Second Opinion

David Cameron is going to "pause for reflection" in his ill-judged reform of the NHS. What a pity he didn't pause for reflection before he even started, as he could have saved the money wasted on this project so far. In fact, the more I see of Mr Cameron, the more I wish his parents had paused for reflection.

In fact, I strongly suspect that the reflection, if any, during this period will be more concerned about how the Tories and mini-tories can sell this deeply flawed crock of shite to a) the Liberal Dimwits at large, who have already showed a marked inclination to defenestrate Clegg over this at their Spring conference b) the House of Lords, who are queueing up to amend it with a chain saw and c)a skeptical public, who are being told that we have no money, and yet see us firing rockets costing £800,000 at Libya and giving £650 million to Pakistan, and are starting to ask "what is this reorganisation of the NHS costing?

In his glossy, smarmy, airbrushed election posters this time last year, Cameron said "We can't go on like this - I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS". If the cost of this reorganisation is coming from existing NHS budgets, then that is a de facto cut. And if the cost is coming from elsewhere, then I can think of a thousand better uses for extra money for the NHS than a reorganisation that nobody wants. Apart from David Cameron of course, to whom it is a shibboleth almost as sacred as "The Big Society".

Emergency, War 10!

The Tories and their stooges in the Mini-Tories have been quick to point out that the cost of the war against Libya will not come out of any existing budgets from Government departments already squeezed by the cuts, cut - in some cases - to the bone, and then beyond.

No, it will, instead, apparently, come out of a "contingency fund" in the Treasury, which is kept for emergencies and dire situations, according to Danny Alexander, on BBC's Question Time.

Now just hang on a cotton-pickin minute, thar, boy! Run that by me one more time, as Captain said to Tenniel or vice versa. The country is allegedly stony broke, on its uppers, so much so that the church mice are having a whip-round for us and yet, all the time, we're all in this together (though clearly some of us are "in it" up to our necks and sinking fast, while others haven't even had their expensive shoes splashed, yet) and all this time, the Treasury has a secret slush fund, a giant piggy bank in the underground car park, a hidden panel that, when pressed reveals a cupboard stuffed with £50 notes or something? What?!?!

Not only a secret slush fund, but one which must be fairly substantial, since it can stand funding the UK bombing the crap out of Benghazi with missiles that cost £800,000 each!

This, for me, raises a very important question. If this money is supposed to be used for emergencies, when is an "emergency" not an "emergency"? If we have got to the stage where we're shutting hospital wards, Sure Start centres and libraries, that is a bloody emergency! If we have got to the stage where we're cutting police because we can no longer afford to keep our streets safe, that is an emegency! If we've got to the stage where thousands of people are being laid off - in the construction industry for example - that is an emergency. If we've got people having their houses repossessed and being turned out onto the streets, that is an emergency.

Forget foreign adventurism and posturing on the world stage. We have little or no idea who these Libyan rebels are, or, in the long run, whether the situation there would be better or worse for our intervention. The examples of Iraq and Afghanistan don't hold out much hope.

Meanwhile, you don't need a flashing blue light and a howling siren to see that there are many more urgent "emergencies" at home, caused by the Con-Dims "bombing" their own economy, to appease the markets and bankers, that deserve much more to benefit from the judicious application of Danny Alexander's secret slush fund.

Monbiot Man

George Monbiot seems to have stirred up something of a hornets’ nest amongst tax lawyers and apologists for the Tories and Mini-Tories with his recent Guardian article about the proposals to change the way in which the UK taxes overseas profits of companies registered here. When it gets to the stage where people are blogging back atcha and calling you “Moonbat”, while simultaneously trying to suggest it’s no big deal, really, this tends to suggest to me that you’ve hit a nerve.

I don’t read The Guardian, and have absolutely no brief for Monbiot - the only letter I ever wrote him remains resolutely unanswered to this day - and I was only alerted to the piece by a tweet on Twitter that was re-tweeted by someone I don’t even follow, so I could well have missed it. As it was, I had to read Monbiot’s article a few times for the implications of it to sink in, but I freely admit that, as someone who failed O Level Maths, numeracy is not my strong point (or perhaps I should say, as Jack Straw did when having his collar felt over his expenses, “accountancy is not my strong suit”.)

Opinion seems divided over whether Monbiot has a point, or whether he is simply over-egging the pudding for effect. All kudos to him, I guess, at least for even bothering to read the adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009! Personally, I glaze over faster than a lump of pork in cranberry jelly just thinking about it. Others have argued that it is just the UK bringing its method of taxing the profits of overseas subsidiaries in line with the rest of the EU. [I have remarked before that it never ceases to amaze me how we always have to harmonize with the rest of the EU, rather than them harmonizing with us, but let that pass for now.]

The net effect of the proposed changes will be to hand big businesses, multi nationals who can more than afford to shoulder the burden of their fair share of getting us out of this mess, a £100M tax break, just at the time when the Government is telling us we are all in it together. Clearly, some of us are “in it” more than others. Some of us are in it up to our necks and sinking fast, while others are allowed to skip gaily over the piles of ordure that lie in wait for the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled and the unemployed, and continue merrily on their way.

And that is really the point behind all of this. What these companies are doing, aided and abetted by HMRC, may well be legal. But that doesn’t make it moral, it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it right that libraries and swimming pools and community centres are closing left right and centre while for the bastards in stripey suits, it’s still “trebles all round”.

Any moral government, any government that even purported to care about the people of this country, would not be looking to add yet more loopholes to a taxation system that already resembles a moth-fancier’s string vest. They would be saying “these people can afford it, so proportionately, they should give more than a bloke on ESA in a tenement in Newcastle”.

This is what UK Uncut, with its excellent campaigns to blackguard and shame the tax avoiders into paying something more like a fair share, are all about, and more power to their collective elbow. I wish they were in Parliament, in opposition, right now, instead of the feeble and supine Labour Party.

But, whether Monbiot is wholly right or wholly wrong, or – as I suspect – somewhere in between, but definitely onto something, I suppose it comes as no surprise to find that the Tories are doing something divisive, unfair, and beneficial to big business. Something that was in no-one's manifesto, either, come to that. I do, however, remain amazed at how long the Liberal Dimwits will continue to allow themselves to be bitch-slapped by Cameron and Osborne. Talk about an abusive relationship!

Unfortunately for them, at the next election, whenever it comes, the electorate won’t believe they simply “walked into a door again.” They won’t believe anything the LibDims say. Vote Lib Dim, get Tory. Once bitten, twice shy, Lib Dims, bye bye.

Small is Beautiful, Big is Better, but Both is best of all

The thing is, we did use to have the Big Society, well, sort of. I remember, growing up in the 1950s and 60s in East Hull, our community did look out for each other and - yes, cliche or not - you could always leave your door open and neighbours were always popping round for a cuppa.

In that scenario, you could never imagine, for instance, a vulnerable pensioner dying on her own of hypothermia and lying there for weeks before being discovered, because somebody would have noticed she was missing from her daily round, hadn't seen her in the corner shop recently, and would have stepped in with a hot meal, a blanket and/or a bag of coal.

Now, that kind of Big Society would be worth aspiring to. The kind of society where people band together and see each other through, behaving altruistically without any notion of payment or reward. The only problem with it is, though, that it's actually the Small Society. It works at a micro level, street by street. You can't scale it up to a national level, though it would be nice to get back to a society which was more caring, more respectful, less self-centred and - frankly - venal in its aspirations, since we seem to be descending more and more into "White Van Man Bigot Britain", encouraged by "dog whistle" pronouncements on things like benefits and immigration.

I say "get back to", because of course the communities that nourished and nurtured the "Small Society" are long gone - the fishing community of Hull being an example, the mining communities of the coalfields, the steelworks or the shipyards in those areas of the country where they were strong, and the docks in places like Liverpool and the East End. And not only have the communities, vanished, the ideas which held them together have vanished too - ever since Margaret Thatcher gave the green light to sheer naked greed for money as the motivating force in society, basically the country was set off down a route where it was apparently OK to climb over anyone's face on your way to the acquisition of wealth and goods, and everything has to make a profit, a philosophy that ultimately leads to your mum invoicing you for cooking your breakfast, or outsourcing the job to a chef in Mumbai.

There are some things that are necessary to be organised on a macro scale and which will never make a profit. Health care, education, prisons and the justice system, defence, transport, the postal system, things like that. The reason that the Big Society is falling apart at the seams is that the Tories, deep down, know this, but they are ideologically attached to the idea that everything must make a profit. This inherent contradiction at the heart of the policy is killing it stone dead.

If they could but bring themselves to abandon that shibboleth, and fund the idea like it needs to be funded, then the Big Society could work. But of course, with Eric Pickles in charge of the budgets, that is about as likely as me lapping Usain Bolt in the 100m at the next Olympics. Not going to happen.

So, as it is, we are left with an empty, vacuous fart of an idea, a trumped-up initiative which relies on wish fulfilment and fairy dust for its success. The idea that you can cut public services to the bone and beyond, remove funding left right and centre, throw thousands of people on to the dole and somehow, magically, the economy is going to pick up and create a lot of wealth that will somehow get given to charities by altruistic donors to pick up the slack. I don't think so. There goes Usain Bolt again.

It's not as if they really mean it, though. Cameron is using the Big Society as an attempt to speak over the heads of most people to those who would like Britain to return to a sepia-tinted era with cricket on the green and spinsters cycling to matins, but the reality is a savage attack on the public service ethos (because the Tories truly think everything can be reduced to a balance sheet) and passing the blame on to councils and charities for not picking up the pieces, when in fact, the Tories have stolen the dustpan and the brush!

I no longer differentiate between Tories and Lib Dims, these days they are all just Tories to me, but I do wonder sometimes how the Lib Dims, traditionally the party of local government, volunteering, and local activism, square their support for this dismal claptrap with their professed stance of caring about communities. And how they sleep at night.

Pass the Parcel

One thing which was obvious from the start, when the Tories and the Lib Dims agreed their pact made in hell with all the bonhomie of Von Ribbentrop and Stalin breaking out the celebratory vodka, was that the amount of money given to councils by central government was going to be decimated.

The Tories hate the public service ethos, they would much prefer everything to be privatised for the benefit of shareholders and their rich toffee-nosed friends in the City. They hoped of course that “The Big Society” would step in and make good some of the deficit, so that if, for instance, your council couldn’t afford to empty your bin any more, a possee of well-meaning citizens and charities could do it instead. The cuts, however, are damaging the income of charities as well – who has the wherewithal to donate to charity when their own job is under threat?

Now that The Big Society isn’t happening, a reasonable person might expect contrition and a re-think, but the Tories and their catamites are pressing on regardless into the valley of death. Their chief cheerleaders in this divide and rule programme of starving the councils of cash and then blaming them when they are unable to provide essential services are Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps at the Department of Communities. [A misnomer if ever there was one. Department for Dismantling Communities would be a more apposite title, these days]

Pickles operates on precisely the opposite principle to his more famous namesake, Wilfred, who was known for his catchphrase “Give ‘Em the Money, Mabel”. The Tories like to trot him out as their equivalent of John Prescott, but in fact he has fewer appealing attributes and even less charisma and life-experience, having risen in obscurity from the ranks of Bradford Council. Despite the fundamental dishonesty of a policy which denies councils the money to carry out essential services and then blames them for not emptying the bins, Pickles is at least straightforward about what he does.

Grant Shapps was in the news recently for holding up the “fact” that Manchester City Council had a “Twitter Tsar” on their payroll, at vast expense, naturally. When the story was investigated further, however, it was discovered that the “Twitter Tsar” was, in fact, the person who ran the Council’s web sites, and that “tweeting” was merely a small part of what his job entailed.

One of the most damaging aspects of this slash and burn approach to local authority funding by the Department of Communities has of course been its impact on the homeless and other vulnerable people who depend on Council social care.

We’ve seen this happen particularly in Nottingham, recently, where Framework, a local charity working to alleviate the problems of homelessness and deprivation, have been forced to the brink of legal action over budget cuts emanating from central government

Andrew Redfern, Chief Executive of Framework, said:

“We have served ‘letters prior to action’ (the first stage of a judicial review) on the department for Communities and Local Government and Nottingham City Council. There is a deadline for them to respond and we hope this may help them to resolve the issue.

“Framework serves homeless and vulnerable people, including those with mental health, substance and alcohol problems, older and younger people, people with learning disabilities and women fleeing domestic violence. We have a duty to defend the thousands of people who will lose their support and may become homeless because of the cuts. Whatever the outcome of this legal action I hope it will shine a light on the ludicrous nature of the situation.

“In the Comprehensive Spending Review the government announced a reduction in the national SP budget of only 12% in real terms over four years. The actual amount of cash available for the programme next year is barely 1% below the figure for the current year, yet it transpires that Nottingham City Council is proposing a cut of 45% (from £22.37m to £12.93m a reduction of £9.4m) based on its interpretation of the local government settlement. It will ameliorate this with an extra £2m for one year only.

“The department for Communities and Local Government disputes the city council’s figures stating that Nottingham’s SP allocation has been reduced by no more than 11.3%. The department has not yet given a precise figure.

“The argument between central and local government leaves us perplexed. The confusion about the settlement is causing chaos. The city council has issued de-commissioning notices for many of its SP-funded services from the end of March 2011 and reduced contract values on the others to £1 per annum. In view of this we have had no choice but to give notice to over 200 staff working directly with vulnerable people in the city.

“We are receiving more and more enquiries from service-users and concerned members of the public asking what will happen in April.

“The proposed cuts will have a devastating impact on the city. Levels of rough sleeping, crime, anti-social behaviour, ill-health, unemployment and poverty will all increase.

“We have to do whatever we can to stop the cuts. Our decision to seek a judicial review is one of the ways we are trying to do this,” added Mr Redfern.

Councillor John Collins, the leader of Nottingham City Council, has written an open letter to Grant Shapps pointing out the errors in his calculations of the amount by which the Support Grant has been cut. Not that this has made any difference. He may as well have saved his breath to cool his porridge.

The fact is that Grant Shapps doesn’t need the effects of his actions pointing out to him. He knows already what the effects are, and if he doesn’t, then he has (still) plenty of civil servants who can explain it to him. It's not a regrettable mistake, it's a deliberate strategy.

Once again, it is past midnight as I sit here, scribing out these words by the combined light of a low-energy light bulb in the standard lamp and the glow of the remaining coals through the window of the stove.

I can hear the wind buffeting the trees in the garden making them thrash about as if in pain, and I can hear the rain, sounding for all the world like handfuls of gravel being flung against the windows of the conservatory.

In olden days, of course, this sort of weather would be the backdrop for a secret lover arriving at your window in the middle of the night. In a poem by Keats for example, or a novel by Thomas Hardy. These days, we’re not so romantic, and every time I hear the rain driving against the conservatory, I think of those forced to be out there in the night, stuck out in the rain with no choice and nowhere to go.

And I think of those who voted for the Tories and the Liberal Dimwits at the last election, and I wonder if they are happy with this outcome? Happy that people are sleeping out in the perishing cold and the rain?

Is Grant Shapps happy with the results of his actions? Is David Cameron, as he goes back home for the weekend to his second home in his constituency, paid for by us, or to Chequers, with its hundreds of bedrooms, paid for by us?

And again I ask, if you are NOT happy with the outcome, why do you allow it to continue?

For the rest of us, the streets are full of cobbles and there are many, many windows in Whitehall. Given that the official opposition is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, what we need is an opposition to the opposition. What we need is an indefinite general strike against the cuts until the government gives in, and calls a general election!

Double Dip

Eight months in to the ConDim administration, and we’re starting to see the first damaging effects of the draconian cuts as the economy plunges back into recession, albeit only by 0.5%, but I wonder what the next quarter’s figures will be. They can’t very well blame the snow next time, and if they say it’s due to the increase in VAT, then they are on a dodgy wicket, since that was their idea as well (despite having “no plans” to do it, when asked back in May).

Every time I hear the phrase “double dip” I have this mental picture of George Osborne and Vince Cable, but I guess that’s just me, eh.

So we see, today, Clegg being pressed into service (the Tories always send out an expendable, gullible Lib Dim when they have something evil or contentious or untrue to announce) to give a speech in Rotherham (oh, the irony!) about how the government does really have a plan for growth, honest, it’s just that before we can implement it, we have to slash and burn and decimate and stifle the economy, then when it’s well and truly buggered beyond all recognition, and reduced to broken glass and ashes, well, that’s the time to start thinking about recovery, obviously!

Deficit reduction by cuts is apparently a vital element of the growth plan, according to Clegg, which is a bit like saying that dousing your allotment with paraquat is a vital element in ensuring a bumper crop next year! Either the man is a complete tit or he’s totally dishonest. I suppose there’s an outside chance that he might just be both.

Meanwhile, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Osborne, Cable, Shapps and Pickles, continue scything their way through the public sector infrastructure. 500 jobs here, 1000 there, this year, next year.

I have just one question to the people who support the coalition in its berserker attack on our society and way of life – it’s quite a simple question, and it is this:

Are you happy with the idea of unemployment, repossessions, marriage breakups? Are you happy with the idea of companies being driven to the wall? Are you happy with the idea of the public services being stripped back and cut to the bone? Do you chortle with glee at the thought of people on benefits having their money cut? Are you happy that companies are no longer able to afford to pay their employees? Are you happy, these cold winter nights, about people sleeping in doorways and under bridges? Does it fill your heart with pride and make you glad to be British?

Or like me, does it make you long for a time when it was like Ancient Rome, as portrayed in Macaulay’s Horatius:

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.

What I want is someone to take us back to the brave days of old. “Brave” being the operative word, since they would be flying in the face of the yellow press and the vested interests of the current swarm of venal vermin who have somehow, unaccountably, (in both senses of the word) misappropriated the levers of power.

So, my Literal Dimwit chums – are you happy with what you are doing to our country by your support of Cameron and his Tory toffs? And if you are not happy, then why not vote with your feet, get out and leave them to it.

Oh - and, do you know, despite all this, despite the fact that their constituents are up against it and struggling left, right and centre, MPs are STILL whingeing about expenses. Still! They just don’t bloody get it. So you can’t claim for everything, so your paperwork gets lost by officialdom, so, it costs you money to do your job. Welcome to the real world, the one the rest of us live in, and shut the fuck up.

Just What the Doctor Ordered!

The latest reorganisation of the NHS is being brought in despite the lack of a mandate, out of political ideology, regardless of what it will cost – at a time when we are supposed to be strapped for cash – and underwritten by the false premise that what people want is choice in healthcare.

Just taking the last point first, for once; when I collapsed last July with peritonitis, I wasn’t lying there thumbing through brochures from competing hospitals, comparing survival rates from major surgery, nor was I surfing on “Compare the Bedpan dot com”. I needed quick, effective and local treatment, and, fortunately for me, that is what I got.

Of course, to the Tories, freedom of choice is a political mantra, a shibboleth that needs to be pursued to the nth degree, even if it is totally unnecessary, inappropriate for the service in question, and results in a worse experience for the end user. See under railways, and see under (soon) the Post Office, unless they see sense and stop their efforts to sell chunks of it to Deutsche Post and the like. In fact, if they ever did succeed in their ultimate aim of privatising the air we breathe, they would probably still insist that people had the choice of breathing either air or Carbon Monoxide, and that it should be from a variety of different providers.

I have dealt before with the lack of a mandate. Cameron was at pains to say, before the election, that the NHS was safe in his hands. I don’t recall what the Literal Dimwit position on the NHS was, but then it didn’t matter at the time, because they were only ever going to get a sniff of power by abandoning everything they ever stood for. It’s just that at the time, none of us thought they would be venal and mercenary enough to actually go through with it. Personally, I don’t believe that any of this crap being foisted upon us has any sort of mandate – if it has, here’s my challenge to the ConDims. Publish what you have done so far, and what you plan to do, as a manifesto, and go to the country on it. And let’s see you get slaughtered.

So the idea is that GPs, in between looking at your bunions and saying “there’s a lot of it about”, will somehow find time to run the rest of the health service, from the bottom upwards (including Proctology, yes, let’s "pile" on the obvious jokes). The idea is plainly such bollocks that the only reason it has got this far is it seems to be Cameron’s own pet project. Even his own brother in law thinks it’s a non-starter. Clearly GPs aren’t going to be able to do all of this on their own, even if the receptionist does manage to fit in the odd bit of hospital management amongst her more normal tasks of glowering at people and refusing them appointments.

So they are going to have to hire some people to do it for them. And what better people than the people who were actually doing the job until recently, working for the Primary Health Trusts? So basically what you have done is sack one lot of health administrators, make them redundant, close their offices, and then pay for them to be taken on somewhere else and for new premises to be set up, with basically the same people doing the same job.

As an exercise in lunacy it ranks with King Louis paying people to dig holes in the road and then fill them in again, in the dying days of the Ancien Regime. And we all know what happened to him.

Just Can't Budge It

Sometimes, for about a nano-second, a tiny bit of me feels sorry for the Literal Dimwits. I mean, they sort of go back to Gladstone, they are sort of a part of history. That's also their problem, though, now. Since Clegg bet the house on vingt et un bleu, and it came up, they don't stand for anything any more.

And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.

He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"

The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.

Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.

The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.

Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.

So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.

This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.

But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?

Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.

The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.

And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.

The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.

Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.

Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.

It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.

The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.

But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.

Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)

Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.

"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"

Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.

How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.

How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)

And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.

Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.

To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.

Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.

I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.

I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)

I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.

If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????

I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed

“Those who choose not to work”

It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.

I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.

I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.

People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.

And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!

*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)

How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?

The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.

So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal

Another Bit Falls Off Great Britain

Another lump falls off Britain. Taking 1700 jobs with it. RIP Redcar blast furnace, and another part of the steel industry. Well, I saw it happen in Hull with the fishing industry, saw it happen with Steel in Sheffield and Rotherham, and Coal in Barnsley, now it looks like they are picking off what's left, one by one.

The trouble is that an industry that can mean life or death to a whole community has been allowed to become a tick in a millionaire's ledger.

What was that Nye Bevan said?:

This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

Yet, by tearing down our traditional industries and also by letting the EU trample all over our fishing grounds, we seem to have achieved just that. We used to make stuff. Out of metal. Time we started again. Yes, I am sober (for once) and yes, I am angry.

Industries rise and fall, and time goes on, etc. But I would like to think we have moved on from more primitive times, and we should be able to consider the effect of such seismic changes in industries against the wider sense of the community of which it is inextricably linked. The buzzword phrase these days is “corporate social responsibility” – the recognition that you cannot just operate an industry in isolation from the locality which provides it with a workforce, and which it in turn feeds by pumping money back into the local economy.

The coal mines were closed because the coal was cheaper from abroad. Or gas was cheaper, or Orimulsion was, or something – to be honest, it wasn’t exactly the proverbial level playing field anyway. But sometimes, of course, "cheapest" and "best" can be in opposition, because the effect of the blight caused by generations of unemployment and lack of opportunity never gets costed in anywhere.

I have yet to hear a serious counter argument to the assertion that Thatcher and Heseltine closing down the remaining pits in 1992 during the dash for gas was anything other than an act of political vandalism and spite aimed at the working classes, that actually damaged our country and made us more vulnerable to foreign oligarchs turning off the gas.

People say that the pit towns were kept together by limited horisons and lack of opportunity, but in truth it is much more complicated. They were kept together by a complex web of community, the pillars of which were chapel, music, brass bands, sunday school, the union, the Labour party, nonconformism, self-education the WMC and the Co-op. There's no reason why the same can't be resurrected today, in fact things like Facebook make it easier to have a sense of community. The internet is just a tool like a screwdriver, you can use it to make something useful or you can use it to break a car lock.

And in that phrase "we buy it cheaply from China" has anyone factored into the equation the cost of three generations of unemployment and social deprivation in Grimethorpe for instance - the cost to the benefits system, the cost of medical treatment. Again, it would probably have been cheaper OVERALL if the government had kept the pits open, even if the coal itself was more expensive (in fact they rigged the market so that gas seemed to be cheaper anyway)

In the case of Redcar, I think the way forward here has to be socially useful employment. If the government re-nationalised this steelworks, and paid the people who were running it a bit more than they would get on the dole to carry on making steel, even if we only put it partly or wholly into a "national reserve of steel", against the day when we might need some, it would be socially "better", surely.

And they could specify that the steel has to be used in the structure of any new government or public sector buildings, instead of buying it in from India or China or wherever, with all the attendant carbon footprint issues. And aren't we supposed to be building two new aircraft carriers or something - made of steel, I guess?

Crash barriers on motorways and major roads - all need steel, and the better they are, the more lives are saved and the less pressure on the NHS. I am sure there are lots of uses a source of local, cheaply manufactured UK steel could be put to.

Again, I ask, has anyone done a cost/benefit analysis into the true "cost" - what about the cost of 1700 people now on unemployment benefit, and the knock on cost of them no longer paying PAYE, the cost to the local economy of them no longer doing their weekly shop, etc etc etc. And in any case, it makes it more secure for the UK to have its own supplies of steel. Again, I ask, what happens if we need lots of steel suddenly, say we have to build a lot of ships or something?

I think we really have to start re-thinking what we consider to be the true meaning of words like "cost" and "profit" and get away from the idea that something that makes a loss is automatically damned and worthless. We need a new set of definitions and a new definition of capitalism.

Some would say, of course, that keeping the works open on reduced wages would be less than the minimum wage and that the Unions would never wear it. Well, in that case, it would have to be the minimum wage or slightly more I guess, but it would still probably cost the country less than the effect of having to pay 1700 people Unemployment Benefit for a long while, not to mention the wider knock on effect of the loss of the tax revenue, the collapse of the local economy and so on.

I agree that it's not a perfect situation, far from it.

As to the Unions, I don't doubt it. Someone would have to remind them that the purpose of a trade union is to safeguard the interests of its members and it is more in the interest of their members to keep a job, and keep the works open, albeit on reduced rates, than to have it close down altogether, throwing 1700 of their members on to the dole. And if they don't see the sense in that, then we need a new union, as well as a new government.

Meanwhile, let’s have one last rousing chorus of “Steelos” – with actions!

Dunna let it cobble, it'll tear the place apart!

The Resounding Clang of the Stable Door, Vol 97

The Financial Services Authority, God bless them, have decided at long last, that irresponsible lending should be disallowed. Fine. Stop the banks lending to people, let them just KEEP all of the money we've lent them to get them out of the shit. They can spend the long winter evenings gloating over it.

Meanwhile, perhaps we could ALSO consider that we PERHAPS should be asking for our bonuses back. Because, to be honest, punishing poor people for wanting to borrow money is not REALLY the way forward. Perhaps you SHOULD, MAYBE, have been stopping the banks in the first place, from spending OUR money on imaginary fucking derivatives, you bunch of stripey-suited WANKERS.

Bunch.

Of.

Arse.

Everything Must Go!

I despair of Gordon Brown.

We are £175 billion in debt and he announces the sell-off of public assets to the approx value of £16 billion.

What's the point? All you are doing is replacing assets with cash. OK, you may be £16 bn less in debt but the other side of the ledger is £16 bn down in assets. Go figure.

Duck and Cover

There comes a point in every news story where it crosses over into the surreal. A point where no matter what you could dream up, reality becomes both funnier and more bizarre than any satire you could invent. Strangely enough, and I have never worked out why - it must be some immutable law of the universe known only unto Stephen Hawking - this apogee in the news trajectory usually involves ducks.

Why ducks? I must confess, I have absolutely no idea. I just know that, for every slam-dunk, knock em dead press release I have ever written over the last twenty years, there have only been two things we have feared, two things that would sink the little barque of our press release in the deep stormy news seas, lost with all hands: the death of a member of the Royal Family, and/or a skateboarding duck.

A skateboarding duck is such a slam-dunk for the "and finally" spot, that you can bet your sweet palookah that if you come up against one, your press release is bound for the cutting room floor. The death of a senior Royal speaks for itself. And of course, if by any chance the skateboarding duck actually contributes to the death of the senior Royal (eg by frightening the Queen's horse at the Trooping of the Colour) well, that's it, you might as well give up and open a whelk stall.

Similar thoughts must have been crossing the mind of the competitors to the Daily Telegraph this week when the MPs' expenses story finally crossed the duck event horizon, with the news that an MP paid £1645 for a "floating duck house".

Judging from the picture, I couldn't actually see £1645 worth of work in it, but in any case, as a duck-related story of public expenditure excess, it pales into insignificance alongside the news that Defra has spent nearly £300,000 on a study that shows that ducks prefer standing out in the rain to floating on ponds. If they'd asked me, I could have told them that for as little as , oooh, £150,000.

It's not been the only duck-related story in the news this week: a banker in Spokane, WA, USA, got up at the crack of dawn to stand underneath a ducklings' nest on some inacessible ledge (maybe he was planning to jump off it later) and catch the ducklings as, one by one, they fell out of it and headed to what would otherwise be a swift demise as duck and pavement met at terminal velocity. He caught and saved every one of them, then shepherded them across a busy road to a nearby lake. Shame there wasn't a shower handy, but at least it proves that not all bankers are bastards. There is one, in Spokane WA, who isn't.

Anyway, once it crosses the duck threshold, even more surreal things start to happen to the story: a Tory MP claims they are all on the verge of suicide (tough shit, you should have thought of that before bleeding the system white) and someone called Anthony Steen says that all this is motivated by envy of him and his big house!

Just for the record, Mr Steen, I don't covet your lifestyle, or your house. I thnk it would be a lot better for you and for us if you were forced to do a fortnight in a tower block in Walsall. I certainly don't want to be you - who would? I envy you the fact that you can use your position to screen you from the realities of life and to be honest I wish I was able to.

But I can't understand why you just don't admit that it's a fair cop.

Meanwhile, I hope that the ducks are OK

Motes and Beams

Like everyone else, I guess, I have been gobsmacked by the way members of Parliament of all persuasions seem to have been taking the piss with their expenses, going back not weeks, not months, but years with their claims for faux-Tudor beams, foaming moat cleaner, spare tyres for their cat's butler's granny's Aston-Martin, etc etc contd p.94.

Yet, on reflection, I suppose, I have always known - we have always known - that the political class have a featherbedded lifestyle, cushioned from the harsh realities of life, so it shouldn't really come as a huge surprise that, coupled with extremely lax standards of accountability, a certain amount of abuse must have taken place.

But what is staggering is the scale of the problem. As I have said before, I generally deplore chequebook journalism, but you have to say here that, in this instance, the Barclay Brothers’ chequebook has, at least for once in its life, and no doubt to the surprise of any resident moths, been deployed in the public interest. The fact that the owners of the Daily Telegraph, and people such as Rupert Murdoch, probably avoid far larger amounts in tax than the MPs have jizzed out of the taxpayer, is sort of beside the point, for once. As is the assertion that journalists also fiddle their expenses. Yes, we know. But that argument descends quickly to the level of “whataboutery”. So what? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Anyway, as I was saying – the sheer scale of it. We all know about David Cameron’s mortgage and Jacquie Smith’s bath plugs, for instance, but this current scandal is like putting your hand through a small hole in a wall somewhere in the dark and feeling what you thought was a small tassel on the end of a leathery bell-pull, and then discovering to your horror that you are actually holding an elephant by the tail. You sort of think on the one hand it might be prudent to bow out now and let it go, but on the other hand the sheer impressive bulk of the pachyderm deserves a grudging respect.

Elephants, of course, have their uses. While alive, they can haul timber, or carry Nabobs and Mahouts around the Indian jungle, thus saving the rest of us the trouble. Translated to the elephants’ graveyard, they provide useful umbrella stands and excellent piano keys. I’m not sure if anyone is currently working on a publication called “101 Uses For A Dead MP” but if they are, it’s likely to be a slim volume, up there with the Taliban Joke Book and the Spanish Guide to Donkey Welfare.

Because they are going to get slaughtered. Not literally, of course, this isn’t France, where if a similar scandal came to light, their equivalent of Parliament Square would be crammed with burning lorries, rioting students and CS gas, in roughly equal proportions. No, this is England, where we shrug our shoulders and say “mustn’t grumble”! But slaughtered they will be, electorally speaking. This is the problem with repressed anger, of the sort that is seething below the surface of (it seems) the entire voting population right now. It sometimes manifests itself in strange, perverse, unexpected and frankly, sometimes unjust ways. So, all over the UK, come the local elections, hard –working councillors, who conscientiously go to meetings, actually try and help the people who elected them, juggle a workload that would stun an ox, and claim little or nothing in the way of expenses, will get voted down because of the loons at Westminster, because people want to vent their anger and protest, and that process will of course inevitably benefit the demagogues.

In fact, this is probably what makes me angriest about the whole thing. Instead of saying “sorry” about the money – or at least as well as – and coming out with their cockanamie lame excuses about mistakes, oversights and accountancy not being their strong suit, they should also be apologising for undermining the very fabric of democracy and handing victory to the fascists on a plate. Because undoubtedly the beneficiaries of this fiasco will be the BNP and UKIP. It is very easy for the likes of the BNP to do now, in the UK, what the Nazis did in 1930s Germany. Denounce the existing administration as incompetent and corrupt (check); promise to make things better (check) promise to put British workers first (check – they mean white British workers, of course); promise to make the trains run on time (check – well, the only opposition was Lord Adonis, so that was a slam-dunk); and blame scapegoats (in Hitler’s case it was the Jews, in the BNP’s, it’s the Muslims and immigrants). What fascists never tell you, of course, is that once they’ve made the trains run on time, the terminus is always the death camps.

So what are we going to do with these MPs, eh? Those public-spirited stalwarts, who all agree now, in the celebrated quip by Andy Hamilton, that the system was so rotten and so abhorrent they could scarcely bring themselves to milk it dry? Is it enough just to apologise and pay it back, even in those cases where amnesia seems to have shaded over into actual fraud? [On the subject of paying it back, by the way, I don’t really see the sense of this. The Government will only go and blow it on something frivolous like an extra Eurofighter or Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. I’d rather they gave the equivalent of the overclaims on second homes back as a donation to Shelter].

Is it enough that, in the most widely telegraphed downfall since King Kong brandished a screaming Fay Wray at the passing Curtis Jennys from the top of the Empire State Building, a charmless and unpopular speaker of the House has been sacrificed in the hope that it will throw us off the scent? No. It isn’t.

In real life, of course, it’s no defence to say I’m sorry, I forgot. But we’ve already established that these people inhabit a different reality to the rest of us. If you forget to tell the DSS about a change in your benefit circumstances for instance, you are likely to find yourself being interviewed under caution, forced to pay it all back, and probably fined and or prosecuted to boot. But MPs live in a different world, and I am not holding my breath for any prosecutions. I am, however, and I remain, incandescent over the double standard. Not so much moats and beams, as motes and beams.

Much has been made of the argument that MPs were given tacit signals that it was OK to fill your boots on this tax-free gravy train of a system, because this in some way compensated for a supposed shortfall between an MP’s “basic” pay and that of the grades of equivalent public servants such as head teachers, civil servants, brain surgeons, etc. If that is the root of the problem, then maybe the solution is as simple as – give them a basic pay rise, but take away their expenses. Apart from legitimate business ones. I’ve no objection to them buying a folder from Rymans, but having your moat treated is taking the piss. Seriously.

In addition, I’d also take away their right to vote on their own pay increases, and give it to an outside body instead, perhaps composed of CIPFA, the Office of National Statistics, and maybe even citizen representatives from say a dozen randomly-typical constituencies throughout the land, on the proviso that these people are not members of any recognised political party.

Furthermore, if they do put in an expense which is disallowed, subsequently, then that should be retrospectively taxed as a benefit in kind. Their claims should also be published, in full, in the public domain, at least annually. Finally, to this I would add (to which I return yet again, like the dog that returneth to its vomit) a residence qualification. If you want to represent the good people of Lower Snodbury in Parliament then you should damn well buy or rent a house in Lower Snodbury and go and live there, and have lived there for a number of years before you are even allowed to stand.

The people who point out this disparity – supposed disparity, I should say – also often use this as a plank to support the argument that unless we pay MPs “what they are worth” you will only get rich people being able to afford to run for Parliament, and those of modest means will be excluded. Well, I would just like to say, here and now, that I think £64,000 is a massive sum of money. It’s three times what I earned last year before tax, and I would jump at the chance of being Ancient Geek, MP. There’s only one thing stopping me standing, which is the £1000 deposit. Get rid of that, or reduce it to a nominal amount, then you might get some people who actually want to make a difference standing for Parliament. People who aren’t just in it for the money. True, by-elections and indeed general elections would suddenly sprout whole lunatic fringes of monster raving loony candidates and people like Wing Commander Boakes, of recent memory, who used to campaign by sitting in a deck chair in the fast lane of the A40!

But to me, you see, that is all part of the rich tapestry of democracy. It keeps the big parties on their toes, and it gives the protest vote somewhere else to go, other than straight into the arms of the fascists!

And, it would send a very loud, very clear message to those present incumbents at Westminster, whose idiocy might even now just have let the Hitler Youth into the Reichstag by the back door, that there is more to the governance of this great little country of ours than just turning up every so often and signing for your expenses.

Absolutely Fabulous!

Oh deary me, it looks like the Court of Public Opinion is in session once again, and this time it was invoked by the lawyer for the continuing campaign for the right of former members of the Royal Regiment of Gurkhas and their dependents to reside in the UK.

Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of their case, and personally I have a great deal of sympathy for it (though this is rapidly being eroded by the increasingly manic and shrill ravings of Joanna Lumley) there is no doubt that once again, the Government has handled this appallingly badly and now has a PR disaster on its hands.

I’m not sure whether it’s the Prime Minister’s advisers being just not up to the job (spending too much time composing schoolboy emails about George Osborne and his wife?) or whether it’s Broon himself, the clunking fist, blundering on with his usual world-war-one style detrermination, on, into the valley of death. Or maybe it’s a heady mxture of both. But oh, deary, deary me.

The resistance of the Government is fundamentally cost-based at the end of the day. They are wary of opening up yet another door to let yet another class of people and writing a potentially open cheque to them and their dependents, for ever and ever, amen. They are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Our mistaken adherence to the one sided terms of the European Political Union project, which, in immigration as in so many other areas, hands the UK the shitty end of the stick, means that we are forced to take in every Eastern European Mafioso and Romanian rapist, while the Gurkhas, who – after all is said and done – have demonstrated a willingness to fight, if not actually die for the UK, have at best an indeterminate status and an uncertain future, notwithstanding Joanna Lumley’s efforts.

This situation presents people like Ms Lumley with an open goal. One which they have never tired of netting over and over again in recent days.

What I find surprising, is that no one from the Government has made any effort to respond by pointing out to people that this dilemma exists. The British people aren’t completely unreasonable or stupid. True, potentially rubbishing the EU three weeks before a Euro-election isn’t that good a move, but the Government is going to get decimated by UKIP anyway, even before all this blew up.

If the Government turned round and said “Look, we feel your pain, we share your frustration, we’d like to help the Gurkhas but we’re strapped for cash right now, and we can’t do anything about this Eastern Europe situation because – however much we might agree on principle – we are part of Europe and all that that implies, in terms of jobs, investment and trade” – Well, that at least would be a start.

The only person I have seen even groping towards this type of empathy has been the unfortunate Phil Woolas, who was being sandbagged by Joanna Lumley at the time. He’s not had a good week, what with the duffing up she gave him. I’m not surprised if it turns out to be true that, at least on the alleged evidence of the reporting of his expenses in The Daily Telegraph, he seeks consolation in nappies, tampons, and items of women’s clothing.

Which brings me neatly back to MP’s expenses. Generally, I am not an advocate of “chequebook journalism”, preferring to believe that the truth should emerge in the end simply because it is the truth. But in this case, the Government has been stonewalling over this for six months, spending yet more taxpayers’ money on a rearguard action through the courts to stop us knowing the details of how public money has been spent, and to be honest it serves them right that this has now blown up in their faces, for trying to delay publication until after July, when the house would have risen for the summer, and even if the media had picked up on it rather than the usual fare of Loch Ness Monster stories at that time of year, anyone who might have been held to account would have been on holiday in Tuscany.

Predictably, MPs have reacted to the revelations that we have paid – for instance – to have John Prescott’s loo seat fixed twice (one of the more understandable claims, in my view) with howls of anguish that their data has been infringed and their human rights traduced. Mixed with pious observations that “we did nothing wrong” and “the system is a bad system and must be changed” (to the latter of which statements I always feel the need to add the unspoken words “now that we have been found out”.)

Well, tough.

You are lucky even to have a second home, in a country where people are homeless, let alone one which is paid for and maintained by the taxpayer. If I had my way, I would give you a sleeping bag and a sheet of cardboard and tell you to doss in Parliament Square, until there was not one homeless person left in the UK.

Now stop whining and lining your own pockets, and get on with running the country, which is what we pay you handsomely for.

Who's been eating HIS porridge?

Too many people are getting Legal Aid, says the Tory Shadow Justice Minister Damian Green. He popped up on various radio shows recently claiming that the explosion in Legal Aid expenditure was because of people being encouraged by the Human Rights Act to mount appeals and challenges that were just not “worthwhile”.

Mr Green is of course an expert on the legal system, having recently had his collar felt by Inspector Knacker of the Yard when he was arrested for the supposed offence of “grooming the mole” over Home Office leaks. Sadly, it looks as though his direct experience of the prison system will stop there, and he will not be expected to sew mailbags, eat porridge, or be known as “Brenda” in the showers by a homicidal “lifer” from Lewisham.

It is the assumptions behind Mr Green’s statement that I find potentially disturbing. As I understand it, you are either entitled to Legal Aid or you aren’t, and the idea of a politician deciding what is or isn’t a “worthwhile” use of Legal Aid is not only incredibly arrogant but also, if followed through to its logical conclusion, incredibly dangerous. And the poor old Human Rights Act is getting it from all sides, with Jack Straw wanting to dilute it and replace it with an official list of things he says it’s OK to do, as well. All I can say is, if both Damian Green and Jack Straw are against the Human Rights Act, well that settles it, I’m all for it.

The way I understand Legal Aid, as well, is that there isn’t a set budget, a “pot” of money, after which there is no more. To hear Mr Green you would think that you went to see your solicitor and he says, “I’d like to help you with Legal Aid, Mr Bloggs, but unfortunately Nosher Briggs in Parkhurst has used up the extra budget for 2009 in a completely quixotic and vexatious action under the Human Rights Act.” I can’t believe it works like that.

On one fact, at least, Mr Green is correct. There are a lot more people in prison now than there were ten years ago. More prisoners = more appeals, and more appeals = more Legal Aid. It’s not exactly rocket science. Prisons are full to bursting and the only solution we’re being offered is to build more of them. But is there another way?

When you look at it, there are a lot of people in prison for relatively minor offences, people who just should not be there. At the same time, it is readily acknowledged that there are lots of things in society at large that need doing, and the armed forces are suffering what seems to be an almost permanent crisis of recruitment. I’d like to explore solving all of those problems by bringing them together into one solution.

It has long been Bolshy Party Policy that, apart from the basic defence of the UK, the armed forces should serve as a sort of auxiliary civil defence organisation. We don’t actually have a civil defence organisation in the UK as such, which is why we struggle with the emergency services augmented by the Army, Navy and RAF when we have to deal with extreme weather events, such as flooding.

Within the prison population are large numbers of able-bodied males (and females) whom the taxpayer is currently supporting to stay in their cells and stare at the walls all day. I’m not talking about letting axe-murderers and child molesters out on licence to fill sandbags, but rather something along these lines. A certain range of “non-lethal” offences should be selected. Then, say you are convicted of one of these offences and you get four years. Currently you could expect to be out in two. My proposal is that after you have served a year, you become eligible for consideration for the Civil Defence Scheme. In conjunction with the armed forces, you learn about civil defence techniques and, under careful supervision, eventually progress, while being trained in useful skills, to actually, eventually, being allowed to participate in “real” civil defence work. If at any time during this period you do anything against the rules of the scheme, you forfeit all your remaining remission and privileges and you go back into the slammer for what remains of your full original sentence.

That way, when there is a national emergency, such as the flooding, there will be a readily available pool of labour to help the hard-pressed emergency services and the army. The vast numbers of people who are currently clogging up the prison system to no useful end will be providing some valuable service in return for their drain on the taxpayer’s purse, and gaining some skills, training and self-esteem along the way. One would also like to hope that their skills might help them find a job. Perhaps the next step could be a “bridge”, via the Territorial Army, into the forces proper, if they prove themselves.

Critics of this idea will say, of course (if they are Conservative) that it is far too liberal and smacks of sending offenders off on white-water rafting weekends, whereas liberal critics will see it as being too harsh, one step away from the chain gang and Cool Hand Luke. If it does attract criticism of this sort, from all sides, I will view that as a hopeful sign that I am on the right track.

Rusty lane Redux

I realise that last week, my anger about the continued existence of Dewsbury Moor may have led me into incoherence. The reference to Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, comes from a stirring passage in English Journey by J B Priestley (1936).

It's one of those touchstone texts, along with George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier, which I keep coming back to, every time I feel I am going soft and maybe David Cameron has some kind of point.

Anyway, here's the full text of the passage:

The whole neighbourhood is mean and squalid, but this particular street seemed the worst of all. It would not matter very much - though it would matter - if only metal were kept there; but it happens that people live there, children are born there and grow up there. I saw some of them.

I was being shown one of the warehouses, where steel plates were stacked in the chill gloom, and we heard a bang and rattle on the roof. The boys, it seems, were throwing stones again. They were always throwing stones on that roof. We went out to find them, but only found three frightened little girls, who looked at us with round eyes in wet smudgy faces. No, they hadn't done it, the boys had done it, and the boys had just run away. Where they could run to, I cannot imagine. They need not have run away for me, because I could not blame them if they threw stones and stones and smashed every pane of glass for miles. Nobody can blame them if they grow up to smash everything that can be smashed.

There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial and industrial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, and about West Bromwich. While they still exist in their foul shape, it is idle to congratulate ourselves about anything. They make the whole pomp of government here a miserable farce. The Crown, Lords and Commons are the Crown, Lords and Commons of Rusty Lane, West Bromwich... and if there is another economic conference, let it meet there, in one of the warehouses, and be fed with bread and margarine and slabs of brawn. The delegates have seen one England, Mayfair in the season. Let them see another England next time, West Bromwich out of the season. Out of all seasons, except the winter of our discontent.

Amen

Don't slam the stable door on social workers

The tragic death of Baby P at the hands of his carers is of course an appalling crime. I think everyone would agree that it should never happen again. Which is why it depresses me almost beyond belief to see people using the murder as a political football, and the social worker in question being potentially castigated in the media, and by definition, all social workers.

I know a social worker. Not the sort that has to make difficult, almost impossible, desicions about child welfare, instead she looks after two guys who can't fend for themselves very well. She works 24 hour shifts, including sleepovers, and when she is on call she has to watch out for things like self-harming, and to try and engage with them, oh, and if one of them has an epileptic fit in the middle of the night, she has to administer rectal valium.

She has an acre of paperwork to fill in, mostly to cover the arses of the people in the management structure above her. Risk assessments, individual learning plans, you name it. And, for all of this, last year, she earned under £16,000. Social Work is one of those jobs like being a teacher, where everyone thinks they can do it better than you. You wouldn't dream of standing over a heart surgeon while he was performing an operation on your auntie and saying "Oi, you've sewn that bit up wonky" - but everyone feels that they can do Social Work and everybody thinks they can teach, egged on by government initiatives to foster "choice" in the public services - choice that people really, actually, don't want. They want public services that work and deliver, not to have to choose between two dysfunctional underfunded public services (often contracted out to the private sector, because we all know how good the private sector is at running things, I mean we have only got to look at the financial services industry .... er...oh.)

While today's shenanigans at Prime Minister's Question Time between Broon and Cameron were vaguely entertaining, sort of a bout of "PMT at PMQ's", they will do nothing to help save future Baby Ps. Why the government feels it can run Haringey social services better than the people who are currently running it beats me (unless they have discovered a secret pot of money) and Cameron of course will not hesitate to jump on any passing bandwagon, especially one that allows him to indulge in a little bit of shroud-waving.

So, once again we hear the sound of stable doors shutting all over Westminster with a resounding clang. There will be an enquiry, involving Ofsted, the Chief Constable, Lord Somebody and probably the Keeper of the Queen's Privy Seal, for all I know.

But nobody wants to talk about the real problem, the lack of that secret little pot of money. Everybody's happy to talk about the symptoms, but not the disease. Until social work is properly funded and resourced, you will always have the situation where potentially, a harrassed, lowly and inexperienced public official can make a mistake with tragic consequences. Unless the downtrodden underclass that we seem to be determined to create with our modern way of life with its relentless obsession with money, fame, celebrity and success as expressed by material possessions, all have a miraculous personality transplant overnight, you will still have kids at risk because of the breakup of what Mrs Thatcher once derided as being non-existent - "society". And it's that mismatch between the growing need and the diminishing resources, coupled with a culture of targets and box ticking which has been fostered and inspired by this government almost to the exclusion of common sense, that causes the problem.

It's a common assertion, especially around the dinner tables of middle England, that the public sector is overstaffed and feather-bedded. It's true, there is some wasteful and totally unecessary spending in public life - MP's expenses, for instance, are a complete scandal. There is no way we should be paying David Cameron's mortgage! But, given that MPs aren't about to sacrifice their salary and expenses to make Haringey social services better funded, then there's only one other option: if you want a social services which really makes a difference because the caseload is not overwhelming and the people who work there are properly-rewarded public sector careerists, then the answer is a simple one - higher council taxes, but that is precisely the thing the angry mob fuelled by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the News of the World refuse to countenance. You can't rebuild the ravages of sixty years of social decay on the cheap.

And so poor little Baby P, who was, it seems, sometimes treated like a real football in life, will continue to be kicked around after death by the politicians and the media, in a bizarre competition to see who can wring their hands the most and spout the biggest load of sanctimonious claptrap.