Liberal Vision

Hung Parliament - the photo op that exposes Clegg’s strategy

I punched the air when I saw the impromptu photo op outside St. Stephen’s gate after the Ghurkas victory. Am I the only one who hopes this signals Nick Clegg’s future coalition strategy…?

…because in the event of a hung Parliament, I’m well up for a coalition with Joanna Lumley.

Councillors join the Gravy Train

Whilst we have all been preoccupied in recent days with the hows, whys and wherefores of MPs allowances. I was stunned by a report I stumbled across on Radio 5 on Sunday evening concerning the incredible rise and rise of Councillors allowances. Listen to the report here: http://odeo.com/episodes/24506564-5lr-Councillors-expenses-26-April-09

The BBC looked at figures for Councillors expenses across the 388 Councils in England, comparing figures over the 4 years 2004 to 2008.

What they found was that around 300 of those Councils had awarded themselves above inflation rises. Some councils have awarded themselves rises in the 100% range.

Example: Rochford District Council in Essex has more than doubled its allowances bill. 3 years ago the Council Leader was claiming around £10,000, now he claims £25,500. His excuse ? That this was done to put Rochford “in line” with other Councils in Essex. Oh please.

Councils appoint a remuneration panel to recommend Councillors allowances - but crucially the Councils can ignore or be selective about what recommendations they take up. And indeed too many do ignore them.

Unlike MPs, Councillors can only claim a flat rate (no John Lewis list here) , though some also can claim a “special responsibility allowance” if they hold what they laughably call a “cabinet post” or are a council leader etc. And of course, some will be eligible for other allowances from elsewhere within the Government system. What is pretty shocking is that Councillors dont even have to turn up to claim the allowance - and again, believe you me some of them dont. All aboard please… the Gravy Train is about to leave the station.

So whilst we are in the mood for “cleaning up” and hopefully, slimming down, politics, let’s not focus all of our attention on Westminster. Let’s spend some time examining the increasingly huge amounts of our money, many Councillors are spending on themselves.

“National economic emergency” - concedes New Labour

Geoffrey Robinson, the New Labour talking head on this evening’s Newsnight, has just admitted that the country faces a “national economic emergency”.

I don’t remember Alistair Darling using this term in his budget speech. Such words are not in the Draper-McBride lexicon, of course.

So,  Robinson gets a half-mark for (unintentional) honesty.

But he also claimed that the Chancellor’s shameless  lie slight statistical misunderstanding that the economy had shrunk by only 1.6% in the last quarter was “within the range”.

The range of what exactly?

Labour’s numbers are only within the “range” of predictions if you’re insane enough to listen to them at all.

And if you’re gullible or mad enough to do so, you will find these charlatans’ numbers are  always at the extreme optimistic end of the “range”.

That’s doesn’t count as a prediction “within the range”.

It counts as bullshit.

Nick Clegg has it and David Cameron lacks it

The fallout of Smeargate has seen a marked and welcome upswing in the LibDem poll ratings - averaging out at around the 20% mark rather than bobbling around in the mid-high teens. Today’s Ipsos MORI poll shows the party within six points of Labour. And all of this is against a backdrop of fairly limited LibDem coverage over the whole Dolly Draper-Mad Dog McBride scandal.The Tories have pretty much flatlined.

However bad sleaze is for the wider body politic, it seems to encourage people to plump for the LibDems. Nick Clegg’s easy television manner and the fact that you can’t really picture the bloke up to his eyeballs in corruption (or even up to his ankles) can only help. Although Nick is, I think, the only mainstream to have confessed to a “crime” (he rather endearingly admits to having over-stepped the mark in a practical joke involving a greenhouse in Germany as a boy), it was hardly grand theft auto.

Although Cameron has done much to revive the fortuens of the Conservatives, the polls from the Smeargate fallout suggest he hasn’t decontaminated the Tory brand.  Nick Clegg and the LibDems seem to have the ability to capitalise on sleaze. Cameron’s Tories just don’t.

New LibDem tax policy (sort of)

Two-and-a-half cheers for Nick Clegg, who seems finally to have settled on the policy the party will take into the next election - namely, raising the basic income tax threshold to £10,000, shedding about £700 off the annual bill of the average worker.

The party leader loses half-a-cheer for having moved away from an overall tax-cutting agenda to one of “tax neutrality”, although I’m reliably told by Cowley Street that Nick’s overall long-term aim to reduce the overall tax burden remains in place.

All those of us who applauded Nick’s determination to go much further in cutting tax last September when he spoke to the Sunday Telegraph’s Melissa Kite, need to continue to press against the old approach of recycling 100% of identified expenditure cuts back in to alternative public sector programmes. Economic times may be tough, but we don’t want to fall into the trap of simply shifting government expenditure from one department to another. If spending reductions can be made, at least some of these savings should be passed on directly to the taxpayer.

I gather that the reasoning behind changing the tax policy from a “4p cut in the basic rate” to a “raising of the threshold” is because Chris Rennard believes it’s easier to communicate to voters a £700 tax reduction rather than a 4% cut. £700 sounds bigger too.

The key thing now - as I argued on the BBC’s six o’clock news this evening (15 mins in) - is to make sure this message is aggressively communicated. The party’s spent four years arriving at a new tax policy, but only has one year before the election to make the case to an electorate who will probably find it counter-intuitive that the LibDems want to lower the average income tax bill.

ASA prevents collapse of Western civilisation (again)

Thank God for the Advertising Standards Authority. It’s hard to imagine that Western civilisation would survive without it.

Their latest attempt to save us from ourselves is to ban this advert:

Apparently, the advert breaks guidelines by suggesting that the alcoholic product advertised would give the bloke the necessary confidence to suggest his girlfriend returns her ill-fitting dress to whence it came.

What total tosh.

He’s going to need a lot more than a pint of piss-weak bitter before he finds the guts to say “Your arse looks huge in that, darling”.

At a guess, I’d have thought the average man would need to knock back at least three full bottles of methylated spirits before daring to articulate such thoughts.

The ASA is funded by the advertising industry, of course, not by the government. But just like many other industries, the state’s threat of “voluntarily regulate or we’ll come in and forcibly regulate” is forever ringing in their ears.

Time gentlemen please

Today’s barmy Government announcement (presumably to detract from the Smeargate debacle) is to conduct a review into the idea that alcoholics have their benefits docked if they do not get treatment.

Hmmmm

The Welfare Reform Bill (currently going through Parliament) already contains the option to withhold benefits from alcoholics. So er…what is new?

And if they DO decide to go down the route of withholding benefits from alcoholics the most likely outcome is that alcoholics simply cease to confide in their GP about their alcohol problem. That will help how?.

..And if they are stupid enough to confide in their doctor and risk benefits cuts as a consequence, there are not enough clinics to treat alcohol as things stand now, let alone take on any more.

If that is the best idea the Special Advisers can come up with to try to knock Mr McBride and co. off the headlines - we should call Time Gentlemen Please on the lot of them.

Revealed: the Smeargate winners

The truly excellent politicalbetting.com prides itself on an objective, non-partisan analysis of electoral politics.  But they have a slightly odd photo attached to their discussion thread about who will benefit from Smeargate.

Under his headline: “Is this the real winner from Smeargate?”, PB’s editor Mike Smithson attaches the above striking image. 

Is the question whether the winners from the present political chaos will be the faceless military industrial establishment, with a public school boy meekly occupying the backseat?

Let’s hope the answer isn’t “yes”.

Not this time.

Hat-tip: Archibald Schwarz, comment #278

Gordon Brown’s “in crowd”

Why am I so unsettled by the current “smeargate” story engulfing Gordon Brown?

I think it’s because my mother’s much-used phrase “You can judge a man’s character by the company he keeps” is ringing in my ears. I am not sure who originally coined the phrase but if we apply this to Gordon Brown , then this is a man with some very serious character flaws. I don’t just mean a dodgy side to an otherwise decent fellow - I mean a deep psychological schism - a lock him up - send in the men in white coats - mark him unsafe to be released back into the community - type of character.

Just take a look at his “in crowd” - the people he trusts, rates, relies upon. (Oh and the “in” refers to infamous, indecent, and incapable (apply as appropriate)).

Damian McBride, Charlie Whelan, Derek Draper ,Peter Mandelson , Ed Balls +Yvette Cooper , Tony McNulty, Alistair Darling , Jacqui Smith, Caroline Flint, Derek Wanless…(I could go on..)

They have variously been sacked but reinstated, cocked up but been promoted or rewarded, had their snouts in the trough but had their gorging defended by Downing Street.

I remember reading a profile on Gordon Brown in The Times back in 2006. He told a story about himself I found somewhat worrying as I read it. It went something like this….”Gordon Brown was quite young when “this guy comes to the door of the manse”. Gordon’s parents have popped out, but he’s well schooled: to a parishioner in need you offer help. He’s seen it again and again - his father, the Rev John Brown, dispensing food, money and advice to the poor. The morality is in his blood. He hears it from the pulpit twice a day on Sunday. “So as my parents taught me, I say, what do you want - help yourself! And when they come back, the town’s most notorious burglar is sitting in the kitchen… ”

So here we are 50 years on and he’s STILL inviting thieves and ne’er do wells to come join him at the kitchen table. That can’t just be naivety. This man is seriously ill. Somebody help him please.

Internet porn - New Labour fails again

In keeping up to speed on the hilarious downfall of Damian McBride and Derek Draper. I happened upon the latter’s blog.

Aside from the prescient image of Mr Draper needing the support of a life belt (Dolly, they don’t actually work if the entire mainstream media is applying several mega-tonnes of force on your head to keep your mouth under water), what I found deeply titillating was the blog’s proud boast that this is where Dolly posts stuff that “isn’t suitable for Labourlist.org” .

I’ve been hitting refresh every few seconds for the last few days.  My mouse is now broken and my index finger is worn to the bone. And I’ve yet to see any pictures of Shadow Cabinet members in  stockings and suspenders.

Yet another broken promise from New Labour.