Climate change: the market correction continues
"I regret the fact that some members of the research community have dismissed out of hand those who have tried to make a counter-argument" Bob Ward, climate change expert at the LSE, is quoted as saying in the Telegraph following the CRU climategate scandal.
Could this be the same Bob Ward, LSE climate change expert, who declared his "shock" because I dared highlight some of those counter-arguments on this blog? And who criticised me for promoting "political denial and complacency"?
Surely that is to dismiss out of hand not merely those who make the counter-arguments, but those who suggest that they even exist?
Like I keep saying, the climate change consensus cannot hold.
Posted on 29 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
City must quit complaining
City bankers whine that new EU Commissioner, Michel Barnier, might strangle our financial service sector with more regulation. The UK could lose its comparative advantage now that the man overseeing the rule book is a Frenchman, they suggest.
Quit complaining, chaps. The fact the Commissioner is French will make only a marginal difference.
Regulation is what the EU does. And this is the only EU on offer.
If you don't like it, have the courage to back calls to quit it.
Posted on 28 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ignore the nanny state
Minister Andy Burnham will today lecture mums and dads on how to feed their kids. Seriously.
Don't "rush to mush" he'll gush, faithfully regurgitated the PR lines his quangocrats hand him.
I suspect most folk will just ignore Mr B and do what they think best for their families. They'll sense that this government is hopeless at most things; unable to cut immigration or fix our schools or equip our armed forces adequately.
They might even wonder why the Health Minister prefers to lecture them on spoon feeding, rather than, say, fix what seems a terrible mess at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust.
Posted on 27 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Politicians still don't get it?
People despise Westminster because many MPs don't answer to them, but only to other people in SW1. Indeed, in four of the past five general elections less than a tenth of seats changed hands. Even in the great 1997 landslide, seven out of ten seats proved safe.
It's precisely because so many MPs answer inward to Westminster, rather than outward to the voter, that they've become less and less effective at holding government to account. For small-state conservatives - and for Britain - this has been a disaster; more regulation, stronger quangos, higher taxes, bigger and more intrusive government.
Change must means making politicians answer more directly to voters. Direct democracy, you might call it.
But again and again those in SW1 propose changes that would mean the precise opposite. Take the latest proposal - by the Speakers' review - to force democratic political parties to publish lists of who they reject as candidates.
This suggestion would mean that political parties would answer inward to SW1 for how they run their own processes. Literally. Democratic political parties would be legally required to report who they didn't select to run for office. Worse, it could begin to extend formal state regulation over internal candidate selection within parties.
This half-witted idea does nothing to ensure our politics has the choice and competition we need to drive up standards at Westminster, nor ensure a wider representation of opinion in Parliament.
If Speaker Bercow and co really wish to broaden representation in the Commons, they should try to encourage the democratisation of the selection process. That means people power, not statutory duties. They should be looking for ways to make parties answer outward to voters, not to yet more people like them. Let local people decide what constitutes representative - not some quota quango in London.
In the one seat where the Tories have tried it, proper open primaries have a 100% success rate in selecting women candidates. My hunch is that after the Gosport open primary results are in, that record could well remain intact.
Even where the Tories are only running imperfect open caucus meetings to choose candidates, residents are turning up in their droves to back candidates with a broad range of views and backgrounds.
As I proposed in this Ten Minute Rule Bill, it's perfectly possible to enable political parties that wish to, to hold full open primaries in any seat they wish. And all at zero extra cost to the taxpayer by "piggy backing" local primaries on to pre-existing ballots.
And why just hold them in marginal seats? If open primaries were held in so-called safe seats, we'd soon move to a situation where all MPs in the Commons had to face properly competitive election contests in order to remain in the House. You know, like in a proper democracy ....
That's an idea that’d make our politicians truly accountable. It wasn't recommended by the great and the good on the Speakers' panel, unsurprisingly. Is it because they don't get it, or because they choose not to?
Posted on 26 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Top US Democrats to advise Labour
Iain Martin blogs that top US Democrats are going to help advise Team Gordon on how to win elections.
Would that be the same Democratic party that contested elections in New Jersey and Virginia a few weeks ago? You know, the ones that saw the victors of 2005 turfed from office in landslide swings?
If I were a US Democrat, I'd be wary of sending my top strategists to shake hands with the current occupant of Number 10. Beware the midas touch in reverse. Gold dust turned to ash.
Posted on 25 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change and the free market of ideas
Just over two months ago, I suggested there was about to be a "correction" in the market of ideas about man-made climate change. By that, I meant that new information was likely to emerge, which - as in any market for commodities - would reveal some positions to be over valued and others under valued.
And so it would now seem.
The leaking of large volumes of data from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) suggest that it is not only climate change sceptics who can be selective and subjectively biased in their interpretation of data. Supposedly objective scientists who support the notion of man-made global warming appear to have preferences for some data (which reinforces their views) over other data (which does not).
Whatever these leaks tell us about the science of climate change, they raise some disturbing questions about the approach of certain scientists. Geoffrey Lean, hardly a climate change sceptic, talks of behaviour that is "deeply reprehensible and unworthy of science.
These leaks also have something to tell us about transparency and public policy in the digital age. They came after a long (and unsuccessful) campaign to get the CRU to willingly disclose the data underpinning some of its supposed findings on climate change. Not unreasonably, given that such findings inform so much of the public policy.
As MPs have discovered, in the digital age an unwillingness to disclose information can lead to its unwillingly disclosure. Indeed, refusal to disclose creates a demand for disclosure on its own. How much easier it would have been to have embraced transparency from the start. So to in science.
Posted on 25 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Mr Heffer should read The Plan
"Our elected representatives [must] start thinking very hard about how we rebuild Britain" writes the august commentator, Simon Heffer, in today's Telegraph.
"If one enters a bookshop in America," he continues "it is full of books on how to get that country off its knees. If one enters a shop in Britain, it is full of books about our glorious past."
Which is precisely why we decided to write best-selling book The Plan; 12-months to renew Britain get us off our knees.
Our book was written by two elected representatives - an MP and an MEP - because we've been thinking about how we rebuild Britain. And we reckon The Plan is the way to do it.
It'd make a great stocking filler - and brighten up the New Year, I hope. For Mr Heffer, or indeed anyone else .....
Posted on 25 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Gosport: a new kind of politics?
One reason folk are so fed up with MPs is the sense that many are virtually unsackable. Or at least they can only be sacked if they fall foul of people in Westminster, not voters.
In four of the past five elections, only a tenth of seats changed hands. Even in the 1997 landslide, fewer than three in ten shifted. That means that 70 per cent of MPs come from fiefdoms.
Wherever there's a lack of choice and competition, standards slide. That's as true in politics as in business. The result has been a steady decline in the Commons as an institution.
So three cheers to James Bethell, one of the contenders in the Gosport open primary*. Not only will every local person in Gosport get to decide if they'd like him to be their next MP, but he's personally pledged to let folk fire him in a "recall" vote, if he fails to do what he promises in his election address.
This is a bold step - but it means that should be become your MP, James would need to keep on delivering what he promised - or step aside for someone else.
* - Gosport, like Totnes, is a proper open primary, and not an open caucus. Everyone who lives there gets a vote on deciding the Tory candidate.
Full list of the contenders here.
Posted on 24 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Wright committee reforms a let down
As predicted
, the Wright committee's recommendations on how to reform Parliament turn out to be a miniscule step in the right direction. Given how utter useless the Commons has become, they are in reality rather shockingly inadequate.
Proposals include allowing those we elect, rather than the executive, to decide their own agenda - one day a week. Gosh. Sovereign Parliament, eh?
And you could be able to petition the self-serving elite in SW1 on-line. Wow. Almost as patronising as Downing Street letting you post a petition on their website. What about giving the people a real right of initiative?
Having MPs choose select committee chairmen is the only real beef in the proposals. It could pave the way to giving the legislature real oversight over ministers, their departments and the myriad of unaccountable quangocrats. But it merely paves the way. It doesn't actually do.
Proper reform means making government answer to Parliament. And making Parliament answer to the people.
This report achieves neither since it is the product of those who ultimately seem content with Westminster and the way it works. Their thinking a feather for each wind that blows.
The committee imply these proposals could be an "antidote to anti-politics". I wouldn't bet on it.
Posted on 24 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Wind turbines: nobody wants it, but they don't care
Another victory for big government and big corporations against local people; the Earls Hall wind turbines outside Clacton have been given the go-ahead. Please don't call it planning consent.
410 foot-high monster turbines will now be erected less than a thousand yards from people's homes - despite the fact that it was opposed at district, county and Parliamentary level. The industrialisation of the English countryside continues despite the opposition of those who live in it. So much for democracy.
Remember this next time you hear a politician talk the localist talk.
Contests such as this are always unequal. Plucky local campaigners rely on volunteers and themselves. Yet big corporate interests are able to hire big legal guns - paid for from the £ billions the developers receive in hidden subsidy taken from every householder's electricity bill.
And it will do nothing to stop the costs of your electricity bill increasing. On the contrary, your bill will rise very significantly to finance this stitch-up between big business and big government.
Posted on 24 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Bold reform of Parliament? More a damp squib
A Parliamentary committee of the great and the good is soon to propose some weally, weally wadical weforms. No doubt the BBC is poised to tell us just how bold it all is.
Having sat and watched as a monumentally useless Commons nodded through every whim of the executive for the past decade or so, this committee wants to let another committee set the Commons agenda. Some of the time. When government allows it. And they also think that MPs should decide which MPs chair select committees.
This is all good stuff, and I don’t disagree with it, but it's hardly bold. Nor is it anything like strong enough given the dire straits into which Westminster has sunk. These proposals on their own will hardly kick start our moribund Commons out of its self-induced stupor.
Indeed, David Cameron has already covered this ground when he made it clear that "The House of Commons should have more control over its own timetable, so there's time for proper scrutiny and debate. MPs should be more independent - so Select Committee Chairmen and members should be elected by backbenchers, not appointed by Whips."
If this committee really wanted to be bold, why not give the said select committees the power to approve the budget of each ministers' department. Annually. Live on TV. Line by line.
Or the power to confirm all quango appointees and annual expenditure?
Or to right to confirm the appointment of each minister? A separation of powers? Now that’d be bold.
Posted on 23 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Top Comment on Monday
Two notable comment pieces spotted elsewhere this morning:
Philip Johnston in the Telegraph on the extraordinary position adopted by ACPO chief, Sir Huge Orde. (Reading it, and having spoken at the Police Federation annual conference this summer, I do wonder how much support Sir H actually has for his centralist, Whitehall-knows-best views amongst rank and file police officers .....?)
Nigel Lawson in the Times is well worth a look on climate change and Copenhagen - whatever your own position on this complex subject.
Posted on 23 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
How do we cut public spending?
You can’t, runs the conventional thinking.
While Britain might be lurching into a spiralling debt crisis, many seem to believe that the answer must mean higher taxes. Why? Cutting spending is all very well in theory, runs the defeatists’ argument, but the impossibility of actually doing so leaves higher taxes as the only real choice if we are to balance the country’s books.
Reinforcing such conventional wisdom is Michael Portillo, quoted as saying that: "In 1979, we faced a big public spending problem … but [Mrs Thatcher] didn’t cut public spending. I was Chief Secretary between ’92 and ’94 – big public spending problem – I was trying to cut public spending; I did not succeed in cutting public spending. I don’t think the Tories will succeed in cutting public spending.
He goes on “ I think the cuts are almost impossible to make and what will happen, whoever wins the next election, is not so much that there’ll be public spending cuts, there will be restraint, but that there will be tax rises."
Far from proving that public expenditure cannot be cut, this shows merely that one cannot leave the task to Ministers alone.
Government does not like to curtail its own expenditure. Executive fiat cannot be relied upon to rein in the executive – no matter what its political complexion.
When was the last time a Minister went into Cabinet to argue that his empire be slimed down? Most Ministers quickly see their role as arguing for more money and greater powers for their department and quangos.
Both the Conservatives and Labour seem to acknowledge this problem; one promising to delegate some of the task of restraint to a quango – the Office of Budget Responsibility. Labour want an Act of Parliament to provide the necessary discipline.
Maybe.
Perhaps instead we need a radically different approach. If the executive cannot be relied upon to keep its appetite for public money in check, why not get our elected legislature to do so? It’s surely the reason we have a Parliament in the first place, no?
Commons Estimates days, when £ billion are put through Parliament on the nod, no longer provide any meaningful Parliamentary oversight over government spending. So why not change the rules and require every government department and quango to have its budget annually approved by each Commons Select committee?
If Ministers and quangocrats had to plead for their budgets before each committee on TV each year, it might focus a few minds on how our money was spent. No approval, no budget. You'd be amazed at what they could suddenly do without. We'd suddenly discover lots of waste.
As MPs have discovered elsewhere, direct accountability can suddenly mean less public money gets spent.
Giving such a task to Select Committees might also give our MPs something purposeful to do.
Posted on 22 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
End of Defence Industrial Strategy?
Liam Fox is preparing a Green Paper on “sovereign capability” to determine what defence equipment has to be made in Britain or whether it can be bought from other countries, reports the Telegraph.
It's my own view those of us arguing for an end to the ruinous, protectionist racket known as the Defence Industrial Strategy are winning the argument. "Off the shelf" looks more compelling by the day.
Thanks to DIS, £ billions from the defence budget are spent in a way that suits certain defence contractors - not our armed forces. The heroic Lewis Page has brilliantly exposed quite how damaging years of this nonsense has been to our military capability. It explains why we spend £27 million on a helicopter we could have purchased for £8 million. And which won't be ready for years, rather than months.
Scrapping DIS means we could get vast amounts of kit - UAVs, fighters, ships, helicopters, and, most important of all, personnel - that we need, when we need them. Our armed forces could literally have the best kit in the world - not what pen pushers at MoD and big corporations allow them.
Indeed, the growing popularity of Urgent Operational Requirements - which by-pass all that nonsense - shows the extent to which our armed forces could benefit from such a move. And if any politicians seriously think that the primary purpose of our defence budget is job creation, they should stand up and explain that to our hard pressed service personnel.
If I was on the board of a large defence contractor favoured by DIS, I'd be demanding to know precisely what that army of lobbyists I pay for have actually been doing. Not winning arguments where it counts, perhaps?
UPDATE: Self-styled "Red Tory" Phillip Blond seems to have dived into the debate on Twitter to advocate defence protectionism. Amongst his profound observations are:
"The trouble with off the shelf procurement sourced internationally is that we undermine our own defence capacity" and "w
e have
to have a national capacity to ensure supply security"
Far from buying us security of supply, the history of the Defence Industrial Strategy has, paradoxically, been to make our supply base less secure. Protectionism means we get so much less bang for our buck that our armed forces end up having to cope without.
A non-existent helicopter that's built in Britain is not supply security, Phillip.
Phillip has criticised "private monopolies" and the "market state" where "the elites of industry cohabit with political elites." But surely that's a pretty good description of the defence industrial racket he's now defending, no?
Posted on 21 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Good bye, Sir Hugh
Sir Hugh Orde, top quangocrat at APCO, hints that he'd quit if the Conservatives go ahead with plans to democratise control over local policing.
Off you go, Sir Hugh.
As Sir Hugh must surely know, the Conservative plan would not mean politicising operational policing matters. They would not see police officers taking orders from politicians on day-to-day policing. Indeed, our plans would enshrine operational independence in statute for the first time. (Sir Hugh, if you read this and still don't understand the detail, trying clicking here)
So why is Sir Hugh bigging up a bogey-man that doesn't exist? Why is he so fiercely against more public accountability? Best ask ACPO and the Association of Police Authorities if this is all part of their (publicly-funded) PR campaign against localism ....
In an astonishingly patronising and demeaning statement, Sir Hugh actually said that there are "no votes in protecting people from terrorism, from organised crime and from serial rapists that cross the country".
Apparently, ACPO would prefer us to address what they see as the real issue in policing; how best to merge police forces. I've yet to meet a single voter who thinks that force merger is the issue of the day. I'm afraid this merely tells us how out of step ACPO has now become.
Extending accountability is no longer merely a question of individual directly elected Police Commissioners replacing the Police Authorities. We need to put some question marks over the future of state-funded ACPO - it is simply not acceptable to have a publicly-funded fiefdom set policing policy and behave in this way.
Posted on 20 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
This is the only EU on offer
Unhappy that we've now got an arch-federalist Belgian, Herman Van Rompuy, foisted on us as the President of Europe?
Are you bothered that we are now represented in the world by an EU Foreign Secretary, in the form of the career quangocrat, Baroness Ashton?
Do you mind that these two technocrats - neither of who you ever had the chance to vote for - now have more power over us than anyone you might elect?
Be clear; this is the only EU on offer.
It's time to hold a referendum so the people can have a say on Britain's relationship with the EU.
Posted on 19 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Hannan wins award
Congratulations to Daniel Hannan for winning an award for the best political blog. He was presented with the Bastiat Prize for online journalism.
Is this a case of an MEP winning the top prize for journalism? Or is he a writer who also happens to be an MEP?
That's the beautiful thing about the internet. It breaks down the barriers.
Merit becomes the only currency that counts. Established professions - politicians as well as journalists - face challenges from the amateurs, and the boundary between the two blurs.
Posted on 19 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What the Queen's Speech really says
What did the Queen's Speech really tell us?
That only people who think, breathe and live SW1 could have written it.
We need a right of popular initiative so that the Queen's Speech contains proposals that people outside Westminster would like on the agenda.
Imagine if once a month MPs had to debate and vote on a subject of popular choice?
MPs might spend less time debating how to exempt themselves from their own Freedom of Information law, and more time dealing with things like immigration and the deficit. They might have included a Bill to fix their own expenses nonsense before looking to tell the rest of us how to live our lives through yet more equality legislation.
Despite the scandal that has rocked Westminster for the past few months, not a single measure in the Queen's Speech will make a single MP more outwardly accountable to the voter. Not one. It's as if those who wrote the Speech hope that it'll be back to business as usual.
Parliament is broken. Our political system isn't working. Yesterday's theatre does nothing to fix any of it.
Posted on 19 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Guardianista alert
Apparently something called Guardian Environment (guardianeco) are now following me on Twitter.
They'll be sure to treat everything I write with fairness and objectivity, I'm sure. Left wing environmentalists with an agenda are famous for that kind of thing, apparently.
Posted on 18 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
More laws, more government
The Bills that didn't make it into the Queen's Speech - this year, anyhow.
I suspect there'd be plenty of takers for it on the Labour benches. More laws and more government only creates a political appetite for yet more laws and more government.
1. Happy Families Bill
- a law to ensure all families are Happy Families by complying with ministerial guidelines. A new panel of independent experts - FAMOF - will issue appropriate rules on things like how much pocket money to give the kids, when to let them watch the X Factor and conflict resolution over who last had the remote controls.
The Bill allows inspectors to visit families and ensure full compliance.
2. Healthy Eating Bill
- Now that Ed Balls runs all our schools so successfully, the government wants to extend the same model to ensure everyone eats properly. This means a national menu - which, as with the school curriculum, will be designed to allow maximum flexibility around a slimmed down, compulsory core shopping list. Without minimum national standards on the content of your fridge, social cohesion could break down entirely.
There are to be catchment areas for supermarkets, meaning that you will have to shop at your local supermarket (localism). This will ensure fairness. Ministers will issue detailed guidance to supermarkets on what food they can stock in order to ensure people only eat what is appropriate. Tough new rules will allow ministers to force failing supermarkets to be turned around.
3. Something-for-Nothing Economic Recovery Bill
- this measure will allow the government to print lots more money to solve the debt problem. And give it to bankers. And borrow more, too. Kind of like they do already.
4. Appropriate Regulation Bill
- a law to ensure that government can identify and target areas of public life that are not yet regulated appropriately. Dangerous loop holes currently allow some people to do things without supervision. This Bill will hand independent officials new powers to issue statutory instruments, without the need for wasteful debates.
5. Democratic Renewal Bill
- this Bill will strengthen democracy by ensuring all democratically elected officials answer to a panel of experts and human rights judges. A new independent regulator - the Supreme Court - will replace the outdated regulatory system known as elections, which involved voters. Instead, a properly representative regulator will ensure that elected officials address issues that are of key concern to those who write for the Guardian or work at the BBC - and comply fully with guidelines issued by the Equality Commission.
Posted on 18 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Who speaks for us in Europe?
With Tony Blair out of the running to be EU President, we are told that other top Euro posts are likely to be awarded to Brits in recompense.
But in what sense does this mean that "we" get any of these jobs? The office holder might have a British passport, but there's nothing "us" about them.
The turf wars between different national officials for top Euro jobs are waged without reference to the populations they claim to serve. When our Foreign Office implies that "we" have won some portfolio or other, what they really mean is that one of them got promoted. What cause does it give us, the people, to celebrate?
Whitehall's line that Brits in Brussels are helping to win Europe round to our free market point of view is - after twenty years of ruinous regulation and dictatorial directives - starting to wear thin.
If top UK civil servants and FCO officials appointed to top Euro posts really did speak for us, surely we'd have some say over their appointment in the first place?
The time has come for us to democratise diplomacy. The Conservatives want to make officials and public servants more accountable. So why not have real accountability over those top civil servants that we send to Brussels?
Why not start with a full Parliamentary confirmation hearing to appoint the head of UKREP? Ever heard of the current post holder, Kim Darroch? Me neither. Yet this career diplomat has more of a say defining our position in the EU than ministers. Surely it is time that we subjected his successor to democratic confirmation hearings?
For over a generation, we've left it to professional politicians and diplomats to decide our relations with Europe - it's time for a referendum on the EU to let the people decide.
Posted on 18 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Wind turbines to be put up without planning consent ...
... reports the Guardian. I thought that's pretty much what happens already?
Big corporations, in receipt of large subsidies creamed off your electricity bill, put forward plans to industrialise the local landscape. Their monster turbines are opposed by elected officials at every level - from parish, district and county council, to Parliament.
Yet somehow it goes ahead all the same. Permission is acquired by bulldozing through local opinion - it is seldom freely given.
Please don't call it consent.
Posted on 17 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Christmas card design
What sort of Christmas card? The end of November makes it decision time once again.
This year, I've opted for a card using photos that I've taken myself. Lots of snaps of Westminster covered in snow.
Now to start signing them all!
Posted on 17 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Inflation rises - no surprise
After pumping £200 billion into the economy, prices are starting to rise. Inflation is back, as once again, we learn that printing more money devalues the worth of the currency.
Inflation happens when too much money is chasing too few goods and assets. All that QE in fact seems to have artificially bolstered certain asset prices. Given that the economy isn't yet out of recession, as a piece of Keynesian pump priming, putting more money into the economy hasn't been a runaway success, has it?
Indeed, the economy is 6% smaller than when this started - and thanks to the massive amounts of extra debt incurred, as a country we're all a lot poorer.
As I warned last October, the government response to the credit crunch is only going to lead to currency devaluation, inflation and higher interest rates. The first has happened. The second is starting. The third will follow.
UPDATE: Guido has a similar take on this, too.
Posted on 17 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
MPs talk. Eurocrats decide
MPs complain about EU plans for a new, super financial service regulator.
Complain away, chaps. It won't be you folk who decide.
If you really feel that strongly about it, why not demand a referendum on Europe - and let the people decide?
Posted on 16 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What if we quit the EU?
Interesting to see Radio 4 starting to raise this question.
I suspect it's one that we might start to see asked more and more.
Posted on 16 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
What do you want in the Queen's Speech?
As everyone knows, Her Majesty doesn't actually write the Queen's Speech. She has no more input than do you or me.
So who does write it? The Prime Minister? Cabinet? MPs? Not really.
Few of those that anybody voted for at the last election have any significant say in deciding the Commons legislative agenda, bar perhaps Gordon Brown and one or two acolytes. Like a scene from The Thick of It, most of the content is determined by unelected officials and PR people. They ask "what will make us look good?" when thinking of what to include, rather than "what does Britian need?" Hence the number of bad, ill-concieved laws passed as a PR excersize.
It needn't be like this. We could allow ordinary voters to have a direct say over what our politicians debate and vote on.
Imagine if the Queen finished reading whatever the Whitehall establishment gave her. What if she was to then draw from Her handbag a list of the six most popular Bills that the people had petitioned to have debated and voted on?
That's not to say that MPs would have to vote through what the public want. But they'd have to at least discuss it - and explain why they voted the way they did. That way our politicians might spend less time debating self-exemptions from their own laws, and more time discussing the things that matter to ordinary folk.
Giving us a right of popular initiative would mean that the Queen's Speech had some real purpose, as well as pagentry.
Posted on 16 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change PR chief attacks sceptics
At the weekend, I dared to mention on my blog that most people don't believe climate change is man-made, citing an opinion poll published in the Times, no less.
Bob Ward
, Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute (Chaired by Lord Stern, no less!), then left the following comment on my blog. I think it merits wider circulation.
Here is the PR head of a body that benefits from public money expressing outrage and indignation that an elected official should be even questioning the fact that we are about to spend £ billions on his pet subject.
Read it for yourself; The absolutist assertion that there is certainty within the scientific community, when there isn't. The self righteousness - "your responsibility as a Member of Parliament". The patronising tone - "help your constituents to understand what needs to be done."
One should not be surprised. This climate change body is involved in actually making public policy, unlike anyone that you vote for. In our post-democratic system, how dare those who trouble to win elections interfere with experts like Bob?
When I was a member of Friends of the Earth, I did believe human CO2 emissions were responsible for global warming. It's just that the facts seem to have changed. And so I've changed my mind.
Mr Carswell,
As Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, can I express my shock to find a Member of Parliament so publicly parading his ignorance of climate chnage [sic].
I can assure you that while the UK public may be confused about the causes of climate change, scientists are not. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increasing its concentration in the atmosphere should cause the Earth to warm. The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased by more than a third since industrialisation. The Earth is getting warmer. All these facts are undeniable. The uncertainties are over the amount of greenhouse gases we will continue to pump into the atmosphere, how much the Earth will warm as a result, and just how big the associated impacts on the climate will be.
Therefore, I suggest that you accept your responsibility as a Member of Parliament by firstly ensuring that you are properly informed about this issue (say by seeking a tutorial from the Met Office or the Royal Society), and secondly by resolving to help your constituents to understand what needs to be done. Better to do that than to continue to promote political denial and complacency through your blog.
Posted on 16 November 2009 08:32 by Bob Ward
Posted on 16 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
New media. Old OFCOM
Media quango OFCOM is to lose its ability to make and meddle in public policy. Good for democracy.
Restrictions preventing the media from evolving - with all-in-one local newspapers, radio and web distribution - are to go. Good for local newspapers and the punter.
Posted on 16 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
RAF cuts
The Times reports that the RAF is planning to axe 10,000 staff and "five large air stations".
Is this not the price of the Eurofighter - and of protectionist defence procurement?
Defence procurement is not a choice between buying British for a little bit extra, or purchasing it from overseas. As the decision to shut down of a quarter of the RAF suggests, it's instead a decision between having the kit, or not having it at all.
Posted on 15 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Why the FSA must go
Another failed regulator looks set to be given more things to regulate. Not the QCA or the CSA or the DPA, but this time, the FSA.
Gordon Brown wants to give his favourite quango, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), power to set prices and incomes within financial institutions. This expansion of regulatory powers comes after the FSA proved pretty hopeless at using what powers it did have to prevent the credit bubble.
For the past decade, the FSA has imposed ever more rules on banks and businesses. Entire compliance departments had to be set up to cope with all that the FSA demanded.
Yet in doing so, it was wielded a sledge hammer to - in Christopher Booker's great phrase - miss a nut. Despite all the box ticking, no one thought to examine banks basic asset to liability ratios.
Now, well run banks that avoided being taken into state-ownership risk being dragged into a nightmare of corporatist banking. It will be a world in which bankers' profit margins owe more to political graft, than to giving customers the services they want. It'll be a world in which Widmerpool and Wesley Mouch thrive - while ordinary folk and businesses go under.
Halt the slide into state quango banking. Take an axe to the FSA.
Posted on 15 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change - most now dare to doubt
According to a poll in the Times, most people do not believe that human activity is responsible for climate change; "Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made."
Far from "still" questioning climate change, the number of doubters seems to be increasing.
All those government awareness programmes don't seem to be working?
Objective science and the flow of knowledge about it on the internet can prove inconvenient for ministers, eh?
Posted on 14 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Tories plan on moving Prime Minister's Questions?
With respect, surely it should not be a matter for any executive to decide the legislature's timetable?
If there is a case to shift PMQs to a Thursday, it should be a matter for the House of Commons to decide. PMQs should be held for the convenience of the legislature - not anyone else.
Tony Wright's committee on Westminster reform will, I hope, reestablish the principle that it is for a committee of the Commons - not government - to determine the Common's timetable.
Inconvenient for ministers sometimes, perhaps, but that's democracy. Or rather, that should be Parliamentary democracy .....
Posted on 14 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Commons reform: the Plan takes shape
Within the next few weeks, the Commons looks set to implement another proposal put forward in The Plan.
Of the 30 proposals Dan Hannan and I advocated, many are now mainstream; abolish MPs perks, remove the Speaker, radical localism and directly elected police chiefs, and open primaries.
Now the Commons looks set to adopt our Step 5; elect select committee chairmen by secret ballot - i.e. free from whip control.
This may seem like a minor, technical point, but it could have profound implications - ensuring that once again government answers to Parliament.
If those who head up select committees owe their position to the whole House, rather than the party machine, it paves the way for the Commons to confirm executive appointments, not only to quangos and the senior civil service (Steps 6 and Steps 7), but of ministers, too. It sets in motion a dynamic that could see ministers and quangocrats having to plead before select committees for the annual budgets (Step 8).
Yes, indeed. You see where this is heading. A separation of powers - but without having to write / re-write our constitution. That's the point .... complete the unfinished English revolution.
Posted on 13 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Thank you, Spectator readers
A big, big thank you to any Spectator readers - you were kind enough to elect me the Readers' choice at yesterday's Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards.
I used my two minute acceptance slot to suggest that reforming Parliament isn't merely about fixing MPs expenses. It's about making those in Westminster outwardly accountable to voters - too many today are only inwardly accountable to other SW1 people.
Really pleased to see Daniel Hannan pick up the award for that speech - two and a half million viewers. And also delighted to see Andrew Tyrie pick up a prize. He has, of course, been asking some interesting questions about supposedly man-made climate change.
Posted on 13 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
MoD cock ups a consequence of protectionism
There's been a lot in the media about the incompetence of the MoD. When it comes to converting our £36 billion defence budget into kit that our armed forces doesn't need, the MoD is in a class of its own.
Yet I don't see how many of the proposed technocratic fixes being mooted will solve much. Hiring smarter lawyers at MoD will merely increase employment costs. "Stream lining" procedure merely speeds up the rate of incompetence.
MoD is failing because it is trying to do the impossible. In any market, when you constrain the supply, the seller sets the terms of trade. So, too, in defence.
MoD simply cannot get value for money when it is having to buy kit off an oligopoly of suppliers.
The answer is to broaden the supply base. For decades, successive governments have done the opposite - yet all the "economies of scale" arguments have turned out to be bogus.
Thanks to constrained, protectionist supply, we are today paying £27 million for a helicopter that we could purchase for £ 8 million. The former will not be ready until 2013. The later could be flying in Afghanistan in months.
If we bought more defence kit "off the shelf", we could purchase more of what our armed forces needs, when they need it. (For example, why not buy UAVs direct from Israel?)
This is precisely why so-called "Urgent Operation Requirements" - which by-passes all that protectionist nonsense - is increasingly the procurement method of choice.
Posted on 13 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Who judges the judges?
Judge Adrian Smith gave a serious sex offender a "three year community order", reports today's Telegraph. Just over a week later, the offender offended again.
Perhaps it is time to democratise the way we appoint our judges?
In most professions, people make mistakes. When a doctor gets things seriously wrong, they get struck off. When an architect messes up, they lose their reputation and work.
Yet judges - almost uniquely - don't seem to be made to answer properly when they get things wrong.
Surely public officials like Adrian Smith need to be made accountable to the rest of us? Should we not have public confirmation hearings for judicial appointments?
Posted on 12 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Britain's decline can be reversed
"Decline is a policy choice, not a condition. So is prosperity" writes Irwin Stelzer today.
Indeed. And, as he reminds us, it doesn't have to be this way.
There's nothing inevitable about failing schools, criminal justice or immigration controls. There's nothing preordained about the collapse in tax revenues, economic dynamism or social values. We're not fated to have useless politicians, quangos or councils.
These things are all a consequence of public policy sclerosis. And public policy has been failing across the board because those who make it are not properly accountable to the public for what they do. From that, all else flows.
The answer? A revolution in accountability.
In the 1980s, the Conservative task was to decentralise control over economic things; privatisation, supply side reform, deregulation. Putting people in charge via markets, rather than politicians and state planners, meant better economic decision making. We prospered.
Why only democratise control over economic things?
Today, the Tory task is to decentralise control over public services and politics; radical localism, elected police chiefs, open primaries and recall, parental choice.
Choice and competition revived the economy a generation ago. Choice and accountability in public service provision and policy making can improve the way Britain is run today.
Our best days lie ahead. All it takes is the political will .....
Posted on 11 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Sounds like the Plan
"The first step is to redistribute power and control from the central state and its agencies to individuals and local communities. .... A necessary counterpart to decentralisation is greater transparency. That’s because information is power, so by giving people more information we give them more power... The third element of the power shift we want to see is accountability ... We will require the people and organisations acting for the state to be directly accountable to the people they are supposed to serve."
- David Cameron speaking tonight at the Hugo Young Lecture
Posted on 10 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Oil production - the only way is up
Remember those 1970s scare stories about the world running out of oil?
I can't remember if it came before or after the "we're-heading-for-a-new-ice-age" scare. But the idea was that oil would run dry - then the lights would dim, cars run dry and plastic grow scare.
Thirty years on and there's more oil derived energy being used in more homes by millions more people. Car ownership has been extended to people who twenty years back couldn't afford a bicycle. It's too much plastic that's the problem, not too little. Far from running out, more reserves of oil and fossil fuel have become available than ever in human history.
Why have the doom-merchants been quite so wrong? Later day adherents of Jacques Rousseau, the nay-sayers consistently under-rate technology. It is technology that allows us to find and access new deposits of oil, and lets us utilise what we find more efficiently.
On a recent trip to Uganda, I was curious to learn more about the estimated 2 billion barrels recently discovered there. Heritage Oil let me visit one of their drilling sites. There’s vast potential – and done properly, it could be a great benefit to millions of people around the world.
If oil does present us with geo-political challenges, perhaps it won’t be problems posed by shortages, but rather those created by abundant discoveries that'll be the headache.
Posted on 10 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We pay for MPs expenses with our liberties
653 state agencies will be able to snoop on every phone call you make, website you visit or email you send. When was that in any election manifesto?
Telecoms firms won't merely store such personal data for a year. Working within each one are teams of state snoopers, whose job is to pass the information out to government. These "security cleared" employees within private telecoms companies even have their salaries met by government - a sort of stasi.com.
And at no time will the hundreds of quangos able to access this data - from your local council to the FSA - need the permission of a magistrate to obtain information from them.
There was a time when our Parliament acted to restrain government, her instinct to rein in overbearing officials.
Yet a generous expense system has put more MPs on what amounts to an expanded payroll. With 7 out of 10 MPs coming from "safe seats", many MPs answer inward to SW1, rather than outward to voters. Thus do most MPs see their job as defending officialdom, not holding it in check.
With the Commons moribund, the state grows.
Posted on 10 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Another day, another decision for quangocrats
Should tuition fees rise?
Lord Browne of Madingley, former BP chief executive, and a panel of Whitehall insiders have today been appointed to decide, reports the Times.
So what's the point of any party including a section on higher education in their next election manifesto if these unelected quangocrats are being put in charge?
The Browne panel have been asked to look at the challenges facing higher education and the implications for student financing. But I thought public policy was meant to be made by those we elect.
Is it all really all so complicated that our MPs can't master the facts and come to a decision for themselves? If MPs really feel that they need to contract out public policy, could we not elect instead people of calibre for who it is not all too imponderable?
Fearing unpopularity, politicians pass responsibility to "experts". Yet all that happens is that they end up losing respect as well.
Posted on 9 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We need to go nuclear
The government is going to announce a new generation of nuclear power stations in the press Parliament.
Good. About time, too. Grown-up politicians need to support this decision - and well done to Greg Clarke for calling this right.
Britain needs nuclear power - sooner the better.
Apart from anything else, it'll reduce our dependence on some very unpleasant governments around the world.
Posted on 9 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Westminster Hour with Carolyn Quinn
I was on the MPs panel on Radio 4 yesterday. Talking about Afghanistan, Kelly, and why we need a referendum on Europe ....
You can listen here at 21 minutes in.
Posted on 9 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Meet the Speaker
On a recent return visit to Uganda (paid for out of my own pocket, I should say), I was invited to meet the Speaker of Parliament, Hon Edward Ssekandi. It was a great honour to meet him.
Posted on 9 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Remembrance Day in Clacton
A moving service on the sea front in Clacton this morning.
Young cadets marched smartly. Veterans stood to attention. The bugler's "Last Post" was pitch perfect.
Yet what struck me most was the high turn-out of ordinary folk. There seemed many more people who just wanted to take part. And lots of younger people, too.
Posted on 8 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Gordo's a loser - but with our money
For years Brown spoke of prudence. He learnt not to sound like a socialist. Yet all the while he spent our money like a drunken sailor.
Brown may well be a loser - but he's been losing with our money, and our children's hopes of prosperity.
The dynamic, low-tax economy he inherited in 1997, has been mortgaged to pay for the greatest expansion of the state since the war.
As Chancellor and the Prime Minister, Brown's only big idea has been to tax and regulate, and then regulate and tax.
Now, he wants to extend his destructive creed with a global tax regime.
Under Brown's proposal, a global tax on financial transactions could net some £500 billion. Think of what people like Brown, and other unelected supranational technocrats, could do with that kind of money. All that money, without even needing the pretense of a democratic mandate.... Terrifying.
We need an election to boot him out.
Posted on 8 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Head of MP watchdog is quangocrat - shock
Today's Telegraph reveals that Sir Ian Kennedy, head honcho of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, is a pal of Labour's ex-spin doctor, Alistair Campbell.
And you're surprised because of .... ?
Apparently, he's sat on a number of public bodies - and will now sit in judgement of your elected representatives. No kidding. What were you expecting?
If you make MPs inwardly answerable to Westminster quangocrats, rather than outwardly accountable to the people, this is what you get.
There was once an independent authority to whom our MPs had to answer. It was known as "the electorate". We need to make MPs more vulnerable to what it thinks, rather than what mates of SW1 spin-meisters want us to think.
Posted on 7 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
False dawn on the economy?
Interest rates held at almost zero. Quantitative easing injecting £200 billion of extra liquidity into the economy.
Conventional wisdom tells us that this is just the ticket to stimulate demand. It's essential for recovery, they say.
No doubt the smug, self-satisfied finance ministers meeting for the G20 summit for another bout of back slapping will convince one another that they've saved the world.
Yet could it be that record low interest rates are actually preventing us from saving enough, thereby keeping credit in short supply? Perhaps all that extra liquidity might merely artificially hold up asset prices?
Perhaps the G20 ministers would be wise to ask their Japanese counterpart, Hirohisa Fujii, in what way low rates and printing money have got the Japanese economy moving again.
Except - oops - he's not coming. Perhaps he's figured out that G20 smug-fests are a waste of time?
Posted on 6 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Nature notes
On a recent trip to Uganda, I saw what looked like a snake. In fact it turned out to be thousands of migrating caterpillars that formed a column in order to look like a snake.
Apparently it's a defence against predators.
So I did my David Attenborough bit and filmed it.
Posted on 6 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Public procurement rip off
"If you want to get rich, work for the government" runs the adage. Given how the taxpayer is so frequently ripped off, I can see why.
At least 43 major projects worth around £200 billion were "at risk of not achieving value for money", reports the Telegraph. Apparently, says the National Audit Office, it's because of "significant weaknesses" in the expertise of government departments civil servants aren't up to the job.
Sitting on the public accounts committee, I know the taxpayer is regularly paying over the odds. But it's not simply because civil servants haven't been on enough training courses. It runs deeper.
Despite all the jargon, the rules and restrictions over who gets to bid for public contracts favours certain contractors - preventing the competition needed to drive value for money.
For example, only a few dozen firms seem to have bid to do the lion’s share of the work on the Building Schools for the Future programme. Elsewhere, t
he protectionist Defence Industrial Strategy means we seem to be paying £27 million for a helicopter we could have bought for £8 million.
What constitutes "value for money" is determined by auditors breaking down costs, and making a technocratic judgement as to what constitutes an appropriate margin. They used a similar system to set prices in the Soviet Union. It doesn't work.
Fixing public procurement means unfixing things - and that means real market competition, not the faux corporatist competition we have today.
Posted on 6 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
The Commons is a waste of space - literally
Despite all the £ millions spent running the Parliamentary estate, and the £235 million thrown on Portcullis House, today there are 3,500 square meters of empty office space. All prime real estate at the heart of our capital city.
Why is it that Parliament is as bad at managing office space as it has been at running its expense system? Because in a world of “safe seats” and steam age democracy, it answers inward to itself, rather than outward to the people it is supposed to represent. Who gets to sit where is decided by the kind of good old boys who oversaw the expense system.
Be a good boy, and you get a big office, see? I sit proudly in a windowless garret.
Douglas Carswell:
How many empty offices there are on the House of Commons part of the parliamentary estate?
House of Commons Commission:
The number of vacant rooms on the House of Commons estate fluctuates constantly as requirements change or maintenance work is carried out.
The office next to mine that sat unused for a couple of years seemed unused rather constantly.
Only records of current vacancies are maintained.
At present there are 14 unoccupied offices on the estate with a total area of 230m(2). Six of these offices are vacant to enable major roof works to take place in the area known as the "Yellow Submarine" north of Speaker's Court.
There are 2,100m(2) of, open plan offices leased in No. 4 Millbank for use as decant space. Of this, 500m(2) is currently vacant, awaiting fit-out.
There are also 2,800m(2) of vacant, open plan space which is the House of Commons' area of No. 14 Tothill street, a building leased in October 2007 and shared with the House of Lords. This area will be fitted out and available for use by the Department of Resources in autumn 2010.
So the answer to my question is in fact 3,530 square meters. Why could you just not say so?
With office space in London going at about £175 per meter per year, I estimate that’s well over half a £million of empty offices sitting idle. Who says Parliament needs to change?
Posted on 5 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We need a referendum ....
... on Europe.
I accept that a vote on Lisbon itself may not be possible.
But a referendum on Europe is becoming urgent.
No one under the age of 52 in Britain has ever had a say.
All three main parties, and 638 of the 646 MPs promised us one at the last election. We Conservatives opposed not merely the Lisbon treaty, but the transfer of powers made by Amsterdam and Nice.
If we are serious about localism, restoring trust in SW1 and renewing our democracy, we must give people a direct vote on Europe.
Posted on 4 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Fund management industry is going to have to change
For years, the UK fund management industry has been charging fat fees for somewhat slender performances.
Why? The regulatory regime means that fund managers answer upward to regulators, rather than outward to customers. If the customer, not the FSA, was king, there'd be meaningful transparency over fees. There'd be more flexible pricing. There may even be lower fees.
But instead effort and energy go into delivering products that the regulator sanctions, not what the punter necessarily finds attractive.
Scrapping the FSA could provide the industry with a historic opportunity to get the regulation right. But will it?
Maybe. Or perhaps the fat fees, lack of transparency and absence of competition for customers suits some players.
Yet if we are serious about clawing our way out of debt, Britain needs radical changes to encouraging saving. No, that absolutely does not mean compulsory savings or curriculum courses. It means less government. It means public policy changes to foster a cultural shift in attitudes that would empower more people to take responsibility for their own financial security.
To do that, fund management, and government policy, is going to have to change.
Posted on 4 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Our venal Parliament has failed us
"How can it possibly be that our MPs have allowed the Lisbon treaty to become EU law?", asks a furious constituent. There is a sense of disbelief and despair with our political class.
Without the consent of the people, Lisbon means most public policy decisions are to be made in Europe. Those we elect will no longer answer properly to us, but to Brussels. Power rests with a quango state, the European Commission and President at its apex.
All this despite the fact that 638 out of our 646 MPs specifically promised they'd put any final decision to the people.
How was it that most MPs were prepared to let this happen? How come they were willing to surrender our right of self-government?
Because too many of our elected representatives have been in the pocket of government for years. Returned from "safe seats", many answer inward to Westminster, not outward to the voter.
With their expense system, the payroll has literally grown to include not only ministers in the governing party, but most MPs. That is where the fury over Lisbon went.
Lisbon is the price we all pay for our MPs expense system. A truly independent legislature would not have let it happen.
Restoring faith in politics doesn't only mean implementing the Kelly report right away. It means giving the people a referendum on Europe.
Our venal Parliament has failed us. We need a referendum.
Posted on 4 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
A referendum on Europe
No one under the age of 52 in Britain has ever had the opportunity to vote on European integration.
We need a referendum on Europe to give the people a say. It need not necessarily be on the Lisbon Treaty. But we must have a referendum on Europe.
The party of localism and direct democracy should have no problem granting one. Restoring faith in politics and politicians requires it.
Remember, 638 of the 646 MPs in SW1 promised us one.
Without a referendum, the EU project has no legitimacy. And what faith in democracy?
Posted on 3 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Primary purpose
My good friend Paul Goodman MP writes an interesting piece on Open Primaries here.
He is critical of them on the basis that "universal Open Primaries would surely lead, sooner or later, to a radical destination – namely, a constitutional settlement in which the Executive and Legislature are separated."
Errrr. Yes, Paul. That's the point.
At present the legislature is in the pocket of the executive, making the Commons
useless. Monumentally useless. So useless, in fact, that it no longer makes most of our laws, nor decides how our taxes get spent.
Open Primaries would force MPs to answer to local people, rather than party whips. Our elected representatives would once more do the job they're supposed to.
Nor is the idea of a separation of powers alien to our political tradition, as Paul suggests. Remember that up until the First World War, any backbencher wishing to join the government had to resign and fight a bye-election. When our MPs were not career politicians subsidised and pampered by the state, they thought and acted more independently.
Paul is simply wrong to suggest that Primaries weaken the role of local party members in choosing candidates. Done properly, members have an even greater say over who is on the shortlist. Rather than weaken local parties, Primaries actually bring lots of new members in.
Paul says there are other ways of cutting the executive down to size. Alas, all such proposals I've listened to depend on the executive reigning in the executive. Somehow that never seems to happen.
I seldom disagree with the great Paul Goodman, but on this I must. Open Primaries are a change for the better that is right here, right now.
Posted on 3 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Hannan for President?
"Daniel Hannan for President" reads the banner on the streets of Washington. Sections of the crowd spontaneously chant his name, apparently.
Now, I know he's nicked the credit for the ideas in The Plan, and done some YouTube stuff, but this is ridiculous.
Posted on 3 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Ethics and expenses
It's morally wrong to use public funds to purchase a private asset that could be sold on for personal gain.
Most 12 year olds can grasp that. So why did so few of our elected law makers? Being "within the rules" is no defence for people whose job is to make our country's rules. Supposedly.
Why should it take Kelly, who is reported to want to ban MPs publicly-funded mortgage payments, to impose a standard of ethics that ought to be blindingly obvious? And if this rotten, venal House of Commons is not capable of getting those questions right, how can it be trusted to get the big political questions right?
Thus do we begin to see why it is we are governed the way we are.
Posted on 3 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Who does the Foreign Office serve?
The Foreign Office is on its knees, complains ex-Ambassador Christopher Meyer in the Telegraph.
Good.
For years, the FCO has pursued policy objectives at odds with our national interest. Her mandarins are aggressively Euro-integrationist, lobbying for each of the treaties, from Rome to Lisbon. (None of which, incidentally, has been democratically sanctioned by anyone under the age of 52.)
Our urbane diplomats spent much of the last century siding with tyrants like Nicolae Ceausescu. Were they not, more recently, a driving force behind the squalid "oil for terrorist" deal with Gaddafi? Far from being objective servants of Britannia, many retired diplomats sit on the boards of arms and oil companies.
If managing decline is all you do, you will decline. The Foreign Office has lost much of its purpose precisely because it has reached the point at which it has negotiated away to Brussels our capacity to formulate our own independent foreign policy in the first place.
Déformation professionnelle
means that our mandarins keep on confusing their own career interests with Britain’s. Until we democratise diplomacy (here's how), our diplomats will never be truly ours. They will never serve the country or the people, but only politicians and themselves.
Posted on 2 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Clacton localism on Radio 4
Yesterday I was on Radio 4's Week in Westminster explaining why we need more local control over public services in Clacton. And Frinton, and Jaywick, and Holland-on-Sea, and Walton and Harwich ....
That's the thing about localism. We know better than some remote officials as to what is right for us. Indeed, we know what is us.
Listen here (31 minutes in)
Posted on 2 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Back in Uganda
Having grown-up in Uganda, I recently returned for a quick visit (100% paid for from my own pocket, I should say).
As you can see from the "before" and "after" photos, it's clearly not just the country that's changed over the years!
A private visit, I was nonetheless invited to meet the Speaker of Parliament. I was made to feel very welcome, with lots of kindness and hospitality.
I was very impressed by quite how free the press now is in Uganda. Lots of fierce debate about all sorts.
Separately, I also learnt lots of interesting things about the way our aid budget is being spent - and had lots of thoughts as to how we could improve the way we give aid. If DfID's budget is indeed going to be ring-fenced against any cuts, we must make sure we achieve more with it.
Posted on 2 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Vote Conservative. The quangos will hate it
If you want another reason to vote Conservative, just listen to Sir Iain Blair attack Tory plans for directly-elected police chiefs.
Sir Iain would much rather that the criminal justice system continued to be run by people like him. The kind of people who have presided over a catastrophic increase in crime and disorder - and under whom state officials seem more intent on seeing things from the criminals' point of view, not the victims.
Sir Iain even says that - shock, horror! - newly elected justice commissioners might sack useless police chiefs. You bet.
Such accountability is, according to Sir Iain, "not a very British way". Indeed it is not. Which is why the level of crime and disorder in Britain are at such historic highs. And why, as a portion of total crimes committed, we punish and incarcerate fewer wrong-doers than most Western nations.
Make no mistake, the quangocrats that actually run Britain are growing desperate to protect themselves from direct democratic accountability. They are waking up to the fact that the new Conservatives' direct democracy programme will call time on them. And, though few of them grasp it, it'll call time on their unconsciously leftist, Frankfurt school public policy assumptions, too.
The new Conservative agenda will democratise control over policing, public services and politics, just as the old 1980s Conservative agenda democratised control over the economy. In doing so, it will roll back our Gramscian quango state, just as Thatcherism pushed back the socialist state.
Vote Conservative. Quango fat cats will hate it.
Posted on 2 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
We'll sell banks when price is right ...
.... promises the Chancellor, Alistair Darling.
Like your predecessor did with our gold reserves, eh?
I'd have more faith in Homer Simpson's commercial nous than any clown at the Treasury. Remember what happened in the 1970s when we relied on government officials to decide on "the right price" for things. Remember what happened when state employees tried to spot winners.
Posted on 1 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell
Blogging light
The six month old has learnt to clap.
Blogging today will be light.
Posted on 1 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell