CentreRight

Military Mental Health

Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry has been brave again, highlighting the disgraceful inadequacies in the help available for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]. [It's worth looking at the comments on the impact of PTSD posted in the Independent online to get a glimpse of what families suffer]. Although he is still a serving soldier, he was talking about ex-service personnel, and it seems that nothing has substantially changed since the early 2008 publication of the Seventh Report of the Commons Select Defence Committee in which one psychiatrist was particularly critical of the lack of proactive provision of mental healthcare for veterans, saying that the NHS "hardly deals with them at all"

The Chief Executive of the charity Combat Stress also said at the time: "A veteran who has undergone a traumatic experience in battle could find himself referred to a PTSD support group with people who had been in car accidents or had suffered traumatic childbirths". It beggars belief that anyone could think this appropriate.

  He also reported a 27% increase in referrals for help in the previous year - now standing at 53% over 3 years.

Meanwhile the Government think that their six 2 year community mental health pilots for veterans are adequate. But hang on, the Tories launched a successful pilot in 1996 in Yorkshire - it proved a success - and is now a mainstream service. What's to pilot? That's no commitment, that's a cop out.

We need a military health service in the UK that communicates the deep appreciation and respect that most of us have for our veterans. The price paid by our forces in the daily sacrifices of duty should be credited to them in the specialised care they receive when their losses later extend to their mental health.

Where spin meets the politics of envy - Labour's new policy to publish Council chiefs' salaries

In its death throes, this Government is combining the worst aspects of Old Labour (like class war and the politics of envy) with the worst of New Labour (such as spin and deceit).

Take for example this new announcement, "Councils to reveal bosses pay". The Government, we are told, is planning to make local councils publish the salaries of their chief executives. Now, I have some sympathy with the sentiments here. I for one have been saying for years that local authority senior officers in general are overpaid.

But why are they paid so much? And why have their pay rates hugely accelerated under this Labour government, especially in the period when the majority of Councils were also Labour controlled, in the years 1994 - 2004? Now that most of these Councils are Conservative-controlled, Labour thinks it has a ready-made campaign on its hands - effectively to throw stones and envious glances at senior officers in Tory-run Councils.

The unacceptable face of capitalism?

On the day the Royal Bank of Scotland announced the largest annual loss in UK corporate history, paving the way for another huge cash injection by the government (bringing the taxpayers’ investment in RBS to £45.5 billion since October), the story eclipsing all others is the size of the pension pot of RBS’s Chief Executive, Sir Fred Goodwin. Let’s face facts - this is a smokescreen to divert attention from the appallingly bad deal that government intervention in RBS represents to each and every one of us.

It is a sign of the times that the idea of a £24.1 billion annual loss fails to raise many eyebrows. Yet at a time when billion pound losses are being posted almost routinely, it is understandable that public anger rests on something easier to comprehend. On learning of the potential £16 million pension pot, we can all make a direct connection between the money we pay in tax and its destination – Sir Fred’s bank account – and ponder the disparity between success and reward, the treatment of top bankers and ordinary workers, our own financial circumstances to the rewards for failure in the boardroom. 

This is why this story is so dangerous to capitalism.

Fred Goodwin's Pension

I'm not a lawyer, and I know no more about Fred Goodwin's pension than I read in the papers, but here's how it seems to me.  The government took over RBS.  It decided that Goodwin had to go.  Goodwin would have had some protection under employment law and might have contested his dismissal, and in any event even dismissal would have contractually obliged a payment to him equivalent to about fifteen months of his salary.  This might have been politically embarrassing, so intead Lord Myners talked him into taking early retirement in exchange for foregoing his fifteen months' salary payoff.

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.

A tale of two jobs

Many people have told me how much they enjoy watching the TPA slug it out with pompous, po faced council leaders (of all parties) about their inflated expenses, upmarket bentleys and grandiose schemes to spend large sums of our cash on prestige projects of doubtful value.

Yet it's worth remembering it's not just about waste and predictable tricorned delusions of grandeur down at your local town hall.  It's also about value.  Some jobs are worth paying for, just a some are not.  Take these two current examples.  The Northern Way is one of those sustainable economic development quango of quangos.  They are advertising for a chair on £20,000.  Meanwhile the Ministry of Justice is advertising for a Director of Children's Services at the Family Justice Council. The role is unpaid and is to focus on child protection in the family court system.

Now I'm sure these are not perfect examples and that lots of people will say how worthy regional economic development quangos are (although I think business does better when it's left alone to get on with it), but I can't see why one of the other quango members can't just step up to chair this thing. Meanwhile, I am puzzled why what looks like a serious and responsible job in protecting our kids is completely unpaid. 

The essence of my point is that we should look not just at the excessive pay of senior public sector workers, we should look more deeply at the value of the actual jobs that are done and how we might improve the balance. I'd be interested to know what Centre Right readers think.

Paul Myners chaired the Low Pay Commission

Labour knighted Fred Goodwin.

Labour agreed to pay him six hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year for life (he's fifty).

Labour pretended they didn't know about the pension they authorised.

And Labour made this guy Paul Myners Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, whose website describes its purpose as "advising the government on the National Minimum Wage". (h/t to commenter mirthios on political betting).

Please may we have an election? Thanks.

UPDATE (Hey, Derek Draper, this is how it's done) I'm sorry - I got this completely wrong by dint of ineffective googling. No excuses. As "whuh" points out, it was Paul Myners, not Fred Goodwin, who was Chairman of the Low Pay Commission. Why does that still matter? Because Myners is an expert on pay and compensation and a Govt minister and he gave Fred Goodwin this pension. There is no way Brown and Darling didn't know. I repeat, can we have an election?

The Government ISN'T toughening its position on Muslim community groups

By Paul Goodman MP, a Shadow Communities and Local Government Minister.

Ministers claimed yesterday that they’ve toughened the Government’s position on which community groups they’ll talk to - excluding those, according to one report, “whose views and practices sit outside the ‘core values’ of mainstream Britain”.

This report specifically cited as an example the DCLG’s relationship with the Muslim Council of Britain.  It said:

“In 2006, Ms Blears' predecessor as Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly scaled back official contacts with the Muslim Council of Britain over its boycott - since dropped - of Holocaust Memorial Day.”

But claims of a new, tough policy are simply Labour spin – and I’ve a letter on my desk from a Minister to prove it.  The letter also raises the question of whether the Minister concerned misled the Commons – “inadvertedly”, as MPs put it.

Religion, Politeness, Political Correctness

This article says it all. You have to read the whole article - but here are some extracts which sum it up:

Extract One: it was a dangerous and worrying defeat of common sense.

Extract Two: .... a worrying increase in ''attacks'' on Christianity, which has seen one Christian school receptionist facing dismissal after her five-year-old daughter was told off in school for talking about God in class – which upset another girl – and a nurse being suspended for offering to pray for a patient. The cases have highlighted what many believe is the high cost our Christian heritage is paying simply to survive. The growing persecution of Christians in public life has so angered senior clerics that they have found it imperative to speak out about the growing marginalisation of Christianity in Britain. Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York and Britain's second most senior cleric, has described the targeting of Christains as ''an affront to decency''. Calling on the silent majority of Christians to defend their beliefs, Sentamu said: ''For those who despair at the treatment meted out to these Christian women the message is clear: wake-up Christian England.''

One surely has to admit that when Church of England clerics get worked up about the marginalisation of Christianity, Christianity must be seriously marginalised .... and when the Sunday Telegraph talks about "persecution" of Christians in Britain - a phrase which I think in Britain is misplaced and an overreaction, in comparison with the real persecution of millions of Christians in other parts of the world, but nevertheless raises an extremely serious issue, we have much to think about. And when religious freedom is violated around the world, as described for example in this House of Lords debate, it puts the situation in the UK in perspective ... nevertheless, I believe we have values of religious freedom and tolerance to defend here at home which the uber-politically correct brigade seek to destroy. It really is as simple as that.

All eyes on when Brown will meet Obama - but when will he meet Vladimir Putin?

Speculation has been rampant in recent weeks on who amongst world leaders will be the first to meet President Obama, when and where. Gordon Brown, in particular, has been desperate to attach himself to the world's new star attraction.

But what about Britain's other important international relationships? Surprisingly, I can find no concrete proof that Brown has ever met Vladimir Putin since he succeeded Blair in June 2007. There is a single uncorroborated report that they met in the sidelines of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest. In response to my Parliamentary question, however, Brown is opaque to say the least on whether he has met Putin since June 2007. Other than that, it seems Brown met Putin when he was Chancellor in early 2006. If I am wrong, and if they have met more often than this, then why is Brown so unwilling to say so?

RE: Printing money now could lead this nation to fiscal and monetary ruin

I see there is quite a bit of concern about the Bank of England's quantitative easing measures, but I don't think it quite hits the target (i.e. I'm concerned about something different from other commentators).  Central banks engage in quantitative easing all the time - they just usually refer to it by the name "interest rate cuts".  For the way in which many central banks cut interest rates is to offer banks more money (i.e. print money), so the price of money (the interest rate) falls.  On other occasions they engage in "quantitative tightening" - i.e. interest rate rises.

The key interesting thing in the current situation does not relate to the principle of quantitative easing but, instead, to the form or method of it.  For once interest rates reach zero, one cannot employ the same methods to increase the quantity of money.  So if they are to engage in monetary easing, they have to use "unconventional monetary policy".

So, Harriet, are you sorry for the wasted years?

A shamelessly cheerful Harriet Harman was the keynote speaker at today's breakfast launch of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation "definitive" report on poverty, inequality and policy in the Labour years; Nick Timmins gives a pretty fair summary in today's FT .

Put briefly: as Labour poured money into welfare spending during its first term, the resultant redistribution shrank (modestly) the numbers of pensioners and children in relative poverty; by 2004 child and pensioner poverty started rising again, and wages were stalling. And as we already know, a plethora of expensive intitiatives made no impact whatosever on the NEETS (16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training) - despite a buoyant economy with no lack of of jobs.

As we stare into the pit of a plunging labour market, there is not much for the Government to be proud of. While she wages war on Mandy, staking out her place as the true champion of equality, Hattie would do well to apologise - on behalf of all her colleagues and especially her erstwhile friend and mentor Gordon Brown - for the wasted years, the wasted billions and the wasted opportunities. Opportunites to create a pro-work, pro-family welfare system with reduced dependency and genuine (not grade-inflated) educational opportunities for all. It's no good telling us you cared, or asking us to let you try more of the same. You had your chance (and our money) and you blew it. You might at least say sorry. 

Printing money now could lead this nation to fiscal and monetary ruin

In such turbulent and volatile times it is tempting to suggest that Conservatives should concern themselves more with political positioning than making a cool assessment from economic first principles.

There is little doubt that for a few months around the turn of the year the ‘do nothing Party’ tag resonated with the public at large. No longer – it is fast dawning on a bewildered British public that frenetic government-by-daily-initiative is no substitute for sound judgement and longer-term thinking.

Whilst superficially the spirit of the age leans towards ever more government intervention and expenditure, so David Cameron’s vision of a smaller state and promoting thrift (which all Conservatives should wholeheartedly support) carries short-term risks. In the medium and long-term it will be vindicated. Moreover, it is a clear sign that we are serious about the challenges ahead of government.

The next big question on the domestic economic agenda is quantitative easing – the printing of money by the Bank of England, necessary (or so we are told) to reflate the economy. An attractively easy option, but the wrong solution to our economic woes.

Because every other government initiative over the past five months has failed to get the economy moving does not mean we should resort to printing money without a crystal clear analysis of its dangers.

The Great European Rip-Off

Next Thursday a new book by me and David Craig - author of the influential Plundering the Public Sector and Squandered books - will be released, The Great European Rip-Off.  You can pre-order the book already but, in the meantime, we have revealed dynamite new evidence of how too many MEPs enrich themselves at the taxpayers’ expense.

Among the explosive findings in the book are details about the Galvin Report which contains evidence of widespread abuse.  MEPs have been paying expenses to shell companies, huge bonuses are paid to use up an MEP’s staff allowance and travel expenses are wide open to abuse.

We have also shown that, while still living comfortably and enjoying the basic staffing and facilities they need, MEPs can rack up enough in dodgy expenses claims to emerge a millionaire after a single term in the European Parliament.  On top of that, thanks to a combination of tax changes, exchange rate movements and a pay rise MEPs will be getting a 47% pay rise this year.

Not all MEPs are rotten.  The Conservative MEPs, under the leadership of Timothy Kirkhope MEP, led the way earlier this year by publishing expenses details online, but there are far too many MEPs abusing their expenses and enjoying the gravy train.  For many European parliamentarians, getting elected has become a route to personal enrichment rather than a way of serving their constituents.  This doesn’t just cost taxpayers’ money that is lost to fraud but makes honest politics impossible.

"If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited."

David Brooks is at his best today on Barack Obama's huge expenditure experiment:

"I worry that we’re operating far beyond our economic knowledge. Every time the administration releases an initiative, I read 20 different economists with 20 different opinions. I worry that we lack the political structures to regain fiscal control. Deficits are exploding, and the president clearly wants to restrain them. But there’s no evidence that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have the courage or the mutual trust required to share the blame when taxes have to rise and benefits have to be cut.

All in all, I can see why the markets are nervous and dropping. And it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity."

Read the whole thing here.

Geert Wilders on Fox News

Geert Wilders appears on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly.  'Welcome to America' says Bill, blaming a "scared" Britain for refusing him entry.

Against a house-building programme

I see in the press this morning that the house builders, some councils, and other usual suspects are lobbying for a huge house-building programme. They still want us to believe that house prices went as high as they did because of some kind of "housing shortgage". The census data clearly refuted the claim that there was any kind of housing shortgage in the UK - since the early 1990s we have consistently increased the number of houses faster than the number of households in every region of the UK. To those of us (such as myself) that pointed this out, they responded that we should ignore the census data as "misleading", because (they said) the rises in house prices clearly showed that there were "hidden households".

Well, guys, I know it's pointing out the obvious, but house prices are falling like a stone. Your story is kaput, dead, an ex-story, devoid of life, nada, nothing, The End, game-over-insert-coin. There never was any aggregate housing shortgage. There may have been some problems with what kinds of houses were built, but that's another story. And there was obviously a purchasing affordability issue (doh!) such that first-time buyers exited on mass circa 2004, but that was a symptom of prices being too high, not of there being fewer houses than households.  (I became blunt to the point of rudeness recently with a panel including Labour and Lib Dem MPs that tried to persuade us that there was a terrible affordability issue and that without a huge house-building programme prices would spiral upwards indefinitely, making home ownership an unattainable dream for the middle classes.)

House prices were not high because there were not enough houses being built. It...wasn't...true.

Against banning 100%+ mortgages

So, Gordon Brown now wants to discourage 100%+ mortgages.  This is no better an idea now than it was when Vince Cable suggested it.  It's a pretty daft idea in general, but even if you thought it might be a good idea at some point, now is certainly not the time for it.

Why are political interviews written up this way?

Most people reading this will already be aware of the Total Politics interview with David Cameron. Today I finally got around to reading it in full, and something struck me about what makes it truly refreshing - a lack of ... well, pointless commentary. After a brief paragraph introducing the interview, the only text for the rest of the article is Iain Dale's brief questions and Cameron's answers.

Most interviews with politicians in the print media that I have read instead include long commentary between every phrase uttered by the interviewee, with the journalist explaining his thoughts on each answer, and what leads him to ask the next question:

"I do hope not!" he shoots back at this point. I am surprised at his candour. Does this abruptness help explain his failure to reach the top? As I look around his dark and spartan office, I see little sign of the human touch - his shelves bare but for an old dictionary and a pile of Hansards. How does he relax at home? Does he enjoy sport or comedies, I ask?

Does anyone prefer this stuff to a simple layout of the questions and answers? Does anyone actually care very much what the interviewer is thinking? Is it some journalists' egos that make so many of them write up interviews differently? Or is there some rule of journalism that demands the reader be walked through the entire discussion, rather than simply read a full account what was said without the intrusive narration? This reader does not need his hand held.

German Finance Minister considers a possible collapse of the Euro

Der Spiegel is this weekend carrying a fascinating article speculating in some detail about what might happen if a Eurozone country needed to be bailed out by the other members. Peer Steinbrück, the German Finance Minister, who had some choice words about Gordon Brown's VAT cut and budget deficit in December, has spoken out again, this time saying that

"We have a few countries in the euro zone who are getting into difficulties with their payments."

He added that Ireland, especially, is currently in a "very difficult situation". Der Spiegel examines in some detail how and in what circumstances a Euro member could be bailed out.

But the really tough questions have not been asked - would the German public, at a time when they were themselves facing a deepening recession, countenance paying for a costly bailout of a country the size of Italy? Ireland maybe, but surely nothing larger. And if the German public have no appetite, then surely none other will?

Brown gets his Obama meeting... but it won't help him

Brown flies to Washington on 3rd March for a meeting with President Obama.

Downing Street will no doubt be feeling smug at winning this photo opportunity but I doubt that Obama's stardust will rub off on Labour.

More likely British voters will see the contrast between a fresh leader - still full of promise - and an exhausted leader, who was Finance Minister throughout the years of excess.

My guess is that the White House won't go out of its way to praise Brown.  They read opinion polls and they know that they're 90% likely to be dealing with a Prime Minister David Cameron within fifteen months.

The rise of the BNP

“Alarm” quoted in The Independent today at the recent success of the BNP in a series of local government by-elections, most recently, and spectacularly, in the hitherto safe Labour ward of Swanley, in Sevenoaks, Kent. Well, of course I share that alarm, we all do - though I imagine the quality of the alarm has a more hysterical quality among Labour councillors, fearful of losing their seats. But I don’t share any of the surprise.

My partner K is an electrician, a properly qualified electrician, who gained his certificates through a three-year apprenticeship and then honed his skills in sixteen years with the RAF. Nearly five years ago, we set up home together. We had a choice about location: either K could move to Hackney, where I lived, or I could move to Saudi Arabia, where he was working. Not much of a difficult decision, that one! So here we are, comfortably happy in Hackney.

But K had to find a new job. This is what we found. That over the last few years, the wages on offer to skilled working men have been drastically reduced. Only a fleeting acquaintance with market economics is required to tell you why this should be. A sudden and vast influx of ‘similarly’ qualified artisans has significantly reduced the pay packets of native workers. Well, that’s understandable, and only an idiot would try to promise, Canute-like, to roll back that tide, by making fatuous remarks about providing ‘British Jobs for British Workers’. Oh.

True Leadership - Read on Jacqui Smith

Amidst the debate over bankers' bonuses and Jacqui Smith's housing allowances this past few weeks we read today of a shining example of leadership from Sir Richard Pym, the Executive Chairman of Bradford and Bingley. Sir Richard has reportedly taken a £400,000 pay cut, given up his guaranteed £187,000 p.a. bonus and reduced his notice period from 2 years to one day. A rare example of someone showing leadership ahead of any ruling or action from the Treasury.

I don't know the man, the history of his leadership or whether he was overpaid to start with but in an era when the Boards of semi-nationalised banks and poorly performing privately owned banks are willing to pay themselves generous bonuses, regardless of performance and the economic climate, this decision is a great example to those who hold significant positions of leadership in our society. The question for me is why aren't there more examples of such behaviour today?

Responsibility for the 'Imagine you are one of the London bombers' lesson - goes right back to ministers

The Times Educational Supplement has revealed that teachernet - the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)'s own in house training and resource centre for teachers - has been promoting a series of lessons whose activities included encouraging children to imagine that they were one of the 7/7 London bombers. The course called 'Things do Change' was developed by Calderdale Council seemingly in response to a 'toolkit' on how to prevent violent extremism sent by Schools Secretary Ed Balls to all schools last October. The 'imagine you are a terrorist trying to blow up London' lesson is according to the TES now being used not just in West Yorkshire schools but also in other schools and madrassas (Islamic theological schools) in the UK...

So there we have it, the government department responsible for our schools is promoting lessons that encourage vulnerable young Muslims to pretend to be terrorists...

In several respects the responsibility for this catastrophic failure goes right to the top of the DCSF - Ed Balls the Schools Secretary and Jim Knight the Schools Minister:

1. Ministerial oversight: These two ministers were responsible for overseeing the department that promoted these lessons - they clearly failed in this duty.

2. A dangerous degree of muddle and confusion in the advice these ministers gave to schools on how to prevent violent extremism: Ed Balls and Jim Knight cannot simply claim that they didn't know what was going on in their department. It was very specifically their muddled policy on how schools should prevent violent extremism that directly led to Calderdale Council developing these lessons.

On polygamy

This morning, Baroness Warsi argued that the government is failing to act adequately against polygamy.  She said "in this country, one married man is allowed to marry one woman".  In contrast, Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, asked:

Why would you not allow Muslims to conduct their affairs in their cultural, religious framework, without interference from the state?

Why should we take them to task for having a second, third and a fourth nikah [marriage] which is compatible with their religion?

I believe that Mr Moghal is broadly correct and Baroness Warsi misguided.