CentreRight

RE: Is Twitter the Conservatives' big election weakness?

Going by the response to my post yesterday supporting the Conservative drive to recruit celebrity supporters, and advocating a greater use of social networking websites such as Twitter, it isn't a tactic which is overwhelmingly popular. I would however like to take this opportunity to clear up a few issues and advance my case. Firstly, I do not advocate an either/or choice between traditional campaigning and online campaigning, which is how some on both sides unfortunately see the issue. The two forms of campaigning are not mutually exclusive, and indeed a celebrity and social media campaign would take very little if anything away in terms of resources from the 'ground war' of door knocking, leaflet delivering etc. The results however could be huge. It was suggested that social media campaigning was like air support to the combat forces on the ground doing the actual meeting, delivering etc, however - to continue the military analogy - Twitter and other social media are more akin to special forces, breaking in via the back door. Knocking on doors can deliver leaflets and interaction between total strangers, one of whom unfortunately probably finds the other a bit strange, whereas Twitter can deliver a completely unexpected message, website or broadcast from a celebrity that individual may admire, right to the computers and phones of many thousands of people. Unlike blogs, social media is also a means of reaching the disillusioned and not simply preaching to the converted. Secondly, I do not believe in trying to find any old celebrity, which would indeed look desperate (unless their support is more subtle, such as on Twitter). In my example of Cheryl Cole and shampoo I discussed finding the right celebrity for the right product, and the importance of aligning this right. Labour loves using Stephen Fry, because he is viewed widely as hugely intelligent which leads people to respect his opinion, just as Head & Shoulders love using Cheryl Cole because she has nice hair, and financial firms like using Carol Vorderman because she is viewed as a maths expert. Where is the Conservatives' Stephen Fry? Finally, I do not advocate becoming a policy free void filled with minor pop star celebrities. No sort of campaigning is a replacement for that, online or on the street, and indeed having a sensible, coherent and popular set of policies is vital to the success of an online campaign just as any other campaign - after all, we need something to stay, online as on the pavement. So where exactly do the Conservatives start? I have no idea of how celebrity edorsements are solicited, however a good trick I find in most things is to see what works and copy it. Given that Sarah Brown has over 1 million followers on Twitter, I'd be signing Samantha Cameron up asap...

And the award for PC, po-faced, self-important, priggish press release of the day goes to...

Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson, who has berated Tory Giles Chichester for congratulating his constituent for winning Miss World, contrasting it with his own uber-laudable commitment to saving the world:

“Needless to say, whilst Giles is ogling women in his office, I will be in Copenhagen campaigning for a deal that will preserve our planet.”

Note: no image of Miss World was gratuitously posted in the creation of this message

**UPDATE** A keen-eyed correspondent points out to me that the Prime Minister congratulated Jo McElderry on his X-Factor win.  Presumably he can expect a slapping from Watson post-haste.

Cottesmore: cut without compassion

We often hear the Cottesmore Harriers from our garden, and see them when we are out walking. It's always good to know they are there; they are the sight and sound of courage. Cottesmore village is a few miles away, over the county boundary into Rutland. Our son goes to Cubs there, in an ugly scout hut behind a very pretty pub, close to a fish and chip shop that's worth driving out of your way to visit. The RAF base is a vital part of the community, and the largest employer in Rutland. Its closure will have a massive impact. It has a human cost; people will be hurt as a result. 70% of the fish and chip shop's business comes from the base. Other businesses and jobs depend on it as well.

I'll leave it to others to look at the Defence implications of this. My point is a different one. Public services will inevitably be cut over the next few years. People will lose their jobs. Families and communities will be damaged. Some of the jobs that go may be unproductive and unnecessary in Conservative eyes, although it's unlikely the people who lose them will think that. But whatever the job or the organisation that is cut, the human cost must be acknowledged. Boris Johnson put this powerfully at the party conference this year: where there must be cuts, he said, do it with humanity and compassion, recognise the price people must pay.

Which is where Quentin Davies went wrong today: If we can get by with fewer bases that will be a very good thing to do. We don't have bases for the sake of having bases, you know; they are not an end in themselves. We have bases where it is necessary to contribute to our defence capability. His tone, complacent; pride in being a Minister, self-evident; compassion for those affected by his decision, zero.

His offensiveness is especially culpable not just because he also today laughed off his £20,000 bell-tower repair claim as an "absolute joke." Nor because this decision has been driven not by defence considerations but by the incompetence, spectacular even by the standards of this government, with which the Defence budget has been set and spent. It is because Quentin Davies represents the next door constituency to Cottesmore. Some of his own constituents work there. But I doubt he realises that.

I am not amongst Quentin Davies's greatest fans. But his recent career should be studied closely by all would-be MPs and Ministers, lest they follow his example in any way.

Defence: is it even worse than we thought?

By Neil O'Brien

According to the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Defence is on course for a £36 billion overspend.

Their report, out yesterday, noted that:

"The Department estimate that the Defence budget remains over committed by £6 billion over the next ten years; this assumes an annual increase of 2.7 per cent in their budget after the end of the current Comprehensive Spending Review settlement in 2010-11.

However:

"If the Defence budget remains flat in cash terms after this time, then the extent of the over commitment widens to £36 billion. In either case the budget remains consistently unaffordable over the next ten years"

Their chart shows how the gap between the MOD’s spending plans (in green) and its budget (in blue) will gradually widen to about £7 billion a year by 2018.

But defence spending isn’t just going to be frozen.  According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Government’s plans in the Pre-Budget Report imply that real terms spending in “non-protected” departments like defence will be cut between 16-19% by 2013/14.

Is Twitter the Conservatives' big election weakness?

Recently a report on ConservativeHome about CCHQ’s drive to recruit celebrity endorsements led to some debate about the merit of such endorsements. Whilst there is of course an upper limit on the result (which wearing my economist’s hat I shall call ‘value’) of any electoral tactic where the opportunity cost in terms of man hours or money of a certain action makes it less effective than another action, I am very firmly of the opinion that such a policy is long overdue.

I’m not suggesting that anyone will switch their vote purely because Celebrity X endorsed the Conservatives (though some may), but then very few people beyond children who long to ‘be cool’ switch their shopping preferences because of the celebrity used on the advert, yet that doesn’t stop hugely successful companies paying millions for celebrities to be on commercials for their products or even to be seen using them. They do it for a reason, the reason is that it works.

People don’t directly decide to buy a certain shampoo because Cheryl Cole endorses it, but people who like Cheryl and think she is trustworthy in this field because she has nice hair, and are open to considering a new shampoo (i.e. not bald), might give it a try. It’s a case of finding a well liked person, trusted in that product’s field, and there being a target demographic of ‘floating’ consumers open to the possibility of changing habits. Right person, right product, right target.

In politics rather than commerce the situation of finding the right celebrity for the right target demographic is even harder. The product is not shampoo or perfume but a political party comprising thousands of people, a raft of policies, and a collection of historical baggage, both good and bad, along with the ingrained prejudices such as class war that result. The target ‘floating voters’ are even harder to define, varying in every way you can imagine, and – unlike in the past – by and large not at all region specific, instead being a kaleidoscope of individuals with multiple, non-exclusive attributes to each of their respective multi-dimensional personalities. The MOSAIC database divides us by postcode into 61 groups, but even this is far too simplistic.

Is the bishop wrong to understand the Taleban?

By Bob Seely

Yet another bishop puts his foot in it by saying: “The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.” Sadly this bishop, The Rt Rev Stephen Venner, is the new bishop for the armed forces.

I had to think a bit before deciding why I was offended, and it should be said that the bishop apologised for his remarks, but criticism of what he said is still valid.

It’s not the fact that the man is bishop for the armed forces, and that his remarks may damage moral, although I suspect they will, and I have no doubt that our enemy will use his statement against our troops.

It’s not the fact that he calls for understanding. Maybe he has little understanding of our enemy, but the Armed Forces are not stupid. They have no illusion about who we are fighting; a hard core of skilled insurgents fired up with Pashtun nationalism and a vicious, intolerant God, and a broader mass of young, bored, Pashtun men, many of whom would be reconcilable if they saw progress in their country. They fight because they are paid, because they are bored, because they are indoctrinated, because tribes come together at the approach of an outsider, regardless of whether that outsider is the Afghan state or the British army.

I think what is objectionable about the bishop’s thoughts are: his ignorance about our enemy, his self-defeating self-hatred, an overfondness for humanising those who hate us, and a moral relativism - a sometimes useful tool for understanding the complexity of the world - taken to absurdity.

The dangers of the PBR’s ‘hockey stick projections’?

by Professor Nick Bosanquet, Consultant Director, Reform

I’ve never known any business that does not claim to follow the ‘hockey stick’ pattern of earnings… This immediately shows some modest dip in earnings in the immediate future followed by continual improvement stretching to infinity (John Harvey-Jones, 1988).

Last week’s Pre-Budget Report was rightly exposed for its failure to address the budget deficit. The PBR not only failed to timetable a plan to tackle the deficit, but was also guilty of presenting hugely over-optimistic forecasts for the economy. Just when most companies in the private sector have got off the hockey field, with intense scrutiny forcing them to make realistic projections of their sales and revenues, the Treasury has moved in with a classic in hockey stick projections. This is shown in their projections for UK GDP for 2011 and 2012.

For 2010 the forecast for GDP growth appears realistic at 1 to 1.5 per cent. For 2011 the plans to reduce the deficit mean that public expenditure reduces growth by 1 per cent, but private consumption (+2), investment (+1), inventories (+½), net trade (+½) and dwellings investment (+¼) all raise GDP. Overall GDP is expected to grow by 3¼ to 3¾ per cent. But how reasonable do these projections look?

In relation to private consumption, from 2000 to 2007 this consumption contributed an average of 1¾ per cent to GDP .This was helped along by housing equity release and by heavy unsecured borrowing on credit cards. The Treasury projections imply that this consumption for 2011-12 is going to spring back to a growth rate even higher than in the boom years, although the conditions facing households appear to be radically different:
• the projections assume that a diminished number of households still in the labour force will embark on a major boost in consumption just at a time of pay freeze and, probably, contraction in the public sector workforce
• the projections need to be revised for high unemployment and rates of labour force withdrawal
• the projections also need to be revised for households increasingly saving rather than spending more of their incomes. As the Bank of England has shown, there are reasons to expect the saving rate to continue to be strong for some time, with some households, for example, beginning to register a further need for saving to provide an adequate income in retirement.

In relation to investment, the Treasury projections also expect a bounce in business investment, which is expected to contribute more to GDP growth than it did on average in 2000-07. However, there is evidence that corporate change is pulling investment in manufacturing and financial services towards the relatively high growth rates in Asia. There is also a pull for consumer products towards new Europe, where much food processing and component manufacturing is now heading.

As well as losing out from a changing distribution of investment, the UK also stands to lose out from any shifts towards investment protectionism. As OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria put it: “Investment protectionism poses a grave risk to recovery by further reducing international investment flows just at a time when these are most needed, ” with international mergers and acquisitions showing their largest year-on-year decline in recent history. The effect of this investment decline may take several years to become apparent, particularly given the short term stimulus from the car scrappage, but is nonetheless a real concern.

In relation to inventory, the projections show a perhaps too high contribution from this variable. In 2010 inventory change is expected to produce to contribute half (3/4 per cent) to the expected growth in GDP, followed by a further build up of inventories in 2011. This seems ambitious given the difficulties firms are facing in building up inventories at a time of constricted bank lending.

The Prime Minister in a recent interview defended these optimistic forecasts on the grounds that the growth in output would not be as constrained by inflation as in previous recessions. However, both households and companies can expect significant cost increases from increased taxes, including national insurance and council tax, and from higher prices to pay for carbon reduction. It is also not clear how long interest rates can remain low for, with the policy mix raising a serious risk of a housing bubble in 2011-12.

There are serious risks that the economy will not have the dramatic rebound projected for 2011 and 2012. What this reveals is that the economy will not be able to rebound fast enough to close the gap, even under the best conditions. As recent posts on ConservativeHome have argued, attempts to stimulate additional growth should be a priority for any future Government. However, only real cuts in public spending and genuine reform can close the deficit and move to an economy of growth. It is time that the Treasury got off the hockey field.

100 Reasons why the ‘Copenhagen’ Governments and other proponents of “man-made” Global Warming theory of Climate Change are completely wrong

1. Politicians and activists say we must tackle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no real scientific proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity.

2. Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, whilst ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: extreme poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

3. Politicians and activists say we must tackle global warming, pointing to rising sea levels but the ongoing rise in the sea level does not depend on short-term temperature changes, and in any case the rate of sea-level increases has been steady since the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

4. Activists and dubious “scientists” provide ice core proof of how warming over the centuries has been accompanied by raised CO2 levels, but as Professor Ian Clark, an expert in Palaeoclimatology from the University of Ottawa, and other scientists have claimed, warmer periods of the earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

5. For activists, global warming is accompanied by raised CO2 levels but after World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions – while global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

South America set for a rightward turn?

With most of the ballots counted in the first round of the Chilean Presidential election, the centre-right National Renewal Party’s Sebastián Piñera leads leftist former President Eduardo Frei by a 45/31 margin.

Piñera, who would become Chile’s first centre-right President in more than twenty years if he triumphs in the 17th January run-off, has put forward an ambitious - and dare I say, Thatcherite – manifesto. 

A Harvard-educated billionaire, Piñera has pledged to privatise large parts of the state-owned Codelco mining firm and to pass significant tax cuts to encourage business growth and investment in the country.  His tough approach to crime, disorder and corruption is such that his campaign posters read “Delinquents: the party’s over”.

A Piñera victory on January 17th could signal the start of a strong 2010 for the South American centre-right who have been plagued by years of galling losses to leftist candidates in Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), Brazil (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Bolivia (Evo Morales), Ecuador (Rafael Correa) and Argentina (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner).

May 30th will see the almost certain election of Álvaro Uribe in Colombia to a third-term as President of Colombia. 

Uribe has been arguably the only bright spot for the continent’s centre-right in the past few years, putting Colombia on a sure path to repaying its loans to the IMF and World Bank through the privatization of state-owned utilities and the extension of micro-credit facilities to small businessmen.  Significantly, he has also made significant progress towards defeating the FARC paramilitary rebels who have controlled large parts of the country for decades.  

The ultimate prize for the South American centre-right would, however, be victory in the second round of Brazilian Presidential election on October 24th. 

After two ideologically-confused and painfully corrupt terms in office, the perplexingly yet perpetually popular President Lula is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in office.   Centrist former health minister and São Paulo state Governor José Serra, who enjoys cordial relations with the liberal conservative Democratas (formerly the Party of the Liberal Front) will likely face Presidential Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff in a second-round run-off. 

Serra currently enjoys 20%+ opinion poll lead over Rousseff - although this will narrow significantly as election day approaches.

Brazil’s recent discovery of “black gold” – an enormous oil field stretching from just outside Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay to Angolan territorial waters – has elevated importance of defeating the President’s hand-picked candidate to a new level.   

The Lula Presidency has charted a curious course in international relations, ensuring strong relations with both the Bush and Obama administrations while at the same time extending the diplomatic red carpet to Iran’s fascist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezeula’s Hugo Chávez.  On a trade level, Lula has sought to boost Brazilian manufacturing strength through tax incentives and has spoken up against US and EU protectionist trade measures.

Rousseff, however, is far to the left of her mentor.  Her political skills were honed as an organizer for Marxist guerilla organisations during Brazil’s military dictatorship and she was a stalwart of Leonel Brizola's far-left Brazilian Labour Party.  Her antipathy towards foreign owned businesses (in particular oil companies) is well known in Brazil, as is her ambition to sit atop of a alliance of South American leftist governments – something Brazil’s newly-found oil wealth would give her the economic and diplomatic power to do.

On the other hand, Serra offers a realistic - if imperfect - solutions to Brazil's many and varied problems.

An economist who was exiled during the military dictatorship, he has taken a centrist position as Governor of Sao Paulo, focussing upon bringing around structural improvements to the state's transportation and education systems to encourage investment and business growth. 

He and his party - the Brazilian Social Democratic Party - have, however, closely aligned themselves with the popular President on expanding social welfare entitlements yet have to date espoused none of the forced equity redistribution and land reform advocated by elements of Lula's Workers' Party.

He is committed to the ongoing repayment of Brazil's international debts and has stated a preference for preference for keeping inflation at a minimum. He similarly favours eliminating the endless red tape which paralyses Brazilian businesses, including the particularly pernicious licença de funcionamento which pushes the time it takes to register and open a business to more than four months. 

Serra has been vocally critical of Lula's repeated dalliances with foreign dictators and could reliably be expected to pursue a tougher line on human rights violations and corruption in the region. It is one thing, Serra argues, to have diplomatic relations with dictatorships but another "to welcome their leaders in your home".

Battered from years of electoral setbacks, the South American right face an uphill struggle but 2010 appears to offer hope of some green shoots of recovery.

Choose and no book - but the IT is fine!

Choose and Book (C&B) is one of the successes of NHS IT, with the programme provided by Cerner's e-booking software. The software is working well, but things are getting in the way of smooth success.

The first obstacle was me. I had lost my paperwork. A call to C&B told me I could get my password from my GP practice. I called; it would take 15 minutes to retrieve it, they'd call me back. They didn't, so I called again later. Password lost, could I call back. Third time lucky, I had my password. Back to C&B to book my hospital appointment. Ah, now for that hospital they don't use C&B, you have to call direct. I called direct. Ah, now for that speciality we aren't making bookings because we are full and your appointment would exceed the waiting limit allowed, I was told. "But we can put you on the waiting list to be called to make an appointment". When will you call me? Oh - sometime in the New Year.

Moral of the story: software is working fine, but people are getting in the way, and don't believe what you read about the 18 week target success.

America looks to Britain's past - for examples of what not to do

The Heritage Foundation's ever excellent Insider Online has featured an extremely good article from the City Journal. It sets out to deter American policymakers from considering industrial nationalisation by setting out the cautionary precedent of Britain's economy in the 1970s and the nationalisation of British Leyland,

Claire Berlinski writes that post-war British politicians

nationalized the commanding heights of the economy and inaugurated the cradle-to-grave welfare state. By the 1970s, the UK faced an economic crisis unrivaled since the Great Depression. Shabby and hopeless, Britain had become, in Henry Kissinger’s words, a “tragedy” of a nation, reduced to “begging, borrowing, stealing.”

British Leyland, Britain’s largest automaker, faced bankruptcy in 1975. Fearing that its collapse would leave a million workers unemployed, the Labour government nationalized it. The company remained a ward of the state for 13 years. During that time, the British taxpayers invested 11 billion pounds—the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $22 billion today—in a company whose only sign of life was a willingness to spend that money. Though the British economy recovered, British Leyland did not.

She is writing in an effort to deter Congress from replicating such errors.  She concludes:

British Leyland, to judge from the news, has disappeared down the world’s memory hole. We’re nonetheless repeating an experiment that has been conducted already, and its results are known to anyone who cares to consult them. The experiment was a failure—and there is no good reason to think that it will succeed the second time around.

From both an economic and a big brother perspective, it's an example that we should not forget ourselves.

RE: RE: Climate action scepticism

I'll have last bite at this for now (it is the Copenhagen Conference, after all!).

I'll cover two things in this last post:

1) I shall explain more about form (3) scepticism, and why it is a genuine position that should get more airtime.

2) I shall reflect a little more on why there is so little interest in or discussion of form (3) scepticism.

RE: Climate action scepticism

Earlier today I posted about climate action scepticism, arguing that climate change scepticism is only one of three important reasons one might have for opposing action to prevent climate change.  I pointed out that there is almost no discussion of whether it is worth trying to prevent climate change even if one believes it is occurring and has a material human-induced component.  I noted that climate change sceptics foolishly try to shout down anyone that wants - as I do - to oppose action to prevent climate change without opposing the science of global warming, whilst those that advocate action to prevent climate change find it convenient to ignore attempts to question the worth of trying to prevent climate change by construing any questions of this sort as attempts to dispute the mainstream science.

As I write, there are fifty messages on the board.  Virtually all of these attempt to dispute the science of global warming, many attacking me (remember, I oppose action to prevent climate change) for not opposing the mainstream science in this matter.  The number questioning whether the costs of action to prevent climate change outweigh the benefits?  Zero.  The number questioning why the BBC or newspapers devote so much space to debating the scientific question and so little to debating the costs and benefits of action?  Zero.  The useful contribution to opposing action to prevent climate change, given the overwhelming consensus in the policy community in favour of accepting mainstream science in this matter?  Zero.

My point precisely.

Climate action scepticism

Climate action scepticism takes at least three forms:

1. those that deny there is any point (because they deny that the climate is changing or deny that human action has anything to do with climate change)

2. those that deny that there is the possibility (they deny that it is feasible for humanity to coordinate sufficiently to prevent or reverse whatever human-controllable element there is to climate change)

3. those that deny it is worth doing (they believe that, even if there is human-induced climate change and even if it could be prevented or reversed, the costs of doing so would be greater than the benefits)

The three forms are independent in the sense that one need not hold any one of them in order to hold the others.

Saddam Hussein, himself, was the weapon of mass destruction

We always suspected it and now we have it confirmed from Tony Blair himself:

BBC1: "If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?"

Tony Blair: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

My own support for the Iraq war was always based on regime change. Saddam was a genocidal leader. He had massacred many of his own people. He had a history of using evil and banned chemical weaponry. He funded terrorist organisations overseas. He had invaded Iran and Kuwait. He had launched missile attacks on Israel. He had constantly subverted UN resolutions, notably the oil-for-food programme. He was the primary source of an arms race in the region as neighbours sought to defend themselves from him.

The existence of WMD was always a device to get the agreement of the United Nations and was, of course, supported by the intelligence services of France and Germany as well as Britain and America. There was no way that the UN would have signed up to a war based on the idea of regime change. Many UN nations, including members of the Security Council, are undemocratic and oppressive regimes and they would never have voted to make their own status more vulnerable in international law.  Faith in the UN has always been a mystery to me. Why have we ever believed that a war becomes morally justifiable if it is endorsed by Russia, China and other questionable UN members?

The actual existence of WMD was always a red herring. It would have been easy for Saddam to have dumped his WMD in order to get the UN off his back. He could have won his face off with the US, seen Bush stand down the troops, seen UN inspectors leave and then over a matter of months rebuild his weapons capacity. He had the technology, the scientific personnel and the will. 

Blair was guilty of sending our troops to war on a peacetime budget and not finishing the job in southern Iraq. Bush was guilty of following the Rumsfeldian strategy of inadequate boots-on-the-ground. McCain, Lieberman and others (including IDS here) were urging much larger troop deployments long before the surge.

The great defeat in Iraq was the idea of a strong and resolute America.  In the aftermath of the successful toppling of Saddam Hussein the world became a much safer place. Libya gave up its WMD. Syria withdrew from Lebanon. The secret Pakistan-supported nuclear technology transfers were exposed. Other gains would have followed if the world's policeman had not become bogged down and on the back foot in Iraq.  Once America looked defeatable and exhausted the world's dictators and terrorists knew that their lives weren't going to change so much after all.

On envy

On Monday on the Today programme, we heard from Dr Lynne Friedl, author of the World Health Organisation's report "Mental Health, Resilience, and Inequalities".  Now, Dr Friedl's report covers some interesting territory.  And there are probably some lessons worth listening to - perhaps even learning from.  For example, she argues that "current economic and fiscal strategies for growth may also be undermining family and community relationships: economic growth at the cost of social recession. This means that at the heart of questions concerning ‘mental health impact’ is the need to protect or recreate opportunities for communities to remain or become connected."

But I didn't want to discuss the strengths of her report.  I wanted to discuss a certain concept within it, which I feel well-illustrates a serious weakness in the way many aspects of policy-making in our society are considered (and although her specific "error" - as I shall regard it - comes from the left, I believe there are similar errors for those approaching matters from the right).

Here is a key passage from the Summary, which illustrates the main point she tried to press in her interview on the Today programme: "An extensive body of research confirms the relationship between inequality and poorer [mental health] outcomes, a relationship which is evident at every position on the social hierarchy and is not confined to developed nations. The emotional and cognitive effects of high levels of social status differentiation are profound and far reaching: greater inequality heightens status competition and status insecurity across all income groups and among both adults and children. It is the distribution of economic and social resources that explains health and other outcomes in the vast majority of studies."

A mark to make us ashamed: Britain wants to brand Jewish goods

I have written before on CentreRight about my support for the State of Israel.  I believe that that support is a balanced one, in which I am willing to be a critical friend when constructive criticism is needed.

But sometimes a story emerges that requires outright condemnation.  On this occasion, the condemnation goes to the British Government.  The government - our government, supposedly representing you and me in its interaction with people abroad - wants to label goods as coming from the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, so as to help consumers boycott them.

As it happens, I have misgivings about the settlements and think that those who call for a return to old borders have a point.  But only people with no sense of history could think it unobjectionable to start branding Jewish goods like this.

Perhaps we should expect little else from those who don't shudder at the notion of creating a "Justice" Ministry.  But even with that sort of crass ignorance of connotation and sense, I thought that the bright spark who suggests slapping little yellow stars on Jewish products might have sounded alarm bells somewhere.

Alex Deane is the Director of Big Brother Watch, a campaign from the TaxPayers' Alliance

Intercept evidence

Targeted intercept evidence of a named individual is the best kind of surveillance evidence.  It can be reviewed by a senior policeman, a judge, or even a Minister.  It would only be permitted on application, with good reason.  But we don’t allow it.  We are still told, as per the Times today, that it would breach human rights.

Mass surveillance evidence, storing everyone’s information without any kind of discriminating eye, is the worst kind of evidence.  It generates vast amounts of data that nobody can realistically review, and it’s fantastically expensive.  But we’re trying to build that capacity.  What "human rights" apply only to those accused of crimes, but not to the population at large, remains to be explained.

We’ve got this debate completely the wrong way round.

A retiring Labour MP who would appear to be taking advantage of taxpayers' generosity before she departs at the general election

Further to the open thread on MPs' expenses elsewhere on the site, I have been looking through a selection of MPs' claims and am intrigued by the entries I have read for Kali Mountford, the Labour MP for Colne Valley.

She announced on January 16th this year that she would not be seeking re-election to the Commons at the general election.

Interesting, then, that she felt the need to refurnish her rented taxpayer-funded pad in Westminster just a month before making that announcement.

Looking through her documentation here, you will see that she submitted a claim on December 12th 2008 (page 24) for a £562.23 LCD television bought in West Yorkshire on November 30th.

Then on February 19th 2009 (page 31) she submitted a claim for £2,239 for 2 sofas and a table, also bought from an outlet in West Yorkshire, on December 7th. 

When the Fees Office queried (page 35) why these were delivered to her main home in her constituency, she explained (page 36) that they were purchased for and subsequently delivered to her London residence - on which she maxed out her allowance for the year, being told by the Fees Office in March 2009 that she had insufficient funds to cover her final claim of the year (page 39).

What is all the more odd though, is that by April 2009 she no longer appeared to have that home in Westminster which had been in urgent need of a new TV and new furniture several months beforehand: page two of this document covering the beginning of 2009-2010 shows her claiming £572.70 for two nights in the plush Marriott Hotel at County Hall, opposite the Houses of Parliament, for the nights of 21st and 22nd April 2009.

That said, page three of the the same document suggests she was claiming over £3,200 for rent covering little more than a fortnight in April 2009.

Very strange indeed.

The word from Germany - thanks to Brown, Britain is now an economic "mini-power"

The big talk amongst London's foreign journalist community today is this remarkable article in Der Spiegel, on the PBR, entitled  "Britain shrinks to a mini-power".

Our disastrous Prime Minister is now used to receiving withering incoming fire  from German governments of all stripes. But the piece by Carsten Volkery in Der Spiegel breaks new ground, and is actually the best read article on their whole site. The word "Mini-Markt" is a German pun, meaning both a "mini-power" and something like a "corner shop". Volkery writes that Britain has moved from being a "model economy" to being "in ruins". The "public finances are disastrous", "the economic decay is alarming" and that "it seems unavoidable that the next Government will have to make drastic savings in places where it will hurt".

Der Spiegel draws special reference to the fact that the motherland will soon be overtaken by the economes of its former colonies, India and Canada.

Brown's people, doubtless cowering in the corner this morning, must be pleased that, as the article is only available in German, at least their boss can't actually read about our national humiliation.

Labour's unsavoury allies (part three)

The Party of the European Socialists Annual Congress in Prague has just voted to reinstate Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction/Social Democracy (SMER) party to full membership of its trans-national political family. 

SMER was suspended from the PES in September 2006 for forming a governing coalition with Ján Slota’s far-right Slovak National Party - a group who make the membership of the BNP look like the audience of a Benjamin Zephaniah poetry recital in an Islington coffee shop. 

At the time, SMER were strongly criticised by PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen for failing to adhere to party rules demanding members "refrain from any form of political alliance or co-operation at all levels with any political party which incites or attempts to stir up racial or ethnic prejudices and racial hatred".  The coalition remains in place today.  

The Slovak National Party's platform is fairly predictable ultra-nationalist stuff.

Party leader Ján Slota appears to have a particular problem with Hungarians, declaring them a "tumour in the body of the Slovak nation" and "ugly, bow-legged, Mongoloid characters on disgusting horses". He has also charmingly declared that "we [Slovaks] will sit in our tanks and flatten Budapest" if ethnic Hungarians assert their authority in the Slovakia. 

Gypsies, Slota claims, should be dealt with in "a small courtyard and with a long whip" and refused to apologise for describing the Roma as "race who steal, rob and pilfer" on the grounds that "at least half of the nation think the same way". 

Slota has also praised the country's fascist dictator Jozef Tiso (hanged in 1945) as "one of the greatest sons of the Slovak nation" and dedicated a plaque to him whilst Mayor of the city of Zilina.  Homosexuality, he argues, is equivalent to paedophilia.

I could go on - but I think you get the picture.

Is it really appropriate for the Labour Party to be aligned to political parties like SMER who remain in coalition with the likes of the Slovak National Party?

> Labour's unsavoury allies - Part I and Part II

All Fur Coat And Nae Knickers

I don't want to write about the PBR: first of all, I don't know what I could add to Andrew's masterly economic dissection, or Tim's withering political skewering, of its failures. Secondly, it's too depressing. I've had a rotten enough week at work (in the private sector we're already on zero per cent. pay rises, and headcount freezes or reductions, and doubling of productivity and so on - I know this will come as a surprise to any Labour minister who thinks that a fictional plan to limit public sector pay rises at some point in the fictional future is an "act" (in the fictional sense) of bravado) and I'm sorry, it's only a few weeks till Christmas.

I want to write briefly about the PMQ session which preceded the PBR. Mr Brown delivered a line which I'm guessing looked better when it was scribbled down on a briefing note than it did when delivered to the chamber. According to the Prime Minister, we Tories are all wind and no turbines.

The precise meaning of this gnomic utterance can be left to political theorists [clue: it means nothing]; I'm more interested in what is suggested by its deconstruction. The phrase is a direct allusion to what we west-coast Scots often say of our east-coast compatriots, perhaps in an effort to calm our envy of their delightful flats and that Festival hoo-hah and so on. It is not uncommon to hear expressed in Glasgow the view that Edinburgh is All Fur Coat And Nae Knickers. In other words, and as an example, that it is a town which would rather buy another delicious pot of piping hot Earl Grey tea, served in a nice china service, than pay for central heating, or, indeed, to fix that leaking roof.

Rhetoric and reality in Alistair Darling's speech

At the TaxPayers' Alliance website, we've been following some of the nasties in the Budget.  There are a few which are particularly nasty, and run completely contrary to the objectives Alistair Darling set out in his speech.  Let's take a few quotes from that speech, and then look at the actions which will undermine his worthy rhetoric:

The Pre-Budget Report

Andrew Lilico is Policy Exchange's Chief Economist.

Alistair Darling’s pre-Budget report (PBR) today was a disappointment, though perhaps not an unexpected one.  In particular, it contained no plan to cut spending further or earlier.  Indeed, spending is rising this year by £5bn, and current spending is rising faster (0.8%) than projected in the Budget (0.7%).  The Government is now relying upon inflation to do the work of spending control.

There is no plan to cut the deficit faster.  This is projected to reach 5.5% of GDP in 2013/14 - exactly the same as in the Budget.  The plan is for the deficit to fall to 4.4% of GDP by 2014/15.  In today's terms, that would be £62bn - a larger deficit than the UK had ever experienced up to 2008/9, even after an entire Parliament of fiscal consolidation.  The PBR boasts (at B.30) that "Cyclically-adjusted borrowing is lower than at Budget across the medium-term forecast."  But this is entirely because of a redefinition of the cycle, not because of any reduction in the deficit!

In the meantime, the UK is projected to be borrowing around £175bn in 2009/10 and 2010/11.  At 12.5 % of GDP, this is far in excess of any plausible level at which deficits could be expected to stimulate the economy in the short-term, assisting it through recession.  Instead, a deficit on this scale acts as an anchor on the economy, raising interest rates and creating concerns amongst households that their taxes will rise.  The structural deficit (that bit of the deficit that won’t go away as the economy recovers) is estimated at 9% of GDP, some £125bn (down slightly on the 9.8% figure estimated at the Budget, but only because of a slightly changed assessment of the cycle).

Taxes are indeed projected to reach 37.3% of GDP in 2011/12, a figure not seen in the UK since 1985/6.  Indeed, taxes not been above 37% of GDP since 1986/7.  Recent Treasury research suggests that there is some 1.7m of suppressed unemployment, with workers keeping their jobs only because they were willing to accept reductions in hours, pay freezes, or pay cuts.  (Our own research puts the number at above 1.9m.)  Yet the PBR increases employer and employee NICs.  Imposing such a tax on employment at this time could well tip matters over the edge for a significant number of these people, accelerating what will, anyway, be a significant rise in unemployment over the next year.

At 4.75% contraction, 2009 is the worst year for the UK economy since comparable records began in 1948.  Indeed, it is worse than the likely estimate for 1931 (4.6% contraction).  As regards the forwards-looking estimates, to get growth of 1-1.5% for 2010, the economy would need quarterly expansions of some 0.4-0.5 throughout 2010.  I believe there will be two quarters of contraction, and GDP will be much closer to flat on the year, but 0.4-0.5% growth per quarter is certainly not out of the question.  To get 3-3.5% growth in 2011, the quarterly expansion would have to be around 0.9-1.0%.  I believe that’s comfortably doable, albeit at the cost of high inflation.

Some commentators seem to be suggesting that if there is growth of 1.25% in 2010, then Darling’s 2009 Budget growth forecasts will have been vindicated.  That is a somewhat confused idea.  The 2009 Budget forecast growth in 2009 at minus 3.5% and plus 1.25% in 2010.  Since the actual contraction in 2009 was 4.75%, the economy starts about 1.25% smaller at the beginning of 2010.  So if it grows only the 1.25% the 2009 Budget projected, it will be about 1.25% smaller in 2010 than the Budget thought it would be.  That means lower wages, less employment, lower tax receipts.

There is a special freeze on the higher rate threshold for 2012/13.  I think we can safely say that Darling does not anticipate deflation in that year.  I think it’s pretty clear that the Treasury expects high inflation that year (as do I), so that a freeze that year will be a significant money-spinner.  The PBR forecasts RPI inflation of 3.5%.  I think they must believe it will be higher (I expect 10%).

Overall, with rating agency and gilt-purchaser warnings about the UK’s credit status ringing all around, it is clear now that the UK's ability to borrow and its credit rating now rely upon bond market expectations that the real decisions will be taken after the General Election.  We’d better hope that whoever wins will be up to taking them.

Burma's crimes against humanity

Burma's crimes against humanity are highlighted in this article in the Daily Telegraph today, and in a debate in Westminster Hall introduced by Nigel Evans MP this morning.