The ‘horrors’ of inheritance tax
David Blackburn in the Spectator explains the horrors of inheritance tax:
Take one example: a family friend, who was a career soldier rising to the rank of Colour Sergeant, retired to a two-up two-down in suburban Essex and lived off a combination of state and service pensions for 27 years. He died in 2006 and his estate yielded £84,000 in inheritance tax.
The deduction means that a maximum of 3 of his 4 grandchildren will enjoy the opportunities that a private education can offer; he had intended all four to do so, among other things, such as enabling his children to move up the property ladder.
I’m assuming this is the worst example of the iniquities of inheritance tax that Blackburn is aware of.
So the consequences are:
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Compassionate conservatism in action
Conservative Home has a new site called ‘RedLeft Watch’. The main purpose of this site to date seems to be to identify people who dare to speak up against Conservative policies, so that they can be subjected to the Two Minute Hate by the Daily Mail.
They’ve now branched out into policy suggestions:
“One of the first acts of any Tory government should be to end government funding of all charities with a political agenda. Stonewall, for example, should lose its money. Ben Summerskill’s political ranting against the Conservatives shouldn’t continue at all our expense.
Conservatives should protect themselves from accusations of being anti-gay or whatever other charge will be thrown by these state dependents by channeling 50% of the saved money to genuinely good causes in that same field of work.”
So if any charity dares employ anyone who speaks up in favour of the charity’s policies and against the Conservative Party, they should have all their funding taken away and half the money given to politically approved groups who right-wing conservatives believe, based on their vast knowledge of LGBT issues, are doing ‘genuinely good work’.
And this ’should be one of the first acts of any Tory government’. Nice to see their ‘compassionate conservative’ principles in action, isn’t it?
Climate change splits Australian Liberal Party
The right-wing Australian Liberal Party, kicked out of power in 2007, has just elected their fourth leader in two years.
Last week, six frontbenchers quit their posts in protest against the Liberal Leader’s support for the Labor government’s proposals for emissions trading to help tackle climate change. They then voted out their leader and, by 42 votes to 41, replaced him with a climate change sceptic who is one of their most right-wing MPs.
A Liberal activist warned conservatives in Britain: “Climate change fundamentalism has wrecked our conservative coalition. Be careful it doesn’t wreck yours.”
It’s always entertaining to watch formerly dominant right-wing political parties get taken over by their wingnuts, whether in Australia or in the USA. There is speculation that the Labor government may call an election to take advantage of these divisions and secure a mandate for their environmental policies.
And I guess it will embolden our very own climate change sceptics in the Tory grassroots to redouble their efforts to kill the idea of ‘Vote Blue, go Green’.
David Cameron’s placebo politics
contribution by Andrew R
With the emergency budget safely pencilled in for after the election, there’s clearly no need for the Tories to discuss economic policy any more. Moving down the list of key priorities, the next giant to slay is, naturally enough, Health and Safety legislation. Cameron’s speech comes as a timely reminder of how tired we all are of a government that’s obsessed with cheap, populist initiatives rather than addressing the big issues facing Britain today.
And they don’t come much bigger than this: bureaucracy is killing the village fete. I’m going to repeat that so the full horror can sink in: bureaucracy is killing the village fete.
Or in other words, the people in charge of organising village fetes are such gullible, lazy, pigshit-thick inbreds that not only do they believe they’ll have to fill in reams of forms to get a tombola permit, but they are so scared by the prospect of reading, understanding and completing said mythical forms that, like the selfish bastards they are, they’d rather see the whole village go without the much-anticipated, long-remembered once-a-year thrill of winning a bottle of Tizer at a coconut shy than crease their illiterate brows in thought, or sweat over a row of tick-boxes.
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Policy Exchange: You win some, you lose some…
Sunny’s busy elsewhere at the moment, so I guess I’d better take on the news that the North London Central Mosque’s libel action against Tory think-tank, Policy Exchange, has been struck out by Justice Eady, leaving the trustees of the mosque facing a £75,000 legal bill just to cover PX’s legal bills.
The case related to allegations made in a 2007 report by Denis McEoin, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, which was withdrawn earlier this year, at the same time as it issued this apology to one of the organisations named in the report as allegedly selling extremist literature.
The Hijacking of British Islam:
Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage CentreIn this report we state that Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre is one of the Centres where extremist literature was found. Policy Exchange accepts the Centre’s assurances that none of the literature cited in the Report has ever been sold or distributed at the Centre with the knowledge or consent of the Centre’s trustees or staff, who condemn the extremist and intolerant views set out in such literature. We are happy to set the record straight.
The key phrase in this piece of news seems to be ’struck out’, which gives no clues whatsoever as to the reason that the mosque’s libel action failed. As yet, there’s nothing on BAILI relating to this case, so whether it failed on a technicality, or because the mosque was unable to put forward a viable case, or even because Justice Eady decided that the mosque has no reputation to defend is anyone’s guess.
I must admit to being a little disappointed that this case failed to all the way to a full hearing, not because I really give a toss about either side winning or losing but because it might have shed just a little bit more light on the circumstances that resulted in McEoin incorporating fabricated evidence in his report. continue reading… »
The divine mission of UKIP’s new leader
Congratulations to Lord Pearson, newly elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He has already hit the headlines this morning by revealing that the party offered to disband, or stand down for this General Election at least, if David Cameron had pledged a retrospective referendum on Lisbon, which is quite an interesting day one secret plot revelation for a leader just elected by his members.
Though little known on the left, Pearson is admired and liked by several Tory Eurosceptics, as Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie testify.
The most interesting profile of Pearson that I have seen was an admiring profile God’s Eurosceptic, published in the Sunday Telegraph back in 1997 when he was first promoting a private members’ Bill to get Britain out of Europe.
Lord Pearson certainly does “do God” – and claims a personal connection with the Almighty which is more direct than any political leader, certainly since Gladstone, after a religious experience in which he believes a messenger from God appeared to him while he was being operated on to have varicose veins removed in 1977.
Pearson says that the experience has led him to dedicate his life to the fight against evil – represented by the European Union, bureaucracy, socialism and Islamism.
Pearson believes that Ukip should highlight Islamic fundamentalism as just as important a threat to the British way of life as the European Union. (Did the forthcoming UKIP result on Friday influence David Cameron’s unexpected decision to raise Islamism and Hizb-ut-Tahir’s alleged involvement in schools at PMQs on Wednesday?)
Pearson has already sought to give a high profile to the issue, bringing Geert Wilders to Parliament. But Pearson has seemed somewhat confused in insisting he makes a distinction between Muslims and Islamists, which was certainly not easy to discern in his recent comments about comparative birthrates which are very much of the ‘Enoch was right’ school, evoking very directly Powell’s fear of an alien element having ‘the whip hand’ in Britain.
Lord Pearson’s own outspoken views about Islam were recorded in Washington DC last month. Asked how much time Britain had before losing control of its cultural identity he said: “What is going to decide the answer to that is the birthrate. The fact that Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us. I do not know at what point they reach such a number that we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands . . . but if we do not do something now within the next year or two we have in effect lost.”
He later insisted that his remark was directed at Islamists. “One is talking about the violent end of the spectrum,” he said.
Friends and foes might agree that we may be hearing a lot more from Lord Pearson.
They haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery
We’re going straight over to Hammersmith and Fulham where Stephen Greenhalgh, the leader of the council and head of the Conservative Council Innovation Unit has a few thoughts on the Shadow Cabinet he’d like to share with everyone…
‘My mates are all in the shadow Cabinet, waiting to get those [ministerial] boxes, being terribly excited. I went to university with them, they haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery,’
No comment from us… well. okay, there is this video that sums things up nicely…
Cameron: More to be done on workplace bullying
Anthony Painter has nothing but praise for David Cameron’s stance on workplace bullying…
Can I just say that I categorically agree with the statement on bullying that David Cameron issued to the National Bullying Helpline in September of this year:
“Stamping out bullying in the workplace and elsewhere is a vital objective. Not only can bullying make people’s lives a misery, but it harms business and wider society too.
Now it seems he has a perfect opportunity to put his views into practice…
A News of the World reporter who suffered from a culture of bullying <b>led by former editor Andy Coulson, who is now David Cameron’s head of communications</i>, has been awarded almost £800,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination.
Anthony asks the question…
“Perhaps Mr Cameron could give his reaction and say how he intends to demonstrate his commitment to making workplace bullying a ‘thing of the past’?”
Tories: filling in forms will strengthen the family
Almost nobody outside the political classes has yet heard of Chris Grayling, the populist, telly-themed soundbite obsessed shadow Home Secretary.
But while his colleagues attempt a liberal love-bombing strategy by posing as progressive, Grayling is already gearing up for what could prove a very successful bid to achieve Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe levels of notoreity.
Here’s his latest headline-grabbing wheeze.
Tories to demand: are you married? reports The Sunday Times.
Official forms will routinely demand to know whether a person is married under Conservative plans to promote stable families.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, claimed that, under Labour, marriage had become a “non official institution”. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he pledged that a future Tory government would make it a priority to raise the status of married life. “Marriage has almost disappeared from official forms, from official documents,” he said. “I think that needs to change.”
These are The Tories at Ground Zero
There’s a revelatory short post at the Adam Smith Institute yesterday. Here’s the most salient part:
You will never streamline the public sector by Treasury ministers bullying departments over money. Instead, you need a complete review of what government does, what it has to do, what it can do better, and what can be done better by other people and by the public. All departments need to buy into that, and it needs a reform, not a finance minister in charge if everyone is going to trust the process and be a part of it. After all, the process may find that spending in some areas should be increased, even if other departments are found to be doing a lot of pointless stuff.
In other words, the influential Adam Smith Institute wants to see an immediate post-election push towards savage public spending reductions in every single government department.
In one respect, of course, none of this is new. We know that the Conservative will cut public services, even if they are not as explicit as the Adam Smith Institute about the range of cuts.
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Getting Labour’s prison record wrong
Having attacked Gordon Brown personally last week and came off the worst for it, this week the Sun seems to have decided to stand on surer ground, by attacking Labour on crime.
Problem is, it can’t seem to do so without telling some whopping great lies, as yesterday’s leader shows:
Prison policy, in particular, has become a joke. Early on, Labour decided not to build more jails and instead focus on alternatives to prison and early release for prisoners.
In 1997 the average prison population was 61,470 (page 4). The population last Friday was 84,593 (DOC), a rise in just 12 years of more than 20,300. I can’t seem to find any concrete figures on just what the total number of places available in 1997 was, but ministers themselves boast that they have created over 20,000 additional places, and the Prison Reform Trust agrees, noting in this year’s Bromley report that the number of places has increased by 33% since the party came to power (page 5).
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The new PCC chair will let journalism down too
“Let me make sure you know exactly who I am and what I am going to do at the PCC” – so said Baroness Buscombe, the new chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), at the annual conference of the Society of Editors.
Having read her speech in full, I fear I do know what she is going to do at the PCC – and that I’m not going to like it.
It’s a curious speech in several ways. She started off by recounting in some detail her Conservative Party roots. Leading off with the fact that she’s a Conservative, added to the jibes at Labour and the silence about other parties (even though her reference to civil liberties gave an obvious opportunity to mention the Liberal Democrats, for example), leaves an obvious question about what her motives were.
I’m sure she’s a smart person and can’t have been unaware that the message many people will take from her speech is, “I’m a Conservative”. Is that really the right message for the chair of the PCC – which has to deal with complaints about political stories all in an equitable manner – to send? Is it the best way to reassure the public about how self-regulation will work on her watch?
There were also some rather astringent comments about Google and news aggregators:
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Revealed: How Tory staffers are astro-turfing leftwing blogs
Will Straw at Left Foot Forward published an astonishing story the other day. He said:
An employee of the Conservative party has used a fake name and email address to comment on a Left Foot Forward guest post about anti-semitism in Poland.
You won’t be surprised to hear that the comment was typically of the “so what?” kind that sought to play down Michal Kaminski’s background. Just the kind we’ve also been getting a lot of since the controversy erupted.
So, Unity ran a quick scan on our own comments. We’ve found four instances where someone with that IP address also posted comments here – in each case defending the party or its sympathisers.
The comments go as far back as March this year when I revealed that the think-tank Policy Exchange had been forced to apologise to a Muslim group. At the time we experienced a whole bunch of new readers coming here to rubbish my story without any substance to back it up.
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What has the EU ever done for us?
Oh wow, have we got an exclusive for you today.
Recently our mole in Brussels managed to sneak a hidden camera into a policy meeting of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, where members from the British Conservative Party, Poland’s Law and Justice Party and the Czech Civic Democratic Party were attempting to thrash out a common position on the future of the European Union following the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by all EU states.
To say that the meeting became a little heated at times would be a bit of understatement, as you’ll see in a moment if you head down below the fold…
Dorries issues ‘apology’ to Labour MP Devine
Nadine Dorries has issued a grovelling apology to the Scottish Labour MP she branded a sex pest on Twitter.
According to a report in the Daily Record, Dorries emailed Jim Devine to say sorry for any “embarrassment” she caused with her comments, which were made in response to tweets by Kerry McCarthy which alleged that soon-to-retire Tory Grandee, Nicholas Winterton, had slapped another female Labour on the arse.
Despite her apology, Dorries is not off the hook with Devine, who said last night: “My lawyer will still be pursuing this.”
Tory Michael Gove offers support for controversial school programme
Since my last article on Steiner-Waldorf education in which I argued, that pseudoscience is not a valid educational choice, things have moved on somewhat.
In the last week or so Plymouth University has discontinued both its BA and Foundation degree courses in Steiner education, the only such courses in the UK.
Unlike Stockholm University, which took the same decision after concluding that the course literature contained ‘too much myth and too little fact’, Plymouth University have decided to axe their course due to poor recruitment and retention of students, although it is looking at incorporating a Steiner option into its existing BA course in Education Studies. They blame the government’s decision to withdraw funding for second degrees for the demise of these course. The excellent UK Anthroposophy blog has a rather more prosaic take.
Despite this obvious setback, the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship is pressing ahead with its efforts to get its nose into the state-funding trough by arranging a ’special pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner schools’. This will take place on the 17th November 2009 at the Charity Centre in Euston.
And if you haven’t already guessed the ‘possible developments in state funding opportunity‘ are those already indicated by Tory Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove:
Under the Tory proposals, new schools entering the state system would be free from the constraints of the statutory national curriculum.
Mr Gove believes many parents think the particular teaching styles “and atmosphere of the environment” at Montessori and Steiner schools would suit them and their children.
This event has, to say the least, an interesting line-up of guest speakers.
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Atlantic Bridge: Is this really a non-partisan charity?
contribution by Stephen Newton
As already reported on Liberal Conspiracy, Tuesday night is destined to see Dr Henry Kissinger deliver the Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Atlantic Bridge and to collect the oxymoronic Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom, which the charity claims was endowed to it by Baroness Thatcher herself.
With ordinary tickets priced at £400 and VIP tickets with ‘priority seating’ going for £750, the night promises to raise a significant amount of money for the think tank.
Atlantic Bridge briefly came to prominence in the summer when its American members were accused of launching scathing attacks on the NHS. And with an advisory board that includes shadow chancellor George Osborne, former leader and shadow foreign secretary William Hague, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling and shadow schools secretary Michael Gove it looks like the stars will be out for Kissinger.
Established in 1997 by shadow defence secretary Liam Fox and dedicated to ‘the simple aim of strengthening the special relationship exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s,’ the Atlantic Bridge helps Tories bond with their US allies.
Typical events include supporting the US launch of one of William Hague’s books or dinner in LA with Fox News film reviewer James Hirsen.
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A war-criminal comes to London
contribution by Ben Six
So, on Tuesday, Liam Fox, the man who’s likely to be our next Defence Secretary, will step onto a platform somewhere in London and celebrate one of the 20th Century’s most notorious war criminals: Henry Kissinger, a man whose bloody footprints trail through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and East Timor.
He even had a hand in Iraq, talking to Cheney “probably…more than just about anybody else“.
The event’s organised by The Atlantic Bridge, “a policy organization that seeks to promote a special security relationship between the U.S. and U.K.“. As relationships go, that’s one of the most wholly unhealthy since Caligula first hit puberty.
Fox, Gove, Osborne, Hague and Grayling all sit on the Bridge’s advisory board, along with US belligerents like Joe Lieberman. It operates largely through dinners and discussions, the low profile of which belie the standing and influence of those involved.
They bring together some of the most hawkish figures in US politics, the media and even banking – Lehman Bros. high-ups made a number of appearances.
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Cameron’s Lithuanian ally: Children need protection from ‘evil’ of homosexuality
Last month on Liberal Conspiracy I exposed how the Conservatives have allied themselves in the European Parliament with Valdemar Tomasevski, a Lithuanian MEP who has described homosexuality as a ‘perversion‘, and who voted in his national parliament earlier this year for a draconian new law banning public discussion of homosexuality.
Today, on Left Foot Forward, Will Straw publishes striking new evidence of Tomasevski’s homophobia:
David Cameron’s Lithuanian partner has revealed his homophobic views in an email to Left Foot Forward. Valdemar Tomasevski MEP – leader of the ‘Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania’ and a member of David Cameron’s alliance of far right Europeans – describes homosexuality as an “evil” from which children should be protected and says “we cannot allow these people to claim … that homosexuality is normal.”
Tomasevski’s anti-gay beliefs were set out in an email to Straw after Left Foot Forward requested an English translation of a Lithuanian interview appearing on the MEP’s website. The email, which also describes Tomasevski’s opposition to almost all abortions, says:
“I accept existence of homosexuals – we are tolerant state. But homosexuality is also a very good example of the wrong understanding of tolerance. We have to respect every human being, including those who experience sexual attraction to the same-sex.
But we cannot allow these people to claim and explain even to children at kindergarten that homosexuality is normal and encourage people to become homosexuals. Those who talk about tolerance should understand that and respect the constitutional right to protecting children from evil.”
Daniel Hannan: building a base for proto-Poujadism
The period of post-Thatcher consensus is not an era characterised by ideological politicians; both the hard left and the hard right have long lacked a substantial figurehead of the intellectual depth and popular appeal once personified by the likes of Tony Benn and Enoch Powell.
This is an important reason why politics today is less political than politics 20 or 30 years ago. Without any real clash of ideas, managerialism is triumphant and apathy replaces polarisation. Same shit, different sock puppet.
Surveying the contemporary British socialist scene, I don’t see anybody with the capacity to step up to the plate. Indeed, no one to my mind comes even close.
But an increasingly obvious choice for the serious right has is now emerging in the shape of MEP Daniel Hannan, who last night stepped down from the Tory frontbench in the European Parliament.
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