended one of its most successful constituency parties and axed three senior officers, two of them councillors.
The 500-member South Staffordshire Conservative Association has been put on "special support" with ex-Birmingham Northfield MP Roger King parachuted in as chairman.
Coun David Billson and Coun Sonja Oatley have been forced to resign from the association's ruling executive by the Party Board over unfounded allegations against their chairman Lyndon Jones.
Mr Jones has also been forced out and has quit the party over the "kangaroo court" which sealed his fate.
The departures follow a high-level two-month inquiry into allegations against Mr Jones carried out by the Tories’ Staffordshire Area Management Executive chaired by Mr Charles Boote.
The inquiry's final report concludes that “an undercurrent of bad feeling” was in danger of “spiralling out of control”.
It says there was “strong evidence of an attempt to undermine the chairman. In particular there have been unproven rumours of previous membership of the National Front or similar organisations and charges of rigging of a selection vote. Both of these could be highly damaging to the party were they to be reported in the press”.
Mr Jones was also accused of using his position to win a pay rise for his wife, who is the association’s organising secretary. But he was cleared by the inquiry which said he “behaved properly in absenting himself from key decisions affecting his wife’s employment contract”.
The report said South Staffordshire District Councillor Oatley had to go because she was guilty of leaking confidential information to members and undermining Mr Jones.
It says of Coun Billson, who is a district and county councillor, that he “has taken certain actions and made a number of allegations that have undermined the chairman. None of these allegations have turned out to be true and Coun Billson has presented no evidence to support them.”
Both councillors have been removed from the local party executive.
The report says of Mr Jones: “The chairman has exhibited a high degree of dedication to the association during his term in office.
The report also states: “However, he has permitted the paid employees to assume responsibility for issues with, and write e-mails to, volunteers that rightly fall within his remit. In doing so, the chairman has abdicated an important responsibility and has allowed situations to develop and fester.”
Mr Jones commented that as paid employees it would be part of an Organising Secretary’s job to respond to emails.
The report says the association must introduce new employment policies “as a matter of urgency” and it would be “inappropriate” for Mr Jones to remain as chairman.
Mr Jones said he had repeatedly told the area management executive that the Organising Secretary already had both a contract of employment and a job description, but he was ignored.
He became chairman 18 months ago following a selection where he was voted as Chairman by a large majority of the members and at the time of his election the Conservative Party wrote to the association confirming there was no objection to Mr Jones getting the post even though his wife was an employee.
A furious Mr Jones said: “I was never in the BNP and I never took part in any decisions regarding the Organising Secretary’s wages. I asked for advice from the party and they immediately suspended the association, told me we could not hold any more meetings, and launched an investigation.
“I do not know what I have done wrong. This is a stitch-up kangaroo court. They are really scraping the barrel if it’s because I didn’t personally reply to all the e-mails we receive.
“I have never been allowed to defend myself. As a convicted criminal I would have more opportunity to defend myself than this.”
He said some councillors may have been angry because he had tried to ensure the local party stuck to the Conservatives’ rules on the selection of council candidates.
Mr Jones added: “I am very disappointed I have had no support from our
MP Gavin Williamson after I was his chief aide and had three weeks off work for the General Election. I was with him every single day of the campaign,” said Mr Jones.
“As his Association Chairman, I would have expected his support. I am a working man who was doing a good job and feel very let down by the Conservative Party. Obviously I do not fit in.”
At the General Election, the Conservative majority in South Staffordshire increased from 8,847 to 16,950, making it one of the party’s safest seats in the country.
Coun Billson said: “I have been struck down from the executive, so has Mr Jones and one other person but I am not allowed to talk about it and that would be the situation at the moment.”
The 500-member South Staffordshire Conservative Association has been put on "special support" with ex-Birmingham Northfield MP Roger King parachuted in as chairman.
Coun David Billson and Coun Sonja Oatley have been forced to resign from the association's ruling executive by the Party Board over unfounded allegations against their chairman Lyndon Jones.
Mr Jones has also been forced out and has quit the party over the "kangaroo court" which sealed his fate.
The departures follow a high-level two-month inquiry into allegations against Mr Jones carried out by the Tories’ Staffordshire Area Management Executive chaired by Mr Charles Boote.
The inquiry's final report concludes that “an undercurrent of bad feeling” was in danger of “spiralling out of control”.
It says there was “strong evidence of an attempt to undermine the chairman. In particular there have been unproven rumours of previous membership of the National Front or similar organisations and charges of rigging of a selection vote. Both of these could be highly damaging to the party were they to be reported in the press”.
Mr Jones was also accused of using his position to win a pay rise for his wife, who is the association’s organising secretary. But he was cleared by the inquiry which said he “behaved properly in absenting himself from key decisions affecting his wife’s employment contract”.
The report said South Staffordshire District Councillor Oatley had to go because she was guilty of leaking confidential information to members and undermining Mr Jones.
It says of Coun Billson, who is a district and county councillor, that he “has taken certain actions and made a number of allegations that have undermined the chairman. None of these allegations have turned out to be true and Coun Billson has presented no evidence to support them.”
Both councillors have been removed from the local party executive.
The report says of Mr Jones: “The chairman has exhibited a high degree of dedication to the association during his term in office.
The report also states: “However, he has permitted the paid employees to assume responsibility for issues with, and write e-mails to, volunteers that rightly fall within his remit. In doing so, the chairman has abdicated an important responsibility and has allowed situations to develop and fester.”
Mr Jones commented that as paid employees it would be part of an Organising Secretary’s job to respond to emails.
The report says the association must introduce new employment policies “as a matter of urgency” and it would be “inappropriate” for Mr Jones to remain as chairman.
Mr Jones said he had repeatedly told the area management executive that the Organising Secretary already had both a contract of employment and a job description, but he was ignored.
He became chairman 18 months ago following a selection where he was voted as Chairman by a large majority of the members and at the time of his election the Conservative Party wrote to the association confirming there was no objection to Mr Jones getting the post even though his wife was an employee.
A furious Mr Jones said: “I was never in the BNP and I never took part in any decisions regarding the Organising Secretary’s wages. I asked for advice from the party and they immediately suspended the association, told me we could not hold any more meetings, and launched an investigation.
“I do not know what I have done wrong. This is a stitch-up kangaroo court. They are really scraping the barrel if it’s because I didn’t personally reply to all the e-mails we receive.
“I have never been allowed to defend myself. As a convicted criminal I would have more opportunity to defend myself than this.”
He said some councillors may have been angry because he had tried to ensure the local party stuck to the Conservatives’ rules on the selection of council candidates.
Mr Jones added: “I am very disappointed I have had no support from our
MP Gavin Williamson after I was his chief aide and had three weeks off work for the General Election. I was with him every single day of the campaign,” said Mr Jones.
“As his Association Chairman, I would have expected his support. I am a working man who was doing a good job and feel very let down by the Conservative Party. Obviously I do not fit in.”
At the General Election, the Conservative majority in South Staffordshire increased from 8,847 to 16,950, making it one of the party’s safest seats in the country.
Coun Billson said: “I have been struck down from the executive, so has Mr Jones and one other person but I am not allowed to talk about it and that would be the situation at the moment.”
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Eric Pickles - a correction
Turns out I was wrong to complain the Staffordshire South Conservatives were only “bullied, browbeaten and betrayed” by Eric Pickles. They were blackmailed as well.
The Tories’ answer to John Prescott told them that if they insisted on choosing Nigel Hastilow as one of the six candidates to be interviewed for the seat, he would have no hesitation in suspending the whole association and imposing three candidates of his choosing on the local party.
When asked about the letter he sent me (see blog from January 17) he just shrugged.
More news about South Staffs Conservatives coming soon
The Tories’ answer to John Prescott told them that if they insisted on choosing Nigel Hastilow as one of the six candidates to be interviewed for the seat, he would have no hesitation in suspending the whole association and imposing three candidates of his choosing on the local party.
When asked about the letter he sent me (see blog from January 17) he just shrugged.
More news about South Staffs Conservatives coming soon
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Telephone banking? Hardly
Another hideous story about banks and recession reaches me. The boss of a small company had to call in the receivers – because he couldn’t call in his bankers.
For months the poor man has been trying to attract the attention of his friendly neighbourhood bankers.
Though we, the taxpayers, own this bank, its staff ignored him, never returned his calls, didn’t bother to look at his e-mails and were “not in” when he visited. As the company’s cash-flow got worse, the boss grew desperate.
Last year he cut his employees from 26 to 13. Things have looked a bit better in the past few months.
Unfortunately, he makes children’s toys so the best time for business is in the build-up to Christmas.
To get to the most profitable time of year, he needs to spend money before he can accumulate it again. This is where the bank is supposed to help with loans and overdrafts.
Our man needed £50,000 – not much in the great scheme of things. He never got it.
Now the banks are under scrutiny, they are reluctant to say no to someone like my toy-maker. They might get into trouble with the politicians – and then what would happen to their multi-million pound bonuses?
It’s much easier to pretend your customers never even bothered to ask for your help. Ignore them and hope they go away – or go bust – without the need to turn them down flat.
The truth is, banks have changed. A few years ago, they threw money around like confetti.
These days, they won’t lend you a penny unless you pay hefty charges, extortionate rates of interest and promise them your house, car, golf clubs, wife, kids and dog if it all goes wrong.
On Tuesday there was a little demonstration outside the Council House in Birmingham as Unison members held a sing-song in protest over the axing of 200 jobs.
A young woman handed me a leaflet calling on me to join a “stuff your cuts, we won’t pay” demo outside the International Convention Centre on October 3 when the Conservative Party conference kicks off there.
To add extra potential for unhappiness, it seems the police are trying to divert the protestors away from the ICC.
This is all in aid of protecting heavily unionised public-sector workers, who seem to think they are on the “front line” when it comes to the new austerity.
They are mistaken. The first blast of cold air is already rushing through the private sector. Look what’s happened to the public housing maintenance firm Connaught.
Quite why it went bust is a bit of a mystery. It had contracts with local authorities and, even if they were being run down, that doesn’t really justify calling in the receivers.
It’s clear, though, the threat of Government spending cuts had already hammered the company’s share price.
It’s happening to dozens of businesses, especially construction firms which have seen plans to build new schools shrivel and die.
Supposedly, we have clambered out of recession and the economy is improving. Most experts think it’s unlikely we’ll fall back into another one – the much-feared “double dip” – but it is a real possibility.
We won’t know the full impact of Government spending cuts until October 20, when Chancellor George Osborne delivers the bad news.
What’s worrying is how Ministers go on about what desperate financial times these are. I understand they want to place all the blame on Gordon Brown.
But they lay it on so thick it’s enough to make the average consumer stay at home and hoard tins of baked beans rather than stimulate the economy by going shopping.
David Cameron’s rhetoric is making things worse. The economy needs public spending cuts and they will have nasty consequences, in the short term anyway.
When the marchers reach the ICC next month, when public sector workers go on strike, when riots take place in Westminster and when tax hikes lead to a spending slump, do people like Cameron and Nick Clegg have the courage to stick to their plans?
Even if the dynamic duo stand firm, will their parties? The Lib-Dems are already pretty flaky.
Few of their MPs or members signed up for the toughest austerity package in history – an election tomorrow and they’d be out on their ears.
In opposition, their hero Vince Cable, now an unhappy Business Secretary, was full of talk about reining in the banks, tackling obscene bonuses and forcing them to lend to small businesses again.
Since getting power? Nothing.
For the Coalition to survive, the least it must do is make sure private businesses also survive. That means dealing with the banks.
There are options. Vince could, for instance, prevent banks demanding personal guarantees from company directors. He could make banks take on the debt many companies now have with the taxman.
He could insist that all bank bonuses are paid into a fund to support small businesses and the money could only be taken out after five years.
If he could make bank managers answer the phone once in a while it would be a start.
For months the poor man has been trying to attract the attention of his friendly neighbourhood bankers.
Though we, the taxpayers, own this bank, its staff ignored him, never returned his calls, didn’t bother to look at his e-mails and were “not in” when he visited. As the company’s cash-flow got worse, the boss grew desperate.
Last year he cut his employees from 26 to 13. Things have looked a bit better in the past few months.
Unfortunately, he makes children’s toys so the best time for business is in the build-up to Christmas.
To get to the most profitable time of year, he needs to spend money before he can accumulate it again. This is where the bank is supposed to help with loans and overdrafts.
Our man needed £50,000 – not much in the great scheme of things. He never got it.
Now the banks are under scrutiny, they are reluctant to say no to someone like my toy-maker. They might get into trouble with the politicians – and then what would happen to their multi-million pound bonuses?
It’s much easier to pretend your customers never even bothered to ask for your help. Ignore them and hope they go away – or go bust – without the need to turn them down flat.
The truth is, banks have changed. A few years ago, they threw money around like confetti.
These days, they won’t lend you a penny unless you pay hefty charges, extortionate rates of interest and promise them your house, car, golf clubs, wife, kids and dog if it all goes wrong.
On Tuesday there was a little demonstration outside the Council House in Birmingham as Unison members held a sing-song in protest over the axing of 200 jobs.
A young woman handed me a leaflet calling on me to join a “stuff your cuts, we won’t pay” demo outside the International Convention Centre on October 3 when the Conservative Party conference kicks off there.
To add extra potential for unhappiness, it seems the police are trying to divert the protestors away from the ICC.
This is all in aid of protecting heavily unionised public-sector workers, who seem to think they are on the “front line” when it comes to the new austerity.
They are mistaken. The first blast of cold air is already rushing through the private sector. Look what’s happened to the public housing maintenance firm Connaught.
Quite why it went bust is a bit of a mystery. It had contracts with local authorities and, even if they were being run down, that doesn’t really justify calling in the receivers.
It’s clear, though, the threat of Government spending cuts had already hammered the company’s share price.
It’s happening to dozens of businesses, especially construction firms which have seen plans to build new schools shrivel and die.
Supposedly, we have clambered out of recession and the economy is improving. Most experts think it’s unlikely we’ll fall back into another one – the much-feared “double dip” – but it is a real possibility.
We won’t know the full impact of Government spending cuts until October 20, when Chancellor George Osborne delivers the bad news.
What’s worrying is how Ministers go on about what desperate financial times these are. I understand they want to place all the blame on Gordon Brown.
But they lay it on so thick it’s enough to make the average consumer stay at home and hoard tins of baked beans rather than stimulate the economy by going shopping.
David Cameron’s rhetoric is making things worse. The economy needs public spending cuts and they will have nasty consequences, in the short term anyway.
When the marchers reach the ICC next month, when public sector workers go on strike, when riots take place in Westminster and when tax hikes lead to a spending slump, do people like Cameron and Nick Clegg have the courage to stick to their plans?
Even if the dynamic duo stand firm, will their parties? The Lib-Dems are already pretty flaky.
Few of their MPs or members signed up for the toughest austerity package in history – an election tomorrow and they’d be out on their ears.
In opposition, their hero Vince Cable, now an unhappy Business Secretary, was full of talk about reining in the banks, tackling obscene bonuses and forcing them to lend to small businesses again.
Since getting power? Nothing.
For the Coalition to survive, the least it must do is make sure private businesses also survive. That means dealing with the banks.
There are options. Vince could, for instance, prevent banks demanding personal guarantees from company directors. He could make banks take on the debt many companies now have with the taxman.
He could insist that all bank bonuses are paid into a fund to support small businesses and the money could only be taken out after five years.
If he could make bank managers answer the phone once in a while it would be a start.
A Government in a hurry
David Cameron banged on about fairness at the Conservative conference in Birmingham. But there’s precious little fairness in what he’s planning to do.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith was garlanded with praise for his overhaul of the benefits system but actually he’s proposing to make the existing unfairnesses worse.
Chancellor George Osborne unveiled his big idea, which is axing child benefit for top earners. Yet within minutes, his plans were unravelling because they were so unfair.
Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke insisted it was right to make prisoners work and promised to pay them £12,000 a year. But how can it be fair to offer jobs to criminals when honest men and women are out of work?
The Prime Minister told us “fairness is giving people what they deserve”.
OK then, let’s look at who gets what in our Big Society.
Child benefit won’t go to anyone earning the top rate of tax. That means a married man with a non-working wife will lose child benefit when his earnings hit £44,000 a year. But if he and his wife each earn £43,900 – totalling £87,800 – they will get child benefit.
It took only moments for even Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne to realise that, as leaders of the self-proclaimed “party of the family”, gunning for middle-class mums is a monumental miscalculation.
So they cobbled together a promise to introduce a tax allowance for married men which will doubtless wipe out the £1 billion saved by the benefit cut.
Fairness was not their guiding light. They just wanted to screw more money from the better-off.
Then Mr Duncan Smith announced that in future nobody would be entitled to State benefits of more than £500 a week.
Has he considered how that compares with the income of ordinary working people?
He might be interested to know that half the workers in the West Midlands earn £456.40 a week or less – and they have to pay tax on it.
His benefit cap is £26,000 a year. To earn that much, somebody in work needs to have a salary before tax of £35,000 because tax and National Insurance will cut his take-home pay to £26,000.
You need to be in the top 15 per cent of all earners in the country to have a salary of £35,000.
Ironically, the average taxable income is £25,800, more or less equal to the maximum Mr Duncan Smith would give you for not working.
Out of that, someone in a job must pay tax and National Insurance so his real income falls to £19,725.65 – £6,000 less than you might get for sitting at home and doing nothing.
One reason for the cap is to stop the State paying massive rent bills for families on benefits living in Mayfair and Belgravia. They will have to move out of their London mansions into more modest accommodation.
This will lead to an exodus from the capital as people are forced to find cheaper places to rent. In other words, London will simply export its problem families and dump them on the rest of us. That’s not fair either.
Then Ken Clarke declares it’s time to put prisoners to work. It’s a nice idea, especially when he says a quarter of their earnings will go to their victims.
Out of the £232 a week he wants to pay them, prisoners will get £20, presumably to buy drugs. Some of the rest will pay for their bed and board and a little may even find its way to their families.
This “porridge pays” policy would see crooks and thieves inputting computer data, repairing shoes and recycling rubbish.
These jobs could all be done by people on the outside. Is our economy so desperate for workers that nobody else is available?
Of course not. If paid jobs are on offer they should go to people who, even if they would prefer a life of leisure, at least have the merit of not being in prison.
Where is the fairness in giving jobs to criminals at the expense of people on the outside who might be grateful for the work?
If fairness is “giving people what they deserve” then mothers who stay at home to look after their children do not deserve to be denied benefits which still go to families with two working parents.
This is a Government in a hurry. It may be because the Tories have been out of power for so long or because they’re afraid they won’t stay there very long.
Either way, in their rush for “change”, they are making terrible mistakes and storing up more trouble for later.
Worse still, they were clearly so frightened of the backlash over child benefit cuts they dashed out a promise to help married couples overnight.
That tends to suggest they don’t have the courage of their convictions. When the going gets tough, they hoist the white flag of surrender.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith was garlanded with praise for his overhaul of the benefits system but actually he’s proposing to make the existing unfairnesses worse.
Chancellor George Osborne unveiled his big idea, which is axing child benefit for top earners. Yet within minutes, his plans were unravelling because they were so unfair.
Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke insisted it was right to make prisoners work and promised to pay them £12,000 a year. But how can it be fair to offer jobs to criminals when honest men and women are out of work?
The Prime Minister told us “fairness is giving people what they deserve”.
OK then, let’s look at who gets what in our Big Society.
Child benefit won’t go to anyone earning the top rate of tax. That means a married man with a non-working wife will lose child benefit when his earnings hit £44,000 a year. But if he and his wife each earn £43,900 – totalling £87,800 – they will get child benefit.
It took only moments for even Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne to realise that, as leaders of the self-proclaimed “party of the family”, gunning for middle-class mums is a monumental miscalculation.
So they cobbled together a promise to introduce a tax allowance for married men which will doubtless wipe out the £1 billion saved by the benefit cut.
Fairness was not their guiding light. They just wanted to screw more money from the better-off.
Then Mr Duncan Smith announced that in future nobody would be entitled to State benefits of more than £500 a week.
Has he considered how that compares with the income of ordinary working people?
He might be interested to know that half the workers in the West Midlands earn £456.40 a week or less – and they have to pay tax on it.
His benefit cap is £26,000 a year. To earn that much, somebody in work needs to have a salary before tax of £35,000 because tax and National Insurance will cut his take-home pay to £26,000.
You need to be in the top 15 per cent of all earners in the country to have a salary of £35,000.
Ironically, the average taxable income is £25,800, more or less equal to the maximum Mr Duncan Smith would give you for not working.
Out of that, someone in a job must pay tax and National Insurance so his real income falls to £19,725.65 – £6,000 less than you might get for sitting at home and doing nothing.
One reason for the cap is to stop the State paying massive rent bills for families on benefits living in Mayfair and Belgravia. They will have to move out of their London mansions into more modest accommodation.
This will lead to an exodus from the capital as people are forced to find cheaper places to rent. In other words, London will simply export its problem families and dump them on the rest of us. That’s not fair either.
Then Ken Clarke declares it’s time to put prisoners to work. It’s a nice idea, especially when he says a quarter of their earnings will go to their victims.
Out of the £232 a week he wants to pay them, prisoners will get £20, presumably to buy drugs. Some of the rest will pay for their bed and board and a little may even find its way to their families.
This “porridge pays” policy would see crooks and thieves inputting computer data, repairing shoes and recycling rubbish.
These jobs could all be done by people on the outside. Is our economy so desperate for workers that nobody else is available?
Of course not. If paid jobs are on offer they should go to people who, even if they would prefer a life of leisure, at least have the merit of not being in prison.
Where is the fairness in giving jobs to criminals at the expense of people on the outside who might be grateful for the work?
If fairness is “giving people what they deserve” then mothers who stay at home to look after their children do not deserve to be denied benefits which still go to families with two working parents.
This is a Government in a hurry. It may be because the Tories have been out of power for so long or because they’re afraid they won’t stay there very long.
Either way, in their rush for “change”, they are making terrible mistakes and storing up more trouble for later.
Worse still, they were clearly so frightened of the backlash over child benefit cuts they dashed out a promise to help married couples overnight.
That tends to suggest they don’t have the courage of their convictions. When the going gets tough, they hoist the white flag of surrender.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Emptiness of Dave's Big Society
Pity Dave has abandoned giving speeches without notes. His party conference address in Birmingham was drearily filled with rhetorical piffle and meaningless politico-speak.
You could tell it was written for him, not by him, and it was made worse because he didn't actually read his speech terribly well and stumbled over the words.
You could also tell that some marketing guru thought it a brilliant wheeze to fill it with silly phrases like “beating, radical heart” and “we are the radicals now”.
The big phrase was, of course, Big Society. This is still a most bizarre concept. Dave clearly wants it to be his legacy. But it’s like a label which gets put on even the shoddiest products to make them look shiny and new – Big Society is the new eco.
Just as every spiv and charlatan has taken to labelling his wizard wheezes eco- to make it look cool and trendy and on-message, now everyone will pretend their products and services are part of the Big Society.
Labour gave us the meaningless twaddle of “stakeholders”; Dave gives us “Big Society”. They are equally empty.
Listening to our Prime Minister, I was left wondering whether, rather than trying to convince the rest of the country of the merits of his case, he was actually trying to convince himself.
You could tell it was written for him, not by him, and it was made worse because he didn't actually read his speech terribly well and stumbled over the words.
You could also tell that some marketing guru thought it a brilliant wheeze to fill it with silly phrases like “beating, radical heart” and “we are the radicals now”.
The big phrase was, of course, Big Society. This is still a most bizarre concept. Dave clearly wants it to be his legacy. But it’s like a label which gets put on even the shoddiest products to make them look shiny and new – Big Society is the new eco.
Just as every spiv and charlatan has taken to labelling his wizard wheezes eco- to make it look cool and trendy and on-message, now everyone will pretend their products and services are part of the Big Society.
Labour gave us the meaningless twaddle of “stakeholders”; Dave gives us “Big Society”. They are equally empty.
Listening to our Prime Minister, I was left wondering whether, rather than trying to convince the rest of the country of the merits of his case, he was actually trying to convince himself.
Monday, October 04, 2010
This is luxury you can't afford
How much longer must we endure being dictated to by the European Union? Its latest edict means we must find up to £2.5 billion a year to entertain “benefit tourists”.
Refusing them handouts breaches their human rights. So we must give them jobseeker's allowance, employment support allowance, pension credit and income support.
People from across the Continent will make a beeline for Britain if, as the EU demands, we are forced to dole out money to all Europe’s benefit scroungers.
This is just the latest in a long line of offensive decisions imposed on us by our lords and masters in Brussels.
Ministers are at each other’s throats over spending cuts – with Defence Secretary Liam Fox issuing a stark warning about the damage they will do to the armed forces.
It would be madness for us to take on the burden of funding Europe’s down-and-outs just because the Brussels bureaucracy thinks its human rights laws are more important than our struggle for economic survival.
In 2007, when he was still making his way as Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron offered crowd-pleasing opposition to EU human rights laws imposed on Britain a decade ago by Tony Blair.
He was protesting over the fact that the law prevented the deportation of Italian-born Learco Chindamo, who killed headmaster Philip Lawrence, even though the Home Office considered him a threat to the public.
Mr Cameron said: "It has to go. Abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, which sets out rights and responsibilities. The fact that the murderer of Philip Lawrence cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense.
"It is a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country. What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence? The problem for this Government is that the Human Rights Act is their legislation and they appear to be blind to its failings."
You would think from comments like these that one of Mr Cameron’s first acts as Prime Minister would be to abolish the legislation.
Yet even before he failed to win the General Election, he was watering this down. It turned out his Bill of Rights would still leave this country ruled by the European Court of Human Rights.
Then, to cobble together his coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Mr Cameron has abandoned these plans altogether. There will be no cancellation of the human rights laws and the Bill of Rights has been shelved.
The boost to benefit tourism will cost us between £1.3 billion and £2.5 billion a year – yet the Government is desperately trying to cut welfare spending and crack down on benefit cheats.
How could it possibly justify hammering its own citizens when it offers an open door and a blank cheque to people from Lithuania, Latvia and Romania?
The European Union is not only trying to impose its bizarre view of human rights on us, it is also seeking to rob us blind.
The EU’s Budget Commissioner, Polish economist Janusz Lewandowski, is campaigning to end the “rebate” Mrs Thatcher negotiated with the EU back in 1984 when she declared: "We are simply asking to have our own money back."
Tony Blair did a deal which will has seen the rebate halved from £5 billion to £2.5 billion. Mr Lewandowski wants to see it axed altogether.
Even with the rebate, we are giving the EU £8.3 billion this year and, under Mr Blair’s deal, that increases to £10.3 billion by 2014.
Where is all this money coming from? How can we afford it?
It’s bad enough Ministers protecting the foreign aid budget which sees millions of pounds leak into the hands of monsters and terrorists. How can they justify increasing our payments to Brussels?
The EU boasts about how much money Britain received in grants from Brussels. It’s so desperate to win the propaganda war that any development completed with EU support must fly the blue European flag with its gold stars.
It even fines people who forget this little detail. It cost development agency Advantage West Midlands £200,000 and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce £77,609.
Yet for every £1 the EU gives us, we give it £2. That is not, and never has been, a good deal for Britain.
The blight of benefit tourism won’t simply be the amount of money it costs. What will all these people do with themselves all day long if they have no work and no intention of looking for any? We can be pretty sure their activities will not all remain on the right side of the law.
Rather like being a member of a golf club or subscribing to Sky TV, EU membership may have been one of life’s little luxuries. It allowed our leaders to jet around Europe at our expense being important.
Surely the time has come when we have to say to our friends across the English Channel that their Union is a jolly nice idea and we wish it well but money’s a bit tight and we simply can’t afford the cost of membership any longer.
Refusing them handouts breaches their human rights. So we must give them jobseeker's allowance, employment support allowance, pension credit and income support.
People from across the Continent will make a beeline for Britain if, as the EU demands, we are forced to dole out money to all Europe’s benefit scroungers.
This is just the latest in a long line of offensive decisions imposed on us by our lords and masters in Brussels.
Ministers are at each other’s throats over spending cuts – with Defence Secretary Liam Fox issuing a stark warning about the damage they will do to the armed forces.
It would be madness for us to take on the burden of funding Europe’s down-and-outs just because the Brussels bureaucracy thinks its human rights laws are more important than our struggle for economic survival.
In 2007, when he was still making his way as Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron offered crowd-pleasing opposition to EU human rights laws imposed on Britain a decade ago by Tony Blair.
He was protesting over the fact that the law prevented the deportation of Italian-born Learco Chindamo, who killed headmaster Philip Lawrence, even though the Home Office considered him a threat to the public.
Mr Cameron said: "It has to go. Abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, which sets out rights and responsibilities. The fact that the murderer of Philip Lawrence cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense.
"It is a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country. What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence? The problem for this Government is that the Human Rights Act is their legislation and they appear to be blind to its failings."
You would think from comments like these that one of Mr Cameron’s first acts as Prime Minister would be to abolish the legislation.
Yet even before he failed to win the General Election, he was watering this down. It turned out his Bill of Rights would still leave this country ruled by the European Court of Human Rights.
Then, to cobble together his coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Mr Cameron has abandoned these plans altogether. There will be no cancellation of the human rights laws and the Bill of Rights has been shelved.
The boost to benefit tourism will cost us between £1.3 billion and £2.5 billion a year – yet the Government is desperately trying to cut welfare spending and crack down on benefit cheats.
How could it possibly justify hammering its own citizens when it offers an open door and a blank cheque to people from Lithuania, Latvia and Romania?
The European Union is not only trying to impose its bizarre view of human rights on us, it is also seeking to rob us blind.
The EU’s Budget Commissioner, Polish economist Janusz Lewandowski, is campaigning to end the “rebate” Mrs Thatcher negotiated with the EU back in 1984 when she declared: "We are simply asking to have our own money back."
Tony Blair did a deal which will has seen the rebate halved from £5 billion to £2.5 billion. Mr Lewandowski wants to see it axed altogether.
Even with the rebate, we are giving the EU £8.3 billion this year and, under Mr Blair’s deal, that increases to £10.3 billion by 2014.
Where is all this money coming from? How can we afford it?
It’s bad enough Ministers protecting the foreign aid budget which sees millions of pounds leak into the hands of monsters and terrorists. How can they justify increasing our payments to Brussels?
The EU boasts about how much money Britain received in grants from Brussels. It’s so desperate to win the propaganda war that any development completed with EU support must fly the blue European flag with its gold stars.
It even fines people who forget this little detail. It cost development agency Advantage West Midlands £200,000 and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce £77,609.
Yet for every £1 the EU gives us, we give it £2. That is not, and never has been, a good deal for Britain.
The blight of benefit tourism won’t simply be the amount of money it costs. What will all these people do with themselves all day long if they have no work and no intention of looking for any? We can be pretty sure their activities will not all remain on the right side of the law.
Rather like being a member of a golf club or subscribing to Sky TV, EU membership may have been one of life’s little luxuries. It allowed our leaders to jet around Europe at our expense being important.
Surely the time has come when we have to say to our friends across the English Channel that their Union is a jolly nice idea and we wish it well but money’s a bit tight and we simply can’t afford the cost of membership any longer.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
BBC needs more reality TV
It’s not surprising Sir Michael Lyons is giving up as chairman of the BBC Trust. He knows when he’s onto a loser.
The former chief executive of Wolverhampton and Birmingham councils was appointed to the job by the old Labour Government. He was one of their trusties, having been a Labour councillor at an early stage in his career.
With the BBC under scrutiny as never before, we can reasonably assume he quit before was pushed out of his £204,000-a-year three-day-a-week job.
Things are getting nasty at the Beeb and they’re not likely to settle down any time soon.
The broadcasting unions are threatening to black out part of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham next month. We may also face blank BBC TV screens when the Government unveils its controversial spending cuts on October 20.
The 48-hour strikes over plans to limit the BBC’s generous pensions scheme will not do the national broadcaster any good.
Instead of causing the viewers and the Government maximum inconvenience, which is usually the aim of any strike, all it will do is play into the hands of the BBC’s rivals.
The unions live in the dark ages when the BBC enjoyed a near monopoly over the airwaves.
These days, there are hundreds of TV channels to choose from. This bewildering, and often dispiriting, variety of output does not guarantee quality, of course.
Some of the stuff you get with a Sky TV subscription is so embarrassingly bad it’s a wonder how the stations which churn it out can survive financially. And many of the Freeview channels are not worth wasting your life watching.
Even so, politics junkies can find more than enough coverage of party political conferences and Government spending reviews without having to go anywhere near the BBC.
The Corporation is still a national institution like the NHS. We seem to love it for all its faults. Yet if you look closely at what the BBC does, you have to wonder whether we need it any more.
We pay £145.50 for the privilege of watching television, whether we ever look at a BBC programme or not.
Most people, most of the time, still seem to think this is decent value for money. The licence is certainly a lot cheaper than even the most basic Sky package.
If payment was voluntary, rather than being the legally-enforced poll tax that it is today, the BBC’s income would fall substantially from today’s £3.5 billion but it would still yield a small fortune.
Sadly, we don’t have that option which is why the Corporation is under such scrutiny over how much it pays its stars like Jonathan Ross and why its executive directors’ salary and expenses are now public property.
It may be OK for BBC Director General Mark Thompson to claim £2,236.90 and £1,277.71 to cut short family holidays and fly home to deal with urgent business but it doesn’t look good. Especially when you know he was paid £778,000 last year.
The BBC attracts hostile attention partly because the papers and TV stations on the attack are owned by commercial rivals. They see the Corporation’s privileged financial position as a distortion of a free market in broadcasting.
That helps to explain why it seems to be under constant bombardment from the rest of the media. But it doesn’t invalidate their complaints.
The BBC’s expansion – especially its attempt to dominate the internet – are rarely justified by its public service broadcasting charter.
That’s because, even though they are highly-paid, it’s executives do not really know what the organisation is for any more.
If “public service” were the real objective, the BBC wouldn’t need all the TV and radio channels it now owns. It would not produce pap aimed at winning an increasingly-irrelevant ratings war. And it would not fork out millions on “talent”.
Apart from the sacred cow of the NHS, everyone in the public sector is facing huge spending cuts. They must be applied to the BBC as well.
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will soon embark on new negotiations over the licence fee. The time has come to debate the options. One would be to close down many BBC activities, sell them off and cut the fee to no more than £100.
In my view, it would be better if the whole monstrous edifice were sold off in a massive privatisation which could make billons for the Government at a time when cash is short.
Luckily for the BBC, though, it is still valued enough by viewers and listeners that a sell-off is not on the cards.
Even so, it’s a fat, monstrous old auntie sitting complacently on its sofa sucking sweeties paid for by the hard-up taxpayer. It needs a fitness regime if it’s to survive.
The unions may think blacking out the Tory party conference is a dramatic statement of intent but they’re asking for trouble.
Sir Michael has six months of his contract to go. He should give the BBC a dose of reality TV. If he switches off now, the unions shouldn’t complain if the rest of us switch off too.
The former chief executive of Wolverhampton and Birmingham councils was appointed to the job by the old Labour Government. He was one of their trusties, having been a Labour councillor at an early stage in his career.
With the BBC under scrutiny as never before, we can reasonably assume he quit before was pushed out of his £204,000-a-year three-day-a-week job.
Things are getting nasty at the Beeb and they’re not likely to settle down any time soon.
The broadcasting unions are threatening to black out part of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham next month. We may also face blank BBC TV screens when the Government unveils its controversial spending cuts on October 20.
The 48-hour strikes over plans to limit the BBC’s generous pensions scheme will not do the national broadcaster any good.
Instead of causing the viewers and the Government maximum inconvenience, which is usually the aim of any strike, all it will do is play into the hands of the BBC’s rivals.
The unions live in the dark ages when the BBC enjoyed a near monopoly over the airwaves.
These days, there are hundreds of TV channels to choose from. This bewildering, and often dispiriting, variety of output does not guarantee quality, of course.
Some of the stuff you get with a Sky TV subscription is so embarrassingly bad it’s a wonder how the stations which churn it out can survive financially. And many of the Freeview channels are not worth wasting your life watching.
Even so, politics junkies can find more than enough coverage of party political conferences and Government spending reviews without having to go anywhere near the BBC.
The Corporation is still a national institution like the NHS. We seem to love it for all its faults. Yet if you look closely at what the BBC does, you have to wonder whether we need it any more.
We pay £145.50 for the privilege of watching television, whether we ever look at a BBC programme or not.
Most people, most of the time, still seem to think this is decent value for money. The licence is certainly a lot cheaper than even the most basic Sky package.
If payment was voluntary, rather than being the legally-enforced poll tax that it is today, the BBC’s income would fall substantially from today’s £3.5 billion but it would still yield a small fortune.
Sadly, we don’t have that option which is why the Corporation is under such scrutiny over how much it pays its stars like Jonathan Ross and why its executive directors’ salary and expenses are now public property.
It may be OK for BBC Director General Mark Thompson to claim £2,236.90 and £1,277.71 to cut short family holidays and fly home to deal with urgent business but it doesn’t look good. Especially when you know he was paid £778,000 last year.
The BBC attracts hostile attention partly because the papers and TV stations on the attack are owned by commercial rivals. They see the Corporation’s privileged financial position as a distortion of a free market in broadcasting.
That helps to explain why it seems to be under constant bombardment from the rest of the media. But it doesn’t invalidate their complaints.
The BBC’s expansion – especially its attempt to dominate the internet – are rarely justified by its public service broadcasting charter.
That’s because, even though they are highly-paid, it’s executives do not really know what the organisation is for any more.
If “public service” were the real objective, the BBC wouldn’t need all the TV and radio channels it now owns. It would not produce pap aimed at winning an increasingly-irrelevant ratings war. And it would not fork out millions on “talent”.
Apart from the sacred cow of the NHS, everyone in the public sector is facing huge spending cuts. They must be applied to the BBC as well.
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will soon embark on new negotiations over the licence fee. The time has come to debate the options. One would be to close down many BBC activities, sell them off and cut the fee to no more than £100.
In my view, it would be better if the whole monstrous edifice were sold off in a massive privatisation which could make billons for the Government at a time when cash is short.
Luckily for the BBC, though, it is still valued enough by viewers and listeners that a sell-off is not on the cards.
Even so, it’s a fat, monstrous old auntie sitting complacently on its sofa sucking sweeties paid for by the hard-up taxpayer. It needs a fitness regime if it’s to survive.
The unions may think blacking out the Tory party conference is a dramatic statement of intent but they’re asking for trouble.
Sir Michael has six months of his contract to go. He should give the BBC a dose of reality TV. If he switches off now, the unions shouldn’t complain if the rest of us switch off too.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Mr Incredibly Stupid
If ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson did not know his reporters were illegally tapping the phones of various prominent people then he is incredibly stupid and utterly incompetent. If he says he didn’t know but, actually, he did, then he is a liar. Either way, he shouldn’t be employed at the heart of David Cameron’s Government. For once, it’s hard not to sympathise with John Prescott.
I suppose only an appalling cynic would wonder if the furore over William Hague not being gay, and Mr Coulson's embarrassment were in any way connected but it is coincidentally a useful smokescreen for the ex-News of the Screws boss to hide behind. Let's wait until the smoke clears.
I suppose only an appalling cynic would wonder if the furore over William Hague not being gay, and Mr Coulson's embarrassment were in any way connected but it is coincidentally a useful smokescreen for the ex-News of the Screws boss to hide behind. Let's wait until the smoke clears.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Bounty hunters? Try paradise
David Cameron is right to employ bounty hunters to crack down on benefit cheats. But why stop there? What about bounty hunters to crack down on tax evaders as well?
They cost the honest taxpayer far more than the unemployed underclass.
Some estimates put the “tax gap” at £120 billion. The taxman says it’s £40 billion.
The Coalition is to employ an army of snoopers, on a five per cent commission, to trawl through people’s bills and financial records in search of benefit frauds.
No doubt they’ll find a reasonable number of people. Mr Cameron claims fraud costs the honest taxpayer £1.5 billion a year.
The benefits system is so complicated, though, that genuine mistakes by claimants and the Government come to another £3.7 billion of money “wasted”.
Some fraudsters aren’t hard to spot. Court cases crop up regularly involving the bloke who claims he’s laid up with a bad back and is out cleaning windows or someone with a gammy leg who turns out for his Sunday league side every week.
It may be that Dave’s army of curtain-twitchers and dustbin-snoopers will save us a fortune. Let’s hope so.
But if we’re taking a high moral tone about the feckless and idle, what about the rich and industrious?
We can’t really be sure how much benefit fraud costs because it’s a crime people try very hard to conceal. In the same way, nobody really knows how large the “tax gap” is either.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, our official tax-gatherers, put the figure at £40 billion. Other experts say it’s three times as much.
Either way, the Government is missing out on a vast sum of money.
The difference between what the Revenue thinks it ought to receive and what it actually gets – the tax gap – includes illegally evaded taxes and those which are legally avoided.
There is nothing wrong with making sure you tax bill is as low as possible. It’s up to the Government to make sure the laws are watertight.
If big multi-national companies and lucky billionaires can find ways to cut their tax bills and stay on the right side of the law, good luck to them.
Some people claim it’s immoral to keep your tax bill to the legal minimum. But few of us would willingly pay more tax than necessary – especially when we see how much of it is wasted. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Tax avoidance is fair and reasonable. It’s up to the Treasury to deal with loopholes in the law.
But there would be no harm in appointing an army of bounty hunters to go after individuals and companies which actively evade paying tax.
Imagine who might fall into that category. For instance anyone who has paid a builder in cash, to avoid the VAT, or failed to declare their earnings, could be ripe for investigation.
The black economy – or “shadow economy” if you’re politically-correct – is worth billions and set to grow when VAT hits 20 per cent in January.
But a few cash-jobs are chicken-feed. From time to time we hear of great HMRC triumphs when a gang of VAT cheats or cigarette smugglers get brought to justice.
In May, 21 people, including nine men from the West Midlands, was jailed for a £37.5 million VAT fraud.
Last month, Wolverhampton car-parts dealer Balbir Baden was jailed for evading £270,000 of VAT and income tax.
Even these cases are only the tip of the iceberg.
HMRC says in its annual report that “the proportion of UK taxpayers who are willing and able to pay their taxes has increased from 49.1 per cent to 51.6”.
This is apparently seen as something of a success. But it means that almost half of the people and companies in Britain are either unwilling or unable to cough up. That’s a lot of potential for our bounty-hunters.
One of the most bizarre legacies of Gordon Brown’s time at the Treasury is that he spent many years cutting down the number of tax-gatherers.
For someone desperate to spend our money, it’s surprising he was so negligent about collecting it all in the first place. But he was.
As a result, the revenue doesn’t have enough experienced staff to crack difficult tax cases. They are far more likely to come down hard on the corner shop-owner than they are on the multi-national corporation.
There are one or two household name businesses which manage to pay little, if any, tax in this country or anywhere else for that matter.
So why doesn’t the Government accept its own customs men aren’t up to the job and hand the task of chasing the missing billions to the private sector?
The vast sums of revenue the Government misses out on – maybe more than ten times as much as it pays out to benefit fraudsters – must be worthy of investigation by a few privatised bounty hunters.
There is a simple alternative, of course. Cut taxes so drastically it’s no longer worth trying to evade payment and Government income would actually go up. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be an option.
They cost the honest taxpayer far more than the unemployed underclass.
Some estimates put the “tax gap” at £120 billion. The taxman says it’s £40 billion.
The Coalition is to employ an army of snoopers, on a five per cent commission, to trawl through people’s bills and financial records in search of benefit frauds.
No doubt they’ll find a reasonable number of people. Mr Cameron claims fraud costs the honest taxpayer £1.5 billion a year.
The benefits system is so complicated, though, that genuine mistakes by claimants and the Government come to another £3.7 billion of money “wasted”.
Some fraudsters aren’t hard to spot. Court cases crop up regularly involving the bloke who claims he’s laid up with a bad back and is out cleaning windows or someone with a gammy leg who turns out for his Sunday league side every week.
It may be that Dave’s army of curtain-twitchers and dustbin-snoopers will save us a fortune. Let’s hope so.
But if we’re taking a high moral tone about the feckless and idle, what about the rich and industrious?
We can’t really be sure how much benefit fraud costs because it’s a crime people try very hard to conceal. In the same way, nobody really knows how large the “tax gap” is either.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, our official tax-gatherers, put the figure at £40 billion. Other experts say it’s three times as much.
Either way, the Government is missing out on a vast sum of money.
The difference between what the Revenue thinks it ought to receive and what it actually gets – the tax gap – includes illegally evaded taxes and those which are legally avoided.
There is nothing wrong with making sure you tax bill is as low as possible. It’s up to the Government to make sure the laws are watertight.
If big multi-national companies and lucky billionaires can find ways to cut their tax bills and stay on the right side of the law, good luck to them.
Some people claim it’s immoral to keep your tax bill to the legal minimum. But few of us would willingly pay more tax than necessary – especially when we see how much of it is wasted. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Tax avoidance is fair and reasonable. It’s up to the Treasury to deal with loopholes in the law.
But there would be no harm in appointing an army of bounty hunters to go after individuals and companies which actively evade paying tax.
Imagine who might fall into that category. For instance anyone who has paid a builder in cash, to avoid the VAT, or failed to declare their earnings, could be ripe for investigation.
The black economy – or “shadow economy” if you’re politically-correct – is worth billions and set to grow when VAT hits 20 per cent in January.
But a few cash-jobs are chicken-feed. From time to time we hear of great HMRC triumphs when a gang of VAT cheats or cigarette smugglers get brought to justice.
In May, 21 people, including nine men from the West Midlands, was jailed for a £37.5 million VAT fraud.
Last month, Wolverhampton car-parts dealer Balbir Baden was jailed for evading £270,000 of VAT and income tax.
Even these cases are only the tip of the iceberg.
HMRC says in its annual report that “the proportion of UK taxpayers who are willing and able to pay their taxes has increased from 49.1 per cent to 51.6”.
This is apparently seen as something of a success. But it means that almost half of the people and companies in Britain are either unwilling or unable to cough up. That’s a lot of potential for our bounty-hunters.
One of the most bizarre legacies of Gordon Brown’s time at the Treasury is that he spent many years cutting down the number of tax-gatherers.
For someone desperate to spend our money, it’s surprising he was so negligent about collecting it all in the first place. But he was.
As a result, the revenue doesn’t have enough experienced staff to crack difficult tax cases. They are far more likely to come down hard on the corner shop-owner than they are on the multi-national corporation.
There are one or two household name businesses which manage to pay little, if any, tax in this country or anywhere else for that matter.
So why doesn’t the Government accept its own customs men aren’t up to the job and hand the task of chasing the missing billions to the private sector?
The vast sums of revenue the Government misses out on – maybe more than ten times as much as it pays out to benefit fraudsters – must be worthy of investigation by a few privatised bounty hunters.
There is a simple alternative, of course. Cut taxes so drastically it’s no longer worth trying to evade payment and Government income would actually go up. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be an option.
Friday, August 13, 2010
We can still make it
Anyone with any sense watches “Top Gear”. The larking about by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond is the only thing that saves the BBC from drowning in political correctness.
But they did something unusual for the last episode in the series. They performed a requiem for the British motor industry buy taking a Lotus Elan, a TVR S2 and the Jensen Healey for a spin across the country.
They visited the shut down Jensen factory in West Bromwich and went on to the similarly abandoned TVR plant in Blackpool.
There was plenty of messing about and schoolboy pranks on the way but in the end this was a plaintive lament for the death of the British motor industry from three of its all-time fans.
At one point in the show, Clarkson kicks around the Jensen factory and says: “In the 1970s, 26 per cent of the British workforce was employed by manufacturing. Today it’s nine per cent. It’s not that we don’t make sports cars any more – we don’t make anything.”
The other day I drove past the old Longbridge plant in Birmingham, once the biggest car-factory in Europe. A bit of building is going on but most of it’s a flattened wasteland.
For someone who was brought up just down the road from “the Austin”, it’s a sorry sight.
Even so, Clarkson and co are wrong. The British car industry is not dead. Actually, it is alive and well.
The difference these days from the lamentable past is that it’s foreign-owned and the unions seem to have learned their lesson the hard way.
Globalisation, consolidation and rationalisation put paid to the dozens of famous old names and marques we used to know and love.
Instead, the industry is owned by a handful of multi-nationals. Like the big banks, some of them are incompetently run and rely on Government handouts to keep them alive – just ask General Motors.
Yet while successive British Governments have cared less and less about the ability of this country to make things, somehow industry has carried on regardless.
Astonishing as it may seem, British factories are manufacturing hundreds of thousands of cars a year. And many of them are being exported to foreign countries.
We are not the world power we once were when it comes to sheer numbers. We’re 11th in the world car-production league table which puts us behind Brazil, Mexico, Canada and Spain but we’re still ahead of Italy.
Jensen Motors ceased trading in 1976. The following year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, British industry manufactured no fewer than 1,315,972 cars and commercial vehicles.
That was, admittedly, down on the 1.9 million the industry hit at its peak in 1972 but even in 1976 people were talking about the death of British manufacturing –warning it was on the way unless the unions backed off.
They didn’t, as we all know, and so famous companies started to go to the wall. A lot of old names are no more: Hilman, Riley, Triumph and Sunbeam to name but a few.
Even so, new models and new manufacturers have taken their place. This country still makes Minis, for instance, and very successful they are too.
OK, so they are made in Oxford by German-owned BMW but, given the fiasco that MG Rover became after it was flogged off to the Phoenix Four, we’re lucky anything was salvaged from the wreckage.
Meanwhile companies like Ford and Vauxhall continue to make cars here as well as Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Because they’re foreign-owned there is, perhaps, more chance that they will abandon ship and go elsewhere. But plenty of British-owned companies have done that already so patriotism won’t help much either way.
What we can say, though, is that things have not got any worse since Jensen stopped making cars in West Bromwich.
The British motor industry may employ fewer people but that’s because the manufacturing processes are so much better. And it churns out pretty much the same number of cars we were making 34 years ago.
In 1980 we made 1.3 million vehicles in this country. In 1990, the number had risen to 1.5 million. In 2000, it was 1.8 million and was still at 1.6 million in 2008.
Admittedly last year was a nightmare for car-makers. As we all know, factories shut down for months on end and nobody wanted to buy anything because of the credit crunch and the recession.
In 2009, the number of vehicles made in this country only just squeezed above the one million mark at 1,090,139.
But the industry has bounced back this year. In the first six months, we made 701,266 vehicles. And guess what? No fewer than half a million of them were for export.
We might not make Jensens and TVRs any longer but Clarkson is wrong to sound the death knell for British manufacturing. We still have the engineering, the design, the technology and the workers to compete in world markets.
It’s just a pity we don’t seem to have the bosses and the investors to lead the way.
But they did something unusual for the last episode in the series. They performed a requiem for the British motor industry buy taking a Lotus Elan, a TVR S2 and the Jensen Healey for a spin across the country.
They visited the shut down Jensen factory in West Bromwich and went on to the similarly abandoned TVR plant in Blackpool.
There was plenty of messing about and schoolboy pranks on the way but in the end this was a plaintive lament for the death of the British motor industry from three of its all-time fans.
At one point in the show, Clarkson kicks around the Jensen factory and says: “In the 1970s, 26 per cent of the British workforce was employed by manufacturing. Today it’s nine per cent. It’s not that we don’t make sports cars any more – we don’t make anything.”
The other day I drove past the old Longbridge plant in Birmingham, once the biggest car-factory in Europe. A bit of building is going on but most of it’s a flattened wasteland.
For someone who was brought up just down the road from “the Austin”, it’s a sorry sight.
Even so, Clarkson and co are wrong. The British car industry is not dead. Actually, it is alive and well.
The difference these days from the lamentable past is that it’s foreign-owned and the unions seem to have learned their lesson the hard way.
Globalisation, consolidation and rationalisation put paid to the dozens of famous old names and marques we used to know and love.
Instead, the industry is owned by a handful of multi-nationals. Like the big banks, some of them are incompetently run and rely on Government handouts to keep them alive – just ask General Motors.
Yet while successive British Governments have cared less and less about the ability of this country to make things, somehow industry has carried on regardless.
Astonishing as it may seem, British factories are manufacturing hundreds of thousands of cars a year. And many of them are being exported to foreign countries.
We are not the world power we once were when it comes to sheer numbers. We’re 11th in the world car-production league table which puts us behind Brazil, Mexico, Canada and Spain but we’re still ahead of Italy.
Jensen Motors ceased trading in 1976. The following year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, British industry manufactured no fewer than 1,315,972 cars and commercial vehicles.
That was, admittedly, down on the 1.9 million the industry hit at its peak in 1972 but even in 1976 people were talking about the death of British manufacturing –warning it was on the way unless the unions backed off.
They didn’t, as we all know, and so famous companies started to go to the wall. A lot of old names are no more: Hilman, Riley, Triumph and Sunbeam to name but a few.
Even so, new models and new manufacturers have taken their place. This country still makes Minis, for instance, and very successful they are too.
OK, so they are made in Oxford by German-owned BMW but, given the fiasco that MG Rover became after it was flogged off to the Phoenix Four, we’re lucky anything was salvaged from the wreckage.
Meanwhile companies like Ford and Vauxhall continue to make cars here as well as Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Because they’re foreign-owned there is, perhaps, more chance that they will abandon ship and go elsewhere. But plenty of British-owned companies have done that already so patriotism won’t help much either way.
What we can say, though, is that things have not got any worse since Jensen stopped making cars in West Bromwich.
The British motor industry may employ fewer people but that’s because the manufacturing processes are so much better. And it churns out pretty much the same number of cars we were making 34 years ago.
In 1980 we made 1.3 million vehicles in this country. In 1990, the number had risen to 1.5 million. In 2000, it was 1.8 million and was still at 1.6 million in 2008.
Admittedly last year was a nightmare for car-makers. As we all know, factories shut down for months on end and nobody wanted to buy anything because of the credit crunch and the recession.
In 2009, the number of vehicles made in this country only just squeezed above the one million mark at 1,090,139.
But the industry has bounced back this year. In the first six months, we made 701,266 vehicles. And guess what? No fewer than half a million of them were for export.
We might not make Jensens and TVRs any longer but Clarkson is wrong to sound the death knell for British manufacturing. We still have the engineering, the design, the technology and the workers to compete in world markets.
It’s just a pity we don’t seem to have the bosses and the investors to lead the way.
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