CentreRight

Chris Kelly MP: Reflections on a very valuable week in Rwanda with Project Umubano

Chris Kelly is MP for Dudley South and reflects here on his experience volunteering with Project Umubano in Rwanda this year.

As the Secretary of State for International Development has already written on ConHome, Project Umubano is now in its fourth year. For me it was my second experience of Rwanda and, having spent two weeks in the central African country on a Project Umubano community project in the summer of 2008, I was keen to go back now that the general election is behind us.

Before I talk about some of the things we did on the project this time I would, first, like to pay tribute to my Parliamentary colleagues who made the journey. Everyone is tired after the long and short campaigns and I know that colleagues have been looking forward to the recess and a chance to relax and spend quality time with their families. But I really must record a special mention for Andrew Mitchell, Stephen O'Brien and David Mundell (all of whom took time out of their busy ministerial schedules) and fellow MPs Stephen Crabb, Desmond Swayne (PPS to the Prime Minister), Pauline Latham, Fiona Bruce and Jeremy Lefroy for giving up valuable holiday time to join the project, many for the second or third time.

I am extremely proud of the contributions made by the whole Project Umubano team in both Rwanda and Sierra Leone but I'm particularly proud of my Parliamentary colleagues for setting such a good example of compassionate conservatism in action. It is now my mission to encourage several more members of the class of 2010 to join the project next year. Parliament undoubtedly benefits having people with experience of the difficulties in continents like Africa and I'm confident that Parliamentarians who come for the first time next year will, to a man, find it a hugely rewarding and enriching experience and also leave with the sense of satisfaction one gets from making a modest contribution in a country with such considerable needs.

Younger voters like AV and older voters don't (and older voters are much more likely to take part in the referendum)

The latest YouGov tracker poll on AV is out (p2).

Current voting intentions neck-and-neck: 38% in favour of FPTP vs 37% in favour of AV.

Looking deeper into the numbers, though, it's looking bad for the Yes campaign, even at this early stage: the 18-29 group is heavily in favour of switching to AV (37 to 26) but most of them, of course, won't vote when it comes to it, whilst the 60+ age group, the vast majority of of which will vote, are heavily against (52 to 33).

Interesting to note that London is the only region in favour of AV - London-based journalists might like to bear that in mind when "taking the temperature" on the issue.  People might bear polls such as this in mind, also, when advancing arguments such as "the case for FPTP is already lost" and so "since change is inevitable, we should accept AV as a less bad alternative than PR".  It's not over yet, though, and some form of "time for a change" argument might yet carry the day.

P.S. I see that in response to my last post, a number of you suggested I was using the cost argument as some kind of cover for a broader opposition to AV and should stick to less "fatuous" arguments.  Eh?  Was myposition on AV in some way unclear?

Dragons slam wasteful Government grants to businesses

Did anybody see Dragons’ Den last night? If you missed it, there is one pitch definitely worth watching. German entrepreneur Ralf Klinnert presented a children’s fitness game based around cones with lights attached; in five years he’s made just £7,000, and sold only fifteen sets of the game. The Dragons asked him how he has survived on this sum of money – and his response is revealing. He tells the panel that he has received a Government grant of £148,000.

Duncan Bannatyne couldn't believe the news and was visibly angry: “I’m sick and tired of seeing the money being wasted, taxpayers’ money.”

Deborah Meaden also expressed her concern: “What worries me is you won’t care if I hand my £120,000 over because it’s not your money. And when it is your money, I tell you Ralf, it feels a lot, lot different in driving costs down because I think if you didn’t get £150,000 from the grants system, we’d be sitting here with that [the game] costing a lot less money to produce.”

True, the entrepreneur eventually received his desired investment from two other Dragons. But even they were deeply critical of his current costs of production which appear to have been predominantly leveraged by the taxpayer. More broadly, the exchange showed why the policy of the Government taxing businesses too much and then giving out grants is a deeply flawed one. It’s been done for years through the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), and past TPA research has shown that RDAs have failed in their key objectives: picking winners breeds an uncompetitive and inefficient business environment, as Deborah Meaden pointed out last night.

Lower taxes and further relief for small start-ups would stimulate genuine private sector dynamism, which is crucial for future growth and job creation. So while it’s good that the RDAs were abolished in the Budget, it’s vital that the new Local Enterprise Partnerships do not simply replace them as grant-givers. It’s certainly not something that the Dragons would approve of.

AV referendum: £80m to £100m - cheap at half the price

Seriously? (33m 50s on)

How many extra prisons could we have for £100m?  How many extra schools or teachers?  How many extra British-made movies?  How many extra tanks or soldiers?

Okay, okay - one can always do that sort of thing, mocking the use of funds and claiming it would have been better spent somewhere else.  But usually one is spending large sums of money on things that someone is in favour of!  Who is in favour of AV?  Not the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats, who were both explicitly opposed in the run-up to the General Election.  And Labour's so in favour of it that it's going to vote against the AV referendum bill in Parliament.  It's not even as though opinion polls show the voters in favour of it - most of the smart analysis now appears to consider it unwinnable.

We know why there's an AV referendum - it's there because that was the price Nick Clegg required to deliver his party for a formal coalition rather than just the confidence-and-supply agreement he would otherwise have offered (and hence the new General Election later in 2010) - something his own party is now turning vigorously against, but too late (they're probably doomed).

So now we're going to spend £100m on a referendum that almost no-one favours, that exists to further an agreement that most of the Conservative Party didn't want in the first place (polls at the time were clearly in favour of a minority administration) and the Lib Dem Party doesn't want now, at a time of such vigorous austerity that there will certainly be a trade-off between the AV referendum and some material elements of public services spending.

Money well spent... not.

A little summer reading

It's not exactly light reading, and certainly not Jeffrey Archer, but over the summer I have read four particular books that I would recommend highly to anyone interested in engaging with some of the major issues of our time. All four books, each in their own unique way, relate to the theme of freedom - freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I don't necessarily agree with absolutely everything in them, but overall they are challenging, inspiring and profoundly thought-provoking.

My four recommendations are:

1. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas
2. The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power, by Melanie Phillips
3. Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash of Civilisations, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
4. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr, edited by Clayborne Carson

A word or two about each of them.

Bonhoeffer

Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer is absolutely gripping - extraordinarily researched and engagingly written, it presents Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a major challenge to the contemporary Church and society. Hitler, Metaxas writes, was disdainful of Christians, believing that they preached "meekness and flabbiness". There's a warning in that for today's Church. Bonhoeffer stood in stark contradiction to this perception, and is a role model for Christians today.

A rare combination of passionate belief and open-minded breadth, Bonhoeffer rejected both the woolliness of ultra-liberals and the harsh dogmatism of ultra-conservative evangelicals. And he stood firmly for freedom, ultimately surrendering his life for the cause. As Metaxas notes, he was horrified at the Church's appeasement of the Nazis. "Action was the only thing these bullies feared, but neither the ecumenical movement nor the Confessing Church seemed prepared to act," Metexas writes. "They preferred to keep up a meaningless and endless dialogue and played into their enemies hands". Again, lessons for today, not just for the Church but for foreign policy makers dealing with dictators.

Ultimately, Bonhoeffer followed in a long line of Christians who saw human rights and political freedom as integral to their faith. Along with William Wilberforce, and to be followed by Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu, Bonhoeffer followed in Moses' tradition of saying to those in power: "Let my people go". The church in Bonhoeffer's view, Metaxas says, "existed for 'others' ... to reach out beyond itself, to speak out for the voiceless, to defend the weak and fatherless." This is a book that should be read by every Christian, but not only by Christians. Anyone with an interest in that period of history, its relevance to today and a concern for freedom would find Bohoeffer's story, as told by Metaxas, inspiring.

The World Turned Upside Down

Melanie Phillips' new book is typically bracing. The world needs the likes of Melanie Phillips, to sound the trumpet, to rattle the cage, to wake us up. She provides a very well-researched, well-substantiated, acerbicly argued rejection of ultra-political correctness, looking at the major issues of militant secularism, radical Islamism, environmental extremism, anti-Semitism, Israel and Iraq. "The postreligious Western world is struggling to adjust to a profound loss of moral and philosophical moorings," she writes. Summing up at least parts of our society quite accurately, she concludes that:

"A consequence of this radical discombobulation is widespread moral, emotional and intellectual chaos, resulting in shattered and lonely lives, emotional incontinence and gullibility to fraud and charlatranry."

It is packed with little-known facts, such as that today there are at least 100,000 practicing Pagans in the UK, a Pagan Police Association has been established and Hertfordshire police force allows officers eight days' pagan holidays a year. In 2007, Phillips notes, "450 scientists from more than two dozen countries, several of them current and former participants in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), voiced significant objections to the claims made by the IPCC and Al Gore". By last year, the number had risen to 700 scientists. Yet, she points out, the climate change dogma has taken root so much that a Stalinist intolerance of debate and dissent results in respected scientists being demonised and dismissed as mentally ill if they so much as question the new orthodoxy.

I don't necessarily agree with Phillips on everything. She is right to champion the values of intellectual and academic rigour and debate, and thereby defend freedom of speech and reject the tendency to repel, remove and character assassinate dissident voices. Yet she undermines her case by failing to clearly and uncategorically acknowledge that even if the science on climate change is debatable, there is still a very good case for wise stewardship of the environment. We should protect our countryside and natural beauty, and therefore minimise pollution, reduce the destruction of trees, avoid dropping litter, use our finite natural resources more sparingly, recycle and renew our environment. If she had emphasised that more strongly, her well-founded argument for freedom of thought and speech would be enhanced.

Happy birthday, Arthur Laffer!

What do John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher have in common? All three lowered tax rates and increased tax receipts. The explanation is simple: when tax rates are raised the state receives more initially, but when the rates become too high the receipts diminish as people and businesses simply stop working or avoid tax. There is plenty of evidence that we are in the latter phase today.

Professor Arthur Laffer, whose birthday it is today, famously explained the phenomenon to Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (then Ford/Nixon officials) on the back of an envelope back in 1974. Laffer was modest enough to admit that what since then has been dubbed the Laffer Curve was not invented by him. The North African historian Ibn Khaldun described it in 1377 in his book Prolegomena. David Hume and Adam Smith mentioned it too.

Long academic palavers have tried to ascertain what the revenue maximising tax rate is. Estimates vary widely though many end up in the 25 – 30% bracket. For example in Hong Kong the corporate tax rate is 16.5 % - and Hong Kong is certainly not short of a penny.

Many countries have lowered their tax rates between 1979 and now, usually based in part on the Laffer curve. In the spring of this year a great number of UK economists and politicians such as John Redwood used it to argue against a proposed increase of capital gains tax to up to 50%. Their campaign ensured that CGT only went up to 28%.

A few years ago I stalked a number of politicians at the Conservative Party Conference with questions about the Laffer effect. In a Telegraph debate (Tebbit and Heffer against D'Ancona and Villiers) Theresa Villiers pointed out that the Laffer curve is a curve, and that tax receipts go up for a while when tax rates are increased before the Laffer effect kicks in and marginal receipts diminish. She apparently thought that UK tax rates were still sufficiently low to increase receipts with rate rises – which they were already patently not at the time. George Osborne was still in his “we are not going to make promises about unfunded tax cuts” - phase. And at a Reform fringe meeting Philip Hammond said that Laffer was too difficult to explain to the public at large. I suppose all those utterances have to be seen in their context at the time.

Why Kashmir's a British issue

By Paul Goodman

No, not because we sold it to a Maharajah in 1846.  Nor because we made a mess of it roughly a hundred years later (though that's a matter I'll return to).  Rather, it's because at least half a million people of Kashmiri origin live in the UK - which means that what happens there matters here.

They originate from a region that's being shaken by a mass uprising, is a crucible of oppression and terrorism, and has been contested for over 60 years by two Commonwealth members - both of which are now nuclear armed - one of which could collapse entirely.  And that's not taking into account Afghanistan, where both have ambitions and our troops are fighting.

Jonathan Foreman, who knows the Kashmir valley well, has clocked that violence and protests there are rising, and has written an account in this week's Spectator.  I see that my old host Barrister Sultan Mehmood has been waving banners outside Downing Street, complaining that the Prime Minister has "exhibited his inexperience" on the Kashmir issue.  As it happens, David Cameron has said next to nothing about it, but his remarks on Pakistan have been noted by the Kashmiri diaspora (which, again, is a matter I'll return to). They'll also have spotted that the Disasters Emergency Committee has to date managed to raise only a tenth of the money for Pakistan that it did for Haiti.

All that's to set the scene.  Here's why Kashmir's a British issue: that's to say, one with the potential to impact on our country in a big and baleful way - more than any conflict abroad in which our armed forces aren't engaged.  In what follows, I'll use "Kashmiris" as a synonym for British citizens of Kashmiri origin.

• For Kashmiris, read Mirpuris - who speak Pahari, not Kashmiri.  Most British Kashmiris originate from Azad ("free") Kashmir, which isn't so much free as controlled by Pakistan (a source of suppressed anger).  But they're Kashmiris in the sense that they originate from the old princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.  That's right: the one sold by us to that Maharajah back in 1846.
• And officially, they're of Pakistani origin.  Our census lumps them with in with their 500,000 or so fellow citizens who originate from Pakistan.  Add well over a million British citizens of Indian origin, and you've a large number of people, concentrated in a relatively small number of urban areas, among whom the Kashmir issue arouses divided views and fervent passions.
• The conflict in Kashmir, like the condition of Pakistan, thus has ripple effects in Britain.  Pakistan's a long way from collapse.  (The army remains a dominant force.)  But trouble there has effects here.  The Al Qaeda connection's too obvious to stress.  A further war over Kashmir between India and Pakistan - three have been fought since the 1940s - could have serious consequences.
• Kashmir's a crucible of oppression and terrorism.  India holds one part it; Pakistan the other; the insurrection's in the Indian-administered (or occupied) part.  As Foreman points out, some 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and the population of Kashmir's roughly 10 million.  It's unclear how many troops India has there, but some estimates run as high as 700,000.
• The scale of the conflict is far greater than Israel/Palestine.  As Foreman notes, ten times as many people have been killed in Kashmir than in Israel/Palestine.  80,000 people is approximately the same number as live in High Wycombe in my old constituency.  If we'd as many troops per head in Britain as India's 700,000 in Kashmir, our army would be roughly four million strong.
• But it commands only a tiny fraction of the coverage.  Unlike Israel/Palestine, the Kashmir conflict can't be squeezed into a narrative of present-day western colonialism.  Nor is it a focus for European religious preoccupations.  Kashmiris complain: the West's quick to act in Afghanistan or Iraq.  And prone to diplomacy on Israel/Palestine.  But Kashmir's ignored.
• There's little merit in the assignment of blame.  Pakistan blames India for occupying the Kashmir valley.  India blames Pakistan for stoking terror.  In the valley, there's been murder, rape, terror, torture, mass graves - and indigenous protest.  Al Qaeda and Wahabi extremists are in on the scene. The Kashmiris complain of India flouting UN resolutions while the world does nothing.
• Britain can do little, if anything, to soothe the conflict.  Some Pakistanis and Kashmiris say  that Britain has a special responsibility to help solve Kashmir's problems.  However, India's a growing power that sees Kashmir as no-one else's business, is sensitive to what it views as British interference, and is fearful of domestic separatism.  The UK only has scope to work at the margins.
• However, the Government's support for India's Security Council membership is problematic.  Under Michael Howard, the Party had reservations about India's application, and specifically hoped for progress on Kashmir.  After Cameron succeeded him, the Party took up India's quest with enthusiasm.  The shift has gone down worse with Kashmiris than the Prime Minister's recent remarks about Pakistan.
• If there's a solution - and there may not be - Northern Ireland's a possible model.  In other words, the withdrawal of Indian troops and Pakistani insurgents; making the line of control "just a line on a map" (as the current Indian Prime Minister put it), so that people and goods can move across it; maximum autonomy in the Valley; cross-Kashmir bodies to promote trade and tourism.

I'm not an expert on Kashmir, but I did spent the best part of ten years representing a large number of Kashmiri-origin constituents and, for what it's worth, I've been to Azad Kashmir, India and Pakistan.   I tend to focus on cohesion rather than trade when considering our relations with all three.  This may be an unbalanced view.  But I own up to wondering, when David Cameron criticised Pakistan in India for looking both ways on terrorism, whether he'd thought of the domestic effects of saying so.

The Taleban are wrong, and I don't care about preserving their "culture"

A famous tale has it that Martin Amis once asked an audience at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts who believed themselves morally superior to the Taleban, and one third raised their hands.  According to David Aaronovitch, a Cambridge academic last week declared that the "affluent West" had "little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators".  In certain circles one can hear that there is no moral difference between advocating cuts to the NHS budget and slicing off women's noses for showing their faces in public - the only substantive difference being that we see the misery in the latter case whilst in the former it is hidden.

I appreciate the challenge here.  In my view, morality is an intrinsically religious concept - to say that "X is moral" is to say "My gods will that X".  So, of course, a man that worships Asherah may believe that his god commands the sacrifice of his children at the full moon, whilst his wife, a worshipper of Yahweh, may believe that her god forbids the sacrifice of those same children.  It thus could well be true both that it is moral for the man to sacrifice his children and immoral for his wife to do so.  But the wife will presumably also believe that her god forbids her husband to sacrifice those children.  So she is fully entitled to say that he is wrong to do so.  Although her standard is religion-relative, she can apply it universally.
 
Now, as clear-sighted Atheists from Nietzsche onwards have recognised, one thing about Atheism is that it robs us of an objective standard here - we have no god of our own to appeal to universally.  So all we can say, with those at the ICA who did not raise their hands, is that from the wife's point of view it is immoral to sacrifice them and from the husband's point of view moral.  We have no (religiously anchored) moral standard of our own to apply to them both (Nietzsche, of course, famously attempted to devise a universal aesthetic standard instead, whilst others employ alternative existential standards to the religious choice one (ultimately, a religion can be regarded as an existential choice for reasons I shan't explore here)).

Gay People and Christians are not enemies

Martin Parsons has written a series of articles for ConservativeHome, arguing that the right of Christians to express their belief has been circumscribed by thirteen years of socialist government. It’s not my intention to argue with this proposal, since it’s self-evidently true, and I am always and everywhere an opponent of thoughtcrime.

I want, instead, to propose a supplementary notion, which, given the tenor of the comments which Dr Parsons’ articles have received from some readers of this website, may come as something of a surprise. It is simply this: gay people and Christians are not political enemies. To suggest that we need a Tory politics where one group is played off against another (indeed, to act as though the groups are mutually exclusive) is not only illogical (since homosexuality and Christianity are not, of course, mutually exclusive characteristics; nor in any important sense does either sexual or religious orientation determine voting behaviour). It’s worse than that. For Christians to squabble (to the point of schism) about something as statistically inconsequential and culturally harmless as homosexuality is self-defeating. Exactly the same is true for those gay people who spend their energy attacking the Church of England (I’ve never met such a gay person, I have to say, no more than I’ve met a Christian who couldn’t see the point of our common humanity). We are not one another’s enemies. We are, in fact, allies. Allies in the fight for reason.

Most of the threads on this website about homosexuality and/or religion - which make up by far the most popular posts, by the way - boil down to:

Homosexuality is not about sex. It is a natural, harmless way a small minority of people express love.

(Adrian, in a comment to Martin’s last article)

vs

[It does if] homosexuality is immoral.

(High-Tory-Shane, same article)

I agree with Adrian, and disagree with Shane, of course, but that’s not my point. You're no more going to stop being a Christian, because of my existence, than I’m going to wake up and find that everything I know about my small, quiet and well-intentioned life is an irregularity or a disordered wound, because of something the Pope thinks. (I wrote about this once, and though I meant what I wrote more strongly than anything I've produced since, it won’t have changed a single mind). 

So I don’t really get the ‘logic’ of this as an either/or. With apologies to Martin for summing up his sequence of articles into a couple of sentences, we won’t get anywhere if we insist on anything other than absolute equality of public esteem for one another. You don’t get a more Christian Britain if I have to pad apologetically around a registry office, hoping to catch the eye of a registrar willing to grant me my legal right to civil partnership without resigning and writing in the tabloid press about how my shocking demand has infringed her Christian freedom of conscience. And if that’s not what you want, Martin, I note that you didn’t spell out exactly what sanction should have been taken to prevent the Islington registrar - and others like her - inflicting their view of morality on the taxpayers (we do pay taxes, you know, just as much as heterosexual people) who want access to the services they provide. 

I need to be more blunt (as ever). I’m sorry Martin, but I’m saying that in cases such as the ones you mention, the Christian has no option but to assimilate the discomfort she feels, and to get on with her job. Either that, or find alternative employment. Just as I have to, in countless similar/through-the-looking-glass circumstances. I went to the wedding of a close friend, someone I’ve loved for decades. Her minister was a bit brimstone-ish and lectured his congregation on sexual morality, as he saw it. This was his right - his duty, of course - and I’d have no more stood up and said -Actually, sir, I profoundly disagree with you than I’d have turned up at the wedding in a teeshirt and jeans. I assimilated my discomfort and enjoyed the beautiful day and its central celebration of love and commitment. Freedom of conscience entails some sort of freedom to be offended, I think. (Here, I’m sure, Martin and I agree, along with nearly everyone who reads this website).

From Central Doom to Local Hope?

By Professor Nick Bosanquet, Professor of Health Policy, Imperial College, and Consultant Director, Reform

Is there any way in which the Coalition can avoid the nerve twisting rows that have already begun over school building, children’s playgrounds and free school milk?

The changes are portrayed as once for all cuts—but this is a media stereotype. Apart from the rare cases in which programmes are being eliminated entirely, what is being recommended is a change in flow of funds over time. The size of the continuing flow should be highlighted and it should be judged against the level of funding that was happening before the pre-election period. In many case the “cut” programme will be still be receiving a level of spending greater than it was three or four years ago.

The new flow of funds should set a new direction in terms of localism. The Coalition should not plan a once for all series of cuts—it should seek to bring about a radical shift in power and responsibility away from Whitehall. Local communities should be given responsibility for getting value from the new flow of funds. They have the incentive to search for innovative and lower cost ways of delivering services. Whitehall deals in spending not in value—and the challenge of reform requires a greater focus on value.

Each of the nerve twisters points to how this could be done. In the case of school buildings the Whitehall approach encouraged a fattening up of projects which were seen as a once for all chance. There was also little sense of responsibility for management of contracts, with a quango so inefficient that it did not even have an accurate list of current projects. Yet by presenting the changes in school building as ‘cuts at schools’ the Government has caused the maximum political pain.

Instead the Coalition could have allocated a reduced budget to local communities and then given them freedom to spend it. Changes need to be seen as introducing more flexibility in how funding is spent over time. Changes also need to be seen as part of a continuous process of improvement, as this would create greater incentives to get value.

In the case of playgrounds, after 13 years of inattention the previous government announced an unfunded programme for upgrading all the playgrounds in the country. Once again the Coalition’s response should have been to give a sustainable flow of funds to local communities. They may well have been able to find lower cost solutions and to organize partnership funding. The process should create hope for the future not a sense of community betrayal.

The free milk problem is at the crossroads of political symbolism and total anachronism. In 1946 the free milk programme had bi-partisan support. Indeed, in 1943 Churchill had said “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”

In 1946 providing free milk was a way of helping the increasing numbers of babies at a time of falling food availability. The diet doctrines at that time stressed the importance of fat content, particularly given the real risk of hypothermia in cold homes with coal and blankets in short supply. It was a time when the government had to decide what everybody was eating.

Now the problem facing our children is eating too much, not too little–and this problem starts young. The idea that government should decide that every child should have a carton of milk is a bizarre anachronism—especially when many children have too much fat already. An alternative approach could be to, for instance, halve the budget and give £25 million to local groups to organize refreshments for their own toddlers.

The emphasis should be on local choice. The Coalition should take the moral offensive on empowering local communities to deliver more value than Whitehall has. This would highlight that the proposed changes are a path towards a better and local future—not as a series of local dooms.

Bob Crow

Can there be any more galling an example of hypocrisy in modern public life than loudmouthed bully Bob Crow trousering a 12% pay rise?

The hardline general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union has taken the £10,000 salary increase, despite the painful pay freeze affecting millions of workers in both the public and private sectors.

His basic pay rose from £84,923 in 2008 to £94,747 at the end of last year, according to figures published by the RMT.

No, seriously - I defy you - name something worse.

Does the EU speak for you?

Joao Vale de Almeida, the European Union's new "Ambassador" to Washington, has announced that he is the first point of contact for diplomatic relations between the Americans and all European nations:

In a comment that has come to symbolise the American view of the EU, Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, is once said to asked: "When I want to talk to Europe, who do I call?"

In a response to that question, Mr Vale de Almeida declared: "In this area code, you call me." The ambassador insisted that he did not wish to "impose myself" on member states' ambassadors, who will continue to oversee "bilateral matters." But he declared: "Where we have a common position, I am the one leading the show."

How do you feel about that?

The smoke and mirrors of quantitative easing

Yesterday’s dire inflation and growth forecast by the Bank of England proves that increasing the money supply does not work.  It does not just fail to produce lasting results.  It is also harmful and destroys potential growth.  Here is why.

Increasing the money supply by way of quantitative easing or artificially low interest rates devalues the existing mass of money.  So everybody holding money ends up poorer.  Labour never picked up on the fact that QE is in fact a flat tax.  Your money can purchase less because the government is printing more of it.  This is typically (as now) reflected in an increase in the rate of inflation.  Therefore the amount of growth you could produce through spending or investing is less, than if the government had not printed new money.  You will for example have to pay more devalued pounds to buy fuel abroad.  As a result potential private sector growth is destroyed.

In the very short term QE produces a mirage of growth.  The state pumps the fresh money in the sectors of its choosing, creating a sudden boom.  This then has a ripple down effect in other sectors of the economy (see Dr. Eamonn Butler’s forthcoming book on Austrian Economics).  At the same time the existing capital devalues.   But this devaluation of the existing money does not register immediately with the money owning public. For a short time the private sector keeps spending and investing as before.  They may for example be working with existing stock, bought at pre-devaluation prices.  The double dip is the catching up – a sign that the penny has dropped.

But it is not even like for like – state growth simply replacing private sector growth.  The priorities of politicians or their staff (the Bank of England) will dictate where the freshly printed money is allocated.  Their priorities may be very different from where the free market would allocate capital to create maximum growth.  Politicians’ investments are virtually always less efficient than market investments.  Therefore they will destroy more potential private sector growth than they create through the state. 

Brown’s decision to print more money was understandable – he wanted to create a short term revival of the economy to win the election in the short term.  It did create some optimism in the beginning of the year – there was for example the temporary increase in house prices.  Sufficient optimism to prevent complete eradication  of the Labour Party and a non-win by the Conservatives.  Now the chickens come to roost.

Let’s not do it again. 

Some holiday reading for the avid politico

Whilst some of you will want to take some trashy fiction to the beach as you get away for some sun this month, I don't doubt that some ConHome readers will want to take the time to catch up on some political reading while they're away.

And one book which fits into the latter category is Nicholas Jones' Campaign 2010: The Making of the Prime Minister.

Unlike some of Jones' previous campaign reviews, it does not just cover the frenetic period in the run-up to polling day itself; rather, as its subtitle, "The Making of the Prime Minister' correctly summarises, the book recounts David Cameron's long journey from staffer at Tory HQ to Downing Street.

Jones pays particular attention to Cameron's years working for Norman Lamont and Michael Howard in the 1990s (when he was covering those politicians' activities for the BBC on a daily basis) and later in the book - after dealing with the 2005 Tory leadership election, Brown replacing Blair, the political attitudes of the Murdoch press and Expenses-gate - he devotes whole chapters to both the TV debates and the role of the leaders' wives in a modern British election campaign. It is an excellent read for anyone who wants a reliable one-stop shop covering an historic few years in British politics.

Jones is as engaging as ever in his telling of the story and the book - unusually for a tome produced so soon after the event - is also furnished with an index, making it an all the more invaluable record for future reference.

The book is published by Biteback and available to buy from Amazon. Nicholas Jones blogs here.

Is it time to tear down the Information Commissioner's Office and start again?

By Alex Deane

There was significant debate yesterday about the use of credit agencies as bounty hunters to track down benefit cheats. I don't really want to get into that debate as I've discussed it elsewhere, but the issue acted as a trigger for this post.

During that discussion, the Information Commissioner appeared on Newsnight. He said a few punchy things. I didn't disagree with him. But I was asked by a journalist whether I thought the ICO would actually do any good for the millions of people potentially affected by new policy. I laughed. Let me explain why.

On economic forecasting and double-dip recession

Via The Financial Times:

The US Federal Reserve on Tuesday took a first step toward extending its crisis-era monetary policy regime, as it downgraded its view of the economic outlook amid rising fears of a “double-dip” recession.

I expect the Bank of England to do similarly at 10:30 this morning. 

On 2 September 2009, I took the risk of explaining why a senior economist writing in The Times was bound to be disappointed when he wrote, Now it’s looking like V for victory over recession. I explained that he was wrong because the contemporary mainstream lacks a robust capital theory, so most economists are misled by distorted data. 

I wrote

No one is arguing that the present interventions by government are not giving the impression of prosperity; we agree that injecting new money creates economic activity. However, these measures create only an illusion which cannot last and which succeeds only in postponing and worsening the unavoidable crash. Society can ill-afford that outcome. 

O’Neill is right: things look better. Unfortunately, this is another artificial boom which will not last.

You can find the article here.  

In due course, the Times reported, Economists revolt over surprise recession data. I repeated that "most economists allow themselves to be misled by a superficial reading of numbers distorted by central bank action." 

Injecting more new money, whether through QE or credit expansion in excess of real savings, will not "fight recession". It will merely delay and worsen the eventual downturn, because injecting new money is bound to shift activity from sustainable economic action to action supported only by that new money.

Sooner or later, the mainstream economic paradigm must shift to accept the importance of time and hence a robust capital theory. Everyone's prosperity depends upon it.

See also

• “The Pretence of Knowledge”: how economists come to make astrologers look good. 
• How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes: Two Tales of the Economy
• Academic economic literature may be found here.

The Treasury aren't the obstacle to welfare reform

At the TPA, we very much appreciate the hard work that Iain Duncan Smith and the rest of the DWP team are doing to try and reform welfare.  It was extremely encouraging to see the 21st Century Welfare report endorse radical measures to fix a failing benefit system - with one of the options in the consultation based on TPA research - that is failing the poorest and trapping people in dependency.  But I'm starting to tire of all the bleating about how this requires lots more money, and how we need to overcome the resistance of a penny pinching Treasury.

Let's be clear.  If welfare reform fails because it is decided that the country can't afford to spend more on benefits, Iain Duncan Smith will bear as much responsibility as George Osborne or any bureaucrat in the Treasury.

The Conservative Party's Project Umubano in Sierra Leone

Alexander Deane is the Director of Big Brother Watch.

The Conservative Party’s Project Umubano is now in its fourth year. Its work commenced in Rwanda and last year expanded to include Sierra Leone. It’s worth stressing that Umubano volunteers of course receive nothing from the state – one pays for the trip or raises the money oneself.

I was very proud to take part in this year’s Umubano work for the first time this year, in Sierra Leone. This beautiful and tragic country is still best known for the civil war which visited widespread, sporadic, senseless, horrific violence upon thousands of individuals and upon entire communities all over the state from 1991 to 2002. A full eight years on, Sierra Leoneans are keen to put that time behind them. There is little doubt in my mind that we should provide assistance to them in doing so. The country anchors the UN's quality of life index, its place at the very bottom of the table merited by deep-rooted problems in almost every aspect of Sierra Leonean society.

It is easy and perhaps sometimes tempting for travellers to exaggerate the dangers of the country they visited. Certainly, traffic can be chaotic, health facilities outside of the capital (Freetown) scant and the electricity supply sporadic and unreliable everywhere, but in both Freetown and in the country more generally one can travel and spend time as a visitor without tremendous problems (bearing in mind the relevant FCO advice of course). Sierra Leone's problems aren't really threats to those there temporarily - they're crippling for those who live there. The greatest dangers facing the country are no longer violent in nature – instead, corruption and the absence of many elements of what we would consider to a basic state apparatus and infrastructure are the chief problems for Sierra Leone today. Indeed, one can often see where the infrastructure once was.

This year, Umubano’s work in Sierra Leone fell into the following team areas:

Raise the retirement age, but understand the implications

Andrew Lilico is Policy Exchange's Chief Economist.

Earlier this month, the Government announced plans to abolish the compulsory retirement age, on which it will consult until October.  With rapidly increasing longevity and changes in the nature of work, the compulsory retirement age has for some time been an anachronism, dating back to an era of manual labour in which life expectancy after retirement was restricted to a few years.  With significant numbers of today’s children expected to live beyond a hundred years, having not even finished their studies until their mid-20s, if the current rules were maintained many people would be retired for longer than they had worked.

Furthermore, compulsory retirement squanders the wisdom and experience of many older workers.  Many 65 year olds today are still healthy, focused, and interested in their work.  Why should they be forced into idleness by rigid and outdated laws?

So, abolition of compulsory retirement is welcome.  However, to work as a concept it will have to be combined with measures that are likely to prove very controversial and that have not, thus far, seen anything like the public debate and discussion they merit.  Specifically, absent compulsory retirement, it will probably be necessary to significantly diminish employment protection for older workers.

Let me explain this paradoxical thought.  Current employment law envisages a particular pattern of the working life: promotion and salary increase as job experience advances, right up to the point of retirement.  For a firm to demote a worker or reduce her salary it requires a good reason, such as a specific failing on her part or her salary falling as part of a company-wide salary reduction.  An employer can pick a specific worker and decide to raise her salary and promote her without any material impediment.  But to specifically target a worker for salary reduction or demotion is likely to lead to an employment tribunal and a claim for constructive dismissal.

I think I can just about get away with this

CentreRight is a smashing forum that gives those of us privileged enough to be contributors the chance to write about pretty much anything. There is a basic requirement, however, that pieces should be vaguely political. Well, this post is that (exactly that). But it's also terrifically self-serving. I do hope that Tim, Jonathan and Paul forgive me.

I want to invite all of you to see me and some friends perform stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. The show is called This Is What You Get, and we are at the Banshee Labyrinth at 8.30pm up to and including the 17th August. The show has started already, but I will be there from Wednesday. It's free too!

I also would like you, dear reader, to help to get me on television. Read on for more details.

Now, how do I justify this free advertising? I'd better make some political observations. And provide some evidence that ConHome has got into comedy reviewing before. Demonstrates a precedent, you see.

There have been a few occasions on ConservativeHome where people have asked why stand-up comedy and wider culture are so dominated by lefties, and why comedy panel shows that cover politics and current affairs do so from an overwhelmingly left wing perspective. (Examples of these matters being covered on ConHome can be found here, here and here. OK guys?!)

£15,000 fine for building a normal house

This story from the Independent on Sunday is very disappointing.  Even the local government team, who have been getting so much right recently, apparently take leave of their senses when it comes to policies aimed at addressing climate change:

"All new homes are rated under the Code for Sustainable Homes. Where planned properties do not reach the highest level 6 standard – where their own green energy production offsets their emissions – developers would be charged a tariff of around £15,000 by the local council to fund infrastructure and local services. Part of this would also include contributing to a "buy-out fund" to pay for the construction of wind farms, solar panels or geothermal technologies in the local area, which would supply the new development with green power."

We are already providing huge subsidies to small-scale renewable energy.  The feed-in tariffs are so generous that they have been denounced by George Monbiot as a "rip-off".  Policy Exchange has called for them to be abolished.

The basic problem is that we are encouraging the use of an inefficient means of generating power.  Things were bad enough when the Government used to try and pick winners, now they pick losers!  We all pay a price in higher energy prices.

Under this scheme, even the most efficient new home will either have to fit some form of microgeneration or pay a £15,000 tax/fine.  That will increase the cost of building new homes and worsen the extremely pernicious shortage of affordable housing.  Just as the vulnerable elderly - excess winter mortality was 36,700 in 2008/09 (the last winter we have data for) - pay the highest price for renewable energy subsidies that drive up energy prices, it will be poor families struggling to find an affordable home who suffer from this green rip-off.

It will also be an administrative nightmare.  Working out whether a property has covered its emissions with new green energy production requires answering a number of tough and uncertain questions.  What load factor are you expecting?  Are you adjusting for the need to back-up wind and solar power, reducing the efficiency of fossil fuel plants?  How can you reliably measure and predict a household's emissions, both in construction and by assessing thermal efficiency afterwards?  Those are just a few questions that will need to be answered to stop this policy becoming even more unfair and inefficient in practice than it is in theory.

The buy-out fund sounds like it will lead to a big waste of money too.  It is like the schemes that require energy companies to spend a certain amount improving efficiency.  If they have money left at the end of the year they start mailing out energy efficient light bulbs to households almost at random, just to spend the money the regulation requires them to.  Councils will wind up supporting all sorts of inefficient schemes not because they are good ideas, but because they need to spend the buy-out fund.

This is yet more bad climate change policy and risks exacerbating the social, economic and political challenges facing a Government trying to push through a significant fiscal adjustment.

The American Tea Party movement's movie

I've long thought that the docufilms produced by the likes of Michael Moore, Al Gore and Morgan Spurlock are powerful ways of influencing public opinion and I'm delighted to see that American conservatives are fighting back with a movie of their own:

The movie has its own website here.

And more...

Vince Cable couldn't be more wrong about taxing the better off

By Roger Helmer MEP.

Vince Cable has a reputation as a competent and distinguished economist.  Yet in declaring a redistributive tax policy his “Red Line Issue” within the coalition, he makes not one but two elementary, undergraduate-level howlers, and compounds them together.

Fallacy Number One (the “Static Economy” fallacy): Raising tax rates will inevitably increase Treasury revenues.

Fallacy Number Two: (the “Robin Hood” fallacy): You can eliminate poverty by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor.

Both these statements are clear and obvious and intuitive.  Unfortunately they’re also simplistic and wrong.  And they’re distinctively socialist, not liberal, misconceptions.

The Static Economy Fallacy assumes that you can raise tax rates without affecting anything else.  But the economy is dynamic: economic players change their behaviour in response to incentives.  Raise higher rate taxes, and avoidance and evasion will follow.  Some will retire early, or work less overtime, or put expansion plans on hold.  Some will hire very clever accountants.  They may decide to invest in more favourable tax jurisdictions.  International companies will move their headquarters out of the UK, and individual highly-paid high-flying executives will move abroad (as is happening at the moment, with the threat of the 50% tax rate).  International investors will move Britain further down their priority list.

Cable must surely know about the Laffer Curve.  If you increase tax rates beyond a reasonable and modest level, you rapidly encounter diminishing returns, and very soon negative returns.  This may be counter-intuitive, but it has been demonstrated over and over again in dozens of countries in recent decades.  Reductions in the higher rate of tax can actually increase government revenues, and promote more rapid growth.

Modest taxes for the well-off obviously benefit higher earners: they also stimulate growth and jobs and investment, and generate vitally-needed employment for those on lower wages.  They help everyone.  Vince’s “fair taxes” are fair only in the sense that they make all of us, rich and poor alike, worse off.

Conservatives and climate change

Two of the world's best conservative columnists write at the very liberal New York Times. I often draw attention to David Brooks' work. Also worth bookmarking is Ross Douthat for his column and for his Evaluations blog.

He has recently written two very thoughtful pieces on the (American) Right and climate change.

In this piece he appears to side with Bjorn Lomborg in arguing that we should not be fighting climate change with immature technologies but should be helping the third world to become richer:

"It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little. This is the view advanced by famous global-warming heretics like Bjorn Lomborg and Freeman Dyson; in recent online debates, it has been championed by Jim Manzi, the American right’s most persuasive critic of climate-change legislation.

Their perspective is grounded, in part, on the assumption that a warmer world will also be a richer world — and that economic development is likely to do more for the wretched of the earth than a growth-slowing regulatory regime. But it’s also grounded in skepticism that such a regime is possible. Any attempt to legislate our way to a cooler earth, the argument goes, will inevitably resemble the package of cap-and-trade emission restrictions that passed the House last year: a Rube Goldberg contraption whose buy-offs and giveaways swamped its original purpose.

Liberals disagree, of course. They think the skeptics underestimate the potential for catastrophe, and overestimate the costs of regulation. They, too, look to the past for lessons, but their model is the Clean Air Act and its various modifications, which reduced domestic air pollution relatively cheaply. But the Clean Air Act didn’t require collective action on a global scale — the kind of action that last year’s Copenhagen conference placed ever further out of reach. What’s more, a crucial technology, the catalytic converter, was already on the way as the act’s provisions went into effect. Cap-and-trade is more of a leap in the dark."

The second Douthat piece on green issues worth highlighting appears on his blog. Drawing on a Bloomberg report, he notes that oil, gas, and coal get 12 times as much government support ($557bn) - across the world - as renewable energies ($46bn). Douthat argues that greens and free market conservatives should work towards a policy environment where fossil fuels lose their subsidy rather than renewables get more and more.

So, in summary, Douthat is reaching towards a position that I can certainly support:

• Global warming IS happening* but because of immature technologies and a lack of international will we can't do much about it.
• Measures to reduce our carbon footprint should be pursued but only if they achieve other objectives, particularly reducing household bills (via better energy conservation) or more security of electricity supply (by building nuclear as well as fossil fuel-powered generating capacity).
• The priority of policymakers should be to help the third world to become richer so that they can tackle their immediate life and death challenges and also, where necessary, have the wealth to deal with extreme weather.
• In the meantime we should ensure a level playing field between energy sources and that should involve a levelling down, not up, of subsidies.

* I would say that natural forces may be dominant in this.

The international community must stand with Georgia

It’s easy to forget that today marks the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia; a ten day conflict in which hundreds died and the entire infrastructre of a country was shattered.  

Some, of course, are comfortable to draw upon Neville Chamberlain’s words and dismiss Georgia's problems as those of as “far away land of which we know nothing”.  Those taking such a position fail to recognise that Russia’s ongoing belligerence towards states on its periphery is, in reality, a battle between the cause of freedom in the West and Moscow’s poisonous insistence on clinging its Cold War past. 

In his book, A Little War That Shook The World, Ron Asmus summed up the ten day conflict as a “clash between a 21st-century Western world that saw the extension of democratic integration closer to Moscow's borders as a positive step toward greater stability and a Russia that was returning to the habits of 19th-century great power thinking and viewed it as a threat”. 

Against a backdrop of bombs raining down on Tbilisi and tanks rolling across the green plains of Tskhinvali, those dark August days two years ago led Georgians not to simply question the future constitutional status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia but the very survival off their country as a sovereign state.

While the majority of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed by Russian troops, it is remarkable feat that further devastation and more substantial causalities were not incurred by Georgian forces.  In holding their own, the Georgians bought themselves the time they needed to bring international attention to their cause and secure a vital ceasefire.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Georgia secured pledges of $4.55 billion in international aid - $1 billion of which came from the American government.  While such aid has undoubtedly been crucial in the success of the country’s rapid reconstruction programmes for homes, schools and roads, Kosovo’s example proves just how foolhardy it is to construct an economic model on the presumption of future international hand-outs.
For Georgia’s recovery – and transition from the ranks of former USSR satellite state to a fully-fledged Western democracy – to succeed, it requires more than the chequebooks of foreign governments or their oft-hollow pledges of diplomatic support. 

It requires serious action on a policy level; and, in a nutshell, that means trade liberalisation. 

Since 2004, Georgia’s exports to the European Union have totalled a meagre €1.3 billion, despite the country possessing significant chemical and mineral deposits that are in short supply and active demand in EU member states.

While Georgia has in the past years benefitted to some extent from EU Eastern Partnership initiatives  designed to provide funding and technical assistance to Eastern states keen to deepen their links with European economies, a 2008 report by the Warsaw-based Centre for Social and Economic Research judged the country to not yet be in a position to “negotiate... a far-reaching trade liberalisation [deal or to] to implement and sustain the commitments that it would require”.

Georgia has clearly taken these comments on board – and taken urgent action to modernise and liberalise its economic structure.  Such reforms are embodied by the Act on Economic Freedom, an unabashedly Thatcherite document which has implemented arguably the most free-market agenda of any government since the election of outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in 2002.

Popularly referred to as the ‘Liberty Act’, the Act on Economic Freedom has instituted regulations demanding budget deficits are kept to less than 3% of GDP and a maximum debt-to-GDP ratio of 60%.  Furthermore, tax increases must now be ratified by public referenda, a moratorium on government agencies introducing any new licences or permits has been implemented and levels of personal and business taxation have been slashed.

The results have been startling.

Despite Russia’s ongoing trade embargo, Georgia is expected to at least match Moscow’s 5.4% annual GDP growth rate this year before recording 9% growth in 2011.  Despite the country’s economic growth rate having slumped from 12.3% to 2.3% in the twelve months prior to the Russian invasion in 2008, double digit growth rates are now projected to return from 2012 onwards.

The 2009 Forbes Tax, Misery & Reform Index ranks Georgia as the world’s fourth most tax-friendly nations behind only Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong. 

Given the country’s clear commitment to free market principles, it is now surely time for the European Union to re-examine it’s trading relations with Georgia and commence negotiations on the implementation of a wide-ranging customs union agreement similar to that currently in place with Turkey.  As a starting block, Georgian membership of the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area (EU-MEFTA) and Central European Free Trade Agreements (CEFTA) would allow the country to extend its trading relations with not only the EU but scores of states on its near periphery. 

Increasing growth and economic liberalisation aside, Georgia will never fully be able to thrive while large parts of the country remain under the control of criminal gangs of Russian-backed separatists. 

Since the election of President Saakashvili in 2004, the Georgian government has made progress in this field, bringing the former separatist region of Adjara back under central government control.

Ruled from 1991 to 2004 by a Russian placeman named Aslan Abashidze, the coastal area was well known as a haven for drug, human and weapons smuggling.  Since his ousting in a popular uprising, Abashidze has been living in Moscow so as to avoid the Georgian courts which have sentenced him to fifteen years in prison for his part in the theft of £34 million in public funds.

Corruption aside, the most significant thing about Abashidze’s Adjara is that he enthusiastically welcomed the presence of the Russian Army’s 89th Rifle Division.  Without their puppet controlling the region, Russians were  forced to leave their military bases in 2007 and thus surrender control of shipping lanes along NATO member Turkey’s north east coastline.  

As in the case of the Russian-backed breakaway province of Transnistria in Moldova, Moscow has singularly failed to honour its commitments to international agreements on the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Indeed, when listening to statements from the likes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, one can be forgiven for raising more than a wry smile at the country’s claims to be continuing their occupation of areas of former USSR satellite states in order to “guarantee minority rights” and “the principle of self-determination”.

As I have discussed elsewhere, the separatist movements in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are likely to call upon the International Court of Justice’s recent ruling on the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence to bolster their own case for global diplomatic recognition.  To draw such a comparison is lazy at best and disingenuous at worst.

While the invasion of Kosovo was justified on the basis of preventing the ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians, the Russian-backed regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia have expelled more than half a million Georgians and other ethnic groups from the provinces since 1991.  Far from their military incursions into the territories being designed to protect ethnic Abkhaz and Ossetian residents of the two areas from persecution, the Russian Federation simply aims to expand its territory and sphere of military influence.

The 2008 ceasefire agreement between Georgia and the Russian Federation is clear – and worth quoting in its entirety:

1. Not to resort to force;
2. To end hostilities definitively
3. To provide free access for humanitarian aid;
4. Georgian military forces will have to withdraw their usual bases;
5. Russian military forces will have to withdraw to lines held prior to outbreak of hostilities. Pending an international mechanism, Russian peace-keeping forces will implement additional security measures;
6. Opening of international talks on the security and stability arrangements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Given the stated commitment of Russia to withdrawing its forces “to lines held prior to outbreak of hostilities” and promise to “not resort to force” in respect of disagreements about the constitutional status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it is curious to read remarks from the likes of Abkhazia’s “President” Sergei Baghapsh describing recent discussions with President Medvedev as having covered  the “development of Abkhaz-Russian cooperation in a number of directions, including... [of a] defensive character”. 

Similarly, the Russian government’s own website makes reference to a Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance between Moscow and the South Ossetia which allows for thousands of Russian troops to remain in the province under the auspices of “peacekeeping”.

While the sun might currently be shining in Georgia at the moment but Tbilisi is never far from the frost of Moscow’s icy winds.   As Ron Asmus argued in the Washington Post last month, Russia is “determined to break Tbilisi's will to align with the West”. 

Without international pressure, Russia has no intention of either fulfilling its obligations made under the ceasefire agreement or working constructively with the Georgian government to find a solution to the ongoing conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

Prime Minister David Cameron must join the likes of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner  in calling for Russia to come to the negotiating table and find a solution to this poisonous conflict before more blood is spilled. 

On today of all days, we must stand firm with Georgia.