Month: Sep 2009

This lunchtime Radio 4’s World at One show is leading on Baroness Scotland’s £5,000 fine for breaking the law she pushed through Parliament which demands that employers both check and copy their employees documents so that they can ensure that they are not employing illegal immigrants, see BBC story here.

Over the weekend the Sunday Times reported that Scotland has also been abusing the House of Lords expenses system to pilfer £170,000 from tax payers. Although she has lived for some time in Chiswick she makes out that she needs overnight allowances. The BBC isn’t using this story so either it does not stand up or they are colluding in keeping the heat off Scotland.

One of Scotland’s Labour predecessors as Attorney General was the notorious Hartley Shawcross of “we are the masters now” fame. Not for long you are not.

If you want some evidence of how far Labour has corrupted our civil service you only have to see this list of milestones produced by the Government Equalities Office. Apparently it records the milestones along the long road of progress towards equality for women.

The truly glaring omission is that our modern civil service is not allowed to name Margaret Thatcher, our first woman prime minister. You can imagine the exchange at the GEO when a lowly functionary presented the list to the Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP, Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal, Minister for Women, and Cabinet Minister for Equality.

Civil Servant: Are you happy with the list Minister?

Harriet Harman: Yes, I know it is hard to ignore the fact that we elected our first woman prime minister in 1979 but couldn’t we just not use her actual name?

Civil Servant: Yes, Minister.

You can understand that after 12 years in power that the civil service can’t help but genuflect in the face of Labour minister’s prejudices. But, in their desire to demonstrate progress on equality under New Labour the compilers of this list have forgotten to acknowledge another Margaret, Labour hero Margaret Bondfield, this country’s first woman cabinet minister. I guess a date back in 1929 does not fit the New Labour narrative so Bondfield gets airbrushed out too. You might think that Harman would remember her sister but maybe she hasn’t got much time for working class Christians.

The list gives us 27 milestones of which 12 (one a year) happened under New Labour. Right. Apparently the appointment of the thieving Baroness Uddin was some kind of advancement for women. The last three are anniversaries (arbitrarily 100th, 90th and 80th) which hilariously distort the list.

In GEO’s own words:

GEO is a small policy Department employing just over 100 staff (excluding our legal advisers based in HM Treasury Solicitor’s Department).

That is about 100 too many in my book I have to say. If you look at their accounts the 103 idiots employed by GEO last year cost us £70 million.

According to the FT today:

The shadow chancellor also pledged to set out plans before the election for a cull of civil servants on a scale that would “pleasantly surprise” taxpayers.

Culling the GEO wholesale would pleasantly surprise me.

The big financial news of the evening is that the FTSE 100 index has pushed through the psychologically important 5,000 barrier today. Great.

The FT says:

The gains took London’s blue-chip index to a close of 5,004.3, a gain of 1.15 per cent on the day, and 42.5 per cent above its low of six months ago. The last time the FTSE 100 closed above 5,000 was September 2008, when financial markets were in the grip of a steep sell-off following the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Excuse me if I don’t get too excited. If you look back a bit in time you will see how the Tories made us rich and Labour have made us poor.

Under the Tories £100 invested in the FTSE in 1984 would have been worth about £500 in 1997 when Labour was elected. After two Labour slumps equities are back where they were 12 years ago when Labour took over. Wow! Go away Labour!

I was not impressed with Hugh Orde’s performance on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday. Although he is a man of impressive achievements, not to mention a knight and OBE, in his role as shop steward for the police chiefs’ union he was drawing a false dividing line between accountability to politicians and operational control.

In last night’s Evening Standard Andrew Jenkins said pretty much all I would want to say about this issue. He is well worth reading:

The old line that politicians set policy and leave “operational matters” to the police is a worn cliché that can hardly stand the light of day. In the case of the Met it has come to mean politicians should give us the money and shut up.

No properly free society allows its police to operate as an elite corps detached from the political process.

The only thing I would disagree with Jenkins on is his denigrating of “community support officers paid for by borough rates” as “uninspiring”. Seeing our PCSOs out in all weathers around Ealing, typically energetic and motivated young people who want to get into the police, inspires me. On this issue Jenkins should literally get out more.

We don’t live in a police state. That is because you can chuck the rascals (politicians) out. It is not the police’s illusory operational independence that keeps us free, it is the ballot box. Police chiefs are just wrong on this one.

It was good to see David Cameron talking today about starting with Ministers, MPs and Parliament when it comes to restraining public expenditure next year when he becomes Prime Minister as I have no doubt he will. The BBC’s clip here has a good joke about LibDem eating habits.

You can read the whole speech here.

It looks like he might have taken some ideas from this blog. He talked about government cars and quoted the number of cars involved:

There are times when having a car to hand…

…which gets a minister to a certain place on time…

…is absolutely vital to our democratic process – for example, to make a vote in the House of Commons, or to meet a foreign dignitary or open a school.

But there is no need for 171 of these cars to be on hand for every government minister, whip – and indeed, myself.

You read it here first.

Cameron also talked about the cost of Parliament:

Last year, it cost £500 million to run Parliament.

That’s twice as much as it did in 1997.

And has it really got twice as good?

Again you read it here (well me but on ConservativeHome) first.

Cameron talks about taking 10% of Parliament’s costs out – I would go for 40%. But, all in all Cameron is going in the right direction. And pretty much following Boris Johnson’s advice of last week in the Telegraph.