Go figure …

There was a time when figures meant something, when we gasped in awe at the thought of a billion dollars, let alone a billion pounds.  I suppose it was Bill Gates’ enormous wealth thanks to Microsoft’s profits that first anaesthetized us the the meaning of vast sums of largesse.  And then along came Google, that aptly named generator of impossible to imagine quantities of greenbacks.

Non the less it is still appalling and quite disorienting to think that our lowly government is set to borrow £100 billion this year.

Still, its all in a good cause isn’t it?

Charity begins at home

Gordon Brown’s home that is.

The Charity Commission report into the activities of The Smith Institute says that even after being warned that it was unwise, the Institute still held 27 meetings at 11 Downing Street.  And why not - the Smith Institute was run by an old school chum and 3 of its 6 laughably named ‘trustees’ donated to Browns leadership election fund.

No matter how Labour spin this its clear that the Charity Commission report is pretty damning about the careless way the Smith Institute chose to ally itself with Brown.  What is equally damning is the way the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’, in the shape of Michael Crick can shrug its shoulders at this report whilst doggedly dragging Caroline Spelman through 10-years old muck.

Given that labour have not even selected a candidate yet and that Glasgow East is such a safe but derelict constituency that it does not even possess canvassing returns, there is widespread speculation that the SNP could pull of a devastating surprise. Devastating for Gordon Brown that is.

Ironically it may take a good showing by the Tories to save his bacon.

But if events pursue their domesday course, could a new leader possibly refuse to call an early election? Could they seriously expect to govern without a quick General Election after giving the country two new leaders inside 18 months — given that the one they had just removed had been appointed by virtually unanimous acclaim?

Removing Brown would leave the Labour party and its MPs staring down the barrel of a gun, toted by the Dirty Hacks of the media …

” — I know what you Labour MPs are thinking. “Is the swing 10% or 20%?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a General Election, the most powerful peoples weapon in the world, and would blow your expenses clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, Labour MPs? — “

Well I, armed with a magnum full of economic statistics, say to them, “Go ahead, make my day”

Newsnight on the NHS at 60

A shocking report by Newsnight (1 June) on the lack of progress on the NHS since the Wanless Report.

Massive funding gap based on current projections to deliver the Wanless solution. No clear evidence of any improvement at all over the last 6 years, with outcomes clearly skewered by politically set targets. An amazingly blunt analysis from the Beeb.

So no surprise then that there was no minister hauled over the coals after it. Indeed why was this report left to air AFTER the previous nights (presumably) flagship discussion. A whole raft of carefully analysed devastating statistics carefully hidden away until the Minister had leaped into his limousine and scurried off home.

Judgement Day

The resignation of Wendy Alexander, or ‘Wee Wendy McNumpty’ as Andrew Neil memorably called her, is a victory for our self appointed Sleazebuster General and his assorted err, cohorts. Mind you Alex Salmond might like to claim an assist there as well. I guess Ms Alexander deserves all she gets as it was after all Labour who invented sleazebashing. As a pretty incompetent minister and Labour leader there are plenty of reasons to relish her demise. I have to say though I find it difficult to justify her resignation based on the issues involved. Both the Electoral Commission and the Procurator Fiscal have acquitted her. She goes I guess because she just does not have what it takes, the heat in the kitchen is too great.

What seems to be being ignored though is that Wee Wendy owes all she has to the patronage of one G. Brown Esq. He pushed her to the leadership and no doubt strong armed the Scottish Labour party into accepting yet another unopposed leadership election (counting Robert Mugabe, I make that 3 such elections for sure in the last 12 months). Its pretty clear poor Wee Wendy was not up to the job, thats reason enough to see the back of her (if you’re a Labour supporter that is). Her donorgate scandal is in all probability due to her dumb stupidity rather than any desperate need to garner funds and provide payback for the same. Remember Bernie Ecclestone anybody? ‘Straight sort of guy’ Blair did not feel the need to resign over that now did he?

So anyway, what does all of this tell us about the judgement of her mentor?

And what does it say about the judgement of the cabinet, the backbenchers and the party that put HIM in power?

Not before time

Over at Defence of the Realm they have gone into the current situation in Afghanistan in great detail, citing and reviewing a number of opinions by learned columnists.  I don’t particularly want to comment on their conclusions (they seem as reasonable as any) rather what’s important is that the debate, as described by the blog, is happening at at all.  For too long the action in Afghanistan has been taking place in a vacuum, taking place under the unquestioning gaze of a mystified public which seems to be collectively shrugging its shoulders and turning back to more mundane local matters.

As a country we need to get ourselves better informed about what our armed forces are doing, because without pressure from us our army will never get the resources it needs or indeed develop the tactics required to ‘win’.  I am reminded of the situation at the beginning of 1918 where Lloyd George withheld reinforcements from the western front, thus leaving it weakened at a key moment to face the German spring offensive.  The government of the day had given the army a task but simply did not understand the requirements, the sacrifice, necessary to carry out its will.

In respect of Afghanistan, the situation seems to have become more doom laden since some more optimistic reports a month or two back.  The Taliban seem to have resigned themselves to ‘pinprick’ hit and run tactics which can hardly effect a victory for them, rather the hope would seem to be to simply wear down the civilian morale of the soldiers they are fighting.  This makes it all the more amazing that the government and senior MoD officials seem incapable of providing our troops with even the most basic protection, a policy which pays right into the hands of our enemy.

Once again a comparison with WW1 seems appropriate.  There is no doubt that early in the piece that war suffered from a failure in generalship, it was a war like no other, mistakes were made on all sides.  But importantly lessons were learned and weapons tactics and generalship evolved to win in the end.  Right now there seems little evidence that lessons are being learned, no evidence that tactics are evolving, no evidence that we - the public who are the real targets of the latest Taliban attacks, are being prepared for the sacrifices that our army might be called upon to make if this sorry mess is to be resolved.

BBC Vacuum

If Richard Dimbleby had been handed plans for Operation Overlord from a mystified train passenger in 1944, would he have read them, photographed them and talked at great length about it on the Radio or sent a copy to the Times for them to publish.? Hmmm … I think not.

So what is it with the modern BBC that they feel the need to expose the latest loss of top secret doccuments in the way they have? They have read them, they have filmed parts of them, have they photocopied them - discussed them? Oh and in the end they handed them over to the police (all filmed of course).

The BBC seems to be reporting in a vacuum. It seems to think that it can expose our security inadequacies with impunity to itself and its licence payers. Our nation is indeed under terrorist threat. We are deluged with bogus issues like 42 days when at the same time real measures to protect us are being ignored and organs like the BBC poke two fingers into the face of our security.

Missing the point - by a mile

Where do I stand on ‘the great expenses scam’?

Well I am absolutely disgusted that conservative MEPs should take even half of the EU expenses on offer, never mind do things like channel them via a family company - not that I even pretend to know the significance of this.

Its easy to see now why so many Conservatives (not to mention of course droves of Socialists and LibDms) are so friendly to the EU - its a nice little earner. The EU we can surmise is more than happy to oblige its parliamentarians their little quid pro quos.  The EU parliament is a fig leaf of democracy for this notoriously totalitarian body and it suits it to draw MEPs into its deceit.  Lets not forget that the EU actually pays lobbyist to lobby itself to formulate the policies both the EU and the lobby groups want. (The public? We are just inconvenient bystanders)

The furore of comment on and investigation into MPs expenses, set off by the Derek Conway scandal, is not much different, but here again the system seems to have encouraged the payments in lieu of proper pay increases.  Its unlikely that Conway received anything serious in the way of research in return for paying his sons ,then again these payments do not guarantee quality.  The exposure of Conway though opened up a whole can of worms and quite frankly it reaches right to the top, not least Brown, Blair and various members of the government, and indeed he (labour Speaker and his wife).   I am not surprised.  But if these payments are  ‘within the rules’ then the current mini frenzy over the BBC and its claims over Caroline Spelman seems wholly bogus.  A relatively short term affair over 10 years ago surrounding a new MP, young mother and no proper working constituency office - well it has the elements of a Brian Rix Whitehall farce not a Guido Fawkes one, and the media really ought to treat it as such.

We have too many MPs with too little worthwhile to do, and we probably pay them too little, we have certainly seen their pay messed around with for political reasons too often.  I do not like the nonsense which has been going on over expenses, but the real corruption has been taking place elsewhere.  Loans for Peerages, donations for Peerages, secret donations, self serving donations.  All of which remember is taking place within a system that has honed to a fine art the idea of pushing agendas, moulding opinion via Reports and Commissions headed by pliable notaries who invariably happen ascend to some nice little sinecure.

I would like to see fewer MPs with clear responsibilities and some independent well funded clerical and research support.  Despite fewer MPs I think this will inevitably cost more.  I am not sure it will make us better governed either.  I hope the headline grabbers are happy.

Pig’s Ear

When a government makes such an enormous pig’s ear of ‘reforming’ the tax and benefits system as this one and makes such a lamentable job of introducing ‘green’ car taxes it makes the public sit up and ask questions.  On top of which we have seen the governments bubble of self proclaimed fiscal competence comprehensively burst.

So, does anyone seriously trust it to look to the future of our energy supplies?  Indeed does anyone think it has been making any sensible considerations these last 10 years?

No, I thought not.  And over at EU referendum they spell it out, not for the first time to be sure.

On top of the government’s own incompetence our problems are compounded by the EU.

” … we shall also have to shut down nine more major power stations – six coal-fired, three oil-fired – forced to close by the crippling cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution law, the so-called Large Combustion Plants directive. This will take out another 13 gigawatts of capacity, bringing the total shortfall to 22GW - a staggering 40 percent of the total demand.”

As the government squanders our precious resources on wind energy then we have the prospect of facing a massive shortfall in our energy production.  The governments incompetence is astronomically greater then its critics give it credit for.

42 Days and 42 Nights

‘Spy blog’ has a great fisking of Gordon Brown’s (and before him, to be fair, Blair’s) defence of 42 day detention without trial.  But what caught my eye was a great line which summed up life in dustbin-chipped Britain -

“That is not any sort of safeguard for innocent people who get caught up in the Kafkaesque bureaucracy which the British State has now been infected by”

The nation is going to hell in a basket, I do not know what is worse, a 15 year old girl  being stabbed by her boyfriend, or the fact that her boyfriend is described as 30+.  But never mind all that - our pen pushers will stamp on us for not shutting our  dustbins properly.  Strikes me this would have been too existential even for Kafka.

Reshuffle?

If Brown is persuaded to perform the inevitable crisis solving reshuffle then top of his list should be a Minister of Expediency.

If …

The latest poll figures gives everyone an excuse to resume speculation about if when and where will Gordon go.  But perhaps the speculators have missed an irony in the midst of all of this.

If only Blair had resisted the demands for him to go.  If only he could have spoiled all the plots.  If only he had never given the hostage to fortune in the first place.  By now he would have had ample ammunition to sack Brown and turn over a NewLabour leaf.  He could have succeeded in renewing the party whilst in office.  Northern Rock.  The 10p tax fiasco.  Can you imagine how this would have played with Brown still in office as Chancellor?  The public would have still been mad at the government but the way would have been clear for the culprit to make the supreme political sacrifice - or at least take exile as Foreign Secretary.

And Tony would have been good at it as well.  “Look Gordon, you know me, I am a regular guy, this is really difficult but…  Its for the good of the country, the good of the party, for your own good … “.

Life’s not fair … just ask Norman Lamont.

However I suspect Labour  backbenchers are having a collective bout of selective amnesia over the process that deposed Blair and left them with Brown.  They must hope the electorate do not cotton on either since this whole episode can hardly mark them down as perceptive - if the electorate stopped to think about it for long enough.

Skating on thick ice

An interesting story in Watts Up With That prompts me to comment on the current state of man made global warming - or the lack of it.

Its quite a funny story really about the icebreaker stuck in the ice.  Whats so funny?  Well it was engaged in a cruise to demonstrate how much ice had disappeared due to global warming.  Such ice as there was, was expected to be thin and weedy, but in the end it trapped the mammoth ship for a week.  Hope the passengers enjoyed it.  As one commenter says “In the last year, 2 separate cruise ships viewing ‘the melting Antarctic ice’ have struck icebergs”.  We will gloss over the ‘carbon footprint’ of these voyages.

One reason why temperatures are rated as high as they are is also highlighted in this blog.  Putting a weather station in a Fire Station car park in the middle of a city is not the best of ideas but its not uncommon as this link explains further.  And you thought all this temperature recording lark was ’scientific’.

‘Watts Up  …’ also points up the fact that there is far from a concensus on global warming, highlighting The Oregon Petition, which has just chalked up Freeman Dyson as a signatory, not to mention the Manhattan Declaration and the Leipzig Declaration.  When you are told there is a scientific consensus by anybody, you know they are lying.  “Nature of course will be the final arbiter of truth” and the graph in this link currently makes devastating reading for warming alarmist.

Here in sunny Britain harsh politics and economics are intruding into the warmists fantasies.  Its troubling that policy such as fuel tax and carbon indulgences trading is being made up on the basis of “the “scientists” torturing the data until it tells the truth”.  Where is Amnesty International when you need them?

Knife edge

THIS is the inevitable result of the bureaucratisation of society.

It seems the government is a little upset over the intervention of the Children’s Commissioner in their belated get tough policy on juvenile violence and murder.  Well they should have thought of that before they invented the Children’s Commissioner  - “to give a national voice to all children and young people” - in the first place.  Silly me, there was I thinking that was a parents job.

Meantime the appalling toll in young life continues, with the government standing transfixed in the headlights.  As it tears up the fabric of our society it seems surprised at the by-products.  its not as if the worry over knives is new, even the BBC were discussing it back in 2003, with a reference to an amnesty in 1996.  It does not need new initiatives it needs existing laws enforced.  It will also need to put policemen on the streets, not community support officers, and keep our policemen there not filling in forms and ticking boxes back at their desks.

As our government wallows in its unpopularity, look out for a few eye catching initiatives on this from which our Prime Minister can be associated with.  But thanks to the unique way its been running the economy lately - can it find the necessary resources to back these up?

Is Labour going to listen?

Labour are going to listen. To change.

OK then. Schools are in revolt over under 5’s curriculum. And there’s more, “obsessive changes leave nurseries joyless”.

And for good measure “the Early Education Advisory Group are urging Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, to water down the new curriculum by dropping targets …”.

If only …

As in so many other areas “choice is being taken away from them”. The Times seems to be making an issue of this so its likely to be drawn to government attention. Libby Purves - “While social services miss tragic cases, the Government fiddles with early learning targets” - points out the inevitable result of Labours one-eyedness.

“… ministers - and here comes the satirical backcloth - are far keener on micromanaging those who are already perfectly OK. They like to impose their will on soft, law-abiding families rather than intractable and uncivilised one.”

“… while we are a society that still has pockets of appalling parenting and children who die by gradual visible neglect, the kindly and reasonable majority of families are subject to endless authoritarian fiddling. While one child lies in filth and fear, taken out of school for ten weeks without a single visit from state authority, that same state authority beavers away to force every childminder to have “a range of programmable toys””

Will Labour listen? Well there is nothing like an execution to concentrate the mind. But there is a world of difference between trimming, running away or compromising and actually having coherent philosophically sound alternative ideas and policies. Central control runs through the middle of this government like a motto through a little stick of Blackpool rock.

Listen? Expect smoke and mirrors.