Gordo must go: I've signed the Downing Street petition
Remember how there was a democratic election in which Gordo stood to be our Prime Minister? Me neither.
Gordon Brown is not merely dreadful. His dreadfulness has never been sanctioned by a democratically legitimising vote.
The stark fact is that Gordon Brown has never won a seriously contested democratic election in his life*.
And you know what? It's really starting to show.
Relying on boot-boys can only get you so far. Indeed, your aggressive-looking boot-boys standing menacingly at the entrance to the Aye lobby this afternoon were ignored, weren't they, Gordon? Watching, I thought there could be no better visible demonstration of Brown's waning authority than the sight of rebel Labour MPs marching contemptuously past. After Smeargate, I sense that fear is giving way to loathing.
Enough is enough. Gordon Brown should quit as PM - and he should take his nasty little cabal of boot-boys with him.
If you share my view, sign the petition on his own website here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/
* - I don't think being selected Labour candidate for the Fiefdom of Fife counts as a seriously contested democratic election.
Posted on 29 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
New Afghanistan strategy?
Gordon Brown will apparently unveil our new Afghanistan strategy today. Six (or is it now seven?) years after our engagement there began. Good. We need a new plan because the old one isn't working.
If General Petraeus is as smart in adapting strategy and tactics in Helmand as he was in Iraq, we can prevail.
Hopefully whatever new plan Brown unveils, it will not involve trying to destroy the local farmers’ cash crop. I think it's fair to say that trashing small farmers crops, in any country or any conflict, is not a good way to their "win hearts and minds".
Posted on 29 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Harriet Harman's Equalities Bill - economically illiterate, morally bankrupt
It’s the arrogance I find so shocking.
Unveiling her new Equalities Bill
, Harriet Harman tells us “This does not hold business back, this helps business." Miss Harman and her colleagues preside over one public policy fiasco after another. They couldn’t run a bath, let alone a business. For a decade, they’ve looted billions from the productive sector of our economy. They’ve squandered other people’s millions.
Yet they now presume to tell those who actually create Britain’s wealth how to do business.
How can anyone really think that Miss Harman knows what’s best for business?
The only companies that might think so will be those large fat cat corporations who already get rich from the £175 billion public procurement budget. Some of them will no doubt be hoping that any new legal equality requirements when bidding for public contracts will disadvantage their more nimble competitors.
This law will do nothing to ensure taxpayers get better value for money. The tick box “equality audits” it will impose won’t do much for employees’ equality of opportunity. Yet for smaller employers it’ll actively diminish their chances of competing against bigger, established firms.
The Harman Bill wants to allow employers to give preference to certain categories of people over others, on the basis of race and gender. Public bodies will be legally obliged to treat people differently, depending on their background. Isn’t that what
Hendrik Verwoerd did in South Africa?
In what sense can such a law ever be about equality?
There’s one area of life in modern Britain that urgently needs action to promote
competitiveness and meritocracy – and that’s our political system.
We need real competition to decide who the MP is for one party fiefdoms like Camberwell and Peckham. That means an end to
closed shop selection contests and the establishment of multi member constituencies. Until then, our out of touch law-makers will keep force feeding us this sort of economically illiterate and morally offensive nonsense.
Posted on 28 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Hannan strikes again
Hattip: ToryBear.com
Posted on 27 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Nothing to hide, but much to fear
"If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear", they tell us. Allowing state officials to track all e-mails and internet use is vital in the fight against terror, they say.
Utter nonsense.
Today’s government initiative to let the state spy on you and your computer
once again puts the onus on citizens to explain themselves to the state. And her army of Aldridge Pryor's.
I'd be willing to
go along with all of that if I knew that the citizens required to do the explaining were indeed terrorists intent on mass murder. Or even merely dangerous people. But, overwhelmingly, they won’t be.
"Tackling terror" was the justification for the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, remember. And precisely how many jihadis have been brought to account as a result? Nothing like as many as the number of people prosecuted for dog fouling.
We keep being told state officials need “new powers to fight terror”. Such arguments would be a lot more compelling if the state was capable of using the powers it already has effectively. Over things as basic as determining who can actually come into our country in the first place.
Until the state has sorted out basic things, like how many student visas and British passports it's been handing out and to whom, we should treat demands to give it yet more power and responsibility with deep suspicion.
Posted on 27 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Defence spending; how to get more for less?
Eighteen years elapsed between the last cavalry charge at Omdurman and the appearance of the first tank in Flanders.
It’s now 19 years since the collapse of the Berlin wall. But we have proved less able to adapt our military capability to changed circumstances and new technology than we were a century ago.
Too much of what we spend on defence goes on Cold War equipment (think Eurofighter). Too much is spent buying what it suits powerful defence contractors to supply - despite there being better and less expensive alternatives (think
A400M or Future Lynx or FSTA).
While the good times rolled, and Treasury coffers were awash with credit-era cash, those who suggested that the taxpayer was being ripped off and our armed forces let down, could easily be out lobbied by the big contractors. (And, boy, is there some serious money and effort put into lobbying).
But no amount of lobbying can erase reality. Protectionist defence procurement is bad at converting taxes into the kit that our armed forces need, when they need it. Austerity is going to expose that fact ruthlessly.
Far from making Britain more “sovereign”, it turns out that protectionist supply chains actually make us more dependent on the say-so of more foreign governments than if we bought kit “off the shelf” from willing sellers. Rather than secure British jobs, protectionism ultimately undermines them by creating incentives against suppliers from providing products that are properly competative.
More for less in defence means "good bye" to the Defence Industrial Strategy and to protectionist procurement.
Posted on 27 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Downing Street orders new printers ....
Some joker sent me this.
It's not funny. Nor very grown-up. And I don't approve.
Posted on 26 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
How to cut government spending? Suggestion #2
Overhaul the way we award big public procurement contracts.
Each year, we hand out £ billions to large corporate contractors. You don't need to be a member of the Public Accounts Committee like me to know that we often pay too much for too little in return. Public procurement today often suits corporate cartels, rather than the public.
But why?
It's not simply that government is never as careful with your money as you would be. For much of the public
procurement process there are what economists call hidden "barriers to entry". These restrict the range of suppliers able to pitch for the work.
Restrict the range of suppliers, and the supplier sets the terms of trade. Oink. Oink.
Put it another way; Imagine there's only one chain of restaurants in the whole of London, or only one supermarket chain in your county. You'd face queues, fewer products and higher costs. That's a pretty neat summary of what happens with much public procurement today. Remember all those big IT contracts? Those defence contracts that came in late and over budget? Exactly.
Uncompetitive procurement explains many of the delays, inefficiencies and cost overruns - and ultimately why we pay such high taxes for so little in return.
For all the talk about competitive tender, it's really a bit of a fiction because in the fine print there sit innocent-sounding restrictive clause that suits the successful bidder by excluding would-be rivals (Just read the Defence Industrial Strategy, or the details about how Building Schools for the Future work is doled out). Indeed, it's even been know for some big contractors to employ lobbyists to ensure that the rules suit them and not their competitors.
Breaking cartel procurement policies - for defence, education services, PFI work, drug companies and much else besides - would give us vastly better value for money
.
Posted on 26 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
How to cut government spending?
Here's a simple idea. Require every Whitehall department - and each associated quango - to have its budget annually ratified by the relevant House of Commons select committee. No approval, no money.
"You mean having those we elect, in the legislature, control government spending, like they do in other countries, and used to do here? You mean forcing officials to justify where the money goes?". Yes.
At present, forget all the theory about Parliament controlling the money; it's Whitehall officials that decide. Having the executive decide how much money the executive spends means they spend more money.
It might also give our MPs something useful to do.
Posted on 25 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Change in Westminster means more than cleaning up expenses
MPs can't be trusted to make the rules on expenses, says Parliamentary Commissioner, Sir Christopher Kelly.
Seeing as the primary purpose of elected law-makers is to make rules, this is deeply worrying. If Sir Christopher is right, what rules can we trust MPs to make? Expenditure rules and budgets? The law?
Now, at last, perhaps we're starting to see how it is that 80% of our laws now come from Brussels; why control over public services had been handed over to quangos; why MPs merely rubber stamp expenditure; why "top politicians" are often just self-publicising cheerleaders for the executive.
With most MPs coming from safe seats, many have come to see supporting some executive or other, as their primary purpose. Rather than actually hold it to account.
Only by making every MP answer directly to their local voters, as though each was from a highly marginal seat, will we see change.
If we had either open primary selection to let everyone decide who their next MP is, or multi member constituencies, there'd be fierce political competition - and a wake up call in SW1.
So much in fact, we'd not need Sir Christopher Kelly to decide the rules on expenses. Or the EU to decide how our country is run. Or human right judges to decide immigration policy. Or unelected officials to decide on expenditure. Or quangos to run our public services.
Those we vote for might actually do that job instead.
Posted on 24 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Media moochers and the state-run BBC
Doesn't this sound like a pretty good description of the presenters on the BBC's Today programme or on Newsnight?
"He was labouring to sound cynical, skeptical, superior and hysterical together, to sound like a man who sneers at the vanity of all human beliefs and thereby demands an instantaneous belief from his listeners".
It's Ayn Rand's description of a broadcaster called Peston Humphreys Paxman Bertram Scudder, which I read in Atlas Shrugged today.
I'm only as far as page 850, but it seems as if the ability to communicate directly with everyone, without having to go through any media elite, is turning out to be key to Rand's plot. And vital in order to stand any chance of taking the looters and the moochers to task.
I think Rand would have really, really approved of the internet and blogging. For the same reasons that many media moochers are starting to hate it.
Posted on 23 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ministers and officials wreck exam system
While attention in Westminster was on the budget yesterday, Sir Ken Boston, former head of the QCA exam quango, gave a pretty shocking account of his dealing with ministers Ed Balls and Jim Knight.
According to Sir Ken, education ministers presented evidence to an inquiry about last summer's SATS test fiasco that was a "fiction". There's another word for fiction that starts with an "L".
It looks very much as if ministers presented a cock and bull story to try to finger officials at the QCA for what went wrong. That makes a change from their earlier efforts to try to put the blame on the contractor, ETS. (Interestingly, ETS manages to work with dozens of governments all around the world. That they felt obliged to walk away from dealing with our own perhaps says more about our government than it could possible tell us about ETS).
Once again, ministers blame quangocrats. Quangocrats blame ministers. No one takes responsibility. No one is held to account.
It's not only fictitious ministers we need to throw out. We have to scrap the notion that the state should be running exam systems.
Government quangos have proved as inept at managing our exam system as they have been at regulating banks. Our exam system is best run by civic institutions - universities, professional bodies, contractors and schools themselves.
Posted on 23 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Market verdict on the budget
This is a graph showing the value of our currency against the US$ today.
Can you guess when Alistair Darling started to give his budget speech?
UPDATE: BBC reporter and government apologist, Robert Peston, loyally bigs up the help that the budget will give to businesses. His blog reads like Downing Street PR.
Yet he also writes "the cost of bailing out the banking system appears to have been greater than expected".
Nonsense, Mr Peston. Greater than expected by people like you, you mean.
Posted on 22 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Idi Amin, Mobutu ....
.... Obote, Mengistu, Bokassa, Charles Taylor, Mugabe. Now Jacob Zuma?
We were told that this time it was going to be different. I wouldn't bet on it.
Best case scenario is another Kenya. Worst case another Zimbabwe or Rwanda.
Posted on 22 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Budget day is bogus
Budget day is - we're told - one of the most important dates in the Parliamentary calendar. It is, after all, when we decide how all those £ billions of public money is to be allocated, right? Wrong.
Our pretence of a Parliament has no more say as to how our taxes are spent than does the mayor of Timbuktu. In fact one year, most MPs embarrassingly didn't realise what was even in their budget for months - until the 10p income tax hike they'd approved kicked in.
As MPs offices and expenses have grown grander, their real power has ebbed away. Most spending decisions are now taken by the executive, the Commons reduced to ritually rubber-stamping what officials have decided. Indeed, when it comes to quango spending, it's not even always necessary to obtain that.
Today, ministers will no doubt tell us how wise it is to support many millions, with other peoples’ billions. They’ll talk of “our economy” as if they own our productive efforts or do anything other than take from them.
But as you watch them do so, remember this: the burden of being governed has weighed more heavily on each successive generation, and will bear yet more heavily on the next. Why? Because we no longer have an effective legislature reining in the costs.
If MPs can't sort out their own expenses, how can they sort out the country's?
Posted on 22 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why are climate change fanatics on the left?
Tom Harris MP asks an interesting question on his blog "Why are climate change sceptics almost always on the right wing of politics?"
Let's turn that around; "Why are fanatical climate change believers on the left?"
I blame the French - Rousseau especially. The modern environmental movement is, like the left itself, largely a product of his memes; pre-industrial good, modern meaning bad. And with experts divining the "general will".
It's Rousseau that explains why environmentalists like Bjørn Lomborg, who dare to suggest that the world is, thanks to technology, getting cleaner, are treated like traitors to the cause. Far from being primarily interested in things like cleaner water, less polluted landscapes and preserving the wilderness, many leftie environmentalists are in fact more intent on repudiating the notion that Western nations are more advanced. The idea of man-made climate change allows them to beat up the big, bad nasty Western polluters (ooops, got to include China now, but no matter). Forget the fact that most environmental degradation today is happening elsewhere, it's all the fault of the West, ok?!
The second reason why the left is so obsessed with climate change is that man-made climate change provides a rationale not just for Big Government, but Big Supranational Government. More taxes. More rules. More unelectable people making decisions that they could never win a democratic mandate for.
I've no doubt whatever that the climate is changing. But I know the science shows that climate change happens entirely naturally, too. Many scientists now have serious doubts that the climate change that is happening is in any way man-made.
For a century the rationale for Big Government was, so the left kept telling us, economic a la Marx. Once it became self-evident that that was not the case, the left fell apart. Now the left is reaching back even further, to Rousseau, to find an environmental justification for more government.
Alas, Tom, these contortions of the left have little to do with preserving our environment, and nothing to do with science.
Posted on 21 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Who's lobbying to scrap Trident?
A new threat to Britain's independent nuclear deterrent has started to emerge - and it's not the usual rag-tag coalition of ageing peaceniks and Guardianistas.
For decades, the British left opposed Trident. Throughout the Cold War, they marched against it, lobbied against it and voted against it. And yet their campaign got precisely nowhere. Trident remained.
Now certain defence contractors seem to be eyeing-up with envy the nuclear deterrent’s mega budget. Their aim would be simple - to free up funds that might otherwise be spent on Trident, and divert it on the things they'd prefer to supply.
Expect to hear some commentators, especially those with links to the defence industry, imply that the cost of Trident is somehow to blame for the shortage of ships and helicopters and troops. "If only we spent that money on .....", they'll say. But you'll be unlikely to hear them suggest we scrap Eurofighter, instead. Odd that.
The irony is that we're short of ships and helicopters and troops not because of Trident. We lack enough kit because the spending that is available has been spent very badly. Thanks to the protectionist Defence Industrial Strategy, we're simply not very good at converting tax pounds into the kit that our armed forces need, when they need it.
Now the money is starting to run out. Rather than embrace properly competitive "off the shelf" procurement, some defence corporations could be out to get their hands on another slice of the defence budget pie. Even if that means the kind of unilateral disarmament resisted by all governments during the Cold War.
It would be truly shocking if Britain were to de facto unilaterally disarm at precisely the moment that the world becomes more dangerous. But that’s what might happen if certain vested interests get their way.
Posted on 21 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Budget: Government cuts and spin
Alistair Darling's spin-doctors have been telling the media how he's going to cut £15 billion off public spending.
Funny that. I seem to remember a smear story in the run up to the last election about how the Tories were planning on cutting expenditure by about the same amount. And we were faithfully told - by the spinners and the ever vigilant BBC-types - that this would mean "The End of Everything".
Budget day announcements aren't about our elected representatives managing our economy. It's about spivs and spin-doctors managing news.
Once again, rather than unveil the budget, you know, on Budget Day in the House of Commons, it's being spun. By people like Damian McBride.
Business as usual, it seems. Same old government. Same old lies.
Posted on 20 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Labour should try open primaries
I don't like to intrude into the private grief that is the Labour party selection in Erith & Thamesmead. But surely the answer is to let every local resident in the constituency have the right to select the party candidate?
If it was good enough for Barack Obama to have to go through such a process to become President of the United States, surely it's good enough for British MPs?
And before anyone emails me to say how open primaries mean non-aligned voters interfer with "our" selection process and how outsiders deliberately vote for "weak candidates", blah, blah, bear in mind that Hillary Clinton probably takes that view, too. But not many others.
Posted on 19 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
John Galt on Smeargate
In my copy of Atlas Shrugged this afternoon, John Galt said to Dagny Taggart: "Reality is an absolute not to be faked, lies do not work, the unearned cannot be had, the undeserved cannot be given, the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't."
I think all in politics should reflect on that. In the midst of Gordon Brown's smeargate scandal, and with the reputation of politicians now lower than at any time in our history, who are these spin doctors anyway? Are they not people paid to fake reality, create unearned reputations and undeserved accolades, and trash value? Is this the way our politics has to be?
Perhaps if government spin doctors in Downing Street had read Atlas Shrugged they'd not be in this mess. Maybe our whole democracy could be in better shape.
Posted on 19 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Dispatches tonight
I strongly recommend you watch Dispatches tonight on Channel 4.
Democracy campaigner, Heather Brooke, puts yet more pressure on our broken Westminster system. Is it right for MPs to exempt themselves from the laws they impose on the rest of us? If our legislature isn't able to keep itself in order, how can it keep the government in order?
Watch it. I believe we now urgently need to clean up Westminster. And reform our elected Commons to make it worthy of respect once again.
Posted on 19 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Sounds like Guido Fawkes ...
.... could be interesting reading tomorrow.
Posted on 18 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The next Commons Speaker?
Graham Dines of the East Anglian Daily Times is one of my favourite political columnists. I think his weekly column should be read by everyone, not only those of us in East Anglia.
This week, he has a column
that says I want the current Speaker of the House of Commons to step down. Guilty, as charged, M'lud.
What is most interesting is Graham's apparent assumption that we can confidently predict who'll be the next Commons Speaker.
I'm not so sure. As Graham knows, Commons Standing Orders 1 a) and 1 b) have very recently and quietly been amended. Tee hee.
Up until now, Whips basically choose who they wanted. They then force the Commons to divide on successive motions for an alternative to their preferred choice. Unless support congealed behind one of the others candidates, the Whips had their man in place. Votes took place, but the process was manipulated.
Not any longer. With the new Standing Orders, there's going to be a secret ballot, and one run in a way that makes it very difficult for Whips to fix. And with no government Whips to sow it up, don't assume that the next Speaker will come from a particular party. Surprisingly few commentators yet grasp the significance of this.
This makes it a wide open contest. Especially if there are lots of new MPs.
Posted on 18 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Guido Fawkes speaks the truth
Guido Fawkes has done more than almost anyone to expose the degree to which our Westminster system isn't working.
As one blogger put it today "The parliamentary system has been corrupted by the explicit and implicit deals done between governments and journalists over access to important stories." Hattip: Guido Fawkes.
Yep. Indeed.
And it took Guido to bring this fact to light. Read his article here and tell me why he's wrong?
Bang goes one cosy little SW1 consensus. Which one might be next to crumble?
The internet is breaking open monopolies in politics the way it has in business and commerce. Westminster's failings, in large part a product of that unhealthy mixture of big corporate media, corporate politics and corporatism, are going to be exposed.
This is only the beginning.
Posted on 17 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Homer too good for SW1
After an MP surgery today, I chat to a constituent, who compares one particular government minister to Homer Simpson.
"Absolutely not!" I reply. "Homer may be hopelessly incompetent and guilty of many things. But he's without real malice."
"And by the end of every episode, no matter how terrible his behaviour, he's 'fessed up to his failings and at least tried to put things right."
Posted on 17 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why is LabourList.org such a runaway success?
Today on LabourList young citizens wrote uplifting and inspirational articles about the glories of having our country run by Damian McBride's ex-boss. Millions of grateful people across Britain were able to read the entirely spontaneous and free flowing commentary that emerges when Labour-minded citizens come together - without any prompting from anyone in Downing Street, Labour HQ or anywhere else.
Unlike some of those deeply irresponsible right-wing "bloggers", patriotic comrades have made LabourLost a leading website with the following kinds of insights:
"Be proud of Labour’s achievements"
"There have been significant investments in youth services by the Labour government over the past decade"
"Drinking is a pleasure, a sociable activity that should be encouraged responsibly."
Apart from the thousands of overwhelmingly negative comments left on the site by the voters, the website seems to be a real win for the left. Keep digging comrades.
It's good to see the British left is so at ease with the politics of the internet.
Posted on 16 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What's your policy on comment moderation?
... asks a disgruntled reader, whose comments I didn't allow.
Simple. I'll never disallow anything because I disagree with the point you are making, or because you disagree with me. Be cutting. Tell me why I'm wrong. Contrarian views make the site more interesting.
But I'll not okay a post if it contains offensive words. It's not "political-correctness gone mad". It's being polite. I suppose I'm just old fashioned that way.
Also, if it's off topic - and I mean completely off topic (UFOs and anything about bilderberg conspiracies) - then I'll hit delete, too.
Other than that, it's all yours.
Posted on 16 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What the Damian Green business tells us about government
So. No charges against Damian Green MP for doing his job. Despite being arrested. Good.
It would have been an outrage if Mr Green had been done for doing his job as an elected member of the legislature.
If there's not enough evidence to prosecute Green, why did senior civil servants say the things they did to police to prompt an investigation? Merely bad judgement or an absence of impartiality? I think the position of some in Whitehall is now untenable.
What about the House of Commons Speaker? This episode shows that we don't really seem to have one.
Rather than hound the current, amiable occupant of the Speaker's chair, I'm simply going to say this; the new Commons Speaker needs to be elected via secret ballot so that government Whips (of whichever party) cannot simply install someone. Allowing the executive to influence such a key appointment in the Commons has a direct influence on the ability of the legislature to then do its job of holding government to account.
If the Commons is to be effective and to clean up its act, it needs to begin by choosing its Speaker for itself, not for party Whips.
The new rules, which will prevent a Whips stitch up, come into effect soon. Then, and only then, will be have a Speaker with the moral authority to begin lifting our shabby little legislature out of the doldrums.
Posted on 16 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Still think our civil service is impartial?
Yesterday, I highlighted the fact that large swathes of our ruling establishment in Whitehall are no longer quite the "Rolls Royce" civil service we're often told about.
Today it is revealed that officials who wrote to the police demanding an investigation into leaks at the Home Office had given "an exaggerated impression of the damage done". According to the Telegraph, one senior Cabinet Office official implied in a letter to police that some 20 leaks posed a "threat to national security". Turns out "Only one of the 20 leaks related to national security". Even that is not quite what it seems, and officials used "hyperbolic" language to instigate police action.
Embarassed by the truth about their failure to tackle mass immigration, state officials made exaggerated claims to the police to try to shut down the leaks. This is how we are now governed.
An impartial civil service, you say?
Posted on 16 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
0.053 % ....
…. is the percentage of the adult UK population who either voted directly for Gordon Brown at the last election, or who voted for a party he led in order to have him as our Prime Minister.
85% is the share of our law that is now made in Brussels - without reference to those we did vote for.
15% is the net increase in the cost of our MPs over this current Parliament.
Don't let them tell you cynicism is all because of the bloggers. Westminster isn't working. We need radical change to our broken political system.
Posted on 15 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
A win for Clacton
For years, local people in my constituency needing dialysis treatment have had to travel to and from Colchester each week. The round trip, plus the length of treatment, often takes up a whole day.
As the new MP, I teamed up with local patients, and we started to push for a local renal unit in Clacton. Given the number of folk needing dialysis treatment, and the fact we're on the end of the Tendring peninsula, it makes sense having treatment available locally.
It looks like we've achieved an important win. The local NHS now says that they'll be looking to establish a renal unit locally. A good decision and great news!
Posted on 15 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
"Rolls Royce" civil service? Parts of it wouldn't get an MoT
How often are we told that Britain has a "Rolls Royce" civil service? Famed for its world-class impartiality and efficiency?
Yeah, right.
Square that with Damian McBride. Was he not a civil servant, at the heart of Whitehall?
"That's different", I hear you say "he was a "special adviser". Okay, so, what about those senior officials at the Home Office, who took steps that resulted in the arrest of Damian Green for exposing their incompetence in tackling uncontrolled immigration? Were they a specially partial category, too?
How partial were they when ruling out democratically accountable policing, despite it having been the policy of all three major parties? And what about the urbane Oxbridge-types at the Foreign Office? They might be impartial as to which clown of a minister is choosing what's on the wine list. But they're most definitely partial to more Europe.
And what about the efficiency of those officials who lost those data disks? Or the quangocrats at defence, who spend £billions, but somehow never deliver our armed forces vital equipment on time and on budget. Are they all exemptions, too? How about those at the QCA who oversee perennial exam fiascos?
From Special Advisers to arms-length quangocrats, the nature of our civil service has changed fundamentally over the past generation. It’s no good just blaming Labour and promising to limit the number of Damian McBrides.
Far from needing to make it "independent", large swathes of the civil service are no longer world-class precisely because they're now almost wholly unaccountable.
Changing the culture in Whitehall means making the civil service more democratically accountable. What about Select Committee confirmation hearing for senior officials? How about Select Committee ratification of departmental budgets? Australia has tried some interesting innovations, giving civil servants clear responsibility and accountability.
Sir Humphrey Appleby needs to be held to account. And he needs to start doing what we voted for, not what he thinks is good for us.
UPDATE: Fraser Nelson writes an excellent piece here. Far from de-politicising the civil service, Fraser seems to suggest that we should in fact be making civil servants properly accountable.
Posted on 15 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Edmund Burke dot com
Clay Shirky, author of Here comes everybody, writes "For the last hundred years the big organisational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. ... People couldn't simply self-assemble ... Our electronic networks are enabling novel forms of collective action.
The scope of work that can be done by noninstitutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo".
Yep. The little platoons are coming. Control over politics and public services is going to be radically decentralised.
It's why we wrote The Plan.
Posted on 14 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Sssssh. Don't give away the secret
Everyone now seems to grasp that there could be something in this blog webby thing.
One Westminster worthy, who a few months back mocked me for an article I wrote saying how politics and the media were about to be transformed in the "age of YouTube", was this weekend pontificating about "how the new media is changing politics".
Rather than listen to one SW1 hack regurgitate the "thoughts" of another, I recommend that anyone interested in what's happening begins by reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.
Having built up a weekly readership on this blog now running into the tens of thousands, I was rather hoping that the SW1 establishment wouldn't wake up to the web for another few months, at least. With 60% growth in readership in the past month alone, I'm hoping to have pulled far enough ahead to be clear of the stampede that will invariably now follow.
Expect a flurry of "blog communication experts", who've never actually built up a blog following. Just like the dot com gurus in 1999 who'd never actually built a business. Or the "experts" in structured debt in 2005 who couldn't read a balance sheet.
Everyone'll now want to get a slice of the blogosphere. But that doesn't mean they "get it".
Posted on 14 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Daniel Hannan on the rise of blogs
For perhaps the best piece yet written about the impact of the internet on the media / politics, read this.
Posted on 13 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Beyond parody
The European Union has spent your money producing a website called Can you hear me Europe? Why not post a message sharing your thoughts on what they call "the coolest community - Europe"?
The site promotes an initiative called "The shout". Intended to make sure we all vote for Europe, we're assured this funky new initiative is "a roaring soundwave that can be heard from the North of Finland to the South of Spain."
There is already a "roaring sound wave" out there. It's called voter anger.
It's the sound of the people demanding back their democracy and an end to the grandiose European project. That "roaring sound wave" is only going to grow louder - but perhaps not quite the way that the European Union intended.
Posted on 13 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
British politics is broken - blogs will help fix it
Over on ConHome, my friend Tim Montgomerie suggests that this McBride v Fawkes business has harmed politics. Tim laments that politics has lost out, with the episode contributing "to the sense that politics in Britain is fundamentally broken."
Tim, Politics in Britiain is fundamentally broken. The internet is merely helping to expose the bogusness of what we currently have to put up with.
It's not only spin-doctors and spivs who'll lose out to bloggers. The commentariat will find themselves commented on - and made accountable. We'll start to see quite how ineffective our legislature is at holding those with real power to account. We'll start to understand why the opinions of many of those in SW1 today are so often at odds with those of the rest of the country.
The web will break the predominance of corporate party machines, the corporate media and corporatism - each of which helps currently sustain the SW1 class. Politics will have to become "open source" and more democratic.
Our politics doesn't need to be the way it is today. Our failing Westminster system was created in the age of steam trains. We can upgrade it for the age of broadband. More direct democracy, less of the faux representative kind.
Posted on 13 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
When corporate social responsibility turns out to be nothing of the kind
RBS's 2007 annual report - like so many produced during the boom times - is full of stuff about the bank's corporate social responsibility. Page after glossy page of Good Deeds.
Perhaps RBS should have concentrated on meeting it's commercial responsibilities ahead of anything else. If RBS had done so, it might not have landed the rest of us with a multi £billion bail out bill.
The annual report seems to want to show us how virtuous the bank was. Yet it's now clear that the bank wasn't actually being good at the things that count - like, for example, calculating the liabilities of those banks RBS wanted to buy.
Tucked away in the 2007 annual report is a single page about the takeover of ABN AMRO - an event that turned out to be so disasterous it resulted in biggest loss in British corporate history.
I was reminded of this when I read James Taggart's boast in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Like many a boardroom charlatan, Taggart denigrates mere profit-making. He sneers at those who seek to simply provide a product to customers at a price they are willing to pay, boasting instead about his businesses' social responsibilities.
Mere profit-making? If only RBS had managed to stick to that, we'd all be better off.
Posted on 12 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
View of my garden
In yesterday's Telegraph, I saw this photo (left) of Michelle Obama gardening. No matter what her husband gets wrong, no matter what a mess he makes of things, I'm now a fan of hers.
Here on the right is a picture of my own much more humble allotment this Easter. Not much to show yet, but the rows are shallots, beetroot, parsley, onion, carrots, onion, salad, lettuce, leek, broccoli, cabbage, potato - with room at the end for some tomatos a bit later.
Posted on 12 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Bloggers 1 : Spin-doctors 0
If you've any doubts about the way the internet is going to revolutionise politics, read tomorrow's newspapers: The Prime Minister's hand-picked henchman ousted by truth and a blogger.
Or read this, or this or this.
Viva!
Posted on 11 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Labour's thug-ocracy
Read about the vile boot boys Gordon Brown has choosen to surround himself with in the bunker. These people are really, really nasty.
Catch breaking news updates here and here
Posted on 11 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I went for a walk in the Essex countryside ....
... and here are some cows I met.
Posted on 11 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why our Prime Minister is such a loser
Gordon Brown became Prime Minister without ever having had to fight a serious, truly competative democratic contest to get there. And it shows.
He's an MP because he's the Labour Party candidate in the one-party Labour fiefdom of Fife. He plotted his way to becoming Labour leader, without a contest.
Now he presides over us as Prime Minister (committing us to decades of debt, as it happens) without having gained a direct national mandate for office.
Brown wants us to compare him with Barack Obama. Okay then .... While Obama had to win over swing voters in every US state, just to become the Democrat Party nominee, Brown has relied on his thug-ocracy. One has charm and great communication skills. The other has his boot boys in the Downing Street bunker to spin and brief for him.
The consequences are starting to show.
UPDATE: Son of the Manse, eh? Moral compass? Square that with this from Guido.
Posted on 11 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Are we governed by thugs?
Guido Fawkes seems to have details of alleged attempts by those inside Downing Street to smear their opponents - allegedly. Not just any old smearing, but really, really vicious and nasty stuff - allegedly.
The emails allegedly show quite how some Downing Street insiders operate. This incident could shed light on the inner workings of the Labour thug-ocracy.
No doubt there will be attempts to make out that any nasty smear campaign being hatched in Dowing Street had nothing to do with Brown. But these are his boot boys.
Far from focusing on fixing the economy or improving our NHS, we're about to see precisely what kind of thuggish preoccupations concern some of those within Downing Street.
Posted on 11 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Student visas from Pakistan
Back in June 2006, I was concerned enough about the number of student visas being issued to ask the Secretary of State how many student visas were issued to people from Pakistan.
The answer I got revealled a five fold increase, from 2,421 in 2000 to 10,850 by 2005, for student visas issued to people from Pakistan.
I spoke out against what I feared was an immigration scam - which could also have serious consequences for our security.
At the same time, I also got the government to admit that it had no firm data on how many foreign students left the UK after the completion of their courses.
Despite raising this with ministers, the truth is that almost three years on the government has done absolutely nothing about it.
Posted on 10 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Digital power shift
Two events this week show how power is shifting in the digital age.
A policeman strikes a man with a baton on the streets of London. Whatever the rights and wrongs, it was caught on digital camera. This alone means that questions are being asked about the actions of a policeman that are very unlikely to have been posed pre-digital cameras.
The citizen with a camera is able to police the police.
Secondly, and totally trivially, there's been a minor public spat between two friends of mine, Nadine Dorries MP and journalist Bruce Anderson. While I never like to see friends rowing, what is interesting is that the politician - Nadine - is able to bite-back via her blog, against what she sees as unfair treatment by a journalist.
The politician with a blog is able to comment on the commentariat.
Posted on 10 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Some of the flowers in my garden
I love gardening, and I'm looking forward to my next meeting with some of the local horticultural groups ....
Posted on 10 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Michael Gove in Clacton
Just had a wonderfully enjoyable evening with Michael Gove MP and about 90 members of our thriving local Conservatives.
Michael is a great speaker, and the evening was a triumphant success!
If you're one to the 14,000 plus people who read this blog last week, and you live locally, and you would like to have come along, please email me. It'd be great to have you join our local team.
Posted on 9 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Can politicians care for our currency?
Thought-provoking article in the Telegraph today about local communities issuing their own "currency". Not sure if these are really just a discount retail voucher scheme, or something more.
It's interesting how modern currencies issued by government always tend to lose value. I suppose this is because it's in the interests of the issuer to always print a bit (or a lot) more.
But might it be that we now live in a world where the state no longer has a monopoly in determining the amount of liquidity there is? Surely the credit crunch came after all those new instruments of liquidity were invented - and some turned out to be froth?
Might it be that in response to the state debauching the currency, someone starts issuing Google dollars, or Amazon shillings?
Come to think of it, there's one unit of exchange no government can control, gold. I see it's become ever more popular since Gordon Brown decided to sell our gold reserves off for bits of politicians paper. Makes you think.
Posted on 9 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Enough is enough: clean up SW1
Yesterday, I told the Evening Standard precisely what I thought about the ongoing saga of MPs and their expenses:
"Something stinks with the way Westminster works - and the expense system is part of the rot. We need radical reform of the way we do politics with the abolition of all MP perks and privileges - with the sole exception of Article 9 of Bill of Rights, allowing MPs not to be sued for what they say in the Commons.
We are in this mess because the political class in SW1 has exempted themselves from rules they have happily foisted on everyone else. They have given themselves tax-free income and tried to escape from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Allowances should be limited exclusively to travel to and from MPs' constituencies. The number of MPs should be cut back to 500 - after all the House of Representatives in the US, a much larger country has fewer members - and remaining MPs could be paid a higher taxable salary, which would cover any additional housing requirements. MPs' staff could be employed through the Commons and then selected by MPs rather than the cost falling on MPs individual offices, which would also help avoid nepotistic employment arrangements.
These changes are vital for the integrity of Parliament - if we have a Commons so supine and so self-regarding that it can't see what it is doing is wrong, how can we do our job of making big moral decisions? The impulse for change must come from the legislature itself rather than a quangocrat like the parliamentary commissioner for standards.
Younger and newer MPs are aware of the extent of public disgust; I hope that with the backing of a generation of young Conservative candidates, David Cameron can use the next election as a mandate for change.
No more professional politicians, let us open Westminster to citizen law-makers.
Posted on 9 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The price of The Plan
A while ago I spent several weeks with Daniel Hannan hard at work on a book, The Plan. Last week I was pleased to see it enter the best seller list on Amazon.co.uk.
Today I had a furious email from someone disgruntled that they should have to pay £10 for a copy of the book.
You know what? They don’t.
I went on to explain that I'd love to be able to offer copies for free. However, I never managed to find a book designer, or proof reader, or editor willing to work on the book for nothing. I've not been able to find a paper manufacturer, or printer, or book binder willing to produce copies unpaid. Nor have I managed to find an internet-based publisher or postman willing to deliver it to you at no cost.
There's a wonderful section in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged that I've just read. It explains how what my emailer calls "grubby commercialism" makes fresh food appear in your local shops, allows us to travel, invents new technologies and medicine, and give us so much that we take for granted in the modern West. Societies without "grubby commercialism" don't tend to have any of those things, and transactions between people tend to be based on fear, favours or force.
Thanks to that facilitator of even more "grubby commercialism" - the internet - anyone, even me, is now able to write a book and make it available to you for a tenner.
Given that it offers a revolutionary 30-step guide on what we need to do to renew Britain, at £10 I think it's a bargain.
Posted on 8 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Just done a BBC interview ...
... about Essex council's glorious decision to give mums and dads freedom to use "their share" of local authority funding to self-commission their children's education. This brave decision has established a new precedent, and shows why we so desperately need more independent academies - and the kind of freedom mums and dads now have in Sweden.
"But what if every parent in Essex starts to demand the same?" asks one reader of this blog. Um. Then there would be something called choice.
"It'd mean anarchy!" rants another. Anarchy? Like there is when we let folk decide what food to eat, or where to go on holiday, or where to live, you mean? Perhaps you think government should start to ration those too?
The days of having people like Jacqui Smith or Ed Balls or Ken Boston pretending to oversee your child's education are coming to an end.
If we left it to these sort of people to run supermarkets, there'd be catchment areas for breakfast cereals and waiting lists for fruit and veg. So why accept a government monopoly on deciding our children's future? In Essex, the monopoly is starting to crack.
Posted on 8 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Essex leads the way on localism
Essex
county council is leading the way on localism. Local Post Offices in my constituency had been due for closure. Yet thanks to a bold local initiative by the council, they're been able to adapt their business model – and survive.
Now, Essex has gone further. For the first time ever, the council is providing funds directly to families who wish to opt out of the school choices on offer.
Having long championed the right of parents to demand their child’s share of local authority funding, I’m proud that this new frontier in parental choice is opening up in my constituency.
When this group of mums and dads first came to see me, they were adamant that they were not going to send
their children to a local school, which they decided wasn’t suitable. Rather than bully the mums and dads into accepting something they were not happy with, Essex council has now given them a £10,000 grant. This will allow the parents to provide their children with the home tuition they need.
I’m encouraged by this development for three reasons:
-
First, Essex council shows that they understand that localism isn’t just a question of giving more power to local government. Actually it can mean less power for town halls, by passing control directly to individuals themselves.
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Secondly, I hope this new home tutor group turns out to be a landmark step towards creating new, parent-led “free school”, outside state control – like they have in Sweden.
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Finally, this episode reinforces the need to establish a new academy school in Clacton. If we had a new independent academy school in Clacton, I doubt parents would feel the need to opt out in the first place.
Posted on 7 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Definition of a libertarian?
I sometimes get described as a "libertarian" by Labour MPs, Guardianistas and BBC-types. I'm not sure how you define a libertarian.
But one thing certainly is true.
I think folk would be better off making decisions for themselves rather than having people like Jacqui Smith do it for them.
I believe local communities are better placed to make public policy than the kind of officials who were supposed to be regulating the banks.
Call that what you like, it's starting to look like common sense.
Posted on 7 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Government unveils law to ban Bad Things
Ministers are apparently toying with the idea of tough new legislation to ban all bad things.
"This draft Bill would legally proscribe a wide range of things that we don’t like - thereby preventing them from happening" said one minister.
“The government is determined to keep taking tough action against bad things”, said a spokesman. "The laws we've been passing for the past decade have meant one success after another; ASBOs have ended anti-social behaviour. Giving more students A grades made them all better students. Yobs dare not venture out for fear they'll be marched to a cash machine. And passing that Financial Services Act meant perfect banking regulation."
"Now this new piece of legislation will build on that success. We've proved that there's nothing that a big new piece of legislation - preferably leading to a new quango and more regulation - can't fix”.
Some have speculated that the new law could even mean an end to the recession, since the government could ban economic downturns.
Sceptics have questioned the effectiveness of such legislation. “Officially declaring something doesn’t make it so,” said one prominent think-tanker. Interviewed on the BBC's Today programme, critics of the new law were asked why they were in favour of bad things.
Ministers hit back at the "old fashioned" doubters. “Any one against banning bad things is clearly in favour of bad things. Obviously it makes sense to have people like Jacqui Smith trying to run your lives for you”.
Posted on 6 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Think Defence
I've added a link to a new defence blog, Think Defence. As far as I can tell, the folk behind it are independent of the big corporate defence interests behind certain other defence blogs - at least I hope so.
Encouragingly, Think Defence say that they "wish defence to go much higher up the UK national agenda, recognising that the answer is not always more money but better spending". Absolutely. Very well said.
Posted on 6 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The death of the Left?
To get an insight into how fatal the internet will be for the political Left in Britain, have a look at LabourLost's post by Alistair Campbell.
Campbell
's online piece about Gordo's G20 triumph reads like propaganda. And so guess what? Campbell's own readers completely trash him.
Remember, Campbell was - until the advent of wiki-politics - supposed to be the master of getting the message across. Yet today, he can't even seem to manage it with the very "Labour-minded people" - to use LabourLost’s own slogan – that the site brings together.
Brighter lefties wondering why they’re doing badly on the blogosphere are beginning to grasp that internet politics spells bad news.
The internet cuts out the middle man – including the need for any 1990s spin doctors like Campbell. This means less influence for BBC-types and Guardianistas. Politics will become inherently more democratic.
Worse for those who believe in the corporatist consensus, the internet removes barriers to entry in politics, like it has in business. This will allow greater political competition. It'll mean more direct, less "contracted-out", old school politics. And ultimately, it's our system of "contracted-out" quango politics that has made the left's corporatism possible.
Wiki-politics will be Edmund Burke dot com, giving the little platoons much greater power.
It's not merely that the man in Whitehall doesn't know best. There's going to be less need to have men in Whitehall.
Posted on 6 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Wisdom of Amazon
Anyone browsing Amazon with a view to buying Eamonn Butler’s
The Rotten State of Britain
is now being automatically recommended The Plan: 12-months to renew Britainas well. Amazon says the two books are now “Frequently Bought Together”.
Or as Eamonn puts it “Diagnosis and solution – makes sense”.
Extraordinarily clever of Amazon to have worked that out.
Posted on 5 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Time for the Great Repeal Bill
“If you think there’re too many laws, Carswell, what are you going to do about it?”
asks a reader, not unreasonably.
How about a Great Repeal Bill to abolish all the unnecessary rules and red tape? And instead of leaving it entirely to the "wisdom" of people in SW1, why not use wiki-wisdom to let every voter help decide what rules need to go?
All politicians talk of deregulation. They’ve been promising to “cut red tape” for as long as anyone can remember. Yet it never seems to happen.
Why? Because the power to make or scrap laws and regulations has shifted away from those we elect, to the unaccountable quango state. 80% of our formal law is made in Brussels. State quangos, like the FSA, enact endless regulation, which ends up carrying the weight of statutory guidelines. Judges decide what they think the law ought to be, not what it is.
The Commons is now so utterly supine and useless, it’s not even up to rubber stamping much of the law. Ministers see defending “their officials” as their job – not reining them in.
So instead of leaving it all to our elected representatives to rein in overbearing government, why not use a little direct democracy to give our smug little legislature a wake up call?
In The Plan; 12 months to renew Britain, Daniel Hannan and I publish the first draft of the Great Repeal Bill. It contains 30 specific laws and regulations to be scrapped. Each proposal was based on suggestions put to us by fellow bloggers - wiki-politics in action. I hope that a future government will take the first draft of the Great Repeal Bill, encourage more suggestions, and then enact it in government time.
MPs would vote to scrap the red tape – and if any of it had to be retained, they’d be forced to tell the rest of us why they felt it were necessary in the first place.
Posted on 5 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Atlas Shrugged going global
Last week, I speculated that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was about to go viral - in the manner of Daniel Hannan.
This week, I'm contacted by a reader of this blog who tells me Atlas Shrugged is now ranked "#2 in US Literature, and #18 of all books world-wide."
Then I see this T-shirt on sale from Tory Bear here. In at least one part of the blogspace, th
e Hannan meme and the Rand meme seem to have merged.
Posted on 4 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I've just discovered ...
…. how to cradle a snoozing nipper with one arm, and blog on a blackbery with the other. Spelling go ing to be a bit of a problem though.
Posted on 4 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
A picture of officiousness
Here's a photo of a think tank academic and camera crew being questioned by the police for … um ….. filming an unauthorised interview in Westminster.
How ironic that Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute was giving an interview about his book “The Rotten State of Britain” at the time they were hauled over. In his book, Butler looks at the erosion of our liberties and the extent to which as citizens, we are asked to account for ourselves to officious state authority.
As if on cue “up screeched a police car, and two armed officers got out to ask our business”.
Dangerous people, these think tankers, in their menacing corduroy. Best not take any chances.
The camera crew then had to provide their names and details, and formally account in writing for their actions to the state. Since when did we need the permission of the state to conduct political interviews? We do now, apparently.
This is how we are governed today.
Is this really the kind of policing that we want? Is this policing “by consent”? Is this accountable policing?
Posted on 3 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
I'm a dad
I've just become a dad for the first time. Mrs C and I are in a haze of spring sunshine ....
Posted on 3 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Too many laws
I've got to page 436 of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged":
The evil Dr Floyd Ferris says "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking the law. ... just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt".
Since 1997, our government has created 3,600 new offences - that more than 300 a year.
Makes you think.
Posted on 3 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
$1 trillion injected into world economy ....
... announces the hype from the G20 summit. From where is this cascade of cash to come?
If the world economy is to get $1 trillion more, it'll ultimately only be because governments print more money or invent new kinds of IOUs.
But taking bits of paper and calling it money doesn't make for more wealth. Rather, it'll mean the value of money is diminished. Wealth will merely be redistributed in favour of those state agencies able to declare bits of paper to be money - and at the expense of the rest of us.
W
hen will the leaders of the West stop fooling themselves that we can spend our way out of recession, or borrow our way out of debt?
Posted on 2 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Localism at the LGA
Invited to speak about future government plans for localism, alongside former Home Secretary David Blunkett MP, at an event organized by the Local Government Association the other evening.
My chief point was that localism has to mean devolving some of that 93% of tax revenue paid centrally, to localities. Secondly, localism is not the same as giving more power to local councils. In terms of education, power needs to go from local authorities to schools and parents. For criminal justice, the local architecture of accountability needs to operate parallel, and separate from, the town hall.
Posted on 2 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
National Curriculum; what if it can't be slimmed down?
Almost everyone now accepts that the
national curriculum is too prescriptive. As today’s report by the Commons select committee, on which I sit, suggests, the curriculum puts Big Government in every classroom, dictating what should be taught and how.
So why not just “slim it down”?
The problem is that the "
slimmed-down” national curriculum everybody says they want never happens. Politicians have been advocating a less prescriptive curriculum for as long as anyone can remember. Yet last year the opposite happened, and it was extended to include toddlers for the first time.
Why does this “slimed-down” curriculum never happen? Simple; you cannot rely on the ministers and officials to restrain ministers and officials.
Whether it’s a minister in Parliament or technocrats at a quango who decide, if you have a national curriculum, they will meddle. And with every initiative and fad comes a “bloating mechanism”, which makes a slimmed down curriculum an impossibility.
The answer? As I suggest in today’s minority report, let every school have the freedom to opt out of the national curriculum. Doing so would act as a safety valve against ministerial overload – and it’d give every school in Britain the same rights that currently only independent schools have. Schools happy with the national curriculum could stay as they are. Others would be free to
innovate in ways which no official could ever plan for.
Giving teachers and schools more freedom might also actually help society – with all its diverse and varied strands - discover its common cultural reference points. Ask an American.
Posted on 2 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Is Gordon Brown insane ...
... asks Janet Daley?
HatTip: Guido Fawkes
Posted on 1 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ayn Rand: the next thing big thing on the internet?
There’s another meme starting to stir on the internet. As with the Daniel Hannan YouTube phenomenon, it’s going viral, albeit much more slowly. And it's doing so despite - not because of - the media / political establishment.
Back in 1957, Ayn Rand wrote a thousand page novel – Atlas Shrugged – in defence of individualism and free markets. Read by 1960s undergraduates, Atlas Shrugged looked like it was yet another forgotten mid-twentieth century novel.
But last year something extraordinary started to happen.
A brilliant explanation of our post-credit crunch world today and of the stupidity of Big Government, people started to discuss the book again. New readers discovered Rand and spread the word. Crucially, thanks to the perfect distribution system provided by the internet, this grass roots surge in demand could be met. Today Atlas Shrugged is creeping up the best seller list on Amazon. It's 274th in the sales ranking this morning - which ain't bad for a book written half a century ago.
Rand
’s ideas are back. Or more accutrately, Rand's ideas never went away. They were simply ignored by that leftist elite that presides over our culture and our institutions. But now the internet means all those quangocrats, bogus academics and Guardianistas no longer call the cultural shots like they did.
The left are going to hate it.
Posted on 1 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell
"Viral" politics will be more democratic
Even the Westminster establishment is waking up to the fact that there could be big implications in this webby, internet thing. Look at Michael White, the Guardian grandee, who once wrote so condescending about “the age of YouTube ”.
Previously, White’s worthy online pieces for the Guardian were lucky to attract a couple of dozen readers’ postings. Yet last week, after he was so rudely condescending of the way Daniel Hannan took on Gordon Brown, he got over 500 readers comments. Okay, so 95% of his own readers were trashing White for his snide take on Hannan, but that’s more responses than for all the other things White has written over the past few weeks combined.
The ability of the internet to create a storm of interest – 2 million viewers of the Hannan YouTube clip, or a minor whirlwind on White’s postings - is now very real. Expect plenty of talk about how ideas “go viral” or act as a “meme”.
As with the printing press all those years ago, the internet is allowing ideas and memes to replicate faster and spread quicker. Just as the internet has created a perfect market in books, where supply and demand are matched on Amazon, so too is there a real market for ideas. As with iTunes, there'll be more choice, too.
The web means fewer constraints slowing down the free flow of memes and ideas. Thanks to the internet, media “insiders” and BBC producers won’t be able to distort the free flow of ideas, in favor of their own prejudices, the way they have up to now.
Viral politics will become inherently more democratic.
Posted on 1 April 2009 by Douglas Carswell