CentreRight

Let's get a few things straight...

1) Daniel Finkelstein may be correct to think that there are believers in "punk tax cutting" - "cut taxes immediately whatever the economic circumstances, sacrifice any other policy objectives to tax cutting at all times, and treat the announcement of future big tax cuts as the only ideological test that matter" -  but I am not one of them.  Indeed, I have repeatedly said I thought the not-properly-funded tax cut promises of 2001 and 2005 were a mistake and until July this year I was arguing that we should not have a policy on tax, per se, at all!

2) Lord Lawson, Lord Lamont, and the Conservative Front Bench are entirely correct to suggest that monetary loosening and the use of "automatic fiscal stabilisers" are (at least in the first instance) the best way to deal with economic downturn.  Indeed, up until just over a year ago the orthodox position would have been that these were the best way to deal with any conceivable downturn in the developed world.

3) The only case I accept for more active fiscal policy than the use of automatic stabilisers relates to a twofold concern that (a) financial market problems in this downturn will lead to impaired ability to borrow; and (b) that the ability of the authorities to actually deliver monetary loosening will be limited by (i) the problems in financial markets meaning that interest rate cuts do not translate into cuts in market interest rates; and (ii) that the necessary cuts in interest rates will take them down to effectively zero, leaving nothing more for interest rate cuts to do and necessitating the resort to (largely untried) alternative methods of injecting money into the system, unless the monetary injection comes in a fiscal form (e.g. by cutting taxes and printing money to fund government expenditure). 

'I'm now so old, my pussy is haunted'

Stopped laughing yet?

Or still can't get enough of that, edgy, provocative, experimentalism that is modern British comedy?

This witless line would probably make older women in any audience feel insulted and uncomfortable.

It was said on BBC 2's show Mock The Week on Wednesday. And it was said about the Queen.

One of the comedians on the panel came out with this pearl of comic genius when asked to come up with something in response to 'What the Queen didn't Say in her Christmas Message.'

Coming during the Ross/Brand storm, it has gone by without so much as a whisper. But it shouldn't be allowed to. I would urge you strongly to complain.

As we at the New Culture Forum said this week, the cultural establishment has, over the past decades, been remarkably successful in setting a tone of public discourse which brands public feelings of disgust, anger or violation as simply the ravings of the provincial and reactionary.

Is Manuelgate the worst offence the BBC is guilty of?

Russell Brand, a BBC presenter, phoned Andrew Sachs, to brag about his alleged sexual exploits with Mr. Sachs granddaughter. Jonathan Ross, a BBC presenter, famous for being famous, goaded him on. Now Mr. Brand has been forced to resign and Mr. Ross has been suspended. This happened because two people complained to the BBC about comments made in their show, other complaints followed later.

Whatever one thinks of Brand and Ross, and I must say I don’t think either of them fulfils the BBC’s remit to provide quality programming, this episode reveals the warped priorities of the BBC.  We all paid for their ill judged comedy routine because if you receive TV broadcasts, you are required to pay the BBC licence fee. However, no one died, the statements were not racist and they did not encourage violence.

There are numerous other examples of far worse views being suported, at our expense, by the BBC.  At the same time as Brand and Ross made their offensive call the BBC comment sections on Israel include numerous comments, allowed by BBC monitors, which are profoundly racist and excuse and in some cases encourage aggression against Israel.  A recent example can be found in the Antisemitism Discourse in Britain 2007 Report by the Community Security Trust.

Could Brand and Ross be prosecuted?

I notice this from Guidance issued to Magistrates:

Googling further I learn that a Band B fine equals one week of wages.

The climate change bill: a futile and very costly folly

It snowed in London last night – the first time it had snowed in October since 1934. And as the temperatures plummeted our elected representatives voted in favour of the climate change bill which includes draconian man-made CO2 emissions cuts of 80% by 2050 (raised recently from 60%) in order to save the planet from “dangerous global warming” and frying to a cinder.

As I discussed on 15 October, there is no dangerous global warming. Indeed there is no global warming - the planet is, if anything, globally cooling. And as I also discussed then, even if one accepts the hypothesis that by cutting man-made CO2 emissions one could “control” climate change, British efforts, unless backed by the other large emitters, would be futile in the extreme. We account for less than 2% of global emissions – and falling. China and India, for a start, have better things to do than comply with westerners’ neo-colonial diktats on reducing their CO2 emissions and restraining their economic development.

Since 15 October, there have been two significant developments in the debate. Firstly, it is even more apparent than it was a fortnight ago that the “new EU” countries will do all they can to dilute the EU’s ambitious climate change policies. Moreover, they were robustly supported by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s Prime Minister, who said “our businesses are in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed.” End of story. And, secondly, here in the UK, GDP registered a much worse than expected 0.5% fall in the third quarter. The economy is inexorably tipping into a painful recession. Businesses are failing and jobs are being lost.

"What kind of people do they think we are?"*

Guido is rightly appalled at Peter Mandelson's £5,000-a-night stay at the Kempinski Hotel in Moscow but isn't the bigger scandal the Telegraph story...

Lord Mandelson hails improved relations between Britain and Russia ?

Two months ago Russia invaded Georgia.  We were all appalled.  Most of us anyway.  We were going to teach Russia a lesson.  Exclude them from the G8.  Etc.  Etc.  Etc.

Is that laughter I hear from The Kremlin?

* Churchill, December 1941: "What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realise that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget."

British taxpayers' money is being used to fuel hatred in the Middle East

Earlier this year the TPA produced a report on Hate Education in the Middle East showing how millions of pounds of British taxpayers' money is being used to support hate eduction through Palestinian Authority school books and state sponsored radio and television.  Financial support from Britain and other donor nation gives them the financial room to manoevre that makes, for example, a TV station where speakers call for the destruction of Israel, the United States and Britain possible.

Itamar Marcus, the head of Palestinian Media Watch, makes a powerful case on this issue in the Jerusalem Post:

"THE WORLD was incensed when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his vision of a world without Israel, and there were calls to put him on trial. Yet when Abbas's TV teaches Palestinian children the identical vision of a world without Israel, Western countries run for their checkbooks to keep funding him."

It is easy to understand his evident frustration.  We loudly proclaim our support for a two state solution while failing to confront one side using our money to encourage their people not to respect the other side's right to exist.

In the end, we could have the best peace deal in the world but it would count for nothing if the Israeli and Palestinian peoples weren't committed to peace.  Politicians and commentators tend to understand peace as being the outcome of negotiations, summits and hand shakes between the powerful but they are wrong.  Far more important are the attitudes of countless ordinary people.  Donor nations that aspire to prepare the ground for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East need to make sure they aren't enabling the radicalisation of the Palestinian population.  British taxpayers' money can't be used to encourage hatred and violence.

Might Brown cut taxes?

Now the spin being fed to Nick Robinson is that the government might announce tax cuts in the pre-Budget report.  As Robinson puts it this would be "bold and big".  He also suggests that this would put the Conservatives in an awkward position.  Might Brown really do this, or is it just another of his bluffs, like the election that never was?  Could it end up, like the election that never was, as a bluff over which he loses control and then must choose between going for it or drawing back?  And if it came to that call, would he draw back again this time, or decide that the lesson of 2007 was "who dares, wins"?

EU legislation at Westminster: time for an electoral mandate

I would like to further Theresa May’s calls for more efficient Westminster scrutiny of EU legislation with a few more suggestions.

It has been a persistent problem in Britain that the Government, in signing up to European legislation, has almost inevitably overridden the scrutinized assessments, conclusions and objections of the United Kingdom Parliament. In short, Westminster continues to be shunned as EU legislation is passed. This has been partly explained by the failure of the European Scrutiny Committee’s scrutiny reserve – by which Parliament, through its designated Committee, should 'okay' a particular Treaty or piece of legislation before elected ministers agree a decision in the Council of Ministers. The Government has overridden the reserve countless times and it has become, to some extent, a redundant tool. In fact, it is this kind of “democratic deficit” attributed to the EU which actually derives from badly designed parliamentary arrangements in Westminster. The Conservative Party has already led the call for the scrutiny reserve to be asserted on a “statutory basis,” so that ministers are fundamentally and legally obliged to gain Parliamentary approval before they pursue fuller negotiations in the Council of Ministers.

Will the Euro re-enter British political debate?

Addressing a mixed group of UK and German parliamentarians at the weekend, I raised a few eyebrows by predicting that Britain's possible membership of the Euro is likely to re-enter our domestic political debate.

I have no personal enthusiasm for joining the Euro, and believe that in both the short and long terms such a move would be very much against our economic and political interests. But others think differently, and will feel that their time is coming.

Sure enough, Steve Richards in a lengthy article in the Independent takes up the case.

Another victory for James McGrath?

Since leaving Boris Johnson's team James McGrath has spent a great deal of time in the Maldives - helping with their elections as campaign coordinator. His hard work might be about to pay off.

Early returns suggest that the thirty year rule of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom may be about to end.  Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed - a man who Gayoom once imprisoned and was championed by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience - may beat him in the run-off election results expected soon.

It will not just be a victory for human rights - and another confirmation that Islam is compatible with democracy - but also an encouragement to the many UK Conservatives who have played roles in building the democratic opposition.  CentreRight's John Glen was out there recently with Lord Bates.  Gary Streeter MP, Francis Maude MP, PPC Karen Lumley and many others have all offered campaigning and policy advice.  And all coordinated by the fantastic Philippa Broom of CCHQ's international office.

The FT joins the tax cuts camp

The FT now advocates tax rebates ("writing cheques to citizens").  It terms this the "prudent response".

This joins the Daily Mail and the Sunday Telegraph.  The Telegraph appears to favour cutting both taxes and expenditure (though why that is more of something to do in a recession than at any other time - of course one should always avoid taxing-and-spending more than necessary - I'm not clear).

Ten recent pundit predictions ...

I hope you've already had the chance to view my new blog, tracking the forecasts of pundits and bloggers. It launched yesterday with a small archive, and from now on, content will consist of predictions logged as they are made. Here are some of the forecasts we have logged so far, all made in recent weeks:

• William Rees-Mogg: Britain's Conservatives will inherit a crisis economy in 2010
• David Aaronovitch: Immigration could fall dramatically in the coming years
• Simon Jenkins: Those who now back laws against euthanasia will be seen as cruel
• Frank Luntz: Obama will be President; America faces a year like 1997 in Britain
• Irwin Stelzer: Problems are nowhere as severe as doomsayers claim; the international economic order will remain as it was
• Steve Richards: The dormant issue of Britain's membership of the euro will be waking soon
• Alan Watkins: The recession will be worse than early 1990s
• Polly Toynbee: The Keynes versus Hayek debate will dominate Britain's fate for years to come
• Mary Dejevsky: The odds of Scottish independence have lengthened almost to infinity
• Johann Hari: The Arctic will be free of ice by Summer 2013

Personally, I am finding this very interesting reading now, let alone a couple of years from now.

If you wish to help with this project, please post the relevant sentence(s) from any prediction you see in the most recent open thread on the pundit predictions blog (with a link to the article/post, please). It will then be added to the front page archive.

"Positive action to help some white groups"?

Posted for Paul Goodman MP who is the newest member of CentreRight but whose account hasn't yet been activated.

Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, seems to have said today that the forthcoming Equalities Bill should be used to help disadvantaged white working-class people.  I write "seems" because I can't find a direct quote from him that says this.  What's certain is that he said that "positive action" should be taken "to help some white groups".

Phillips, like Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, seems increasingly to delight in tweaking the tails of the politically correct establishment while making a serious point at the same time.  He said that "immigration has fuelled resentments that are real and should not be dismissed – resentments felt by white, black and Asian", and highlighted the alienation and disadvantage of parts of the white working-class.

According to the DCSF's own figures, white British boys entitled to free school meals performed worse at GCSE level than any other ethnic group last year.  A recent report published by the DIUS revealed that only six per cent of white boys eligible for free school meals went on to higher education compared to 24 per cent of young men from ethnic minorities.

There'll be more to statistics like these than meets the eye.  (The 24 per cent figure, for example, lumps all ethnic minority members together.)  But there's no doubt that sections of the white working class are seriously disadvantaged.

“Top-ups” pave the way for a new debate about healthcare funding

by Helen Rainbow, Senior Health Researcher

The expected acceptance of the principle of NHS top-ups by Alan Johnson next week will be a defining moment for the service.  He said himself in a newspaper article at the weekend that it is like opening “Pandora’s Box”.  Enabling patients to top-up their own care, even if it is only happens in a very small number of cases, shatters the assumption that the service is capable of providing everything to everyone.  It heralds a new type of relationship between the individual and the State in terms of funding healthcare.

The society in which the NHS came into being 60 years ago is very different to the one that we live in today.  On the whole we are wealthier and more educated, with the internet revolutionising access to information.  The last 60 years has also seen considerable innovation in the field of medical technology, with advances leading to previously life limiting diseases becoming more manageable.  This fact along with increasing access to information increases demands on health services, and will lead to more questions about what we can and cannot afford.

The introduction of top-ups is a step forward in that it recognises the limitations of the current model, but it is not a wholesale solution to the current pressures that our service is under.  The time has come to think big, to consider system wide solutions that incorporate the characteristics of high performing international health systems – insurance incentives and universal coverage.   The top-ups debate opens up a space for wider debate of this issue, to identify how the NHS can evolve to equitably meet the needs of a 21st century society.

What does a target of an 80% cut in emissions by 2050 mean?

Today sees the third reading of the Climate Change Bill.  With aviation and shipping included in some way and the target strengthened from 60% of 1990 levels to 80% the bill now constitutes a significantly harder legally binding pledge than it did before.  I've written before about the nonsense of setting such a target when, over the Government's time in office, emissions have actually increased 1.6%.  However, it is worth thinking about what a cut of that magnitude could mean in more detail, I've set out some of the details in a research note for the TPA which has been released today.

It is easier to understand what it will take to secure 80% cuts if you keep the following equation in mind:

Emissions = GDP x Emissions intensity

For obvious reasons, cutting emissions by reducing emissions intensity - getting more efficient rather than poorer - is the preferred option.

Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.  We've had a series of measures designed to reduce emissions since Ken Clarke introduced the Fuel Duty escalator in order to "meet our Rio commitments".  With green taxes on a series of the most important emitting activities already excessive, there is every incentive for people to use as little fossil fuel as possible.  Despite that, there is little sign that we are likely to achieve efficiency gains on anything like the scale that would be necessary to meet an 80% below 1990 levels target without crippling economic sacrifice.

What says the BBC on the Spanish Civil War?

Alex, any chance of you leafing through again and posting a little on Spain's horrors in the late 1930s? Far be it for me to suggest the authors of these guides might be inclined to whitewash the crimes and would-be despotism of either side in Spain's Civil War ... but it would be nice to be reassured.

This landscape?

He’s looking out the side-window of the van, onto a grey landscape of such wetness, it reminds him of peering from a ship’s porthole at a churning sea. Endless stretches of functional housing that could only have been built behind the Iron Curtain, with an attractive looking train – Brief Encounter – keeping tag with the van’s progress. What day-dreams occupy its passengers? What homes are they heading towards, who do they love, what makes them smile? Surely not this landscape, he thinks, and turns his face to the van’s interior. His colleagues are sat in front, clearly tense, given the hunch of their shoulders. Wild techno-pop bounces off the carpeted walls, to which the age-proof driver nods his grizzled head, in time to the beat. Welcome to St Petersburg, Dr Archer, we hope you enjoy your stay with us.

*

Leaving home at 4am. All leave-takings are portents of the ultimate departure from the loved one. Feeling it more strongly this time than usual, his bog-standard anticipatory anxiety about flying combining with a suspicion that a week spent visiting secure mental health institutions in the Russian Federation won’t be one of those work trips to excite the interest and envy of friends. Refuses to catch the Mister’s eye, waving from the bedroom window. Be careful crossing the roads, Keith. At least the Company still does long-haul travel in style and there’s some comfort to be taken from the limo with driver, the leather seats to sink into, the suspiciously generous use of "sir": Are you interested in sport, sir? No. I’ve never picked anyone up from Hackney before, sir. Oh. I know where I am, but I don’t know where I am, if you know what I mean, sir. Turn right here, onto Hackney Road. It’s astonishing, he knows, the gap between his image of himself, open, warm, friendly, and the way he sometimes fails to interact with others: Just leave me alone.

We have nothing to fear but fear of Peter Mandelson

Remember John Kennedy FDR?  Well we Tories should do well to remind ourselves of  the old adage; “we have nothing to fear but fear of Peter Mandelson”.  The way the media and other cognoscenti have been talking in recent days (witness Question Time last Thursday evening), you would think that Baron Mandelson was responsible for every plague, fire and pestilence that ever stalked the land. Just because J K Rowling funds the Labour Party, it does not mean that Lord Voldemort now runs riot (except perhaps on Radio 4 Today programme).

Yes Lord Mandelson is well versed in the arts of spin and was a formidable architect of New Labour.  But if he was so deadly, he wouldn’t have got into a position in which he had to resign from the Cabinet twice, be mired in yet another controversy and be loathed by so many of his colleagues on his own side.   All right thinking people should seek to change the narrative – and present Baron Mandelson for what he is – a lightening conductor for Gordon Brown and a shield against a leadership challenge.

If Peter Mandelson is Lord Voldemort, I am Harry Potter.

The Criminal Justice System is not on your side

Jack Straw today says that the justice system needs to "get tough" with criminals.  Find me a Home Secretary who hasn't talked tough on crime over the past twenty years.  But it's always precisely that. Just talk.

The criminal justice system is failing law abiding people because it's not accountable to law abiding people.  Those supposed to chase criminals through the street or through the courts, or "manage offenders" answer to remote officialdom – not to you and me.

As a result, criminal justice has been hijacked by those with unconsciously leftist assumptions.  Policing?  PCs are so PC in some areas they resemble social workers.  The CPS?  Their interpretation of "public interest" isn't one most members of the public would recognise.  Probation Service?  A triumph for behavioural psychologists.

Does Straw propose to change any of this?  Of course not.  He's actually proposing to make the system even less unaccountable.  He wants a new "victims commissioner" sitting along side the experts on the Sentencing Guidelines Council. Yet more quangocrats to represent you....

Why I am not a localist

There's nothing like not hitching yourself to the latest trend. Localism - in a nutshell the philosophy that political power should be devolved to the most local level practicable - is very trendy indeed these days. Localists have captured the zeitgeist. They're hip to the jive. They seem to have won the argument in Conservative circles. Many of them are great policy analysts and great people. But they're wrong.

Certainly the (wo)man in Whitehall doesn't always know best. Our public services are sclerotic and out-of-date. Specifically, they are hopelessly unresponsive to public demand. About that much, any non-communist would agree, the localists are quite right.

But it doesn't follow that the answer is to let local councils take over.

Mandelson under fire from European Parliament

This is very interesting about Mandelson.

Lonely Planet, revisited

Went to Madrid this weekend with She Who Must Be Obeyed.  Waiting for the flight at City Airport, I bought the Lonely Planet Guide to Spain.  Had I considered Greg Hands' superb take-down on the Lonely Planet empire, I would have gone for an alternative tome, but I didn't think.  Shame on me.

Tthe book is in many ways very useful, as are all the LPs - that's the problem; if they were just rubbish then they couldn't be written off, but they're not.  In any case, it entirely reaffirms the point Greg made about left wingery and our collective ownership of LP (for anyone who missed it, the Beeb bought LP and so we, the taxpayer, now own a string of guidebooks).  It does so in two important ways.

Pundit Predictions - the blog

Today I am launching a new blog, Pundit Predictions. As I explain in my introductory post, its aim is to log the forecasts of Britain pundits, bloggers and others on politics and elections, foreign affairs and economic trends. For years, some have noted with amusement or irritation that for newspaper columnists, there is no accountability: they can get it wrong time and again and see no consequences. At the least, such people's wrong calls - like theirs and others right calls - will now be highlighted.

At this stage, the blog is very much live and active and welcoming content - please do email me with predictions you spot and I'll happily put them up. But I am also interested in your suggestions on where to take this. I am not happy with the colour scheme I have right now, so that will change, but not just design - what do CentreRight readers think of the idea? Of how to go about it? Please take some time to visit the blog, take a look, and then leave your thoughts here.

Warning: We intend to be thoroughly offended

'Inter-faith advisers' are warning the Metropolitan Police that the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games, a commemoration which is planned for the 2012 games, should not offend local and travelling Muslims.

This would be one way, apparently, of reducing the threat of any possible Islamic terrorist threat to the London Games.

One of these experts is Michael Mumisa, an Islamic scholar, who has been hired by Scotland Yard to train the police this week on inter-faith issues. He said that the commemoration of the 11 Israeli athletes, killed by Palestinian militants from the Black September Organisation at the 1972 Munich Games, could become a national security threat if it was not managed properly and was perceived by Muslims to be “hijacking” the Games.

What would constitute 'hijacking' in the eyes of these 'experts'? A ceremony perhaps, a two-minute silence maybe, which is then reported on by the media?

And what would it take for such a commemoration to be 'perceived' by some Muslims as hijacking the games?  We already know that the bar for what is considered offensive or insensitive is set very, very low.

And what does 'managed properly' mean? Kept to a minimum, perhaps? Kept quiet?

What is it that's most offensive and worrying about such advice?

Perhaps it is the knowledge that the Metropolitan Police will heed every word, and that they will be backed up by our supine cultural and political establishment.