Educational Failures

A Government of Slightly More Talents

The Thunder Dragon snorts the fires of righteous derision at Ed Balls' inability to name the colours of the rainbow and I'm a bit annoyed!

I'd actually been watching the committee session during which he revealed his ignorance to the world on BBC Parliament, but had had switched over before his faux pas on the electromagnetic spectrum, in disgust at his thick-as-pigshit grin and his inability to understand that debate in committees is meant to be at least a little more mature than in the commons chamber. Indulging in every answer avoidance technique of his mentor he seemed blissfully unaware that even the said Brown shapes up just a little bit for his equivalent session.

Like I had to do today though, you can still enjoy things being Ballsed up here for a few weeks.

While there is little doubt that Balls is an over promoted, under performing twat you would think that spending time in a cabinet with Zippy as Foreign Secretary, George as Chancellor, all ruled over by Prime Minister Bungle Brown, he'd know a bit more about rainbows.

Apologies in advance for making comparison between well-loved children's' TV characters and the pond scum who rule us presently. To make up for it here is an excerpt from the said show that didn't quite make it to air.

An Expensive Failure

Counting the Cost

I've got a sneaky feeling that if, on some Inland Revenue form or another, I signed off on a turnover figure of £82,000 rather than a true figure closer to £200,000, I'd be out of 'oops sorry' band, even were the figures put together by some underling or another. The repeatedly useless Peter Hain though is a politician where different, much lower, standards prevail.

As much as it has been amusing to read of Hain's deputy leadership bid team fighting like rats in a sack over exactly whose incompetence has dragged the bad name of Labour further into the mud, at heart it is a deeply depressing spectacle.

The idea that the availability of more than double the declared funding would not have affected campaigning choices, something that Hain himself must have at least some hand in, beggars belief, even if he didn't do the book keeping himself. If you look at a five figure quote for some activity it looks very different with £200k in the bank instead of less than half that. The alleged unawareness of the Prime Minister, once again, of the developing story until the last possible moment again strikes another familiar off-key note, or at the very least betokens a 'see no evil...' approach of deliberate ignorance.

Of course though, it is a story with a happy ending, in that there was at least a little poetic justice. To have spent more than double the amount of every other contestant in a race and still only come fifth out of the six that made it to the start line must have been humiliating enough, even before the realisation sunk in that the winner was one of the most easily dislikeable performers on today's political stage.

I have to admit that I used to find Hain one of the less offensive senior figures in the Labour hierarchy. Of late though he has joined a growing band whose demeanour and simplistic form of argument by unfounded assertion was something that I never had a lot of time for, but I accepted to politically work a once inexplicably popular and modestly trusted Labour government, but seem hopeless incapable of adjusting to their newly reduced circumstances.

I suspect that there are many who, unlike myself, would dearly love to be able to vote Labour without a bad smell in their nose next time around, having seen a party truly contrite and self-aware of the faults that prolonged exposure to power has brought to them as to so many others. From the likes of Hain, as well as many others such as Balls and Harman and the Prime Minister himself, I doubt an apology will ever seem truly sincere as it may do to an extend, for example, from the likes of a Miliband or Darling as similarly useless as they may be in other respects.

As long as the likes of Hain linger, so will the bad smell. It's actually less to do with individual offences against the law or general decency, but how their lack of grace under fire even if they can abase themselves just far enough to say sorry.

Oh Ye of Little Ability

I suspect that if I ever sat down with a psychiatrist I'd be tagged with some kind of 'depressive' label, but actually I'm not. True, when I wake up I have a tendency to let everything that is wrong with my life run through my head, but I put that down my irresponsible use of the Today programme in conjunction with a clock-radio.

Usually, once sentient thought has blown away the cobwebs of the latest "eating lasagne can take five seconds off your life" story, I'm actually quite cheerful as long as Big Brother (the TV show) or Big Brother (the Labour ideal of governance) are not mentioned, and if Ground hog day doesn't strike.

Unfortunately, on Monday we had day-glo have-a-go half-wit Hain, dismissing, without benefit of a single number, let alone calculation, the Conservative proposals on incapacity benefits on the grounds of being too expensive. Today we had even more modest proposals that the able-bodied shouldn't be able to claim unemployment benefits indefinitely as long as we remain an country with many opportunities for employment, dismissed by the same tosser as:

"...hugely costly and the Tories can't fund it, it also won't work."

Source: BBC News

It would have been good to see that an extra day's thought had allowed Mr Hain to come up with a more considered response, backed up with real figures and real analysis behind it rather than following what remains of his own party line, that of the Lib Dems and every pressure group in the BBC Rolodex, in relying on baseless assertions, but then I guess he might have other things on his mind right now.

As depressing as it is, I fear that I must return to the distasteful subject of Hain once more tomorrow once, in a more sober state, I have re-read what I just think I have read on a mainstream website, about that other little matter afflicting him, this time on his 'forgetfulness'.

It's a true achievement of Gordon's government of all the talentless, that even Blair's bland and irrelevant can rise to the level of truly dangerous incompetence, but then I guess there is an issue over the type of role model they have.

Break for the Border

A More Free West Lothian Question?

I was quite excited when this BBC article popped up on the news reader, detail the UK government's truly abysmal ranking in a report by Privacy International league table on protection for civil liberties and how much better Scotland, when considered alone, ranks.

I'll have to be honest and say that to an extent I was disappointed when I got round to reading the report in question today, as it did seem to be based on rather subjective criteria, even if it's conclusions are very much in line with other similar studies and commentary from both within and without this country.

On so many issues, from the size of our DNA database, to the number of surveillance cameras, to the scope of the proposed ID card database coupled with it's cousins that are even closer to being a reality for the NHS and the country's children, there is pretty clear tangible evidence that the UK is light years ahead down the track to the complete surveillance society.

As such, any report that spells it out so clearly is to be welcomed, even if it could have punched harder with solid facts and a less arguable methodology behind it, especially from an organisation which is traditionally very sound on both.

Our relative wealth, and commensurate ability to break through technical barriers is rapidly overcoming the head start that certain former more authoritarian regimes had in reversing the roles of citizen and state in the last century. Indeed, amongst the new European democracies covered by the report there is are clear signs that their citizens and possibly even their governments have learned the lessons that our own masters arrogantly think do not apply to them; lessons which a distressingly large, though mercifully dwindling number of 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' sheep are too stupid to ponder even for a moment as long as it 'keeps the immigrants out'.

The report's findings on Scotland are also interesting and once again they do at least bring some structure to the general impression that they at least care about the aspects of liberty involved in many of these matters, even if in many cases their ability to act is severely constrained by the elements that are reserved to Westminster. It shouldn't be forgotten either that this sentiment is not constrained to the SNP, with the former Labour/Liberal administration already having made a number of hostile noises about the nascent Blair/Brown police state before they were turfed out office.

With all other parties north of the border united against most of Westminster's actions in these areas and the tartan wing of Labour itself hostile it does seem likely that Scotland, for the immediate future, will remain infertile ground for the growth of the NuLab surveillance society.

Perhaps in that there is some limited grounds for hope.

While I use the example I am about to quote with a due sense of dread, and understand that there are many huge differences between the cold-war era and the case in hand, some of the political calculus remains the same.

For all its greater size and supposed economic might, East Germany could never quite overcome the existence of a smaller, at least geographically speaking, more liberal state, more in tune with the instincts of its citizens, sat right on their borders, with a pretty similar culture and an even more similar language.

Many of the wonders proclaimed by the Scottish executive are, as anyone can see, as about as substantial as their own-brand mist. I do though wonder if we in England, might start to look over Hadrian's wall for an understanding of the proper role for the state and its agents, as others once looked over a newer and uglier concrete edifice once did.

Yes, I do go too far, but at least when I listen to MSPs of all parties on the box, they do still seem to understand that there is a balance to be struck, whereas this side of the border one of the major parties, sadly the the badly-governing one, seems to see it is a matter deserving only of lip service.

The Business of Government Goes On

A case for Incapacity Benefit

As appalling as it has been for the country, at least the tenure of Brown as PM has had the benefit of bringing a little unpredictability to British politics. Every time you think that the very nadir of competence and honesty has been reached, it seems that the bar can be lowered further.

Reaction to Conservative proposals on benefit reform has though been much more traditional fare where it has been scarcely worth the wear and tear on the contact lenses to read the reaction from the Government, Lib Dems and various interest groups, so predictable has it been.

As the The Guardian succinctly summarises the policy:

Controversial proposals to remove benefits for three years from people who refuse their third offer of a job are to be announced by the Conservatives tomorrow.

Source: The Guardian

I don't really think any sane person would believe that having 2.6 million on incapacity benefits at a time when, we are told we need vast swathes of immigration to fill jobs is remotely a tenable position, but this is a benefits issue, an area rarely illuminated in the glare of common sense.

It would appear that in some cases 'conservative_benefit_change_response.doc' has simply been attached to the appropriate distribution list and e-mailed without even reading the proposal, as seems to be the case with mental health charity Mind:

A spokeswoman for Mind, the mental health charity, said: "David Cameron needs to bear in mind the 40% of IB claimants who have mental health problems.

"Continuing stigma and discrimination also means many employers will not hire people with mental health problems."

Source: The Guardian

To help out what appears to be a very overworked Mind spokeswoman, I shall underline the key phrase: "refuse their third offer of a job". Listen, think, speak...it really does help.
Even the access to a large support staff is no guarantee of successful critique though, as Peter Hain demonstrates admirably in the same article:

"Their plans to interview 2.6 million people would also be prohibitively expensive."

Source: The Guardian

OK, so interviewing 2.6 million, even in the unlikely event that there isn't some simple pre-filtering that can be done on this number, with the real likelihood of making some compensating cost savings is prohibitively expensive, where as interviewing the entire adult population of the country for their ID card, for negligible gain other than in satisfaction to bureaucrat egos is not?

While we are on the subject of Hain and unhealthy orange glows, what do the Lib Dems think? Some bold blue-sky thinking coming down from their new leader? A realisation that welfare reform is possibly one area where they could be an honest broker in real change? No, they are still the party of 'real opposition', at least to anything that the government opposes:

Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Danny Alexander said: "Once again, the Tories have missed the point about welfare reform. Millions of sick and disabled people want to work, but the government has failed to provide the tailored support they need to find a job."

Source: The Guardian

Let's be fair to Alexander, not only is he one of the more honest people in UK politics bearing his surname, but he is right to point out that the plans on a carrot side could do with a bit more fleshing out, but in general it seems that he too has missed the point that the proposal applies only to those who have rejected job offers, not those unable to get such an offer. There is still the implicit presumption against any application of the stick, anyone who listens to one end of the claimants involved in their willing acceptance of life on the taxpayers' payroll should realise that both are desperately needed.

Looking at the numbers involved and the high bar set for having benefits withdrawn it does appear to be a modest proposal. Personally I'd love to see a more ambitious target and for each and every penny saved over the basic target to fund an increase in Incapacity Benefits so those who are genuinely unable to work, for reasons physical or mental, can live the kind of dignified life that a modern society like ours should be able to offer once the abuse is stopped.

Last Orders?

First we came for the witches...

Just before Christmas, the Devil highlighted some worrying statistics concerning the health of the licenced trade in England in recent months. The Christmas period has, in a limited way, allowed me to witness this first hand in two very different parts of the country.

In the Village, the pubs and bars, with very few exceptions, were like those of a ghost town compared to years past in the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas. Usually anything bar Monday evening would see the level of custom somewhere between heavy and heaving.

It should be said that according to a contact in the pub trade that the Village is somewhat notable for strange seasonal swings in business out of line with generally accepted patterns, but the same could never be said of my old home town in the heart of the Yorkshire beer belt?

Yet here again the pattern was similar, with the rather nice pub that was my local from before legal drinking age until I started my long drift south was closed down, apparently having run into financial difficulties despite a fine location and, the last time I was there, a solid customer base. According to more expert opinion on West Yorkshire hostelries, in the form of my father, this was not an isolated problem, with his typically pessimistic prognosis being that the pub "was on its way out".

It would, of course, be easy to lay the blame directly at the door of the most significant act of national government apropos the premises in question, in the form of the smoking ban, but this, I'm sure is simplistic and, while doubtless significant, not the whole story. There are changes in lifestyle that may play a part and many may applaud, and there is the fact that visiting the pub is becoming an increasingly expensive pastime.

If there is any truth in the imminence of the £4 pint, reported widely before Christmas, due to the rise in world grain prices, the future does not exactly look rosy, especially for those without the strength that the numbers of the large chains can bring.

With the risk of sounding like Jim Hacker having watched my dad's entire boxed set of 'Yes Minister' over the last few days, the Pub is a real British institution; except, of course, to those in the government who believe that great British Institutions are things like ID cards. It does seem to be an institution though that is under some threat at the moment and as an Industry that has shown itself very capable of moving successfully with times and fashions it is hard to conclude anything other than that much of the current threat must come from some of the extraordinary external factors, most of which in some form stems from Government actions.

In this context, even a raise in excise duty in line with the RPI next time around can only be interpreted as an overtly hostile act. True, it's a racing certainty that there will be some sort of concession for the likes of the Scotch Whisky industry, considering the Prime Minister and Chancellor's personal political needs, but if anything I would have thought that the impact of a rise in the cost of raw materials would be less for such a product than in the case of a simple pint of beer.

HMCE revenue from wine, beer, cider and spirit duties is forecast to cross the £8 billion mark in 2007-08, just under 5% of HMCE revenues, even before you take into account VAT receipts. It's a healthy enough take already and it's about time the government realises that they have their knife at the throat of the golden goose.

The problem is that it is easy to present it as a 'moral' tax on health grounds, but it should be noted that the reported fall in pub trade has not been accompanied with any similar statistics on falls in the problems associated with the down side of alcohol consumption. Freed from the constraints of providing a high staffing ratio, a convivial premises or, for that matter, a quality product you can still buy loopy strength lager from the supermarket for about 70p a can, so why should there be any such change?

Incidentally if I buy a pint at Base Camp, I am guess I am paying around 46p in VAT to the Treasury, buy the cheap supermarket alternative and the figure drops to around 13p, so perhaps the puritanical element that still holds such sway over our hopeless government should not take unalloyed pleasure over the sight of the damage they have caused.

It's time to give the licensed trade a break. Even if it's beyond the wit of ministers to understand the concept that less tax doesn't always mean less revenue, surely they can find some way to make the burden fall more heavily on the sales of cheap and nasty booze that can more easily find its way into the hands of those under age to consume it, without further damaging a sector that, while not without its faults, is still fundamentally an asset to the country. This is also, to any intelligent person, not the time for the government to once again satiate it's nanny fetish with further smoking restrictions, such as exclusion zones near the pub door; were only there any signs that the current government was composed of intelligent people.

Perhaps also they may choose to reflect on the nature of those areas which will resent the loss of local pubs, and those parts of society where the pub plays has the highest significance in local social life.

Some day the time will come when those in Labour's heartland will realise that Labour only represents them to the same extent that other parties such as the Lib Dems at one extreme and, sadly, the scum of the BNP do at the other, and in terms true empathy with their day-to-day lives, the metropolitan elite that is the bedrock of the NuLab project comes a poor third.

Labour's agenda of clumsy paternalist puritanism can only hasten this time.

Christmas Wishes

In the true spirit of Xmas, some bloggers are turning their mind to what kind of festive gift they would offer their best beloved politicians. I can't really outdo some of the thoughtful gifts that have been suggested for these well-loved (swap 'well' with 'self' and it starts to sound honest) characters.

Throw in an afternoon of Xmas shopping in Dante's twentieth level of hell (Kingston-upon-Thames) and my cup of human kindness runnethed under so badly I began to wonder what they themselves would be asking for:

Dear Santa,

My name is Gordon and everyone tells me that I am a good boy, apart from nasty people who are fibbing, and not doing proper fibs like what I do.

I don't want much this Xmas because I got a good present already this year, but my friends are cross with me 'cos I broke it. I was trying to look after it, honest, even my best friend (Ballsey, not the pretend one) says so.

I would like something called a 'spine' though. Everyone says the head boy at school before me had one, but he wouldn't let me borrow it. Lots of people got cross because he had one, even his mates, but it made him look cool. Can I have one too, pleasssssssse!

I'd like a new woolly jumper too, or if I can't have that I'd like some good policies. Whenever I have to play top-trumps with that rotter Cameron at break on Wednesdays he always wins even though he doesn't have many policy things, but his are OK and mine are rubbish cause I don't have enough time to write them out before they go wrong. Even when I borrow his cards I get into trouble for not writing him a "thank-you" letter!!!! He is nasty to me, Santa, even nastier than my friends even if they only pretend to be nice even though some of them say there should even be another head boy!!!

If I can't have some of my own or some of Cameron's can I have some of the orange gang's? (shhh Santa...don't call them that or some of them get cross)...They have loads!!!!! Like if they play against snotty Murdoch in the lower school they have one lot, and then they hide those and use other one's when play against Toynbee junior...that is cheating Santa...you should not give them presents at all!

Finally, can I have some 'charisma', I think it's like some kind of after-shave or something. I don't think that bully-boy Cameron or crappy Cleggy even shave (he is sooooooooo cross because his mate Huhne does and they almost made him house captain as well!!) so why can't I have some!!! It's not fair!

Thank you Santa,



Gordon
xxxxxx


PS Cough up you beardie fucker or I will tax the hooves off those bloody reindeer of yours, bang you up until the middle of January for your illegal Al-Queda inspired overflights of the UK, and wait until headmaster Barosso finds out that you do different stuff in different countries!!!!!!! He'll make you write out 67 squillion lines in Latin, or French or whatever it is, and even getting smelly Miliband to do it for you doesn't get you out of it.

Play ball, and I'll send you some new elves for your sweatshop to help you because they are not fagging for me properly. Give me my presents and you can have Miliband, Smith, Harman, that little Scottish lass and the bloke with weird eyebrows that always is creeping around me just because he grew up in the same village as me and her. Deal?

Caption Competitions

It is, of course, impossible to compete with Mr Fawkes' incomparable Friday caption competition, but this photograph, which I won't risk the wrath of copyrightwallahs by reproducing here, from the Telegraph's story on Brown's tardy appearance in Lisbon today amused me even more than the pathetic sight of Brown being led through the empty room where lunch was being cleared away.

I'm a bit torn over a caption between "Miliband sends tailor's dummy to Lisbon to avoid embarrassment in 2009 leadership bid" and "Sim José! it's true, Sr. Brown has installed an emergency off switch, watch this..."

It was nice to see Sarkozy break precedent and speak a few words in English to the press too today, especially when you could see the amusing insincerity in his "We need Gordon". It was far more likeable than the Cheshire Cat grin of Barroso at seeing the plan of Ms Wallström and himself, one of the of Deception, Demagoguery and Democracy Deletion come to fruition.

Not Waving but Drowning

Another overused life belt

It has been pretty amusing watching the Labour party's pitiful attempt at a fightback over the last ten days or so. As they sink deeper in to the mire they have fallen back on every trick in the Labour handbook.

The problem does seem to be that so low has their stock fallen now that even once friendly parts of the media now rightly tackle each initiative from a starting point that it is nothing but a publicity stunt. It may be that the hostility provoked among many correspondents by Brown's clumsy handling of his non-election has really come home to roost, or simply the undeniable fact that much of what is being done is unmitigated crap.

It probably started just over a week ago when the very slim Labour play book was opened at the well thumbed 'B' for 'Ban' page. Banning activities that are legal but disapproved of by the more puritanical elements of the government is something that still seems to set the pulse racing among Labour MPs, but there was a problem in that there seems to be much less public clamour for criminalising anything in particular at the moment. Undeterred though, the rather bizarre combination of sun beds and cigarette vending machines were declared joint public enemies number one.

For god's sake, sun beds and cigarette vending machines. Only the most stupid in society don't realise that there is a risk associated with both pieces of technology, but we really can't legislate around this sad tiny minority. There would be many legitimate businesses closed in the case of sun beds, simply because the government thinks that whether to take a chance on a well regulated tanning salon is a decision only their Robin Reliant minds can make. As for the impact of cigarette vending machines on smoking behaviour, I wonder if the government could bring into evidence even a single case of someone whose smoking career started by buying a pack from such machines and, as every serious smoker knows, for us the use of these rip-off machines is simply a sign off piss poor mission planning for a night out.

Flipping further ahead in the play book, we come to 'T' for both 'Terror' and 'Tough'. The government consulted its terrorism riskopportunity assessment index, added on five and divided by the first number they though of and came up with the same assessment as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's 'Deep Thought' computer as to the answer to the ultimate question, forty-two. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, maths has never been a strong suit for the Home Office and it looks as though poor old Jacqui Smith may be just as bad at counting the number of her own side's MPs willing to extend the terror detention limit as she has been at counting the number of former attorneys general willing to support her proposals, the number of jokes that would be made at the expense of Lord West, and for that matter the number of overseas workers in the country.

For the remainder of the week there was far too much flak about other government policies such as a casual attitude to our personal data held by government agencies and the provenance of the governing party's funds to hope for any good headlines. Nor did it help that Brown also opted to make use of his own personal addition to the list of Labour ploys, scribbled in after he took power under 'Macavity' with the news of his preplanned non-appearance for the signing of the EU treaty. We had to wait until Sunday for another used and abused page of the manual to be opened at 'E' for 'Educashun', 'Educashun' and 'Educashun'.

Now, as it happens, I think there is some merit in the proposals on SATs, unfortunately they were delivered by the one person in the government who has been, by fairly common consent the only person on Labour's front bench more over-promoted than the Prime Minister himself. I think that there were quite a few on my own side of the political fence that were quite worried about Ed Balls becoming a powerful player for the government team, but out fears have proved to be groundless, as he mumbled and stumbled through his TV appearances yet again. Government of all the talents or jobs for your mates? Gordon needs to make his mind up; Balls and fair few of others should remind him that he can't have his cake and eat it too. Given that the news was still pretty hot, I'm sure that Balls would have known that he was leaving a wide open goal to bring up our precipitous slide down the international educational league tables, but he really should have had the self-knowledge that he was in no way the man to occupy the last line of defence.

Then finally today, we have the Prime Minister's whirlwind tour of those last refuges of the political scoundrel, Afghanistan and Iraq. Filed under both 'G' for glory, and 'R' for reflected, the plans were followed to the letter as they should be, well rehearsed as they are, down to the flack jacket, probably this time featuring the armour plating that his penny pinching as chancellor shamefully led to being supplied on his preferred 'too little, too late' basis. Surrounded by people who have more courage in their fingernail clippings than Brown has in the whole of his bloated frame he delivered the remarkable news that, erm, nothing had changed since he last created a security headache in these type of blighted areas.

There was also another mini-whirlwind in that other entry under 'E', this time in the form of the 'Environment', with a suitably grandiose plan, coming seemingly out of thin air, to generate a vast proportion of our electricity from wind power. Now wind is something that the government produces in large quantities, mainly of the hot air variety, so perhaps I should defer to their judgement however suspect. It does though sound like a typical headline-grabber-with-no-immediate-need-to-deliver-anything ploy. To be fair, this one has played better with the media, so obsessed have they become with the 'climate change is everything' mantra, but its place in a glut of hastily rolled out announcements has not escaped notice.

At least in this case we can get a measure of the unmitigated joy a visit by our dour Prime Minister brings to our fantastic serving men and women from the various message boards the MOD haven't managed to close down yet:

• "at least we didn't have to suffer him here at Souter, we just had to put up with a visit from the other Browne"


• "Any chance of him doing a quick tour of the AOR in a dayglo vest?"


• "Did you feel dirty, need a wash following such close contact with the slimmy git?"


• "After 10 years of ignoring the Armed Forces, he now apparently wants to be their best friend."

Source: British Army Rumour Service

On another site there were many references to doing something to Brown called 'slotting', but I wouldn't in my ignorance wish to inadvertently mention anything that may be either obscene or complimentary to the dour one.

There is at least one difference from the Blair era in two of the stories, in that what is being proposed in not even really policy, but actually yet more additions to the lengthy list of 'reviews', which will probably consist more of reviewing newspaper headlines than the real meat of the issues. At least Blair, at times showed conviction, a word that could never now be applied to Brown, other than in a sense that probably keeps him awake at nights.

A Momentary Lapse of Incompetence

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

It should not be forgotten amongst the myriad tales of govenment woes that even the most abysmal of governments do on occasion, even if it is by accident, the right thing.

It's only fair to say that on a couple of issues in the last week or two Brown's miserable administration have been on the angels. The score might be about 10-2 but the consolation goals deserve a limited respect.

First of all, as already highlighted by the Thunder Dragon, the government has stood firm in its stance over attending the EU-Africa summit because of the presence of the thoroughly evil Robert Mugabe. As I've often posted here I have nothing but contempt for those who attempt to deny any form of platform to those the spongiform minds of those afflicted by tertiary leftism try to dictate should be silenced simply for their wrongthink. There is a huge difference between evil thoughts and evil deeds though, and one that places Mugabe in a different league to the Griffins and Irvings of this world. As appalling as these people are they do not even advocate violence, let alone practice it as Mugabe does through a thousand proxies. It is actually quite worrying that there are people who see some sort of moral equivalence between the cases.

As for the alleged controversy over Clare Short's comments on the reasons why Baroness Amos was chosen to be sent to the summit, I'm loathed to intrude into what seems to be purely Labour party private grief. I would differ slightly from the Thunder Dragon's view on her attendance in principle. As far as I can see Baroness Amos seems perfectly well qualified to act in this capacity and it would have been reckless in the extreme to leave the UK completely unrepresented and leave everything to the sometimes suspect judgement of some of our partners.

The other thing the government deserves some praise for which, while a little faint, is not intended to be damning is it's resistance this week to the EU's continued attempts to impose a mindless working monoculture on us all, this time by demanding that the full panoply of supposed workers 'rights' on temporary agency workers virtually from their first week on any given assignment.

In the whole range of employment related directives dreamed up by feather bedded bureaucrats in Brussels, there seems to be little or no understanding that there are a significant number of people who choose of their own free volition to adopt work patterns very different to their own. Yes, there is exploitation at times that needs to be tackled, but in the mindless drafting of broad directives Brussels machinery only achieves new rights for this group at the cost of stripping rights from another.

For the first few years of my working life I worked some ridiculous hours, and rarely took more than a handful of days off in the course of a year. I was not compelled to do so, but I was well rewarded for it. Every day of holiday not taken was repaid at time and half at the end of the year. I worked the hours to best exploit the performance related pay schemes that were in place, and my efforts my employer, my clients and myself were all very happy. Now already the first practice, of paying for untaken holiday, is outlawed by the EU, and they desparately want to end my right to opt out over their legislation on the latter.

It's not a way of life everyone would choose, but I liked it. We don't all, over the entire course of our working lives want the same couple of weeks off in the summer, a week at Christmas, and so on and so forth. When I've worked in FSA regulated businesses and been forced to take a week off at a time when I had no real yearning to go on holiday, I resented it badly. My prefered way of life was to take a few months off at a time either between jobs or on occasion with the willing blessing of my employers. I've made good use of these kinds of sabatical to enhance my life in ways that a fortnight in Ibiza never would.

It wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but it was mine, and the thrust of the EU employment legislation is already half way through stripping me of my rights to persue my working life and career in the way that makes me most happy. Where are my rights? Removed to make us all fit the views of some civil servants, doubtlessly with precious little exposure to the real world, of what the ideal working life is like.

The same arguments hold against the plans over agency working. I'm sure there are agency workers who are treated badly and if so there may need to be some narrow, targeted legislation. Narrow and targeted is not the the Brussels way though, their legislative arsenal is filled only with various forms of blunderbuss. I've done temporary and agency work at various times, always for very positive reasons. The lack of security or supposed rights was well compensated for in the financial rewards, and both those companies which employed my services and myself were happy with the flexibility the arrangements afforded us.

At another end of the scale even this government understands the simple message that is lost on the befuddled minds of the EU that what they call 'rights' becomes translated to 'responsibilities' for an employer and the more responsibilities they seek to heap on the shoulders of the employers, the less inclined they will be to take the risk that such responsibilities represent to the business. Also they realise the vital role that such temporary work can play in getting the unemployed back to work, the old corporatist EU sees only one model of employment, and in their discomfort over more progressive models would rather see work as being an 'all or nothing' situation, not an 'all or something' choice.

It is faint praise for the government in that they have already allowed much of the damage in the area of employment law to be done, but the fact that they are prepared to fight for some last vestige of free bargaining between employer and employee to remain should be accorded some respect.

OK, even adding these two issues together is not anywhere close to balancing any single one of Labour's manifestly poor acts of government, but it's something.

It's the Issues Wot Count

50 Million Tiny Millstones

There have been so many polls to comment on of late, but most convey the same message about changing attitudes to our current government. I enjoy these as much as the next man who has deep concerns about the man at the top; feelings which I never had to the same degree about the Blair administration, but ones that more and more I find others have come to share.

The classic response from the Brownites is "ahh, but it's the issues that ordinary people really care about". Well, for a start that is now nothing more than an assertion of dubious provenance, not really an argument. I know many people significantly more left leaning and less attuned to the day-to-day goings on in Westminster than myself who are starting to worry about the kind of mood music that drifts out from the Brown Camp. More than that though, it's the kind of statement that assumes that not only is the policy fundamentally right, but that ordinary people agree with that assessment, with the airy complacency and arrogance of the current government that more and more are coming to detest.

On one policy, that Brown could so easily have ditched, with nothing but credit to himself for doing so, it may be that he has made another major misjudgement. It was without surprise, but with pleasure nonetheless I read the report of the first YouGov poll showing a majority of Britons who oppose the ID Card/National Identity Register scheme. True, this comes after the HMCE data scandal(s), but it also comes well before the real costs start to hit the wallet directly and before such joys as a trip to the registration centre become an everyday reality. It's hard to see anything other than a ratchet on this one, as the unsustainable arguments in favour of the scheme wilt in the sunlight, just as even the practical objections alone to the scheme begin to ripen in the public's mind.

I suspect Brown doesn't really care one way or the other about ID cards on a personal level, but saw it as a 'tough and decisive' buoyancy aid to his premiership. There's really not been much in the smoke signals about what he believes about this subject, and frankly it would be odd if even the most political of beasts didn't really have the occasional "frankly I don't give a damn" issue where you just try to read the polling runes. In this type of analysis though, it may well come to pass for Brown that this buoyancy aid may increasingly seem more like a rather large and costly millstone. It couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.

As for the government line that the HMCE data fiasco is in fact an argument in favour of handing more data to the government, I'm frankly too tired to give it the contemptuous treatment it truly deserves.

I haven't even tried (and nor has any minister as far as I can see) to understand the argument they are peddling. Are they really saying that for every piddling little transaction we must present ourselves for our biometrics to be checked (no phone banking, no use of your plastic on the Internet, even if unconcerned about the government having such detailed information on our day-to-day lives anyway)?

Or is it simply a case of poorly informed, inadequate political figureheads spouting what institutionalised civil service mindsets, befuddled by the sales pitches that I know the major consultancies can cook up, tell them to say?

The intellectual incoherence of the government line on the subject is offensive enough even before consideration of whether it springs from politically motivated dishonesty or simple inadequacy.

More Lies, Damn Lies and...

Abacusmicus Membership System

...Labour Party funding.

Today was one of my less efficient days at the coalface of my paying job. I suspect in terms of progress made on a few fronts, it could almost count as a day of negative achievement, as all that I actually managed to do was wire up a FreeView receiver to a a spare PC display in the office, thereby ensuring continuous distractions in days to come.

Being the sad anorak I am, though in my defence I would say the alternative early evening fare wasn't much better, I ended up watching poor old Jack Straw take his punishment in the opposition day debate on party funding over on BBC Parliament.

It was a bit of a guilty pleasure to be honest since, as I've posted before, Straw is one of the few front line Labour troops I have any real heartfelt respect for. If there's anyone who was genuinely enraged and appalled by the recent funding scandals I suspect it would be he. Straw manfully took thorough kicking, while at least one of those who should really be on the receiving end of it sat grim faced to one side.

I should say in the interest of impartiality, I'm big enough to admit that the debate that followed on the incompetencies of DEFRA, was a poor effort by Team Cameron. To get bested by 'Rabbit in the Headlights' Benn on such a week suit for the government was a bit unforgivable. Perhaps though the Conservative front bench team may have been reported for cruelty had they followed up the frontal charge on party funding with further such brutality.

The highlight was the effective demolition of the arguments in favour of preferential treatment for Union donations alone. One passage from Francis Maude alone should have been enough to convince at least the likes of the Lib Dems who for some bizarre reason still seem to back the government line on this issue, but sadly it did not seem to.

Discussing the ludicrous concept that these donations are just the aggregate of thousands of willing members' small donations, Maude had this to say:

After all, it is the trade union leaders who decide how many affiliated members they are going to declare. Let us look at the numbers. Unison is one of the unions that does put the right to opt out up front on the application form. More than half its members have exercised that right and decided to opt out. Other unions, such as the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, declare that 100 per cent. of their members pay the levy, with no opt-outs whatever.

Even that is not enough for two of the biggest beasts among Labour’s paymasters. Amicus and the Communication Workers Union both calmly state that more than 100 per cent. of their members pay the political levy. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) for his research on the subject. Amicus shows that 109.4 per cent. of its members pay the political levy, and the CWU declares that 104.1 per cent. of its members do; I am sure that that would not have happened in the Health Secretary’s time at that union. That shows what a sham the situation is. We are expected to allow what are plainly block donations by the trade unions to be treated as individual voluntary donations. It is laughable."

Source: Hansard, 4th December 2007: Column 705-706

There could be no clearer indication of the deceit that underlies the nature of the unions' block donations to Labour.

I could personally stomach some form of mechanism where a member of a union actively opted in, at their own additional expense, to paying a defined some of money to the Labour party as part of the process of joining a union, but this, of course, is not the type of voluntary donation that Brown is desperate to keep his sweaty mitts on.

The other great sight was seeing another wound inflicted by Straw's own backbenchers. Having little better as a line of defence for their rotten party, the only pinprick of damage they inflicted on the opposition was based largely on attacks on Lord Ashcroft, even if it did mean skirting around the distinction between legal and illegal donations, and only being able to attack his tax status. Unfortunately, the pin with which they inflicted the minuscule wound, turned out to be from a grenade left in Mr Straw's lap:

Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): To help the House in relation to what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, could he confirm the tax status of Lord Mittal and of Sir Ronald Cohen?

Mr. Straw: An individual’s tax status is a matter for them and for the Inland Revenue and the Electoral Commission.

Source: Hansard, 4th December 2007: Column 711

Thereby quoting Tory chapter and verse on such matters.

What a hopeless rabble. It's all too clear why Brown has had to look beyond the confines of his own party to fill ministerial posts. Like a badly drilled school trip to the theatre to see Shakespeare they laughed on the wrong cues and bayed out of time with the dialogue, even protesting against allegations made by Maude that their own leader has admitted were true.

Incapability Brown

All Hail the Chieftain

So it's official; Knacker of the Yard is back on the case of that serial offender, the Labour Party.

It may be that there may be the slightest glimmer of a smile on the face of some at Labour HQ. They will doubtlessly hope that the treatment the treatment of Ian Blair will be reciprocated in deciding whether actions were criminal, incompetent by design, or incompetent by accident.

There are already signs that the die hards of the left know the game is up. On another blog I saw in the comments left by one such pitiful creature whose proud boast was that even if recent polling data (properly treated with caution with those on the right) that the Conservatives may have a 13% lead in the popular vote was replicated at a general election, that a 20 seat majority for NuNuLab could be the outcome. He may well be right, but it's not something I'd be proud of even if I had the required mental insufficiencies to be a Labour supporter.

To be honest, on the facts alone, though serious, the latest Brownian debacle is the least serious charge standing against this group of pointless muppets. It is its position at the bottom of a long list of failures that makes it so significant, as does the general reaction of the media.

The only game in town over PMQs was whether it was Vince Cable or David Cameron who landed the heaviest punches on a Prime Minister who came into the ring with a large number of standing eight counts already counting against him and already knowing his only weak counterpunch would be to reel of a few discredited statistics.

On this matter I think the best contribution, quietly delivered as it was, was overlooked. Cameron's final assault was delivered well after an average start, and was harsh, but at the same time reflected the general mood of the media, and in that, for once, in all probability the instincts of all sentient life; Vince Cable's 'Mr Bean' joke was snappier, and drew the most instinctive support.

I though, give the trophy to someone that I had to abuse on the only other occasion he has drifted in to my political conciousness, Mr Michael Ancram.

He asked a simple question:

Mr. Michael Ancram (Devizes) (Con): In the face of the recent crises that have beset the Prime Minister, particularly this last one, he has told us that he learned about them only at the last possible moment. Why does he think that members of his Government—and, indeed, of the party that he purports to lead—are apparently so intent on keeping him in the dark?

Source: Hansard

Quite, and let us not dismiss the idea that Brown was completely unaware of what was going on, pathetic as it is, out of hand entirely, for there is a reality that many, who have worked in the management structures of large organisations, will all recognise.

It is simply this, that one of the most identifying hallmarks of a bad manager is that he or she becomes a person that his immediate juniors feel they must hide every personal or organisational defect from. It's a pattern of behaviour discussed at length in every serious MBA course in the land and the 'villain' in every discussion is the person higher up the corporate food chain. Seeing Brown's ritual humiliation of West and Miliband is a better case study than any dusty textbook of why this is the case; a bad manager, by the very nature of who they are, engenders such behaviour.

I doubt, but do not entirely discredit, the theory that Brown was only aware of the manifest incompetence of his juniors days (and 'days', even in the singular, is, in of itself unacceptable) before it became public knowledge. Yet, even if this remarkable proposition is accepted it may raise more questions than it answers about Brown's fitness for office.

Management is a tough job. It's not something I was born to, and it's something I struggled with and sometimes failed on. I'm not Mother f***ing Theresa, but I did realise the overall failures were in no small part my own; I learned, and I moved on, and worked out how the world really works.

Sadly I think our Prime Minister would consider this beneath his dignity and, if we are to believe the 'I knew nothing' line he should, in any sensible society, realise that even the couple of years that our constitutional settlement will allow him before his name only has currency as part of a joke, is two years too many.

Technical Notes #1 - Personal Data

How NuLab Sees You

OK, it's just 24 billion one day and a mere 25 million the next, but you couldn't say that life in the treasury team is exactly dull at the moment.

IT is boring. I earn my living from it, and at times it is a good living, but there is precious little joy in it. I can't get excited by the Wintel v Mac v Linux kind of debates that crop up from time to time on blogs and the like, and to be honest I could probably make a good argument on any given side of that sort of thing that I was dumped on. I write this on an amazingly good value Wintel laptop, I'm amazed by the 'bang for bucks' I can get out of the linuxy hosting platform I do the Facebook stuff on for £50 a year, and Apple stuff, at the very least, looks as if it deserves a place in design museums around the world from the moment it is released. I like it all, I hate it all

I normally steer well clear of the whole subject unless I get 'tired and emotional'. For all of that, I think to most people with experience of large 'customer' (and the term was used in the Commons about those on HMCE's systems even if it sounds a bit perverse - surely HMCE is the customer) databases there must be several points in Darling's explanation of the whole affair that must sound shocking.

My own company holds copies of databases, some with several million records of individuals that are used to help respectable companies develop and maintain their systems. It is more likely than not that anybody reading this article would appear on one of them. Ask me which though and I could not tell you, because, before they were given to me, any piece of information that could possibly identify you was removed. No addresses, everyone lives at 'A Street, B Town, C County, XX1 1XX' and you are called 'M/s Customer XXXXXX', your date of birth is the '01/01/1900' and your National Insurance Number is 'AB123456C'. Even this is only handed over after a debate over the necessity of such a handover and the terms under which I received this copy would be clearly defined and make me contractually obliged to treat even this obfuscated data with the same respect as if I was an employee of the company who legitimately hold the original version.

I could not bypass this. Systems such as those I work on, let alone those overpriced government solutions do not have, as a rule, a menu option that says 'copy all customer data to 2 CDs'. The hypothetical junior civil servant at whose door the fault the latest fiasco can supposedly be laid would have had to have asked for specialist help to produce this data extract. If I went I looking for such an extract with my own customers, the relevant person would have said 'you must be joking'. This is not surprising, I'm only an external consultant, but they would have refused to do it for almost any in-house employee, and, especially in the case of FSA regulated companies, would not even have done it for a director of that company without formal written approval. Even the most junior of database administrators in most companies these days have awareness of the sensitivity of personal data, and have specific authorities granted to refuse to perform certain tasks, even from those whose nominal seniority far exceeds their own.

I encounter this on a daily basis, because it breeds a culture where even much more reasonable requests routinely cause a lot more hassle than they really merit. Fundamentally though, the attitude that gives rise to this kind of irritation also ensures that what happened, apparently so easily, within civil service circles, would be much less likely to occur in large, but not national government scale bodies.

I cannot construct any remotely reasonable scenario in my own mind where the single 'junior civil servant' is anything other than a politically convenient myth, and that there is a bigger problem in terms of the culture surrounding the handling of personal data than even Darling could admit in his humiliating admissions today. While it might superficially sound like something from the pointy tinfoil hat brigade, I cannot really imagine that there would be anything less than half a dozen people responsible directly for this failing. I do not cry 'conspiracy' but rather point to an institutional mindset that would allow these events to happen and, from that cultural failing, the Darling and, perhaps technically in this case his junior ministers, cannot maintain the distance that they currently desperately seek.

I honestly don't know which is the case, but there was little in today's revelations that inspired confidence. Darling waffled on about how he was 'concerned' that all 25 million records were transferred to the auditors when, as he implied, they couldn't possibly audit more than a dozen or so individual cases, which stands in stark contrast to the actual request for anonymized data, which suggests a wholly different kind of higher level statistical analysis.

There is, at least, some more than cold comfort in the whole debacle. I will at least know that the line of 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' next time I argue about the merits or otherwise of ID cards and the National Identity Register can only come from a certifiable imbecile. The case for proceeding with this scheme is now not so much dead, as hung drawn and quartered, and burnt on the brazier afterwards for good measure.

It would be the act of a fool to trundle on down the path we find ourselves on in this regard and while, it is true, it would appear that we have just such a fool occupying Number 10, the sounds of his fragile coalition on this measure disintegrating are music to my ears.

The Great Orifices of State

Donkeys led by...erm

To have a cabinet minister, even a senior one, find him or herself in a spot of political difficulty is hardly new and if I stretch my mind back far enough I can remember several instances of two simultaneously facing down the pen barrel of a hostile media.

My political memory does not extend back as far as some, but within my own recollection I cannot think of any other time where all four office holders of the four great offices of state have ended so far up into their neck in the brown sticky stuff in such a short space of time.

To see a Chancellor of the Exchequer face Commons humiliation twice in as many days is a pretty extraordinary, but when you consider how close this followed upon the heels of the Home Secretary's similar experience, it has been a remarkable enough period. Then you throw in the public humiliation of the Foreign Secretary by the holder of the most senior post of all, himself subjected to almost daily assaults on his fitness for the job.

To make a defence for any one is just about tenable, but overall the stench of the whole is even stronger than that of its component parts. It might be a smell of decay, not malice, but please God, don't let anyone believe any of self-selected tags such as 'competent' and 'talented' for the current Government ever again.

What may happen to polling data for the other parties in the coming weeks is hard to say, but I wouldn't mind betting that the raw data on the 'Best able to handle...' questions in polls over the next few months will not make happy reading for those sufficiently credulous to have any belief whatsoever left in Team Brown. These perceptions that can be a springboard to major change come general election time and that really can't come quickly enough.

Another Non-Policy?

Sacrificial Victim?

Much of the comment on the last weekend's BBC politics output has rightly focused on the 'Calamitygate' story surrounding the Chris Huhne's bid for the leadership leadership for that eternal political calamity, the Liberal Democrat party.

I would have to admit to enjoying the acrimonious exchanges; real Punch and Judy stuff from the party that thinks we are all stupid enough to believe their baseless assertions that they are above that kind of thing. If anything, it actually fell short of the level of intellectual warfare to count as Punch and Judy politics, being more like a scrap between two five year olds watching the show at a seaside stall, which, after all, could be said to be a metaphor fore the role of the Lib Dems in UK National politics more generally. No more Mr Nice Party then. Good, they never really were; no worse than the other two main parties certainly, but not the morally superior force they manage to hoodwink the gullible into believing them to be.

My eye, or rather ear lest I thought to be a very sick puppy, was more taken by the appearance of the ever strange Ruth Kelly with Andrew Marr earlier in the day and what she had to say, or rather not say about plans for airport style security at major railway stations. It was only a few days since I posted my thoughts, for what they are worth, on this ridiculous plan and from the obvious downgrading by of the scheme by Kelly from a headline initiative to an 'option not to be ruled out' it would appear that the government may finally have thought through the implications of the scheme too.

This type of oft repeated story, especially under the current government, leaves the likes of myself, who has never worked inside the political bubble, scratching my head about how such daft ideas ever come to see the light of the day in the first place.

Ignorant of any real insight of the process I am forced to speculate that it must run something like this, with the only known facts highlighted in bold:

• Policy announcement - 3 days: Weekend of media criticism of visionless government


• P - 2 days: PM summons meeting of top secret eye watering initiative team at Number 10, memo sent to all cabinet ministers demanding ideas. Lists of remaining civil liberties that can be dispensed with and things that could be banned circulated.


• P - 1 day: CabinetPM selects least stupid idea from unknown minister, who is informed that it was the PM's idea.


• P day: PM delivers weak speech to House of Commons to announce his idea and is derided by opposition MPs who suspect the policy is unmitigated crap.


• P + 5 minutes: All intelligent life outside the Labour party realise that the policy is indeed crap.


• P + 1 day: Print media splash lurid headlines about PM's bold initiative, some though already comment on inside pages on the fact that the policy is crap.


• P + 2 days: Even slower elements of the media realise that the policy is crap, as do more sophisticated Labour MPs without ministerial sinecure.


• P + 3 days: PM informed that the policy is in fact crap and angrily summons the overworked Labour crap policy disposal team.


• P + 4 days: Expendable minister dispatched to non-announce the strategic non-advancement of a policy, in place of the Home Secretary whose political health was too weak to allow her to deal with what was fundamentally a Home Office issue.


• P + 5 days: PM slinks off back into hiding ahead of what he, unlike Parliament, already knows will be a week of disastrous news for his disintegrating government. Next eye catching initiative placed in production, illiberal line failed, so try banning something next time....plastic bags?

...and so the weekly cycle begins again. Well, this kind of knee jerk rubbish has to come from somewhere.

A Surfeit of Riches

Also available in Earl, Marquis and Duke

Blogging has been light for the last couple of weeks as real, though much less enjoyable work, as well as a surfeit of opportunities to consume alcohol in convivial surroundings have intervened. It's not come at the best of all possible times as wave after wave of opportunities to lay into a struggling government have come and gone.

The media has also had the occasional tale of the bizarre that I've had to pass on too. I thought nobody was going to comment on the man bites/is bitten bymarries dog story of the week, but fortunately Thunder Dragon picked it up in time to stop me making some tasteless reference to Blair (Mk. I).

Other than the Home Office's daily blunder, most of the serious debate has focused, naturally enough on the subjects of the Queen's speech debates. Overall it is a truly abysmal programme of legislation that is proposed, one that if it shows any vision whatsoever, it is a terrifying one. I guess for myself the most repellent items on the agenda will be the European Communities (Stuff the People) to ratify the EU reform treaty and the Terrorism (Unwitting Promotion of) Bills, but the Political Funding (Preferential Treatment for Labour) Bill runs both of these very close.

The unequal treatment proposed, that uniquely benefits one party and the likely further dipping into the taxpayer's purse is pretty a pretty vile blend of greed and corruption. One thing that has been rather interesting in the opening forays over this piece of forthcoming legislation is the relatively emollient tone of the Lib Dems over it, as they prefer to make facile attacks on Team Cameron. Might they fantasise that with one more lurch to the left, some of the less dogmatic unions might choose to buy a little influence with a third party that may hold sway in the far from unlikly scenario of a hung parliament?

I know the passage of this piece of legislation will frustrate me intensely, but that will be more over the principle of it. On a practical level, I hardly think that the attempts of a governing party to pass one of the most self-serving pieces of law in recent times will endear it to the public, and there have been a number of analyses that suggest that the impact on those not blessed by special treatment in any act should, while doubtlessly unwelcome, would not be as disastrous as the baying hoards on the government back benches may hope.

There is though, perhaps one additional precaution the Conservatives could consider taking. Members of the House of Lords, let's be honest, get the tarry end of the stick when it comes to pay and conditions, compared to the Commons trough diners. Surely, it is time for these downtrodden masses to unite.

It is time for the Union of Conservative Peers. If some if its members should opt in, following all of the correct laws, to paying into that union's properly constituted political fund, for disbursement to political parties whose aims they support, who are we to complain?

Time to Go

Dead Man Walking

The general consensus seems to be that Iain Blair (I won't use an honorific that he seems so unworthy of) will continue to inspire diminishing confidence in the Metropolitan police.

As I've posted elsewhere I have more than a little sympathy for the Met on the specific issue of the health and safety prosecution; health and safety legislation and the defence of the realm against terrorism do not mix, period. Civil liberties must be balanced against the needs for terror legislation, health and safety is not worthy of the same consideration in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

I have no such sympathy for Blair. Watching him over the last few days I've seen a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. When I hear him speak, I hear all the arrogance of his Labour masters, but when I look in his eyes and at his general demeanour I see a rabbit in the headlights, a man who knows he has blown it.

It has been truly appalling to hear Jacqui Smith's unsupported claims that Blair enjoys public support, while the best evidence available, the body elected to represent London has spoken otherwise. There's not much she could do I suspect, even if she was inclined to hang Blair out to dry. After all he is simply following Labour's new orthodoxy that acts of appalling mismanagement, far from being a a career limiting matters, should in fact offer job security under the mantra of the 'cleaning up your own mess' principle. It's understandable when you look at the fate of Smith's predecessors why she is so keen to endorse this line of thinking. Many heard the distinctive sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped when she was appointed to her current post and let's be honest, the best spin you can put on her tenure so far is encapsulated in the famous acronym SNAFU.

The most offensive aspect of Smith's piss-poor handling of the whole affair is her petulant whinging about those who call for his resignation. Time and type she, and her acolytes make the claim of 'playing politics' with the fight against terrorism. Blair's appointment was one of the political to the police's top job in recent years and her defence of him, against all decency, is even more politically motivated. If incompetency is no bar to high office in the Labour party of today, hypocrisy never has been. Most of Blair's opponents have had issues about his suitability for the job for a long time and for Smith to expect them to turn a blind eye to his latest misdeeds, simply because there is a tenuous link to terrorism, is frankly ridiculous.

The only redeeming feature is that Blair and Smith now are to a significant extent political Siamese Twins. Smith must be a very nervous woman. Blair can't really afford to make any more mistakes, but on his track record the next cock-up can't be far away. When it comes, Smith knows she will be receiving the dreaded message of 'full confidence' from the Prime Minster that announces to the world that the remaining span of her ministerial career can now be measured in days.

But back to Blair, a phrase often heard these days, albeit about a different Blair. It is perhaps for other offences that need to be taken into consideration that I would like to see the back of Blair, but there is in the whole de Menezes affair one solitary fact that should in of itself mark the end of his time at the top, the issue of his obstruction of the IPCC investigation. As reported in the Guardian:

Just after the shooting on July 22 2005, Sir Ian wrote to the home secretary saying he feared an independent investigation could jeopardise lives. His plea was rejected as the law required the IPCC to investigate any police shooting.

Source: The Guardian

So, there it is, a requirement in law that the IPCC investigate any police shooting and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police attempted to incite the Home Secretary of the time to break that law. I always thought that incitement of another to break the law was itself an offence, even if it isn't, it is a profoundly unethical thing to do. As for Blair's reasoning for asking for the law he is bound to uphold to be broken, does it sound even vaguely plausible?

Either way Blair is unfit to be part of the police service, let alone to lead it. Almost everyone seems to agree that he is damaged and at times like this we cannot afford to have a damaged top cop. With stories such as those about potential ECJ action likely to run and run the damage will continue as long as he remains in post. I might enjoy the discomfort it causes to the current government, Brown, who seems to be pulling a bit of a Macavity on the issue, apart, but this is two important to wish to see the open wound undressed.

For God's sake, go. A tritely decent man would have done so a long time ago, even a moderately self-aware one would have done so yesterday.

Incompetence Central

Exercising Tiny Minds

For the past week there have been almost daily stories of the government backing down on policies announced just days earlier, using dodgy figures to mask the failures of their existing ones, or the wholesale adoption of Conservative material to fill the gaping void in their own vision.

It's really hard to pick which one has been the most humiliating for Brown and his team. I suspect that many would opt for the admission over the statistics on migrant workers, though my favourite was the climb down over plans to claw back surpluses in school bank accounts.

I delighted to see much of the embarrassment falling on the narrow, in terms of personal courage, shoulders of Brown having being skewered effectively on the issue at PMQs by Cameron. Moreover it demonstrates once again the type of ludicrous thinking that still permeates government. In the private sector the once common practice of punishing departments that have spent their money wisely and run a surplus by cutting their budget in the following year is now universally treated as a joke. Who knows what improvements we could see in the value obtained for we taxpayer's money when one day, and it could be still some time away, similar inanities are swept away in the public sector.

Cameron's most widely reported jibe at the Prime Minister was the "…what makes you think you know better how to spend the money?" line. I'm sure that Brown does think he knows better, as his well known arrogance would allow no other thought to pass his mind. The history of the centralisation of government spending decisions though tells a very different story.

As it happens, the other reason I liked this particular story is that I do have quite an interest in education. In no small part this is because it is the family trade. I'm the black sheep, the only one of my immediate family not to work, or have worked, in the state education sector.

My father was the headmaster of a large comprehensive school before he retired and had one story that illustrates well what happens with excessive centralisation of spending power in education.

Many years ago some bright spark in local government came up with what on the surface of it seemed to be a pretty sensible idea. Centralise the purchasing power of all the schools in the county for most day-to-day needs, and this combined negotiating power and the simple economies of scale could bring enormous cost savings. It makes sense put that simply and indeed in the private sector such effective use of a central purchasing function can, if well managed, deliver good value. This though was local government, which should have set alarm bells ringing, but nonetheless an organisation was born along with an edict that it was obligatory for all schools to use its services.

I won't name the organisation as I think it was mercifully and quietly strangled before the growth of the Internet so facts are hard to check, but I can remember its logo proudly stamped on every exercise book I used while I was going through school and on every pencil and every textbook.

The remainder of the story could be filled in by anyone who has seen what happens with any one of hundreds of similar initiatives. The organisation needed a bureaucracy and not a lightweight efficient one, but a big one with suitable levels of political oversight for pompous councillors and jobs for their offspring and doubtlessly a nice office too.

The result was inevitable. I think it was at a meeting in London that dad went into the WH Smiths at Kings Cross and picked up a single simple exercise book, functionally identical to those that he had to buy from the central purchasing organisation. This being before the widespread use of barcodes the price sticker made the point quite starkly, with the purchasing power of a whole county's schools resulting in a price half as much again as that single over the counter purchase in a London railway terminus.

It turned out to be in no way an isolated example.

The point is for me that, until the public sector can achieve the efficiency levels that can be achieved in the private, very similar schemes that sound good in theory will continue fail to deliver. It seems to be in the nature of government that centralising failure tends to compound, not mitigate that failure. Until Brown has a coherent answer to this as well as understanding that not targets, but the way those targets are set are part of the problem, no, he does not know better.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

An Unappetising Dessert

It used to be a risky business talking about immigration if you are not a member of the self-appointed band of leftism victims who, they would have us believe, are alone in being able to discus the matter without falling prey to base racist instincts. Slowly but surely this unilaterally imposed 'consensus', especially among the left-liberal media appears to be dissolving. For this the actions of the current government must take much credit, however unintentional this outcome of their handling of the issue may have been.

Today's double humiliation for Jacqui Smith is pretty typical of the series of deceptions, intentional or otherwise, on immigration matters under the Labour administration. These failures have left a huge question mark hanging over Labour's competency in this policy area, even among those whose instincts on the subject are not markedly different from the general thrust of government policy.

To a large extent, I would count myself among those who have a generally positive attitude to immigration, but not an uncritical one.

It is true that immigration need to be better managed to prevent the type of damaging shock loading on local services that is now not a theory, but a widely acknowledged fact. It is also true that the phrases a long the line "they do the jobs that the local unemployed won't do" send me into an apoplectic fit of rage, but then this is directed more against the benefit system that allows this statement to be as true as it is annoying rather than against immigration per se. I'm also concerned by the amount of anecdotal evidence I hear of increasing targeting of law abiding Commonwealth citizens in this country by the Home Office, especially antipodean ones, presumably to make up for our newfound inability to deal with even the real dregs of the EU who wash up on our shores.

Despite these many serious provisos I find it hard to find much serious fault with the philosophy behind current government policy, especially now that they have taken the bulk of the Conservative's
'unworkable', 'uncosted', 'damaging' policies and made them their own. True, they have come to their senses late, but that is a minor charge in comparison to this further example of what is, at best, Home Office incompetence, but which has the distinct stench of deliberate deception hanging around it.

It is hard not to notice one simple fact. Had Gordon Brown not had an almost complete break down of his limited courage we might have been just a couple of days from a general election and with Parliament dissolved it is almost certain that this 'mistake' would only have come to light in the early days of the new government. Ten years ago it would have been scandalous to suggest that civil servants would produce misleading figures at the behest of their political masters; today it is a common charge with the numbers of incidents such as this providing strong evidence, empirical as it may be. Frankly the excuse offered by Smith for the first of the errors seems wholly implausible as simple error by one of her 'Rolls-Royce Brains', if that is what they are.

If my interpretation of the Government's initiative to restore faith in the statistics they quote is correct, it is also worth saying that these miscounts, as a departmental matter, would not be covered by the revised procedures and will in future remain open to further abuse.

The man who will sleep soundly tonight is David Davis. Jacqui may have escaped an immediate Commons mauling while Parliament takes a mini-break prior to the state opening to allow her leader's wounds to have a field dressing applied, but the next Home Office Questions will come soon enough. The scent of blood will be in the nose of a shadow Home Secretary who has brought down bigger and more evasive prey. He will know that a single act of gross incompetency on ones watch is no longer a resigning matter for Labour ministers, but Smith is now playing under a yellow card and with the Home Office seeming still unreformed, another final booking cannot be far away.

It looks like it is possible that the LibDem leadership turnover jokes may be recyclable as Labour Home Secretary jibes before there's even any chance for the dust to settle on them.

There's a green policy for you.