CentreRight

Whither the IEA?

Tim raises some very good questions surrounding the future of the Institute for Economic Affairs.  As someone heavily involved in running a think tank that is all about free markets over here in Washington DC, I hope that these observations will prove helpful to those who are to decide its future direction.

First, we must recognize that one of the founding principles of the IEA - Hayek's advice to win the war of ideas without engaging in politics - has been rendered moot by technology.  Today, the war of ideas is not fought between dons in Senior Common Rooms, in the lounges of Pall Mall clubs or in the bars of the House of Commons, but between web-based organizations that involve thousands or in some cases millions of people. As a result, the war of ideas and politics have merged together.  This site is a great example, with many people - all experts in their way - contributing ideas on complex aspects of economic policy.  A good guide to the way the web is transforming politics all over the world is available for free at The Webster's Dictionary.  I hope the IEA's Trustees will read it.  None of this is to say that the IEA must merge with the Conservative Party - far from it - but it must recognize that it is part of the conservative movement and act accordingly.

Secondly, this means that the IEA must communicate and advocate.  Its old business model of producing worthy economic papers proved of great value to the conservative movement, but it is no longer enough (although it must continue in some form).  A good free-market think tank must actively proselytise the value of the free market in a political atmosphere that is increasingly hostile to the concept, for various bogus reasons.  That means embracing the tools we now have available - video, chat, social networks, twitter and so on - and finding creative ways to use them that will engage people in realising the value of the free market.  Guido Fawkes and Tory Bear (to take two random examples) between them have probably done more to defend the free market than the IEA over the past two years, and without ever explicitly saying so.  The tools that they use and their messages reinforce the free market (anti-politician = anti-control = pro-market, for instance).  Google shows us 20,000,000 ways to skin a cat.

Did Michael Jackson have a political message?

So far as I can tell there is no solid evidence that Michael Jackson was involved in child abuse. He enjoyed the company of children and sought to compensate for having missed out on a normal childhood of his own. As he was rich others thought they could cash in on this eccentricity. Of course we will never know the truth for certain but surely there should be a presumption of innocence for the dead as well as the living.

The whiff of suspicion has been enough for politicians to exercise restraint in their tributes. But what was Michael Jackson political message, if any? He was honoured by President Ronald Reagan for allowing his song Beat It to be used in a campaign against drug and alcohol addiction.

But really Jackson was focused on providing entertainment. The Earth Song reflected a concern for animal welfare and the environment. There was Ben with emotional theme about a pet rat. Perhaps the most politically significant song was his number hit Black or White. It pounded out the lyrics: "It don't matter if you're black or white" and "I'm not going to spend my life being a colour." A laudable sentiment. Also a far better message for an integrated harmonious country where individual merit counts than the dreary sectional resentments peddled by both the BNP and the Diversity Officers.

How not to be Prime Ministerial on a PM visit

Today, Gordon Brown and Ed Balls visited a school in my constituency, I was told to help launch the Government's new White Paper on schools. With my constituency being the closest marginal to Westminster, we are used to a few ministerial and shadow ministerial visits over the last ten years, but never I have I seen such manouvrings and political jockeying by officials as with today's.

As has become traditional with this Government - and contrary to the Commons Conventions and Courtesies - neither Brown nor Balls notified me of their visit. I found out from the Local Education Authority. When I arrived at the school 10 minutes early, waiting for me was a Ms Izzet from Ed Balls's office, who loudly announced, in front of an ITN camera crew, that I was "not invited". This was a new first - not only not told of a ministerial visit to my constituency, I was actively disinvited. The head Teacher of the excellent Fulham Cross School was being put in a very difficult position. Clearly, nobody had ever heard of a civil servant attempting to ban a Member of Parliament from a public facility in his own constituency. Realising that I wasn't moving, and in front of dozens of children eagerly awaiting the visit, Ms Izzet then tried to entice me to an office for "some refreshments". She was trying anything to get me out of the way, in a way that is outrageous to a Member of Parliament in his own constituency. Ms Izzet told me that I hadn't even myself visited the school, which was a lie, and that I would make the visit "political" - which was a bit rich coming from a Balls adviser.

Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader of the Council arrived, and Ms Izzet was remarkably and improbably even more confrontational towards him, even though the School was Council property and the Council is the Local Education Authority. She then proceeded to try to dupe Stephen and me into believing that Brown and Balls were coming in by a different entrance, and there was even a decoy posse of security people to help do the job.

We eventually got back into our own school, and were then treated to an hour of pure pantomime. The children, mainly 15 or 16 were on great form and were clearly thrilled by the visit. Brown's chatter, however, was embarrassing. Balls asked in the most patronising way he could about the quality of the food and about school sport, and seemed to have limited interest in the educational achievements.

Brown made a number of faux pas. His worst was to meet the same Italian teacher twice in 15 minutes and attempt to have the same conversation with her, forgetting he had already met her. Each time he told her he was looking forward to going to Italy next week (presumably on some official business, hard to imagine he is going on holiday), and he suggested she take the children to Rome "as that is where they have the ancient...." (he didn't finish the sentence, searching for the word monuments or sites, I suppose). Sometimes Balls had to add the words Brown was searching for, like "ambition" at one point.

Brown and Balls learned that the school is a specialist language school. I told them that French, Spanish and Italian were taught. One of the staff added that Arabic is also taught to those for whom it is a home language. "Arabic, that is a difficult langauge" said Brown; er, but not if it is your home language I suggest.

It has been much commented on before, but Brown's chatter at this sort of event is dire. Balls is little better. The school did a fantastic job under some pressure from the officials, but the overriding memory of this Prime Ministerial visit to my constituency is that Brown and Balls surround themselves with officials who might be even more hectoring and bullying than their masters.

State set to spend 50% of UK GDP

So reads the headline of an alarming article in yesterday's City A.M.  The source of the story is some pretty remarkable research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research.  In sum -

While the South East has relatively low public spending, forecast to rise from 32.4 per cent of regional GDP in 2007-08 to 40 per cent next year, Northern Ireland and Wales’ state spending is expected to jump from 59.4 per cent and 57.5 per cent of GDP respectively to more than 69 per cent.

To put those figures into context, government spending as a share of GDP in Cuba – a communist country – is set to fall to 60 per cent next year.

Blimey.

The view from Steerage

I'm a huge fan of Nick Cohen's writing and his latest piece, in Standpoint magazine, is well worth a read. He writes about the inchoate and yet civilised anger of the public to the recent sequence of revelations regarding the abuse of our money, in both the City and in Parliament. I think it's the first time I've read a coherent narrative describing my gut response to both events:

When the Titanic sank, it was said that the plebs in steerage watched as first-class passengers hogged the places in the lifeboats. Today's plebs could be forgiven for sharing their astonishment as they watch the executive class hog public money as the country goes down.

Worth reading the whole thing here [updated 11.40am with a fixed link!]

Obama goes to Moscow next week. Will Brown ever make it?

Whatever one thinks about Vladimir Putin/ Dmitri Medvedev's government in Russia, one cannot deny that Russia is an important player in its own right, as well as in current hotspots like Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea, all of which border Russia or its former empire.

President Obama clearly sees this, and is making his first visit to the country next week less than six months after taking office. The talks will cover non-proliferation, disarmament and the key regional issues where Russia is an important player.

This is in stark contrast to Gordon Brown, who, as I blogged here in February, has not visited Russia for years, and hasn't met Vladimir Putin anywhere since he became PM in 2007.

As David Hughes at the Telegraph pointed out last year, in 2000 Blair made sure he was the first Western leader to meet Putin (rather like he was with Obama too, for that matter!). So as British relations with Iran hit an all-time low, Brown has no friends in the region to call on who might help.

The Queen costs us each a mere 69p a year - and she wants all MPs to know it

Today has seen the publication of the annual report of the Royal Public Finances, a summary of which is downloadable here (as a pdf file).

The main conclusion from the figures is that the Queen effectively costs us each just 69p a year, which is pretty good value, I would venture.

But interestingly, she appears to have felt the need for something of a spin operation to promote this fact to Members of Parliament.

Here's the letter the "Keeper of the Privy Purse" has sent this afternoon to all MPs...

Do you really want your MPs to work for you as a job?

Very shortly now, we shall be told in detail all the “second jobs” MPs do, how much they earn, and how many hours a week they spend on them.  Harriet Harman wants to go further and ban “second jobs”.  Gordon Brown suggests a set of minimum requirements for MPs in how they respond to constituent queries and so on, with the possibility mooted of removing MPs that do not meet these minimum requirements.

The assumptions underlying this train of thought are so misconceived that one barely knows where to begin.  Being an MP is not a “job” at all, let alone a “main job”.  And if voters want to elect an MP that never responds to their queries, what business is it of Gordon Brown or anyone else to prevent them from doing so?

But attacking all these points directly would probably clash with so many things that so many of you reading this blog would think obvious that I would test your patience going down that road.  So I shall come at the matter from the other side, as it were.  Instead of telling you what an MP should be, I shall describe for you the creature you are asking for, and ask: Is this really what you want?

Why not hold by-elections a set time after the vacancy occurs?

Ian Gibson resigned as Labour MP for Norwich North on June 5th, yet three weeks later and the writ is yet to be moved in the Commons to cause the by-election, which is now not expected to take place for another four weeks.

Meanwhile, Michael Martin resigned his Glasgow North East seat at the beginning of last week - having announced his intention to do so as long ago as May 19th. Yet there, too, no writ has been moved for a by-election.

Convention states that the departing MP's party gets to decide when to hold the contest, as it is a whip from that party who formally moves the writ for the by-election (and I gather that it would be the Labour whips in the case of the outgoing Speaker too).

But why should they?

Given that the idea of fixed term parliaments is now up for discussion, why not create a rule stating that a by-election automatically happens a fixed time after the vacancy occurs - say, five or six Thursdays later (perhaps allowing for extra grace over Christmas or holiday periods)?

That would leave ample time for a funeral (in the case of an MP's death) and selection meetings before a standard length campaign - and ensure that a constituency is not left unrepresented in Parliament for weeks or even months on end.

As far as I can tell, the only reason the voters of the above two constituencies are without representation in Parliament right now is because of Labour Party tactical games as to which timing will suit it best.

Certainly I hear mutterings that Labour wants the contests to be fought on separate days - possibly with Norwich in July and Glasgow as far in the future as September - in order that its limited machine doesn't have to be stretched into fighting on two fronts at the same time.

My photograph of a stoopid sign beats Tom Harris MP's photo of a stoopid sign

Over on his blog Tom Harris MP has a photograph of a silly sign from a Virgin train.

I reckon the photo of a sign that I took recently outside London's US Embassy beats his for stupidity...

Apparently you are not allowed to take bombs in with you!

Nihilism and the rise of Islam

The way our society is going, before the end of the century - perhaps well before the end - we will be an Islamic state.

It is conventional to date the decline of the influence of Christianity in Britain to the horror of the Somme.  The Great War led British Christians to doubt their previous creeds about the unique merits of their faith and of a society based upon that faith, and the idea that such merits were worth killing and dying for.  Robbed of the evangelising and civilising impulse (for what Good News was there to tell about the trenches?  And was Ypres really “civilisation”?), and burdened by debts, the intellectual drivers of Empire were also gone.  Amongst the British establishment as a whole, there was a catastrophic loss of self-confidence, and the events of the Depression were a further blow.  After the Second World War we became progressively more and more obsessed with the Nazis as their defeat was the one unambiguous Good we could still believe our Society had done – a brittle straw to hold on to as we sank further and further into the waters of Nihilism. 

Barack Obama shows that moderation of style is more politically potent than moderation in policy

In today's Times Sarah Vine writes that voters want passion from their politics.  I'd agree with that but Barack Obama has shown us the most important quality that a successful and radical politician needs is civility.

It's true that he has passion and charisma and a brilliant campaigning machine but it is his civility that has persuaded Americans to swallow his policy radicalism.

And, make no mistake, Barack Obama is America's most radical President of modern times.  Yesterday, hardly noticed because of Michael Jackson's death, the House of Representatives approved very radical action on climate change.  Next on Obama's 'to do' list is sweeping health care reform.  He's already increased federal spending in the largest ever fiscal stimulus.  He's already made massive changes to American foreign policy by pursuing direct engagement with the country's 'axis of evil' enemies.

Obama has demonstrated that voters are more persuaded by moderation and reasonableness of character than moderation of policy.  Voters, as Sarah Vine suggests, don't take a lot of interest in policy detail.  Obama won over middle America because of his generosity to opponents, his optimism, his image as a family man.  Republicans have hated this and have gotten more and more heated, more and more angry in the process.  Almost shouting now at the American people they cannot understand that Obama is getting away with enacting 'the Europeanisation of America' (which is what it is).  This heated reaction is compounding Obama's advantage.  Voters see the extreme language and temperament as the most offputting thing of all.

David Cameron has this moderation.  Earlier in the week I was struck by Quentin Letts' remark that Cameron is "not one of life's haters".  My hope is that the Conservative leader will use his Obama-style temperament to persuade Britain that he can be trusted with the radical action that will be necessary to put Britain back on track.

The BBC can learn from politicians’ mistakes

By Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Over the last few weeks MPs have learned the hard way that there is no point being half hearted when it comes to transparency over expenses. We’ve made big mistakes and the public have rightly been angry. But with independent scrutiny and more openness things are finally starting to improve.

The BBC needs to take note and avoid the same mistakes. Dragging your feet on transparency does not work. Yesterday’s announcements published the expenses claims of just 10 people in an organisation of 23,000. We are still no closer to unpicking the Beeb's £14m taxi bill or £15m domestic flight bill.

So here are a few things I think the BBC should do:

• Learn from the mistakes of parliament and be forthcoming with information the public wants, and has the right, to know. Transparency means showing the expense and salary details of the many not the few.
• Instigate proper independent scrutiny of expenses to assess whether they were justified. If some are not, then they should be paid back.
• Allow the National Audit Office in at any time to judge whether BBC expenditure, including expense claims, offer value for money. Currently the NAO can only go in on the invitation of the BBC - that is not good enough.
• Be more flexible and open when it comes to Freedom of Information. Requests must not compromise journalist sources but the public does have a right to know how much BBC staff spend on taxis and lunches.

Successfully restoring fiscal credibility

by Dr Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist, Reform

Spending cuts is the only game in town. Both the OECD and the Governor of the Bank of England have (in their own ways) emphasised a need for a debate on reducing government expenditure and debt. In April this year Reform released a detailed plan for expenditure reductions of at least £30 billion from 2010-11. The proposals in the report were widely debated in the media and at a series of lunch seminars, which highlighted that restoring the government’s finances requires being honest with the electorate about what has to be done.

As politicians such as David Cameron and Vince Cable appear to have recognised, making so called ‘efficiency savings’ will not be enough. The fiscal situation requires bold measures like addressing middle class welfare, reducing pay and employment in the civil service, focusing defence procurement on the UK’s real military needs and controlling increasing health expenditure.

Yet there has been limited political appetite for outlining a clear programme of expenditure and deficit reductions. International examples, however, highlight that UK politicians may be unnecessarily cautious – many countries have undertaken major programmes of reform that have restored fiscal creditability and improved the quality of their services. To highlight possible lessons from governments that have successfully reduced deficits this article briefly looks at reforms in New Zealand and Canada in the 1990s. (Many other examples could be given from countries such as Australia, Chile and Sweden.)

New Zealand 1991 – Self Reliance and Private Enterprise

A centre-right government was elected in New Zealand in November 1990. The incoming government faced a larger than expected fiscal deficit (approaching 20 per cent), as the economy moved into recession and funds were required to stop the country’s largest bank from collapsing. In 1991 the Minister of Finance, Ruth Richardson, introduced a wide-ranging budget (which, evoking memories of the 1990-91 Gulf War, came to be known as ‘the mother of all Budgets’). Key initiatives contained in the Budget included:

• removing middle class welfare, such as replacing a universal child benefit with targeted family assistance. This reduced the degree of churn in the welfare system, where tax rates on higher income earners were used to fund transfers they receive with associated administrative and deadweight costs. David Cameron and Vince Cable have raised similar concerns regarding the need for tax credits in the UK to be more effectively targeted to families in need

The BBC must not slow the media revolution

Leading on from Tim's post, some politicians and candidates may be delighted by the attention he refers to, a few may even be swayed, yet most by far will think of who they serve. Like the person on £350 a week (the average wage in Dover & Deal) who struggles to pay the TV tax, frankly prefers Sky or Cable anyway, and would benefit from a more widely based and exciting media market.

And that must surely be the key question here for everyone in public life. Forget the nice dinner, the free DVD and the posh race course enclosure, the key question is does the BBC stand in the way of a more interesting media future for Britain and her people? It's much more than just a matter of questionable programming, excessive pay and the entertainment of MPs and candidates.  It's the mixing of public sector and profit making operations that enables the BBC to compete in the media market in unfair ways, including brand stretching. In any other walk of economic life that would be a state aid. Anyone who has been to the USA, and seen the vast ocean of choice, will see what I mean and understand how it could be.

Media is changing fast now, there is a great convergence between platforms going on and nothing - not even the BBC - can be allowed to slow this media revolution or damage Britain's chance to be at the forefront of it.

Future-Gazing - The threat to Cameron from within

I want to think in this blogpost about how the Cameron premiership might end.  It may seem odd to do this when Cameron hasn't even become Prime Minister yet, but I believe that for a premiership to be a success, it's important to understand properly the nature of the challenges to be faced.

It has become a commonplace in senior Conservative circles now to accept that the incoming government will rapidly become very unpopular.  Public spending cuts, rising unemployment, and struggles with unions over public service reform are thought likely to make the government the most hated since Thatcher and perhaps even more than that.  Not quite the sunny uplands Conservatism that Cameron originally hoped to promulgate.

Some commentators suggest that this might make politics in the 2010s much more like the 1960s and 1970s than like the 1979-2010 period, with frequent switches of administration between Conservative and Labour.  I think that's most unlikely.  I think it's much more likely that unpopularity will lead, much more quickly than most people expect, to challenges to Cameron from within the Conservative Party.  If his administration is to be a success, he needs to understand and anticipate this from the beginning.

The BBC (like much of the public sector) enjoys private sector pay AND public sector security

Licence to Bill is how The Sun headlines its coverage of the BBC expenses revelations.

For me the bigger issues about the BBC and how it uses licence fee payers' money have been highlighted by David Elstein - former CEO of Channel 5.  In yesterday's Times David Elstein noted how the BBC showers politicians and other influentials with "lunches, dinners, receptions and — above all — events" as it seeks to maintain monopoly control of licence fee revenue.  Read his full piece here and listen to him again on Radio 4 this morning noting how BBC execs enjoy private sector pay AND public sector security.

The disastrous public finances: Call in the IMF

There is absolutely no doubt that Britain’s public finances are a disaster area. The IMF recently said that the Chancellor’s debt reduction programme needed to be on “a firmly downward path faster than envisaged in the 2009 Budget”. Standard and Poor’s rating agency has downgraded the outlook for Britain’s public finances from “stable” to “negative”, implicitly threatening the loss of triple-A status for government debt. Earlier this week the European Commission shot a fresh warning at the Treasury about the soaring budget deficit. The OECD has warned that public borrowing as a percentage of GDP could hit 14% next year. And the Governor of the Bank of England has insisted that the government’s “extraordinary” and “enormous” levels of borrowing had to be reduced faster than the Chancellor planned. 

Suffice to say the numbers are beyond appalling and there will be a real possibility of an investors’ strike if the next government does not take an axe to borrowing. The main cause for this disaster has been Gordon Brown’s profligate spending. Of course, the recession has made the situation worse. But this does not excuse our ex-Chancellor from taking the blame for this catastrophe. And, of course he should have repaired the roof while the sun was shining. But he didn’t. And to extend the metaphor, he allowed dry rot, wet rot and death watch beetles wreck the timbers and let the windows fall in and the floorboards give way. Despite many warnings that his profligacy was unsustainable, he merrily showered money on his vote-winning pet causes irrespective of the long-term consequences. Along with the wreckage of occupational pension schemes, the introduction of the fundamentally flawed tripartite system of financial regulation and the sad undoing of the golden economic legacy he inherited from the Tories in 1997, this wreckage is Gordon Brown’s true legacy. And yet I still hear people, though prepared to acknowledge his shortcomings as prime minister, who seem to believe he was a great Chancellor. He wasn’t. He was a disaster. And he was a churlish and dishonest one at that.

Universal, unfair and unaffordable

By Thomas Cawston, Researcher, Reform

As the Welfare Reform Bill goes through Parliament, some commentators have questioned whether a recession is the right time makes changes to the welfare system. But it is precisely when unemployment is growing and government finances are collapsing that fixing welfare must be high on the agenda. The immediate challenges should not obscure how the true cost of Britain’s welfare system has been growing out of control for years and is in urgent need for reform.

Work and pensions is the largest single area of government expenditure, with more spent on welfare measures than health and education combined. But borrowing £175 billion next year won’t be enough to foot the forecast tax credits and benefits bill. As Britain enters an age of more for less, welfare spending is one area where less is more.

An honest appraisal of the welfare budget illustrates that modernising welfare to work schemes, while important, is not the biggest fiscal challenge. Designed to defeat the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, Britain’s welfare system now wastes tens of billions every year on providing benefits to the richest.

• Each year £3.2 billion is spent on free television licenses and other pension gimmicks.  But a report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee shows universal winter fuel payments are only needed by 18 per cent of recipients.
• Although pensioners are no longer the poorest in society, we still divert 55 per cent of welfare spending to a part of the population that is made economically inactive at 65. 
• £12 billion a year is spent on universal child benefit, although a quarter of households with children have total weekly incomes above £1,000.
• The state spends £1.2 billion on subsidising loans to students mainly from a middle class background, despite the long term financial incentives for young people to enter university.
• Supporting the middle classes is the new raison d’etat sociale, and it can no longer be sustained.

Today you can stop working for the state and start working for yourself...

I am alerted to this piece in today's Telegraph by Dr Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, who explains that today is "Cost of Government Day".

Basically, he explains that for the last 176 days the average Briton has been working for the state and only now does he or she start working for him- or herself.

And as if we didn't already know what a state the economy is in, he adds that this year we have had to put in "10 days’ more work than last year in order to keep the Government afloat".

Enjoy the rest of the year folks!

Sally McNamara: The EU is already trying to progress from Superstate to Superpower - and must be stopped

By Sally McNamara

One could never accuse Javier Solana of lacking ambition. In typical Euro-arrogance, EU ‘Foreign Minister’ Solana has already assumed an Irish “Yes” vote to the Lisbon Treaty and predicted that EU diplomacy will eventually rise to such heights as to match the US and China (Note: several other countries have not yet signed the wretched Lisbon Treaty either, including Poland and the Czech Republic).

Last year, I questioned Mr. Solana about the Lisbon Treaty when he appeared on a panel in Washington alongside former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, UN official Kemal Dervis and President of The Brookings Institution, Strobe Talbott. He seemed genuinely perplexed that someone would rain on the parade of unfettered Euro-gushing that was enveloping the event. When I asked him about the EU’s utter disregard for public opinion opposing further European integration, he dismissed my factual question, saying: "I’m not going to be very long, because Strobe and Kemal have defended the case which to my mind doesn't need too much to be defended.”

Bob Crow and the RMT need to grow up

Many thanks to my (Labour activist) friend Chris for sending over this rather disturbing photograph he took whilst passing the headquarters of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) this lunchtime.

Yes chaps; that is a Cuban flag.

We shouldn't be surprised.  Bob Crow does, after all, have a framed photograph of vicious killer Che Guevara in his office and is proud to host an "RMT Annual Cuba Summer Party".  I do wonder, though, if Bob Crow and his merry band of brothers have ever taken a moment to learn the truth about the supposed Cuban "workers' paradise"?

Unlike in the United Kingdom, where the RMT's sporadic strikes frequently paralyse city centres and cost British business hundreds of millions of pounds, strike action is outlawed.

Under the 1995 Foreign Investment Law, all employment and wage bargaining must be centrally coordinated by state employment bodies.  "Investors", according to the ITUC, "pay the agencies in dollars, but the agencies pay the workers the equivalent figure in pesos, pocketing up to 95% of their salaries".  Wow, that's fair!

The only professional body in existence is the Central de Trabajadores Cubanos, a 'union' controlled solely by Fidel Castro's thugs. Debating with the CTC is a non-starter - unless one fancies a spell of "re-education" in one of the numerous gulags the Castro regime operates. 

Take a look at the International Trade Union Confederation's (ITUC) annual survey of violations of trade union rights in Cuba for more - including information on the independent trade unionists jailed for, well, unionising.  "Workers' paradise", eh?

Bob Crow and the RMT need to grow up.

More guff at the Tate

I've complained before here about the increasing abuse of Tate Britain, with the sort of pseudo-art rubbish Tate Modern was supposed to accommodate (if it must go anywhere at all).  Today's Evening Standard brings more depressing news on this front.

"Monochrome Till Receipt (white)" is currently on show at the gallery.  It is, as the name suggests, a till receipt.  From Morrisons.

Laughing?  The joke's on you.  You're paying for this.

Reform must be deeper than choice of cloth

Time was the Speaker looked like a judge. Then, by turns, like a barrister, a solicitor advocate and now, it seems, not unlike a court usher. All much remarked on by today's press, but then who really cares what the new Speaker looks like? Surely what matters are that the reforms needed to restore trust and confidence in our democratic system are made at a substantive level.

 

And what we've seen so far gives rise to some cause for concern. We are told of a new law to imprison MPs for a year where expenses are fiddled. This is just another "we must be seen to pass some new (and useless) law" response. The criminal law caters perfectly well already for the likes of Morley, Chaytor and Moran. Prosecutions could successfully be made under the existing Theft Act and the Fraud Act. The bigger worry is the malaise is such that there is little public confidence the Police and the CPS will take any action and Concerned Citizens may well take the lead with private prosecutions.

 

We need to move towards proper reforms:

• Get rid of all personal type expenses and reset the salary at an appropriate level;
• Look again at reform to the House of Lords, introducing elected members in whole or part;
• Look again at party funding and impose a maximum limit of £50,000 per person or company (including unincorporated and every other form of association);
• Reduce the number of MPs - to 500 and no more - on "fair votes" boundaries;
• A recasting of responsibility and accountability towards the citizen - e.g. merge quangos into local authorities or back to Central Government, bring back powers from Europe - so people feel they can change things around them, have some say and fire decision makers through the ballot box.

There is a strong constitutional reform agenda that the Conservatives can pursue for the renewal of our democracy and our national life and David Cameron has indicated that he will indeed do so. It's necessary as the public mood is for reform to be deeper than the choice of public cloth.

Climate change questions, with no apparent (permissible) answers

An important debate is taking place in Australia, one of the few "western" (you know what I mean) countries in which mainstream politicians are (to some extent) able to question the gospel of climate change.  Here is the relevant report from the ever-excellent Australian.  In summary, the questions asked and as yet unanswered are:

• Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5 percent since 1998 while global temperature cooled during the same period? If so, why did the temperature not increase, and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?

• Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th-century phase of global warming) were not unusual as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history? If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

• Is it the case that all computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990 to 2008, whereas in fact there were only eight years of warming followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling? If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy-making?

They await answers over at the Australian.  Or you can have a go here.