Tories still cling on to Inheritence Tax
In a resigned, disillusioned sort of way it was amusing to listen to top Tories yesterday attempt to cover-up the fact that Ken Clarke broke the official party line. You see, Clarke admitted that when the Conservatives come to power they won’t be able to afford cuts on inheritance tax.
Aside from the brief amusement of watching the Tories try not to squabble and denounce each other in public, it is depressing that the Government-in-waiting thinks that inheritance tax should essentially be scrapped. As I have argued previously on my blog, a foundation-stone of fair society with proper equality of opportunity and anything like social justice is progressive taxation of the rich.
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The Davies Agenda (sic)
[Note: the latest Carnival on Modern Liberty is by Cabalamat]
David Davies MP has modelled himself as a staunch opponent of political correctness, but the truth is that he – like most people obsessed with the horrors of PC – is all for it really. He just has different political priorities, as his recent outburst shows.
Sadly, I suspect that Davies is rather more representative of his party than David Davis MP, as the fairly lamentable Tory showing at the Convention on Modern Liberty a fortnight ago made plain. Any party which has a Shadow Home Secretary who can utter the phrase “fewer rights and more wrongs” without cracking up can be fairly described as being “confused” (if one were feeling so generous).
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Tory authoritarian instincts come out
The BBC reports:
Conservative MP David Davies has called on abusive protests against serving military personnel to be outlawed. The Monmouth MP has tabled an amendment to a bill governing religious hatred that would extend protection to the Armed Forces. It would make it an offence to incite hatred against serving soldiers.
…
“What I’m suggesting is that British soldiers, who I think are our finest young men and women, the cream of society, should also be protected from that sort of gratuitous abuse they experienced last week,” he said.
Update: Iain Dale doesn’t understand the laws he’s criticising.
How liberal are the Conservatives?
With Shirley Williams speaking on liberalism and Labour in conversation with Michael Crick at last night’s Fabian event (previewed by Ed Wallis), and Stuart White setting out some challenges to the LibDems (though he also, rightly in my view, credits their strong overall record in this area).
So let’s complete the set.
Thanks to Evan Harris MP suggesting and coordinating the following letter to The Observer, published on Sunday, following the Convention on Modern Liberty, which senior Conservatives had been keen to use as an opportunity to project the party as “pro” civil liberties.
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Huhne clashes with Tories on ‘rights’
This extract from Chris Huhne’s speech at the CoML was excellent:
It is also essential in my view that we don’t abolish the Human Rights Act. Both Labour and Conservative politicians are now talking about how we need a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities and the Conservatives actually said they want to repeal the Human Rights Act.
Now we must remember why the Human Rights Act is so important as opposed to British rights. Because Eleanor Roosevelt was not foolish when she championed human rights in the 1948 universal declaration and the British lawyers involved in the drafting of the process were making a fundamental point. Any society at some point in the future can decide who its citizens are and who they are not. That is what happened in Nazi Germany – they defined the Jews as non-citizens outside the pale, no longer at the serving of human rights no longer deserving of German citizens rights. If we define [rights] as British that is the risk that we run again and we must not allow that to happen.
And let me make one final point, which is that if we want to achieve that consensus that I very much want to see, we have certainly to build a popular campaign that is absolutely crucial, but the end of that popular campaign to my mind should be an entrenchment of our civil liberties in a way that cannot be challenged in the way that it has been challenged in the last ten years in particular. I am thinking here of a written constitution. … That is the sort of entrenchment of civil liberties which we’ll never have in this country unless we too have a written constitution to guarantee that judges can oversee laws and can make sure that they do not contravene fundamental civil liberties.
Completely agree with all of that. [Update: text has been cleaned up]
Tory AM Brian Coleman triples expense claims – and you’re paying!
The Tory Troll reports:
[Conservative London Assembly Member] Brian Coleman has almost tripled the amount of expenses he claims from the London Fire Authority, Tory Troll can reveal. The figures released to this blog, show that the man Boris Johnson appointed to chair LFEPA claimed a whopping £2275 in ’subsistence and travel’ between 1 April and 31 December 2008.
In fact, as information collated from other blogs shows, this isn’t the only sign that Brian Coleman is putting the entire London Assembly to shame though his inflated expenses claims.
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Slipping a Rizla between Labour and the Tories
Tory bloggers like to crow about how awful and incompetent and corrupt and authoritarian the Labour government is, and how different the Tories will be when they get in. If, by any chance, anyone brings up past performance they point out that it was a terribly long time ago they were last in government, and anyway, look at David Davis!!!
Ah yes, David Davis. The man who thinks 42 days is worth resigning over, but 28 days is A-OK! Well, you can paint him as a Tory Champion of Liberty if you like but Cameron and his little buddies, emboldened by the recent opinion poll leads, are distancing themselves from his Liberal
agenda at the speed of light.
And yes, that is this Chris Grayling they’re talking about. Oh how corrupt and incompetent and anti-liberty the Labour party are. Isn’t there something Christians say about planks and eyeballs?
And then there’s yesterday’s news (broken by Jo Swinson) that Jack Straw has disobeyed a court order because he’s Judge Jack Straw, and he doesn’t have to go through no stinkin’ appeals procedure! it might be embarrassing for various people.
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Following Ashcroft’s Money
At the risk of giving Sunny another attack of the vapours by poking a stick at the notoriously litigious, the news that the Electoral Commission have finally decided to take a good close look at Lord Ashcroft’s financial affairs is not only long overdue but if, like me, you’ve done a bit of poking around in few sets of relevant accounts, hardlycomes as much of surprise.
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Time to defend politics – not liberties
Try as I might, I can’t help feeling that this week’s Convention on Modern Liberty addresses far more of the symptoms that our liberal democracy exhibits than the actual diseases that it suffers from. I say this because I’d argue that the biggest threat to individual liberties is not the particular instances of illiberality in themselves by governments, as much as what the late Bernard Crick described as the populist mode of democracy that we are drifting into.
Here’s an example. I would argue that the Conservatives have – this week – promoted perhaps the most reactionary and dangerous set of proposals that any party with a realistic prospect of victory has ever announced in this country.
In their local government proposals, they have adopted the very worst excesses of populism. And by populist, I don’t mean any half-arsed Phillip Gould-type attempt-to-push-the-party-where-focus-groups-tell-them sort of populism.
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The Tories want ‘freedom’ for pay-cuts
The danger of twelve years of New Labour in power is that it’s easy to forget the Tories’ true nature. It’s in the interest of every single person in and out of work that the true substance of the Conservative party remains visible to all.
For evidence, look no further than Christopher Chope, Tory MP for Christchurch, Dorset. When the minimum wage was brought in in 1999, Chope almost had a seizure. The idea that the weakest members of society could be paid a touch more really didn’t agree with him. In the Commons, he barked that it would have “a massive impact on small enterprises”, in line with his party’s view that the minimum wage would quickly cause an economic collapse.
Which is why, in the face of overwhelming evidence, David Cameron was later forced to admit that the opponents of the minimum wage were wrong. But that doesn’t mean the old Tory instincts were kept at bay. Of course they would be daft to openly campaign to scrap the minimum wage as they wouldn’t want to be seen as the party in favour of a pay cut to millions of workers in Britain. So, with the crisis as the perfect platform to attack workers’ rights, they’re now trying a sneakier, more bizarre approach.
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Mayor spends £17k on ‘propaganda’
The Mayor of London spent £17,000 to hold an anti-Third Runway rally, a cost that included £1,000 just for taxis.
The information was unearthed by blogger Will Parbury through a Freedom of Information Request which is detailed here.
The £1000 spent on taxis alone will be particularly hypocritical given that the Mayor himself had said he would try and keep his transportation costs down.
The Hillingdon event was originally criticised for being a “Tory propaganda” event.
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Two future battles within the Conservative party
We’ve been sent a press release courtesy of “neo-con rag” Standpoint magazine, which has an article this month by a senior Tory insider whispering against Steve Hilton – public relations man for David Cameron – while playing up Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome.
But I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.
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Do you “deserve” your rights?
Anyone who thinks our civil liberties will be any better protected by a Conservative Government should think again. Speaking in Bangor (the Northern Ireland flavour) on Friday, the News Letter reports Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve saying:
… there is “a rights culture” which is “out of control”, not just in Ulster, but throughout the UK. It did not help that “the undeserving in society” can often use rights legislation for personal gain, he added.
The Conservatives, he suggested, intend to create a UK Bill of Rights which would have in-built safeguards to prevent those “whose own behaviour is lacking” from abusing the powers.
I’m used to people from across the political spectrum differentiating between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor when it comes to welfare but not when it comes to fundamental rights. This rhetoric even goes beyond the talk about Wrights and duties.”
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Apparently, Osborne wants Ken back
Many years ago, at school, the smart sarcastic thing was to scratch your chin and make references to Jimmy Hill “itchy chin” and “chinny reckon” if somebody was being just a little implausible.
Now that is a little bit ‘playground’ for such an esteemed public figure as the Shadow Chancellor, to say nothing of an ancient serious think-tank, but for some unfathomable reason, that image just flashed into my mind when I saw this this Telegraph news report, which effectively confirms that Ken Clarke is coming back. And what do you know, but it was the Boy George’s idea all along…
Some believed that Mr Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, would be against Mr Clarke’s return as it would undermine him. However, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that contrary to those reports, Mr Osborne has been actively lobbying for his return. He has told friends that he works well with Mr Clarke and values his advice.
One friend of Mr Osborne’s said: “George has been talking to Ken about his return and Ken has been very supportive of George. The two get on very well and George would not have a problem with him coming back – in fact is pushing for it.”
Ooh. Itchy, itchy chin. That’s better.
(Cross-posted from Next Left)
George Osborne is confused, again
George Osborne says in the Evening Standard:
Our economy sucked up the savings of millions of Chinese workers, like a national vacuum cleaner, and spent them – often on the very goods those Chinese workers were toiling away in their factories to make. And the message from the Labour Government was: don’t worry, we’re borrowing recklessly, too. Gordon Brown ran up the highest budget, borrowing in the developed world to go on a spending spree, too.
As I’ve said before, its part of the Tory narrative to keep talking about debt, so it can paper over their ‘do nothing’ economic strategy with regards to the economic crisis. This bit simply displays more of that nonsense.
Is Osborne saying households were wrong to buy cheaper Chinese goods? I thought the Tories were for free trade? Is there something wrong with this?
Well, yes, you could argue there is something wrong with it – that we aren’t manufacturing enough of our own cheap, British goods to export or consume here. As a result, we imported significant portions of our consumption, in return for which the Chinese bought British (and tons of American) debt and currency. That’s global trade for you. So what’s Osborne arguing for? Less free trade? An investment in British industries? Protecting existing British industry? Invading the Chinese so we can loot their foreign currency reserves? Or is it another silly article fumbling his own economic ideology so he can stick it to Labour? When will someone in the mainstream media call out this man’s silliness?
Youth crime and Tories; another broken record
Since the Tory conference 2007, there have been periods where every week or so, the Conservatives announce a new policy with which they hope to win over more votes. It seems to be the nature of politics these days; one doesn’t exist unless one is appearing in the media. When announcing such policies, the Tories in question often indulge in hyperbole, blaming Labour, citing the end of Labour, citing the awakening of popular consciousness against Labour and so on, ad nauseam.
The last few weeks have seen such behaviour with regard to crime – knife crime at first, then moving to general crime and now it is the turn of youth crime. “Back public against crime – Tory” is the ridiculously jingoistic title of the BBC piece showcasing Dominic Grieve’s interview with the Indy. The Shadow Attorny General has been saying that we should give adults the right to intervene with any young person they feel to be acting in an anti-social manner.
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Nadine Dorries’ sex education ‘policy’ in tatters
Conservative MP Nadine Dorries doesn’t like politically correct health advice such as teaching children about contraception. In a blog-post on her website in April, titled ‘Beyond the School Gates’, she said:
Throughout the session it struck me that the discussion focused on dealing with the consequences of teenage sex, in the form of STIs and pregnancy; whereas the fundamental problem, the fact that sex is now regarded as a recreational pastime, no relationship required, is largely ignored. Much easier to focus on how quickly we can get treatment to an infected sixteen year old, than how we get the same sixteen year old to think twice before having sex again, until at least within the confines of a stable relationship.
…
The money that the Department of Health spent on their campaign could have been used on developing a national standard for sex education within schools, which taught the principles of self respect and at least began to address the issue of values, morals and ethics within education and wider society.
Ahh yes, I smell thinking along the ‘silver ring thing‘ phenomena. Except, new research from the US now shows these gimmicks don’t work.
Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.
The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.
(via NHS BlogDoctor). In other words, not only does trying to teach abstinence of responsibility not work, but it leads to even more unprotected sex. Despite the evidence however, I doubt a minister who regularly hangs around with Christian fundamentalists is likely to take any heed.
Behind New Labour’s online operations
So, last week New Labour’s Derek Draper hosted a breakfast at party HQ, inviting some left-leaning bloggers, party members and technology people to hear what two senior execs at Blue State Digital had to say about working on the Obama campaign. Thanks to hilarious spinning by Guido and Iain, this non-event has taken a life of its own and, since I attended, various people have been asking how it went.
Two points are worth making overall: (a) the Tory bloggers are more deluded than I thought; (b) Derek Draper’s online initatives are misguided.
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Yet more Tory economic stupidity
I don’t want to make a habit of defending Yvette Cooper, whom I’ve always thought of as the poor man’s Ruth Kelly. But for Iain Dale to accuse her of economic illiteracy is rather like Ann Widdecombe calling her ugly.
Ms Cooper says:
We have never had a policy of targeting the pound. Our policy has been to target inflation.
To which Iain replies:
Last time I looked at the laws of economics they told me that a weak currency means the price of imports goes up, which leads to higher prices, therefore higher inflation.
But there ain’t no law about it. If exporters price to market – that is, accept the prices prevailing in their target market – a weaker pound will lead not to higher prices but rather to a squeeze upon exporters‘ profit margins.
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Brian Coleman should resign
The Fire Brigades Union have issued this press release:
Fire Brigades Union (FBU) leaders in London have called on the chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) to consider his position, after he labelled as “dizzy” and an “airhead” a woman MP who dialled 999 when sparks began to fly from her boiler.
Conservative councillor Brian Coleman’s remarks were branded “sexist” by Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Hornsey and Wood Green, who said she intends to protest to the London Fire Brigade commissioner, Ron Dobson.
As the Daily Telegraph reported earlier:
Brian Coleman, the Conservative chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, laughed off accusations that his attack on Lynne Featherstone was sexist – by remarking that a man was unlikely to have acted in the same way.
A website asks: Is Brian Coleman a Tedious Cock?. There is also a campaign now on Facebook and myspace calling for his resignation. Aren’t the Conservatives disgusted for having such a sexist representative?
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» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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