Is Robert Peston a government stooge ...
... asks the Daily Mail?
A bit harsh perhaps. Instead I think it happens like this; Downing Street's spinners decide how they want to handle a news story. They phone up Robert and spin him a line. He values being the first to have it, and - in the view of some people - perhaps does not assess it quite as critically as some other journalists might.
News that Lloyds and HBOS are to merge - Peston reported it, if I remember correctly, with breathless awe - and implied Downing Street played a role in the deal.
Turns out that HBOS merger has in effect sunk Lloyds and was utter folly - Peston's report implies it was nothing to do with Brown.
RBS £24 billion losses show it’s a mess - Peston takes the bait about Fred Goodwin's pension and doesn't focus on the bigger issue, suggest some.
I've managed to obtain a copy of Peston's job description off the BBC. Has Peston's coverage lived up to it? It's my opinion that he's failed - by a wide margin - to question the government and its response to this crisis with anything like the rigour one might expect from the BBC's Business Editor.
Next week, I'll post a copy of his job description on-line so you can decide for yourself.
That said, the job description does say the applicant needs to have lots of contacts. Peston certainly seems to have Downing Street's number - and they, his...
Posted on 27 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Life Channel in Clacton
This morning, I was asked to launch the "Life Channel" at a school in Clacton. It means that the school now has its very own TV channel - with 80% of the content made and provided locally, apparently. Having worked in TV previously, I find it immensely exciting.
Watching children making their own video clips to broadcast on the channel, I wondered about the possibilities. They could make a project about something at school? Perhaps they might have an idea for a short film about our town?
But besides any future Spielbergs, sooner or later young people somewhere will look to make something beyond the approved genre and say something that is genuinely challenging. That's to say, not what the leftist cultural elite call "challenging" (think Tracey Emin et al), but that which challenges the assumptions of the leftist elite itself.
The digital revolution's democratisation of broadcasting is going to have big consequences.
It'll no longer be up to remote BBC producers alone to decide what the news is, or what defines the parameters of public debate. The state will find it much more difficult to patronise a sceptical people via the telly. Once everyone has some experience of communicating a story via camera for themselves, they're likely to be much more sceptical of what they see on TV, and what the big broadcasters try to tell us.
Role on the revolution!
Posted on 27 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The left fears even talking about immigration
A leftie loon keeps badgering me about why I constantly raise the issue of immigration. They point out that half a dozen recent blog posts have focused on it, and I raise it constantly in Parliament.
Apparently, they say, I should be talking about "the real issues".
Well, immigration is a very "real issue" - to me, to my constituents, and according to a survey in today's Telegraph, to most people.
When lefties say we should talk about the "real issues" it usually means they don't want us to be talking about what's important. Instead they'd rather we focused on the froth - like what some empty gesture politician did or did not say to another in SW1 this week.
Immigration is fast becoming a massive issue in politics – and Labour has little to say about it precisely because the left has tried to stifle debate about it. The left, having failed to raise the issue, will have less credibility when forced to.
Posted on 27 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Eamonn Butler's new book
Eamonn Butler has just launched his new book The Rotten State of Britain. I've added it to my reading list. Click the button on the right to read the review ->
It should be required reading for everyone worried about the state of our country after a decade of this rotten Labour government.
Posted on 26 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Europe in decline
Europe
is in relative decline, warms Joschka Fischer, the former German vice-chancellor.
So what does he propose we do about it? More unity, of course. Europe would become irrelevant – and vulnerable – he says, unless we speak with one voice on more matters.
Does it never occur to our Euro-elite that perhaps Europe is growing weak precisely because of centralisation, and the stupor and sclerosis it brings? Do they never reflect on the possibility that European unification is less a response to Europe's relative global decline, but rather the cause of it?
Precisely because she consisted of competing states, Europe was innovative and dynamic - at times a little too much so, perhaps. Unlike, say China, or the Ottomans, or the Moguls, we never had a centralised political authority capable of stifling innovation and progress - despite the best efforts of the medieval papacy. That's why Europe was able to establish economic, technological, scientific - and ultimately cultural, political and military supremacy.
Yet over the past half century, Europeans have foolishly put in place the architecture of centralised political authority. And guess what? It's buried Europe in red tape and stifled us under directives.
Today, it's not only the US that's more decentralised than Europe. Provincial government in India enjoys great autonomy. In China since 1978, power over economic decision making has passed from Beijing to the provinces. Indeed, today China's maritime provinces enjoy local rules - and in some cases separate currencies (Hong Kong) and legal codes.
Guess who's growing fastest?
Posted on 26 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Conservatives on law & order: don't get distracted by the vested interests
Conservatives keep inching towards a radically different approach to law and order - which could transform our country for the better.
For years, we’ve had endless promises by successive Home Secretaries – “more bobbies on the beat”, “clampdowns”, “tough action”, blah, blah. Yet, somehow, for all those Daily Mail pleasing headlines, crime, disorder and yobbishness continue to increase.
The new Conservative approach recognises that the criminal justice system needs to be made more effective by becoming vastly more accountable; not upwards to the centre (remember all that failed target-setting?), but downwards to those the criminal justice system is supposed to serve.
Making the criminal justice system properly accountable to local people ought to be the essence of the Conservative approach to law and order. I was, therefore, slightly disconcerted to read Gavin Lockhart of Policy Exchange, suggesting something rather different.
Over at Coffeehouse
, he suggests we spend more money on “prevention” and on what he calls “developed programmes which target the factors that can lead young people to a life of crime.” Sounds like a lot of outreach workers, youth justice panels, and criminal justice bureaucrats, to me.
Surely, what we should do is to make all that paraphernalia of the criminal justice quangocracy accountable to the rest of us for how it does its job. Right now, they aren’t.
Gavin laments that “only a tiny 5 per cent of the Youth Justice Board’s budget is for prevention work”. Maybe doing more prevention work suits officials on the Youth Justice Board, but maybe the rest of us want them to, you know, like, help administer justice?
Gavin suggests we might want to spend £50,000 per troublemaker. Set aside the small matter called the budget deficit, isn’t it the cry of every vested interest that if only we spent a few extra £million on them, we’d in fact be saving ourselves £zillions? Somehow, it never seems to turn out that way.
It doesn’t require more money to make the criminal justice more effective – just proper accountability to the local communities it’s supposed to serve.
Posted on 25 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I'm proud to be a friend of the Taxpayers' Alliance
The Taxpayers' Alliance does a first-class job of highlighting the expensive follies of politicians and officials. And guess what? Some politicians and officials don't like them for doing it.
Read how they’ve been attacked as “anarchists” and “dictators”
(does that mean they favour enforced chaos?). When you criticise big, self-serving, bloated officialdom, eventually even they snap out of their lethargic stupor for a counter-attack. Well sort of…
Far from wanting technocratic, managerialist government (which we have today), the Taxpayers' Alliance want smaller, less wasteful, more properly democratically accountable government. You could even give it a name - like maybe "direct democracy" or something?
Long may they continue their sterling work.
Posted on 25 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
House Magazine - is it censored?
Yesterday, I was interviewed by Parliament's House Magazine for their next issue. I was afraid it might be a sign that I'm going native and becoming part of the Westminster establishment.
No need to worry. I gave it both barrels.
I spent much of the interview responding to questions about Mr Speaker. As regular readers may know, I do not believe that the incumbent, Michael Martin, is up to the job. He should quit. For as long as Mr Martin remains in the Speaker's chair, the Commons will continue to decline as an institution capable of holding the executive to account.
It's going to be interesting to see if the House Magazine - which I gather the Speaker may have some sort of a role overseeing - prints what I had to say.
Posted on 25 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Quit worrying about the digital divide
A reader asks me about the supposed "digital divide". This is one of those clichés banded about by people who want to sound like they get the internet. Innit.
And by politicians looking to meddle.
But it's ridiculous pessimism to drone on about the supposedly elitist nature of the web.
Sure, not everyone is on-line - yet. Not all have broadband.
But the web is the greatest leap forward for equal opportunities of our age. It empowers disadvantaged people the most. Its significance is greatest on households who previously might never have written to public officials.
It makes specialised information - how to oppose planning decisions or get you child the education they need - available to all. Not just those professional types "in the know".
It democratises distribution, removes barriers to entry, allows everyone to be an author, and breaks the monopoly of big media outlets and opinion formers. It allows true markets to exist where there was only corporate kleptocracy - and zero customer service.
And it's older folk whose lives have been transformed, as much as any. On-line shopping, delivered to their door. Skype and emails to keep in touch with overseas relatives.
It took centuries after the arrival of the printing press to ensure 99% of adult were literate and able to benefit from the technology. It'll take less than a generation to make sure everyone is web literate.
Ignore those politicians who fear the Edmund Burke dot com consequences of the digital revolution – and join the little platoons!
Posted on 25 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Politics and the internet
Just been speaking at an event organised by Microsoft and the Hansard Society, chaired by Peter Riddell of the Times. It was to launch this new report on how politicians used the internet - or fail to.
I'd only five minutes speaking time, as I needed to rush back to the Commons for a vote. Key points I made were;
-
The web's transforming politics - and it's not simply a question of what politicians are doing in SW1, and who happens to be twittering (MPs have been doing that for years).
-
The real revolution is the way the internet empowers the disadvantaged the most - it's profoundly democratic. It aggregates - techie speak for bringing people together and allowing previously specialist knowledge to be shared (I see it with mums and dads and their child's special education needs).
-
The web's transforming expectations - people increasingly expect their politicians and public services to be answerable to them.
-
Mainstream parties will have to adapt. As the barriers to entry dissolve - just as they have in business and commerce - expect new entrants. The only way mainstream parties can maintain market share will be to adapt - expect open source parties. Open primary selection to decide candidates etc etc. Don't assume that the formal parties will be able to control "the message" with Party Election Broadcasts et al in an election, when a random supporter with a video camera, YouTube account and sense of humour can viral market their views.
-
The web revolution will be transformative, like the changes brought about by the printing press - only more so and it'll happen faster. In medieval Europe, knowledge was the preserve of a few. It helped make priests and princes rather powerful. Once that monopoly was lost - think printing press - things started to change. I suggested that the internet might one day be to our politics, what Luther was to the church. After Luther, doing religion wasn't just something you had to do through a hierarchical church. Some day, politics won't just be something we do through hierarchical party machines.
-
Our essentially ninteenth century system of representative democracy will have to give way to a system with much more direct democracy.
Having leapt from twitter to the reformation in a few minutes, it was time to leg it to the lobby for the vote. I was sorry not to hear what Tom Harris (MP for Glasgow South and a great guy) and Lynne Featherstone (MP for Hornsey and likewise) had to say.
Posted on 24 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Freedom of Information statement
Apparently the government is to make a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon about the 2000 Freedom of Information Act. I wonder what they've got to say?
Could it be:
a) FoI has been a great tool at ensuring accountability. And now the law is going to be applied to MPs, too?
b) it was all a terrible mistake. We revoke it all?
c) it's a great tool at ensuring accountability, but we'll exempt politicians because it's really embarrassing to have to disclose details of how they spend public money?
If the minister says a) it's progress. Good.
If he chooses b) at least he's being consistent - however wrong.
c), however, is the default setting for SW1.
I shall listen with interest.
UPDATE: The answer Jack Straw gave the Commons this afternoon is c). Politicians will be exempt from the FoI, not in relation to their expenses this time, but over the decision to invade Iraq.
Posted on 24 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
After hubris, nemesis
Hat tip: Guido Fawkes
Posted on 24 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Quangos are hopeless
Such an alphabet soup of quangos now presides over us, we're running out of letters to name them all. CSA, QCA, DSA, FSA, FSA....
The financial crisis has focused attention on the shortcomings of one of the FSA's. It turns out that the Financial Services Authority, far from being ultra efficient technocrats, are hopeless old boobies.
Yet what of the other FSA, the Food Standards Agency? Should we expect them to be any better at their job?
This morning I note patronising billboards they produced on the London underground telling me what to eat.
Like their financial namesake, they find it easier to lecture us, than to do their job. While failing to ensure banks kept their liabilities as a reasonable ratio on their deposits, the finance regulator regularly lobbied for changes to the national curriculum. If they'd made sure the banks were run properly, rather than share their thoughts of financial education in our classrooms, we'd not be in this mess.
All quangos find it much more fun to have a say over public policy than deliver the priorities Parliament mandated them.
And since Parliament is so useless, and ministers so weak, there's nothing to stop them or hold them to account.
Posted on 24 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We're the new progressives now
Tom Harris, the MP for Glasgow South, asks if the Conservatives are the true progressives now. Yes, Tom. We are.
The left has a long and proud tradition of support for progressive causes - of taking on and defeating unaccountable concentrations of power and vested interests. Many of the greatest strides made by progressives were supported by the left at the time.
But the new progressive agenda - of making politicians and public services more accountable to the people they're supposed to serve - is the agenda of the new model Conservatives.
Which party champions radical localism? Which party wants directly elected police chiefs? Which party proposes to clean up Westminster, not to shore up the perks of those in SW1?
MPs from which party seek to make the quango state more directly democratically accountable?
It's not the party of Keir Hardie that wants those things, Tom. You, yourself, dismiss this new progressive agenda - of making politicians and public services more directly accountable - as pandering dangerously to a media-made mood of “anti-politics”. It might look that way when you’re sitting in the back of a ministerial car, Tom. But you'd be wrong.
In the age of Google, people want the same direct accountability and control over their politicians and public services that they have over so many other aspects of their lives. And they’re right to expect it.
While you were busy being a Minister, Tom, the centre right has indeed developed a new progressive agenda – for the age of YouTube. In our book, Direct Democracy: an agenda for a new model party many of the 2005 intake of Conservative MPs floated detailed policy ideas that have since become mainstream thinking on the centre right.
Read it – it’s not a book written from a partisan perspective. I believe this new progressive agenda could be genuinely popular - not simply angry populist. But it seems to be an agenda that only the centre right can deliver.
Posted on 23 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Open door Britain?
Forget what the government says, here are two facts:
1. Abu Qatada, having entered the UK on a false passport way back in 1990something, remains in this country. And he's likely to do so for the foreseeable future.
2. Binyam Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia, has today also re-entered the UK. And is likely to remain in the UK.
Seems it's a lot easier for some folk to get into our country, regardless of their status, than it is to remove them - regardless of what they do or how they behave.
Am I the only person wondering why either of these two individuals is allowed to be in Britain? On what legal basis did either enter in the first place? Where are the human rights judges demanding that the government enforce its own laws on entry?
Posted on 23 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
"Are you suggesting the Bank of England should no longer be independent?!"
... asks one of my readers incredulously.
Here's the news; It isn’t.
Back in September last year, I forecast that the coming crisis would raise a question mark over the Bank's supposedly independent status.
Five months on, in what sense is the Bank of England (BoE) independent?
The (political) appointees to the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee have never been in much doubt as to what their (political) masters have expected. In the age of Greenspan, cheap money was the order of the day. Now the pressure is for making it even cheaper.
If the MPC was truly independent, we'd be hearing at least some debate about whether it wasn’t cheap money and debt that got us into this mess in the first place. At least one dissenting voice would have argued that rates shouldn’t be set to manage aggregate demand, but to defuse the debt bomb. So far, silence.
Whatever the “right” rates might be, setting interest rates is always likely going to be a political question in a democracy (unless the state ceases to issue the currency). The issue, therefore, is to what extent those who set the rate should be accountable for how they do so.
Today, it’s pretty clear that the BoE – under Brown’s faux independence – kept interest rates too low for too long. Without accountability, there was never the public deliberation that might have made it obvious what it was doing wrong at the time.
As with Brown's muddled system of financial regulation, his bogus BoE "independence" has created fudge. The BoE's status has none of the advantages of real independence, and all of the draw backs that come with a lack of accountability.
Posted on 22 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
You can't trust this government on immigration
According to the spin in the Sunday papers, the government is promising a "crackdown" with "tougher" new immigration rules. It’s all balls, of course. No one can possibly believe it.
This rotten government - and their dysfunctional Home Office - have promised us this sort of thing for years. The truth is that they present bogus statistics. They change rules to legitimise existing patterns of inward settlement - not change them. And top Home office officials played a key role in events leading to the arrest of an opposition MP for trying to expose their deceit.
This government and its officials must take us for fools.
Posted on 22 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Gordon Brown is a disaster
Gordo's latest on-the-hoof response to economic meltdown? Banning 100% mortgages.
And how many 100% mortgages do you suppose the banks actually gave out last month? Zero? Three? A dozen?
This isn't effective action to tackle the ruinous debt bubble Gordo helped create. It's desperation to appear effective.
More worryingly, it shows the man in charge simply hasn't got a clue how to fix this mess.
As election day looms closer, Brown is lurching from one desperate measure to another.
It was the "tripartite" regulatory system Gordo put in place that saw banks lend so recklessly. It was after he'd declared the Bank of England "independent" that it set interest rates ruinously low for so long. It was while one G Brown was at the helm that the debt bubble grew. And grew.
Now it’s burst, we need to recognise the catastrophic errors of judgement that were made, not simply pile new debt onto the existing mountain of it.
Does he grasp any of that? No. Instead he bans something in order to make it look like he’s not the hopeless disaster-zone that he clearly is.
Posted on 21 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Centralisation creates the postcode lottery
One of the arguments against localism is that it supposedly leads to a "postcode lottery".
In fact the opposite is true. If people are able to determine what they get, surprisingly often they chose the same kind of things. Leaving it to remote, impersonal forces to set local priorities means it's left to chance to determine what you get. You become a victim of arbitary forces.
This turns out to be quite literally the case when it comes to school places. Today's Telegraph reveals that a lot of school places are being allocated on the roll of a dice.
Years of centralised education policy mean that it has literally become a lottery.
Posted on 21 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Dear Tom
My earlier blog, in which I referred to Tom Harris, MP for Glasgow South, as being "some guy" was naughty. I should not have referred to a fellow MP as being "some guy". I've sent a grovelling apology ....
From:
CARSWELL, Douglas
Sent: Sat 21/02/2009 09:21
To: HARRIS, Tom
Subject: I apologise
Dear Tom,
Having looked at your blog this morning
, and read your comments about my comments, I wanted to contact you.
I apologise for having described you as "some guy" that Total Politics found.
I should, on reflection, have referred to you as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow South. Good manners are always important, and if you felt my tone was disrespectful, I am sorry.
The more important points I made - about the rotten nature of the Westminster system, and its smug, self-regarding establishment - I nonetheless stand by. The Commons is pretty rotten at holding the executive to account. SW1 is pretty smug and self-regarding.
It is not anti-democratic to want to make our MPs properly accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. Reducing the number of MPs is an important part of this new progressive agenda - as outlined in my book, The Plan (I shall send you a copy by way of apology).
I suspect the main difference between our two positions is that you seem to think of yourself, as an MP, as being part of what you describe as your "chosen profession".
My view of my role as an MP is rather different; I see my role as an MP as being a citizen law-maker - not a professional politician - and one chosen by local people.
I look forward to debating this - and other things - with you on Tuesday.
Once again, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings.
Warm regards,
Douglas
Douglas Carswell MP
Posted on 21 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Clean up Westminster
In this month's issue of Total Politics, I argue that Parliament has become pretty useless and that we need fewer MPs - but doing a better job. I suggest ways of making Westminster MPs more directly democratically answerable to the people they're supposed to serve.
Total Politics managed to find some guy called Tom Harris MP to argue the opposite. He suggests its "lazy" to argue that politicians are parasitical, and "silly populism" to want to give Westminster a radical shake up.
Harris blames "the media's agenda for undermining representative democracy". I thought MPs had done a pretty good job of doing that by themselves.
It wasn't the media that farmed out the business of government to the quango state, or who've made it almost impossible for elected law-makers to hold government to account, or who put Michael Martin in the Speakers chair. And who all the while racked up their expenses.
Harris dares to imply it’s "anti-democracy" to
want to mend Westminster's vile and unaccountable ways. It doesn't seem to have occured to him that those who want to clean up Westminster do so precisely because it is no longer works as a democratic legislature.
Keep digging, Mr H. Keep on defending the indefensible political status quo.
Read both articles here.
A grovelling apology: Apparently Mr Harris is upset that I refered to him as "some guy". On reflection, it probably was not very nice, and I do apologise. I should instead have referred to him as "the Member of Parliament for Glasgow South, Tom Harris". Sorry.
Posted on 20 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Welcome home?
Guantánamo detainee, Binyan Mohamed, is due to be released. What's the bet he ends up living in the UK? Perhaps he might even end up in the town where you live?
Remind me; what was the legal basis for his original entry into the UK? Given that he wasn't born in Britain, can someone please let me know on what basis was he originally admitted and subsequently given the right of residency?
I'm curious, and I think we should be told.
Posted on 20 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Storm sucks
I finally lost patience with it; hours of fighting with an auto spelling system determined not to let me write even my own name. Frustration at navigating around a screen with a mind of its own. A keyboard that doesn't go "click".
I've handed back my Blackberry Storm. I feel like a weight as lifted off my shoulders. Spring is on the way. Not even the thought of scowling Gordo can dampen my spirits now I've got rid of that cursed contraption.
Posted on 19 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Immigration: it's time for government to face up to the issue
I urge you to read this excellent piece by Nicholas Soames MP on ConservativeHome.
For years, this rotten government has pretended to address the issue of large-scale immigration into our country. But they've spived about with statistics. Ministers have deliberately misrepresented the true picture. They’ve changed the rules to give a legalistic legitimacy to patterns of inward settlement - rather than try to change them.
The government department in charge – the Home Office – is dysfunctional, and played a key role in events leading to the arrest of an opposition MP for exposing their efforts at concealment.
Worse, they've tried to trash the reputations of good, decent people who've raised this issue responsibly.
It's time to reduce immigration into Britain. I'd personally like to see net settlement reduced to zero. Shout me down for saying so - but I know whose side my constituents are on.
Posted on 19 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Qatada ruling shows why Human Rights laws must be scrapped
Just did an interview for Channel 4 news.
What did I think of Qatada getting another taxpayer funded payout, thanks to the European Human Rights judges?
I told them the only public funds that should be spent on Qatada should be on a one way air fare out of the UK.
If we'd enforced the law on entry into the UK when he arrived on a bogus passport, this - and much else besides - won't have happened.
Posted on 19 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Abu Qatada to be deported
Good.
He should be removed from the UK.
Once he's gone, let's turn our attention to the human rights lobby. Sitting on the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Parliament, I used to wonder precisely who voted for any of this ECHR-based judicial activism in the first place.
As a rather wined - and whining - Human Rights lawyer smugly explained to me once, Human Rights is about delivering through the courts all those things the lefties know they couldn't do democratically through the ballot box.
Posted on 18 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Quit the LGA?
According to ConservativeHome, three councils have or will, quit the Local Government Association. Why?
Apparently, it could save them, and local taxpayers, up to £50,000. But it is not just about giving local people value for money. Let it never be forgotten how the LGA lobbied against directly elected police authorities. They talk about decentralising power, but they lobbied against localism when it mattered.
Disgraceful.
Posted on 18 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Will Eurofighter sink the carrier fleet?
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You know how there now seems to be just ever so little bit of a teeny-weeny question mark over these new aircraft carriers we're supposed to be getting?
Minor delays, we're assured. A wee delay, nothing to worry about. Just to allow the 'planes to be built first. Blah. Blah.
If only we'd not spent £20 billion on the Eurofighter, we'd have enough money to build a fleet of carriers - with better planes on them. And have several £ billion left over.
Think of all those extra UAVs and helicopters we could have had. Or the new vehicles or even extra frontline soldiers. Or top of the range US fighters, rather than something designed twenty years ago ....
Nothing better illustrates the stark reality; defence protectionism isn't a choice buying kit off-the-shelf at less cost, or maintaining our sovereign capability by building it ourselves and paying more for it. No. It boils down to buying off-the-shelf and having the kit. Or not doing so, and not having the kit.
Posted on 17 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Sir Andrew Green: should he be given a role in government?
He's done it again. Sir Andrew Green, the man who has almost single-handedly changed the public debate about immigration, has exposed once more how bogus current government policy is.
Ministers like to boast that the UK Border Agency removes a failed asylum seeker, illegal immigrant or foreign criminal every eight minutes. Yet it turns out that's a spiv statistic.
In reality, 6 out of 10 people included in the figure either leave of their own accord, or never actually enter the UK in the first place. At the same time, a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers who should have been removed, have not. Many tens of thousands of people who have entered illegally simply remain.
Green was once vilified for even discussing the facts. He’s stuck to his guns bravely and determinedly – and he’s avoided dramatising the problem or overstating his case. And crucially, when discussing immigration, he's done so in a way that is respectful to every citizen, from all backgrounds and of every heritage.
I’d love to see Sir Andrew given a major role formulating immigration policy under a new government.
Posted on 17 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We're all localists now
Today's proposals to radically decentralise power, published by the Conservatives, are unequivocally good.
These ideas are Edmund Burke dot com. They represent a coherent agenda that is vast in scope, with the potential to be immensely popular - at a time when confidence in the centralised political system is low.
When Direct Democracy: an agenda for a new model party was first published by a number of the new intake of 2005 Conservative MPs, many of these ideas were not exactly mainstream Conservative thinking. They are now.
A few further thoughts:
First, pushing power away from the centre doesn't only mean giving it all to local government. For instance, directly elected police commissioners must not, and will not, be part of the existing local government architecture (LGA please note: localism means unbundling executive functions, as well as devolving them).
Secondly, localism needs to be a constant theme running across all policy areas. One-size-fits-all policies in education or health can be just as harmful as one-size-fits-all dictats to local government.
Thirdly, localism also means devolved finances. As well as giving local communities control over spending decisions, they need revenue raising (or lowering) powers.
Finally, when it comes to implementation, you can't decentralise from the centre. Labour's "earned autonomy" is an oxymoron.
Note instead, how w
hen the Tories gave local people power to buy their council houses, they didn't do so by extending central government control over local housing stock, in order to empower local people. They gave people a legal right vis-à-vis their local council - and let go.
Beware those who advocate some supposedly small and temporary centralising measure in order to prepare for localism. No. Localism means letting go.
In The Plan, we publish 30 specific legislative steps required to make it happen.
Posted on 17 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Authoritarian government won't be effective against terrorism
Growing up in 1970s Uganda, I was very aware that people who took photos in public places were liable to fall foul of the authorities. An innocent snap of a particular landmark in downtown Kampala, and you stood a pretty good chance of having your camera arbitrarily confiscated by Idi Amin’s thugs.
It’s sobering to think that from today the same "rule" now applies in Britain. I say "rule" because the new Counter-Terrorism Act is so vague it almost invites the arbitrary exercise of power. Under the Act, there’s a catch all offence of taking pictures of officers "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".
Sounds reasonable, you say? Well, ponder this. We know that powers handed to state officials in order to "counter terrorism" have often been used for quite different purposes. Remember how statutory agencies were given powers to collect personal information in order to “counter terrorism”? In reality, it just meant your local council started to spy on you.
Will this new law really be applied to crazed, camera wielding jihadis? I doubt it. If the state is too inept to deal with the fact that trained terrorists are already in Britain in the first place, I doubt the state has the wherewithal to stop them taking photos.
Instead, a lot of perfectly innocent people, going about their lawful business, will come to resent an increasingly authoritarian and unaccountable state.
Apparently, not a single terrorist arrest in London in recent years has been made as a result of locally passed-on intelligence.
If we really want to counter terrorism, we need to start asking why that is, rather than passing more asinine laws.
Posted on 16 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Is Austria kaputt?
Before I stood for Parliament, I worked in business - pan-European investment management, to be specific.
At that time, Austria was a good place to do business. From small retail investors, to larger institutional clients, our business offered a range of pretty sound investment vehicles; Fixed-income. Equities. Nothing off-the-wall. No financial voodoo. Rewards for our clients were reasonable, and the risks likewise.
How shockingly different the world seems today. Austria's financial sector looks like it could get wiped out. Their banks have, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in today's Telegraph, lent a staggering Euro 230 billion to eastern Europe. Sub-prime? The risks involved with Austria's gamble make a reckless punt on a shack in Alabama look prudent by comparison.
It was Viennese banks going under that heralded the 1930s Great Depression.
I simply don’t see how the Euro-zone is going to cope. Looking across the EU, the enormity of what is unfolding is difficult to comprehend. It’s not simply that it’s bad. It is staggeringly bad, in many different Euro-zone countries, in many different ways.
Even those who warned that monetary union was vulnerable to asymmetric shocks, I don’t think quite envisaged anything like this.
Posted on 15 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ireland pays the price of the Euro
Ireland's
economy is in serious trouble. After two decades to extraordinary growth and prosperity, Gross National Product fell almost 5% year-on-year in the last quarter of last year.
The flow of foreign investment that fuelled Ireland's success has dried up. Just like in the UK, too much cheap money for too long has created a debt / asset bubble. Like us, her banks are in trouble.
But, because she’s in the Euro, there's much less Ireland can do about it.
Currency realignments are not really an option - meaning that the impact on output and investment is likely to be much more sharply felt than it might otherwise be. She has to put up with the interest rates French and German bankers impose on her.
Thank goodness we're not in the Euro. If we'd been locked into the Euro since 2000, the impact of this recession would be even worse.
Posted on 14 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
How government education policy harmed a local school in Clacton
Bishops
Park College
in my constituency was officially the worst performing school in the country. Figures out the other week showed that only 8% of children there got 5 or more GCSEs last year.
Local mums and dads in Clacton felt let down. Many tell me their children never received the education they deserved. Government policy meant a postcode lottery; if you lived in that area, you'd a less that 10% chance of getting enough GCSEs.
What's so shocking is that Bishops Park College was a flagship for the government's education policy:
·
£16 million was spent on it as a prototype for the £ billion Building Schools of the Future programme.
·
Ofsted officially endorsed the school's trendy new thematic curriculum.
·
The then Prime Minister opened it (just in time for the last election) proclaiming it was an example of what Labour's education policy could achieve.
The Prime Minster was right. It was indeed an example of what the government’s education policy could achieve – just not quite in the way he intended.
I say that the school "was" the worst in the country because it is now being put back on the right track. Parents and teachers I speak to are a lot more enthusiastic about the school than they were a couple of years back. Perhaps most encouraging of all, the school is likely to become a semi-independent school, an academy. Setting schools free - not yet more Whitehall initiatives - has got to be the answer.
Posted on 14 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
"Just because I accept this corporate hospitality ....
.... doesn't mean I'm in any way influenced by it
" says Sir Humphrey Appleby.
Now we can see all the entertainment
he (and Lady A) get from those who stand to benefit from the awarding of big government contracts, we can expect to hear much more of this dross.
Just ask yourself this: if all that corporate hospitality had no effect on the decision-making process, as is claimed, why is it that IT companies spend money entertaining officials from HMRC, which buys lots of IT services? Why do defence contractors happen to ask out officials at the MoD and Foreign Office, as opposed to other departments? Or why the BBC entertains officials that oversee broadcasting, or drug manufacturers those responsible for health?
Their hosts might laugh loudly at Sir Humphrey’s jokes – but they don’t entertain him because he happens to be particularly engaging company.
All this does have an impact on decision-making. It's called buying influence.
Posted on 13 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Question for the Home Secretary
Having been prevented from meeting Mr Wilders in the Houses of Parliament yesterday, today, I've submitted the following question to the Home Secretary:
What was the legal basis for her decision to prevent Mr Geert Wilders from travelling to the UK?
I suspect this decision owes more to the politics of Blackburn than it does to any rational attempt tackle extremism.
PS. Read a great post on this by Imtiaz Ameen here.
AFTERTHOUGHT: Was seriously impressed with both Ed Husain, former radical islamist, and with a spokesman from something called the Quilliam Foundation on Newsnight. The guy from Quilliam kept asking the dreadful Keith Vaz why it was he could not debate against Geert Wilders in his own country. Quite.
Incidentally, do you get the feeling that Boris might not be the only person in the country who feels like swearing at the former Europe minister? I suspect some people do it every time Mr Vaz pops up on TV.
Posted on 13 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We are a lesser country today
Today, I was supposed to meet fellow Parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, in committee room 4a in the Houses of Parliament.
I'm an elected MP, in a supposedly free democracy. I've taken the trouble to read Sayed Qtub's Milestones, Ed Hussein's The Islamist, Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 and Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel. I'm interested and open-minded and wanting to learn more.
I absolutely genuinely wanted to hear, in a spirit of open-minded inquiry, what Mr Wilders had to say about radical Islam.
Yet when I turned up at the meeting, Mr Wilders wasn't there. The British state had intervened to prevent me from discussing his views with me. They refused him entry at the airport.
We are a lesser country than I thought we were.
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Economic crunch: the left doesn't have a clue
Top Guardianista, Seumas Milne, has a piece about how the economic downturn must mean an end of free market capitalism.
"Responsibility for this crisis goes a great deal further than a tumbril-ful of greedy bankers" opines the expert Milne. Indeed.
How about blaming quangocrats at the FSA who were made aware of the risks, but failed to act?
Or the "experts" at the Bank of England who gave us the debt-bubble caused by interest rates being too low for too long?
Or the politicians who assured us that the "independent" Bank of England would get it right?
Or even blame the stupid commentators at the Guardian, BBC and elsewhere, who unquestioningly swallowed the line that Gordo was a genius for setting up the FSA and independent Bank, in the first place?
Blame them all, Seumus. But don't blame the free market for calling time on all that collective stupidity.
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Lobbying the civil service - UPDATE
Just got the report. Let's see who offered hospitality to the head honchos at the MoD
.
There's BAE, the Defence Manufacturers Association, UK Defence Forum, BAE, Babcock, the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme (funded in part by defence contractors), Boeing, BAE systems, BAE again. And look at BAE.
"It's all arms length, you understand".
Who says you need MPs when you can make your case directly to those who make the real decisions, eh?
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Lobbying the civil service?
Details of hospitality received by senior civil servants from big corporate lobby groups are due to be published later today.
Will it show MoD officials being entertained by defence contractors? Might it tell us who’s getting opera tickets for who?
I doubt the list will show us much. It’s the information Sir Humphrey wants you to see.
And I doubt it'll include details of all the technically non-civil servant public officials who work for all the zillions of quangos. Unless it include information about the real decision makers working for the defence agencies, the NICE, the FSA etc etc, it'll tell us little.
I'll keep you posted .....
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Immigration - government sets another record
A record 150,000 work permits were handed out to non-EU nationals to settle in Britain last year. It's the highest number ever.
Since the permits are issued to heads of household, bear in mind that the extraordinary large number of permits doesn't take into account the other family members that inward migrants would have brought with them.
The government is not curtailing immigration at all. What the British state – Jacqui Smith, Sir David Normington, the Home Office et al - is doing is giving a legalistic legitimacy to existing patterns of inward settlement - not changing it. They seem to take us for fools.
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Wherever I lay my hat, that's my home ....
Posted on 12 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Question about Labour Lords
I've (belatedly) submitted the following Parliamentary question to the Commons table office for the Ministry of Defence:
“Whether ministers in his department received representations relating to defence procurement contracts from a) Lord Truscott b) Lord Moonie over the past three years?
Posted on 11 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Are we governed by spivs? UPDATE
Following my previous blog
, the screening is going ahead tomorrow, I'm told.
Geert Wilders "intends to fly to Heathrow as planned [tomorrow] and it will be uncertain as to whether he is allowed entry or not until he goes through immigration." Regardless of our vile authorities and their despicable cowardice in the face of threats and intimidation, apparently the screening goes ahead.
Douglas Murray has a blog here
that raises some questions about the alleged role of Lord Ahmed in this business.
Posted on 11 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Spending our money
I've just got on to the Commons Public Accounts Committee, and today's my first meeting. I'm really excited as it gives me an opportunity to examine how government is spending our money generally, and public procurement specifically.
As regular readers of this blog may know, I’ve some ideas about the way public money is spent on things like, for example, defence procurement. To pick an example at random. Yep. I'm really looking forward to this
.
Posted on 11 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Are we governed by spivs?
A couple of weeks back, I'd been due to attend the screening of a film called Fitna in the House of Lords. Made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders, it’s apparently controversial and about Islam.
Do I agree with it? I really don't know – but being on the advisory panel of the Centre for Social Cohesion, I felt I’d a responsibility to find out. Having recently read Milestones by the radical Sayed Qtub, one of the key thinkers behind political Islamism, it's a subject I'm interested in.
First the officials who run the Parliamentary estate - apparently - "postponed" (i.e. cancelled) the screening.
Now Geert Wilders has been banned from entering the country altogether. The idea of our government banning a Dutch parliamentarian from setting foot on these shores sounds like something from the Reformation. But it happened yesterday.
The Home Office justifies the ban because they "oppose extremism in all its forms". We'll "stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages" they declare.
The hypocrisy of the Home Office is breathtaking. This is the same government department that has permitted many radical imams to settle permanently in Britain and in some cases preach hatred. The same Home Office that has granted permanent leave to remain in the UK to many individuals who pose a far greater risk to social cohesion than any Dutch MP.
But of course it's pretty easy to take tough action against middle-aged Dutchmen. They won't threaten to blow themselves up or riot in your capital.
Posted on 11 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
My book list
You might have noticed that there's a new button on this site marked "Douglas' book list". It's a new venture I've started on with a group of friends, and it aims to provide you with a short, concise summary of the kind of books I think you might be interested in reading.
Have a look now - click the button on the right ->.
Browse the reviews. Add your own comments.
Posted on 10 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Cleaning-up SW1 must start with a proper Speaker
Every time the Commons slips a little further into the mire, I'll be posting this image.
The weaknesses of the Speaker help explain why the Commons continues to lose its power and purpose.
How much worse does it need to get?
It's a pretty simple choice; either we stick with Mr Martin and the decline of the Commons will continue. Or we can replace him with a Speaker willing to drive through the radical reforms needed to clean up Westminster.
Posted on 10 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Liam doesn't get it
More proof of how tired this government is; Minister Liam Byrne MP gave a speech last week in which he rattled off all the current Whitehall clichés;
We need more accountable public services. End monolithic government. Decentralised control. Empowering communities. Blah blah blah.
Yet, with comic irony, what did he end his speech proposing to actually do?
Did he suggest scrapping any of the one-size-fits-all diktats imposed by Whitehall? No. Propose breaking the state monopoly over schools? Allow local people to elect their police chiefs? Outline an agenda of radical localism and direct democracy? Errr. No.
Instead, Byrne invited three Whitehall insiders (one a Sir and one a Lord, of course) to publish recommendations to "close the gap between Whitehall policy and frontline delivery".
You get that? Flexible public service provision achieved by Whitehall fiat.
Then, he asks Sir Gus O'Donnell, head honcho in Whitehall, to review civil service accountability, and consider how government can be more "innovative" and allow more "choice". Does anyone, including the minister, seriously think that Sir Gus is ever going to recommend anything that'll make him and his Sir Humphrey Appleby colleagues truly accountable?
By leaving it all to Sir Gus, it sounds like Mr Byrne has just put the fox in charge of chicken welfare.
If any minister really thinks central government needs to let go, they need to explain how they intend to actually decentralise control - not patronise us with what they think sounds Google and Facebook and modern and Twitter, innit?
Posted on 10 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Parliament is pointless
MPs are increasingly regarded as parasitical. Not because of expenses, but because in recent years they’ve farmed out the business of government to quangos.
Take this afternoon, for instance. The Education select committee took evidence from Ofsted, the school's inspector. I had about 5 minutes to ask them how they spend their £215,191,000 budget.
Parliament theoretically approves their budget when we vote on estimates. But in reality it's just a rubberstamping of vast sums of money for dozens of quangos. Not even a cursory examination.
Instead Ofsted is held to account by something called the Better Regulation Executive. You get that? One unaccountable government quango answers to another unaccountable government quango. The number of elected MPs able to question it can be counted on one hand.
I asked Ofsted's head honcho, Christine Gilbert CBE, if she'd be more accountable if the Commons select committee, not government agencies, voted to approve her budget each year. Indeed, all quangos could have their budgets annually ratified by their respective select committees. Might give MPs something purposeful to do.
No thanks, she said. She's happy with the way things are. She would, wouldn't she.
Is it any surprise that people resent politicians when quangos make the real decisions and Parliamentary accountability is a facade?
Posted on 9 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
England's getting angry
It's more than just the government's falling popularity or fear of recession. There's mounting anger - fury even - bubbling away out there.
They might not see it yet in SW1, but I see it on the faces of my struggling constituents; mums forced to appeal for tax credits and government hand-outs, while dad is taxed to the hilt. Older folk, who've spent their working lives scrimping and saving, now penalised because they did.
I see it in families who feel they've no real choice of local schools, and fret about the non-choice on offer. Young couples struggling to afford their own home, wondering if it’s worth the cost. The local businesswoman who asks me why she alone has to take the risks, but government takes the reward.
And beneath it all is an incendiary sense that others are getting it all for free. And who's to say they don't?.
It's not about strikers in Lindsey. It's about good, decent, hard working people who've done the right thing, lived the way they're supposed to. And who then discover government doesn't care. In fact, in some cases they'd be better off if they'd not tried to do the right thing at all.
Government takes income tax, national insurance, council tax, road tax, petrol tax and TV tax, all manner of tax. Little more than pocket money is left over. On the big personal decisions, they try to take responsibility. Yet they're treated like children.
They feel patronised by a government that controls them. Bossed about by officials that claim to know what's best. Nannyed and micromanaged. Taken for fools by ministers.
A storm is coming - and it's going to shake up Westminster.
Posted on 9 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What are they doing about illegal immigration?
The number of illegal immigrants discovered hiding in lorries after entering Britain has more than doubled in two years. "More than 3,300 were picked up in just an eight month period in 2008, compared with only 1,400 in an entire 12-month period in 2006/07", says the Telegraph.
How many of those found do you suppose have now been actually removed? All? Half? Ten? None?
I've tabled the following Parliamentary question to try to find out. Assuming that Commons clerks allow the question to be tabled (you'll be amazed at how often they find reasons not to) and that Sir David Normington's self-serving Home Office feels like giving an answer, I'll let you know.
Parliamentary Question: What proportion of the 3,300 illegal immigrants picked up UK Border Agency between April and November last year have now been removed from the UK?
Posted on 8 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Arrogant and out of touch?
Peter Mandelson as Marie Antoinette
Hat tip to Conservative Home and Mail on Sunday.
Posted on 8 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Is democracy giving way to corporatism?
It's not merely that those we elect no longer decide. What's so shocking is how many people appear to actively approve of the way that MPs have been emasculated.
Last week it emerged that a court, not voters, now decides if an MP is doing a good job representing their constituents. Human Rights rules now mean that it is not up to those we elect to formulate a whole range of public policy. An alphabet soup of corporatist quangos runs the show, while pretending to answer to ministers. A few dozen clowns in SW1 pretend to be those ministers.
And everywhere audiences cheer the commentator who declares something "too important for party politics".
Party politics is becoming so discredited, many now seem to believe public policy decisions should be left to "experts", judges and officials.
In our moribund democracy, the demos seem to prefer independent watchdogs, commissioners, or even hereditary peers. Anything but party placemen.
For democrats like me, there's no point in explaining that the idea of disinterested technocrats is an illusion, and that no such person exists. Or that deference to supposed "experts" makes it much more difficult to recognise and correct failures. There's no point in saying that leaving it to "experts" was precisely what happened with child protection in Haringey. Or with the Bank of England setting interest rates too low for too long.
It's urgent and vital that we clean up Westminster and bring more competition and accountability to politics. Without it, people will continue to lose faith.
And unless we restore confidence to the Westminster system, people are going to end up preferring a technocracy that is technically inept to a democracy that excludes the people. We’re already half way there.
The photo is of Ayn Rand, whose novel, which touches on some of these themes, I recently came across and
I review here
.
Posted on 7 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ousting the Speaker
Iain Dale blogs
of how "MPs of all parties are becoming more exasperated with The Speaker by the day." Indeed. And we've still not had a proper review of the Damian Green business.
Mr M's not up to the job. He's run by the Commons clerks and under the sway of the executive. Under his direction, the legislature is rudderless. He needs to go - perhaps taking one or two Commons clerks with him.
The trouble, Iain, is that thus far MPs have been happy to complain about him in private. But less keen to say so publicly. I've lost count of the number of MPs who’ve sidled up to me to say that they agree with my public calls for him to go, but ..... there's always X, Y or Z that prevents them from joining me in tabling a motion for him to quit.
Next time an MP complains, tell them to join me in tabling a motion. I'll table the motion, they only need to sign it.
Posted on 6 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Coffee Crunch
On a long train journey yesterday, I set off down the carriages in search of a coffee. "It's free" said a smiling ticket collector. But when I got there, the restaurant car counter was firmly shut - and stayed that way.
Without any incentive to provide me a coffee, they didn't. Disempowered, I was left to appeal in vain to the goodwill of some jobsworth for what I wanted.
I was reminded of this when a financial expert said this of the credit crunch; "few borrowers are complaining about how much they are having to pay [for credit]. But they are worried about its availability".
On a vastly more serious scale, it’s the same as my coffee problem.
No one on my train complained about how much we were having to pay. It was availability that was the issue.
Coffee or credit, if there's no price incentive to provide it, you get less of it than folks want. One of the extraordinary things about market pricing is that if folk do want more of something, it normally arranges for more of that thing to be produced. Without it, they have to beg.
With interest rates so low, and political pressure on banks to keep rates low, I fear that there’s now little incentive to supply more credit. So we get less credit than folks want.
So those needing credit, like people wanting a coffee on the train, have to appeal to the goodwill of officials to get what they need. On the train, it's a minor irritation. For businesses and jobs, it'll be a disaster.
Posted on 6 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Quango chief calls for more quangos - shock
Sir Christopher Kelly, Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, wants an independent watchdog appointed to oversee the Upper House, according to the Telegraph.
Precisely. I agree. But I don't think Sir Christopher and I would agree about the kind of watchdog.
My idea is that this independent watchdog could be called "the voters", and we'd all get to be on it. A revolutionary idea since 1640 something, this "voter" watchdog would get to choose who sits in the legislature.
To ensure the Upper House isn't stuffed full of party placemen, whip's patsies or those desperate to ingratiate themselves with the government, the voter watchdog would elect members from multi-member constituencies, using open primary selection.
Not everyone likes my idea. Constitutional expert, Sir Reginald McGimmeagong told me it was "Absurd. It'd lead to chaos and anarchy - like in Ireland, Switzerland or the rebellious American colonies. And look what happened to them, eh?"
Posted on 6 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Anger with the government on the doorstep
Here are some of the 34 volunteers who helped me deliver thousands of leaflets.
We’ve noticed one real difference on the doorstep; local people are now really fed up with the government. I don't normally do too much party politics on this site - but they are really so fed up I can't not mention it.
For example, £16 million spent on a brand new local school, which the PM conveniently opened a week before the last election. Yet where less than one in ten children last year got 5 or more GCSEs (in fairness the team now running things are putting things right - but local folk are still pretty angry).
£14 million spent on a local hospital that has been two thirds empty for three years - at a massive cost to the local NHS.
The other week, there were apparently less than a few dozen job vacancies in the whole district. The government has trashed our economy.
People are ready for a change of government.
Posted on 6 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
1% interest rates - to what problem is it the answer?
I've been saying it for the past eight months - and I'll keep saying it; how do ultra low interest rates solve this debt-created downturn?
It was interest rates being kept too low for too long - by the independent experts at the Bank of England - that got us into the mess.
Now the downturn has arrived, it is not to be solved by simply raising aggregate demand. Falling demand is a consequence of the problem - not the cause of the problem.
In fact, more cheap money and largese with public funds will exacerbate the debt problem - not cure it.
This problem is about debt. Public debt, private debt, corporate debt. A sea of cheap money we could not afford – even if it seemed we could at the time.
We need to treat it as a debt problem first - and worry about aggregate demand second.
Now what would encourage the opposite of debt, known as savings? Interest rates of 0.5%?
UPDATE: Jeff Randall, one of the few pundits who did see this mess coming, makes the same point better in today's Telegraph: "Yesterday's half-point rate cut was a panic measure from a central bank whose excessively loose monetary policy in the first half of this decade encouraged a catastrophic borrowing binge. Now, desperate to mitigate the consequences of its own failure, it is trying to inflate another bubble."
"Pumping out yet more debt will not be the answer. It is simply a short-term fix that in the long-run creates an even bigger disaster, like giving a shivering alcoholic a case of Special Brew."
Posted on 6 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
This blog rises in the Wikio rankings
As the orange button on the right shows, Wikio ranks this blog as 35th "most influential" politics blog in the UK (and 46th of all blogs in Britain).
Wikio's ranking methodology is disputed by some - it measures the "footprint" of the site (RSS take up etc), rather than absolute unique viewers. In terms of absolute unique viewers, its rising fast - up 114% in the past month.
No matter. I enjoy writing it. And it is wonderful to know you like reading it! Thanks.
Posted on 5 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Gordo's gold
Reports of gold at US$ 1,000 an ounce...
What's the bet Gordo shows his famous economic acumen again and decides now's the time to rebuild our gold reserves again, and buy?
Posted on 5 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Robert Peston; behind the curve when it counts
According to the evidence he gave to MPs yesterday, the BBC's Robert Peston appears to believe he foresaw it all along. He warned of the sea of debt. Like so many other "experts", his analysis was so on the money, its surprising that the bubble was able to inflate at all.
Yeah. Right. Of course Peston saw it coming. He challenged government debt spending throughout. He fiercely questioned the wisdom of an independent Bank of England setting interest rates so low for so long.
Peston bravely challenged the line fed him by Downing St over the bankers ' bail out.
He rigorously applied a liberal economic critique to every big government action.
Its just he never seems to have actually broadcast any such insights or wisdom when it mattered.
Posted on 5 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The House of Cards
Another week, another illustration of power draining from Parliament. This time a court is apparently able to decide if MP, Ann Keen, has done her job properly by a constituent. (I assumed this was a spoof story when I first read it)
MPs will hate it. We'll say, with some justification, that in a democracy, it's for voters at the ballot box - not judges - to decide if we're doing our jobs properly.
And yet. And yet …. remember the Human Rights Act? Or the European Communities Act, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, and the Ministers of the Crown Act? Recall how those who opposed them said they’d diminish Parliament? Remember who's stood by as unaccountable Commons clerks have run an inept Speaker? Who gave men-in-tights authority to veto Parliamentary questions and MPs newsletters to their own voters?
Indeed. In politics, as in life, you reap what you sow. Give power away and you lose power. Reduce the role of Parliament, and you get a House of Cards.
If MPs don’t like what happens when Parliament’s power drains away, we’ll need to be prepared to reform the damage to our democracy caused by the above.
Posted on 5 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
BBC's Today favours big government
BBC's Today programme featured someone called Dr Maryon-Davis from the Faculty of Public Health calling for more nanny state interventions; banning smoking in cars, regulating supermarket prices, blah.
The entire premise of the interview was that Dr Maryon-Davis was being brave and bold in calling for more nanny state. What balls.
Dr Maryon-Davis’ statism is the established orthodoxy. In my own constituency in the past fortnight alone state agencies announced they'll be visiting toddlers groups to "educate" them about what'll happen to mum and dad if they smoke. Plans have been unveiled to pay expectant mothers pocket money rewards of £100 for not smoking.
In a process of remorseless infantilisation, the state treats us all as toddlers.
But when did you last hear Today asking the Adam Smith Institute why we need less government? Somehow Humphries et al never seem to make those sorts of points. That's because being a corporation, the BBC’s outlook is inherently corporatist.
The Today interviewer ridiculously seemed to suggest it was politicians making decisions to be more interventionist - and who might be ousted if people didn't like it. More balls. Dr Maryon-Davis and his fellow quangocrats (funded by public grants and the EU) make decisions without reference to those we elect.
They receive public funds, but never answer to us for how they spend it. Like the BBC, they're accountable only to themselves.
Posted on 4 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Labour's crashed the economy
A constituent emails me this graph.
It shows how the FTSE – a key indicator of our economic outlook – has performed under governments over the past few decades.
Labour’s crashed it.
They looked good only because they rode on the wave of success Thatcher generated.
Since then, they piled up the debts, squandered zillions on all those Guardianista non-jobs, and lived beyond our means.
See the result.
Posted on 3 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Direct democracy frightens Guardianistas
An organisation called Involve asked me to speak about my book, The Plan. I think I upset some Guardian readers.
Involve are a good thing - they recognise that the status quo isn't good enough and want to change it - and the people who work for it are open-minded and fun. That said, some of the more Guardianista elements in the audience were clearly horrified at what I was advocating;
"But if we make local government self-financing, local people might decide they don't want more outreach workers!"
Yep.
"But if we let local people elect local police chiefs, the system might be really, like, much more harsh!"
Could be.
"If we let parents control their child's education, there might be less progressive education?"
Maybe. But not if it's truly progressive.
"If you had referendums all the time, it'd be like the Lisbon treaty, and people would just vote "no".
Umm. We didn't get one on Lisbon. But if we do, I hope they'd vote no.
By that stage, the lefties in the audience seemed about ready to restore hereditary peers.
For years, we've listened to the centre-left twittering on about political reform. Okay, guys, let's take you at your word and bring in a system of real democracy that allows us to "empower" local "communities" and "engage" all the "stakeholders".
Guess what? The lefties hate it - it's corporatism they want, not democracy.
As one Guardianista wrote for the Guardian after a similar talk I gave, "Carswell's case is unsettling".
"He uses reforming language to argue for quite radical Conservative projects ... His embrace of change is based on more intellectual self-confidence than the old fashioned belief in grabbing the controls of the machinery of the centralised, elitist British state and making it serve Tory ends.
New Conservative .... reformers can talk confidently about trusting the people, because they believe that the people ultimately agree with them. And left of centre constitutional reformers feel some anxiety that Carswell may be right about this."
You bet. It's not just Nick Cohenwho's clocked the left's hopeless contradictions.
Posted on 3 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Reforming criminal justice
Just been talking at a lunch organised by Reform - a great and original think tank. I was asked to give a presentation on directly elected justice commissioners - why we need them and how to make it happen.
Most seemed very supportive of the idea, bar one person who kept on banging on about "
postcode lottery policing
".
Errr - isn't that what we have today? It's literally a postcode lottery - what kind of policing you get where you live depends entirely on arbitary decisions made by unaccountable officials. Live in some parts of south London, and the coppers will turn a blind eye to certain drugs. Elsewhere, you'll be done for going a fraction over the speed limit. If you don't like it, tough.
But if you allow local people to elect a justice commissioner to set policing priorities, and supervise public prosecution and offender management, you shape local justice to suit local people. There might be local differences, but they'd be shaped by deliberate decisions - not remote technocrats.
Posted on 3 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Speaker's big idea won't make Parliament more representative
Speaker Michael Martin has called a "Speaker's Conference" to look at ways of making the Commons more representative and diverse.
Good - except the kind of representation I want to see enhanced isn't about gender or heritage. I want real diversity of outlook and opinion - fewer professional politicians and less SW1 attitude.
Yet what's the bet that the "Speaker's Conference" (why didn't he invite me?) makes a series of utterly predictable and trite suggestions; shortlists, public outreach, more shortlists, blah, blah. Yawn.
There's one proposal I guarantee Mr Speaker's insiders won't ever recommend, but which will make your politicians truly more representative; open primaries. In other words, letting everyone who lives in your area decide who gets to be each of the parties candidates.
Instead of Westminster insiders asking themselves "who do we want in Parliament?", open primaries mean that local people in each constituency decide. By definition, those selected are more representative. Ask Obama.
Would open primaries mean your political opponents are able to mess up your selection contest and impose "weak" candidates on you? Hilary Clinton might think so. Evidence instead shows allowing non-partisan voters a say in selecting the candidate for party X, makes them far more inclined to support party X on polling day. If you have primaries and your party opponent doesn't, it's not you who needs to worry about tactical voting and entryism. It's your opposition who needs to worry about having no voters.
Many British Conservatives think that we've held open primaries to choose candidates in marginal seats. We have - sort of. Yet our "primaries" are in fact caucuses - better than what they had before, but a long way sort of the kind of process used in New England to decide who runs for office.
If we had open primaries for every sitting MP, our law-makers would not only be more representative, they be more responsive to what people think. As one Congressman countered when I asked him why he was prepared to ignore his party whips on a particular issue, "I vote with my district, Sir. What do you do?"
Who knows, as a legislature, the Commons might even start doing its job of holding government properly to account.
And with real competition in politics, open primaries would also give us fewer one party fiefdoms, like Glasgow North East. Now there's a thought, Mr M.
Posted on 3 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Westminster covered by global warming
I went to see the amazing Carol Vorderman give a press conference about maths. On my way back, I snapped a couple more photos through the blizzard.
Richard the Lion Heart, the AlbertTower, and a snowman posing by Big Ben. It's good to know that everyone is taking the Lib Dem opposition day debate so seriously ....
Posted on 2 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Westminster in the snow - ever seen it look so clean and pristine before?
Posted on 2 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Lords scandal shows us who's in charge
Lord Taylor of Blackburn is quoted in the Times: “You see, it’s not always ministers that are making the decisions”.
Indeed.
It’s Sir Humphrey Appleby and the quangocracy who now determine most policy on energy, defence procurement, the national curriculum .... indeed, most things.
The idea of “accountability to Parliament” is bust. Broken. Kaput. It's a charade.
Cleaning up Westminster doesn't only mean ejecting a few peers. We need to ensure that those who “are making the decisions” - to use his lordship's phrase - are properly accountable to those we elect on polling day. In The Plan, I propose several ways that this might be done.
Right now, senior civil servants and quangocrats are not properly accountable - regardless of which politician happens to be playing the role of minister.
Posted on 1 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The smell of ermine
The Sunday papers are full of allegations of sleeze in the House of Lords.
So there we have it. In the name of Labour's "modernisation", we have created an Upper House full of "experts" and lobbyists for various corporate and vested interests. Pretty progressive, eh?
It's superficially attractive to have a legislature full of people with a real expertise on say, energy policy or defence.
Yet look what happens.
Defence "experts" lobby for more money for defence contractors. Energy "experts" lobby for government intervention that would affect energy businesses. And so on.
All these new peers are generally people who've spent their entire professional life in a particular field. Surely they are the last people to give an objective overview of public policy as regards their particular speciality.
Besides (the tiny miniority) of peers who have alledgedly been paid to lobby for particular vested interests, there would appear to be a far larger number of peers lobbying for particular interests because professionally they've done very well out of it.
This is surely corporatism, in the Italian, early 20th century sense?
What a tangled web. Rather than try to untangle it all, perhaps we need to start again. An entirely democratically elected Upper House, anyone?
Posted on 1 February 2009 by Douglas Carswell