All the criticism around Southern Cross is aimed at the American private equity firm Blackstone, which bought the business in 2004, floated it on the stock market two years later and sold all its shares in 2007 at a huge profit. But what none of these complains seems to recognise is that a seller needs a buyer. If it was such an asset-stripping scam, how come investors put money into it? The new owners are not entirely stupid, are they? If between them they found £425 million to buy Southern Cross, they must have thought there was money to be made despite the sale of the company’s properties. If blame is being handed out and everyone is looking for a greedy villain, surely the buyers and owners today are more culpable than the people who sold them the business.
Opponents of the private sector are rubbing their hands with glee over the potential collapse of Southern Cross, the largest provider of old people’s homes in the country.
The company crisis has led to demands for the Government to step in and rescue the business in much the same way as it was forced to bail out the banks in the depths of the recession.
It would be mad to do so. The taxpayer cannot be expected to step in every time some badly-run business gets into trouble.
And while this is not a particularly good advertisement for private-sector provision of public services, it doesn’t mean the State has to run things.
It’s not a good time for the private sector. Apart from concern over any collapse of Southern Cross, there’s the BBC’s exposure of a care home for people with learning disabilities and autism.
“Panorama” revealed “torture” by staff at Winterbourne View in Bristol, the police have been called in and the owners, Castlebeck, say they are “shocked, disgusted and ashamed” by what’s been going on.
Meanwhile the “Financial Times” says care at one in seven privately-run homes is “poor” or only “adequate” compared with one in 11 in the public and charity sectors.
Critics are queuing up to attack the private sector for putting profits before patients, for inadequate levels of care and for threatening old people with being turfed out of their homes – and with some justification.
The Southern Cross debacle is based on an over-expansion in the days before the recession, when the company in effect borrowed to expand.
It provides care for 30,000 old folk in 750 homes and is now desperately trying to cut its rent by 25 per cent to stave off bankruptcy.
It may succeed because the owners of these properties have been enjoying over-the-odds income from the company for some time and if they rejected the move they would probably end up even worse off.
There is a danger, though, that even this rescue won’t succeed and Southern Cross will go to the wall. The company’s share price has already plummeted. It’s now worth about £12 million compared with £1.1 billion in 2008.
Clearly the business is deeply flawed. The expansion plans drawn up at the height of the Brown-Blair boom have been blown out of the water. The company is struggling to keep afloat.
The people who run Southern Cross are not victims. They are guilty of bad planning and abominable business skills. They wouldn’t make it past round one of “The Apprentice”.
But if the company does go broke, that doesn’t mean its homes have to close. It doesn’t mean the public sector should step in. And it doesn’t mean the taxpayer should be expected to cough up even more money.
Southern Cross, like Castlebeck, relies on the taxpayer for its income anyway. It’s a substitute for council-run care. It has a secure income as long as it can provide good care for old people.
If it went into administration, other companies would want to snap up its empire at knock-down prices. It would be a valuable opportunity for a buyer which wasn’t too greedy or reckless.
The residents themselves, elderly, frail and settled in their homes, would not necessarily see any difference at all.
The worst thing for them would be months of uncertainty over the fate of the roof over their heads.
The private sector stands accused of poor levels of care. But the Government has armies of inspectors responsible for ensuring standards are maintained.
If they are inadequate then the Government, as the ultimate paymaster for these businesses, has sanctions it can impose. If Government inspectors are failing, they must share the responsibility for low standards – just as bank regulators were asleep on the job.
Of course, a case like Winterbourne View is unforgivable and, for all we know, it may not be an entirely isolated incident.
But care, whether of the elderly, children or people with mental disabilities, is fraught with difficulties. Among the hardest tasks is recruiting and keeping genuinely caring members of staff.
Low pay is part of the problem – if employers insist on cutting wages to the bone they shouldn’t be surprised if the only people who will work for them are the desperate or the dubious.
All of this makes the Government’s plans for more private-sector provision in the NHS look even more controversial.
Yet there is nothing wrong with the profit motive itself. Companies can make decent returns on their investment while at the same time providing good quality care for their customers. There are many excellent private homes for the elderly.
We would be in terrible trouble if we reverted to the old “public sector good, private sector bad” attitude of the taxpayer-funded classes.
At the Alexandra NHS hospital in Redditch the Care Quality Commission found patients weren’t even given water to drink – something I know to be true because doctors there turned their backs on me when I was searching for a tap to fetch water for one of their parched patients.
And that’s in the public sector.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The fog of war
Talk about creating a diversion – the new “military covenant” is no better than a smokescreen to hide what’s really going on.
Ministers want us to forget our armed forces are fighting one and a half wars while they impose defence cuts and boost foreign aid by billions.
Our armed forces are still dying in Afghanistan in a war we will never win. David Cameron has admitted as much by announcing troops will be withdrawn by 2015 whatever is happening in that benighted country.
We are taking part in fruitless bombing raids on Libya where Colonel Gaddafi is still dodging the bullets and our Government is talking about sending in ground troops.
We are scrapping aircraft and carriers and handing redundancy notices to soldiers on the front line.
No wonder “Commander in Chief” Cameron says he has “robust” debates with service chiefs. They must wonder what planet he is on when he’s ordering our troops into battle while at the same time reducing their numbers and their firepower.
Yet he promises a “military covenant” promising, among other things, free IVD courses and priority housing for ex-soldiers.
Into this mess plunges Defence Secretary Liam Fox, opening up a new front in the Whitehall battle by criticising the Coalition’s plan to increase foreign aid by 34 per cent.
It’s not just the Ministry of Defence which can’t understand why we are throwing good money after bad on foreign aid when every other aspect of public spending in being cut.
Foreign aid is a wasteful bucket with a hole in the bottom. Much of the money ends up funding civil wars or in the Swiss bank accounts of bloodthirsty dictators and their henchmen.
It is hard to tell what good it does. Yet we are already spending £7.5 billion. Some of it is going to countries like China and India which both enjoy massively booming economies.
These countries are so wealthy their billionaires are busy swallowing up bargain basement Britain’s remaining assets – MG Rover and Jaguar Land Rover are a couple of obvious examples.
They don’t need our help; if anything, we should be holding out the begging bowl to them.
Yet Mr Bleeding Heart Cameron proposes to increase foreign aid to £11.4 billion in the next two years.
It’s so embarrassing for International Development Secretary that Andrew Mitchell has won the nickname “Lord Bountiful”. He’s apparently even using the title when he sends text messages.
Unlike his Cabinet colleagues, the Sutton Coldfield MP is wandering the world with an open cheque-book wondering what to do with all his loot.
It’s true that, despite everything, Britain is still an affluent country. And there are places where people’s lives are nasty, brutish and short.
It may be the judicious application of aid from richer nations can make some difference to their lives.
But while we offer these handouts, we are expending billions more fighting losing battles in the Middle East.
Mr Cameron “announced” the withdrawal of 400 soldiers from Afghanistan this week but, as it was planned anyway, it’s meaningless and there will still be 9,000 people risking their lives over there.
We are taking part in half-hearted bombing raids on Libya though nobody can agree whether we’re supposed to be protecting civilians, which is legal, or killing Col Gaddafi, which isn’t.
And while our troops are no longer in Iraq, our depleted Royal Navy is still patrolling the Gulf.
The defence cuts – which, let’s not forget, even envisage sharing aircraft carriers with the French – have been imposed by our politicians.
Yet these same politicians don’t seem to have noticed they can’t afford to strut the world stage any longer as if they owned the place.
The cuts are necessary. Partly because the Ministry of Defence has overspent by a cool £38 billion and partly because the country is broke.
But if David Cameron is reducing our military capability and making front-line soldiers redundant, surely he must accept he can’t go round threatening mad dictators with retribution.
Gunboat diplomacy went out of fashion in the Victorian age yet here we are, ineffectually bombing Libya as if our political masters still think of this country as the world’s policeman.
Even the Americans are wisely taking a back seat during the “Arab spring” while Dave and Nicolas Sarkozy of France come over all belligerently humanitarian.
The “military covenant” is a nice idea. Few people would object to the idea that the Government promises to look after its troops once their active-service days are done.
Free bus passes for the wounded and better schools for their kids are all very well but they should not be allowed to draw attention away from the real battle about Britain’s role in the world.
We are not rich and powerful. We can’t afford to impose our will on “poorer countries”. Nor can we afford to send Mr Mitchell off dishing out money we have to borrow to spend to those same banana republics.
The “military covenant” will cost £45 million a year – the Taxpayers’ Alliance says Mr Mitchell’s department will soon be wasting £1 billion simply administrating its great international giveaway.
Ministers want us to forget our armed forces are fighting one and a half wars while they impose defence cuts and boost foreign aid by billions.
Our armed forces are still dying in Afghanistan in a war we will never win. David Cameron has admitted as much by announcing troops will be withdrawn by 2015 whatever is happening in that benighted country.
We are taking part in fruitless bombing raids on Libya where Colonel Gaddafi is still dodging the bullets and our Government is talking about sending in ground troops.
We are scrapping aircraft and carriers and handing redundancy notices to soldiers on the front line.
No wonder “Commander in Chief” Cameron says he has “robust” debates with service chiefs. They must wonder what planet he is on when he’s ordering our troops into battle while at the same time reducing their numbers and their firepower.
Yet he promises a “military covenant” promising, among other things, free IVD courses and priority housing for ex-soldiers.
Into this mess plunges Defence Secretary Liam Fox, opening up a new front in the Whitehall battle by criticising the Coalition’s plan to increase foreign aid by 34 per cent.
It’s not just the Ministry of Defence which can’t understand why we are throwing good money after bad on foreign aid when every other aspect of public spending in being cut.
Foreign aid is a wasteful bucket with a hole in the bottom. Much of the money ends up funding civil wars or in the Swiss bank accounts of bloodthirsty dictators and their henchmen.
It is hard to tell what good it does. Yet we are already spending £7.5 billion. Some of it is going to countries like China and India which both enjoy massively booming economies.
These countries are so wealthy their billionaires are busy swallowing up bargain basement Britain’s remaining assets – MG Rover and Jaguar Land Rover are a couple of obvious examples.
They don’t need our help; if anything, we should be holding out the begging bowl to them.
Yet Mr Bleeding Heart Cameron proposes to increase foreign aid to £11.4 billion in the next two years.
It’s so embarrassing for International Development Secretary that Andrew Mitchell has won the nickname “Lord Bountiful”. He’s apparently even using the title when he sends text messages.
Unlike his Cabinet colleagues, the Sutton Coldfield MP is wandering the world with an open cheque-book wondering what to do with all his loot.
It’s true that, despite everything, Britain is still an affluent country. And there are places where people’s lives are nasty, brutish and short.
It may be the judicious application of aid from richer nations can make some difference to their lives.
But while we offer these handouts, we are expending billions more fighting losing battles in the Middle East.
Mr Cameron “announced” the withdrawal of 400 soldiers from Afghanistan this week but, as it was planned anyway, it’s meaningless and there will still be 9,000 people risking their lives over there.
We are taking part in half-hearted bombing raids on Libya though nobody can agree whether we’re supposed to be protecting civilians, which is legal, or killing Col Gaddafi, which isn’t.
And while our troops are no longer in Iraq, our depleted Royal Navy is still patrolling the Gulf.
The defence cuts – which, let’s not forget, even envisage sharing aircraft carriers with the French – have been imposed by our politicians.
Yet these same politicians don’t seem to have noticed they can’t afford to strut the world stage any longer as if they owned the place.
The cuts are necessary. Partly because the Ministry of Defence has overspent by a cool £38 billion and partly because the country is broke.
But if David Cameron is reducing our military capability and making front-line soldiers redundant, surely he must accept he can’t go round threatening mad dictators with retribution.
Gunboat diplomacy went out of fashion in the Victorian age yet here we are, ineffectually bombing Libya as if our political masters still think of this country as the world’s policeman.
Even the Americans are wisely taking a back seat during the “Arab spring” while Dave and Nicolas Sarkozy of France come over all belligerently humanitarian.
The “military covenant” is a nice idea. Few people would object to the idea that the Government promises to look after its troops once their active-service days are done.
Free bus passes for the wounded and better schools for their kids are all very well but they should not be allowed to draw attention away from the real battle about Britain’s role in the world.
We are not rich and powerful. We can’t afford to impose our will on “poorer countries”. Nor can we afford to send Mr Mitchell off dishing out money we have to borrow to spend to those same banana republics.
The “military covenant” will cost £45 million a year – the Taxpayers’ Alliance says Mr Mitchell’s department will soon be wasting £1 billion simply administrating its great international giveaway.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Does Dave actually want a Tory Government?
If David Cameron really wanted a Conservative Government, he should call a snap General Election now.
A year after the Coalition was formed, it’s clear the Tories’ deal with the Liberal Democrats is falling apart.
The two parties face months, if not years, of wrangling over every decision and every piece of legislation.
The Lib Dems look like dead men walking. It’s hard to imaging a way back from their humiliation at the local elections and in the Alternative Vote referendum.
Whatever happens, they will still be viewed by most voters as having propped up a Conservative Government. Nick Clegg will get the blame for unpopular policies; the Tories will get the credit when things to well.
The Prime Minister has the chance to call an election which might well give him the majority Government he failed to secure a year ago.
With the Lib Dems already down, an early election would provide the knock-out blow.
Labour might pick up a few seats at the Lib Dems’ expense but the Tories would gain more.
And Ed Miliband is hardly a credible option as Prime Minister.
If the Coalition actually lasts a full five years, Labour may see sense and replace Ed with another leader – quite possibly his brother David or even Ed Balls.
Either of these would be a more attractive proposition than the present Labour leader and, therefore, a more formidable foe for the Tories.
So with the Lib Dems likely to get another kicking from the voters and Ed Miliband struggling to revive the Labour Party, this is the ideal moment for Mr Cameron to win a working majority at Westminster.
He may recall the autumn of 2007, when newly-chosen Prime Minister Gordon Brown was ahead in the polls and his supporters were urging him to hold a General Election.
There was a good reason for an early poll. Mr Brown arrived at Number Ten thanks to a stitch-up in his own party. He had never faced the voters as party leader and run the risk of defeat.
If he had called an election in October 2007, he might well have secured a full five-year term and seen off David Cameron into the bargain.
He bottled it. Instead, he endured economic meltdown, personal humiliation and electoral defeat.
Mr Cameron’s position is different. For a start, he’s promised us five years of Coalition Government and he would be accused of betrayal if he broke the deal so soon.
On the other hand, few people seriously think the Coalition will last a full term whatever the promises made by Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg at the height of their rose garden romance a year ago.
After their drubbing at the polls, the Lib Dems will seize every opportunity to frustrate, harry and undermine their Conservative partners.
Eventually, as electoral reality bites, there will be plenty of Mr Clegg’s MPs who refuse to follow him any longer. They will walk away from the Coalition.
There may well come a point, long before the five years are up, when the Coalition crumbles away, forcing Mr Cameron to call an early election.
Before then, though, he will have to deal with arguments, dissent and splits not only with the Lib Dems but with his own MPs as well.
There are plenty of Conservatives who dislike the Coalition, despise their traditional Lib Dem enemies and see no reason why they should make further concessions to a party which is so weak politically.
If Mr Cameron insists on “bigging-up” Nick and offering him a few open goals, just to shore up his position as leader of the Coalition’s minority party, many Tory backbenchers will squirm with fury.
Every time the Government pays our money to bail out countries in the Euro, for instance, or abides by absurd human rights rulings, Mr Cameron’s supporters will blame his desire to keep the Lib Dems happy.
This makes the job of running the country – especially the task of trying to revive the economy – increasingly difficult.
For many Conservatives who already think the Lib Dem tail has been wagging the Tory dog, the prospect of following a policy of appeasement for the next four years is hard to swallow.
Mr Cameron could resolve these difficulties by calling an election now. The chances are that he would win an outright majority and set his party free.
It would be a gamble, of course. The alternative is years of confused, incoherent and carping Coalition when what the country needs is clarity and purpose.
Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg is Mr Cameron’s human shield.
It’s not just that the Deputy Prime Minister protects Mr Cameron from his opponents in the country. His presence in Government also defends Mr Cameron from his Tory critics.
Without his Lib Dem whipping boys, Mr Cameron would be exposed. He’s happier leading a Coalition than a Conservative Government with a clear working majority.
So he will struggle on for as long as possible – he doesn’t want outright victory at an early election. He might have to introduce genuine Conservative policies and that would never do.
A year after the Coalition was formed, it’s clear the Tories’ deal with the Liberal Democrats is falling apart.
The two parties face months, if not years, of wrangling over every decision and every piece of legislation.
The Lib Dems look like dead men walking. It’s hard to imaging a way back from their humiliation at the local elections and in the Alternative Vote referendum.
Whatever happens, they will still be viewed by most voters as having propped up a Conservative Government. Nick Clegg will get the blame for unpopular policies; the Tories will get the credit when things to well.
The Prime Minister has the chance to call an election which might well give him the majority Government he failed to secure a year ago.
With the Lib Dems already down, an early election would provide the knock-out blow.
Labour might pick up a few seats at the Lib Dems’ expense but the Tories would gain more.
And Ed Miliband is hardly a credible option as Prime Minister.
If the Coalition actually lasts a full five years, Labour may see sense and replace Ed with another leader – quite possibly his brother David or even Ed Balls.
Either of these would be a more attractive proposition than the present Labour leader and, therefore, a more formidable foe for the Tories.
So with the Lib Dems likely to get another kicking from the voters and Ed Miliband struggling to revive the Labour Party, this is the ideal moment for Mr Cameron to win a working majority at Westminster.
He may recall the autumn of 2007, when newly-chosen Prime Minister Gordon Brown was ahead in the polls and his supporters were urging him to hold a General Election.
There was a good reason for an early poll. Mr Brown arrived at Number Ten thanks to a stitch-up in his own party. He had never faced the voters as party leader and run the risk of defeat.
If he had called an election in October 2007, he might well have secured a full five-year term and seen off David Cameron into the bargain.
He bottled it. Instead, he endured economic meltdown, personal humiliation and electoral defeat.
Mr Cameron’s position is different. For a start, he’s promised us five years of Coalition Government and he would be accused of betrayal if he broke the deal so soon.
On the other hand, few people seriously think the Coalition will last a full term whatever the promises made by Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg at the height of their rose garden romance a year ago.
After their drubbing at the polls, the Lib Dems will seize every opportunity to frustrate, harry and undermine their Conservative partners.
Eventually, as electoral reality bites, there will be plenty of Mr Clegg’s MPs who refuse to follow him any longer. They will walk away from the Coalition.
There may well come a point, long before the five years are up, when the Coalition crumbles away, forcing Mr Cameron to call an early election.
Before then, though, he will have to deal with arguments, dissent and splits not only with the Lib Dems but with his own MPs as well.
There are plenty of Conservatives who dislike the Coalition, despise their traditional Lib Dem enemies and see no reason why they should make further concessions to a party which is so weak politically.
If Mr Cameron insists on “bigging-up” Nick and offering him a few open goals, just to shore up his position as leader of the Coalition’s minority party, many Tory backbenchers will squirm with fury.
Every time the Government pays our money to bail out countries in the Euro, for instance, or abides by absurd human rights rulings, Mr Cameron’s supporters will blame his desire to keep the Lib Dems happy.
This makes the job of running the country – especially the task of trying to revive the economy – increasingly difficult.
For many Conservatives who already think the Lib Dem tail has been wagging the Tory dog, the prospect of following a policy of appeasement for the next four years is hard to swallow.
Mr Cameron could resolve these difficulties by calling an election now. The chances are that he would win an outright majority and set his party free.
It would be a gamble, of course. The alternative is years of confused, incoherent and carping Coalition when what the country needs is clarity and purpose.
Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg is Mr Cameron’s human shield.
It’s not just that the Deputy Prime Minister protects Mr Cameron from his opponents in the country. His presence in Government also defends Mr Cameron from his Tory critics.
Without his Lib Dem whipping boys, Mr Cameron would be exposed. He’s happier leading a Coalition than a Conservative Government with a clear working majority.
So he will struggle on for as long as possible – he doesn’t want outright victory at an early election. He might have to introduce genuine Conservative policies and that would never do.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Labour Scotches the United Kingdom
Now it’s Scotland that matters most. Defeat for Labour north of the border is a disaster for Ed Miliband.
Worse could be in store if, as seems likely, the SNP goes ahead with a referendum on independence for Scotland.
Labour would be wiped out at Westminster and lose any chance of forming a Government for a generation if the party were deprived of its cohort of Scottish MPs.
The Scots won’t care about that. They will vote for independence if they think it’s good for Scotland.
When push comes to shove, I suspect they will think they are better off as part of the union than they would be as an obscure region of the European super-state.
But who knows? The Scots have given Alex Salmond an overwhelming vote of confidence.
That is partly because of the slump in support for Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems who are seen as propping up a Tory Government. But Labour did very badly in Scotland as well and there is no excuse for that other than a rejection of the effete Metropolitan Mr Miliband.
It would be tragic if the legacy of Cameron's first Government were the break-up of the United Kingdom but the Tories would be tempted to support the idea because it would leave them in power at Westminster for the forseeable future.
Worse could be in store if, as seems likely, the SNP goes ahead with a referendum on independence for Scotland.
Labour would be wiped out at Westminster and lose any chance of forming a Government for a generation if the party were deprived of its cohort of Scottish MPs.
The Scots won’t care about that. They will vote for independence if they think it’s good for Scotland.
When push comes to shove, I suspect they will think they are better off as part of the union than they would be as an obscure region of the European super-state.
But who knows? The Scots have given Alex Salmond an overwhelming vote of confidence.
That is partly because of the slump in support for Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems who are seen as propping up a Tory Government. But Labour did very badly in Scotland as well and there is no excuse for that other than a rejection of the effete Metropolitan Mr Miliband.
It would be tragic if the legacy of Cameron's first Government were the break-up of the United Kingdom but the Tories would be tempted to support the idea because it would leave them in power at Westminster for the forseeable future.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
They know how you voted
I suppose I’m the last one to notice but it has finally dawned on me there is no such thing as a secret ballot in this country.
The foundation and bedrock of our democracy is no more.
Why has it taken me so long to notice?
When I went to vote in the AV referendum the elections officer took my polling reference number and wrote it down on a list.
Next to my number was already printed the serial number of the ballot paper he gave me.
Obviously, the ballot paper had the same set of numbers. It's like a cheque and a cheque stub.
It follows that if some dubious Government official wanted to discover how I had voted, he could work back from the ballot paper, match its serial number with the number on the officer’s list, read across to the polling reference number and identify me as the voter.
Or you.
Mostly this doesn’t matter. Nobody would bother to check if we voted Yes or No to AV or Tory or Lib Dem in some dull council election.
But suppose you wanted to vote Communist, Socialist Worker, BNP or UKIP. Suppose you backed Sinn Fein or any other fringe party of which the Establishment disapproved.
It wouldn’t be difficult to sort out the relatively few ballot papers with an X by a controversial candidate’s name.
It wouldn’t be difficult to take the serial number and compare it with the elections officer’s little list of voters’ numbers.
And there you are – the secret ballot is no longer secret. They know who you voted for.
I asked the bloke who took my number and gave me my voting slip what happened to the papers once they’d been counted.
He said they were stored somewhere secure. How secure? Oh very, he assured me. For how long? He didn’t know. What happened to them in the end? He didn’t know.
In an era when privacy is disappearing – not because of the media and the courts but thanks to charlatans posing as our friends (Apple, Sony, Google, Experian etc), it’s probably too late to worry that the secret ballot is a fiction.
But it’s another reason not to bother voting.
(And in case you wondered, I voted Yes to AV not because I approve of it but because I disapprove of David Cameron forcing this ridiculous debate on the country when we’re financially up the creek and I wanted to register my protest).
The foundation and bedrock of our democracy is no more.
Why has it taken me so long to notice?
When I went to vote in the AV referendum the elections officer took my polling reference number and wrote it down on a list.
Next to my number was already printed the serial number of the ballot paper he gave me.
Obviously, the ballot paper had the same set of numbers. It's like a cheque and a cheque stub.
It follows that if some dubious Government official wanted to discover how I had voted, he could work back from the ballot paper, match its serial number with the number on the officer’s list, read across to the polling reference number and identify me as the voter.
Or you.
Mostly this doesn’t matter. Nobody would bother to check if we voted Yes or No to AV or Tory or Lib Dem in some dull council election.
But suppose you wanted to vote Communist, Socialist Worker, BNP or UKIP. Suppose you backed Sinn Fein or any other fringe party of which the Establishment disapproved.
It wouldn’t be difficult to sort out the relatively few ballot papers with an X by a controversial candidate’s name.
It wouldn’t be difficult to take the serial number and compare it with the elections officer’s little list of voters’ numbers.
And there you are – the secret ballot is no longer secret. They know who you voted for.
I asked the bloke who took my number and gave me my voting slip what happened to the papers once they’d been counted.
He said they were stored somewhere secure. How secure? Oh very, he assured me. For how long? He didn’t know. What happened to them in the end? He didn’t know.
In an era when privacy is disappearing – not because of the media and the courts but thanks to charlatans posing as our friends (Apple, Sony, Google, Experian etc), it’s probably too late to worry that the secret ballot is a fiction.
But it’s another reason not to bother voting.
(And in case you wondered, I voted Yes to AV not because I approve of it but because I disapprove of David Cameron forcing this ridiculous debate on the country when we’re financially up the creek and I wanted to register my protest).
Friday, April 22, 2011
Walking on sunshine
How tickled Ken Dodd must be to discover the Government is trying to get us all to sing his old hit “Happiness”.
The Diddymen in Downing Street are spending £2 million trying to find out what makes us happy.
What with war, unemployment, cuts, chaos in the NHS and the blubbing of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, you’d think they had enough to worry about.
But be warned, this Ken Dodd politics boils down to a new way for the Government to control how we live.
They will conclude we are happy if we are healthy and therefore they’ll order us to stop smoking, drinking and eating the “wrong” food.
Actually it’s none of their business how we live our lives. Governments cannot make us happy.
Their job is to keep us secure and reasonably prosperous. The rest is up to us.
Luckily we don’t take this nonsense terribly seriously. Responses to the Office for National Statistics survey of what makes us happy include looking at pretty girls, better pies, cheese and tomato toasties with ketchup on the side and better TV programmes.
Even being allowed to smoke in pubs would make some people happier, it seems.
It’s impossible to measure happiness or even define what it is.They can’t accurately measure Britain’s balance of trade, the inflation rate, the level of economic growth, the crime rate, how many people are unemployed or what the number of illegal immigrants in this country really is.
We treat the statistics as Gospel but they’re not. They are approximate stabs at coming up with something roughly near the mark.
You’d think adding up numbers would be simple but if they can’t manage that how can they possibly measure something as nebulous as “happiness”?
What is it? How long does it last? Is it the same as contentment? Is it a one-off emotion sparked by something nice happening to you – or is it a state of mind?
I was happy last week when we went away to Cornwall for a few days and walked the dogs on a beautiful, near-deserted beach in glorious spring sunshine. Does that mean I am happy?
I doubt it – if only because there are so many things our Government does, from needlessly “reforming” the NHS to madly waging war, which make me angry.
If you took all the advice on the internet, you’d end up miserably confused.
A quick search shows that – according to “scientists” – happiness is contagious and spreads among family and friends; the more we try to be happy the more miserable we become; the colour blue makes us happy; money does buy happiness; no it doesn’t; happiness is earning more than £50,000 a year; being rich makes you unhappy.
Having a fourth child makes you unhappy; fathers talking to their teenage sons make them happy; you’re happy if you earn more than your friends; you’re happy if you eat pizza in front of the TV and live in Norwich.
You can be happy if you don’t marry a neurotic, don’t worry about your career, to go church and stay thin; or if you sleep six hours a night, enjoy four shopping sprees a month and take two holidays a year.
This whole nonsense began, of course, in America, land of the neurotic, where “the pursuit of happiness” is written into the Constitution.
It’s been imported by David Cameron’s personal guru, Steve Hilton, and no doubt when their happiness report comes out we’ll be told we’re all actually quite cheerful really.
It wasn’t happiness but “the economy, stupid” which Bill Clinton saw as the one and only issue when he was running for President.
He realised the job of a Government was limited to creating a stable society we can build our lives around.
It’s still the economy, stupid. Our financial well-being has a direct effect on our happiness. Having a job, a decent income, a roof over our heads and enough to eat – Governments can help us achieve these things.
When the economy goes wrong, the most worthwhile contribution politicians can make to the sum of human happiness is to repair it.
But beyond that, what makes life worthwhile is not in the gift of any politician and they shouldn’t pretend it is.
They don’t choose our friends and loved ones. They don’t give us sunshine on deserted beaches. They don’t give us nice sandwiches or enjoyable telly.
I’m all in favour of spreading a little happiness. A new organsiation called Action for Happiness wants to do just that.
Yet I can’t help thinking this isn’t about encouraging random acts of kindness but about controlling how we live.
Especially when you know the Government has a “Behavioural Insight Team” aiming to find “intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves” about diet, obesity and alcohol.
When he became Tory leader, David Cameron told the party faithful to “let sunshine win the day” which presumably makes him and Nick Clegg the Morecambe and Wise of British politics.
Even so, they may like to know that Ken Dodd’s greatest hit was not “Happiness” but “Tears”.
The Diddymen in Downing Street are spending £2 million trying to find out what makes us happy.
What with war, unemployment, cuts, chaos in the NHS and the blubbing of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, you’d think they had enough to worry about.
But be warned, this Ken Dodd politics boils down to a new way for the Government to control how we live.
They will conclude we are happy if we are healthy and therefore they’ll order us to stop smoking, drinking and eating the “wrong” food.
Actually it’s none of their business how we live our lives. Governments cannot make us happy.
Their job is to keep us secure and reasonably prosperous. The rest is up to us.
Luckily we don’t take this nonsense terribly seriously. Responses to the Office for National Statistics survey of what makes us happy include looking at pretty girls, better pies, cheese and tomato toasties with ketchup on the side and better TV programmes.
Even being allowed to smoke in pubs would make some people happier, it seems.
It’s impossible to measure happiness or even define what it is.They can’t accurately measure Britain’s balance of trade, the inflation rate, the level of economic growth, the crime rate, how many people are unemployed or what the number of illegal immigrants in this country really is.
We treat the statistics as Gospel but they’re not. They are approximate stabs at coming up with something roughly near the mark.
You’d think adding up numbers would be simple but if they can’t manage that how can they possibly measure something as nebulous as “happiness”?
What is it? How long does it last? Is it the same as contentment? Is it a one-off emotion sparked by something nice happening to you – or is it a state of mind?
I was happy last week when we went away to Cornwall for a few days and walked the dogs on a beautiful, near-deserted beach in glorious spring sunshine. Does that mean I am happy?
I doubt it – if only because there are so many things our Government does, from needlessly “reforming” the NHS to madly waging war, which make me angry.
If you took all the advice on the internet, you’d end up miserably confused.
A quick search shows that – according to “scientists” – happiness is contagious and spreads among family and friends; the more we try to be happy the more miserable we become; the colour blue makes us happy; money does buy happiness; no it doesn’t; happiness is earning more than £50,000 a year; being rich makes you unhappy.
Having a fourth child makes you unhappy; fathers talking to their teenage sons make them happy; you’re happy if you earn more than your friends; you’re happy if you eat pizza in front of the TV and live in Norwich.
You can be happy if you don’t marry a neurotic, don’t worry about your career, to go church and stay thin; or if you sleep six hours a night, enjoy four shopping sprees a month and take two holidays a year.
This whole nonsense began, of course, in America, land of the neurotic, where “the pursuit of happiness” is written into the Constitution.
It’s been imported by David Cameron’s personal guru, Steve Hilton, and no doubt when their happiness report comes out we’ll be told we’re all actually quite cheerful really.
It wasn’t happiness but “the economy, stupid” which Bill Clinton saw as the one and only issue when he was running for President.
He realised the job of a Government was limited to creating a stable society we can build our lives around.
It’s still the economy, stupid. Our financial well-being has a direct effect on our happiness. Having a job, a decent income, a roof over our heads and enough to eat – Governments can help us achieve these things.
When the economy goes wrong, the most worthwhile contribution politicians can make to the sum of human happiness is to repair it.
But beyond that, what makes life worthwhile is not in the gift of any politician and they shouldn’t pretend it is.
They don’t choose our friends and loved ones. They don’t give us sunshine on deserted beaches. They don’t give us nice sandwiches or enjoyable telly.
I’m all in favour of spreading a little happiness. A new organsiation called Action for Happiness wants to do just that.
Yet I can’t help thinking this isn’t about encouraging random acts of kindness but about controlling how we live.
Especially when you know the Government has a “Behavioural Insight Team” aiming to find “intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves” about diet, obesity and alcohol.
When he became Tory leader, David Cameron told the party faithful to “let sunshine win the day” which presumably makes him and Nick Clegg the Morecambe and Wise of British politics.
Even so, they may like to know that Ken Dodd’s greatest hit was not “Happiness” but “Tears”.
Monday, April 18, 2011
More fool us
We are at war and we are officially getting poorer. So what do our MPs do? They give themselves more expenses.
A few ex-MPs have been jailed for fiddling their expenses; others have been forced into humiliated redundancy; a few – those with duck houses, moats and porn videos – have become laughing stocks.
Yet still our politicians think they can milk us for all we are worth.
And what do we get in return? A supine Parliament where a pathetically feeble 13 people voted against the latest in the series of wars we have been waging in the past few years.
Just 13 people out of 650 had the courage, temerity or conviction to object to yet another headlong rush into a war with no apparent end and no defined objective.
They just did as they were told by the whips of all three main parties.
They didn’t, for instance, object that defending civilians and ousting Mad Dog Gaddafi were not the same thing.
They didn’t vote against the war on the basis that there’s no exit strategy. They didn’t vote against because the Government’s defence cuts mean we have no weight to throw around any longer.
They didn’t vote against bec
ause there’s no money for more missiles or because putting British lives at risk for a few hundred miles of sand is none of our business.
They didn’t even vote no because, once you start trying to police civil war in the Middle East, then who knows where it will stop?
They voted yes – by 557 to 13. You may wonder why we bother with MPs at all if they can be so overwhelmingly in agreement over our latest Blairite military adventure.
Many people think there’s something wrong with the whole idea of “humanitarian bombing raids” but not our MPs.
There are a few honourable exceptions. Tom Watson (Lab, West Bromwich East) abstained, saying: “I cannot give the Prime Minister carte blanche to execute an unconvincing military plan. I've done it once before and I'll regret it for the rest of my life.”
And David Winnick (Lab Walsall North) voted against, pointing out: “In Yemen, the regime slaughtered 45 people last week. They were protesting. And Saudi Arabia actually took military action to intervene in Bahrain. Has anyone suggested that we should intervene against Saudi Arabia? Of course not.”
As well as bombing-for-peace, there’s another issue which unites most of our MPs –their expenses.
After they were found to be on the fiddle and on the take, we were promised ever so humbly that never again would our politicians betray our trust or thrust their hands deep into our pockets in order to line their own.
That contrition lasted right up to the General Election. It looked for a while as if they had learned their lesson, especially as ex-MPs like David Chaytor and Eric Illsley are now behind bars.
They were the fall guys. It’s hard to say their scams were very different from their colleagues’, from David Cameron (wisteria-cutting) and Gordon Brown (domestic cleaner) down.
Between them, our MPs repaid the taxpayer more than £1 million.
Ever since the election, MPs have been whingeing about how hard done-by they are as their expenses claims shrank from £2 million a month to £800,000.
The body set up to police them – the Parliamentary Standards Authority – came under more fire than a Libyan tank column.
Even the Prime Minister joined in, warning he would abolish the quango entirely unless it became the MPs’ flexible friend.
So they’re now getting a special Parliamentary credit card – British Excess? That’ll do nicely – to meet their home and office costs.
Another 31 MPs will be allowed to claim for second homes even though they live in commuting distance of Westminster.
Even more bizarrely, MPs will get a benefit of £2,500 per child even though they’ve voted to axe child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers.
All this extra featherbedding takes place in a period of extreme austerity.
We don’t need half a million protesters, or anarchists occupying London’s top stores, to remind us these are tough times.
The Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility admits households face falling standards of living for at least another two years.
According to one estimate, a typical family’s disposable income is expected to shrink by £1,500 this year. Another claims we’re £1 a day worse off.
Either way, everyone except bonus-rich bankers is feeling the pinch.
So where are those “I feel your pain” MPs when you need them?
The only time they take their snouts out of the trough is when they trot through the voting lobbies without thinking, without questioning and – in some cases – without even knowing what they are voting for or against.
We seem to have elected a parliament full of yes-men and yes-women milking the system for all we are worth while the rest of us get poorer and our country is yet again fighting a war that’s got nothing to do with us.
The new expenses system comes into force today. But it’s the voters – not our MPs – who are the April Fools.
A few ex-MPs have been jailed for fiddling their expenses; others have been forced into humiliated redundancy; a few – those with duck houses, moats and porn videos – have become laughing stocks.
Yet still our politicians think they can milk us for all we are worth.
And what do we get in return? A supine Parliament where a pathetically feeble 13 people voted against the latest in the series of wars we have been waging in the past few years.
Just 13 people out of 650 had the courage, temerity or conviction to object to yet another headlong rush into a war with no apparent end and no defined objective.
They just did as they were told by the whips of all three main parties.
They didn’t, for instance, object that defending civilians and ousting Mad Dog Gaddafi were not the same thing.
They didn’t vote against the war on the basis that there’s no exit strategy. They didn’t vote against because the Government’s defence cuts mean we have no weight to throw around any longer.
They didn’t vote against bec
ause there’s no money for more missiles or because putting British lives at risk for a few hundred miles of sand is none of our business.
They didn’t even vote no because, once you start trying to police civil war in the Middle East, then who knows where it will stop?
They voted yes – by 557 to 13. You may wonder why we bother with MPs at all if they can be so overwhelmingly in agreement over our latest Blairite military adventure.
Many people think there’s something wrong with the whole idea of “humanitarian bombing raids” but not our MPs.
There are a few honourable exceptions. Tom Watson (Lab, West Bromwich East) abstained, saying: “I cannot give the Prime Minister carte blanche to execute an unconvincing military plan. I've done it once before and I'll regret it for the rest of my life.”
And David Winnick (Lab Walsall North) voted against, pointing out: “In Yemen, the regime slaughtered 45 people last week. They were protesting. And Saudi Arabia actually took military action to intervene in Bahrain. Has anyone suggested that we should intervene against Saudi Arabia? Of course not.”
As well as bombing-for-peace, there’s another issue which unites most of our MPs –their expenses.
After they were found to be on the fiddle and on the take, we were promised ever so humbly that never again would our politicians betray our trust or thrust their hands deep into our pockets in order to line their own.
That contrition lasted right up to the General Election. It looked for a while as if they had learned their lesson, especially as ex-MPs like David Chaytor and Eric Illsley are now behind bars.
They were the fall guys. It’s hard to say their scams were very different from their colleagues’, from David Cameron (wisteria-cutting) and Gordon Brown (domestic cleaner) down.
Between them, our MPs repaid the taxpayer more than £1 million.
Ever since the election, MPs have been whingeing about how hard done-by they are as their expenses claims shrank from £2 million a month to £800,000.
The body set up to police them – the Parliamentary Standards Authority – came under more fire than a Libyan tank column.
Even the Prime Minister joined in, warning he would abolish the quango entirely unless it became the MPs’ flexible friend.
So they’re now getting a special Parliamentary credit card – British Excess? That’ll do nicely – to meet their home and office costs.
Another 31 MPs will be allowed to claim for second homes even though they live in commuting distance of Westminster.
Even more bizarrely, MPs will get a benefit of £2,500 per child even though they’ve voted to axe child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers.
All this extra featherbedding takes place in a period of extreme austerity.
We don’t need half a million protesters, or anarchists occupying London’s top stores, to remind us these are tough times.
The Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility admits households face falling standards of living for at least another two years.
According to one estimate, a typical family’s disposable income is expected to shrink by £1,500 this year. Another claims we’re £1 a day worse off.
Either way, everyone except bonus-rich bankers is feeling the pinch.
So where are those “I feel your pain” MPs when you need them?
The only time they take their snouts out of the trough is when they trot through the voting lobbies without thinking, without questioning and – in some cases – without even knowing what they are voting for or against.
We seem to have elected a parliament full of yes-men and yes-women milking the system for all we are worth while the rest of us get poorer and our country is yet again fighting a war that’s got nothing to do with us.
The new expenses system comes into force today. But it’s the voters – not our MPs – who are the April Fools.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Plus ca change....
Amazing isn’t it? The Government abolishes Advantage West Midlands and the Government Office of the West Midlands and the word “regional” is more or less banned from the civil service vocabulary. So what happens?
The Department for Business opens a regional office; the Department for Transport sets up a regional unit; the Department for Communities and Local Government sets up a regional office to process applications for EU funding; the Department for Business plans a “sub national” Coaching for Growth business support programme; a changed regional international trade operation is introduced; the Skills Funding Agency keeps its regional structure; the Cabinet Office keeps a regional structure for emergencies from floods to terrorism; the Home Office encourages police forces to collaborate to save costs; and the Environment Agency keeps its regional structure to deal with flooding.
The Department for Business opens a regional office; the Department for Transport sets up a regional unit; the Department for Communities and Local Government sets up a regional office to process applications for EU funding; the Department for Business plans a “sub national” Coaching for Growth business support programme; a changed regional international trade operation is introduced; the Skills Funding Agency keeps its regional structure; the Cabinet Office keeps a regional structure for emergencies from floods to terrorism; the Home Office encourages police forces to collaborate to save costs; and the Environment Agency keeps its regional structure to deal with flooding.
Monday, March 28, 2011
HS2 - the Birmingham by-pass
How come nobody seems to have mentioned the planned HS2 high-speed rail system will actually pass us all by?
Instead of the West Midlands becoming the heart of the country’s rail system, we’ll be left in the sidings.
We’re constantly told the HS2 scheme is brilliant for business and only cure to all known economic ills for Birmingham and the rest of the region.
It’s bluff and nonsense.
If HS2 is built, the only area to definitely lose out in the long run will be the West Midlands.
Short journey times to London from Birmingham are irrelevant but from Manchester and Leeds they might make a difference.
It is simply not in our interests to see the thing built – but nobody seems willing to acknowledge that.
In these days of austerity, the idea of splurging £32 billion on a shiny new railway line seems like Imelda Marcos shopping for shoes with the starving at the palace gates.
Yet the Coalition is determined to press ahead even though HS2 is not a British initiative. It’s just another stage in the European Union’s plan for high-speed trains to go whizzing all round its domains.
Our Government’s just following orders. Our local leaders are all on board the HS2 gravy train as well.
They argue it will create construction jobs, boost the region’s economy by unfeasible billions and somehow transform our image and fortunes.
The full scheme is not for a London-Birmingham link. It’s for a route to Manchester and another to Leeds with the line dividing to east and west around Lichfield.
Indeed, if you look at the maps, Birmingham’s on a branch line. The main route by-passes the city completely.
Not a single financial figure put out by those promoting this scheme is worth the paper it’s written on. It’s entirely guesswork and almost certainly wrong to the power of ten.
But let’s pretend the forecasters know what they’re talking about because, even if they don’t, their sums give some indication of what’s going on.
A study in Leeds claims HS2 will generate “productivity benefits” worth £2.3 billion.
But where are these benefits to be felt? Well, £750 million of them go to Leeds and another £420 million to Sheffield. London prospers to the tune of £550 million.
What about us? According to this analysis the Birmingham City Region gets £100 million. In other words, we lose out.
Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond claims HS2 will benefit Britain to the tune of £44 billion.
Much of that will go on jobs created to build the thing in the first place. And obviously, if you spend £32 billion on a new train set, it’s going to provide work for people.
But assuming you had £32 billion to spend – which we haven’t – could it be better used in other ways?
That’s another question nobody is prepared to answer.
We’re told the great benefit of high-speed trains is much shorter journey times. But few people will pay a rail fare of about £320 to save half an hour travelling between Birmingham and London.
That alleged benefit doesn’t take into account the time it takes to drive to the station, park the car, get a ticket and wait for the train. Nor does it account for time spent at the other end getting from the station to your destination.
High-speed rail won’t change any of that.
If you’re travelling to Manchester or Leeds, the amount of time spent faffing around will be the same but it won’t matter as much because you’re going farther, faster.
The recently-axed quango the Commission for Integrated Transport said high-speed rail was worthwhile for travel between 180 and 375 miles.
Manchester-London is 181 miles, Leeds-London 195 miles so they both just scrape in. The Commission said there was “little benefit” for journeys of less than 180 miles. Birmingham-London is 109 miles.
The only place in this country which has so far enjoyed the dubious privilege of being a through station on a high-speed line is Ashford in Kent.
The economic benefits to the whole county were much-trumpeted in advance but, since it opened, various studies show Ashford’s economy has remained virtually untouched, unlike the Kent countryside.
It seems the small-print for HS2 suggests we may be forced into high-speed travel by the cancellation of some existing rail services between the West Midlands and London.
It may be the only way to make passengers pay a premium for the dubious pleasure of saving half an hour on the train.
So why is it deemed “unpatriotic” for people in the West Midlands to argue against HS2?
There are some vested interests at work: Birmingham Airport thinks it will become the third London airport, for instance; local politicians like to be regarded as men of vision; construction and engineering companies hope to get a hefty slice of the action.
We keep getting told HS2 is vital for the future prosperity of the West Midlands.
But how can any of us back a scheme which leaves the region standing on the platform while rich passengers rush past at 250 mph between London and the north?
Instead of the West Midlands becoming the heart of the country’s rail system, we’ll be left in the sidings.
We’re constantly told the HS2 scheme is brilliant for business and only cure to all known economic ills for Birmingham and the rest of the region.
It’s bluff and nonsense.
If HS2 is built, the only area to definitely lose out in the long run will be the West Midlands.
Short journey times to London from Birmingham are irrelevant but from Manchester and Leeds they might make a difference.
It is simply not in our interests to see the thing built – but nobody seems willing to acknowledge that.
In these days of austerity, the idea of splurging £32 billion on a shiny new railway line seems like Imelda Marcos shopping for shoes with the starving at the palace gates.
Yet the Coalition is determined to press ahead even though HS2 is not a British initiative. It’s just another stage in the European Union’s plan for high-speed trains to go whizzing all round its domains.
Our Government’s just following orders. Our local leaders are all on board the HS2 gravy train as well.
They argue it will create construction jobs, boost the region’s economy by unfeasible billions and somehow transform our image and fortunes.
The full scheme is not for a London-Birmingham link. It’s for a route to Manchester and another to Leeds with the line dividing to east and west around Lichfield.
Indeed, if you look at the maps, Birmingham’s on a branch line. The main route by-passes the city completely.
Not a single financial figure put out by those promoting this scheme is worth the paper it’s written on. It’s entirely guesswork and almost certainly wrong to the power of ten.
But let’s pretend the forecasters know what they’re talking about because, even if they don’t, their sums give some indication of what’s going on.
A study in Leeds claims HS2 will generate “productivity benefits” worth £2.3 billion.
But where are these benefits to be felt? Well, £750 million of them go to Leeds and another £420 million to Sheffield. London prospers to the tune of £550 million.
What about us? According to this analysis the Birmingham City Region gets £100 million. In other words, we lose out.
Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond claims HS2 will benefit Britain to the tune of £44 billion.
Much of that will go on jobs created to build the thing in the first place. And obviously, if you spend £32 billion on a new train set, it’s going to provide work for people.
But assuming you had £32 billion to spend – which we haven’t – could it be better used in other ways?
That’s another question nobody is prepared to answer.
We’re told the great benefit of high-speed trains is much shorter journey times. But few people will pay a rail fare of about £320 to save half an hour travelling between Birmingham and London.
That alleged benefit doesn’t take into account the time it takes to drive to the station, park the car, get a ticket and wait for the train. Nor does it account for time spent at the other end getting from the station to your destination.
High-speed rail won’t change any of that.
If you’re travelling to Manchester or Leeds, the amount of time spent faffing around will be the same but it won’t matter as much because you’re going farther, faster.
The recently-axed quango the Commission for Integrated Transport said high-speed rail was worthwhile for travel between 180 and 375 miles.
Manchester-London is 181 miles, Leeds-London 195 miles so they both just scrape in. The Commission said there was “little benefit” for journeys of less than 180 miles. Birmingham-London is 109 miles.
The only place in this country which has so far enjoyed the dubious privilege of being a through station on a high-speed line is Ashford in Kent.
The economic benefits to the whole county were much-trumpeted in advance but, since it opened, various studies show Ashford’s economy has remained virtually untouched, unlike the Kent countryside.
It seems the small-print for HS2 suggests we may be forced into high-speed travel by the cancellation of some existing rail services between the West Midlands and London.
It may be the only way to make passengers pay a premium for the dubious pleasure of saving half an hour on the train.
So why is it deemed “unpatriotic” for people in the West Midlands to argue against HS2?
There are some vested interests at work: Birmingham Airport thinks it will become the third London airport, for instance; local politicians like to be regarded as men of vision; construction and engineering companies hope to get a hefty slice of the action.
We keep getting told HS2 is vital for the future prosperity of the West Midlands.
But how can any of us back a scheme which leaves the region standing on the platform while rich passengers rush past at 250 mph between London and the north?
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Prolier than thou
Wha has happened to the le-er T? George Osborne and Ed Milliband have both delivered Budge speeches oday which omi he soun of the le-er T a every oppor-uni-ey.
Es ow posh people lower their social sta-us and pre-end hey are men of the people. Bu e wo work. E jus bogus.
Es ow posh people lower their social sta-us and pre-end hey are men of the people. Bu e wo work. E jus bogus.
Gizza public-sector job
If we knew then what we know now, most people would have gone for a career in the public sector.
Not because it’s particularly lively, stimulating or exciting – though, no doubt, it has its moments – but for the job security and the gold-plated pension.
Most private sector workers nearing retirement – if they have managed to stay in work throughout their careers – will be contemplating a bleak future. Their pensions ain’t what they used to be.
Before Tony Blair became Prime Minister, this country had one of the most secure private sector pensions industries in the world.
Thanks partly to the greed and stupidity of some major employers but also thanks to Gordon Brown’s £5 billion-a-year raid on pension funds, all that’s now been destroyed.
For many workers, there are few if any pension arrangements in place; for the rest, inflation-proof final salary pension schemes are a relic of past prosperity.
Yet public sector workers still enjoy lavish pay and pensions.
There was a time when pensions for teachers, nurses, soldiers, local government workers and civil servants were reasonably generous to make up for their relatively modest salaries.
They were looked after in old age because they were paid low wages in their working years.
All that changed under the Labour Government. Pay rose so fast that public sector workers earn an average of £2,000 a year more than those in the private sector.
Family doctors are now on £150,000, some “town clerks” earn more than the Prime Minister and teachers’ average pay has shot up from £22,000 to £35,000.
Pension entitlements rocketed as well, costing taxpayers more than £32 billion a year.
And, of course, if you work in the public sector you get to retire while you’re still young and fit enough to enjoy it – or get another job.
If you’re lucky, you can enjoy generous early-retirement deals. The public sector is especially keen on these when it comes to getting rid of someone who’s no good at their job – so much nicer than sacking them.
It’s got to stop because, even if we had the money in the boom years, we certainly can’t afford it any more.
The Coalition is struggling to deal with the massive public debt but even David Cameron and Nick Clegg are reluctant to admit how massively in debt this country really is.
Officially, we are borrowing £900 billion, rising to £1.1 trillion later this year.
In reality, the figure’s closer to £2.2 trillion already, if you take into account the money we’re spent on the banks, the mortgages taken out through the public finance initiative and our unfunded pension liability.
We’ve run out of money. Taxes are rising, the economy’s in the doldrums, the “squeezed middle” has been squeezed dry. You can’t get blood from a stone.
Former Labour Cabinet Minister Lord Hutton’s reform plans aren’t terribly radical or far-reaching.
For a start, they won’t have much effect on anyone over 50. And they mean the lowest-paid public sector workers will benefit more in retirement than their fat-cat bosses.
In future, public sector pensions will be based on average career earnings rather than the salary at retirement.
This cuts the burden on the taxpayer but it still leaves most public employees better off than their contemporaries.
Lord Hutton says his proposals are about fairness, not just that the taxpayer can’t afford to carry this weight indefinitely.
It cannot be right for private sector workers to endure poverty in old age simply to maintain the lifestyles of those lucky enough to work for the State.
Don’t forget the burden on the taxpayer gets greater every year because we’re all living longer. The average 65-year-old man will live until he’s 82; a woman can expect to reach 85.
In 1955, life expectancy was 67 for men and 72 for women.
No wonder Lord Hutton thinks the retirement age for public sector workers should rise to 65 and, in due course, to 68, in line with those in the private sector.
We are victims of our own success – but there is a price to pay for living longer, healthier lives.
Lord Hutton has not made himself popular by telling the one-fifth of us who work in the Government to work longer for less money.
The unions are, of course, warning of protests, marches and strikes to protect their pensions. But it’s just self-serving bleating from people who really don’t seem to understand how well-off they really are.
If they’re only interested in a fat pension, today’s school-leavers would still be better off sticking to the public sector.
There’s another difference between the public and private sectors. People not employed by the State don’t get expensive public inquiries into their pensions – they scarcely get consulted at all.
They just get told what’s been decided, like it or lump it. No wonder they cast envious eyes at the public services and wonder why on earth they bothered with the private sector in the first place.
Private sector workers create the wealth – but many won’t enjoy the fruits of their labour in retirement. Where’s the fairness in that?
Not because it’s particularly lively, stimulating or exciting – though, no doubt, it has its moments – but for the job security and the gold-plated pension.
Most private sector workers nearing retirement – if they have managed to stay in work throughout their careers – will be contemplating a bleak future. Their pensions ain’t what they used to be.
Before Tony Blair became Prime Minister, this country had one of the most secure private sector pensions industries in the world.
Thanks partly to the greed and stupidity of some major employers but also thanks to Gordon Brown’s £5 billion-a-year raid on pension funds, all that’s now been destroyed.
For many workers, there are few if any pension arrangements in place; for the rest, inflation-proof final salary pension schemes are a relic of past prosperity.
Yet public sector workers still enjoy lavish pay and pensions.
There was a time when pensions for teachers, nurses, soldiers, local government workers and civil servants were reasonably generous to make up for their relatively modest salaries.
They were looked after in old age because they were paid low wages in their working years.
All that changed under the Labour Government. Pay rose so fast that public sector workers earn an average of £2,000 a year more than those in the private sector.
Family doctors are now on £150,000, some “town clerks” earn more than the Prime Minister and teachers’ average pay has shot up from £22,000 to £35,000.
Pension entitlements rocketed as well, costing taxpayers more than £32 billion a year.
And, of course, if you work in the public sector you get to retire while you’re still young and fit enough to enjoy it – or get another job.
If you’re lucky, you can enjoy generous early-retirement deals. The public sector is especially keen on these when it comes to getting rid of someone who’s no good at their job – so much nicer than sacking them.
It’s got to stop because, even if we had the money in the boom years, we certainly can’t afford it any more.
The Coalition is struggling to deal with the massive public debt but even David Cameron and Nick Clegg are reluctant to admit how massively in debt this country really is.
Officially, we are borrowing £900 billion, rising to £1.1 trillion later this year.
In reality, the figure’s closer to £2.2 trillion already, if you take into account the money we’re spent on the banks, the mortgages taken out through the public finance initiative and our unfunded pension liability.
We’ve run out of money. Taxes are rising, the economy’s in the doldrums, the “squeezed middle” has been squeezed dry. You can’t get blood from a stone.
Former Labour Cabinet Minister Lord Hutton’s reform plans aren’t terribly radical or far-reaching.
For a start, they won’t have much effect on anyone over 50. And they mean the lowest-paid public sector workers will benefit more in retirement than their fat-cat bosses.
In future, public sector pensions will be based on average career earnings rather than the salary at retirement.
This cuts the burden on the taxpayer but it still leaves most public employees better off than their contemporaries.
Lord Hutton says his proposals are about fairness, not just that the taxpayer can’t afford to carry this weight indefinitely.
It cannot be right for private sector workers to endure poverty in old age simply to maintain the lifestyles of those lucky enough to work for the State.
Don’t forget the burden on the taxpayer gets greater every year because we’re all living longer. The average 65-year-old man will live until he’s 82; a woman can expect to reach 85.
In 1955, life expectancy was 67 for men and 72 for women.
No wonder Lord Hutton thinks the retirement age for public sector workers should rise to 65 and, in due course, to 68, in line with those in the private sector.
We are victims of our own success – but there is a price to pay for living longer, healthier lives.
Lord Hutton has not made himself popular by telling the one-fifth of us who work in the Government to work longer for less money.
The unions are, of course, warning of protests, marches and strikes to protect their pensions. But it’s just self-serving bleating from people who really don’t seem to understand how well-off they really are.
If they’re only interested in a fat pension, today’s school-leavers would still be better off sticking to the public sector.
There’s another difference between the public and private sectors. People not employed by the State don’t get expensive public inquiries into their pensions – they scarcely get consulted at all.
They just get told what’s been decided, like it or lump it. No wonder they cast envious eyes at the public services and wonder why on earth they bothered with the private sector in the first place.
Private sector workers create the wealth – but many won’t enjoy the fruits of their labour in retirement. Where’s the fairness in that?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Cameron is turning into Blair
So our wonderful Government wants a no-fly zone over Libya. Have they learned nothing from Tony Blair's disastrous years in Government - or have they learned far too much?
We do not have the money, manpower, aircraft or carriers to enforce this ridiculous idea never mind the strategic necessity. And if we start threatening Mad-Dog Gaddafi's bonkers regime, where do we stop?
Why not Bahrain? Why not Saudi Arabia? Why not Zimbabwe for that matter?
It's time we accepted we are not the world's policeman, we are a third-rate bit-part player in the games of superpowers and we should mind our own business.
We do not have the money, manpower, aircraft or carriers to enforce this ridiculous idea never mind the strategic necessity. And if we start threatening Mad-Dog Gaddafi's bonkers regime, where do we stop?
Why not Bahrain? Why not Saudi Arabia? Why not Zimbabwe for that matter?
It's time we accepted we are not the world's policeman, we are a third-rate bit-part player in the games of superpowers and we should mind our own business.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Petrol prices push us over the edge
The petrol station wanted to charge me £1.42.9 per litre. I can’t think in litres but I knew that was a lot of money. I’ve now worked it out. They wanted to charge me £6.48 per gallon. What an outrage.
I didn’t stop. Instead I wasted some of my precious fuel driving five miles down the road to another one where the price was £1.35.9 – a mere £6.20 per gallon.
It seems I’m not the only one balking at the high price of petrol. We’re all shopping around for lower prices, apparently.
Sometimes we are so reluctant to fork out for over-priced fuel we cruise around, even if the gauge is on red, until we run out altogether and have to call the AA.
We can’t go on like this – yet the price of petrol only ever goes up.
Admittedly it can fluctuate, and sometimes it does fall a little, but the trend is obvious. The price of oil is high and it’s likely to keep on rising.
Who is to blame and what are we to do?
We can always drive more slowly to save fuel. The up-side is it may make the roads safer but, if you stick to the speed limit already, it’s difficult to go much more slowly anyway.
Have you tried sticking to 70 on a motorway? It’s a nightmare. You’re going more slowly than almost everyone else and even in the slow lane you find massive lorries bearing down on you as if they’re in that old Steven Spielberg movie “Duel”.
We could trade in our gas-guzzlers for environmentally-friendly eco-cars. I’ve tried that but the advertised 63 miles per gallon for a Volvo V50 turns out to be a disappointing 51 or 52.
Try as I might, I can’t get better fuel consumption than 54 mpg even if I do 30 on a dual carriageway – and who in their right mind does that?
We could try working from home but for most of us, most of the time, that’s impossible.
You have to go to meetings, meet customers and clients, work with other people or with machinery which won’t fit inside the average spare room. Home-working is a nice idea but mostly impractical.
There is always public transport, of course. Some journeys are best made by train and bus but most are not.
For the majority of us, it’s not an option no matter how much cheaper it may be than driving – even if you can stand the long delays, inconvenience, discomfort and unreliability of most services not to mention the indifference of the service-providers.
Given the chaos in the main oil-producing countries of the Middle East, the day of the £2 litre can’t be too far off.
Unfortunately, we depend on oil from corrupt and unstable countries. A quarter of world supplies come from the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, 10 per cent from the mad mullahs of Iran, 8.6 per cent from Iraq.
Few of the world’s oil-supplying nations can be trusted to keep selling us with reasonably-priced crude. And even if they could, most of it is being bought up by the new superpower of China.
Even so, it is possible to cut the price of petrol and stop it rising ever-higher. Thanks to Government taxes, Britain has the second most expensive petrol in the world.
Only in Holland do they pay more – and they get about on bicycles because it’s so flat.
Despite all the oil price rises, without tax the cost of a litre would be just over 50p.
Another 1p tax increase is due next month though Chancellor George Osborne may well cancel that in his Budget on March 23.
We shouldn’t be grateful if he does because January’s VAT increase added almost 3p a litre to the price.
Of course the Government must pay off the massive debts Gordon Brown left behind.
But the price of petrol is now so high it isn’t just forcing ordinary motorists off the roads, it’s adding massively to business costs, making Britain even more uncompetitive.
With the economy in the car park, if not heading for the scrap yard, our promised “Budget for growth” must do something about the way fuel taxes are holding back the whole country.
Forcing us out of our cars has always been the aim of the green environmental do-gooders who dominate Government these days.
Even they, though, might worry we still don’t have a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine.
Electric cars are unlikely ever to become a practical option – and, anyway, until we build a new generation of nuclear power plants, generating electricity will itself be environmentally unfriendly.
Drivers are an easy target for tax-gatherers but petrol prices are becoming prohibitive.
At £2 a litre our roads, rather like the Ritz, would still be open to everyone – but only the rich will use them.
And as long as the whole economy depends on road travel to keep it moving, our politicians will have to do better than cancelling a 1p rise in fuel duty.
Either that or we’ll all have to take up horse-riding.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Bloody-minded fruitcakes
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.”
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.”
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.
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