CentreRight

Polly Toynbee is wrong, public sector staff are better paid

Yesterday, Polly Toynbee used her column in the Guardian to attack the idea that staff in the public sector are now better paid than those in private sector.  In that piece, she accused us of "using conveniently deceptive figures" because we cite the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings which shows public sector staff are paid significantly more.

We've responded on Comment Is Free today setting out the problems with her argument, concluding that:

"The evidence for Toynbee's argument that the gap between average public and private sector pay is down to a great mass of menial workers having been outsourced to the private sector appears extremely dubious. Her case relies upon misleading comparisons between very different jobs and an, at times, extremely selective reading of the evidence.

The true gap in remuneration between the public and private sectors may be even larger than the ONS statistics suggest. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimate that "relatively generous public sector pensions mean that a public sector worker is on average around 12% better off than a private sector worker on the same basic salary.

There are a number of factors that have contributed to rewards in the public sector leaving those in the private sector behind. Public sector staff are more heavily unionised, public sector organisations are run by politicians who aren't spending their own money, as many private sector managers are. Shareholders, who can take their money elsewhere, are better able to exert control than taxpayers, who sometimes aren't even able to find out how much the most senior staff are paid. Quite how the gap in remuneration between the public and private sectors arose and how it might be tackled is open to question. What is clear though is that the gap is far from a myth."

The Conservatives need to keep their promise to cut inheritance tax

By Mark Wallace, TaxPayers' Alliance Campaign Director

When Ken Clarke joined the Shadow Cabinet he suggested that the Conservative Party's flagship pledge to cut Inheritance Tax was now an aspiration, now Neil O’Brien of Policy Exchange makes the case that the pledge should be dropped in the Daily Telegraph today. Neil argues – correctly – that the Tories must prove to the public that they appreciate how tough times are, and demonstrate their willingness to be bold and even controversial in order to balance the books at the Treasury. However, his conclusion that abandoning the pledge to all but abolish Inheritance Tax is the way to do that is deeply flawed.

George Osborne struck the right note at the start of the week when he began explaining to the public that some very difficult decisions need to be made in coming years, both as a product of the recession and of Gordon Brown’s irresponsible and wasteful borrowing binge. As well as being factually correct, this is politically the right tack to take, too – the public know things are bad and they will respect politicians who come clean with them and are brave enough to take really tough decisions.

Is it really a brave or tough decision to tax people more, though? The answer is no. Gordon Brown has demonstrated in the last 12 years beyond any doubt exactly how easy it is for a politician to slap the public time and again with higher taxes, whilst posturing as a generous leader by lavishing money on public spending. The public are sick of it. What would be really radical, and truly brave, would be to look at the other side of the equation and cut spending. What’s more, once the plunge was taken it would be popular and productive. 

Housing MPs in the Olympic Village

Jonathan wrote about the possibility of housing MPs in the Olympic Village back in April, after Cllr Ian McCord floated the idea with a petition on the Number Ten website.  As part of our response to the MPs' expenses scandal, at the TaxPayers' Alliance we've released a short research note going through some of the practical considerations around housing MPs in the Olympic Village.

Having government-owned apartments does seem a reasonable way of avoiding MPs profiting from their expenses, and all the recent scandals over things like flipping.  However, with investment budgets being slashed, the idea that we can't afford to build roads but can afford to build new homes for MPs would not sit well with the public.  Using the Olympic Village, which is being paid for by the taxpayer anyway, avoids that problems and provides a range of homes a short commute from central London:

For more details, see our research note.

Re: Greening the Blue

Radomir Tylecote makes the case for conservatives to embrace environmentalist policy in response to potential global warming.  He describes the attitudes of British conservative thinkers on this subject as “atrophied”.  Unfortunately, there are a number of distortions in his article which result in a failure to really engage with the conservative critique of the current direction of global warming policy, the direction that Radomir urges us to follow.

He argues that it is ironic that conservatives “scorn” requests from renewable energy firms for “better government support” as many of them are more sympathetic towards nuclear power, which also struggles without subsidy.  This isn’t really ironic, it is simply the result of the fact that nuclear power gets far less subsidy per KWh and generates far more useful power, as it is less volatile than wind in particular.

Renewables firms currently get over £50 for every Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) they sell and they get one of those for every megawatt of power they generate.  That is a massive subsidy, adding around 50% to their income, above the amount they’ll get from the market for actually selling the electricity (PDF).

Radomir thinks that nuclear has had “massive state subsidy”, but it has never enjoyed anything like the level of generosity currently being extended to renewables.  Despite that, nuclear power has supplied a substantial portion of our electricity demand for decades, something that renewables have never done.  Conservatives are right to be sceptical of sources of power that aren’t economical without the level of government support renewables currently receive, particularly given that it is vulnerable manufacturing industries and the poor who suffer most when prices rise.

Re: UKIP's flaw

JP,

I'm not particularly interested in a debate over the UKIP, but your case against pulling out of the European Union seems flawed.  This section is critical, as it is your empirical case that the EU will act against its economic interests and stop free trade between the EU and an independent UK:

"No, posturing against us would be the logical outcome of us pulling out.  Look at how they reacted to the Lisbon Treaty referenda.  Look at how they react to the Conservatives’ pulling out of the EPP.  Not conciliatory.  Not in their own economic interest."

In neither of those cases was there a significant economic interest at stake.  No one is going to lose their job because Barroso condemned the Conservatives leaving the EPP, or thanks to the eurocrats contempt for the views of Irish voters.

Of course, countries can act against their economic interests for the sake of some political goal.  However, if the UK were to leave, what would the political interest in attacking us be?

Our scepticism would no longer be a threat to ever greater union, and there would therefore no longer be a reason to punish it.  If they wanted us to return to the EU, the very worst thing the remaining EU members could do would be to lash out at the British public.

So your case, essentially, comes down to the idea that the remaining members would be stupid enough to lash out, in pride, at us, despite that being entirely counterproductive.  And, that they could sustain that position despite it adding to their already high levels of unemployment and making a lot of valuable voters poorer.

If you really think that the EU will act in that way.  I'm surprised you are willing to have anything to do with such an institution.  Surely that level of blind stupidity will also render them deaf to any calls for reform?

The Speaker resigns

It is good news that Michael Martin is going to resign.  His credibility was destroyed when he tried, in vain, to use taxpayers' money to prevent taxpayers discovering the details of MPs' expenses claims.  With the scale of the abuses uncovered by the Telegraph, it is now quite clear that was nothing more than a taxpayer funded cover up.  After that, there was never any chance that Michael Martin could lead the reforms needed to restore the reputation of parliament.  Douglas Carswell deserves huge credit for his strong and early stand on this issue.

There are now three things that need to happen:

1. MPs' can't assume that the resignation of the Speaker draws a line under this affair.  He bore a significant measure of responsibility but so do the MPs' who made the unethical claims in the first place.

2. His resignation has to be immediate, he can't get a big payoff and there can be no question of shuffling him on to the Lords.

3. The next Speaker needs to be someone committed to transparency and democratic accountability.  We can't just have a new face leading the same old attempts to hold back reform of the system.

The TPA has issued a statement.

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:

“Michael Martin has been an awful Speaker and his arrogance and incompetence have betrayed the interests of taxpayers and Parliament, so his resignation is welcome. He has allowed MPs to get away with outrageous expenses claims, and wasted taxpayers’ money on legal action to try to keep those expenses secret. His resignation should be immediate, he should get no payoff and he absolutely must not be elevated to the Lords. The next Speaker must have a commitment to full transparency and democratic accountability.”

Many, many MPs have been unethical in their expenses claims

"Melanchthon" has written a defence of MPs' extravagant expenses claims on the Platform.  His argument starts from the premise that MPs' do need to have some kind of provision for having two homes.  I'm not sure anyone disagrees with that, except when they don't attend Parliament for ideological reasons or live close enough to London that many of their constituents commute.

From that, he argues that we should, except in those cases where actual fraud has been committed, stop attacking MPs whose claims appear excessive because that's somehow just the way expenses work.  Apparently everyone claims for things that aren't necessary to do their job, so we should shut up and stop whining when politicians do the same with taxpayers' money.

Clearly, penny pinching could be taken too far.  But, no one is yet suggesting that MPs sleep in tents on the floor of Westminster Hall.  The basic standard that most people appear to be working to is that, just because the MPs are away from home, ordinary people shouldn't be expected to subsidise a lifestyle for their elected representatives that is significantly more luxurious than their own.  That isn't too much to ask.

For most people, around £700 is a pretty large amount to spend on a television and thousands of pounds is taking the piss.  As such, they find the idea that Shahid Malik submitted a claim for that offensive.  Equally, most people don't have moats and MPs' homes are supposed to be just that, not the kind of ambassador's residences that "Melanchthon" suggests they are.

Most companies aren't nearly as generous as "Melanchthon" pretends.  Certainly, at the TaxPayers' Alliance, it isn't seen as acceptable to claim your meals as expenses just because you happen to be on a work trip.  And it isn't just us, plenty of people from all walks of life have written into their newspapers making it clear that MPs are enjoying, at taxpayers expense, treatment ordinary people would never expect where they work.

Now we need to finally get all the details of MPs' expenses

Thanks to the Telegraph's devastating exposé, the cat is now completely out of the bag.  Serious action needs to be taken by the individual MPs and parties with excessive claims returned, some MPs may need to be fired if they have lost the authority they need to do their jobs and the system needs to be reformed so that similar scandals don't arise in future.

Before that, we need the record set straight.  The Telegraph shouldn't be the only source for this information and an official release of all the information the High Court ruled should be public is still absolutely necessary.  By continuing to delay the official release of the full details of the expenses claims, even after the Telegraph has printed the most embarassing secrets, the Commons authorities aren't doing any service to MPs.  Having everything out in the open might help to stem the collapse in the moral authority of Parliament.

It shouldn't just be the Telegraph, with access to a leak, who can sift through the details of MPs' expenses.  The newspaper has done an invaluable public service in breaking the story and putting an end to the Speaker's attempts to keep this information from ordinary people but people should be able to look at all the details in the record and make up their own mind, and the scrutiny of thousands of interested taxpayers might uncover issues that the Telegraph haven't discovered.

We've organised a petitition with freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke calling on the Commons authorities to release the information.  Go here to sign it.

The Budget is full of holes

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we've spent the day going through the Budget.  It's still early days yet but it is already clear that the rhetoric in Alistair Darling's speech - and even some of the figures presented in the report - don't remotely represent the reality of the position we're in.  We've found a number of critical problems with a Budget not even a day old:

• After the Pre-Budget Report, we exposed how - even adjusted for RPI inflation - the Government were planning to borrow twice the amount borrowed during the First World War.  Even if we accept the new figures announced in the Budget as legitimate, borrowing is now set to be more than was borrowed during the Napoloeonic Wars, the First World War and the Second World War put together.  William Norton sets out the details.
• Ruth Lea points out that the growth projections that the Budget's borrowing estimates are based on are "simply not credible".  If those start to fall apart, even the dismal borrowing figures outlined by the Government will turn out to be far too optimistic.
• While the £15 billion of spending cuts announced by the Government is a welcome sign that they don't want to heap the entire burden of tackling the public finance crisis on the public, the savings might not be reliable.  Mike Denham discusses how there are a lot of similarities between the plans they're outlining and policies that, when tried as part of the Gershon review, actually increased spending.
• Equally, it doesn't look like they've honestly accounted for the cost of the banking bailout.  Mike Denham sets out how, while the Budget report might insist that it includes a high end estimate of the cost of the bailout, its estimate is actually "extraordinarily optimistic".  William Norton argues that the Treasury is hiding the full cost of responding to the financial crisis using exactly the same accounting tricks the banks have been accused of.
• Maria Fort exposes how the car scrappage scheme creates an exposure of up to £14 billion and will mostly be a transfer from ordinary Britons to the shareholders of foreign car companies.  I discussed how an academic study examining the record of attempts to create "green jobs" in Spain suggests the 400,000 green collar jobs that the Budget hopes to create will come at the cost of 880,000 jobs in the rest of the economy.
• As our initial response made clear, this Budget shows that ordinary people and the poor are going to pay for the huge debts announced in this Budget, people are going to face higher taxes on everything from driving to work to a pint at the end of the day.  Susie Squire argues that the new 50 per cent tax rate will send the worst possible message to those thinking about investing in Britain, drive a brain drain that will leave Britain much worse off and lose the Government money, according to estimates from the CEBR.  Finally, William Norton notes that, while the Treasury has now decided to treat shifting income into pensions as a tax dodge, the HMRC website explicitly advises people on how to make use of "salary sacrifice". 

There is some seriously bad news hidden in the small print of this Budget.

The TPA Green Calculator

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we've just released a new calculator that allows people to work out the amount they're paying in green taxes and regulations.  With the effects of so many taxes and regulations, like the Renewables Obligation and European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, hidden in prices hopefully this tool will shed some light on them and stop a political race to ever stealthier ways of imposing big costs on the public for policies that do little to achieve their stated objectives.

If you have a website of your own, there are lots of options to let other people know what they're paying.  You can link to the calculator with text or an image, embed the calculator itself on your site, or embed or link to your own results.  Those options are all available from the calculator's results page.

What if we only had 100 MPs?

Over on the Platform, John Leonard argues that calls to reduce the number of MPs are misplaced.  In particular he responds to Iain Martin making one of the more radical calls so far to reduce the number of MPs.  Martin calls for the number to fall to around 400.

It seems worth looking a little into the analytical issues raised by cutting the number of MPs or maintaining our present number of representatives.  There are a number of questions to consider in assessing the number of MPs that is appropriate.

Which thirty million?

I think Peter is quite right to highlight Jonathan Porritt's renewed call to cut the British population.  There is a horrible sense that such a view is becoming ensconced as another unquestioned prejudice of our tranzi elite.  After all, the Times couldn't even find someone in their address book of the influential and powerful to actually criticise Porritt's position.  The closest we got was George Monbiot arguing the toss over whether people or prosperity are the greater problem.  No one was given a chance, or took the chance, to stand up for prosperous human beings as a good thing.

All this shows the ideological roots of the modern environmentalist movement.  The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth are canonical works for that movement, arguing that the incredible achievements of free market capitalism in doubling incomes every generation alongside massive increases in population cannot continue and will run into inevitable and awful Malthusian blocks.  Those books were proved dramatically wrong and the author, Paul Ehrlich, of the Population Bomb lost an expensive bet on his theory.  In light of that, the theory has been reinvented.  Now the problem isn't that we can't keep increasing human prosperity and population but that we can, and that is a bad thing as global warming provides Gaia with a means to take revenge.

What these theories always underestimate is human potential.  Just as Malthus was proved wrong by the unexpected boon of the Industrial Revolution, technological progress has and can overcome other natural limits to our prosperity.  That's where Jonathan Porritt's limit of thirty million comes in.  In among that sea of people who wouldn't exist if Mr. Porritt had his way, it is entirely probable that there will be those who might otherwise prove vital to our coping with whatever challenges nature throws our way.

Galloway banned from Canada

As reported earlier this week, George Galloway's disgusting support for Hamas - he boasts about financing a group most Western countries have rightly designated as terrorist - has got him banned from Canada.  The AFP reported at the time:

"Galloway said he personally would be donating three cars and 25,000 pounds (35,000 dollars) to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya as he dared the West to try to prosecute him for aiding what it considers a terror group."

There are also other grounds for Canada's ban, such as his calling for a coup against the Egyptian government:

"So I call, in conclusion, on the great people of Egypt, on the heroic armed forces of Egypt, and the heroic army of Egypt of 1973, to rise up and sweep away this tyrant Mubarak."

Given the conditions set down in Canada's Immigration Act, reported in the Guardian, that's pretty clearly the kind of breach that makes Galloway inadmissable.  The Canadian Government refused to make an exception for someone who had breached rules designed to protect Canadians' security.

That is why this is so different to the case of Geert Wilders.  In that case, the Government actively stepped in because the "Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK".  That case was about freedom of speech.  Mr. Wilders was banned not because he was inciting or commiting violence, however objectionable his positions there is no allegation he has done anything of the sort.  It also doesn't really make sense to suppose that he posed a public order threat because his supporters might go on the rampage; he was set to speak in the fairly civil House of Lords.  He was banned because his opponents do not respect his right to freely express his views and might cause trouble as a result, the British Government cravenly gave official support to their attempts at censorship.

Galloway's facile case that he too is being censored is undermined further by the fact that he supported the ban on Geert Wilders entering the UK:

Hate Education in the Palestinian territories since Annapolis

Today the TaxPayers’ Alliance has released a new study looking into British aid spending in the Palestinian territories and what that money supports.  We’ll be launching the report, along with versions in German, French, Italian, Swedish and Slovakian, in Brussels later this week as a lot of the aid goes through the European Union, as this is taxpayers’ money and it is time this issue moved up the policy agenda.

In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, both sides pledged to seek a two state solution to the conflict.  Since then we’ve had the conflict in Gaza.  It should be very clear that negotiations are not the only critical step in obtaining peace in the region, as they are often made out to be.

Even the best treaty will quickly be rendered worthless if the populations of Israel and the Palestinian territories don’t reject the cries of those who attack any peace deal as an unnecessary compromise.  Particularly important are the 42 per cent of the Palestinian population who are under 15.  That huge young generation’s attitudes will be critical to whether or not a stable peace can be achieved.

There are obviously plenty of reasons for Israelis and Palestinians to hate each other.  The same is true of the populations involved in most protracted conflicts.  However, it is vital that everything possible is done to minimise that hatred.

Unfortunately, the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza do nothing of the sort.  On television and radio, in newspapers and even in school books the Palestinians are encouraged to see an ongoing violent struggle as preferable to a peaceful compromise.

Regulation and the financial crisis

Eamonn Butler recently wrote an article for the Times arguing that regulation's role in creating the financial crisis has been underappreciated.  Chris Dillow has responded arguing that, as banking crises have been a feature of economic life since the Industrial Revolution, this is a bit of a red herring.

The problem with the argument Chris puts forward is that he is conflating the relatively high frequency of banking crises around the world with the systemic stability of the British financial system.  While banking crises may be fairly commonplace the modern British financial system has actually been quite stable.  The last serious deposit bank failures were in 1878 when the City of Glasgow Bank and the West of England & South Wales District Bank failed.  That means there is an important question to be asked about why a system that has been quite stable for more than a hundred years has failed on such a spectacular scale; we can't just put the financial crisis down to the inherent instability of the system and do need to work out what went wrong.

That's where a report I wrote last year comes in.  It put forward a comprehensive account of how inept regulation and poor policy choices drove the financial crisis.

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The Royal Mail

The main Conservative criticism of the Government's plans for the Royal Mail should be similar to their criticism of its education plans a few years ago.  The Labour Party's back benches won't allow the full reform that is necessary and the watering down they are insisting on is limiting the gains for consumers and taxpayers.

As well as Jonathan Sheppard's excellent post on the Platform, I thought a post on the TaxPayers' Alliance blog by my colleague Ben Farrugia very effectively answers the criticism levelled by people like Daniel Kawczynski MP, that privatising the Royal Mail hurts the consumer interest.

Ben points out that, in countries with privatised postal services, even rural areas tend to enjoy far better standards of service than they do here:

"Nowhere has found a magic formula, but in both Germany and the Netherlands services improved following total privatisation and the end of direct Government involvement. In both countries a monopolistic provider remained (Deutsche Post in the former, TNT in the latter) following privatisation, just as it would here. But with a different set of incentives, efficiencies were found and innovation introduced. In Germany they have established a 'travelling post office' for the more quiet rural areas, travelling around a prescribed area and offering customers the services they enjoyed at their local branch, including some banking services right on their door step. 95 per cent of letters posted in Germany (to a German address) are delivered the next day. 99 per cent of all mail is delivered within two days. And that is all post, not just 'special delivery'. It is not cheaper, but considering the rises in UK stamps, it is not much more expensive either."

If reform could mean consumers can enjoy improved services and taxpayers can avoid having to write yet more subsidy cheques, it seems pretty clear that the Government's main failure is fudging the issue to sate the demands of their backbenchers.

The parade of murderous Hamas critters continues

Hamas television (Al Aqsa TV) programme Tomorrow's Pioneers has paraded a series of cuddly but angry characters before Palestinian children.  First there was Farfour the mouse, then Nahoul the bee, then Assoud the rabbit - who pledged to "finish off the Jews and eat them".  Now, there is Nassur the bear who discusses with the host, 11-year old Saraa, how they are ready to "sacrifice ourselves for our homeland!"

This is the kind of material that builds attitudes that make a long term peace in Israel-Palestine far more difficult.  Over 40 per cent of the Palestinian population are aged under 15 and this kind of hate education makes it far less likely that it will be possible to convince them, as they grow up, that peaceful compromise is preferable to an ongoing violent struggle.  Previous episodes, particularly the death of Farfour, centred around the idea it would be immoral to accept even Tel Aviv remaining a part of Israel.

While Britain doesn't donate directly to Hamas, there is plenty of similar - if less extreme - material on Palestinian Authority television and radio.  At exactly the same time as the Palestinian Authority leadership were negotiating for a two state solution at Annapolis their TV station was showing a map of Israel and Palestine all draped in the Palestinian Authority flag, building the idea that the Palestinian's objective should be the destruction of Israel rather than peaceful coexistence.  Equally, while we may not fund Hamas itself we pay for services in the Gaza strip that Hamas would otherwise be expected to provide (through the Temporary International Mechanism and its successor PEGASE).  That leaves more money in their budget to spend on things like the programme above.

We need to take responsibility as donors and put pressure on the Palestinian authorities to end this hate education.  Look out for a new TaxPayers' Alliance publication on this subject, coming out soon.

Re: Boris Johnson suspends green measures to protect small businesses

I think Tim is absolutely right about this:

"We need a serious and big picture statement from Greg Clark or even David Cameron himself on how they plan to reconcile their extraordinarily ambitious targets to cut the UK's carbon emissions with the number one priority of the British voter; a return to job-creating, income-enhancing economic growth."

As well as a speech, I think the Conservatives need to show that they are willing to scrap some of the more ineffective and economically destructive of Labour's environmental policies.

At the moment, a cocktail of policies are in place that pose a huge burden on employers. 21 per cent of the average industrial electricity bill is the result of climate change policies (PDF, 10.5.3). Manufacturing industries, and they still employed 3 million people in the UK at the start of 2008, are competing with one hand tied behind their back.

These policies aren't delivering a major reduction in emissions. Emissions are up 1.6 per cent between 1997 and 2006 as I've discussed in a previous post. Despite massive subsidies under the Renewables Obligation major energy companies are abandoning UK schemes and focussing on the American market. Even Greenpeace have condemned the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation for, among other things, contributing to the destruction of rainforests and have called for the scheme to be scrapped. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme has been such a farce that environmentalists are now calling for prices in that market to be fixed.

If the Conservatives start pledging to scrap some of these dreadful policies then notional commitments to environmental policy that doesn't imperil the prosperity of ordinary Britons will start to become more credible.

Re: Why does a few inches of snow bring the country to a standstill?

Jonathan asks why other cities don't shut down, the way London has, when it snows.

While I'm not going to discount a bit of good old fashioned bureaucratic incompetence, I think that the main cause is that these days are rare in most of Britain. Unlike in Moscow, Oslo or New York we don't get many days of snow each year, often we'll have none. When they do come along people, organisations and equipment in those cities are well prepared.

Research for the International Journal of Biometeorology showed that a similar phenomenon exists with respect to heat waves. Isolated heat waves can be incredibly lethal - in 2003 a heatwave killed nearly 15,000 people in France and over 2,000 here in the UK - but as they increase in frequency the number of deaths tends to fall rather than rise "because of adaptations: increased use of air conditioning, improved health care, and heightened public awareness of the biophysical impacts of heat exposure." That's one reason why Global Warming is unlikely to lead to a marked upsurge in heat-related mortality.

On the other hand, tens of thousands of Britons die each year thanks to the cold. Excess winter mortality in the winter of 2007-08 was 25,300. That figure has been fluctuating between twenty and fifty thousand since the seventies. That is far more than the 8,724 alcohol related deaths in 2007. Given the severity of this winter, it is quite likely that the number of deaths will be tragically high again. British rates of excess winter mortality are roughly double those in Scandinavian countries.

Our failure to use growing incomes in the last decade to adapt to the months of winter cold is a more telling failure than our infrastructure struggling to cope with weather we only experience once or twice a year. Adding 14% to domestic electricity bills and 3% to domestic gas bills through climate change policies (BERR's estimate, PDF, 10.5.3) and, thereby, making it more expensive for people to keep the thermostat up might have something to do with that.

What is the Conservative position on flights?

Just over a fortnight ago, I wrote that "we will need to have a reckoning over whether the Conservative Party is in favour of letting ordinary Britons enjoy a holiday abroad, or not."  Is the Conservative Party only against expansion at Heathrow, as Boris appeared to be, or against airport expansion in general, as Theresa Villiers appeared to be?

The water is even muddier today.  We've had Theresa Villiers writing, on this website, that:

"And what about the Government’s promise to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050? Despite rushing out yet another empty promise to reduce emissions from planes by 2050, the Government have come up with no concrete plan to explain how a 46 per cent increase in flights will be reconciled with the international fight against catastrophic climate change."

Then, the Times reports - from yesterday's debate:

"The Tory attempt to embarrass Labour during the debate backfired when Ms Villiers said during the opening exchanges: “We don’t rule out South East expansion.” Later, she added: “Nor are we against flying.”

This is Ms Villiers’s most explicit statement so far that the Conservatives would be prepared to see expansion in some parts of the South East."

Apparently the favoured airports for expansion are Luton, London City and Southend.  Emissions from a plane flying from Luton will have much the same impact on the climate as emissions from a flight from Heathrow.  It isn't just that the Conservative Party is more divided than its opposition to Heathrow suggests but that Theresa Villiers herself appears to be unsure whether an increase in international flights is acceptable.

If the Conservatives' opposition is to expansion at Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow then it appears almost calculated to prevent the UK having a hub airport.  We'll have lots of airport capacity from small airports that will fly to hubs at Frankfurt or Paris, then we'll rely on them to access the rest of the world.  That wouldn't be good for London's competitiveness or for ordinary Britons wanting to fly abroad conveniently and affordably.  However, at the same time it won't prevent emissions rising.

Re: No more Heathrow runways!

I've written about the third runway quite a lot on this website.  The Government made the right decision today in enabling the principal London airport to grow.  Heathrow is of vital economic performance and critical to Britons being able to see the world and come home again without too much fuss or expense.

What is, I think, under appreciated is that this debate is not simply two-sided.  You can't really understand the politics of a third runway at Heathrow until you realise there are really three broad groups in play:

Re: We sang God Save the Queen and rallied for peace against Hamas Islamist Terror

It looks like CentreRight was well represented at the End Hamas Terror rally.  Douglas gave a great speech.  I met Peter Cuthbertson in the crowd and plenty of the commenters in Rob Halfon's post appear to have been at the rally.  The event was well organised and very well attended.  Apart from some anti-Israel protesters causing trouble for the police, it was genuinely peaceful and included an appeal to text and make a donation to save lives in Israel and Gaza.

It was made clear at every step that the enemy was Hamas, which put Israel in a position where it had to act to defend its citizens.  This quote, from Golda Meir after the Six-Day War in 1967, sums it up: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."

Re: In praise of the Conservative Transport Team

First, I think I need to correct Tim's argument, which Charlie links to, that opposition to the third runway is "crucial in the battle to win many seats under Heathrow's flightpath".  The evidence for that statement is very weak.  Anthony Wells, at the excellent UKPollingReport blog, highlights the underlying figures in Greenpeace's poll on the subject: "Of the people who say it would make them less likely to vote Labour, the large majority say they would vote Conservative or Lib Dem tomorrow anyway. Too many people in questions like this are committed voters who are just using it to send a message, not people whose vote is actually up for grabs." 

Many voters under the Heathrow flightpath, in West London marginals, may dislike the idea of another runway but those who care enough to even think about changing their vote on that basis are already voting Tory or Lib Dem (and the Lib Dems also oppose the new runway).  On the other hand, there are Labour voters, in those very marginals, who are more committed to that party because of the possibility of a third runway: "Of the people who say a decision to build a third runway would make them more likely to vote Labour, the overwhelming majority are people who say they would vote Labour already."  Unless we really think that the Conservatives' primary objective in West London should be to defend their core vote, the policy isn't a political winner.

I've written, at length, before about the policy of putting in place a high speed rail link and blocking a new runway at Heathrow.  There is a huge range of reasons why the policy doesn't stack up:

High speed trains aren't a green panacea.  George Monbiot, who hates flying so much he compares it to child abuse, has said that high speed trains create more emissions if powered from conventional sources (which they would be in Britain).  Getting major new rail lines through the various stages of planning will take forever, Britain will suffer a shortage of capacity in the meantime.  Planes circling above London waiting for a landing slot aren't doing much to reduce emissions.  New rail lines will represent an extremely poor substitute for a new runway if and when they are completed.  You won't avoid the need to upset locals, and use compulsory purchase, as the line will need to be driven through hundreds of miles of countryside and into the major cities the lines are supposed to connect.

The question I'd ask Charlie, in particular, is why should anyone on the centre right be in favour of using regulations to block private industry spending £13.3 billion on a major infrastructure project, just so that £15.6 billion of taxpayers' money can be spent instead?

The conflict in Gaza

On Friday Charles Krauthammer wrote a superb article about the conflict in the Gaza strip for the Washington Post, the beggining is particularly telling:

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.

-- Associated Press, Dec. 27

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

If France were firing thousands of rockets and mortars, month after month, across the channel at Sussex how would we react?  I'd expect we would respond much the same way Israel has.  That might be why a spokesman for the Czech EU Presidency has said that they understand Israel's actions as "defensive, not offensive".

42% of the Palestinian population are under 15 years old.  Hamas hope that if they keep using the education system and media to radicalise the Palestinian population (supported by our money - PDF) then that huge young generation of Palestinians can be encouraged to fight a slow war of annihilation against Israel.  They are relying on international opinion preventing Israel from defending itself due to admirable, but misdirected, anger on behalf of the Palestinian people who suffer when Hamas succeed in getting them bombed.  As Krauthammer says: "For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians."