The BBC Trust has just ruled that ....
... lewd phone calls from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to actor Andrew Sachs had "no editorial justification". No kidding!? Really!?
What asinine "accountability" do they have at the BBC so that it takes a panel of well-paid quangocrats weeks to articulate what'd be obvious to most 12 year olds?
Posted on 21 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Welfare reform - unelected official tries to veto change
Sir Richard Tilt has demanded that government rethink its plans for welfare reform.
I’m no defender of this rotten Labour administration, but who is Sir Richard to try to veto reforms introduced by a democratically elected government?
Sir Richard (they always seem to have knighthoods) is yet another unelected quangocrat who seems to think its okay to have a say in how we're governed – without going to the trouble of getting elected.
In case any Conservatives are tempted to feel smug that a senior technocrat is speaking out against the government, we should reflect; if the Sir Richard Tilt’s of Whitehall are prepared to frustrate Labour’s half-hearted, half-cocked reforms, surely they’ll be out to subvert our own? In almost every Whitehall department and quango – the FCO, MOD, education, QCA, DEFRA – are people like Sir Richard. We need a clear idea as to how we deal with them – orders in council, legislative steps, P45s for certain Whitehall grandees - in order to form an effective government.
Posted on 21 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Economically illiterate politicians
“Banks must pass on the cuts in interest rates” they cry. “They must be forced to start lending again” they shout. There may be a shortage of credit, but there’s no shortage of economically illiterate politicians who think they’re experts.
Interest rates are a price - literally, the price of borrowing money. Fearful of a recession, interest rates set by the (no longer independent) Bank of England have been cut to record lows. Yet this has not restored us to the days of cheap and plentiful credit. Why not?
Market forces, not merely Bank of England fiat, determines the real cost of borrowing and availability of credit.
As the credit crunch unfolded, we went from a world of cheap and plentiful credit, to one where there is a shortage of money to lend. Such a shortage, in fact, that banks will pay you high interest on deposits. Indeed, Barclays appears willing to pay Dubai plutocrats interest of 14%. So much for rates of interest now being low.
Even with massive government hand-outs to the banks, they remain reluctant to lend. Once they’ve exhausted the latest Treasury give-away, and have to start lending their own money, I wonder if inter bank lending rates may even start to rise.
Either we can try to force banks to lend cheaply – in which case they’ll probably not lend to many people at all. Or we can allow them to set their own prices on loans, and expect that more will be willing to lend. You can't do both.
I thought it was only in third world countries, like Zimbabwe, were politicians lashed out at "speculators" and "hoarders" for refusing to sell things to people at prices politicians thought they ought to pay. Yet these are the sort of noises now coming out of Westminster.
For the sake of stuggling small businesses, let's hope other politicians have a better grasp of economics than that displayed by Treasury select committee chairman, John McFall, on Radio 4 this morning.
Posted on 21 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Peter Oborne reviews The Plan
Peter Oborne has written a review of my book The Plan: 12-months to renew Britain in
this week's issue of Prospect magazine.
I'm deeply flattered.
Peter is someone I admire - his top-selling book, The Triumph of the Political Class, contains some pretty good analysis.
If his book defines the trouble with our political system, I hope my book, The Plan, provides some of the answers.
Posted on 20 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
An early election?
Will Gordon Brown call a snap election? One theory doing the rounds in Westminster is that he'll call an early poll. Brown's dead cat bounce in the polls, so the gossip goes, give him a narrow window of opportunity - before a full economic depression takes hold.
I think an early poll unlikely. That said, I think I'd like an early election.
It'd give us the chance to hold the people who got us into this mess to account ....
Posted on 20 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell