Category: National politics

It has come to my attention over the last few days that when teachers go on strike on 30th November and close your school, costing you a day’s holiday or a full day’s pay the teacher causing you this pain will only effectively lose half a day’s pay.

The national Ts and Cs for teachers in England and Wales, the so-called Burgundy book, specify that deductions should only be made at a rate of 1/365th. Section 3.2 reads as follows:

In addition to the provisions of Sections 4, 5 and 6, where authorised unpaid leave of absence or unauthorised absence (e.g. strike action) occurs deductions of salary shall be calculated at a daily or part-daily rate based on the day’s salary being 1/365th of a year for each day of the period of absence.

The upshot is that teachers are only really losing half a day’s pay. Teachers barely work for half of the days of the year. When they need training parents, outrageously, have to deal with so-called INSET days in term time. The 1/365th formula would be fair if teachers went on strike on a public holiday, on a weekend day or gave up a holiday day. Maybe they are planning the next teachers’ strike on Christmas day? But they don’t therefore they should be losing about 1/180th of their annual salary, twice as much as agreed.

Such pay deductions, as the recent New York labor posters clearly show, are legally treated as damages to reimburse the employer for the services lost due to withdrawal of labour. The loss to employers is a day of face time in front of children. This is worth at least twice as much as the deduction of 1/365th.

The number for non-teaching staff at 1/260th is also too generous. It does not account for annual leave and public holidays. Most public service workers get more than 20 days holiday plus 8 days public holiday so 28-40 days need to be lopped off the 260. Other public service workers are getting a 15% discount typically when they buy back a day of time when on strike.

The disparity between teaching and non-teaching staff shows how ludicrous this very expensive concession to teachers is. The school cleaner will be a lot worse off than the head on strike days.

During the last teacher’s strike over pensions on 30th June (another day’s holiday blown for the people who pay the bills) 850 Ealing teachers went on strike and the council saved £110K due to deductions from their pay. It should have been twice this much if the employers had negotiated a sensible set of Ts and Cs with this particular group of staff.

Overall the country will be paying out £100 millions for work not done on 30th November. Striking should be twice as expensive for teachers. They clearly like it too much at the current price.

Interesting piece on Coffee House blog yesterday.

It points out that the UK has the second fastest rate of growth of government expenditure in the EU. The left’s Plan B and too far, too fast rhetoric are simply nonsense.

The reason that we have the pain of cuts whilst public expenditure is growing is because we are having to pay more benefits and more interest on accumulating government debt. If the markets lost faith in George Osborne we would have to pay double to service our debts. Looking at this comparison there really is no room to increase public expenditure. Balls and co would have to visit massive new cuts on us with their Plan B.

We are hearing a lot about youth unemployment today after the latest ONS statistical release. The headline is 21.9% youth unemployment or 1.02 million people. These numbers are just statistical nonsense. If you are on unemployment make sure to review the texas unemployment benefits, so you can make sure to keep getting your benefits. They are also part of a decade long trend.

It is truly terrible that hundreds of thousands young people in this country are unemployed. I remember leaving school in 1980 and seeing many of my friends struggle to find jobs for years. I was lucky to work through my year off in 1980/1981 but still saw redundancies at the electronics business where I worked. I was doubly lucky to spend three years at university sheltering from the financial hardships of the early eighties.

The first thing that most people don’t know about these stats is that they are inflated by 40%, 286,000, by the “unemployed” youngsters who are in full-time education. The ONS bulletin says:

In accordance with international guidelines, people in full-time education are included in the youth unemployment estimates if they are looking for employment and are available to work. Excluding people in full-time education, there were 730,000 unemployed 16 to 24 year olds in the three months to September 2011, up 58,000 from the three months to June 2011. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds not in full-time education was 20.6 per cent of the economically active population, up 1.8 percentage points from the three months to June 2011.

The second thing that most people don’t know is that these numbers are 21.9% of non-students, not the total young population. It is not 1 in 5 young people who are unemployed as we keep being told. It is 1 in 5 of young people who are not in full-time education. The real youth unemployment rate is more like 12%. Not great but not quite as frightening as the almost 22% you might imagine.

This text from Eurostat explains:

Youth unemployment rates are generally much higher than unemployment rates for all ages. High youth unemployment rates do reflect the difficulties faced by young people in finding jobs. However, this does not necessarily mean that the group of unemployed persons aged between 15 and 24 is large because many young people are studying full-time and are therefore neither working nor looking for a job (so they are not part of the labour force which is used as the denominator for calculating the unemployment rate). For this reason, youth unemployment ratios use a slightly different concept: the unemployment ratio calculates the share of unemployed for the whole population.

It is really interesting to see how Eurostat’s 2010 youth unemployment rates translate in unemployment ratios. Suddenly countries such as France, Italy and Portugal which seem like disasters from a youth unemployment view look much better when you look at the ratio.

The third thing that most people don’t know is that youth unemployment on this measure bottomed out in 2001. Currently youth unemployment on this measure is 80% odd higher than its best. It has taken 10 years to get here.

You can see from the Eurostat figures that different approaches to education significantly change the youth unemployment ratio. It looks like in the UK we have a deep seated problem caused by our parlous education, education, education system. It isn’t the economy stupid. In other words youth unemployment looks to be a structural rather than a cyclical problem.

Tonight I am off to see the Borough Commander and his boss as a member of the Ealing Riots Scrutiny Review Panel. I am keen to hear at first hand the details of the police response to the Ealing riots and to have the opportunity to ask on your behalf the questions we want answered.

At the end of September I was in Richmond, Virignia visiting my American in-laws. I was taken to a shooting range by my father-in-law to shoot his Smith & Wesson 45 and 9 millimetre automatics. These are kept loaded in a gun safe in his bedroom. My father-in-law, like many Americans, cherishes his Second Amendment right to keep a gun for his self-defence. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The whole American gun thing is alien to us in Britain today and it comes at huge cost. The rate of gun deaths in the US is 30 times that in the UK, see here.

It is worth noting though that those that advocate the Second Amendment in the US cite the 1689 English Bill of Rights and the historical right of an Englishman to be able to have arms to defend himself as the historical source of their right. The Bill of Rights says:

That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.

In the UK we have a different history to the US and we have been content over the last 300 years or so since the Bill of Rights to allow the state to ever tighten its monopoly on the use of force. The riots in August have not caused us to question our choice and neither do I think it should. But, if the police are to hold a domestic monopoly on the use of force they must use it, and use it effectively, to keep us safe. I don’t keep a gun at home like my father-in-law. I don’t want to. But, I don’t want riots in my town that leave me and mine undefended. August must not be repeated.

During yesterday’s Lords debate on the NHS Elaine Murphy, Baroness Muphy, a crossbench peer talked emminently good sense:

Seldom have so many health policy folk fought so many pre-Bill skirmishes over what in the end has proved to be rather modest changes intended to preserve and improve the NHS based on the principles of the NHS constitution, and rarely have I received so much misinformed lobbying about a Bill. I hear that the Bill heralds the end of the NHS as we know it; I read that armies of evil capitalists from the United States and the Middle East are geared up to zoom into the UK like the hordes of Genghis Khan to hoover up our favourite hospitals and services. It is twaddle. In fact, this Bill contains no privatisation at all, it does not transfer any assets to the independent sector and, if we build on the contribution of the independent sector of 1 to 2 per cent per annum, we shall be doing quite well. We have been building on the expansion of existing policies that have been in place and developing slowly over the past 20 years and introducing a new level playing field for providers from all sectors.

As another noble Lord said, this is a vast improvement on favouring the independent sector treatment centres. I quite understand why that had to be done in the early days, but this puts everybody on a favourable, equal footing. It will sharpen NHS commissioners to get the quality of care improved and, crucially, will improve productivity, which has fallen quite catastrophically as investment has risen in the past decade. This Bill improves the contribution of clinicians to the planning and management of services and shifts a hospital system chained to central diktat towards a regulated emancipation to manage their own affairs. In my view, the most important aspect of this Bill is the introduction of the independent regulatory framework for providers, with the tools to promote a sharpening of competition and co-operation that will promote the kind of integrated care across primary community and specialist services that we all want.

Those of us who were at the meeting last night heard Sir David Nicholson repeat what the NHS Confederation has constantly stressed: that any delay will be profoundly depressing to the service, which now wants a clear steer and direction of travel. We have had two years of delay already. Almost all the features of this Bill are familiar to us: clinical commissioning; foundation trusts; a regulatory system; competition and collaboration between qualified providers; and patient choice. They have all gone before, so the new Bill builds on what has been learnt, especially by ensuring that competition is based on quality not price. There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding that we are basing these new proposals around price. That is absolutely not the case, and I would not support this Bill if it did.

Some people talk nostalgically about the demise of PCTs and SHAs, but the demise is in an orderly fashion, and as a former chair of a strategic health authority, I can only say “Hurrah”. In fact, clinical commissioning groups are what primary care trusts were supposed to be in the first place. For those who can recall primary care groups, those were also what clinical commissioning groups were meant to be. The difference is that we have a national framework to support and empower them that will not be diverted into the provider system.

Murphy is one of those rare creatures an experienced doctor and administrator. Maybe we should listen to her and not the wreckers who are playing politics and do not have a viable alternative.

I am not impressed with the 60 or so “medics” who have signed a letter in today’s Independent titled: “No one voted for the NHS to be privatised”. They are a motley crew of Labour activists, ridiculous luvvies and retired busy bodies. The real doctors who have signed the letter risk their reputations on such a nakedly political attack.

Just take the title for starters. No-one is privatising the NHS. Do the signatories of this letter suggest that we nationalise factories, power stations, mines and steelworks so that their scalpels can be produced entirely in the public sector? The health sector in the UK is now 10% of GDP. One tenth of ALL economic activity. There is always going to be a mix of providers and we really need to get the most efficient mix and not be doctrinaire about who provides what.

The “doctors” claiming that no-one voted for healthcare reform clearly did not read the Coalition party manifestos. The Tories said:

Give patients more choice

We understand the pressures the NHS faces, so we will increase health spending in real terms every year. But on its own this will not be enough to deliver the rising standards of care that people expect. We need to allow patients to choose the best care available, giving healthcare providers the incentives they need to drive up quality.

So we will give every patient the power to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards, within NHS prices. This includes independent, voluntary and community sector providers. We will make patients’ choices meaningful by:

• putting patients in charge of making decisions about their care, including control of their health records;
• spreading the use of the NHS tariff, so funding follows patients’ choices; and,
• making sure good performance is rewarded by implementing a payment by results system, improving quality.

We will strengthen the power of GPs as patients’ expert guides through the health system by:

• giving them the power to hold patients’ budgets and commission care on their behalf;
• linking their pay to the quality of their results; and,
• putting them in charge of commissioning local health services.

GP commissioning is there in black and white.

The LibDems approach was slightly different but implied equally radical change and the idea of any willing provider which was also in Labour’s own plans.

• Empowering local communities to improve health services through elected Local Health Boards, which will take over the role of Primary Care Trust boards in commissioning care for local people, working in co-operation with local councils. Over time, Local Health Boards should be able to take on greater responsibility for revenue and resources to allow local people to fund local services which need extra money.
• Giving Local Health Boards the freedom to commission services for local people from a range of different types of provider, including for example staff co-operatives, on the basis of a level playing field in any competitive tendering – ending any current bias in favour of private providers.

The language of privatisation which these ill-advised medics are indulging in is Socialist clap trap, language that even the Labour party did not use when it was in power. Furthermore, the idea that people didn’t vote for change in the NHS is unsustainable.

Some of the signatories are:

Carl Barat – musician with no medical experience

Russell Brand – potty-mouthed comedian with no medical experience

Dr Chris Burns-Cox – Labour supporting retired doctor

Julie Christie – lefty actress with no experience of medicine

Dr Amy Ford – Manchester law academic with no experience of medicine

Sadie Frost – actress and stuff and Hampstead Labour luvvie with no medical experience

Dr Katy Gardener – academic, social anthorpologist, member of Socialist Health Association with no medical experience

Ken Loach – left wing film maker with no medical experience

Caroline Lucas MP – Green party MP with no medical experience

David Morrissey – Labour supporting actor with no medical experience

Tony Robinson – Labour Luvvie actor/comedian/presenter with no medical experience, Labour party member and one-time NEC member

Dr Alex Scott-Samuel – academic who is active in Keeping Our NHS Public campaign group with no medical experience

Will Self – left wing writer with no medical experience

Dr Nigel Speight – retired doctor

Dr Norman Traub – Southend NHS Activist, retired doctor and serial letter/petition signer

Professor Cathy Warwick, General Secretary, Royal College of Midwives – union leader

Dr Tony Waterston – stood as Green party candidate in local elections Newcastle 2010

Dame Vivienne Westwood – self-promoter and dressmaker with no medical experience

Dr Patrick Zentler-Munro – retired letter/petition signer

Dr Pam Zinkin – retired doctor who spends her time signing petitions, including Islington Labour ones, she turned up to her first ever BMA meeting to vote against the NHS bill carrying Nye Bevan’s book ‘In Place of Fear’

Two GPs from the same Liverpool practice signed. I am sure they are OK GPs but they are only two NHS workers at the end of the day, highly paid £150K workers, but just foot soldiers!

It seems that Ealing council leader, Labour’s Julian Bell, is in favour of our 19th century system of household voter registration. The UK is the only Western democracy that does not have individual electoral registration (IER). He is not alone. Labour figures Harriet Harman and Tom Watson have also come out in favour of the existing system which many suspect allows men, especially men in ethnic communities, to control the votes of their entire households.

The UK’s independent Electoral Commission has been advocating IER since 2003. The previous Labour government initiated moves to IER and the current government is carefully moving this project forward. Belatedly the Left has realised that this may lose them some votes, see the New Statesman here.

All of a sudden Hattie and Co. are in favour of men’s right to vote on behalf of their entire household. Harriet Harman’s remarks are typically partisan and unhelpful. She said in closing last week’s Labour conference:

And the Lib Dems – to their eternal shame – are colluding with the Tories in changing the law on the electoral register. The plans the Tories have set out are going to push people off the electoral register – deny them their vote, deny them their voice. The numbers are going to be huge. The independent Electoral Commission warn that this could deny millions of people the right to vote. The Tories hope it will help them win the election. That is a shameful assault on people’s democratic rights and we will expose it and campaign against it. Parliament has no right to take away people’s right to vote. The government cannot be allowed to get away with it.

You would get no idea from these remarks that IER is entirely uncontroversial. If you spend any time reading the White Paper the current proposals are merely a speeding up of proposals made by the previous Labour government and endorsed by the independent Electoral Commission. Indeed the Electoral Commission issued the following statement to effectively rebut Harriet Harman the same day she spoke:

We support the introduction of IER as an important improvement in how people register to vote. It was initially proposed by the previous government and we are pleased that the current government has produced a White Paper on its introduction. We welcome the current debate on the issue and the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny to ensure IER is introduced in the best way possible.

We believe IER can be introduced in a way to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register is improved. We have however highlighted to Government and Parliament our concern that if the opt-out from registration currently proposed is introduced registration could drop towards election turn-out levels.

The News Statesman is more reasonable than Hattie. It does make a good point about compulsion:

The Electoral Commission calls it the “biggest change” to voting since the start of universal suffrage in 1928. What has attracted the attention of the independent Electoral Commission, and the ire of academics, pollsters, electoral registration officers, the Electoral Reform Society and, belatedly, the Labour Party, is the Conservative-led government’s proposal to switch from a system of household registration of voters, which is vulnerable to fraud and error, to a system of individual electoral registration (IER), in which, crucially, it will no longer be compulsory for members of the public to co-operate with electoral registration officers.

It does seem to me that there is a debate to be had about compulsion. In theory the current annual canvas is compulsory. In theory you can be fined £1,000 for not making a return. In practice this never, ever happens. I defy you to find a report of anyone being taken to court and fined by any council. The compulsion issue is a red herring I suspect. If we had compulsory voting then compulsory registration might be logical. But, we don’t have compulsory voting. I would argue that it will become normal for political activists to work to get potential voters on the register. What better way of re-connecting people with politics? The alternative is to have local authorities prosecuting people on a large scale for not registering, people who don’t want to vote in the first place. This will not improve our politics. Compulsion implies punishment.

The bottom line here is that Labour calculates that in many ethnic minority households the man of the house block votes Labour on behalf of the entire household and that IER will hinder this. Harman’s commitment to female emancipation comes second always to her commitment to the Labour party’s electoral chances. She believes always that the means justify the ends.

This clip from Newsnight last night shows columnist Peter Oborne casually calling an EU spokesman an idiot, causing him to walk out, before he goes on crucify ex FT editor Richard Lambert. He flings his pamphlet “Guilty Men” at Lambert. Lambert takes offence at the connotations of the phrase Guilty Men.

Throughout the nineties I worked in banking and read the FT. I totally lost patience with the FT’s state-loving, corporatist Europhilia. It is great to see Lambert called to account for being so epically wrong (which was the point of Oborne’s historical reference).

Ed Miliband has made the worst mistake of his career so far. He has set a cap on university tuition fees at exactly the same level that the Coalition was aiming for until the greedy, inefficient universities decided to grab as much as they could. I can’t believe that in one move he has vindicated the Coalition’s policy on university tuition fees and rescued the LibDems from oblivion. According to the Guardian:

Labour would cut top university fees to £6,000, says Ed Miliband

Only on Friday Graeme Archer in the Telegraph pointed out that a whole generation of middle class parents and children would be forever offside with the LibDems over their U-turn on tuition fees. Now Labour has itself u-turned and saved their bacon.

The hillarious part of the whole announcement is that the original Coalition plan envisaged that the maximum fees would be £6,000 except in exceptional circumstances. Here is the announcement that Vince Cable made in Parliament:

For the funding of universities, Lord Browne recommended-in a report that the then Labour Government endorsed, I think, in their manifesto-that there should be no cap on university fees and a specific proposal for a clawback mechanism that gave universities an incentive to introduce fees of up to a level of £15,000 a year. That was the report given to the Government. We have rejected those recommendations and proposed instead that we proceed as the statutory instrument describes. That involves the introduction of a fee cap of £6,000, rising to £9,000 in exceptional circumstances.

The reason that the £6,000 cap has been largely ignored by our liberal, leftie universities industry is that they are simply too greedy and inefficient to stop at £6,000 and on the whole think that they can charge the same as Oxford and Cambridge.

There is essentially no difference between all three main parties on tuition fees now. You can see how Miliband thought that he was showing how grown up Labour were in accepting that fees had to rise. I can’t help thinking that a little mystery in this area might have won them many 100,000s of LibDem votes. Beautiful.