Debauching the Civil Service

I have just come across this advertisement for the post of Ministerial Media Visits Coordinator:

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is looking for a talented IO to join our busy and friendly national press office. A proactive and creative communicator, you will come up with ideas for newsworthy ministerial visits and know how to sell them into the media.

So deep rooted has the culture of spin and obfuscation become that they do not even bother to hide what they are doing to the Civil Service.

Instead of coming up with ideas for "newsworthy ministerial visits" would it not be more to the point for the minister to visit the places he needs to in order to do the job properly.

And instead of choosing to "sell them into the media", how about just briefing the media where the minister will be, when and for what purpose.

These people deserve nothing but our contempt.

Gordon - Your Fired

£2.7 billion more national debt simply to save your political skin?

10p tax solutions

And so the government has finally settled on a solution to the 10p tax mess. Apart from the typically wordy statement and usual Labour guff about how great they are, they have surely settled on the simplest solution. But, by simply raising the tax free allowance they have saddled the nation with another £2.7 billion of debt. A drop in the £600 billion ocean of debt we already have but one would have thought we should be reducing it, not extending yet again.

Anyway, Labour will think this solves all their problems but they just do not get it.

Proposals for a Citizen's Pension

The vexed issue of pension provision and social care have raised their ugly heads again so how about a suggestion which concentrates on the state pension system. After all the state pension should be used to pay for retirement in good health and bad.

Currently, the state pays the in year state pension bill of those at pensionable age and above from current taxation. In effect this signs the government up for eternity to a bill that it will increasingly find difficult to meet as we live longer in old age.

The primary weakness of this system is that the government cannot really control the costs of state pensions without directly affecting the income of pensioners - an incendiary political issue. The other weakness is that recipients of state pensions continually fail to make the connection between personal saving and responsibility with their own retirement costs and standard of living. After all, one of the major
headaches of the government is to get people to put more of their own money in savings as opposed to smoking it or drinking it away.

The solution - or a suggestion at least - is that the government stops paying the money to state pensioners at pensionable age but gives them the money as pension contributions throughout their lives making it almost the same as a private pension. Therefore, from the age of 18 or perhaps 21, each citizen receives a flat monthly payment that must be deposited into a pension plan.

The benefits of this system are that the government can more easily control pension costs free from the contention that reducing pensioners' income brings. It also allows each citizen to know how much they have in pension savings today rather than hang out for a future promise of a weekly payment that might be radically reduced or not depending on the whim of the government and the prosperity of the nation. But finally and most importantly, the individual citizen gains more control over their own pension saving and can top up this pension as they would do for a normal private pension. At one stroke, pensions remain largely funded by the state but are put in the control of the citizen. And I would call this the citizen's pension.

Job searches should be easy

Why is it that online jobs sites have sections for administration, construction, banking, consultancy, media, sales and the like but no sections for interesting, fun, stimulating and rewarding? Job seekers could save themselves from an age of keyboard bashing if they could only filter out the jobs nobody really wants or the careers it is advisable to have a lobotomy for. You would have thought those IT boffins would have sorted this one out by now, wouldn't you?

The City Salute with Princes William and Harry

Some things the BBC does extremely well and tonight's coverage of "The City Salute with Princes William and Harry" was no exception. Then again, when it comes to coverage of royal and military ceremonial events they have always done well. If anyone missed it preferring instead the Soap Awards on the other side then I think you have missed out.

Flanked by members of all three services, many of them injured in recent operations, the two princes surveyed the event with its customary music, marching and fly pasts. The whole event was compered by Jeremy Clarkson, a friend of the Armed Forces and supporter of Help for Heroes, the newly created charity that supports rehabilitation services.

Many of us understand in basic terms what service personnel do but those that have not served themselves cannot understand its exact nature and the truly exceptional demands of service life, especially at the sharp end. It was therefore pleasing to see Ross Kemp, another friend of the Armed Forces, quoting Field Marshal Slim's words about the soldier.

Not only a soldier's officer, he was arguably the most accomplished military leader of the Second World War. But he is not so well known as figures like Montgomery partly because he was less politically motivated but also because his campaign took place in Asia.

SACRIFICE, he recognised as the primary characteristic of the British soldier but less well know is his GENTLENESS. But these are the hallmarks of the British soldier and we do not always recognise it. As Ross Kemp concluded to the audience both in the City and on television in his own words: "It is your army and on it much more yet might depend".

The Band of HM Royal Marines then treated the crowds and the precision of their drum work was exceptional. An exemplary demonstration of attention to detail so important to any military unit. They were all there and even the Household Cavalry Regiment showed us the contrast between the old of the ceremonial horse and the new of the
operational recce vehicle.

The live events were interspersed with film excerpts from operational theatres but the especial focus was on highlighting the sacrifice that Bill Slim mentioned so much in his writing and that Ross Kemp referred to in his reading.

The Lord Mayor of London and his entourage completed the affair with a call for three cheers for all members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces AND their families. Quite right too.

Many will say they deserve no more recognition than anyone else for just doing their job, after all they all volunteered did they not. Well yes, and also no. That is just it. It is because they are all volunteers that their sacrifice is all the more special and worth recognition. They are a credit to this faltering, fracturing and uncertain nation of ours.

Ship of State in good hands

I have the utmost confidence in Gordon Brown's ability to steer the Ship of State

through present storms. How about you?

Police, laziness and drugs

Every now and then some innocuous event plays itself out in front of you and is immediately recognisable as illustrative of much bigger things. Today, reading a book for a while in a well known London park, one such event took place that made me sit up and think: why is it that the police consider it a good idea to drive their cars, emblazoned with the motto "making for a safer London", through a London park crammed with people?

Time and again these cars (there were more than one) drove through the park and even at this stage I was thinking: 'why don't these people get out and walk, at least that way they would appear a little more engaged with the public?'

I did not think much more of this until one of these cars then proceeded to drive onto the grass and park under a tree not 10 meters away from me and a group of students. The policemen then got out and asked an astonishing question to the students: "have you been smoking marijuana?"

Unsurprisingly, they said no - top quality interrogation - and the policemen sheepishly wished them the best for the rest of the afternoon and got back in their motor and drove off. What an insipid, lazy an ineffectual example of the nation's finest.

Too lazy and thick to patrol on foot; too lazy, in fact, to park on the tarmac, preferring to save their little feet a walk of not more than 30 meters; and too timid to search them for drugs if they thought that was what they were up to (I hasten to add that they were all white so fear of being branded racist cannot have been the reason).

No wonder the public seems to hold them in so little regard and no wonder that thugs treat them and their authority with contempt.

But what then capped it all was the conversation of the students after they had gone: one of them describing with much mirth how his father mistakenly thought he had been binge drinking one night earlier that week when in fact he had been doing some sort of drug.

So, we have police too thick to engage with the public on their feet, too lazy to get out of their cars until they absolutely have to, too timid to search people for drugs if they suspect them of being in possession and we have a public that thinks nothing of taking drugs and talking about it in public as if it is some jape.

I am not an old fart but a more revealing sketch depicting some of what is wrong with modern Britain would be hard to find.

And on a quick tangent, I still find it despicable that our politicians have our service personnel risking their lives and killing in the war against drugs in Afghanistan when at home they can do nothing more than avoid the demonstrable fact that those who demand and take drugs are the ones perpetuating the trade.

Gordon Brown on the Andrew Marr Show

Just been listening to Gordon Brown on the Andrew Marr program. Not too bad a performance but I am afraid it did not offer much to convince of a significant revival (this does not mean they will definitely lose the next election).

One thing that struck me was his comment that we have a complex tax system. Of course we do, and what have you done to simplify it? Nothing, except remove the 10p tax rate but in your recent climbdown you proceeded to insert complexity in other areas: more tax credits and winter heating allowances.

This is a simple point. We now have one of the longest tax code books in the world and Gordon Brown is the architect of this system. Whatever he says now cannot disguise the fact that it is not only hindering the economy but making it more difficult for people to understand just what their liability is. And that is the way he likes it. After all, in his opinion it seems, all money belongs to the state and we get back what he deigns to give us.

Reasons for Labour misfortune

Today is the day that the Labour post mortem begins. Well, it began sometime ago when it was clear that they were in for a torrid time in the local elections but now that the votes have been counted not even the formidable, if delusional, Labour machine can explain the bad showing away.

And the question that they will be asking themselves is why? Why have the voters deserted them to give the Conservatives 45% of the vote and Labour only 24% behind the Liberal Democrats on 25%?

Some will blame it on Gordon, others on mid-term blues, maybe the legacy of Blair still hovers with the menace Thatcher brought for Major. Perhaps the poor showing was about the 10p rate or maybe it is just what happens when any party has been in power for so long?

But like every turn of fortune, there is usually a myriad of reasons which are clearly identifiable but utterly unquantifiable.

Here are some suggestions: high tax, growing welfarism, uncontrolled immigration, party funding scandals, the client state, poor education, 42 day detention, the surveillance culture, the EU Reform Treaty, high indebtedness (private and public) and many more.

All these issues are being dealt with in a way redolent of the Left's ideology but it seems the public mood, contrary to the orthodoxy of the media and establishment, wishes them to be dealt with in a way more in tune with the Right's philosophy.

Is this a vote for the Right or is it a demonstration of unhappiness with Labour. What is certain is that each faction will explain the shift in electoral fortune through the prism of their own ideology. And in this we should be pleased. Just maybe we can begin to hear from the politicians what we know to be the fundamental dividing lines between the Left and the Right rather than the insipid colonisation of the mythical centre ground that endears no-one.

Time will tell.

Why is a 45% electoral turnout good?

Just heard that the turnout for the London Mayoral election was 45% and everyone is reporting it as a triumph. Well, a record showing at least but I hardly think we should take this figure as an indication of our commitment to the democratic process.

It is not as if there was a lack of choice. After all, we could have chosen from such options as the Left List, the Greens, BNP (gained a seat in the London Assembly I hear) and UKIP, not to mention the safer options of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and several more.

Boris has now been declared the winner of the 2008 London Mayoral election and there seems to be a slight lift in the mood of the country - at least as portrayed by the media, however, the stats indicate what could have been if everyone had turned out and voted another way.

Out of an electorate of 5,419,913 there were 2,456,990 papers counted. This is the turnout of 45.33% hailed as a record turnout which leaves a staggering 2,962,923 voters that did not turn out. If we note that Boris got 1,043,761 first choice votes at 42.48% of the turnout, then if all those that did not bother had done so and voted for the Green candidate, Sian Berry, or the BNP candidate, Richard Barnbrook, then they would have got more than 50% of the first choice vote and would now be getting ready to be sworn in as London Mayor.

Just thought some might find these stats interesting. I suppose some might be thankful that so many people just cannot be bothered to stumble several hundred yards from their front door and mark a cross in a little box. There are so many more important things to do, are there not?

Oh, and one last stat. Boris' first choice votes comprised 19% of the London electorate.

The Boris and Cameron Show

What a lovely picture this is of the two triumphant Tories. But my wonder is just who is holding whose hand?

It will be interesting to see how this new power balance plays out, not in the sense that Boris may drop a clanger but that he is now the Conservative politician with the most political power and the only one to hold serious office - if the office of London Mayor is serious, that is.

We have got used to the taunts of the Left saying that Boris is a fool and a jester but they underestimate him if they think he is thick as one unbelievable Labour video stated in no uncertain terms through the medium of song.

Who would have thought a year ago that Boris would be the number one or number two Tory a year hence. Well, now he is and we should observe with interest how the relationship with Cameron develops.

P.S. Has anyone noticed how we tend to refer to Boris by his first name and Cameron by his second? Is this significant?

Not Labour's Fault

It seems that they just do not get it. Yvette Cooper on Channel 4 News still pedals the myth that their only mistake has been the 10p tax fiasco. The main reasons, according to them, for their electoral failures this time are: mid-term blues and the international economic situation.

Of course it cannot have anything to do with Gordon Brown's own standing in the country, increasing taxation, increasing national debt, the Brown sponsored private debt bubble, uncontrolled immigration, the EU Reform Treaty, crime, a fragmenting society and the rest of it.

And the last fantastic comment was that the Conservatives also benefited from the electorate's lack of scrutiny - how weak is that?

The spin machine has been hard at work only I think the public is beginning to rumble their shallow game.

Election Warnings

Already the commentators are extrapolating the local election results into a victory for the Conservative Party at the next general election. With about 44% of the vote going Tory and the Lib Dems - if you can believe it - their nearest rivals on about 25% of the vote it seems a done deal and we can all rejoice.

But let me be the first to sound a note of warning. I will be pleased if the Conservatives win the next election if only because it will mean that this mean, conceited and unpatriotic Labour lot will have been ejected from power. Such a crew of villains and idiots are a disgrace to the offices they hold and the dignity of our country. It cannot come soon enough.

However, the word of warning is this: the issues that we should judge any government on are the big, strategic issues of the day. I hope the Conservatives win the election but I hope even more that they have the courage to tackle these great issues head on and in line with conservative philosophy: Patriotism, nation, tradition, freedom, small state, law and order, strong institutions and confidence in our country and people.

If they buckle from this as I fear they may, we will be no better off and the change of government will be only cosmetic.

They must address the growing power of the EU, the effect of rampant and uncontrolled immigration, inward colonisation by hostile peoples, politicised education, increasing taxation, the burgeoning welfare and client state and the intrusion of the state in our private business.

You have been warned.