Back later......

Out of the country for two weeks relaxing in Sharm.

Ciao!

Dr Irene Bishop... now where have I heard that name before?

As someone who very briefly was suckered by the compelling pseudo-science that is Marxism, but was then blinded by the light that is common sense realism not long after, I have great sympathy for the "suspended" former-Marxist deputy head who saw the light and spoke eloquently at the Tory conference about the failure of their education system.

I put the word "suspended" in quotes because officially she's been told to "work from home" apparently "while the situation is reviewed." Whether a teacher can work from home is of course one thing, but you have to ask yourself, what situation, and what needs to be reviewed?

She didn't, as I understand it, talk about the school she worked in directly, she didn't name and shame colleagues. She simply stood up and expressed her opinion that the education system is flawed because of the flawed "leftist" assumptions that run through the establishment.

Effectively she was stating that the education system is institutionally leftist. Hardly a shock to anyone really because it is. So why was she sent home from school one might wonder?

Anyway, apparently her fate is in the hand of Dr Irene Bishop, the "executive head teacher" of St Michael and All Angels Academy.

Might this be the same Dr Irene Bishop who was head teacher at St Saviour's and St Olave's in 2001, when the school was used as the launchpad of the Labour 2001 general election campaign?

Errr.... yes.

Labour triangulated on child benefit - how will Ed respond?

The anomalies of the plans for child benefit are, as I've said, totally nuts. That a couple earning £80K jointly will still receive a minimum of around £1200 as a handout, whilst a couple where only one is earning bringing in £45K won't is universally stupid.

I don't say this because I want higher rate taxpayers to keep child benefit though, far from it, I say it because its clearly silly to say that such a situation is "fair". It's a complete snafu of a policy problem, but I understand why it exists, as its a result of the desire to avoid means-testing.

Let's not forget that means-testing will require form-filling of some sort to establish a household income, and then someone else to process the forms, which costs money.

However, as the polling suggests, most people (83%) really don't have a problem with it, and that's pretty much because those 83% are going to be people that will be unaffected by the change anyway. There are some who argue that the only people complaining are the ones on over £44K anyone who will lose out, this might be true.

The thing is, on reflection, whilst I still think Osborne was a complete cock for allowing the plan to framed like this, tactically it is a perfect bit of triangulation of the Opposition. If they vehemently oppose it, on the rather 1940s-esque grounds of "universality" then the quick response is to say that Labour want to give millionaires a free £1200 a year and clearly don't care about the deficit.

At the same time, even if they propose alterations to the plan in order to protect "middle earners", they place themselves in the odd situation of arguing to give handouts to people in the top 15% of earners.

Even if, as Yvette Cooper has tried to do, they paint it in terms of "children suffering" they're on a hiding to nothing, because they'll have to argue that someone taking home £2700 per month really needs an extra £100 to make sure they're child can eat. That argument is simply not credible.

There is no doubt about it, the policy, whilst causing a storm that varies from those who in principle have no problem with the idea but think the implementation sucks; to those who are simply outraged at the loss of money; it has pushed Labour into a sticky corner with little room to manoeuvre in terms of opposing it without appearing opportunistic.

Of course, they could, if they tack Leftwards, target the anomaly only, and argue that the policy is case of the "same old Tories" keeping benefits for their rich friends on an £80K household income and taking it away from the lower paid.

The only problem they'll have then though, is that the 80% of the country not impacted by it will simply shrug their shoulders, and Labour will reinforce the view that the Tories are now the true friends of the C2 working class, and that Labour puts ideological dogma above tackling the deficit.

It's going to be very interesting to see what Ed Miliband actually does when he faces Cameron at the Dispatch Box. It's said that he is very clever, I think a very clever man would keep quiet, let it happen, and avoid the trap that has so clearly been laid, but we shall have to wait and see.

Errr if you don't pay you don't get.. simples.

Interesting post over on Liberal Conspiracy. General synopsis of the post is this little tale.

BION COUNTY, Tenn. – Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. That’s exactly what happened to a local family tonight. A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

Now, you can probably imagine the Libcon reaction on this, that's it's the shocking reality of private enterprise and a total lack of compassion or humanity. It's the comments that are interesting, I particularly liked this one,

I was furious that Direct Line wouldn’t replace my stolen car.

You won’t believe their excuse – I hadn’t taken out a policy.

I ask you. What is the world coming to?

Absolutely on the money. If you're foreign and visiting the UK you don't get totally free NHS treatment, and the reason is because you've not paid - funny how no one complains about that even though it's the same principle at work huh?

Dear Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

You should probably sort this out. Not sure local government education websites should contain links to rape porn however "gentle" it might be.

Please also note that you appear to have lots of link to videos that the resigning head of CEOP may have concerns with too.

This is not a 10p tax moment.... (redux)

James Forsythe as an interesting piece over at the CoffeeHouse titled This is not a 10p tax moment, which eloquently argues that the child benefit issue is not the same because it is out in the open unlike Brown who was devious.

The comparisons with Brown’s removal of the 10p tax rate miss a crucial point: Brown tried to hide what he was doing. In his final Budget statement to the Commons, the abolition of the 10p rate wasn’t even mentioned. Instead Brown boasted about a 2p reduction in the basic rate, to huge cheers from the Labour benches.

By contrast, the Tories have been upfront about the fact that there are losers from this change. There’s been no attempt to cover that up which is why the outcry started straight after the speech.

A cogent argument you might think but for one tiny flaw, it isn't true that Brown tried to hide what he was doing. Brown said, in the final part of his 2007 budget,

I can now return income tax to just two rates by removing the 10p band on non savings income....... I will from next April cut the basic rate of income tax from 22p down to 20p.

Now I'm not defending Brown, but to suggest that the 10p tax issue occurred because it was hidden is just not true. In fact, at the time on my live budget blog I said,

Oh look, here's the big one. A 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax to 20%. But given he's just scrapped the 10% tax rate altogether he's just off-set it and dragged a ton of people into the 20% tax rate. He's basically just increased income tax whilst making it look like he's cut it.

It was there for everyone to see, just like child benefit, the only difference is that no one seemed to notice it at first, possibly because they were falling asleep.

My guess though, on the issue of child benefit, is that the idea will be quietly shelved and/or changed before it comes into force in 2013, probably with the line that "the economy is much better so we don't need to make it as harsh as it was going to be".

For that reason James Forsythe is probably right to say it isn't a 10p tax moment, but his reasoning for getting to that conclusion is wrong.

Note: Then again politics is funny, so who knows what might happen?

The key debate all the parties face in 2010

With all eyes fixated on the Tory Conference and whether or not they're going to kill every first born to save a few quid each week on child benefit, there is a far more important and wider debate occurring that needs to be resolved.

Who would win in a fight between...?

Airwolf

or Blue Thunder


Never let it be said that I do not take things seriously or engage in serious discourse.

Pointless Government spending... so much for austerity

Now here's something I find mildly amusing, especially given the current theme in politics is about cutting wasteful and extraneous Government spending. You see, part of the Tory manifesto, and Lib Dems to an extent, was a call for greater transparency about what departments were spending and doing.

The irony here of course is that in order to provide the public with such transparency of detail they need to spend money to do it, and spend it during a time when the Chancellor (aka Twat) is banging on about cutting spending.

And so it came to pass, that soon after the election, certain departments started doing the transparency thing. They did it by providing us with pointless real-time graphing of their energy and water consumption on their websites that few people really look at. Along came a company called "Ecodriver" who provided the Ministry of Justice with this little baby.


But it's not just the MoJ that have it, the Home Office is in on the tree-hugging hippy act too. Then there's the Department for International Development who are taking pride in telling all those drought ridden countries they're helping how much water they're using. Finally we have the Department of Transport showing us similar colourful data... ain't transparency great?

How much is this costing at a time when we're supposed to be tightening our belts? Well, in the wider scheme of things not very much really.

The Ministry of Justice spent £13,180 on implementation, and has an annual fee of £5,514. The DfID says it paid a total for implementation and managed service of £16,773. The Home Office was cheaper getting it installed for just £7,359 with a mere £2,769.80 yearly subscription (so that's £10,128.80, not sure what the 80p covers). The DfT says they only paid £9,915.82 but don;t mention anything about annual subscriptions.

One presumes that some departments managed to negotiate harder than others, hence the differences in prices, but, on a wider point, is this sort of spending, although small, particularly worthwhile? Do we really need to spend taxpayers money so we can see real-time data on how many lights have been left on in the Home Office or how many times the bog was flushed?

Methinks we have some skewed priorities here. On the one hand they're saying we're going to have to cut, and then on the other they're spending money on giving us information that we don't really need, or likely want - and if we did, we could just ask for it instead at a fraction of the cost.

Note: Before someone suggests that this might be pointless spending by the previous Government, it isn't. It was commissioned by the Coaltion.

Dear Gideon......

You are a twat.

There, I said it, I can't be more blunt really. Look, the idea and principle of saying higher rate tax earners shouldn't really be getting a £20-or-so a week handout in child benefit is a good thing, but please, if you're going to do it at least execute the change with some sort of skill.

What you don't do is go on the telly and say that a couple earning £43,000 each, making their household earning £86,000 will still get the benefit, whilst a couple with only one working on £44,001 won't.

Would you like me to get a bandage for your foot seeing as the bullet wound appears to be weeping a tad?

Did I mention that George Osborne is a twat?

Me.... and Andy Coulson

Morning all, first up, to all the people that have been emailing me about meeting up at the Tory conference, I'm not in Birmingham and won't be going either, for two reasons. Work and a holiday at the end of the week.

Ok now that's said, just wanted to pass a quick comment on the latest in the Andy Coulson voicemail interception saga, which, amusingly, some are calling the 'smoking gun'.

It seems that Channel Four's Dispatches has found a former News of the World employee who says that Coulson personally listened to intercepted voicemail messages. What's that you say? You want to know their name? Sorry can't help you there.

Yes that's right. The smoking gun is an unidentified anonymous witness who has not even had their voice disguised or been filmed in shadow. The voice has, in fact, been done by an actor. Smoking gun indeed.

As Lord Prescott (class traitor) noted, sources off the record are worthless and just tittle tattle, although don't expect him to acknowledge that in this case of course.

Anyhow, I'm slightly digressing, you see, I've been musing over what would really be a proverbial 'smoking gun' and have concluded that there is only one solution for those that want to take Coulson down.

What they should do is hire a private investigator to listen to the voicemail of Coulson and his friends and get a recording of him admitting he's lied and did really know all about what was happening at the Screws.

True, that would be illegal but isn't there a saying about sending a thief to catch a thief? Ok, I'm joking, but wouldn't it be funny if he was found guilty through the use of intercept?