Immigration: no one is in control
The arrest of Damian Green exposes the truth; no one is in control of immigration - and our democracy isn't working.
Home Office officials knew disturbing facts about thousands of illegal immigrants. Yet they kept these facts from Parliament.
When that information that should have been put before Parliament was finally leaked, Sir David Normington, senior Home Office official, complained the leaks "risked undermining the effective operation of my department".
No, Sir David. It's the failure of senior officials like you that accounts for incompetent Whitehall departments. It's you - and your departmental mouthpieces like Jacqui Smith - who've failed to get a grip on immigration.
Having tabled many Parliamentary questions on immigration, I've rarely got a real answer out of you and your department. Accountability to Parliament is a fiction. Sir Humphrey Appleby has won - but this is no joke.
Now you, Sir David, have initiated an inquiry that resulted in the arrest of a democratically elected MP who was able to expose your department's failure and duplicity.
Why should any of my constituents, concerned about mass immigration, believe that our democracy is working? Why should they believe the authorities have democratic legitimacy?
I certainly don't.
There's a convention MPs don't criticise civil servants. There was also one that civil servants don't have MPs arrested for doing their job.
David Normington's position looks untenable. If it requires a change to Orders in Council to oust him, then so be it.
Posted on 30 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
News just in: Speaker to issue statement on Wednesday
Coming out of the BBC studio this evening, a journalist tells me that the news is just in that Michael Martin will now make a statement about his involvement in the police raid on Damian Green's office.
How about "I quit".
If he gives a statement full of defensive dross about "process" and "correct procedure", he'll prove he's only fit to be a compliance officer - not Speaker of the House of Commons.
Under Mr Martin, the Commons has grown utterly useless at holding the executive to account - to the point where a permanent under secretary took steps that resulted in the arrest of an MP. Because he was holding the official's department to account!
Few commentators have yet spotted that new rule changes in House of Commons Standing Orders now mean that Michael Martin’s successor will be chosen not as he was – in a rigged election controlled by Whips - but through secret ballot. In other words, MPs will decide for themselves – not at the executive's behest.
There’s a view in Westminster starting to emerge that some of those wanting the Speaker's job might need to start setting out their stalls....
Posted on 30 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Look what happens when Sir Humphrey is put in charge ....
Is it true that Sir David Normington, top Home Office official, who initiated the inquiry that led to the arrest of Damian Green, is also playing a key role in appointing the next head of the Metropolitan police? Spot the conflict of interest.
If so, the case for proper democratic oversight of policing - rather than having backroom Sir Humphrey Appleby in charge - becomes overwhelming.
Posted on 30 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
"So why did all you MPs elect Michael Martin ...
… as the Speaker?” asks a puzzled constituent.
I didn't. None of us elected to Parliament at the last election had any say. Mr Martin was installed several years beforehand - in a rigged election open to manipulation by the executive via government Whips. Hence his inability to
stand up to the executive .....
Posted on 30 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Britain: a state of failure?
According to press reports, some of the Bombay terrorist were from Bradford.
You'd think that tackling such home-grown British jihadis would be the UK authorities absolute number one priority. Yet this week the only anti-terror raid I'm aware of seems to have been the one on Damian Green's office.
Yep, that's right. Nine anti-terrorist officers raided his office. Why? Because he was doing his job and holding the authorities to account for their ineptness.
His arrest seems to have been instigated by the top official in the very department he was shadowing. And incidentally the department supposed to be tackling home-grown Islamic radicalism.
As I argue in The Plan: 12-months to renew Britain, there's a profound malaise at the heart of the British state - and it now requires radical change to fix it.
Posted on 29 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Just done Radio 4's ....
... Week in Westminster. It goes out at 11am. I hope Mr Speaker is listening. If he's anything more than a compliance officer, he needs to explain his role - not keep hiding behind the "I followed the correct procedures" line.
Posted on 29 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Good bye, Sir Ian
Sir Ian Blair steps down as head to the Metropolitan police today. This is why he must be considered a failure:
1. Crime - and especially violent crime - increased on his watch.
2. His dogmatic, politically-correct policing agenda has crippled the effectiveness of the force.
3. Sir Ian never paid enough attention to the concerns of rank and file police officers trying to do their job.
4. He politicised the force, for example when he lent on MPs to support compulsory ID cards.
5. Sir Ian failed to realise quite how people's expectations have changed. No longer are they prepared to leave it all up to remote officials to decide how their community is policed - they want a say. Yet Sir Ian's parting shot today is to call for an end to local democratic oversight over policing.
For a supposed progressive, turns out he is remarkably backward looking .....
Posted on 28 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Speaker Martin sanctioned raid on opposition's office
Anti-terror police raided the Commons office of an opposition spokesman. Not in Zimbabwe, or Pakistan. But in Britain yesterday.
Why? The opposition spokesman, Mr Green, has had the audacity to hold the executive to account and expose their failure to tackle illegal immigration.
If it turns out that the Speaker of the House of Commons gave the go-ahead for this raid, I will be demanding to his face, on every occasion that I can, that Mr Martin now quit.
The purpose of the Commons Speaker is to preside over an institution that holds government to account - not to give the green light to police raids against legitimate opposition
. His excuse had better be good.
MPs cannot have confidence in Martin if he sanctioned this.
UPDATE: I 'phone the Speaker's office to find out if Mr Martin sanctioned the raid. Am told "there is a process to be followed that was followed". I shall take that as a yes, Speaker Martin sanctioned the raid on Damian Green's office.
UPDATE: Guido Fawkes is brilliant today - pointing out that no action was taken when public officials conspired to give the BBC's Robert Peston sensitive information - allegedly.
Posted on 28 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Theresa good. BAA bad.
Over on ConHome, I defend Theresa Villiers, our first-rate transport spokesman, and the free market, from some rather unfair comments. It's my personal view that BAA's conduct is not exactly winning them friends or influencing people. If I was on the board at BAA, I'd be having words with my corporate affairs team.
Posted on 28 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Thank you ....
.... to everyone who read my blog today. It's been something of a record.
Google Analytics tell me that there were many thousands of you - not to mention the dozens of comments you posted. I'd love it if you added www.TalkCarswell.com to your list of favourites.
Posted on 28 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Whose side are the CPS on?
An Essex man who suspected one of his employees had stolen from him decided to take some direct action. Apparently, he frogmarched the alleged thief to the local police station - with the suspect bearing a sign that read: "Thief. I stole £845. Am on my way to police station".
Having delivered the suspect to the police station, he seems to have thought that the alleged thief would face justice. He clearly didn't count on the local public prosecution service.
Today, we learn that the alleged thief has been let off with a caution. Why? Was it not in "the public interest"? If so, how are those who decide what is "the public interest" answerable to the public? They aren't.
The people I feel most concerned for in all this are our local police officers.
They work hard to bring suspected thieves (and worse) into local police stations each and every day. And despite their brave efforts, as in this case, many suspects who should be brought to account, aren't.
This is why it's so vital that we give back to local police custody sergeants – not the CPS - the power to decide whether a case should go to court. If the local custody sergeant had had the power to make the decision in this case, I've no idea if the outcome would have been any different.
But I strongly suspect that the decision - one way or the other - would carry a good deal of legitimacy in the eyes of the local law abiding public.
It’s time to give locally accountable police – and especially
custody sergeants - the power to charge all summary offences and most common offences.
Not only has the CPS taken too much responsibility away from the police, but their relationship with the courts needs rethinking. By taking cases to court only when there's near certainty of a conviction, some people fear that the CPS - rather than the courts - are de facto determining guilt.
England is a civilised country - and we cannot have mob rule. But the more local accountability there is, the less likelihood there would be of frustrated people taking matters into their own hands.
Posted on 27 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Today's Telegraph is wrong
The Telegraph has long been the voice of intelligent conservatism.
Hardly slavish towards Conservative politicians, her mid-1990s leader "Get off your knees" was perhaps the most brilliant critique of the John Major government I've ever read. Yet the paper retained a loyalty to conservative ideas. Indeed, what criticisms she levelled at Conservatives, she made them in defence of conservatism.
Yet today's Telegraph seems detached from classic economic liberalism, and oblivious of what one might term Friedmanomics.
This morning's petulant leader hectors banks
, taking the Mandelsonian line that it's "unacceptable" for banks not to start lending again - and threatening them with nationalisation unless they do.
The idea banks are refusing to lend because they are deliberately being difficult is absurd. Banks are not lending because there's a shortage of credit to lend - caused by excessive debt built up by too much cheap money.
The current credit shortage has been exacerbated by the pressure to reduce the price (interest rates) that banks charge for whatever credit that they have available to sell. (Raise price, increase supply. Lower price, reduce supply. Pretty simple really).
To make matters even worse, in recent weeks government has issued so many bonds IOUs, that banks are lending what credit they do have to government, rather than private businesses. The more the government borrows, the more credit it seems to be soaking up that might otherwise go to help the real economy.
As a city friend of mine explains "If we want monetary policy to work and the banks to lend to the private sector we should stop flooding them with low risk public sector debt."
There was a time when the Telegraph would have been able to explain as much.
Posted on 27 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Proud of Damian Green
Government officials have consistently failed to deal with immigration. Yet today, nine anti-terrorist officials and police are reported as having arrested my colleague, Damian Green MP - for daring to expose the state's failure.
Why do state officials not act to enforce immigration law, but act to arrest a democratically elected representative for exposing the malaise?
This is toxic - and an outrage against democratic government.
Posted on 27 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
What shall I ask the Prime Minister?
I'm number 9 on the list of MPs to ask the Prime Minister a question this morning. It could be that the half hour session is up before it’s my turn. But if not, - and in the interests of a little direct democracy - what question should I put to him?
Email me your suggestions?
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Question to Prime Minister; but no answer
Thanks for all the suggestions - over 30 emails and comments at the last count before I went into the chamber.
Since so many were about the dire state of the economy - and since Brown failed to answer David Cameron's questions about them - I put the following short, snappy question to Brown:
Will the Prime Minister confirm that the national debt is going to double to over £1 trillion under his premiership?
Sounded pretty straight forward, and clear cut question to me ...
Brown's answer was the sort of evasive shuffle that we've come to expect. No wonder people don't trust this Prime Minister ...
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Live blog: 13:45 emergency debate on state of economy
Six months into this crisis and our elected representatives finally get the chance to put questions to the government over their management of the economy.
Osborne is on form. Assured and measured. I sit right up close by the Labour benches. Close enough to see all that crooked teeth and dandruff.
They shout and sneer at every point he makes. But their jeers tell us more about them than it reveals of anything else.
From my vantage point on the green bench, I see Labour's lobby fodder, so blinded by slavish years of party politics; they no longer see themselves as those outside Westminster now do.
Would they carry on like this in front of their anxious constituents? Would they jeer and gloat when there's 3 million unemployed? If they do, they'll be slung out of office.
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Live blog: 14:10 emergency debate
Alasdair Darling foolishly says he wishes this debate could run for more than 3 hours. If that were the case, why hasn't he called one before? He's only here because even Speaker Martin realised that if the Commons bunked off for a five day holiday without going through the motions of a debate, contempt for politicians would reach a crescendo.
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Are the days of the Defence Industrial Strategy numbered?
Equipment shortages in Afghanistan prove that there’s something seriously wrong with our defence procurement. That’s because the Defence Industrial Strategy deliberately reduces the number of suppliers able to equip our armed forces. As in any market where you restrict the number of suppliers, the seller sets the terms of trade.
That's why our defence budget gets spent - but the kit is over priced and delivered late.
It suits the defence contractors not to have anyone point this out. But people are starting to notice.
Bill Kincaid has just written a book about the failure of defence procurement.
It's going to be increasingly difficult for the defence lobbyists to keep everyone quiet or distracted …..
Posted on 26 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Live at Defence Select Committee
Live from the Defence select committee taking evidence from some MoD officials. The room is stuffed full of lobbyists. Clearly some people take a keen interest in how we spend money equiping our armed forces - and they're not just the actual soldiers.
John Smith MP asks searchingly about the cozy ties between former civil servants and defence contractors. Much sqwirming ..... Little light.
Adam Holloway MP asks why there wasn't a fully competative tender process for Future Lynx. Good question. Ridiculous answer. The official claims that there weren't alternatives able to fulfill both the naval and maritime role. Of course there aren't. But one could find helicopters to fulfill each role - quickly and at lower cost.
Perhaps if the committee had the power to approve MoD's annual budget - and hire and fire top officials - we might start getting a proper idea as to why our defence budget fails to be delivering the right kit.
Posted on 25 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Is Polly Toynbee mad?
For some time now, I've wondered if Polly Toynbee had a touch of the full moon about her. With Marie Antoinette-style disregard for those affected by recession, she today declares that:
"Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession".
Back in March 2005, Polly was, in the view of some people, maybe just a little unfair in the way she represented something my friend, Danny Kruger said.
What would Polly be writing today about any Conservative who suggested, as she does, that this recession is nothing much to worry about?
Final thought, before blogging came along, we had to listen to people like Polly pontificate on the BBC and the leftist media. And there was little we could do. Not any more, Polly. Not any more....
Posted on 25 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell MP
Speaker does something right
At last! The Speaker acts to ensure the Commons can hold government to account. Well done Mr Martin. He's ruled we're to have a debate tomorrow on the government's debt-binge.
And about time, too, most of my constituents would say.
Posted on 25 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Abolish it: what we should really do with VAT
Daniel Hannan's excellent post on ConservativeHome deserves looking at. Dan examines the idea he and I mooted in our book, The Plan; abolish VAT and replace it with a local sales tax - set and collected locally.
Under the hated council tax-system, town halls are under the thumb of unaccountable officials in Whitehall. Council tax goes up and up and up - and those you elect have remarkably little say over what the council actually does. Unsurprisingly, fewer people vote.
But with a local sales tax in place of VAT, those you elect locally would have a real say on the local things that matter to you. And there would be a bit of tax competition - leading to lower taxes and more efficient local government.
And what's the drawback? It'd be incompatible with our existing EU treaty obligations.
Suits me.
Posted on 24 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Citibank nationalised
For years, brash young men earned were paid a fortune working for Citigroup. We were told that this rich young tribe, swarming about the smarter parts of London, shuttling importantly across the Atlantic, were worth their £ million bonuses.
Yet being a free marketeer, never once did I resent them their success. If these senior managers worked hard - and lived in swanky riverside appartments and "gave it large" in West End resturants - good luck to them, I thought.
Yet now it appears that none of their board was apparently able to see a basic danger: Citi had loans on its books that were over 30 times the value of its assets. In other words, a miniscule fall (3%, if my non-banking maths is right?) in asset values would make it worthless.
And that's, more or less, what Citi is today; worthless. Citigroup's value is estimated to be less than the value of the various subsidies that it has had from government.
How come not one single member of the senior team appears to have seen the obvious danger? It's more Homer Simpson than Harvard MBA - and especially tough for those at Citi who were doing lots of the work but not raking it in.
So why should anyone who wasn't bigging it up on the Citi payroll now have to pay to bail them out?
Posted on 24 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Blogging live in the Commons
I'm writing this in a packed House of Commons.
The Chancellor has just announced a whole series of measures - including a VAT cut and raising tax on top earners. Almost all key proposals were deliberately leaked in yesterday's papers.
The Speaker is quick on his feet this afternoon to tell MPs not to interupt the minister. But will he do anything to ensure that the elected legislature holds the executive to account? Of course not.
No wonder the Commons fades into irrelevance. When will we get a proper Speaker able to restore confidence in the chamber of which he or she presides?
Posted on 24 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Commons live
Three or four times Speaker Martin rose to tells Tory MPs not to raise voices as the Chancellor spoke.
Not once has he done likewise as Labour MPs heckle George Osborne.
Zero objectivity. Zero sense that the Commons job is to hold ministers to account. Either he's too dozy, or he thinks his job is protecting ministers from scrutiny.
Posted on 24 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Defence procurement is pathetic
The shoddy way we equip our troops ought to be a national scandal. Why isn't it?
According to news reports
,
only 1 in 3 of the 67 Apaches we've paid for works properly. Despite paying over £30 million apiece - vastly more than we needed to - these battle winning weapons have been in short supply.
It's a similar story with the lift helicopters; vast amounts of public money have been handed over, but somehow the helicopters are someplace other than helping our armed forces.
I wonder if this is because the defence procurement process is, in effect, run in the interests of a few large companies. With armies of lawyers and legions of lobbyists, they are able to get vast contracts to supply what it suits them to make, when it suits them to deliver it - and at a price that gives them a good margin. Divided and directionless, the MoD doesn't stand a chance.
Don't take my word for it - read this best-selling book about it by Lewis Page called Lions, Donkey and Dinosaurs. (Defence "experts" keep telling me it's complete rubbish, of course, but they never seem able to explain why).
Posted on 23 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
This binge will have to stop
The spin suggests that tomorrow Alistair Darling is going to announce measures to boost spending.
More spending? What about increasing savings? Surely the cause of the current crisis is too much debt? Too much consumption based on cheap credit?
Something tells me that the policies unveiled tomorrow won't be the last chapter in this economic drama. My bet is that the action taken by the Chancellor might be made to look clever by Robert Peston-types at the BBC. But will look pretty foolish in the long run.
Look at Japan. For a decade, she's been in the doldrums because of debt and a deflated asset bubble. How have their various governments responded? A decade of low, low interest rates and measures to boost spending - racking up more debt. It's fair to say it's been a complete failure. So much so that you'd be forgiven for asking if it's the right remedy for Britain.
Posted on 23 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Winter has arrived in Essex
Mr Darling announces government spending plans on Monday. I imagine he'll spend much of this weekend at home hunched over a calculator.
Given how cold it's now in Essex, I hope he does something about heating bills and winter fuel allowance....
Posted on 22 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
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
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
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
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
A boycott of the BBC license fee?
It seems as if we may be on the verge of an organised, mass boycott of the BBC license fee. Charles Moore, a respected commentator, says he may stop paying. The Telegraph letters page has been awash with people refusing to pay. Fascinatingly, many also seem to suggest that all those threats by the BBC to send round the "detection vans" are so much hot air.
Given how the internet can mobilise vast numbers of like-minded people, could we be about to see an internet-based non-payment campaign? The idea of the internet being used to orchestrate a tax strike raises some interesting questions.
As an MP, I'm certainly not advocating anyone refuses to pay taxes or that they break the law. Law makers can't be law breakers etc etc (incidentally, what if Ben Franklin or Cromwell had taken that view?) I digress .... without calling for it, I do ponder how the internet might impact politics if it were to facilitate tax strikes in ways that were previously unimaginable.
Our current political system has, to a very large extent, been shaped by the ability of labour to organise and strike. Technological change in the 19th century - cheap leafleting, railways, coal, factory production et al - allowed labour strikes. This had profound political consequences; a new party - Labour - emerged. Existing parties merged. The role of the state was redefined as much more interventionist etc etc.
What if the 21st century sees taxpayers able to organise themselves in the way labour did in pervious generations? We already have the Taxpayers Alliance. What if we start to see an increasingly consumerist electorate willing to have orchestrated tax strikes? What if a BBC license fee boycott is followed by mass non-payment of council tax? Or VAT? If such a movement got underway, how would the existing political parties respond?
Politicians often talk about harnessing the power of the internet to reenergise the political process. Blah, blah, blah. It may do so in ways they don't quite expect.
Posted on 19 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Well done India!
![INS Tabar [File picture]](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45219000/jpg/_45219313_instabar226.jpg)
The Indian navy has apparently sunk a pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden.
No nonsense. No blathering about human rights. No dithering officaldom or Euro-weeney task force. They just sunk it.
Am I alone in thinking that the Royal Navy should perhaps be taking a similar approach? Why don't they? Is it the ships we lack, or the self-confidence?
Posted on 19 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Men-in-tights ban MPs blog
According to this story on the BBC website
, an MP has lost some of their House of Commons funding for their blog - because, horror of horrors, they were being critical of a fellow MP.
The fact the House of Commons rules prevent the Communications Allowance being used to criticise MPs looks all too cosy. Many people outside Westminster will see that as yet another instance of politicians looking out for their own.
This is another reason we need to scrap the Communications Allowance. If MPs want to blog, they should pay for it themselves - like I do on this site.
Incidentally, it has the added advantage of letting me be as critical of other MPs as I like.
Posted on 19 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
The men-in-tights said "no" to this photo
Over the summer, I put out a newsletter to let my constituents know what I'm doing to represent them.
Having spoken out about the way that the House of Commons works - or rather doesn't - I felt it was important to include something on my comments about the Speaker. (Nothing personal, Mr Martin. I just don't think the legislature over which you preside is up to the job of holding those with real executive power to account). So I prepared an article and included the attached photo.
I quickly discovered that the Commons authorities were having none of it. I was instructed to take out the offending image. So here it is on my blog instead.
Once you have a taxpayer funded Communications Allowance, it becomes inevitable that officials will begin to police the way it’s used. You’re then one short step from having officials required to approve what MPs say – which is where we now are today.
We need to axe the Communications Allowance - and change the Westminster village's cosy, self-serving ways
.
Posted on 19 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
200,000: immigration is out of control
A report out on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics is expected to show net immigration on the increase. According to press reports, when you subtract all the people who left Britain in 2007 from the number coming in, net immigration stands at 200,000 - a historic high.
The kind of people that the BBC likes to interview, somehow rarely seem to discuss immigration. But thanks to the internet, those of us wanting to raise the issue sensibly and responsibly are now able to.
I believe that government politicians and officials have repeatedly misled us over immigration. They've tried to give the impression that immigration is under control. But it isn't. They've implied they are taking action. They aren't. Some officials have even suggested we stop us using the word immigration, instead talking about migration.
Controlling immigration has to be made a priority. I would like us to adopt a public policy that is fair - but which seeks to end net immigration from outside the EU.
Failure to address immigration openly, sensibly and honestly is stirring up trouble and extremism.
Posted on 18 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
"Should we have sharia law in the UK?", asks the BBC - using your license fee
Today the BBC spent some of your license fee making a programme that asks if we should have sharia law in the UK. See for yourself here.
Posted on 18 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Speaker's Conference an admission MPs are useless
Dimly aware of the fact that Westminster isn't working, Parliamentary grandees have called a "Speakers Conference". This will allow "experts" - especially the types invited onto the BBC to pontificate - months to ponder how the Commons might be made more representative and relevant. Brace yourself for all the hot air about "outreach programmes" and quotas. Blah, blah, blah.
I can tell you what the problem is, and how to fix it, now, Mr Speaker.
The House of Commons over which you preside is growing irrelevant because it is monumentally useless at holding those with executive power to account. It is despised precisely because it's so supine and spineless. To change, we need to free the Commons from control by government Whips by having:
a) a properly elected Speaker with the moral authority to allow our elected representatives to stand up to government. The last vote took place years before the last general election - and it was rigged. Hence the current sorry state of affairs.
b) properly elected select committees, with the power to hire and fire the heads of all the quangos who really make the decisions.
c) proper control over money - the Commons has lost control of expenditure and needs to take it back by forcing every quango to have its budget annually approved.
d) A right of citizen's initiative so that people had a direct say over what MPs debated and vote on. That would see us spend less time trying to exempt ourselves from the Freedom of Information Act, and more time sorting out the things that really matter.
That would make our elected representatives more relevant. So, how to make them more representative?
The Commons is unrepresentative because our politics is increasingly dominated by paid up members of the professional political class. We need to do what the Conservatives have done, to a limited extent, in a few marginal seats, and establish "open primary" selection to decide who stands for public office.
Barack Obama, the President of the USA, got the job because voters didn't simply have a say in the general election. They had a say as to who should be each party's candidate in the first place. Even in super safe Republican or Democrat states, these primaries prevent politics becoming a closed shop. If the person who holds the most powerful office on earth has to go through this process, are our own MPs somehow too grand to do likewise?
Allowing every local person a say would - by definition - ensure a more representative range of people stood for public office.
And if MPs who owed their positions to local open primary voters, perhaps they'd be willing to be a little more independent-minded?
Indeed, Mr Speaker, I even took the trouble to write a book which sets out in detail the precise changes to the Standing Orders that would be needed. It’s called The Plan, it's yours for a tenner, and one of your Clerk’s could order you a copy off something called Amazon.
Something tells me I probably won’t make it onto the list of people to speak at Mr Speaker’s Conference....
Posted on 17 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
The quangos strike back
Today's Times contains an extraordinary story suggesting that we won't be able to have democratically accountable local policing, lest the BNP take over.
Surely that'd be a reason against having democratic elections for anything? Elect your local county councillor, you say? Better not, it might let in the extremists. Polling stations at a general election? Wisest not to give the skinheads a chance, sir.
I detect a clumsy PR spin operation. As the momentum for directly elected police chiefs builds, the quangocrats who stand to lose out are trying to discredit the idea by bigging up the idea that extremists are poised to take over.
It is crass, clumsy and clearly nonsense, of course. But what I do find surprising is that the Times should treat such spin as a serious story.
Posted on 17 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
How not to defeat an Obama or a Blair
There was no one who was more opposed to Tony Blair than me; on the eve of his 1997 election victory, I went from doorstep to doorstep in target constituencies trying to persuade people not to back him. By 2001, I was so appalled with him, I personally stood against him in his own Sedgefield seat.
Yet despite my best efforts, Blair left office undefeated - his irritating smirk intact.
Watching some US Republicans react to Obama's victory, I see a danger of them making precisely the mistakes we British Conservatives made against Blair. Their anti-Obama language is growing more shrill and angry.
Here are a couple of suggestions I’d give my fellow travellers across the Atlantic:
1.
Respect the verdict of the voters.
2.
Don’t rant.
3.
Recognise that you lost because the voters rejected what you had to offer.
4.
Looking forward, don’t expect to beat something with nothing. There no point in pointing our Blair/Obama is a light weight opportunist who stands for nothing if you are not quite clear what it is you’d be doing differently.
Posted on 16 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Dan Hannan's "must read" blog entry today ...
... highlights the extent to which Baby P was a victim of the quango state and the monumentally useless officialdom that now rules over us.
He's on to something.
We need a new government that understands the extent to which it's the quango state that's the problem. It's not just the politicians that we need to change.
Posted on 15 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Brown passes the buck as the pound plumets
Why is the £ falling in value?
Gordon Brown wants you to think its because of something that George Osborne said.
What utter nonsense. The fact Brown can dare to pretend it is all George Osborne's fault shows that he takes you and me and everyone else for fools.
No, Mr Brown. This will not do.
Our currency is in free fall because under Brown's stewardship, the government has racked up massive debts. Such vast debt, they're not - I'm told - totally incomparable with that we incurred fighting World War II.
Now some people are starting to worry that our government - even with massive tax hikes - isn't going to be able to pay back what we owe, when we owe it. That's called defaulting - and until now it was something that normally only happened to Latin American republics run by dodgy dictators, or Russians.
There's also the realisation that with interest rates being slashed and government issuing bonds IOUs to anyone who'll lend them money, something may have to give. Can you keep cutting interest rates while throwing IOUs around like confetti? We're about to find out.
One decade of Brown in charge, and we're headed towards the kind of creditworthiness Argentina had in the 1970s, with a rapidly devalued currency, to boot.
Posted on 15 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Politicians playing catch-up
There is often a lag between economic reality and politics. Economic circumstances can change - often remarkably fast. Yet those making public policy take longer to grasp what's happened.
The biggest recipient of British overseas aid today, for example, is India. The rising power with double-digit growth that recently put a man in space gets more of the aid budget than anywhere else. One reason I suspect our aid budget is so spectacularly misallocated in this way is that there are too many NGOs and officials with a vested professional interest in keeping things as they are. The economics might change, but the public policy remains the same.
Another instance of the lag between economics and politics has been the reaction of many politicians to the current financial crisis. While the world's economy has changed dramatically since the 1980s, many politicos talk and think as if the old levers of control will still work.
Politician-talk about easing monetary policy misses the fact that there are now $ trillions of new instruments of liquidity that didn't exist the last time we faced a situation like this. There's so much privately created money in the world economy, it's no longer merely a question of our government - or the G8 or indeed the G28 - dictating monetary policy.
Interest rates are a price - the price of borrowing money. For too long, the price of borrowing money was so low that people, businesses and government borrowed too much - running up massive debts in the process.
Now there is a shortage of money. Such a shortage, in fact, that some banks will pay you - or any Dubai plutocrat - handsomely to borrow it. That’s called a high rate of interest, and it’s got nothing to do with anything on the Monetary Policy Committee’s monthly agenda.
The politics of this down-turn might still be all about bank bail outs. The talk is still of bullying bank chiefs to "pass on the rate cuts" etc etc etc. But what usually happens to the price of something when supply exceeds demand? Go figure.
The West has had decades of consumer-led growth, built on consumption and debt. Unsurprisingly under such a scenario, low interest rates have tended to be popular. Perhaps a very brave group of leaders now needs to suggest that we need less consumption based growth, and more production. Less debt and more savings.
Maybe we need less government intervention to always and everywhere lower the cost of borrowing? Perhaps we need to balance the needs of savers against borrowers? Possibly now is the time to have an economy based on production, as well as consumption?
Whatever the answer, the centre right needs some new thinking about economics. These are the kinds of questions we should be asking.
Eventually the politics will have to catch up with the economic reality.
Posted on 14 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Yet more BBC biase ...
Huw Edwards, the BBC presenter, fronted a programme that the BBC now admits was biased. Indeed. I thought it was called the Ten O’Clock News.
The people who gave us Russell Brand’s obscenities produced a programme called “Wales: Power and the People". Shown before the Welsh Assembly elections last May, the BBC now admits it "breached impartiality guidelines by not seeking a balanced range of views."
I think the same almost every time I happen to see the BBC news or listen to Radio 4. The BBC's editorial line seems to be lifted straight from the Guardian. Why should we be forced to pay for a broadcast version of the Guardian? The BBC license fee has zero legitimacy and must go. Yes we can.
Posted on 14 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Human Rights law favours bad people
Abu Qatada came into our country illegally on a forged passport in 1993. A decade later, and having spent vast amounts of public money, the authorities have still failed to remove him. Why?
Simple: The Human Rights Act - and the activist judges it has unleashed.
If, as seems possible, this extremist were to finally leave Britain, it will be despite, not because of the Human Rights Act.
For two frustrating years, I sat as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Parliament. Yet it took me about 15 minutes to work out that Human Rights law is a con.
Human Rights law sounds reasonable enough - protecting liberties, defending freedom, civil society blah, blah, blah. But it’s about judicial activism, and gives license to some pretty unreasonable things – like not being allowed to control who comes into our country.
Ever noticed how those who benefit from Human Rights laws seem to be the bad guys - immigration cheats, extremists, pirates, organised gangsters? And, of course, the well-paid lawyers.
Has Human Rights law made justice more accessible to you and your family or business? Of course not. It's achieved the precise opposite.
On the Parliamentary Committee, I learnt that many paid-up members of the professional political class simply don't understand what all the fuss is about. Many MPs would much rather have unelected judges make the tough decisions for them, so that they can spend more of their time reading out their fatuous speeches and issuing press releases. A number of those unelected peers on the Joint Committee, meanwhile, have spent much of their professional lives working on and promoting Human Rights legislation - hardly the best people to invigilate the Human Rights system.
It’s time to scrap the Human Rights Act – and reign in activist judges. Yes we can.
Posted on 13 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
"Let the professionals get on with it!"
Next time you hear someone say that, remember that's what they did at Haringey Child Protection services. They let the professionals get on with it. And half a dozen of these professionals proceeded to come into contact with a child, on over 60 separate occasions, over a 6 month period during which he was being battered. And done nothing to prevent it.
You cannot have public services without accountability to the public. If those you elect are unable to hold those running public services to account, there is no point in democracy.
Posted on 13 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
His Excellency the Right Honourable Paul Boateng
When Paul Boateng was elected to Parliament back in 1987, he gave a speech declaring "today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto!” Twenty years on, he's now the High Commissioner to South Africa, living in the large official residence provided by HMG.
According to today's Telegraph, his wife Janet, is "under investigation for allegedly bullying domestic staff at the official residence in South Africa.”
To quote the Daily Telegraph again "domestic staff alleged that they had been subjected to verbal bullying by Mrs Boateng and [the Telegraph] obtained details of the internal inquiry into her conduct under a Freedom of Information request.
In a statement the Foreign Office said: "While a grievance has been raised by some members of the residence staff, it has not been made against Mr Boateng." That’s good to know.
Posted on 13 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
The British State: authoritarian and incompetent
The British state is extraordinarily authoritarian; in the name of child protection, church volunteers are barred from helping organise children's games until they've been vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau. Soon every child in Britain - together with details of their family - will be placed on a state database.
Yet the British state is extraordinarily incompetent; a baby is gradually battered to death over a six month period - despite having been seen by social workers more than 60 times. And not a single individual is properly held to account.
This is the state of our country today.
Posted on 12 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Why we need directly elected Justice Commissioners
Let’s be honest. The public are losing confidence in the criminal justice system. More people than ever now doubt it is on their side - and even the government's own advisers now recognise this.
Yet there’s been no shortage of Home Secretaries, and other Westminster politicians, talking about the need to "get tough" on crime. But that’s it. It’s only ever talk.
Today I’m proposing a different approach.
Imagine if local people, not remote Home Office officials, determined the priorities of the police where you live? Imagine if you could hold your local police chiefs to account for fighting crime? Then we'd see a "get tough" approach for real.
Today I'm introducing a Bill in the Commons aimed at doing precisely this – at giving local people direct democratic control over policing.
My Bill would establish elected Justice Commissioner (sometimes referred to as Sheriffs) for each county and large town in England and Wales. They – not remote Home Office officials – would then determine local policing priorities and be accountable to local people for the effectiveness of the local criminal justice system.
My Bill would replace the moribund quangos – also known as Police Authorities - with properly accountable Justice Commissioners. Each local Justice Commissioner would be held directly accountable by local people - and would have to take responsibility.
Home Office targets would be scrapped, and it would be up to each Justice Commissioner to set the priorities for their own area.
I'm fed up listening to politicians just promising to cut crime - but never delivering. It's time for change. It's time to trust local people to decide how their own local communities ought to be policed. If we made the criminal justice system answer directly to local people we'd soon get the sort of criminal justice system we need.
Readers of The Plan: 12-months to renew Britain will of course recognise that this Bill is one of the 30 legislative measures detailed in the book.
I’m pleased to have (as of 9.45am this morning!) co-sponsors for my Bill on both sides of the chamber. Let’s hope that government Whips don’t swing into action and try to change that …
Posted on 11 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Bogus reforms leave Westminster unchanged
In an effort to appear progressive, the government announced it would allow a public consultation on the contents of the Queen's Speech.
Yet now it turns out that the public had so little faith in yet another sham consultation, that few took part in it. Indeed, for every person involved, it cost the government £33.47.
The remote officials in charge of these so-called reforms are giving democracy a bad name.
If this government - or any government - is serious about giving people a real say, they should allow a right of citizen initiative. Here is the Ten Minute Rule Bill I introduced on the floor of the Commons, designed to do precisely this.
Naturally, the government, and the Sir Humphrey Appleby-types who really run the show, ignored it.
Paid up members of the professional political class don't like the idea of mere mortals being allowed to decide what laws we have.
Post-Obama, politicians will use the word "change". Yet remember this; change must mean changing the way we do politics and how politics is done - not only changing the politicians doing the politics for us.
Posted on 10 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
EXPOSED: Adrian Mole's blog site?
I'm very pleased to have been repeatedly attacked on the anti-Conservative blog site, Conservative and Unionist Blog. It's written anonymously - but Dizzy Thinks has now revealed that the site is allegedly linked to "Adrian McMenamin, a former Downing Street advisor...". (
Incidentally, the same individual, I believe, features in this article about Labour computers being used for dirty tricks.)
As an "attack blog", the site's so comically crass, I'd suspected it had to be written by a paid-up member of the professional political class. No normal person writes that way. Plus it's riddled with unintentionally funny, Adrian Mole-type comments.
Which is more amusing?
a) The idea of ex-Downing Street insiders fretting about what I write on this site? (Do you think Gordon phones up suggested rebuttals? "Make sure you expose Carswell's irresponsible plans to cut taxes!" I do hope so).
b) The idea of Adrian Mole now working as a Labour apparatchik (Blogging and Rebuttals Unit)? (Do you suppose Pandora Braithwaite is now a Minister?)
c) Or the Homer Simpson stupidity that allowed those behind a supposedly anonymous blog to be revealed? Doh!
Posted on 9 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Vote Lobbyist! ooops, you already did ....
Apparently one in ten of my fellow MPs used to be a lobbyist. According to Hazel Blears, it's unhealthy that Westminster is now dominated by a remote class of career politicians who lack "real life experience".
She's right. But like Trevor Philips complaining that there's no British Barack Obama, she's got no meaningful answer.
Trevor and Hazel suggest that political parties need to actively select a more "representative" range of people to stand for public office, "in the same way as they have women and ethnic minorities." This approach is so wrong-headed its difficult to know where to start.
Do Hazel and Trevor seriously think that Barack Obama got to the top because of quotas? Obama won the candidacy precisely because he was able to take on and defeat, during a bitterly contested open primary, the Clinton-controlled Democrat party elite. Not a short-list quota in sight.
Sarah Palin - another "minority" candidate in the contest - didn't become Governor of Alaska because she was on some Republican version of the Tory A-list. She got there be taking on and defeating an establishment-backed incumbent.
American politics is able to throw up its Obama's and its Palin's precisely because it doesn't have political parties that decide centrally who is going to stand for office. On the contrary, it’s got a healthy system of open primary selection that allows local people to decide who should be the party candidate in their area.
Most British MPs, on the other hand, are short-listed by party officialdom and selected by ... um ... well, party officialdom plus a few dozen party members. Hardly exposed to mass, popular democratic scrutiny on the way up, they then mostly represent "safe seats" - the twenty first century version of the rotten borough.
If Trevor and Hazel and co really want to open up British politics and expose the political establishment to a little competition, they should be calling for open primary contests to select candidates. In my book, The Plan, I show how this could be done - simply and effectively.
Open primary selection would ensure that those selected to run for office were genuinely representative. Instead of leaving it to a committee of middle class, college educated party officials to decide what constitutes representative, you let the local electorate make that choice. That's how Obama and Palin got their big breaks in politics - not by sucking up to the party hierarchy.
Open primaries in safe seats also means that everyone gets a say over who'll be their next MP. And if you want to be represented by a former lobbyist, it’s up to you.
Posted on 8 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
The next Met Chief must have legitimacy
Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is trying to cling on to her power to appoint the head of the Metropolitan Police. It is absurd that the MP for Redditch in the Midlands should have the power to decide who runs London's police force.
Of course, having the Home Secretary make the appointment doesn't really mean that Ms Smith uses her good judgement to select a new Chief Constable. Allowing the Home Secretary to appoint the head of the Met is really shorthand for saying that the Home Office / Police quango establishment run the show.
Rather like a Merovingian monarch, Ministers main purpose these days seems to be to legitimise the machinations of officialdom. If the decision remains with the Home Secretary, you can rest assured that the Sir Humphrey Appleby-types at the Home Office will remain in charge. Yet these are the people whose defeatist approach to fighting crime has given us record levels of it.
This is precisely why we need to give the power to appoint the next head of the Met to the democratically elected Mayor.
Posted on 7 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Greg Clark's a hit in Clacton
Shadow cabinet minister, Greg Clark, came to Clacton today - and was on excellent form. He was here to support Open Road, a local charitythat helps people with drug and alcohol problems.
Alas, there's all too great a need for Open Road. Yet it does some remarkable work helping vulnerable people and it has a very high level of local support. Gone are the days when people preferred not to acknowledge the problems drugs and alcohol can cause in our midst.
Greg spoke about the importance of the voluntary sector, and about how it could sometimes be a more effective agent than the government sector. To prove the point he refered to Open Road's annual report, which quoted one user talking of all the "love and support" they'd had from the charity.
How often do you hear anyone talk about the love and support they get from any government office?
That's why we need the voluntary sector.
Posted on 7 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Congress is as important as the Whitehouse
With lots of attention on Barack Obama winning the Whitehouse, there's been much less focus on the contest to control the Senate and Congress.
Unlike the UK, where the executive (ministers and quangos) completely dominates the legislature (Parliament), the American's have a proper democracy. Just because one side wins control over the Whitehouse, it doesn't mean it gets things all its own way.
Unlike our often supine MPs, US Senators and Congressmen have a real say over law-making and a decisive role setting budgets. This actually has very little to do with the separation of powers. It’s more down to practical politics; most British MPs represent so-called "safe seats". Many seem to fear their whips more than they fear their electorate. US lawmakers on the other hand are selected to stand for office by local people through open primaries. That means they answer to local people first and foremost - making them much more robust at scrutinising government.
While delighted Obama won, I'm pleased that his party's hold on the Senate and Congress is not as overwhelming as it could have been. It appears the Democrats won less than 60 Senate seats, meaning they can't guarantee to have it all their own way. Congress, while Democrat held, is not their fiefdom.
If I was a Republican strategist, I'd be planning recovery around trying to retake the Senate and Congress, over and above the Whitehouse.
Posted on 5 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Has the surfin' Congressman from California won?
Attending the US Embassy reception last night, the crowd was so thick it was impossible to really follow any results. As a consequence, I still don't know if my friend, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, held on to his seat in California?
I tried googling for any clues this morning, but either the results aren't yet in, or last nights party in California was so wild they've not yet got round to posting up the results.
Dana is a great guy. Not only did he teach me to surf in California a few years ago, but his views on most things are totally sound.
Being a Republican in California isn't always easy - but how can you not vote for a Congressman who surfs regularly, and then holds his surgeries by the beach outside Starbucks?
Posted on 5 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
What is localism?
Margaret Eaton, the superb new head of the Local Government Association, champions localism. Hurray! But what does supporting localism mean?
Is it simply banging the drum for local government? Lobbying for more "resources" and status from Whitehall?
I hope that the LGA means to do more than push the sectional interests of those who work in local government – while demanding more cash.
When a group of us younger Tories pioneered the idea of localism in our manifesto for a Conservative revival - Direct Democracy; an agenda for a new model party- we were seen as bold and radical, with a clear vision.
We called for directly elected police chiefs - or Sheriffs. We suggested devolving to county and metropolitan authorities the same powers devolved to Edinburgh in the Scotland Act.
Rather than badgering Whitehall for more money, we suggested that local councils should get almost none. Instead of depending on handouts from Whitehall, we proposed a new system of self-financing local government. Treat councils responsibly, we argued, and they’ll behave responsibly.
If the LGA wants localism, it should be demanding these sorts of radical reforms.
Margaret Eaton rightly mentions how certain local authorities have allegedly lost some £920 million of council taxpayer money in the Icelandic banking crisis. She’s right to suggest that there needs to be a review of the advice credit agencies give to councils.
But there also needs to be some criticism of those who blindly ticked all the right boxes, followed approved practice – yet didn’t appear to use any of their own sound judgement. It wasn't the credit agencies names that were on the ballot papers. Localism isn't about demanding more stringent advice and more "appropriate" guidance from above. It's about taking responsibility.
Since our book was published, localism has gone from radical to mainstream. Today, everyone seems to pay lip service to localism. In our latest book, The Plan; 12-months to renew Britain, Daniel Hannan and I outline how power might really be devolved from Whitehall to the town hall.
You might not agree with us, but you can't say we're merely paying lipservice to localism.
Posted on 4 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Marriage visa age raised to 21
At last. After a decade in office Labour does one thing sensible on immigration.
Until now marriage visas have been available to those aged 18 or above. And guess what? A very large number of young people came to Britain - especially from Pakistan - for forced marriages each year.
Some people have felt that this was not entirely good for long term community cohesion.
Talking to Danish officials on a recent trip to Copenhagen, one of them explained how Denmark had had to raise the age to - I think - 24. With surprising candour, they told me that without the restriction in place, there would not be what they termed "cultural compatibility" with Danish society. (Note to those inclined to bombard me with hysterical emails for even talking about this subject: I'm quoting a Danish official, so email a Dane instead).
Personally, I'd like to have seen a higher age limit. I think that 24 years would be better.
As a liberal democracy, we should be prepared to say - calmly, sensibly, politely and with everyone's best interests at heart - that in Britain forced marriages are not acceptable. Full stop.
Posted on 4 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Obama / McCain?
I've a hunch that the US Presidential election is going to be closer than everyone seems to assume. I've no idea why, but I just do. (Now I've said that, it'll probably mean it's a landslide.)
As a long declared Obama Con, I'm increasingly horrified by the BBC's evident delight that my man might win. The people who brought us Russell Brand's obscenities make little effort to hide their own preferences. Its almost enough to make me think twice ....
I console myself that the BBC appears to have conveniently overlooked that Obama is running on a platform to cut taxes. They're backing Obama because they've projected on to him things that'll turn out not to be there. President Obama's still going to be American - and no amount of BBC anti-Americanism can change that.
Not for the first time, our state broadcaster's coverage of events tell's us more about their prejudices than their reports inform us of world affairs.
Posted on 3 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
America in the World
David Cameron is tonight helping launch America in the World, Tim Montgomerie's latest venture.
It's about time that we made a stand against the invidious anti-Americanism that's creeping into UK institutions (normally taxpayer funded ones, like the BBC, it must be said). America is a force for good in the world, and US isolationism - the idea she may turn her back on the world - is, in my view, the biggest threat to peace and security.
I'm proud to call myself a friend of America - whoever wins tomorrow's election.
Posted on 3 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
An early election?
Michael Portilo writes an interesting piece in today's Sunday Times
. He suggests that we may be heading towards an early general election.
I think the chances of that happening may have increased in recent weeks. Might we see a joint Parliamentary-Euro-County election next spring? Maybe.
As the recession begins to bite, I think more and more people will wake up to the fact that it's not all the fault of US subprime mortgages. No. We're headed for bust and have run out of money because the government spent the boom years squandering your taxes. This recession is built on the debts run up in Downing Street. Once folk start to see it that way, Brown's dead cat bounce will be over.
But I'm not going to try to forecast what's in Gordon's mind. I was convinced he'd call an election last autumn - so what do I know ....
Posted on 2 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
I'm backing Charles Moore
Charles Moore has done it. He's raised the banner. Lit the fuse. He's spoken for me and for my England. He's said "enough" and launched rebellion; Mr Moore is going to refuse to pay the BBC TV license fee.
In a brilliant article today, he explains why we should no longer be forced to pay a TV poll tax to the rich, elitist people who gave us Russell Brand's obscenities.
It's not only the spivs I resent having to fund. I don't see why I have to pay for Orla Guerin's leftist world views, or for Robert Peston's biased coverage, or for politically-correct propaganda masquerading as "drama"....
Do I have the courage to follow Mr Moore's example? Perhaps tea-drinkers asked themselves the same in Boston all those years ago ...
Posted on 1 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell
Have I touched a nerve, perhaps?
The UK Defence Forum website runs this hilariously aggressive piece attacking me. It's part Mr Angry, part Col Blimp ....
First they suggest I'm a maverick, who should be "wearing a strait jacket". I
f I'm quite such a loon, why did they, as they put it, invite me to "publish my unexpurgated views" on their website?
Second, the article questions my judgement.
Surely the fact I politely declined to have anything to do with them shows I've rather astute judgement - not least given what they've now written about me?
Surely they're not angry with me just because I wouldn't write for them. I suspect that its because they, and their backers, don't like some of the points I make in Parliament. Rather than say so openly, they post anonymous* blogs (If I was a defence contractor paying for any of this, I'd be asking my Public Affairs people if this was really value for money).
In fairness to whoever wrote their piece, they do repeat some of what I said in Parliament. But they then fail to repudiate what it is that I said. They simply quote another anonymous source at the MoD saying what a wonderful job the MoD does. Surprising that.
The article then suggests that some of what I've said is somehow libellous - but for Parliamentary privilege. Oh yes? Which bits? Let's take your complaint to the Speaker, if you've got one.
I've no certainty as to who wrote the article, but I wonder if the UK Defence Forum or this site associated with it, might be funded by any of the contractors I criticised? Now there's a thought.
It's easy to shout people down as being "maverick" when they are prepared to hold unfashionable views. If being maverick means being prepared to challenge certain prevailing views in the Westminster village, I plead guilty.
But am I wrong?
And if I'm as wrong as the UK Defence Forum website would have you believe, why are they so fierce in their criticisms of me, rather than what I've said?
----------------
* - NB. The Google Alert (see below) I received informing me about this article seems to suggest that the article was by a "Robin Ashby (Nick Lee)". However, the by line on the article that appears on the actual website says it was by "Great North News Services staff reporter".
I note that a certain Robin Ashby, who worked as a lobbyist for some defence contractors, apparently once had a Parliamentary pass - and was forced to give it back according to this BBC report. I'm happy to accept that this article had nothing to do with anyone named Robin Ashby, or anyone refered to in any BBC report about a Parliamentary pass. I fully accept that the views of anonymous staff reporters bear no relation to those of anyone involved with the UK Defence Forum.
Google Blogs Alert:
Maverick MP’s defence attacks repudiated
By Robin Ashby(Nick Lee)
The campaign by Harwich MP Douglas Carswell against the UK defence industry has been carried to the House of Commons – and been slapped down by the Shadow Defence Minister. Gerald Howarth MP said “ As far as the defence industrial ...
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Posted on 1 November 2008 by Douglas Carswell