Westminster alphabet soup
A is for .... Accountable, something many of our MPs are not.
B is for ... Ballot, the lottery process used to decide which lucky MP gets to ask ministers a question, to maintain the fiction that government is Accountable (see A above).
C is for ... Commons Committees, and all their spineless, executive-controlled futility.
D is for ... Directives, the rules (issued despite Westminster) which really decide how Britain's governed.
E is for .... Executive power, once held by those answerable to Parliament, now in the hands of Quangos (see Q below).
F is for .... Fed-up, something most voters now are.
G is for .... Guillotine motion, a procedure used to prevent MPs doing their job whenever any are so inclined.
H is for .... Hansard, that record of ministerial evasion and bluster.
I is for .... Indefensible
J is for .... Joke
K is for .... Knighthoods, once awarded for achievement, now dished out for .... best not ask.
L is for .... Legislature, something the Commons once was, but now fails to be.
M is for .... Mr Michael Martin, the Speaker, who presides over it all.
N is for ... Not-to-blame, as in “the minister followed official advice”.
O is for ... Order, order!
P is for ... Pocket, as in “the Commons is in the pocket of government”.
Q is for ... Quango, the unaccountable institutions that really run Britain
R is for ... Right of Recall and Referendum, as in the direct democracy we need to make our politicians work for us.
S is for ... Smug, self-satisfied, self-regarding SW1.
T is for ... Turnout, something that's fallen to an all time low at elections.
U is for ... Useless, as in the House of Commons
V is for ... Vanity, which stops many elected ministers 'fessing up to the fact they no longer count for much.
W is for ... Whitehall, which is to Westminster what puppet-master is to puppet.
X is for ... The mark our forbearers once struggled to have the right to place on ballot papers.
Y is for ... Why does it have to be this way? Other countries have proper legislatures.
Z is for ... The grade I give our broken Westminster system after four years there as an MP.
UPDATE: Angry email arrives from Col. Blimp; "Why can't you make some positive suggestions for a change?" he rants.
I do. Plenty of suggestions for real change. In The Plan, I propose 30 very specific, detailed changes, including drafts of the actual Bills required, that would clean up Westminster and restore meaning to our broken democracy.
Posted on 30 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Thought for the day
China
has risen to global economic predominance as she has decentralised.
Europe
has fallen down the world economic tables as she has centralised.
Go figure.
Posted on 29 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Three cheers for Tesco!
It's wonderful to see Tesco about to go into retail banking.
They could take deposits off all those savers desperate to get a reasonable rate of interest. Then they could lend it out to all those small businesses and other folk needing credit. In seeking to profit from doing so, Tesco's would be helping millions of would-be savers and borrowers currently left in the lurch by the financial crisis. Indeed, Tesco will be giving more practical help than anything promised to us by government.
You mean, private profit in the public interest, Carswell?!?
Yep. Clever thing, these free markets. Would you rather have credit rationed by politicians in SW1?
And not a Collateralised Debt Obligation nor a structured credit bond in sight.
How come so few of the established retail banks thought of this business model? Too many MBAs on the board, perhaps?
Posted on 29 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I'm enjoying Ayn Rand
I get to page 413 of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:
Francisco d'Anconia says “When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money …. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper”.
Any of that sound familiar? Heard of any businesses now needing permission from unproductive quangos just to do business? Suspect any big corporations lobby regulators for advantage or quangocrats to siphon off public funds? Brown sold off our gold, didn’t he? That pile of paper bonds he’s left us with aren’t worth much, are they?
And then I look up at the TV and I see an anti-free trade protester on the streets of London. He wants more regulation and government. He bears a banner that say "People before profit'', "Money for need not greed''.
UPDATE: The Plan on Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 50th in Books.
UPDATE: Michael White's condescension has now earned him over 400 overwhelmingly critical
postings
.
Not quite as many as the 1,488,967 who've now watched that speech.
Posted on 28 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Your taxes are paying for the G20 protests
The way the BBC reports it, you wouldn’t think that some of the demonstrations in London this week are in fact orchestrated by state-funded agencies.
But today's March - a precursor to the disruption expected later in the week - is in part paid for by ... err ... you.
Look at the hodge podge of unaccountable quangos behind today's protests. Dig about on Google, and you'll see many receive the bulk of their funding from - to quote one - "official bodies and international agencies, including the EU, UK government, USAID, UN, World Bank".
This leftist, anti-free market, anti-capitalist agenda is being paid for by you. And no one asked you.
I'm happy to have my taxes go to pay for the police. Spare a thought for them, as they try to keep order this week. Yet the perverse morality of our quango state means that if there were to be a confrontation, your taxes could end-up funding both the good guys (the police) and the bad.
Posted on 28 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Plan becomes a bestseller
Since Daniel Hannan made that speech, sales of our book The Plan: 12 months to renew Britain have taken off.
Yesterday, it was the number one best seller in it's category on Amazon - and just outside the top hundred selling books in the UK overall.
I'm not writing this to plug the book, but to point out the really interesting thing: When Dan and I wrote the The Plan, we'd both just finished reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. So we decided to take a risk. We turned down the offer of getting a think tank to publish it, or even a publisher, as we had with previous books we'd written. Instead we opted to publish via "print on demand" (POD).
It was a big risk, since on the downside there's still a strong snobbery against POD in the established (and dying) publishing world (not unlike the condescension towards YouTube expressed by established political journalists like Michael White).
On the upside, using POD would allow us to leverage off Amazon's internet distribution and match supply to demand perfectly. This is especially useful for a book aimed at a niche market, or if there's, for example, a sudden and unexpected surge of interest in the book. Like there now is.
I'm told by an expert in the field that these sort of sales for a POD book are without precedent. Like Anderson says, this is how most books will be published in the very near future.
UPDATE: Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 99 69 57 in Books
Posted on 28 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Biased BBC (again)
Gavin Hewitt on BBC 10 O'Clock News reports on the expected protests in London next week. I think I counted four interviewees, each explaining why capitalism had failed, why we needed socialism, more government blah blah. Not one person invited to put the opposite view that free markets work.
Perhaps it's time to have a protest over the BBC license fee with a bit of orchestrated non-payment?
Posted on 27 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Michael White's sneering is low grade journalism
I've never met Michael White, political correspondent for the Guardian - despite my best efforts.
Last year, when I first suggested that Westminster needed radical reform, rather than ask me why I might have come to think that, he wrote sneeringly about me. Instead of refuting anything I'd actually said, he tried to belittle, boasting how he "wouldn't recognise 36-year-old Carswell, whose experience of speakerships goes back as far as 2005".
Does the fact that the political editor of the Guardian can't recognise an MP who's worked in the same building as him for four years, make me look bad or him? You decide. I certainly recognise him.
I then sent Mr White a couple of polite emails suggesting, you know, what with him being a political editor, me being an MP, both of us being in Westminster, perhaps I could buy him a coffee and explain why I'd come to the view that Westminster isn't working? I was particularly keen to discuss with him some of the changes that the internet will bring to politics. Still nothing. Perhaps his server was down that day.
One thing White had very specifically tried to mock me for back then was my suggestion that YouTube was going to change the way we do politics. Indeed, he tried to parody what I'd said, writing Carswell had a lot of experience "by YouTube standards, I mean, like the stone age, you know".
Ironically, today he tries the same sneering approach to belittle the fact over a million people watched Daniel Hannan take on Gordon Brown on ... um, like .. I mean, YouTube.
Once again, he resorts to sneering, dismissing Hannan as "horribly priggish ... a daft wee boy".
This is pretty low grade journalism. Perhaps if White was a little less grand, he'd have seen how YouTube was going to change things, and be able to make more insightful, and less snide, comment about it.
UPDATE: For some amusement, do read the comments posted on Michael White's own site about his absurd article; "sneering", "fuddy duddy", "out of touch", "condescending", "cheap political point scoring rather than informed opinion and comment". And there's hundreds of them - more than for anything else the fellow's written.
Keeping on sneering, Mr White.
UPDATE: 1,242,597 have seen the Dan Hannan speech so far. Still sneering, Mr White?
UPDATE: 374 411 overwhelmingly critical comments have now been posted on Michael White's site.
Posted on 27 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Power of the web
The internet will utterly transform politics in three ways:
1. Remove barriers to entry.
Daniel Hannan's famous speech was ignored by the big corporate media players. So what? There are no left-wing BBC producers on YouTube to veto views they disapprove of, so over a million of us watch it anyway.
The terms of the political debate won't be set by the press lobby and party managers - it'll be decided more democratically.
But removing barriers to entry isn’t simply about democratising communication and the dissemination of "news". It’ll be far more profound.
Just as the internet removed barriers to entry in business and commerce, it'll do the same for politics. Established corporate media and political parties will either have to adapt - or lose market share. Expect to see the democratising of party structures, with, for example, voters having a direct say over who the candidates are.
2. Aggregation
- techie speak for bringing like-minded people together. In the past, it was difficult for people with sectional interest to work together. They were often spread around over many constituencies, and diluted. Hence the rise of the corporate political party.
Parents unhappy over the choice of schools they are offered. Residents concerned about the failures of their local criminal justice system. They’ll start to hook up in what'll amount to on-line town hall meetings. The full impact of this has yet to be felt - but it's coming.
3. Rise of the AmPros:
In The Long tail, Chris Andersen notes how the internet blurs the distinction between what is a professional and what is an amateur. So, too, in politics.
Already the internet allows people who’d never previously have had access to specialised information to access it. Need information on how to fight a planning decision, or get your child the special educational needs they deserve? It’s a click away – you no longer need to defer to a professional expert to do it for you.
Politics will increasingly become something that we do for ourselves, rather than leave to a remote and unaccountable class of politicians to do for us in Westminster or the town hall.
Final thought: The single most influential development in politics last century was the rise of organised labour movements. What if the internet now allows consumerist citizens and taxpayer movements to mobilise? Could a tax strike against, say, the BBC license fee, be the 21st centruy equivalent of the Taff Vale railway strike?
Posted on 27 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Westminster is La La Land
Britain
now has one of the world's largest debt burdens, which our grandchildren's children will struggle to pay off.
Our nation's financial affairs are in such a mess that many banks have now passed into state control.
Unemployment is expected to reach 3 million. Home repossessions are rising fast. Britain is broke - and we've a government so foolish that it persists in trying to borrow its way back to prosperity.
There's more than enough serious matters for politicians to be contending with.
So, what's top of the agenda for many in Westminster today? Should a Roman Catholic be able to ascend to the throne in succession to the Queen.
Is this really the most pressing issue of the day?
It's like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland.
Posted on 27 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Tom Harris MP is being a touch daft
Yes, I know he’s a nice fellow and as a Labour politician he has to find something critical to say, but Tom Harris’ condemnation of that speech by Dan Hannan is daft.
Far from being the “diatribe” Tom describes, Daniel’s words were a well chosen, at times amusing, dissection of Gordon Brown’s failed response to the economic downturn.
Tom call Daniel’s speech “truly repugnant” because it lacked “any sense of patriotism." How come? Because, continues this guardian of constitutional propriety, Gordon Brown is "Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader - in a foreign country - is nothing short of disgraceful." Keep a straight face, I think Mr Harris means it.
Surely by extension I shouldn’t be making unpatriotically anti-Brown postings on this blog, in case it be read “in a foreign country”? Tom clearly thinks that in the Europarliament no one should be able to make measured criticisms of our international-laughing-stock-of-a-Prime Minister. He seems to suggest it’s dastardly anti-British to point out to foreigners that we’re led by a loser.
The clincher in Tom’s article is his claim that “Some Tories .... don’t regard the head of government to be the nation’s leader unless he or she is also a member of their little party."
Indeed, Tom, you are correct. Unlike the United States, the head of government in the UK isn't “the nation's leader”. Not unless you're seriously suggesting your devalued leader has replaced the Queen as head of State?
Posted on 26 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Recycling stupidity
"Let's not reinvent the wheel" is perhaps the most irritating and foolish of clichés.
Had the wheel not been continually reinvented, we'd still be travelling about on wooden discs. The spoke, axel, mill, air-filled tyre, pottery, graphite – each of these innovations meant a reinvention of the wheel.
When dunder-heads - in business or government – say "don't reinvent the wheel", what they mean is "no more innovation, I know best". Such presumption is usually about who decides what gets done, rather than improving how things are done.
Yesterday, I overheard someone decry localism since, they claimed, we ought to prevent local councils "trying to reinvent the wheel".
Okay. Imagine if wheel design had been left to some Whitehall agency? We'd still be in the Stone Age.
Those who use the worn metaphor about wheel design are often the same people who invoke that other daft cliché about "spreading best practice". If local government, businesses or people were free to innovate for themselves, there'd be no need to try to oversee the spread of what worked. It'd spread itself. "Spreading best practice" usually means telling other people what to do.
I don't recall John Boyd Dunlop having a problem getting people to copy his new way of doing things.
Posted on 26 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Viva! The internet revolution has begun
Guido is brilliant
– once again his blog speaks for many tens hundreds of thousands, this time on the global phenomenon of that speech by Daniel Hannan.
When did you last hear such an interest shown in anything a politician had to say?
The web revolution is coming to politics
.
... and then some.
UPDATE: 660,691 viewers have so-far watched that speech on-line.
UPDATE: 730,961 viewers.
Posted on 26 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What next if Big Government isn't the answer?
Just like the Financial Services Authority, the Big Government bail-out isn't working the way we were told. Indeed, what all the “experts” said would happen didn’t. Yet what all the mavericks and fools predicted has come to pass.
No longer dazed by the scale of financial meltdown, those who believe free markets are generally better at arranging things than politicians, need now to gather their thoughts.
Tim Congdon makes an interesting contribution today with the publication of a paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Agree with him or disagree - but at least read what he has to say first.
Posted on 26 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I'm not alone in the Westminster swamp
Regular readers of this blog will know what a low opinion I have of the Commons; supine, spineless, smug, self-serving. And plus the fact it's monumentally useless at holding government to account.
The good news is that I’m not the only MP who thinks like this. A new cross-party grouping of MPs is launching this coming Tuesday. Called “Parliament First”, the name is a little unfortunate. I’d have preferred “Open Parliament”. No matter. The intention is good, and they propose giving the legislature greater control against the overbearing executive by;
·
Allowing those we elect, rather than government, to set the Commons agenda.
·
Popular petition to ensure that MPs debate the things that matter to you, not just people in SW1.
·
A Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry so the Commons could hold ministers to account for things when they screw up.
So what, you might think. This is hardly the system of open politics and direct democracy we so desperately need. And you’d be right, but it’s the first step in that direction. Throughout history, the greatest reforms are made possible when the unaccountable elites recognise that the status quo is indefensible.
And look who’s supporting it;
Sir George Young, David Davis, Graham Allen, Ming Campbell, Ian Duncan-Smith, Michael Meacher, Douglas Hogg, Frank Field, David Currie, Adam Price, Derek Wyatt, Bob Marshall Andrews, John Bercow, David Howarth and Evan Harris.
This is the most interesting thing to have stirred in the SW1 swamp in a long time.
Posted on 25 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Bankrupt Britain; no more takers for Gordon Brown's IOUs
On January 20th , I warned that "there's now a very real danger that international lenders will refuse to accept any more UK bonds IOUs".
Seven days ago , I repeated my forecast that "at some point people are no longer going to be prepared to keep accepting his [Gordon Brown's] IOU bonds". Yesterday I wrote of "unwanted IOU bonds".
Today, the government's gilt auction failed. In other words, people were no longer willing to pay the government real money for what they see as bogus IOUs.
Don't accept it when Gordo claims no one could see this coming...
Posted on 25 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Tory riddle
How to deliver improvements without yet more government?
In the late 1970s, too much government - high taxes, regulation, labour law - threatened to bring Britain down. It seems obvious now that the answer was to cut back government. But it was never as obvious to many Conservative MPs at the time as they like to remember.
In fact, the first instincts of many were the precise opposite.
Instead of getting central government out of running the economy, many initially tried executive fiat to solve the problems that Big Government had itself created. They were wooed by the idea of a prices and incomes policy, exchange controls and picking industry winners. Many deservedly forgotten Conservatives of the 70s shared the conceit that if only they were a Minister for trade and industry, all would be well.
Today, it’s not only the economy that suffers from too much government and a grotesquely expensive quango sector. Our public services suffer from too much government, as well.
Like in the 1970s, we need to resist the temptation to assume that one more ministerial decree or set of targets, or new initiative is going to be the answer. We need to recongise - as even Blair did towards the end - that executive fiat is not merely incapable of delivering improvements. It is often actually the problem.
Rather than looking exclusively to executive fiat to get things right, we need to work out how to make public services answer to the people they’re supposed to serve – not ministers. This is why radical localism and direct democracy are so vital if we are to do more than replace ministerial decrees issued by Labour politicians, with ones issued by ourselves.
Posted on 25 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why doesn't our Parliament do that?
Why doesn’t our UK Parliament take Gordon Brown to task quite the way that Daniel Hannan did in the Europarliament? Because it can’t.
In Westminster we’re prevented from making the kind of short, pithy speeches that hold squirming ministers directly to account by something called "tradition". Procedures for debates in SW1 make it very difficult to actually say what needs to be said. The closest you can get is a question. If you're lucky.
Indeed, most debates are reduced to bogus, formulaic ritual. The order of speaking often irons out spontaneity. Cabinet ministers invariably clear off to the tea rooms rather than listen to what anyone might want to say.
Other than the weekly Prime Ministers Questions, I'm trying to think when I've ever seen a Prime Minister speaking in the Commons in a way that would allow anyone to hold him to task the way Daniel did.
Like I've been saying, our Commons is monumentally useless at holding government to account. But don't worry, we've a wonderful chap as Speaker ....
Posted on 25 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Well said, Mervyn King
The Governor of the Bank of England has just said that the government can't spend its way out of this recession.
Indeed.
Debt is the principal economic problem we face - not low aggregate demand. Misguided Keynesianism, or attempts to “buy up” the debt, will end in unwanted IOU bonds and default disaster.
According to the BBC, "official figures show a surprise rise in consumer price inflation". No surprise to regular readers of this blog.
Posted on 24 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Daniel Hannan says to Gordo's face what the rest of us think
Posted on 24 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Planet Gordo
Half his front bench seem accused of making questionable claims on their second homes.
So, ever the point-scoring student politician, Gordo tries to concoct a bogus row with the Tories by trying to make the issue about MPs second jobs.
Gordo. This is about second home allowances, not second jobs. It’s about how your lot do their main jobs.
If Labour ministers lack judgement when it comes to claiming their expenses, how can they possibly have the independence of mind to deal with rising unemployment, or the credit crunch, or financial regulation?
That Gordo behaves this way, tells you all you need to know about his judgement ….
Posted on 24 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Weak Speaker, more expenses fiasco
The very same Labour MP who berated me for suggesting Michael Martin is not up to the job of Speaker, was yesterday bellyaching about MPs expenses.
"A media witch hunt" he whined. And besides, he said, it was "the expenses system", not his mates, who were at fault.
When will these SW1 people understand? If you insist on having a third rate Speaker, your House of Commons will keep lurching from one blunder to another.
An effective Speaker would have called time on this nonsense months ago. He'd have shown leadership and acted to pre-empt the enormous - and entirely predictable - damage caused by expenses and the FoI exemptions.
Without leadership from the chair, our legislature is rudderless and sinks into the mire.
Mr Martin - a kind and honest man - may be very good at being Mr Martin, but he's not much good at being Mr Speaker.
Posted on 24 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Westminster isn't working - how much more proof do we need?
"I complied with the rules" whines the minister. "So you can't blame me”.
They say this when their:
·
expense allowance claims look dodgy
·
financial regulation system tanks the banks
·
SATs tests end in classroom chaos
·
boastfully low interest rates lead to asset boom, people bust
·
quangos lose databases with our personal details
·
incompetence means our armed forces lack the right kit
And after every fiasco, cock-up or blunder, they always end up blaming “the rules”.
“It’s the rules fault” they blather “They need tightening up”.
Yet these are the people supposed to be making the rules. If they need outside compliance and rules to tell them what to do, no wonder the country’s in such a mess.
Posted on 23 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Are Police Authorities indefensible?
Police Authorities are desperate to stop the momentum building for directly elected police authorities. These turkeys won’t vote for Christmas – and they don’t want the rest of us to have a vote at all.
In the latest issue of Police Professional, Fraser Sampson, chief executive designate for West Yorkshire Police Authority, sets out the case against democratically accountable policing as follows:
Police authorities, he writes, "set policing plans and strategies ... they conduct research about local priorities ... they provide governance
". Indeed, they do. But without the direct democratic input of local people, they don’t always do a very good job of it.
He proceeds; "I would be surprised if many police officers, let alone the public, could tell you what their police authority does, ever mind who they were".
Yep. That’s what those of us who want directly elected police chiefs keep saying.
The real reason for all this “democracy control” malarkey, he seems to be saying, is that people lack confidence in local policing due to having the wrong "perception" about crime. Set people right over their "perception" issues and there’ll be no need for democratic accountability.
Marxists used to make a similar point about people with a “false conscience”.
Besides, he argues, why pick on police authorities, other branches of the criminal justice system are even worse.
I agree. So after we’ve made policing democratically accountable, we’ll need to extend local accountability to cover public prosecution and offender management, too.
But direct elections to choose a police commissioner would be taken-over by "single issue" groups.
You mean like those "single issue" folk demanding a cut in crime?
And directly elected police chiefs would mean less "diversity".
Nonsense. Allowing us to choose our police commissioners for ourselves may well mean an end to the patronising tokenism rife amongst criminal justice quangocrats. But it would mean much more genuinely representative attitudes to fighting crime. Ask a New Yorker.
And anyhow, directly elected police commissioners would "politicise policing".
Unlike Sir Ian Blair or Bob Quick, you mean?
Except in North Korea and Zimbabwe, how a society is policed is an inherently political question. The question is, should we, the people, be able to have a direct say over how we're policed or not? Mr Sampson appears to think not.
And voter apathy means elections wouldn’t work.
Apathy? I call it a simmering anger, Mr Sampson. Folk will turn up a vote in droves if their vote meant something. Under the status quo, it makes zero difference to local policing. Let them elect a Rudy Giuliani in every county and town, and that’ll change.
Mr Sampson’s article is brilliant because of what it so comprehensively fails to do. Given several hundred words to defend quango policing, he merely convinces me that the status quo is utterly indefensible.
Posted on 23 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
This is why illegal immigration is out of control
In the House of Commons I've just asked the Home Office minister two questions about illegal immigration;
a) "How many illegal immigrants are resident in the UK?"
The minister says he doesn't know...
b) "Ministers will recall that thousands of illegal migrants have been found to work in the security industry. Last month, it was revealled a mere 35 had been removed. Would the minister please tell the House how many more have since been removed?"
Minister says he doesn't know...
There you have it. This government has failed to control illegal immigration - and does not even know the scale of the problem.
Posted on 23 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Scrap Human Rights laws - don't extend them
The government wants to extend Human Rights to cover economic and public service entitlements. This is despite the already dreadful consequences of leaving it to unelected judges to preside over immigration policy, asylum and much else.
Do ministers really believe this is what the people want? In that fantasy world Labour MPs have retreated into, do they imagine public protests demanding "more power to unelected judges"?
Anyone who favours more Human Rights law is either;
a) a Human Rights lawyer
b) on the public payroll, or
c) has misplaced faith in the ability of government fiat to fix things.
Making laws that decree things should be a certain way simply doesn’t always make them so. As King Canute deliberately set out to show his sycophantic courtiers, there’s a limit to what even a king can command.
The tragedy of this administration is that it can’t get government fiat to do even simple things. Yet it concocts ever more elaborate schemes using government statues and money.
The intelligent way of making public services more responsive to people’s needs would be to give people consumerist rights and freedoms; control over their child’s education budget, freedom to self-commission certain services, localised welfare benefits etc.
In other words, less government fiat, not more.
Posted on 23 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Still blogging, eh, Carswell?
Some MPs think that this blogging I do is all a bit of a fad. "Like that twitter or is it twister!".
So why do I do it? Well, last week I spoke from the floor of the House about a subject I care about passionately - the monumental uselessness of our "supine and spineless" Commons.
Add up the smattering of MPs in the chamber, plus those listening to the debate, and I'd be surprised if a dozen clocked what I had to say.
Last time I made the same point via this blog about our "supine and spineless" Commons, I had several thousand read the article, and many dozen websites link to it.
Still blogging? You bet.
Posted on 22 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
A state of failure
According to the Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie, prisons north of the border are "awash" with drugs. I imagine the situation is depressingly similar in many jails across the UK.
Many readers will shrug their shoulders, and think "where's the news in that?"
But it ought to shock us - if only because of what it says about the inability of the British state to get even the most basic things right.
Prisons are the one place in the country where the state has almost total power. Yet it's unable to prevent prisons from being "awash" with illegal drugs.
How often on Radio 4's Today programme do we hear vested interests urging that government power and money be used to do X, Y or Z? If the British state can't even keep illegal drugs out of its own prisons, what chance is there it'll be able to do all those other vastly more complex and difficult tasks being urged of it?
Posted on 22 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The mood in my constituency
Met Clacton businesses and delivered leaflets in the morning. Hosted a residents' tea in a village hall this afternoon.
Everywhere the anxiety, sprinkled with anger, is the same; Brown's blown our prosperity.
Most feel there'll be no quick fixes. But they want a government that'll stop wasting our money and start living within its means. Prudence? Gordo's legacy is to have robbed the term of meaning.
Posted on 21 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Our trains are @#)*#!
I made the mistake of turning up at a railway station today expecting to catch a train.
But, of course, our rail network is run by corporatism - that stupor-inducing mixture of government regulators and big business. So, my sixty mile trip involved two replacement buses, a pair of grubby trains and three long hours.
Half a century of state-controlled railways gives us 20 mph train travel. Quite something, when you look at it that way.
Ever noticed how the things that work best in Britain, don't involve big government? Imagine if government regulators ran itunes, or produced films, or ran our holidays?
"Sorry for the delay, but everyone's trying to download Kings of Leon this morning, sir". "Due to unexpected seasonal demand, there's a six week waiting list for spring breaks in Paris".
Imagine if we ran our garden centres, or the web, the way we run the trains?
"Due to adverse weather conditions, we've the wrong kind of leaf on the tomato plants". "You can write to the Essex internet-user forum, if you are not satisfied with the way your complaint about weekend restrictions on surfing has been handled".
Like with our railways, would we get accustomed to the endless excuses? Or would we see that things don't need to be run that way?
Posted on 21 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Low interest rates won't work
Japan
's economy is due to fall a staggering 6% this year. Is this despite, or because of, ultra low interest rates and massive state expenditure? They've had both for the past decade, and neither has worked.
Orthodoxy says lower rates are good in a downturn; Ease up the money supply and stimulate aggregate demand. What if conventional thinking is wrong?
What if new instruments of liquidity make the tool of rate cuts redundant? What if this isn't primarily about aggregate demand?
Perhaps there's only two ways out of a post-asset bubble, debt crisis; higher inflation or interest rates. I know which I'd dislike more.
Posted on 21 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Cameron's plan
I recommend you read David Cameron's article in the Spectator this weekend. He writes of "a massive transfer of power from central government and its agencies to individuals and local communities ... we want to give folks power over their lives." He continues, we will "transfer power from the political elite at the centre to people and communities across the country".
Yep. If you've read either The Plan or Direct Democracy; an agenda for a new model party, it'll sound encouragingly familiar.
Posted on 20 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Europe's leaders still in denial
The EU is asking the G20 to increase the amount of money given to the IMF. Presumably so that they can borrow from it?
This urge to increase debt is yet further proof of quite how dreadful and appalling the leadership of Western Europe is in this crisis. EU governments ought to be spending and borrowing less, and making it clear that we need to live within our means.
Instead, they expend every effort to try to draw other G20 nations into Western Europe’s pyramid scheme of debt.
Austria - and perhaps others who gave away all their savings to eastern Europe - is about to fold financially. And borrowing off Japan or Brazil ain't going to solve the problem …
Posted on 20 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Is there anti-Israeli prejudice in Britain?
I hosted a lunch for graduate trainees with the Israeli foreign office this week. They were a very interesting and engaging group. Asked, I summed up what I think are the sources of anti-Israeli sentiment within Britain that need to be overcome:
1. Memories of empire: Israel was formed, to some extent, in rebellion against British rule in Palestine. Painful memories of that era still rankle with a small number of people of a certain generation. That said, one might point out that much of the world, including Ireland, India and the United States also struggled for their independence from Britain. There's more to it than that.
2. Cultural relativism: The British left subscribes to the dogma of cultural relativism, which has it that all cultures are equal. Israel’s relative success repudiates the notion of cultural relativism. With common law, property rights, liberalism and democracy, in the space of a single generation, a new state has turned desert into fertile land. Within two generations, hi tech parks have sprung up in downtown Tel Aviv, as in California or Australia.
To avoid having to draw the obvious conclusions, and ditch cultural relativism, the British left has had to invent the notion that Israel is somehow a wicked, exploitative, Western industrial power. It’s pure Rousseau, of course - but it’s a powerful driver of the hostility to Israel amongst the Guardianistas.
3. Anti-nation: Israel is a Jewish state. For 2,000 years, the Jewish people said “Next year in Jerusalem”. And in 1947, it came true. Israel embodies the very notion of national self-determination.
To our technocratic, post-nationalist British left, with its faith in supranational institutions, Israel is an anathema precisely because she represents the triumph of the national ideal. Notice any correlation between anti-Israeli sentiment and support for the UN / EU / ICC?
The BBC, our universities and the Foreign Office are often hostile to Israel not because of they’ve a romantic reading of TE Lawrence. Rather it’s because they subscribe to the post-nationalist conceits that are common place amongst the British elite.
And what of political Islamism, one of my guests asked? Isn't that a factor, too? Of course it is, and a very dangerous factor. But political Islamism isn't running Broadcasting house or King Charles Street.
We need to address these other sources of hostility, which make some in Europe disproportionately critical of a fellow liberal democracy, precisely so we can also deal with any more virulent forms of hostility towards Israel.
No nation is perfect and all governments can - and should be - criticised. However, these factors, I believe explain why criticism of Israel is often so shrill and fierce.
Posted on 20 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Edmund Conway's "If only ..." advice
Yet another bit of "If only ..." advice for the Conservatives.
Edmund Conway writing in today's Telegraph says "The Conservatives should also set a specific target to which they will reduce the size of the public burden and the tax burden". Erm. Yes, Edmund. But why do you suppose that not a single government has managed to achieve that in the past two generations?
Using executive fiat to control the amount that the executive spends doesn't work. No matter who's the minister, the executive doesn't do executive restraint - fact.
The cost of government has ballooned because there's no longer any effective restraint over how the executive spends our money.
Estimates debates in the Commons are an exercise in rubber stamping. Budget Day is reduced to poor theatre. Instead, the myriad of quangos don't have anyone properly accountable to taxpayers overseeing how they spend our money. The result is
massive waste, project delays - and the ever rising cost of government.
If we're serious about curtailing the fiscal (and other) excesses of the executive, we need to allow the legislature - not a panel of technocrats - to rein them in. Were technocratic oversight of quango spending the solution, Italy would never have had a budget deficit, and the our own National Audit Office would have curbed government excess.
Why not require each of the 800+ quangos to submit an annual budget to the relevant select committee of the Commons for annual approval? Don’t stop at quangos, why not require each department to have its annual budget submitted for such approval?
No approval, no money. Simple. It’d focus a few minds.
It'd also give them something meaningful to do in SW1 - and it'd mean many fewer botched contracts and wasted money.
Posted on 19 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Danny Finkelstein gets it
Danny Finkelstein has read Chris Andersen’s Long Tail – and sees the implications for politics. A great article, Danny. Well done.
Posted on 19 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
55% support leaving the EU - apparently
Posted on 19 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
It's about to get really grim ...
On Monday, I pushed the Employment Minister about rapidly rising unemployment in my constituency. Today, we learn that nationwide unemployment is now over 2 million.
Bad? When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
The money's about to run out. Here's a graph showing our net debt as a percentage GDP between 1997 and now (not counting the cost of the bank bailouts). This could be ruinous.
When Brown boasts of all that he's spending to tackle the problem, remember he needs to borrow to do so. What's the chance that at some point people are no longer prepared to keep accepting his IOU bonds? What then?
Posted on 18 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Caving in to Twitter
I've given in. My resolution crumbled. This afternoon, under pressure from a constituent, I've joined twitter. You can follow me at DouglasCarswell
But I promise that I shall only use it very sparingly - to update folk about what's on this blog. And other such important stuff like that.
Posted on 18 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Technocrat in call for more regulation - shock
Adair (Lord) Turner, head honcho at the Financial Services Authority, delivers his report on banking regulation today.
He calls for a new pan-European FSA to monitor and regulate banks. Seeing as how our national FSA failed to do the job, why does he think having an even bigger, more remote and less accountable regulator might do a better job?
Turner calls for requirements for banks to lend more responsibly. You mean the way that Merrill Lynch did, and for whom a certain someone previously worked, before Merrill ended up having to write-off $40 billion bad debt?
Lord Turner, I'm told, would like it if banks had more in the way of savings. You mean the way he recommended we all build up our savings when on the Pensions Commission?
Anrew Lilico's analysis
is vastly better than anything Turner has produced.
Posted on 18 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The danger of "If only ..." Toryism
"If only we had New York-style policing" they say. "If only we had proper history taught in schools". "If only we had lower taxes ... synthetic phonics ... school discipline ... welfare that encouraged people to work". If only ad nauseam.
To a certain kind of Tory, the answers are pretty simple. All we need to do is seize the levers of power from Mr Brown - and impose the solutions. Col Blimp thought much the same.
Alas, it's not quite that simple. Executive fiat alone cannot achieve for Conservatives the outcomes that they rightly desire. No minister, no matter how Tory nor how wise, can reach his hand into every classroom, or hospital, or police station in the land - and ensure the outcomes we seek. Indeed, if Blair and Brown have anything to teach us, it is surely that executive fiat, with all its targets and micromanagement, has its limits as a tool for change.
Rather than shouting "lower taxes", wiser Conservatives need to ask "why it is taxes have increased, no matter who has been in government?" Instead of chanting "Wisconsin welfare" or "New York policing" as mantras, we should ask why it is that Wisconsin or New York were able to formulate successful policies that have since been emulated throughout the world.
Taxes rise no matter who forms the executive because the executive is no longer held accountable by the legislature. If you want to cut the tax bill, reform Parliament to make those ministers and quangos who spend our money accountable to the rest of us.
Policing and criminal justice lack the tough edge they have in New York because those who run them here are not accountable to us the way they are to New Yorkers. If you want what they have in New York, don't ape the police tactics in Brooklyn. Give us the same level of local democratic control.
Wisconsin
has found ways to help welfare dependents back into work precisely because Washington politicians passed accountability for tackling the problem over to each US state. If you want our benefit system to do likewise, don't import Wisconsin. Give each county in England the same freedoms US state have.
What's the key word? Accountability.
Localism and direct democracy are vital to the new Conservatives because they are the two means of ensuring that the state is made accountable. The only people who think accountability through Ministers to Parliament still works are in SW1. Tories who still don't get localism and direct democracy retain a misplaced faith in the ability of big central government to deliver change.
It took a painfully long time for 1970s Tories to grasp that the way to a more effective economy was not through ministerial fiat. Indeed, it was by not trying to run the economy from Whitehall in the first place. Conservatives today need to understand that the outcomes we wish for from our public services cannot be delivered from Whitehall either.
Posted on 18 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Tom Harris' blog
Since he’s an independent-minded member of our legislature, well capable of thinking for himself, I've added a favourites link to Tom Harris MP's blog site on the right. Do read it ->
Posted on 17 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Is the NHS properly accountable?
Treatment at StaffordHospital was apparently so bad that 400 people died who might not had things been run properly.
If that wasn't shocking enough, it took a quango - the Healthcare Commission – seven years to reveal the awful failings.
Eventually, in May 2008, an inquiry began after lots of local complaints. Now - almost a year on - the quango has pronounced on the failure. Almost a decade after the problems started to arise, the minister in London has begun an inquiry. Thus do the wheels of the state grind into action….
But hang on? Given the extraordinary failings, why did it take so long to do something about them?
The Commission's report found "low staffing levels, inadequate nursing, lack of equipment, lack of leadership, poor training and ineffective systems". Worse, the Healthcare Commission discovered that unqualified receptionists carried out initial checks on patients arriving at the accident and emergency department. Heart monitors were turned off in the emergency assessment unit because nurses did not know how to use them. Patients were "dumped" into a ward near A&E without nursing care so the four-hour A&E waiting time could be met.
How come it takes years, and a remote quango, to recognise such elementary failings? Where else, where a big quango hasn't happened to have spent months investigating, might similar things be going wrong?
We were told that foundation hospitals would be made properly accountable. Where's the evidence that corporatist accountability works?
Posted on 17 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Daniel Hannan and the BBC license fee
One of the beauties of blogging is that when one is feeling lazy one can simply link readers to someone else's hardwork and thoughtful insights.
Given how Daniel Hannan has been nicking all my ideas for years, I've no guilt in referring readers to his excellent item on the BBC license fee. It's spot on, and all his own work, too.
Posted on 17 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why we need to make the Foreign Office properly democratically accountable
Here's why.
(Hat tip: Paul Waugh)
Our man in North Korea does a pretty good job of conferring legitimacy on a tyrannical regime. Only a technocrat who’d become utterly detached from the people he’s supposed to serve could write such apologist dross.
Perhaps its time to introduce public confirmation hearings to ratify the next diplomatic appointment to
Pyongyang?
Posted on 16 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Keith Vaz needs to quit
Press reports tell us that Keith Vaz MP signed a letter "in his capacity chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee" to a High Court judge to "try to halt a case in which a friend stood to lose £400,000".
Listen to that again. A politician is alleged to have tried to put pressure on a judge to stop the case against his mate. In Britain, not Zimbabwe. In this century, not the 17th.
If these press reports are true, Vaz must quit as chairman of the Commons select committee. His position is simply not tenable, and the longer he stays, the more he brings the entire farcical Commons into yet further disrepute.
It is bad enough that a Member of Parliament should seek to influence a judge in such a way. To do so as chairman of the Home Affairs select committee would be appalling. To not be held to account for it by the rest of the House is inexcusable.
Vaz, according to press reports, "intervened on behalf of a Shahrokh Mireskandari".
Some people have suggested that Vaz's conduct be reported to an independent panel to review, and decide if he should continue.
I agree. But that panel should be the House of Commons, not the Parliamentary quango for standards. Indeed, the quangocrats won’t act.
Vaz - like most select committee chairmen - got the job because the executive (party whips) decided to make him chairman. Had there been a free and fair ballot, beyond the ability of the whips to control, I do not believe he would have ever been made chairman of the Home Affairs committee. Indeed, I doubt he'd have made it on to the Commons catering sub-committee for sandwiches.
There needs to be a formal motion, put to the Commons, to debate the conduct of this Honourable member. If the Commons was remotely capable to doing its job, and if it was anything other than under the thumb of the executive, there would be a motion to censure the MP, and end the bogus pretence that he’s up to the job.
Posted on 16 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Barroso talks tosh
Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, has attacked the decision by the Conservatives to quit the EPP.
Good. When arch-federalists, like Barroso start criticising you, it probably means you've done the right thing.
Incidentally, why is Euro President Barroso giving press conferences in 10 Downing Street attacking a democratic party for making whatever alliances it pleases in the Euro parliament? What's it to do with him?
The sooner we break the political monopoly of the federalists, and start giving the people a coherent alternative to "more Europe", it's over for people like Barroso. Remember the "no" majorities against the Lisbon treaty? They haven't gone away, Jose.
Posted on 16 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Should we increase tax on booze?
If something is good for us (new jobs or homes), the justification for taxing it is to raise revenue. If bad for us (cigarettes or carbon emissions), the justification is to prevent us from having it. Rarely is the rationale for taxing things consistent. Tax turns out to be the answer, no matter what the question.
So, will a new punitive tax on cheap booze solve the problem of over consumption of alcohol at certain times, in some parts of Britain? Or will it simply mean perfectly decent people having to pay more to enjoy a glass or two?
It could, depending on the circumstances, do either. To make sure any new tax actually solves a real problem, rather than becoming yet another impost, why not ensure that any new levy on booze is only ever introduced as a local levy?
Instead of Whitehall technocrats deciding how much to tax booze down the Dog and Duck, why not let local district councils – who already issue licenses – set and collect any new levy?
Where binge drinking is a real problem, councils could act. But where it isn’t, they need not.
It could be that some local authorities, where binge drinking is a real problem, introduce a sensible charge that reduces the problem. It could even be that they also use the revenue raised to actually do specific things that local people want them to do.
In other areas, where binge drinking is not an issue, a council might impose the charge, but then fritter away the revenue raised along with all the other money they waste. Local people could then turf the scoundrels out of office at the following election.
The beauty of making any tax a local tax is that it’ll be possible to actually see if the new charge actually tackles the problem it was introduced to deal with, and the revenue actually delivers what was promised. Or, if it is just a scam to raise more money. If a new booze tax is set and collected centrally, we’ll simply never know.
If taxes were localised, there'd be less tax - and it'd pay for actually doing the things we wanted our tax to pay for.
Posted on 16 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Andrew Lilico's new book is required reading for everyone in SW1
At last! A proper economist (i.e. not some technocrat on the public payroll) has explained what caused the financial crisis, and what we need to do about it.
I hope that the BBC's Robert Peston reads it. Downing Street’s pet reporter might then show slightly more scepticism and start questioning the bogus consensus that says we can borrow our way out of this mess.
Maybe the technocrat Adair Turner (see below) might read it, too. Turner's calls for more regulation to ban "irresponsible" lending are an unfunny paraody of what happens in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The folk who messed up in the first place (Who oversaw Merrill Lynch's less-than-responsible lending strategy? Who oversaw a Pensions Commission that's failed all our pensioners?) are left urging the power of government to be used against those who never made the mistake that they did. And worst of all, they dare to claim the moral high ground as they do so.
Do
wnload a copy of Lilico's book here.
Posted on 16 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Rewarded for failure
On Wednesday, Adair (Lord) Turner is expected to recommend giving the quango over which he presides - the Financial Services Authority (FSA) - more powers. Perhaps even some kind of supranational FSA?
Is there not something perverse in handing more powers to the FSA when they so demonstrably failed to properly exercise the powers they already have?
The one absolute essential, when it comes to regulating banks, is to keep asking them this question; Are your liabilities manageable as a ratio of your deposits? Making sure that if deposits or loans dried up, banks could cope was what ensured that there was never a run on any British bank between 1866 and 2007.
Set up in 2000, did the FSA put this question to Northern Rock? Or HBOS? Or Lloyds, before okaying the takeover that sunk it? Doh.
The FSA failed comprehensively and utterly at performing its most basic task. Instead, in the manner of all quangos, it got sidetracked into doing things that suited it; like lobbying for changes to the national curriculum, or lecturing public officials about "sustainability", rather than making sure real banks were really sustainable.
No matter. Why let being consistently wrongheaded ever hold you back?
Look at Adair Turner's CV; As head of the CBI, he was a cheerleader for British membership of the Euro.
He was a Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe until 2006. A couple of years later Merrill had to write off $40 billion bad debt, before an emergency takeover.
He was also chair of the UK government's Pensions Commission, the quango supposed to make sure our pension system worked and that we had enough long-term savings.
Seems like Turner's just the kind of guy Gordon Brown would be taking advice from. The rest of us should think twice.
Posted on 15 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Spring in my Essex garden
At this time of year, there's no place I'd rather be than pottering about my Essex garden.
I've decided to live dangerously with some early sowing. Alongside the shallots that I put out in January, this week I sowed onions, beetroots and parsnip. Last year's experience of late snow and frost over Easter, make me cautious about starting with the beans or the peas quite yet. As for the potatoes and tomatoes, they'll have to wait a bit longer.
What's really exciting is the way that the half dozen rhubarb plants I put in last summer are already shooting up. And the buds on the fruit shrubs are starting to open, while the ones on my vines begin to stir.
Posted on 15 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Six things you won't hear Labour MPs say in Westminster
In the four years I’ve been an MP, here are half a dozen things that I’ve never overheard a Labour MP say in Westminster:
1. It’s true. There is something a bit odd about that Gordon Brown, isn’t there?
2. I’m so glad I had a career in business before I came here. It’s given me a broader outlook than had I only ever lived on the public payroll.
3. Great guy, that Ed Balls – a chap I can totally trust.
4. You know, maybe we do have too many careerist politicians doing a bad job representing the people?
5. Government can’t do everything, you know. Many of the best things about our country work really well without any involvement by officials at all.
6. Ooops. Sorry about the economy.
Posted on 14 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
PR posters do nothing to help enterprise
An angry constituent complains about the large black poster above, which has appeared at a nearby railway station. "Take it to the world" it instructs, and is apparently funded by the government, at great cost, so as to encourage us all to export.
My constituent is furious because as a small businessman, he'd love to be able to export. The trouble is that the tax bill he gets from the government each year - to pay for posters like this - makes him uncompetitive. So he can't.
Once more with this government, we see PR rather than action, as the vacuous triumphs over substance.
The real purpose of this PR campaign isn't to provide actual help for real businesses. If it was, ministers would simply write to them directly - they've got their names and addresses on the corporation tax registry.
Instead, this PR campaign is about convincing the rest of us that the government knows what it's doing to help the economy in the run up to an election.
It doesn't have a clue. Don't be taken in.
Posted on 14 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Radio 4
Just done The World Tonight on Radio 4. The panel discussion was about social mobility - or lack of under Labour. The entire premise of the debate was if we need higher taxes, more intervention in education and more government to ensure more social mobility.
I was rather outnumbered as I suggested that real meritocracy meant less government. Surely the most socially mobile policy of any post-war government was leting people buy their council houses? Let's give everybody those same consumerist choices over all public services.
Posted on 13 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Stern and climate change
Having not been in the climate change spot light for a while, up pops Lord Stern today to warn us that it's even worse than he told us first time.
Stern's 2006 report was full of dire warnings about eco-armageddon - unless, of course, we sacrificed money and power on the altar of Big Government to avert disaster.
Some people think the Stern Report wasn't entirely balanced in considering the evidence both for and against man-made climate change. No matter - it didn't stop the BBC reporting it as objective truth.
Frankly, I'd have a bit more confidence in Stern's weather forecasts if there was evidence he had form for accurate economic forecasting. He is after all an "expert" economist.
So , did he see the financial meltdown coming? If not, why should we take seriously his predictions of climate meltdown?
There's enormous debate within the scientific community about the extent to which there is man-made climate change. Public policy needs to take into account all the evidence - not just do what sounds good at climate conferences.
Throughout history, mankind has irrationally attributed his own actions to explain extreme natural phenomena. More rational explanations often exist. Eco-fundamentalist, repeating the conceit of many cults down the ages, presumes man and his actions lies at the centre of creation; "if it's getting colder/warmer/staying-the-same, it must be us!"
Just as we discovered that the sun does not in fact revolve around us - but we around it - so too we may discover that changes to the earth’s climate have very little to do with whichever species happen to be living on it at any one time. As medieval astronomers also found out, suggesting mankind isn't quite so central, is not always popular.
Having joined Friends of the Earth in my teens - long before I ever joined the Conservative party - I now fear that much of the eco-movement, with its increasingly wild and hysterical utterances, is actually undermining the case for real, effective conservation.
Posted on 13 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Youth Parliament in Westminster
The government today announces that it wants to let the UK Youth Parliament hold debates in the chamber of the House of Commons. I
t’s modern, innit?
I suppose letting the UK Youth Parliament sit in the Commons chamber means two sets of infantilised politicians using the chamber.
Posted on 12 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Free market zealot
I've just been called a "zealot for free markets" in a Commons debate by Ian Davidson, MP for Glasgow South West. I take that as a compliment.
It's true. I prefer living in a country where people decide things for themselves. The alternative is having politicians, like him and me, deciding for you.
Take your pick.
Posted on 12 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
A "chocolate tax"? April fool arrives early
As a small child, my chocolate consumption was strictly controlled. Given my love for the stuff, and my boy-ish self-control, it was a wise move on the part of those in authority.
Now, however, a doctor in Scotland wants government to treat us all like small children, and reduce the amount of chocolate we eat. Apparently, he says, we've been "
lulled into a false sense of security about chocolate". Cunning cocao, eh. His answer? A tax on chocolate.
Having government tax chocolate to prevent us eating it would reduce us all to the status of a small child. It would literally become a nanny state. Without the opportunity to decide for ourselves whether to behave responsibly or irresponsibly, we'd live in a state of perpetual childhood.
It would also mean that chocolate would become a luxury that only rich people could afford - as it once was. Surely it is deeply patronising to impose a policy that would mean some people wouldn't be allowed chocolate, but billionaire bankers would monopolise the Green & Blacks?
What about the poor farmers unable to sell their cocao crop? Perhaps an illegal trade in toblerones might spring up?
I've no problem whatever with a doctor saying such nonsense. One can find all sorts of doctors, with all sorts of kooky ideas on all manner of things. What's disturbing is that our state-funded broadcaster, the BBC, gives this nonsense attention.
If government does tax chocolate, I have every confidence that British chocolate lovers will respond the way Boston tea drinkers once did all those years ago.
Posted on 12 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Constituency newsletter
My Spring Newsletter is going out as I type this, and it can be viewed on-line here.
Posted on 12 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Right-read.com
Maurice Cousins has written a review of Christopher Hitchen's Blood, Class and Empire for my book review site, www.right-read.com
You can read it by either clicking on the link, or on the "My Book List" button on the right.
Posted on 12 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Young Briton Foundation
I spoke to the YBF rally in the House of Commons this afternoon. A really enthusiastic group of young people.
Well done to Donal Blaney - once again – for organising it. Donal shows that one man, with grit, determination and belief, can achieve an enormous amount in politics. Outspoken and passionate, he’s a driving force behind the transformation of conservatism in Britain into a broad, grass roots movement.
Posted on 11 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Conservatives to leave the EPP
Today, the Conservatives formally served notice of their intention to "leave the EPP and establish a new grouping in the European Parliament after the 2009 elections."
Three cheers! Rejoice! Bravo!
Why is this so important? It'll break the monopoly of the pro-Brussels, integrationist politicians. Once there's a coherent voice advocating the return of power back to the nation states, and the scaling down of the EU project, the federalists and technocrats and FCO diplomats who run the show know that it'll be game over for them - and their Euro scam.
Which is precisely why they'll still try every trick in the book to prevent it. Be warned - career diplomats and the sort of people who inhabit the Foreign Office will try all they can to stop this happening.
Incidentally, it's also why the Europhile, Guardianista Left is so anxious to prevent this development by trying to misrepresent it as something other than a perfectly reasonable and sensible realignment.
Posted on 11 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
House Magazine profile ....
... is now available to read on-line here. With all the things I had to say about Mr Speaker taken out.
Posted on 11 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Peter Oborne sees much of Westminster for what it is
Peter Oborne understands the failings of our political system better than most of the SW1 commentariat.
That makes it all the more flattering that he should have read my book The Plan, and quoted approving from it when giving the Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture.
Peter can't be dismissed as just another hack having a pop at politicians. He grasps that our essentially 19th century system of democracy - with its one party fiefdoms, all powerful whips, executive control over the Commons - needs to change. Until we make our politicians more directly democratically accountable - open primaries, scrap MPs perks, ballots free from whips control - Westminster will remain stuck in its self serving ways.
Posted on 11 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
This bail out isn't working
Looks like the £multi billion bank bail out hasn't worked. Despite what we were told, the banks still don’t seem to be lending to each other - or indeed anyone else.
How predictable. Once the banks were through lending out our tax money, and had to start lending their own, they stopped. I don't mean to swank, but without being Deputy Governor at the Bank of England, I said so at the time.
Yet still the clowns in charge blunder on. They still see this in terms of restoring easy credit - hence their ultra low interest rates and quantative easing.
But it was too much easy credit that got us into this mess. The markets called time on the sea of debt that followed.
Soon the markets will call time on these asinine attempts to return to the days of easy credit. There are only two ways out of a debt crisis. So brace yourself; the twins of high interest rates and inflation are coming.
Posted on 11 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why don't you twitter, Carswell? ...
... asks a colleague in Westminster. No, he wasn't refering to the way I delivered my latest speech, but about the new social networking craze.
Alas, I'm just not that interesting, I'm afraid. Spamming folk with details of my every going-on would bore them senseless. Some say this blog is bad enough.
Posted on 10 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Islamist group jeers Anglian soldiers
Have a look at this item.
Shocking.
Posted on 10 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Brown's public service reform gimmick is John Major all over again
Today, Gordo unveils plans to let us rate our local GP, council or police on-line.
Cut through the hype about making public services accountable for the age of the internet; this is John Major’s traffic cone hotline initiative – but on the web.
After decades of plotting for the top job, you'd think Gordo might have had a "Big Vision Thing" for when he finally got there. But it turns out that like John Major, his idea is really just the Citizen's Charter dot com.
This isn't the internet being harnesses to transform our lives. This isn't the revolution as described by Clay Shirky or Chris Andersen. This isn't goverrnment adapting to the web.
The internet is going to be revolutionary because it will mean that you can organise without organisations. Gordo's latest idea simply let you
complain to cyberspace.
If Brown was serious about using the internet to allow people control over public services, he's allow consumerist rights, and then let people take control for themselves.
He'd listen to Alan Milburn and allow every parent dissatisfied with the school choices they were offered last week an "education credit" worth the £7,000 his minister, Ed Balls, misspends on their account each year.
He'd give us directly elected police chiefs, and local control over local government finances.
But he doesn't. And he'll never be able to. The
one constant throughout Gordo's political career has been his faith in the ability of central government to better shape the world. No one in government who believes is ever going to get the internet - no matter how many government-funded websites they pay for.
Posted on 10 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Transport questions
I'm due to ask the Transport minister a question about high-speed trains in the Commons this afternoon. I said "high-speed" so that alas does not mean anything that ever comes out of Liverpool Street station.
Last week, it was revealed that trains into London now take longer than they did three decades ago. Sitting on delayed trains to and from Essex, I always suspected as much. For all the advances in technology, with big government and large corporations in charge, we go backwards.
With plenty of time on the trains to read Atlas Shrugged, I see this was yet another thing that Ayn Rand saw coming....
Posted on 10 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
My local council spent £137,000 making 30 of these holes in the pavement
Local folk in my constituency have just received their council tax bill for next year from Tendring district council. For the umpteenth year in a row, the district council has increased the council tax to … um … well, the maximum they think they can get away with, it seems.
With all that extra cash, can we expect an increase in services? Are they going to start emptying the bins more, or providing more services? Of course not.
So, what have they done with the extra cash?
One thing they’ve done is build a fountain for the centre of Clacton at a cost of £137,000. Great idea. Or rather, it’s supposed to be a fountain, but it doesn’t actually work. It's only ever worked for a few weeks.
The design means it picks up various dirt and bugs – I’d told. And no one thought to ask. So, to stop it becoming one big germ incubator, it’s had to be switched off until an expensive new purification system is added to it.
That means that for that £137,000, so far we’ve got 30 holes in the pavement to show for it all.
Posted on 9 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Parasite State
I'm speaking to a group of undergraduates at Oxford this week. My latest posting over on ConHome gives a clue as to my general theme.
Incidentally,
I’m halfway through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I deeply regret that it’s taken 37 years for me to get around to reading it.
But seeing as her novel is set in a world where the US economy is in nosedive, a credit crunch has forced car makers to shut, and the government tries to run everything, perhaps now is the time for us all to discover her.
Posted on 9 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
My friend, Mr Speaker
The Mail on Sunday
has picked up what I had to say in my earlier blog about my comments on the Speaker being censored. All very petty.
But if you're one of the SW1 people reading this, don't come crying to me next time a catastrophic lack of leadership from the Speaker means yet another round of the expenses saga. Or complain that we can't hold ministers to account.
You can't continue to back Michael Martin and then wonder why Parliament's going down the pan.
Posted on 8 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Sir Paul Judge, direct democracy and the internet
Sir Paul Judge is setting up a new "open source" political party
- which aims to make great use of the internet and direct democracy.
He seems to have grasped that the internet will remove barriers to entry in politics as surely as it has done already in business and commerce.
In order to retain market share, the big, established political parties are going to have to either adapt - or lose out.
Some of these changes involve using proper open primaries to decide who stands for public office, so everyone gets to decide who is their next MP. It'll mean encouraging more niche politics and less central control over "the message", and less powerful whipping. It's going to mean having flatter, more "open source", less hierarchical party machines.
It'll also mean standing on a robustly "anti-politics" platform - offering to clear up Westminster and ensure that those we elect are able to actually decide things.
Voters want a politics that is more distinctive, authentic, local and particular. They want politicians that are more directly democratically accountable. The internet means they can
.
Having understood this - and indeed written a book about it - I see that Sir Paul Judge is trying to set up the architecture to do precisely these things. Many of the ideas outlined in our paper Open Politics, which elaborated on this theme, seem to have been taken up by Sir Paul.
How I wish that Sir Paul and the Conservatives were working to bring these ideas to fruition together. Why aren't they?
Posted on 8 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
These "experts" are driving us to ruin
The clowns who run our country want you to think that their job is immensely complicated and technical - especially when it comes to finance and economics. That way, they avoid having to answer difficult questions from the rest of us.
Look at the fancy Financial Services Authority that Brown and his Treasury lackeys created. All that "tripartite" regulation, shrouded in rich jargon and technocratic expertise.
It
spawned an
entire industry of City compliance. But, at the same time, they failed to do the one thing that a financial regulator is supposed to always do; make sure that a bank's liabilities are manageable as a ratio of their deposits.
So long as banks ticked all the boxes on laundering money, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, blah, blah, they were able to do the one really irresponsible and unsustainable thing a bank can do - build up
liabilities that bear almost zero relation to deposits. Within a decade of the new system of regulation coming into operation, the cheap wholesale money dried up, and starting with Northern Rock, many banks were sunk.
Now those who created and managed that architecture of failed regulation, seek to repeat the same folly on a vastly grander scale. As with our banks, so too with our country's
public finances, we now reach the stage where our liabilities bear little relation to deposits (ie government income). When the equivalent of wholesale money – issuing bonds to borrow – dries up, we could find our entire country is sunk like the banks.
It’s no surprise they don’t want you to understand.
Posted on 7 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Doh! There goes the currency
The government’s decision to create an extra £150 billion
makes you, me and everyone in Britain an awful lot poorer. Whatever money, savings, assets or future income you had, it all just got smaller.
Quantative easing printing more money devalues our currency in every sense – higher prices and inflation, falling exchange rates, and a debauched faith in markets and enterprise.
Once again, we’re patronisingly informed by the BBC et al that this is the least bad option; we can’t afford not to, they say. As in the early 1970s, our political establishment spent years trying to fix the economy by prescribing counterproductive solutions. Then it was "the least bad option" to have a prices and incomes policy, national wage bargaining, state planning et al. All nonsense of course. Today, they lurch from one bogus remedy to another - yet manage to ignore the simple truth.
You can’t solve a problem caused by debt and too much cheap money by borrowing more and making more cheap money. You can’t solve a credit crisis by removing every possible incentive that there might be to save.
Why isn't any of this being said more loudly? Obviously you can't expect much original thinking or scepticism from the BBC. And in SW1, MPs seem to have spent more time bickering over their expenses than they have discussing plans for quantative easing. It's not only our currency that big government has debauched, but the idea that Parliament controls the money.
Posted on 6 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Miners' strike was no victory
It's 25 years since the miners' stike began. Those on the centre right will remember the miners' strike as the start of Thatcher's epic battle to take on and defeat the unions. Those on the left will see it as the beginning of the end for our coal industry.
I was rather wondering if it wasn't a desperately sad and inevitable consequence of the decision to steal nationalise the mines, and have government try to run them.
Coal had been mined for centuries. Yet in the 1940s, the state looted nationalised private concerns; for the common good, you understand. Health and safety. Safeguard jobs. Economies of scale. Blah. Blah.
All nonsense. Whatever the intention, within a couple of decades the industry was broke. Stripped of incentives, the industry came to depend on corporate government. A unionised work force clashed with a National Coal Board. Of course, it was going to end that way – bankers please note.
The irony is that there are right now absolutely vast amounts of coal still waiting to be mined. There's the means and the know-how to mine it all. And, it would seem, plenty of demand for energy.
Nationalising once private businesses meant that those individuals with every incentive to innovate and improve their businesses were replaced with bureaucrats. Strip away the incentives from society's great innovators, and it doesn't matter how much coal is under your feet, it'll stay there.
What's the bet that if we'd never nationalised the coal industry, there'd today be lots more mines making good use of all that coal that's still there?
The miner’s strike was no triumph or victory. It was a tragic consequence of big corporate government.
Posted on 5 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Our troops pay for chinook blunder - yet no one takes responsibility
The outrage is how no one takes responsibility. No "sorry". No P45. No recognition that it’s had serious consequences for our armed forces.
The Public Accounts Committee today produces a report on the procurement of eight Chinook helicopters - which began in 1995. £422 million and a decade and a half later, the Chinooks are still sitting in a hangar unused.
Our report suggests, diplomatically, that the price of this incompetence is being paid for by front line troops in Afghanistan who "would have had the additional helicopter capability available to them today if procurement decisions had been made more quickly".
And if MoD's utter stupidity hadn't caused them to make hopelessly inconsistent decisions. And if MoD hadn't requested multiple and complex tailor-made specifications to what was supposed to be an "off the peg" purchase. And if someone at MoD had thought to pick up the phone to Boeing and ask "Guys, how much do you think these modifications might cost, and when can they be done?"
What’s so shocking is not the utter incompetence. It's the absolute failure of anyone to be held properly accountable. Career-ending incompetence seems to have gone unpunished.
Reading the evidence given to the Committee by Sir Bill Jeffrey KCB, the real head of the MoD, and others, made me very angry.
But hey. If things at MoD don't work out, I'm sure that the senior Sir Humphrey Appleby-types at MoD could always try the revolving door and find something to do in the defence industry.
Posted on 5 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Russia: is she about to wobble?
Back in the days when oil sold for over $US 100 a barrel, fashionable opinion had it that Russian strength was a problem.
"See how she throws her weight about!" they cried as she beat up Georgia last August. "She's reawakening as a great power" we were told.
I was a little more sceptical in my blogging at the time
. In fact, I suggested that far from having us over a barrel - so to speak - oil-dependent Russia is actually a bit of a weakling.
I went further and suggested that it's Russian weakness, rather than strength, that'll be generating some pretty big headlines in the years ahead.
According to Mark Steyn, quoting the Finnish Defence Ministry, "At the beginning of the 1990s, there were 149 million people in Russia. By 2007 the figure was seven million less. The population is falling by around 400,000 per year."
Given that Moscow's budget - half of which was supposed to go on military hardware - was based on the assumption oil would be north of $US 80 per barrel, my guess is that Moscow's in big trouble.
Almost as much trouble as any Western nations who've been lending her money ...
Posted on 4 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Tom Harris MP - interesting guy
Read this. This is a Labour MP saying all this. Wow ....
Posted on 4 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Washington DC gripped by Gordo mania
Remember how Gordo lectures us, on every occasion possible, how this economic crisis was "made in America"? How it "started in America". And that it was somehow all the fault of those feckless Americans - i.e. not his prudent self?
Well, somehow I doubt he'll be taking that line when he addresses both Houses of Congress.
But then again, given his charm, grace and judgement, you never know ....
Posted on 4 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Looks like the EU might fall apart
Good
UPDATE:
"What do you mean, Carswell?" ask my readers. "What do you know that we don't?"
Just join the dots, guys ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4929362/Europe-sees-trouble-rising-in-the-East.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5828323.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/4934431/Its-the-Europhiles-versus-reality-and-reality-is-going-to-win.html
Posted on 4 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
House Magazine interview - some things they won't let you say
The House Magazine
this week (alas, not yet online) features a profile of me based on an interview I had with them last week.
Oddly, nowhere in the published article is there any mention given to the Speaker or my thoughts on him. Strange. I distinctly remember him featuring quite a lot in the interview.
I raised this in the politest possible way with Gisela Stuart, the MP in charge of these things - and incidentally one of the nicest and most respected Labour MPs in Westminster. To be clear, it was not a decision taken by the Speaker or one over which he apparently has any involvement.
I told Gisela I was disappointed that an interview which focuses to a large degree on my attitude towards politics and Westminster omits to mention a key point of view - namely that we need a proper Speaker.
If the Commons was strong and self-confident, there'd be no need to edit out the comments of one, minor little backbencher like me, in this way. It is precisely because the Emperor really does have no clothes - and because privately everyone knows it - that the little boy pointing out the fact must be told to be quiet.
As an MP, I constantly hear some MPs complaining about the fact that the Commons has got into a muddle over things like expenses, and SW1 is held in such low regard. Well, might it not have something to do with the leadership within our legislature? Do we not all pay the price for pretending that the Emperor is cut out for something, when he's not?
Posted on 3 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
FakeCharities.org
Ever listened to some "charity" lobby for more public money, or government action, and wondered who lies behind the organisation? Ever thought that some big "charities" might in fact be public funded lobby groups? Ever pondered why so many supposed "charities" often seem to be demanding the sort of things that Big Government wants us to do?
Over at FakeCharities.org, there's a wiki initiative to find out if some of these big, corporate charities are all that they seem.
I'm not in any position to take a view, but have a look for yourself.
Posted on 3 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Iain is right to ask
Iain Dale demands to know why I voted last night in the House of Commons to keep my home address secret.
I didn't. I want to ensure that my address details always appear on the ballot paper come election time.
Iain says that he was "astonished" by my decision to back Julian Lewis' amendment to the Political Parties and Elections Bill. He needn't be quite so surprised. Not when he knows what it was actually about.
It's my view that as a candidate for public office, my address should most certainly be on the ballot paper. I believe that it's right and proper that folk know where I live - and since when did we need to protect politicians from their own electorates?
My fear is that the Electoral Commission no longer believes that disclosure of address details is necessary. SW1 people seem to be manoeuvring to ensure they are insulated from proper scrutiny. My chief fear is of a blanket removal of the need for disclosure.
I backed Julian Lewis' amendment precisely because I wanted to guarantee that this will not happen. People like me should be able to have their full address details published on election documents.
Candidates who want to disclose their details, ought to be able to. Candidates who don't, need not. And voters should be able to draw their own conclusions.
Voters, perhaps weary of big, corporate party politics, are increasingly discerning. They seek out the particular, the local and the distinctive. Allowing individual candidates to decide for themselves if they are prepared to let people know where they live, will no doubt be used by some voters to help them reach a view about certain candidates.
Surely that is no bad thing? Last night’s decision will allow candidates for public office to make a choice. It will send a powerful signal to voters about each candidates perception of their role as a representative of the people. A bit of competition between candidates in a General Election to be open and transparent? Who knows, it could be the start of something even more substantial.
Posted on 3 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Almost 10,000 people read this blog last month
My blog was read by 9,788 unique individual users in February. My goal is eventually to have more people read my blog on-line each week than read the Spectator magazine - my definition of success.
I've still a long way to go - but I only started eight months and 506 blog postings ago!
Thanks for reading.
Posted on 2 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell MP
What Harriet says rarely ever happens ...
Sir Fred Goodwin won't get his pension payout, says Harriet Harman.
And education standards will rise. And immigration will be controlled. And we'll "get tough" on criminals. And older folk will get the care they deserve. And our freedoms and liberties will be safeguarded. And taxes won’t rise under Labour. And blah blah blah.
The past ten years of this phoney, bogus government shows a massive difference between what ministers say, and what actually happens. Do they take us for fools?
Posted on 2 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Throwing more money at defence - without reform - will solve nothing
A decade ago, any debate about the NHS or education used to be dominated by those shouting "spend more!” And so we did.
We hosed billions. Yet today, there’s shockingly little to show for it.
Even Blairite ministers (although not the Brownite ones) now realise it’s not just how much money you spend – but how effectively to spend it, that counts.
I fear that those on the centre right may make precisely the same error in relation to defence, that those on the left made over public services. And what a long and expensive lesson it could be.
Today's report by the UK National Defence Association on what our armed forces need sounds like a shopping-list – not a rational assessment of what’s gone wrong and how to put it right. Spending an extra £15 billion on defence equipment, without reform, is no more going to give us the armed forces we need than Gordo’s extra billions on education or health have given us the schools and NHS we need.
At present, the money we do spend on defence is spent in the interests of a few contractors. This explains why money always seems to go on more expensive kit, rather than soldiers (note how we’re protectionist when buying helicopters, but not when recruiting soldiers cheaply from overseas.)
Protectionist procurement explains why kit is expensive and late. In any market, if you restrict the range of suppliers, the seller sets the terms of trade.
Defence equipment inflation is already high. A basic grasp of economics should tell us that throwing even more money after the same finite supply of kit will simply raise the prices the suppliers charge.
Any serious critique of defence policy needs to address these issues, rather than simply suggest we spend more money. More money is to be welcomed. But we need to reform how we spend it by scrapping the Defence Industrial Strategy, and allow off-the-shelf procurement to become the default.
As a senior brigadier told me, our armed forces now use a record number of Urgent Operational Requirements to buy their kit. Why? Well, he explained, buying stuff that way is exempt from protectionist restrictions. It allows them to buy what they want, quickly. That should teach us something.
Posted on 2 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Forget Sir Fred
Daniel Hannan has an interesting take on Fred Goodwin and his pension pot here. Forget Sir Fred - it's the public sector pensions we need to worry about.
Posted on 1 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Liberal Judaism
I hosted the Liberal Judaism Council of Patrons dinner last night. A really, thoroughly enjoyable evening!
Posted on 1 March 2009 by Douglas Carswell