On National Insurance and Child Benefit

There's recently been coverage in the media of a thing called 'The Living Wage', that is a wage upon which people can live comfortably, a somewhat higher wage than the current minimum wage. By a quirk of statistics, the Living Wage is within a few pence of what the take home amount of the minimum wage if it wasn't taxed. That is, if people on minimum wage didn't pay income tax, they'd be taking home the living wage.

Fiscally, I'm a big fan of raising the income tax threshold to £16,000 or so, enough to take the minimum wage earners out of the tax system. And then, with feelings of generousity, I'd raise the threshold to the median wage, so the poorest half of the UK paid no income tax, and the rest pay the rest of it, at whatever rate balances the books.

However, I'm not the chancellor, and I have doubts. There's the whole concept of National Insurance, which I still believe is an insurance scheme and not just a different name for tax. I feel that all earners, no matter what their income, should be paying national insurance, like putting away a little bit each pay day, for when they fall ill, or become unemployed or otherwise fall on hard times.

And here we land at the problem with Child Benefit. Within twelve months, those earning £50,000 or more will not receive Child Benefit. Whether or not this is fair depends entirely on whether that money comes from taxes or national insurance.

If its from the National Insurance Fund then it ought to be a universal benefit, paid for all children regardless of their parents' income. Imagine if you paid for insurance on your car or your house, and then when disaster strikes, the insurance company turned round and said, no, you can afford to repair or replace without the insurance money so we're not paying up. In which case, I imagine you would do your damnedest to ensure that the insurance company never received a penny from you.

But if Child Benefit is paid from tax, then fair enough, deprive the rich of it benefit, as they are paying for everyone else's services anyway, its part of the package, part of the deal you sign up to when choosing how closely you comply with a country's tax regime*. The tax rates vary regularly anyway so any gains or losses are transient rather than long term.

It appears that Child Benefit is not paid from the National Insurance Fund, and is administered by HM Revenue and Customs and so is paid from tax.

In order to hold views such as this I try to indulge tax avoidance as little as possible, I don't give money to charity, I don't use GiftAid, and I don't keep my savings in an ISA.

*Its widely believed that only the rich can take advantage of tax regimes in different countries to maximise their wealth. I believe this is untrue as I've worked for minimum wage in factories where the vast majority are workers who've travelled thousands of miles from far off lands to work for minimum wage and then send a proportion of their earnings back home to ensure their families have a higher quality of life. This is the same package as Sir Philip Green's wife living in Monaco receiving the benefits of the Arcadia group in the UK.

The political spectrum in UK newspapers

The other day I was wondering about which newspapers in the UK were left wing, right wing and which occupy the centre ground. This blogpost attempts to definitively investigate and plot which papers occupy which areas of the political spectrum.

It was last week when Tom Watson off of twitter was saying that the News of the World phone hacking scandal had reached a new low, with Sara Payne's phone being hacked. Sure it was a new low, but it wasn't much lower than the previous lowest low, I asked on twitter whether it was some kind of competition, @flashboy replied that it more like a plateau of shit. Phone hacking was a low for right wing newspapers, and for left wing newspapers their low was the Johann Hari plagarism scandal. But then if The Mirror is getting embroiled in phonehacking too, then that'll be a new low for left wing papers.

But which newspapers are left, and which are right?

I started with a quick look on the internet. Yahoo Answers had something a rather comprehensive list as the top answer, but the second answer caught my eye for it's wrong-cockedness:-

Left wing - The Guardian, The Mirror (sort of)
Middle - The Independent
Right Wing - The Sun, News Of the World, The Times, The Telegraph, The Star
Extreme Right Wing - Daily Mail, Daily Express

edit: Sheetwow and Rikstir [other yahoo answerers] - there are no extreme right wing papers in this country? In recent months, the Daily Mail has alleged links between Ed Miliband and Stalin and claimed that "liberalism" is caused by a faulty gene. Meanwhile, the Daily Express has run a poll asking its readers if they think our schools are being ruined by foreign children. In what way do you regard these things as "centre" anything?

How can there be extreme right wing papers without corresponding extreme left wing papers? Besides, The Independent is quite left wing, so I guess everything else does seem right to the left. Its all about perspective.

So I thought some original research would be necessary. For this I used the AllOurIdeas survey/suggestions website, I fed in a list of the top ten best selling national newspapers according to wikipedia's page on circulation (and The Metro), asked the question "which of these two newspapersis more right wing?", then pinged the link round twitter and Google+.

After about ten respondants the newspapers had been sorted into the following sequence, from left to right

The Guardian
The Independent
The Mirror
The Metro
Financial Times
The Times
Daily Telegraph
The Sun
Daily Mail
Daily Star
Daily Express

They're broadly in the order I expected, except for anomaly of The Metro, which of course is a free newspaper, so folk don't have to make an economic choice to buy it so shouldn't be in the list, however, it is published by Associated Newspapers, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust, I expected them to have a similar editorial line to The Daily Mail, but it seems it is perceived as being far more left wing than its brethren.

Anyhoo, based on just this sequence, The Times is a centre ground newspaper, The Daily Express is a far right paper and The Guardian is a far left paper.
Still that's not an appropriate resolution of the issue. Instead of the centre being the median point where half the newspaper titles are left of it and half the newspaper titles are to right, it should be about readership.

So if we include circulation figures (from wikipedia)

The Guardian - 279,308
The Independent - 185,035
Daily Mirror - 1,194,097
Financial Times - 383,067
The Times - 457,250
Daily Telegraph - 651,184
The Sun - 3,001,822
Daily Mail - 2,133,568
Daily Star - 734,311
Daily Express - 639,875

The total number of newspaper readers is around 9.5 million. The halfway point is around 5 million. It follows then that someone in the dead centre of the political spectrum, where half of all newspaper readers are on the left of him and half of newspaper readers are on the right, would be a reader of The Sun. That's what the centre ground looks like.

Say you break down the entire newspaper readership into three thirds representing the leftwing, the centreground and the rightwing, then still The Sun represents the entire cohort of the centre ground. The trio of the Daily Mail, Daily Star and Daily Express represent the entire rightwing. The leftwing of newspaper readership includes, as expected The Guardian, Independent and Daily Mirror and, somewhat counter to expectations, The Financial Times, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Although that last three are rightwing compared to the Guardian and Independent, they are left of centre compared to the centre.

Left wing
The Guardian - 279,308
The Independent - 185,035
Daily Mirror - 1,194,097
Financial Times - 383,067
The Times - 457,250
Daily Telegraph - 651,184 

Centre
The Sun - 3,001,822
Right wing
Daily Mail - 2,133,568
Daily Star - 734,311
Daily Express - 639,875

Now, back to that barmy wrongcock from Yahoo Answers, accusing the Daily Mail of being extreme right wing, I bet he feels stupid now, in reading my methodology and research, cos look, its just right of centre, not extreme right wing, it can't possibly be any closer to being on the centre ground.

Just because a dreadful newspaper is dreadful, doesn't mean it is far-right, it just means you're a snob who hates people and thinks they're too stupid to be trusted to make their own decisions.

Addendum to my previous post on the political spectrum and newspapers

My previous post on location the position of the best selling national daily UK newspapers in the political spectrum lead to some interesting discussions on Google Plus which pointed the way to other areas of research and points I need to clarify.
Is the left- and right-wingedness of UK newspapers representative of UK political opinion?

Probably not, the thing that is most representative of UK political opinion is the general election, and even then, that isn't representative of people who don't vote. The political spectrum of UK newspapers based on their -wingedness rank and their readership size is only representative of people who make the free economic choice to purchase newspapers. It doesn't represent people who don't buy papers, but instead get their news from TV, radio and the internet.

On the other hand, TV, radio and the internet are pretty much free, like The Metro newspaper, you don't have to make an economic decision to indulge, so they may be less representative of their viewers/readers.

I was going to say its like comparing apples and oranges, but I had a look on wikipedia about apples and oranges, and the consensus is that they're are quite comparable, they're both soft fruit that cost about the same, etc. Comparing websites and newspapers is pretty easy and valid, compared to, for example, comparing the word "research" and the number 38.

Anyhoo, I guess one of the main points of my argument that I should have mentioned earlier, is my belief that political views in the UK are smoothly and symmetrically spread. That there are just as many left of centre people in the UK as there are right of centre, and just as many far left supporters as there are far right supporters, not only that, but I propose that any doubts in the nature of this smooth continuum are down to the beholder's own personal bias, rather than an imbalance in -wingedness. And so from this, the centre ground is the median point where there are just as many people to the right as there are to the left.

An exception to this may be that perhaps some swath of people are less inclined to purchase newspapers and so aren't represented. So it could be possible that the UK press as a whole are biased to the right, or possibly biased to the left.

To try to address this, I've looked at the alexa stats for the newspapers involved, and from the given number of links to the website, we can approximate how popular the sites are, and applying the same methodology as before, the -wingedness of the papers is a little different:-

Left wing
The Guardian - 76,114 incoming links
The Independent - 27,797 incoming links

Centre ground
Daily Mirror - 10,263 incoming links
Financial Times - 26,386 incoming links
The Times - 39,534 incoming links

Right wing
Daily Telegraph - 54,075 incoming links
The Sun - 17,721 incoming links
Daily Mail - 40,243 incoming links
Daily Star - 2,520 incoming links
Daily Express - 4,347 incoming links

And I can create the neat table at the top of the post where the width represents the approximate number of hits for each newspaper's website.

This shift in the middle ground suggests that website viewers are biased to the left compared to newspaper buys who are biased to the right. Of course the objective truth of what the middle ground looks like is somewhere between these two. As for which is more truthiness, the internet or newspaper buying, I reckon its the people who are willing to directly hand money over for their news, rather than those who can freely click, that's my bias.

Philip Davies and the minimum wage for disabled people

An MP called Philip Davies didn't seem to be very popular on my Facebook newsfeed and Tweeter feeds last week, he'd allegedly said something along the lines of disabled employees should be paid less than other employees. That's clearly discriminatory and just shows how evil Conservatives and right-wingers in general are.

One twitterer reckoned that Philip Davies thinks that Stephen Hawking should be working for below minimum wage.

On a related note, this time three years ago I was very much unemployed, claiming job seekers allowance at a rate of about £1.80 an hour. After eight months of unemployment, I somehow managed to scrape myself into a minimum wage job sweeping floors in a sandwich factory, where I was the only native English speaker on the shop floor for around £5.75 and hour. It was sheer hell, After a few months I displayed a bit of talent and got myself transferred to the Quality department and got a 50p pay rise to £6.25 per hour. After six months of walking to work at 4am to be moaned at and given impossible tasks, I handed in my resignation and signed up to a temping agency and got a job for £10 an hour filing in an office in regular office hours, and after twelve months of turn up on time every day I was taken of full time permanent at around £12.30 per hour, which is about the same as I was on at the peak of my previous career in British hifi manufacturing.

Its like an employment ladder, you start on the bottom rung and work your way updeveloping your talents, self-esteem and trust with your employers.

Anyhoo, back to Philip Davies MP, his name was familiar to me, one of the libertarian blogs I subscribe, Dick Puddlecoat, has Philip Davies as their blog mascot and reports on when he's done anything note-worthy in parliament.

It seems that rather than saying that disabled people are subhuman scum should be paid less than able-bodied people for doing the same work, he said:-

If those people who consider it [the minimum wage] is being a hindrance to them, and in my view that's some of the most vulnerable people in society, if they feel that for a short period of time, taking a lower rate of pay to help them get on their first rung of the jobs ladder, if they judge that that is a good thing, I don't see why we should be standing in their way.

I can see kind of where's he's coming from even if I don't agree, I'm empathic like that, its one of my skillz.I could be mistaken, but it doesn't look like he's suggesting that anyone is forced to take a pay cut. Unless you've got what could be considered a imaginary evil tory strawman in mind, that you want to project concepts and policies onto to justify your own opposing beliefs.
For days I've been rumbling in ma heid if I should blog about this and how, how I would frame it all. I want to raise reader's ire, but at the same time I want to cover my back against the sort of claims Philip Davies faced for being evil.
So here's a few bullet points:-

• How come young people are on a lower minimum wage? that's already enshrined in law, is it as evil as having a lower minimum wage for disabled people? More so perhaps? Is their labour somehow worth less than elder workers? Or is it accepted that inexperienced labour is worth less. Did anyone accuse the 1998 government of being evil? Well, yes.
• The old strawberry picking / minimum wage line. A punnet of strawberries is worth X amount of money. That's how much they sell for in the shops. So if you can't collect a minimum wages worth of strawberries in an hour then the employer would be making a loss by employing you compared to someone who can, so you'll never get the job. Sure with a bit of practice you might become faster at collecting strawberries, but under the current system, you're going to have to be a volunteer and provide your labour for free until you're fast enough, unless you find an uneconomically generous strawberry farmer. If your labour isn't yet worth £5.75 no one will buy. Would you pay £1.89 for a 16p can of lager?
• Why would you want to stay in a minimum wage job for ages. Can't you make yourself better at doing something and then get a better job? Why would you stay where there are only minimum wage jobs. Millions of people travel thousands of miles in search of better jobs all the time. Some of my colleagues in the sandwich factory, on their minimum wage, would send money back home, cos the jobs back home paid so little in comparison.
• In London a return the underground cost about £5. In Glasgow a return ticket costs £2.40. Down south a minimum wage worker has to work twice as long just to get to work. Likewise house prices and rents vary enormously across the country. The minimum wage is hell in some places and more comfortable in others. Sometimes for two people working side-by side.

Anyhoo, in my Walthamstow survivalist cabin these points are moot, Philip Davies is wrong, the disabled, the vulnerable should not be singled out for special dispensation of the minimum wage. The main thrust of my argument about minimum wage, be it for the disabled, young people and everyone else, is this:- Minimum wage should be a personal choice.
The state shouldn't have anything to do with it.
What is the minimum wage that you specifically would work for?
People are very rarely forced to work in the UK, slave labour is the exception and against the law. Its a free choice. If you work you get paid money, if you don't you then you are beholden to the state on benefits. If you've got a shit job, feel free to quit.
Also, what makes you think that the minimum wage that you would chose to work for is the same as the minimum wage that any other person else would chose to work for?
Now since I typed this piece, I've read up the wikipedia page on minimum wage, the Minimum Wage Act UK 1998 and the actual Hansard debate from whence Philip Davies has been quoted. And also via twitter, a variety of other bloggists have written on the matter, some with similar opinions, some raging, and some widely differing.

• Some people like concept of the minimum wage
• Some people don't like the idea of it
• Some disabled people like the idea of the minimum wage
• Some disabled people don't like the idea of the minimum wage
• Some people thing the minimum wage is too low
• Some evidence shows that the minimum wage is a good positive thing
• Some evidence shows that the minimum wage is a bad negative thing
• Some evidence is overwhelmingly authoritative and conclusive
• People chose to support and promote which ever evidence and research supports their own views

I remember back when I was unemployed, I thought at the time that the minimum wage was too high and I'd willingly work for less in order to not be unemployed. I still do. I think people should be able to opt out of the minimum wage. Luckily they can.
There are plenty of employers who, outwith the system, pay below minimum wage regardless of the law.
Anyhoo, if we must have a minimum wage dictated by the state, I propose this:-
A higher minimum wage for disabled people and special groups
and
The option to opt out of the minimum wage in order to undercut people competing for the same job
Satisfied? I thought so.
References
The text of the debate - http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2011-06-17a.1010.0&m=40619
Wikipedia Minimum Wage - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
Wikipedia National Minimum Wage Act 1998 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Wage_Act_1998
Bruce Lawson - http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/disabled-people-working-for-less-than-minimum-wage/
Devils Kitchen - http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2011/06/moron-of-week-edward-leigh-mp.htm
Dick Puddlecoat - http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2011/06/mascot-watch-13-that-speech.html
Jackart - http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/thoughts-on-evidence-on-national.html
Old Holborn - http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2011/06/minimum-wage-is-actually-165-enforced.html
Politics Student - http://www.politicsstudent.co.uk/2011/06/is-philip-davies-actually-wrong-on-his.html

Diane Abbott on Andrew Marr

I've been asked to write something nice and supportive about Diane Abbott after seeing her on the Andrew Marr show this morning. She truly is my favourite choice for Labour leader, but only for narrative purposes, it would make the story of British politics rather fine.

Also on Andrew Marr was Iain Duncan Smith, I though he looked very much like a 1950's statesman, which was kind of a cool anachronism, although he's pinched his body language from Tony Blair.

Anyhoo, that Diane Abbott, whilst she was being interviewed I couldn't take my eyes off her hands, the way she was constantly picking at the nail on the third finger on her right hand, all through the interview, regardless of the words coming out of her mouth, just pick pick pick.

Whilst IDS was doing Tony Blair hand gestures, Diane was just pick pick pick.

IDS's body language tutor must have said in one lesson, emphasize points by using your hand, grasping motions, open gestures, rolling gestures, gestures, gestures, gestures. Drumming in the lesson. Diane must have missed that lesson. Probably busy with diversity training.

I've listened intently, dragging my eyes away from her nail-picking and it seems the over-riding message of her leadership bid, it isn't policies or dogma, its just that she's not white or male, so my narrative reason for supporting her is entirely reasonable.

Not that her reasoning is that reasonable. She may not be male or white, but she is an Oxbridge graduate, so she's just like all the other candidates and miles away from the vast majority of Labour supporters. Not to say that an Oxbridge candidate can't represent a non-Oxbridge constituency, just that it forever cancels out any argument about who can represent the views of who.

Back to her policies, I'm not sure what they are, although when on the Marr show she was discussing public sector cuts with Iain Duncan Smith, Iain Duncan had said something along the lines of how up north public sector wages had squeezed out the private sector so factory owners were finding it difficult to employ quality staff at a price they could afford, with the subtext of if there were public sector cuts up north, the folk could easily find new employment, albeit with lower wages.

Diane Abbott's response was that in her constituency the public sector was the biggest employer, the last factory in Hackney closed twenty five years ago, if people in the public sector were made redundant they wouldn't be able to find new jobs and hence increase the burden on welfare.

To my jaundiced ears it sounded like her constituents are unemployable wastes of space who only have their jobs so that they don't show up in job seekers allowance claimant figures. And they might as well just be paid to dig holes and fill them in again, anything to keep them off the dole.

All the more reason to sack the lot of them.

That said, if what Diane said was correct, then maybe their pay could be cut drastically, as there's little private sector employment to compete with, and so Hackey could provide better value for money for the taxpayer than Iain Duncan Smith's northern masses.

But no no, Diane's line was they Hackney's public sector workers shouldn't face cuts as they're unemployable, almost as if giving them jobs is charity.

**UPDATE**
That's just Diane Abbott's portrayal of her Hackney public sector constituents. Me, I think they're probably very employable but are currently trapped in a public sector wage trap. They'd be able to fulfill their creative potential and self-actualisation far better in the private sector, but taking a hit on their wages is just too much.

Her point about the last factory in Hackney closing twenty five years ago show a contemptibly poor understanding of manufacturing. it doesn't take a factory to make a factory, give me a dozen lads, a few soldering irons and an RS Components catalog and I'll give you a world-leading cutting-edge manufacturing company.

The Spice Girls of Westminster

Sometime last week, I was moving house and doing trips in my Smart car from my empty hulk of a house to the storage place, and I heard Kirstie Allsopp on Radio4. She reminds me of a girl I used to know, confident, brazen, bubbly, conservative. Slightly sad eyes, with a child-like innocence. Anyhoo, it was some debate about how there were so few female cabinet ministers in the coalition government, and so few female MPs.

I'm paraphrasing, but Kirstie's point was that being an MP is a male game, there are plenty of women in politics, but they're mostly behind the scenes as lobbyists and researchers and officers, rather than chasing the fame game as MPs. Some sectors are dominated by women, publishing and lobbying she said.

Her point reminded me of some article I read in the Daily Record in 2007 about how grave diggers (a male profession) were paid more than primary school teachers (a female profession). Its not quite as simple as women get paid less than men, rather, people are free to take whichever jobs they want, women don't chose grave digging and so don't earn the same pay.

The thing is, the barriers stopping women from becoming grave diggers and men becoming primary school teachers are different to the barriers stopping women from becoming MPs.

Charlotte Gore has a neat take on the subject of female cabinet ministers.

You know what I’d love? I’d love to be able to write something along the lines of “every single woman who’s a minister or cabinet minister is there out of merit and ability to do the job, rather than tokenism. That matters more than the numbers.”

I’d love to be able to write that… but I’d have to be a fool to believe it. For it to be true, it’d have to be true of every single minister – not just the women. The exception that disproves it, quite obviously, is George Osborne, someone who’s as qualified to be Chancellor as I am.

To become a cabinet minister, you've got to not just personally choose to pursue that career, even if there are all women shortlists and special arrangements for childcare and family friendly flexible working hours, you've still got to get elected, persuading your constituents to vote for you over voting for the other candidates, male or female. Your ability to be elected has to outstrip the electability of your competitors.

Even then you've got to stick at it for more than one length of government.

And then to become a cabinet minister, as Charlotte points out, you've got to become part of the prime minister's trusted circle, you've got to be amongst his best mates. Its not enough to be great at your job, or to have carved out a specialist subject niche, like Housing or Defense. You've got to do that and be mates with the PM.

And clearly these things are difficult to do.

The one strategy that occurs to me, that might get more women into cabinet, rather than having diversity targets or all-women short lists, would be a girl-group, collaboration between the women PPCs or MPs, a gaggle if you will.

So, that in the same way that when Dave is PM you get George as Chancellor, or when Nick is PM you get Vince as Chancellor, you know that when you elect Diana, you get Mary and Florence too, or when you elect Geri, you get Victoria, Emma, Mel and Mel.

Its a brand thing. Some political brands ought to be WOMEN, not a pro-women party or policy, but something self-evidently dominated by women.

Hmm, maybe some folk already do this.

On public spending

This morning I went to the shops to get some coffee, I didn't have quite enough change, so I had to use my credit card, and sadly there's a minimum spend on credit cards, so I had to buy some more stuff. Its a shame cos I'm trying to save my pennies at the moment, with being unemployed and everything.

Anyhoo, over on the BBC website there's a story about how Charles Moore refused to pay his TV licence as a protest against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's Sachsgate phonecall.

He went on: "The question was, how to protest. Normally if you don't like a service or a political party, you can at least withdraw your custom and choose another. With the BBC, there is no such option.

"So disobedience seemed the logical response... when my licence fee came up for renewal, I would pay the sum instead to Help the Aged, out of respect for Andrew Sachs. Until Ross was sacked, I would keep my television and go on watching it."

Sadly this sort of thing is forbidden, c'est interdit, and Mr Moore was fined £262.

Its a similar thing with public spending and taxes. Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers Alliance made a similar point the other day in an article on ConservativeHome

Councils are at best semi-accountable at the moment. Every year, or three or even four years I get a vote on who my councillor is. Even then, many of their policies are not decided by elected councillors. In between elections, I am legally compelled at the threat of prosecution to hand over as much money as they demand.

Compare this to private business. Every time I go shopping, I take part in a referendum on which supplier I give my money too. Even better, it is a referendum of a population of one – me. At any time, if I get a dodgy product, poor customer service or an unreasonable price hike, I am free to withdraw my business from any one of the thousands of different companies I deal with in my day to day life. I don’t get outvoted by others, and if I choose to reject Heinz beans as far too expensive, they cannot serve me with court papers demanding I hand them money regardless.

Does Mr Myers still think that Kensington & Chelsea is more accountable than a private business?

This is the really good reason why councils should be more transparent than private companies: if voters are only given a choice about their council service once every year or more, then they deserve as much information as possible to inform that decision. If taxpayers are to be forced to hand over their money, then the very least councils can do in return is show us how it is spent.

I prefer to decide how to spend my own money (or when to save it) myself.

Yon Facebook group 'Tories have no MANDATE to rule Scotland' and their hypothetical counterpart group, 'Labour have no MANDATE to rule England', it all comes down to the same thing, how aligned are you with the UK's political system.

If the party you voted for doesn't form the government,
do they have any right to spend your money?

Clearly under the current system, the answer is yes, they (the winners) have the right, can raise taxes (or lower them) as much as they decide, and them allocate resources in any way they see fit. Any protests against the current system comes down to this, you think your judgment of how to allocate resources is better than those who have been elected.

God knows what I'm trying to say here, probably something about how the government of the last 13 years has been trying to extract as much money as possible from our pockets, keeping them in power isn't going to change that policy.

If you think you could better allocate resources then electing a party that lets you keep more money in your pocket is the wisest course.

Pitchforks

Although Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have fled the capital to his home turf, the Labour government is still in place, in a manner of speaking Gordon Brown is still in Downing Street. Its a nice image, the thought of a mob, armed with pitchforks and burning torches, marching down Whitehall to Downing Street to oust the defeated leader.

So I almost attended a protest at the weekend, a hastily organised affair, that later I read about on Twitter. It was odd though, the mob with placards aloft didn't march on Labour, they marched on the Lib Dem HQ and then the Conservative HQ.

Sure, they were protesting for electoral reform, but it didn't quite make sense in my head. The people they were shouting at had only been elected the day before, yet already the mob were protesting. Had the mob somehow elected the wrong people? Already?

Back to Copenhagen, when tens of thousands of protestors descended on the environmental talks, tens of thousands of activists from all over the world. Did it make any difference to the handful of world leaders who were inside discussing what measures they were to take to tackle climate change? I doubt it.

If climate change is anthropogenic, then there's only a couple of countries responsible, the top five polluters responsible for 90% of emissions, all the other countries are essentially the same as the mob outside, posturing to no end.

Back to the protest mobs, I marched against the war in Iraq back in the day, but I can't march for electoral reform. Iraq was a binary issue, against the war or not. But electoral reform is a rich tapestry.

Personally, I think equalising constituency sizes is far more important than PR, STV, AV or FPTP. Others feel that PR is the issue worth breaking the stability of a nation for, STV has its merits.

But it's all burocracy, admin, red tape and paperwork. There are more important and urgent issues to address in the UK today. Electoral reform is merely a 'would be nice to have' issue. Jesus, how long did Labour spend trying to ban fox hunting?

Stuart Sharpe stuck a wee line at the end of his last blogpost which I feel is very profound:-

I would be fascinated to hear evidence that proportional voting systems directly contribute to improved social or economic outcomes in other countries.

The Tories have no mandate to rule Scotland

I've been invited to join a Facebook group entitled "Tories have no mandate to rule Scotland".

Does the government rule? Or does the government just govern and its either the people or the queen who rules.

Does the statement "Labour has no mandate to rule England" stand up as much as the former?

Supposing that ruling and governing amount to the same thing, and that somehow the Conservative party form a minority government, would cutting off Scotland's funding satisfy those who joined the Facebook group? It would sure help with reducing the deficit. But I doesn't see an independent Scotland getting a bailout from the EU, there's a long queue.

Anyhoo, the Westminster parliament is an English and Welsh affair, which has temporarily allowed the Scots and the northern Irish to join, to the mutual prosperity of all the UK nations. Its only fair that in this period of economic decline those who wish to be cast adrift are.

How about "The Tories have no mandate to rule Brent North"? Would that work?

So how did we do

A number of friendly bloggers and twitterers were standing in the election, lets have a quick look at what political upsets they caused.

Old Holborn (Ind)
Cambridge - 7th - 145 votes (0.3%)
Mark Wadsworth (UKIP)
Uxbridge & Ruislip - 5th - 1,234 (2.7%)
Martin Cullip (Libertarian)
Sutton and Cheam - 9th - 41 votes (0.1%)
Nic Coome (Libertarian)
Devizes - 7th - 141 votes (0.3%)
Anna Arrowsmith (LibDem)
Gravesham - 3rd - 6,293 votes (13.3%)

Fair dos to Mark Wadsworth and Anna Arrowsmith, for getting four digits, but they did have their parties' brands to draw people to the cause, so its kind of like cheating.

Gotta say, its all a bit pathetic for the Libertarians. I can just imagine Devil's Kitchen doing his own Downfall rant, for fucks sake 41 votes and 141 votes, I got more than that when I stood for president at Strathclyde University, twice, naked, with adverts that read "Don't just vote for him, Worship him".

But Old Holborn's 145 votes, that's complete pish too, he's an internet celebrity and maverick of the political blogging scene and he's barely rounded up the guys from the pub.

Its just a bit disappointing. Like there are some who'll say well done for taking party, for trying to make a difference, but that's far too generous considering the result.

Back to Strathclyde University 2000 and 2001, when I stood in the student union elections, the first time round I campaigned hard for weeks and secured 172 votes, the winner got around 8,000, the next years I stood in the elections again, but this time didn't bother to campaign, I just stayed in bed, and got 255 votes. Doing nothing was more successful than doing something, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Cashing in while they still can

God knows where I read it, but there was a thing about whats going down in Greece where civil servants get paid a huge lump sum when they retire, and they can retire from the age of 45, its all unsustainable and as a result of the government trying to do something about it, the country is on fire and dragging the European Union into the flames.

Anyhoo, elsewhere in the European Union, on the sunny shores of Camden, Jim Wintour, the Housing Director chap, has resigned from his £158,000 a year job. Tracy suggests three reasons:-

Much speculation as to why he quit:

A. He finally met and experienced first hand the gaggle of truly awful graspy, lying, devious so-called 'leading' tenant reps we have lurking about in Camden and thought 'what the fook get me out of here'.

B. He has taken the fall for a workforce that is a law unto itself.

C. He made the mistake of giving interviews to a local newspaper and admitted that the council was at fault over a matter to do with the housing of a local disabled woman who died in her council flat. This type of behaviour (displaying a degree of integrity) is wholly unacceptable when working for the 'firm' and will be punished accordingly.

I've heard differently, that he actually emailed out his reasons for leaving to all the council employees, that like in Greece, Jim Wintour heard that the powers that be were going to be tinkering with retirement packages, so he's jumped to maximise his pension.

However much is in his pension pot must dwarf the £158,000 he's currently on.

NHS cuts

I know its controversial, but I don't see anything wrong with cutting NHS budgets. Its not going to affect front line staff much, most people will barely notice.

I don't mean uniform cuts across the board, 10% off every department budget, just a couple of well placed drastic cuts. Here, look at this graph.

Can you envisage cutting GPs pay by 50%, so it has parity with MP's pay again? Same comparitive remuneration as they had before 2002?

There's about 36,000 GPs in the UK, so currently they get paid a total of about £4,500,000,000. The total NHS budget is around £102,000,000,000. So aye, cutting GP's pay by 50% would cut the NHS total budget by about 2%.

Maybe, this is a little heartless and before 2002 GPs were woefully underpaid, and its only now that they're paid as much as they're due.

Up until very recently I was working in a sandwich factory making sandwiches for minimum wage, I feel I was woefully underpaid for the job I was doing. Without sandwich makers such as myself thousands of office workers would starve, should I have been paid more?

Is Germany Gillian Duffy?

Melina Popova, a disenfranchised Easten European, has a piece in The Guardian. She's not a happy kitten.

Words fail me. Yesterday I stared alternately at my screen and keyboard in complete and utter paralysis, while inside I was raging. At one point I actually genuinely broke down in tears and great heaving sobs.

She thinks that Gillian Duffy is a bigot.

I wonder though, does she think that Austria, Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium are bigot nations? Or the UK as a whole? I ask because when the A8 nations (Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia) joined the European Union in 2004, the R5 nations (Austria, Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium) put in immigration controls to stop the Eastern Europeans flocking in ans swamping their labour markets. Even now six years later Germany and Austria have controls in place.

The UK already has a block on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. Whilst Melina is shedding tears cos of one Rochdale resident, does she shed any tears for all the Bulgarians and Romanians who are unable to come here?

This one time when I lived in Glasgow I was discussing immigration with a friend who's mother was foreign, she was all precious about it, until I pointed out that I trumped her by being a first generation immigrant coming from England to Scotland for work.

**UPDATE**
Brilliant, it turns out the original piece was a Livejournal posting here, and she actually mentions The Indelicates who are a band I follow on Twitter.

A sickly nation, unable to provide for their children

Channel4 have a neat websitey thing called ChoPORNot, where viewers are give a series of choices between two cards representing things that could be cut to reduce the £152,000,000,000 deficit.

Choices like Reduce disability benefit or not to renovate social housing.

A lot of the options are a bit, well, crap. Like axing GPs when actually giving thema pay cut might be less destructive (considering their pay tripled in the last ten years)

Anyhoo, a neat thing is that you can see the charts of which items most people have chosen to slash and which items most people have chosen not to cut, to 'cherish'. After 500 or so people have had a go on the website the list of things to cut is like this:

1. Military - Don't upgrade Trident. Stop subbing the subs...
2. Military - Withdraw from Iraq. Time to watch our own backs...
3. Religious and other community services - Stop supporting churches. What about their collections?
4. Economic affairs - Plan a bank raid. Reclaim bankers' money.
5. Broadcasting and Publishing services - Cancel all government advertising. Stop ads...
6. Military - Pull out of Afghanistan. Stop digging that hole...
7. Military - Cut navy spending. Waive the rules...
8. Education not definable by level - Learning and Life Skills Council? Who's heard of that?
9. Military - Clip the wings of the RAF
10. Executive and legislative organs, finacial affairs, external affairs - Cut back on government. No such thing as society...

The overiding message seems to be that we hate the military, we hate bankers and the government.

Contrast this we the items most cherished:-

1. Primary and Preprimary education - Shut primary schools. Increased illiteracy? So waht?
2. Social Exclusion - Stop all home help visits. Leave unwell alone...
3. Medical Services - Axe, slash, chop or cut 50% of A&Es...
4. Medical Services - Close 20 hospitals. Keep 'em waiting...
5. Primary and Preprimary education - Sack 2000 teachers. More friends for each classmate!
6. Old Age - Shiver their timbers! Cut winter fuel payments.
7. Secondary Education - We don't need no education... Cut 2000 teachers.
8. Transport - Close branch railways. Everyone's got a car...
9. Old Age - Cut state pensions. No more golden oldies...
10. Secondary Education - Shut 40 secondary schools. Don't teach 'em a lesson...

We love the NHS, schools and old people! Wooh.

Personally I'm divided, I thank we should pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but other than that the UK should have a strong and well-funded military. But on the other hand, the more right-wing libertarian in me reckons that the government should have little to do with education, health and social care, we she keep our taxes and invest in our own private health insurance, and we should fund our kid's education first hand from our own pockets.

Maybe its just Chop or Not's jaundiced view, that only the state can provide teachers and schools and hospitals and if not the state then these things would cease to exist. In real life, rather than closing 40 colleges or sacking 2,000 teachers, they'd just transfer to the private sector. The jobs would still be there, the potential for educating is still there, its just the state have abandoned that as one of their competencies.

Regardless, the state has demonstrated that it is unable to run its finances adequately enough to fund health, education and social care. It could almost be like the government is to the UK, what Greece is to the EU.

**UPDATE**
Just to clarify and ruminate, this one time at my last job in the soup room, I was asked how old I was, thirtyish, and if I had any kids "nope" and why not, at the time I didn't answer, but the answer would be that culturally I'm unwilling to have kids if I can't provide for them, that is I can't afford kids, I'm thousands of pounds in debt, and either on minimum wage or unemployed. To have kids I'd want to be able to pay for them, to pay for their toys and trinkets and to some degree pay for their education, since I can barely afford these things for myself, I refrain from spawning.

Its part of my self-sufficiency thing, like growing my own potatos or not drawing housing benefit.

Although somewhere out there its an enshrined right to have a family, to have kids, this isn't a free right, its a right that the state has to provide for, so I refrain from taking advantage of that right.

A little bit of me thinks that to have kids and expect the state to provide for them is as bad as living an unhealthy lifestyle and expecting the state to keep you alive. My health is, for the most part within my own hands, however the defence of the nation and upholding law and order, that's for the government.

Ashamed of being Labour not a one-off

I thought it could just be a one-off the other day when I discovered that despire there being no mention of it on his leaflet, that Brent North PPC Barry Gardiner is the Labour candidate, but chucking out a pile of rubbish from the kitchen, I find another of his leaflets from a few weeks ago, still with no mention of his Labour membership.


Its not even the Labour red colour scheme, just some weird mix of other party's colours, UKIP's purple, the Green's green and LibDem's yellow.

Having said that, there is a little bit of Red, and the death knell for Labour candidates, he's got a picture of himself with out-going Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Has he not read Guido? What kind of politician doesn't read Guido?

Opting out

This morning I was trying to think of example reasons for why you'd want to opt out of having your medical records in the NHS's database thing, and whilst I could come up with many theoretical hypotheses, the only concrete examples I could come up with was the possibility of your details being leaked or lost or left on a hard disk on a train along with a few hundred thousand other people's details.

Its not really that convincing, cos in such a case there would be a few hundred thousand other people in the same boat and there'd be a case for some kind of class act.

However, via Dizzy Thinks, we find that Greenwich Council are cross referencing their payrole records with council tax and housing records to see if any of their own staff owes them any money. They have to inform the staff that they're doing such a thing.

Its probably not quite what the council employees had in mind when they took up their jobs, that their employer would be seeking out new and exciting ways of extracting money from them.

So aye, at some point in the future, the NHS could decide to mine their records for anything that could be used to extract more money from you, which is why its wise to opt out.

How can Labour not win?

I could be a little late on this, but there was a big old fuss the other week general electionland after the first Leaders Debate where the LibDems got a bounce, became the most popular party and still ended up the third biggest party in parliament.

Folk were asking, or more like demonstrating how Labour could come third in the popular vote but still be the biggest party. The BBC's Election Seat Calculation proved its worth, but its missing something.

In the Euro elections the other years, UKIP came out of nowhere and trounced Labour, but they're nowhere to be seen in this General Election. Maybe they'll get some seats, just one or two, maybe they get a few more. Maybe the media has got it wrong, this isn't a three horse race, and we're got the rainbow of political parties and coalitions is going to be the only way forward from now on.

Anyhoo, here's the Election Seat Calculator showing how Labour could come fourth in the popular vote and still be the biggest party.


The 'Other' segement could easily contain a larger party like UKIP or the Greens, or one of those regional parties. If that's not clear evidence of the need for electoral reform, I dunno what is. Although in my own naive way, I reckon its just a case of balancing constituency sizes a wee bit, and just the Electoral Commission needing to get their act together.

Ashamed of something in Brent North

The letterbox in my new house fills up daily, never stuff for me, just junk mail, stuff for previous residents and those election leaflets.

I glance at the candidates, read what they have to offer, and chuck the leaflet in the bin. It wasn't until a few moment ago that I discovered my incumbent MP was Barry Gardiner, he's been the Labour MP round here since 1997.


Which is odd cos I thought he was standing as an independent, his leaflet says nothing about which party he belongs to.


Is he ashamed of being the Labour candidate?

Maybe it doesn't matter which party he belongs to, he's his own man, able to make his own choices in parliament. Its possible, but sadly this isn't the case. According to The Public Whip website, in the past 13 years, he's only voted against the whip 13 times, out of 2601 votes.

So, after supporting Labour policies in the House of Commons 99.5% of the time he's now trying to hide the fact that he's the Labour candidate

VoteMatch Trends

The jury's still out on how biased VoteMatch is. Its this website, you answers your questions and based on policies and your priorities it tells you which parety is your best match in teh general election.

After reading Mark Pack's piece about polling, I thought I have a look at how VoteMatch fares over time on Twitter, checking out which parties people are saying VoteMatch recommends for them.



Looks like Twitter folk like teh LibDems.

Why's petrol expensive?

The BBC have a nice graphic to cover the story of petrol reaching a new high


So, fuel duty is about half of the price. Bear in mind that Fuel Duty is entirely within the control of the British government. Whilst the wholesale cost is at the mercy of OPEC and the dollar/sterling exchange rate, the majority of the high price is because of the government.

At any moment they could cut fuel duty if only the government didn't pish so much money up the wall. They get £26,000,000,000 from fuel duty, about 6% of the £400,000,000,000 total estimated tax receipts for 2010.

Bah.