Brentwood, Essex, England

Voting rights and emigrants

2011-05-17T04:00:00.003+01:00

I've been mulling over the issue of voting rights ever since the European judgement and the subsequent vote in the House of Commons on the issue of prisoners and voting. I then more recently engaged in a thoughtful twitter exchange with Noreen Bowden who has been campaigning on the subject of the rights of Irish citizens to vote while they are abroad.

Just to reiterate my own position and situation - I am a British citizen, raised in Ireland and currently based in Singapore. Having lived in Brentwood for six years, and with every intention of returning, I am registered overseas as a voter in the parliamentary constituency of Brentwood and Ongar. This gives me the right to vote in General Elections and referenda, but not local elections in Brentwood.

Despite some of the rhetoric used, I've come to the conclusion that voting is not a human right - at least not in the sense that the right to freedom of religion or the right to be fed and sheltered is. I base this on a number of reasons, but the most obvious one is that a French citizen living in the UK or Ireland does not get the vote. Instead of which, the right to vote is a privilege of the citizenship you hold - and further, other restrictions can apply to that right (eg an Irish citizen must actually be resident in the UK to exercise the right of an Irish citizen to vote in a UK election).

It is however clear to me that any restrictions on voting rights must be clearly objective in a proper democracy (the European Court ruling on prisoners voting rights implied it was okay to stop them voting if their sentence was more than four years). British rules on emigrant voting rights are clear - the overseas vote is only allowed for 15 years.

The second point that needs to be raised is that under the electoral systems used in much of the former British Empire (which includes the US and Ireland) you typically vote for the representative in a specific area. When I cast my vote in the next UK election, the only thing I'm actually voting on is whether or not I want Eric Pickles or one of his opponents to represent Brentwood and Ongar in the House of Commons - I am not voting on whether I'd prefer David Cameron or Ed Miliband to be Prime Minister (though the position of the candidates themselves on that issue might influence my voting decision).

The final point is that the issue of overseas citizens voting gets even more complicated when one considers citizenship by descent - despite the failings of successive Fianna Fail governments, I doubt Ireland would have been better off if in the 1980s the romanticised view of Ireland amongst Irish Americans had ended up leading to second and third generation Irish American votes effectively imposing Sinn Fein on the voters who would have had to live with the day to day consequences of that decision.[1]

Noreen Bowden has made the point that the young Irish people who have had to emigrate as a result of the Irish economy imploding don't get a chance to determine the government who might be able to fix the mess so that they could come back in a few years[2]. She's right - but I do think there needs to be a balance between those who have the intention to return and those who ultimately decide to remain abroad for the remainder of their lives. Ultimately, in my view, there needs to be a balance between those who may or will be affected in their day to day lives by the decisions made at election at time, and those for whom the biggest impact may be reduced consular services in Timbuktu. I do think tax liability plays a part here - the US taxes American citizens abroad, Ireland and the UK do not.[3]

So how do you tell when a leaver has the intent to return? Well, that's actually in itself horribly subjective - and open to change. So you can't. Instead, you end up having to approximate - suggesting that there's a fixed period of time within which you retain the right to vote, but after that it's accepted you don't. In other words, I think the UK has it more or less right - British citizens retain the right for 15 years after departure. You can argue about the specific length (why not 10 or 20) but in general, I think the balance is right.

That's not to say there aren't other opportunities to engage emigrants in the political process. It has always been my view that having a two house legislature where both are elected on a proportional basis is a bad idea - the "Lower" house[4], which tends to be more representative of how votes are cast, should always have the precedence - and if both houses are fully and directly elected it's then unclear which has the mandate and precedence. The role of the upper house needs to be to act as a restraint on politicians simply passing idiotic populist legislation and to provide alternative voices within the system. My advice therefore to my Irish friends is that they should campaign for the right to vote to be retained for a fixed number of years, and that as part of the reform of the Seanad, they could also have a specific number of Senators to represent the views of Irish citizens abroad.

What do you think?

[1] Yes, I know there's a few big ifs in there, but I don't think by themselves they are unreasonable.

[2] Ironically, despite the tendency of Singaporeans to label those who do move abroad as quitters, there's actually a concerted effort to get those citizens to vote as overseas voters in the elections. And that's despite the evidence that overseas voters are much more likely to vote for Opposition candidates.

[3] The issue of tax liability is not of course the determining factor in itself. Plenty of emigrants still have investments back in the homeland, but that's a factor in how they deploy their investments, it's not automatic.

[4] Another artifact of the British legacy?

David Lammy shows why lawyers should never do statistical analysis

2010-12-07T15:24:00.002Z

A few years ago, I watched an episode of Question Time when David Lammy and George Galloway were on the panel. Lammy spent most of the evening taunting George - ironically behaving like the stereotypical Oxbridge Union debater who spends most of the evening badly heckling others, and not being anywhere near as funny or clever as he thinks he is. In other words, he came across as a total and utter prat.

I was reminded of this when I saw Lammy's figures being quoted in the Guardian today. As an example of how not to do it, this has to go down well. Some details of what's wrong with this analysis is here - including making the point one didn't need lots of FoI requests as much or all of the data is made available by the university itself.

Even the Guardian article makes it obvious what is wrong with the analysis:

A spokeswoman for Oxford said: "Black students apply disproportionately for the most oversubscribed subjects, contributing to a lower than average success rate for the group as a whole:

That alone should send up red flags that what is needed here is a proper statistical analysis of all the factors that can affect the success rate of an application. Any competent statistician would start of by collecting data on all the potential factors (including popularity of the course, race, sex, school type, A level results and then run a detailed analysis of this to discover which elements are statistically significant). One case where this was done was in an analysis of the application of the death penalty in the state of Georgia - where it was clearly shown that statistically, the race of the murder was not significant, but the race of the victim was (ie: if the victim was white, the murderer was more likely to be executed, but this was true regardless of whether or not the killer was white). Ironically, in my Open University module where they presented this data analysis, they took it from a book called "Statistics for Lawyers". Perhaps someone could get Lammy a copy!

In other words, all this analysis proves is that Lammy is, in fact, a prat. Anyone who had seen that Question Time show already knew that, but it's always nice to have corroborating evidence.

(Note: this doesn't prove Oxbridge admissions aren't biased. And before the usual suspects make the comments on Facebook, nor should it be taken as a statement by me about the rightness of the death penalty, which I oppose).

Singapore and democracy

2010-11-08T02:09:00.002Z

A few weeks ago, the wife and I attended a local production of the play "Boeing Boeing" (starring amongst others, Wendy Kweh, who some of you might more readily remember as DC Susie Sim on The Bill). Because the play had been customised to the Singapore audience, I didn't get all the jokes, but one of the highlights of the evening was when a Singaporean character was interacting with the British friend of the play's hero:

S: "Do you know what makes Singapore great?"

B: "Err... Democracy?"

S: "Don't try to be funny lah!"

In an evening when the mostly young audience did a lot of laughing, this was the exchange that got the biggest laugh of the evening.

I was reminded of this when in response to my recent tweet/facebook update suggesting that the London Underground should ring Singapore and ask how to do driverless metros, I was effectively accused of giving succour to dictatorships.

This is simply nonsense - I don't like dictatorships and I am passionate about freedom but more to the point, Singapore is not a dictatorship. It holds elections every four or five years, and there's no suggestion that the voting process itself is in any way corrupt. Another election is due before February 2012 (in the Singapore system, like the British one, the Prime Minister effectively gets to set the election date). It is guaranteed though that the PAP will still be in power in March 2012, regardless of when the election is held.

There are a number of reasons for this though - most of which would still hold even if freedom of the press was the same as it is in the US or the UK. The first and most obvious is that whatever else one can say about the PAP, noone can deny that as a party, they have been immensely successful in developing Singapore since the city state seperated from Malaysia in 1965. They have managed the feat of building a modern city despite having few natural resources, an education system that is the envy of the world (or at least the pre election Conservative Party!) and generally managed to punch above their weight at an international level. They've done this while managing to keep Singapore as one of the least corrupt countries on the planet, and their politicians seem to actually believe they have a duty and responsibility to the country. The opposition in the last election only bothered even putting up candidates for just over half the seats - presumably the ones where they felt they had the best chance of winning - and still only got less than 40% of the vote!

Indeed, the opposition is one of the reasons why the PAP are so strong. Not long after arriving here, I was out at lunch with my in-laws and my daughter. We were approached by a group of opposition activists - including their candidate who I later found was seen by some as their party's next leader. I was not particularly impressed by them[1]. Not that long afterwards, my wife and I attended a post budget dialogue with one of the local MPs[2] who despite being a backbencher, was impressive, intelligent, and had a good command of her brief. In addition, she also came across as a pretty decent human being - defending the presence of foreign workers and saying we had to remember they were people too. She wasn't afraid of saying things that weren't going to make her popular either.

The final point though that needs to be remembered is liberal democracy is not something that comes naturally to societies. Political cultures don't always take it for granted - in 1932, the winners of the Irish election turned up for their first day at work with guns in their pockets in case the previous government wouldn't step down voluntarily (the memories of the civil war were still fresh). A year later, German voters decided to put a stronger emphasis on strong leadership rather than maintaining democratic freedoms. Singapore is still a young society (though maturing fast) with a lot of internal tensions. Up until the 1950s the decisions were made by a group of people accountable to London's colonial office, not the residents. It's not surprising that many voters and citizens put a higher priority on maintaining that stability and comfort than on political freedoms.

[1] I may be slightly unfair here - they were wearing "Singapore for the Singaporeans" teeshirts which come a bit too close to the slogans of racist parties like the BNP back home. They then approached us and I got asked a couple of questions about my intentions to take Singapore citizenship (highly unlikely at this point and even more so when I'm less than a month in the country) and I just ended up feeling like I was offending these guys for giving my kids a chance to interact with the Singapore half of their heritage.

[2] The event was "graced by" her presence. One of the wierd things about Singapore is the level of respect shown to politicians! Also, no one gave me any hassle at all about being presented, though I was ignored by one activist who leaned accross me to talk to my wife about something.

Fisking Johann Hari

2010-09-10T17:07:00.003+01:00

I'm not usually one for blogging on religion, but a couple of people I follow on twitter saw fit to tweet an article by Johann Hari, and I couldn't decide what astounded me more, his ignorance of Catholicism or his arrogance in attempting to preach to Catholics from that position of ignorance.

It is my conviction that if you review evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them - and join the protesters
Well, let's see. I would make a couple of points here - I refer to Damien Thompson's blog entry on a couple of occasions - Thompson of course has a bias due to his Catholic Herald connections, but he would have a better understanding of how the Catholic church works than a self proclaimed atheist (of whom it was once said that he's proof that "you can take the boy out of Govan, but you can't take the Rangers Supporters Club out of the boy" which leads me to conclude that he's not from a Catholic background).

Another more general failing in much analysis of Catholicism and it's administration is the failure to realise that it's organisational structure is not like that of large corporations or public bodies. If the head of GE or BT doesn't like what a senior executive is doing, it's relatively easy to sort out. Bishops act as head of their dioceses, with a reporting line to Rome that would on some organisation charts be represented as a dotted line. It is very hard for the Pope to fire a bishop - while moral pressure can be exerted on a bishop to resign, it's rare for that to happen (this is why many Catholics often complain their bishop is not working in line with what they perceive to be the Pope's leadership on issues - if you really care, you can go through Damien Thompson's blog and look at the debate over the liturgy).

I want to appeal to Britain's Roman Catholics now,...

Well there's always a first time (yes, I know it's a cheap shot).

In the final days before Joseph Ratzinger's state visit begins. I know that you are overwhelmingly decent people. You are opposed to covering up the rape of children. You are opposed to telling Africans that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. You are opposed to labelling gay people "evil". The vast majority of you, if you witnessed any of these acts, would be disgusted, and speak out. Yet over the next fortnight, many of you will nonetheless turn out to cheer for a Pope who has unrepentantly done all these things.

A few points here - it may be a distinction without a difference, but the Catholic Church does not teach that gay people are "evil", only that gay sex is. The issue of condoms, AIDS and Africa is not as black and white as Hari cares to depict it (and neither is the response of Catholic agencies on the ground in Africa). There's also precious little evidence -as we'll go into - that Cardinal Ratzinger was involved in covering up the rape of children.

Some people think Ratzinger's critics are holding him responsible for acts that were carried out before he became Pope, simply because he is the head of the institution involved. This is an error. For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse.

Er, no. The body responsible under much of John Paul II's pontificate for enforcing the law on sexual abuse was normally the local bishop, not the Vatican. When the cases did get to the Vatican, it was usually the case that they were handled by the Congregation for Clergy, not the Doctrine of Faith. If Hari had done his research - and read up authors like John Allen on how the Vatican works, he wouldn't be labouring under this delusion. The rules were changed in around 2002 to give the CDF authority over the cases - partly because the then Cardinal Ratzinger (correctly) felt that the local bishops were rather dropping the ball on this one.

He is a notorious micro-manager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Küng, a former friend of Ratzinger's, says: "No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope."

There is a lot of dispute about the Pope's management style - there's actually a lot of evidence that he over-delegates. Quoting Kung is not a good sign - Kung has been in conflict with the Vatican for over 30 years and is simply not a reliable source on how the Vatican (doesn't) work.

We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.

Hari's track record on handling figures is not encouraging - see Tim Worstal's blog for a number of recent examples. I suspect there's some conflating of figures here with the number of victims raped by priests who had already offended with the abuses that went on in a number of institutions - notably in Canada and in Ireland. The problem of course is that one is still too many.

Here are three examples.

In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn't go to the police, instead Hullermann was referred for "counselling". The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was "untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again". Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.

Cardinal Ratzinger of course moved from Munich to Rome in 1982, so he didn't have direct authority within the Munich archdiocese from that point onwards. Most of the documentation in the Hullermann case suggests that he was allowed into Munich to receive treatment - and Cardinal Ratzinger was aware of this. The decision to put him into a parish was taken by the Vicar General, not Cardinal Ratzinger. What the hell the Archdiocese thought it was doing in allowing Hullermann to remain working after the 1986 conviction is anyone's guess, but it's a little harsh to blame a man who hadn't worked there for five years for the decisions being taken.

In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining that he was thinking of the "good of the universal Church" and of the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age" of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger's statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the "good of the universal Church" – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.

A couple of points here about the Kiesle case which Hari doesn't mention - either because he's not aware of it or because it doesn't suit his polemic - Kiesle already had a criminal conviction for the crime referred to. Kiesle was already suspended from active ministry by his bishop. Hari also misrepresents the circumstances of the laicisation request - it came from Kiesle himself - apparently to get married (in other words, he was looking for permission to marry within the church). It could equally be argued that 'Ratzinger thinks the "good of the universal Church" lies' in not effectively rewarding child rapists with a church wedding they were otherwise not entitled to.

Finally, the further allegations of assault on children came fifteen years after Kiesle was laicised. Damien Thompson has more on the details of the case here, but Hari's reading of the case seems to be based on the inital reports without looking any further into the details. It could also do with looking at the context of the laicisation process in the 1980s as well, but as he can't see the difference between an application to be laicised and "de-frocking" I doubt he'd able to properly understand it.

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical "trial" – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a "spiritual retreat". He died years later, unpunished.

The Murphy case is another case where inaccurate reporting in the early stages seems to dominate the story - especially as spun by the Protest the Pope crowd. Some of the facts missing from the above paragraph - Murphy's crimes took place between 1950 and 1974. The relevant Archbishop had been in situ for some time (and later had to resign in his own personal scandal when it was revealed he had lent a male lover diocesan funds) - so there's some question over his own competence when dealing with these cases (it's also alleged that he was not particularly sympathetic to other allegations of abuse in his diocese). The relevant canonical process was not cancelled, but was still underway when Murphy died in 1998 - two years, which is not what was implied by the paragraph. Incidentally - the case was only even able to be tried because of the confessional element - in terms of both Wisconsin criminal law and Catholic Canon Law the statute of limitations had kicked for the sex crimes themselves. Again, more detail here.

These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with "in absolute secrecy... completely suppressed by perpetual silence".

The subtle implication here is that Ratzinger's letter in 2001 forbade bishops to get the local police involved. This is quite simply a lie. Guidelines laid down by the US bishops, the English bishops and at least in the Archdiocese of Dublin during the 1990s made getting the civil authorities involved a mandatory part of the process. None of the bishops took the letter as meaning those processes should change.

...the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: "I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration." The commendation was copied to all bishops.

Er, no. A Vatican offical - albeit a very senior one - did that, not "the Vatican" (Hari again falls into the error of assuming the Vatican works as one mind. It's a collection of human beings, not the Borg collective). It was a strange thing to do - and only really acceptable if the reason the bishop failed to inform the police was that he himself only learned about it when hearing the priest's confession - which has been suggested by some. There is however no indication that the letter was approved by the current Pope (which would be fine if he was simply railing about the Church's handling of the cases in general - but Hari has personalised the issue in this piece).

When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with... ordaining women as priests.

No, he didn't. The Vatican's press department rather screwed up on this one - they did a clean up of canon law and process in a number of areas that it was felt needed clarification, and then released them all at one go. Fr Lombardi even said at the press conference they weren't equating the two. In PR terms, it was a stupid thing to do, precisely because people like Hari would make the claim above.

In short Hari's article is long on rhetoric, short on dispassionate analysis of what actually happened. This is not exactly unusual for him. I appreciate he's never likely to be a huge fan of the current pope - and at the end of the article he does manage to make a couple of half decent points, but he ruins the effect by making no attempt to understand how the Catholic Church works or to look into the cases past the initual reporting which sensationalised the cases into something they weren't (namely the "smoking gun" that tied the Pope to cover ups).

During my teenage years I had a number of encounters with Sean Fortune - one of the more notorious priest abusers in Ireland. I count myself fortunate I was not one of his victims - something I may blog about later. I am angry at the actions of the bishop whose inactions allowed me to be put in that risky situation (Fortune already had form at that point) - but that bishop wasn't Cardinal Ratzinger.

To be clear, I am not denying there were failings - at both the local and at the Vatican level - to get to grips with the problem. There are countless explanations for this, but the reality is there's little excuse for a lot of what happened. Cardinal Ratzinger appears to have been one of the first senior Vatican officials to fully get the extent of the problem, and his response to centralise the administration of the cases was to some extent a reversal of some of the Vatican II reforms. It is a tragedy it took so long, but there's a long distance from incompetence to international conspiracy to cover up.

One final point - there was a lot of comment when the Pope was elected that he wanted a purer church - even if it was smaller. His role at the CDF would seem to support that suggestion. Cardinal Ratzinger was also quoted as saying it was time to get rid of the "filth" from the church - he then backed that up by fairly quickly pushing Fr Maciel into contemplative retirement once he became Pope - despite Maciel having powerful friends in Rome. It does appear that on the abuse issue at least he is devoting more time to actions than perhaps he is to words.

UPDATE: made a few minor corrections of spelling and sentence structure - the perils of blogging at 2am.

Also worth noting that Catholic Voices responded much better than I did.

David Laws, expenses and public service

2010-05-29T17:12:00.003+01:00

I'm not going to get into the debate over David Law's sexuality because in the context of the controversy over his expenses claims, it's irrelevant.

Unless I've misunderstood something - it seems his "offence" is that having shacked up with his partner in London, he then claimed (substantially below) the second homes allowance for this over a period of four to five years - a total of about £40,000.

£40,000 may sound like a lot of money, but that's actually not a lot to be paying in rental over a period of 5 years (when I first moved to Brentwood in 2004, I rented a one bed place at 550 a month - that would have come to a total of about £33,000 over five years. That was about as cheap as I could get, and was for a small one bed flat).

The ridiculous thing about this does appear to be that had Laws -having claimed well below the allowance in the first place - simply "flipped" his second home to his constituency and claimed the full whack, wouldn't be under fire this morning.

The actual breech of the rules is that apparently it's not okay for an MP to pay his expenses to a family member or partner. So far, so good, and Laws has moved to pay the money back to the Commons authorities - it probably helps that he is "independently wealthy" as a result of his investment banking background.

But why precisely is it not acceptable for MPs to not claim expenses for staying with friends or family. One can essentially two approaches to expenses as expenses - one, that they should actually cover the costs to the MP of doing his job, or second, that they should be used by MPs who could not otherwise afford the costs of being an MP.

If we take the latter approach, then Laws shouldn't have claimed the expenses - the fact he can repay such a large sum of money indicates he was well able to pay them in the first place without claiming the money. This is not an unreasonable approach - it emphasises the public service element of being in politics, but doesn't prevent the less financially well off from entering parliament on affordability grounds. In effect, you means test the second homes allowance.

That's not what the rule book says though. What it says is that the costs are there to cover the expenses of being an MP. There is a category of MP that clearly needs a second home - either in London or in their own constituency (Laws almost certainly falls into this category). If an MP owns a house in their constituency, and then owns a flat in London - there is still a cost to them of using that flat in London - if they weren't using it for their duties as an MP, they might have the option to rent the flat out. So the cost to that MP, of using a flat in London, is that they lose the rental income on the flat they would otherwise have. Under the current rules though - they can't claim that. In fact I even recall one MP being criticised because they did rent out their London flat and then claimed second home expenses on a "third" property they used as their London base.

This is how it works in the real world by the way - if I stay with a friend instead of using a hotel on a business trip, I can claim a nightly allowance (under HMRC guidelines, there is a set amount which isn't taxed and doesn't require receipts). Most managers and finance departments if they see an expenses claim that comes well under the allowance tend not to question the details too much, as they are simply pleased that the employee has saved them money (a manager who is expecting to sign a claim for 3000 pounds and might look at the details will simply just sign a claim for the trip if it comes in at 2300 - and that's my own recent experience).

It's really quite simple - either we pay MPs expenses on a what it costs them basis, or we means test them. David Laws seems to have fallen into that gap where despite saving us money by his own lifestyle choices he is being condemned for... well what precisely?

Education, education, education...

2010-04-07T14:46:00.004+01:00

Those of you following my twitter feed (apparently there's 56 people following me - so when I tweet this I might get a few more readers) will have noticed I've been tweeting reasons why I think it's time to get rid of Labour. Some of these tweets when imported by facebook have led to some interesting debates there.

The most interesting, and yet fundamentally irrelevant one though, came from one friend who insists that it's unacceptable that the "privileged" are over represented in the Tory Shadow Cabinet. He based this on the assertion that several of them have been educated in private schools and then went onto Oxbridge (mostly Oxford). He clearly feels that being privately educated gives you an unfair start in life.

There's little doubt in one sense that it does - apart from anything else, look at the Labour cabinet that also has plenty of privately educated people - Straw, Harman, Balls for a start (Straw apparently attended Brentwood School on a scholarship/funded place - which only proves that simply looking at the school proves nothing about background!)

However, I'm not convinced that being privately educated makes all that much difference - after all, state education didn't exactly stop the Milliband brothers getting into the cabinet.

My son is four - he seems quite bright, though it's hard to be objective about this. If he ends being educated in our part of Essex, he has a number of good state schools to chose from, in Brentwood or in Chelmsford (or possibly in his case, Hornchurch). There is little doubt in my mind that the key influence in whether or not he goes to Oxbridge is not whether or not I pay for his education - but whether or not he has the natural ability to do so.

The reason for this is simple - the school really isn't the determining factor for most children in terms of their future - it's the parents. If you come from a background where university education is taken for granted, you most likely will end up going to university. If you come from a background where it isn't - then your chances of going are considerably lower (my paternal grandmother didn't go to university partly because she felt it wasn't for her - it was my father who was the first to go). I am the eldest of eight - the only two who don't have degrees are the two who aren't old enough to have graduated yet - and several of my siblings either have or are studying for postgraduate degrees. None of us went to posh schools - in fact my secondary school was particularly ordinary.

The state schools, such as King Edward VI in Chelmsford - that regularly rank at the top of the league tables and often send 10 to 20 to Oxbridge each year - are in one sense self perpetuating. The sort of parent that values academic excellence is more likely to send their child to that school than the parents who don't (and for what it's worth - an academic education isn't for every child - it may not be for mine).

So it's not the schools that matter - it's the parents. And if you're unfortunate not to have the "right" set of parents, you are doing to start at a disadvantage.

Jon Venables and hysteria....

2010-03-06T03:04:00.003Z

I am currently in Singapore with my two year old daughter - I'm going to be working out here for a while - in all probability at least a year. Maybe I should think about renaming the blog :)

I can't begin to imagine the horror of what Jamie Bulger's parents have had to go through over the last 17 years. I know that if something similar happened to my little girl, I'd be devestated. Should it be done by an adult while we're out here, that adult would be hanged - and I genuinely believe my principled objections to capital punishment might well crumble in the face of such a horrendous event.

Here's the point though - even hanging the culprit wouldn't bring her back. And nothing that we do to Robert Thompson and Jon Venables can bring James Bulger back either.

Here's another point - a lot of emphasis is put on the entirely understandable anger that Denise Bulger in particular exhibits towards her son's killers, as though this should some how influence how they are treated. Imagine however, that her reaction had been the stoic one of Gordon Wilson on the night of his daughter's murder by the IRA. His pain was no less, but his personality combined with his religious faith clearly affected how he reacted to the loss of his child.

I first became aware of the reports regarding Jon Venables return to gaol through a Facebook update of an old friend which read "Good riddance to Jon venables, I hope he gets put in a cell with a big hairy paedo... I'd pay to watch the big brother version of these two getting aquainted... Oh and why oh why at 27 is his identity being protected...." (incidentally said friend lives in Ireland, so it's not his taxes that are paying to protect their identity). This was then followed up with a comment by him "As for Thomson... keep looking over your shoulder son..." Sadly, this attitude seemed typical of the gross over reaction of some in the media.

(Incidentally, I find the above reaction particularly shocking as it is from a friend who professes to be a Christian - and yet he seems to forget the principle that all people are equal in the eyes of God.)

There appears to be a growing body of opinion that somehow we should know what specific terms of his release Venables breached to be locked up again - despite everything, it does seem probable it was more than a mere technical breach. One press report suggested he'd been to Liverpool several times - including attending a Premier League game at Goodison. If so, then the man's an idiot - there was a significant if small possibility he could be recognised (I met an old primary school friend some years back, having not seen him since we both left primary school, and we quickly recognised each other). A member of the Question Time audience on Thursday suggested we should know as it would help put the issue to rest. In fact, as the above quote from Facebook shows, this debate will only be put to rest when both Venables and Thompson are dead - so we could be dealing with this for another 70 years!

The Question Time panel, with the except of Carol Vorderman, generally agreed that in this case the law should the law should be allowed to proceed in it's own way in the full knowledge of the facts, as opposed to the more emotional response that many in the public feel. This has to be the correct way to proceed - if we start dealing with this in an emotional manner based on incomplete or inaccurate press reports, or even the feelings of the mother, then we end up with a situation where justice and the rule of law cannot prevail.

One final thought - Venables and Thompson were arrested on the 20th February 1993 for Jamie's murder. Six days later, two children - Jonathan Ball, who was only a year old than Jamie, and Tim Parry, aged 12, were murdered in nearby Warrington. As far as I know, no one has ever been convicted of their murders - but if we did find the adults who killed them, and convicted them - their murderers are unlikely to spend much if any time in gaol under the Good Friday Agreement. Is murdering a child somehow more acceptable when it's being done by an adult in pursuit of a cause?

Lisbon treaty referendum....

2009-11-04T11:33:00.002Z

I'm annoyed at the inherently undemocratic way the UK has ratified the Lisbon Treaty (essentially, Labour and the LibDems broke their election promise of 2005 to hold a referendum).

David Cameron promised that if a Conservative government was elected before the treaty was ratified, he'd hold a referendum on the treaty. The treaty is now ratified.

If he were therefore to hold a referendum on Lisbon now - it wouldn't have any effect - the UK can't simply renege on a signed, ratified international treaty. Simply running that referendum is going to be the behaviour of those who can't accept reality.

That's not to say a referendum shouldn't be held on something - merely that Lisbon can no longer be the subject of the referendum per se. We're told an announcement will take place this afternoon - it will be interesting to see what happens.

Maternity Leave and the pay gap....

2009-10-18T12:47:00.002+01:00

There's been a fair amount of debate over the last few days after Nicola Pease's comments about maternity leave and the fact it may be indirectly hurting women's advancement in the work place.

Julia Llewellyn Smith has an article in the Telegraph today in which she discusses the impact of extended maternity leave on mothers. Much of the article is anecdote about mothers, who have high flying compensation packages and don't hesitate to exploit them to the full (while simultaneously complaining about welfare scroungers). The one piece of data though is "studies show three female doctors have to be trained to produce the same 'work time output' as two men."

We're constantly told that there is a pay gap between men and women - there are a number of reasons for this, and it's certainly not as simple as plain sexual discrimination. According to the NSO, there were 28.9 million people in employment in the UK last year. Let's assume that 15 million of those are men.

Wayne Rooney, John Terry and Frank Lampard between them earn over 400k a week - or alternatively, three footballers earn 20 million a year between them as a base salary (before bonuses or other endorsements). I make that those three men alone add £1.33 to the average male salary in the UK. When you include the rest of the Premier League - that suddenly adds a lot to the gap. But the fact that Premier League footballers earn a lot is hardly news - nor does it really make that much difference to what the man on the street earns. The reality is that the really well paid entertainment stars up the rate, and it does seem the bulk of them are men (women's football is not as well paid, and girl groups don't appear to have the staying power of boys groups - see the X Factor voting patterns).

But even when you bring it down to the level of somewhere like the NHS, where salaries are set according to bands which you have to work your way up through. The overall cost of hiring a man of 25 on 25k a year is less than that of hiring a woman of 25k. This is because the cost of hiring the woman is increased by her maternity benefits - this does carry a cost, in terms of paying her for the nine months she might not be working as well as paying her replacement. In addition, this is exacerbated by the pension costs - many women are entitled to receive pensions at 60, whereas men have to wait 65. As women tend to live longer, the cost of supplying a pension of X to a woman is more than it is for a man of the same age, never mind how much more it is if you allow the woman to claim the amount five years earlier.

None of this is to suggest that sex discrimination doesn't happen - but it's to point out that there are often hidden financial costs to legislation that is meant to level the playing field. As has been pointed out elsewhere (and in much fruitier language - don't read if easily offended) if the results of the legislation you pass creates perverse and unintended incentives, why then express surprise that people act on those incentives?

As for the idiotic idea that childless women should somehow be entitled to "maternity" leave, words fail me.

Cuts in public services.

2009-10-13T15:12:00.003+01:00

Via a friend on Facebook, I was pointed to this article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. In which she asks why the public sector should pay the price when "reckless banks" are to blame for the deficit rather than "state extravagance"? She calls the idea that the state sector might be to blame "poisonous".

In a sense, she is right. The current recession isn't the fault of the state sector. However, the deficit quite clearly is.

Deficits occur because the government spends more money than it receives. (I know this should be obvious, but Toynbee appears to believe that taking money from people and spending it through an inefficient public sector somehow drives growth, so I can't assume anything). If we are run to deficit in the bad times (Keynsian economics), then the counter side to that is during the good times, you run a surplus, in order to be prudent and have some money in the bank to pay for the deficit in the bad times. The problem is that over the last 12 years, the government haven't felt the need to do that, spending it all on a splurge of increased public spending - believing the solution to any problem was a combination of top down targets and throwing more money at it - while simultaneously increasing the tax burden (the removal of the cap on NI, the increase in NI, the abolition of the 10p tax band) - all of which was presided over as Chancellor by the current Prime Minister (whose arrival in number 10 was greeted with such huge enthusiasm by Toynbee).

It may not be fair that the public sector might be carrying the can for a deficit that wasn't their fault - but nor is it fair that in the private sector there are hiring freezes and staff reduction programs in large companies for employees who aren't responsible for the recession either.

Um... it's called democracy...

2009-09-21T11:06:00.002+01:00

The Telegraph reports that despite the attempt to railroad the Lisbon Treaty through by holding a second referendum in Ireland it may be delayed until after the British general election because the Czechs have some legal issues to be resolved.

Particularly intriguing is this quote:

Mr Sarkozy then threatened the Czech leader with unspecified "consequences" if Prague allowed the delay to trigger a British referendum that would probably lead to the Lisbon Treaty's rejection.

So, thats the clear admission then. The attempt is to get this Treaty through before the Tories can "wreck" it by actually reflecting the will of the British people on the treaty (anti Lisbon parties easily took over 50% of the votes in this years Euro elections).

Dell update

2009-09-06T00:45:00.004+01:00

Here's the email I sent Dell last night on arrival back from Belgium (a subject on which I shall write more later). I've removed the name of the customer service agent I've been dealing with via email. Apologies for any formatting issue, probably to do with Chrome, Gmail and Blogger not playing nice with each other. I blame Dell, as I'd actually bother to work this out properly if I was using my new shiny laptop!

Dear XXXXXX,

I have now returned from my holiday, and despite this being about the
eighth promise of an update, I notice there is still no news, despite
the fact you mailed this promise on Wednesday.

To be clear, I have been made the following promises:

1. On August 18th, I was promised a response by the end of the day.
2. Having called at 5pm that day, I was then told the response would
be on Thursday August 20th.
3. On August 20th, I called and was told by the supervisor that a
response would be forthcoming by the close of play on Friday August
21st. The supervisor assured me that the matter had been "escalated
with the courier".
4. I called at 5:15pm on that Friday, to be assured an updated would
still be forthcoming that day.
5. As you can see from the email thread below, you emailed me on
Monday 24th to assure me of an update by the end of that day.
6. On Tuesday 25th I was then emailed and told on the phone that a
response would be forthcoming by Friday 28th. At this point, I
informed the customer service agent I was talking to that I would not
be in the UK for the working week ending September 4th.
7. On Friday 28th, I called again to be told that an update was not
then expected until Tuesday September 1st.
8. On Wednesday September 2nd you sent the email below promising an
update by the end of September 3rd. It is now late in the evening on
September 4th.

This means that Dell Customer Service have now missed seven seperate
commitments for an update.

On Tuesday, I was contacted directly by the courier with a return
number in Ireland. Despite being on holiday and therefore having to
pay roaming charges on top of the outrageous amounts typically charged
by mobile companies for international calls, I returned the call to
the courier. I was informed that having now confirmed that I did not
know "J Jones", they would now need to interview the driver. This
was a full fortnight after I initially raised the issue. When I
expressed my dissatisfaction about this, I was told a) that the
courier might take until September 6th to complete their investigation
(I presume she in fact meant the 7th, the 6th being a Sunday) and this
was what the SLA with Dell was. I was further informed that from the
point of view of the courier, the issue was only raised on August 27th
- nine days after I initially raised the issue and a full week after I
had been reassured by one of your supervisors that the issue had been
escalated with the courier. Clearly it wasn't escalated very well!

On returning from my holiday, I have received confirmation from my
bank that the money Dell took off my credit card has now been credited
back to my account. Considering the way Dell have handled this
matter, I am going to take some convincing to allow the bank to
release the money back to Dell.

I would therefore like to ask the following questions to Dell:

1. Why have you consistently failed to meet any of the seven
commitments regarding issue update/resolution that I have been given?
2. Why is the courier company (Walsh Western) saying it took nine
days before they were asked to investigate the misdelivery?

Kind regards,

Thomas Bridge

Why I will never buy from Dell again...

2009-08-18T22:12:00.003+01:00

I had hoped that I might be typing my next blog entry on a brand new Dell laptop, which I ordered a couple of weeks ago. Oddly enough, this was a big thing for me - despite my advanced age of 34 and my general geekery, I have never actually bought myself a laptop - the three laptops I've had since 2000 were all company laptops which to a greater or lesser extent could also be used for personal purposes - though being moved to my employer's standard build a few months ago meant I couldn't really do anything on my laptop.

This was a problem for a few reasons - I couldn't install the software I needed for my Open University course, the laptop only worked for internet access when connected through the corporate VPN, but the most significant thing is I'm leaving at the end of next week with a view to going contracting.

So having decided I couldn't really justify the expense of a new Apple, I placed an order with Dell for a generally well specced, beefed up laptop. Yesterday I received an automatic call saying "your new laptop will be delivered tomorrow am". Generally quite impressed - they've only taken about ten days to assemble the laptop and ship it from China. (Yes, I'm the sort of saddo that regularly checks the shipping info on their site to find out where the laptop was).

And that's where the entire thing fell apart.

I spent the morning at home on tenterhooks waiting for the doorbell to ring. Regular checks showed me that the laptop had left the depot in Chelmsford at 9:45.

And I waited.

And I waited.

And I waited.

By two o'clock, I was starting to wonder where the laptop had got to. At quarter past 2, I reloaded the shipping page to discover it had been signed for at 12:08 by someone called "J Jones." I've no idea who J Jones is.

So a quick call to Dell.

Me: "I'm wondering where my laptop is. According to the shipping stuff, it's been delivered, but it's not here! It's signed by someone called J. Jones, who I've never heard of"

Dell in Delhi(*): "Please hold Sir... Sir, according to our records, the laptop is delivered and J. Jones signed for it".

Me: "Yes, I just said that. The thing is, there's no J Jones here. We've been here all morning, so it's not like the delivery people left it with the neighbour. Not that I think we have any Jones as neighbours".

Dell: "i'm sorry Sir, but it's marked as delivered."

Me: "No it isn't".

Dell: "Well Sir, I can ask the carrier to send us the slip, which I can then email to you."

Me: "which will prove it was signed for by someone I've never, ever heard of. Can't you just take my word for it now?"

Dell: "Sorry Sir. I need an email. I will contact you by end of the day".

I rang them an hour later, to get the "no news message." I did suggest that while they were at it, they should find out where the laptop is (if it's been misdelivered to another house in the village / borough / county I'm sad enough to drive over to get it!). I also tried to contact the courier company direct (Walsh Western, now Syncreon) but their automated systems can only tell me the laptop is "delivered".

At 5:30, I call back, as I still haven't received my email. Dell in Delhi informed me that that the lady I had dealt with earlier had gone home, but it would be 48 hours before they would get the slip from the courier. When I get through to customer service, they are about as much help as Gordon Brown is to Labour's re-election prospects. At this point I decide I've had enough - I want to cancel as the alternative seems to be fighting Dell's multi menu system to get through to people who can't tell me what's going for at least another week. I'm then informed that I can't cancel the order until "their investigation is complete" as the laptop has been "delivered". My insistence that:

It hadn't been delivered to the delivery address.
It hadn't been signed for by anyone known to anyone at the delivery address.
I reminded them that Dell that on their own website it's very clear for security reasons they will only deliver to the address on the credit card. They clearly have not done this!

was met with a response of "it's delivered Sir".

The day ended with my calling Halifax and disputing the payment to Dell. Updates will follow!

(*) - I don't know that's where Dell's call centre actually is, but the lack of Irish accents and the prevalance of Indian ones on the phone plus a vague recollection of some Irish news reports makes me think I was talking to an Indian call centre, and I can't resist the alliteration.

Harriet Harman says Thatcher's government was best...

2009-08-02T17:40:00.003+01:00

After all, that's the only obvious conclusion one can draw from her statements to the Times:

I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions.

and when she "insisted that men should not be left to run things on their own."

The only 20th century premiership that had a leader/deputy leader pairing of a woman and a man was of course the Thatcher premiership.

I'm not unsympathetic to the notion it was successful, I just wasn't expecting the endorsement of the deputy leader of the Labour Party.

Note for the BNP...

2009-06-06T00:34:00.001+01:00

Dear British National Party,

The next time you wish to leaflet my house, I would very much appreciate if you could simply deliver some Andrex.

I'll know immediately who it's from, and it will have the advantage of being softer and more absorbent.

Not to mention the fact that it won't already be full of shit.

Thank you in advance,

Democracy in action....

2009-03-24T20:39:00.002Z

Was recently seen at Brentwood Council when councillors voted on the issue of approving the William Hunter way development (or not!).

It now transpires that pretty much the last legal hurdle the council had to get over has now been cleared, in that the Secretary of State for Communities has decided not to call the development in for review. The Gazette reports one protestor as saying:

"The whole process represents a dark day for local democracy.

Nope, it's actually a very good day for local democracy when the Secretary of State (who is herself an MP for a North West seat and a member of a party that has two representatives on our borough council) decides not to overrule the decisions of the democratically elected local representatives.

I've expressed concerns already at the rules that means councillors who state an opinion on developments outside of the council chamber (to the extent that if you are elected on a platform for or against a proposed development, you're automatically excluded from voting on that development) but the fact remains that an absolute majority of councillors voted for this proposal.

What is equally amusing is that the protestor goes on to say that Brandon Lewis has failed to

to engage and captivate local people's imagination

I've only met Brandon a couple of times - and both of those were in passing - but I can say from having attended last week's council meeting that it was quite clear Councillor David Kendall for one would have to disagree, given that under Brandon's leadership of the local Conservative party the number of seats held by the Conservatives on the council has gone from nine to twenty eight.

Speaking as a Tory, if that's a failure, then here's to a lot more of it at the next general election!

Sir Fred's pension

2009-02-27T23:43:00.002Z

As the Devil and Tim Worstall point out, if Sir Fred Goodwin's pension was part of an agreement reached between him and RBS as he exited the company, there's really no grounds in law for confiscating his pension money if he's not willing to give it up voluntarily. Sir Fred claims that he has already made a number of gestures in terms of his entitlements from RBS, and that the pension relates not just to his time in RBS but also his previous employments. Sir Fred also makes the claim that his pension arrangements "have not fundamentally altered" from when he joined RBS in 1998.

During his time in RBS, Mr Fred Goodwin became Sir Fred, due partly to the intervention of the then Chancellor. The same Chancellor whose regulatory system completely failed to prevent the collapse and (partial) nationalisation of several banks. Perhaps Sir Fred should consider this - offering to take the same percentage cut in his pension as the then Chancellor, given that they both messed up on the job.

I wonder how well that would play with the current resident of Number 10 Downing Street.

William Hunter way and democracy

2009-02-26T12:42:00.000Z

I attended last night's Council meeting to have a look at local democracy in action - I had been told the main focus would be the budget, but it turned out the main topic of interest was the proposed planning development for William Hunter Way, a matter of intense controversy locally. The plans were being brought to full council for approval - leading to the public areas being packed with opponents of the developments.

I have no strong views on the development - I haven't studied it in enough detail, but it was clear to me that the only way this was going to fail to pass was if there were sufficent opposition from within the local Conservative group (as a majority of the council is 19 and they make up 28 of the 37 councillors). In the end - despite the absence of three Conservative councillors, and a "rebellion" and a few rebels voting against, 20 votes were cast for the development and it passed.

The thing that appalls me though is the number of councillors who had to step out of the chamber for the debate because they had publicly expressed opposition outside of council to the development - this was a cross party issue, as Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative councillors all excused themselves. Some of the councillors actually represented the ward in which this controversial development is to be built. Legal advice was that this was a requirement laid down by central government.

If this was a swear blog, I'd make the Devil's Kitchen look the soul of reason. This is totally ridiculous - what's the point of electing local councillors if the moment they start to represent the interests of those who voted for them they lose their ability to vote on the issues they care about? It wouldn't have made any difference in this case, but it's still fundamentally flawed.

Ivan Cameron

2009-02-25T14:00:00.003Z

As a father myself, I can just about start to get an idea of the pain David and Samantha Cameron must be feeling today.

Today is not a day for party politics - as recognised by the Prime Minister who made the very wise decision to cancel PMQs today - and instead made a very moving speech on the subject - he of course, has some idea of the pain the Camerons must be feeling after the death of his own daughter.

David Cameron is a church goer - it might be some consolation for him to realise there is a little angel in heaven tonight praying for him.

That's how to do it....

2008-12-05T15:28:00.002Z

Kirklees District Council have announced they are to have an "independent review" ... "into the way social services dealt with Shannon Matthews's family before the schoolgirl was kidnapped by her mother."

The Council Leader, Robert Light, said they had ordered the review "because any responsible local authority would want to be constantly reviewing its processes and working practices".

Good man!

There's no way that social services can 100% guarantee the safety of any child in a dangerous and abusive position. The law designed to protect the rights of parents and children can get in the way, and busy overworked social workers can make mistakes (and indeed, even social workers with a managable workload could be deceived and this isn't a black or white issue - they are dealing with various shades of grey).

It is possible - maybe even probable - that Social Services in the area followed procedures and genuinely felt there was no need for Shannon and her siblings to be on the "at risk" register. This doesn't need to be a witchhunt (for a start, despite everything, thankfully nobody died) - what it needs to be is an opportunity for a local organisation to look at itself, see if there are lessons to be learnt and then learn them.

Thoughts on the interest rate cut

2008-12-04T12:33:00.001Z

Last time interest rates were at 2% was 1951.

When Labour lost an election and didn't return to power for years.

We can but hope!

You know you're getting old...

2008-11-19T00:32:00.001Z

When you're watching Father of the Bride on the Sky Plus box, and you're looking at the wedding from the father's point of view.

Might have had something to do with the gorgeous eight month old baby on my knee at the time.

You know you're settling into Brentwood....

2008-11-17T17:12:00.002Z

It's been the end of an exhausting fortnight - I went over to Ireland for my brother's wedding, returned home last Monday only to have to go straight back to Ireland for my grandmother's funeral (I actually got the call as the boat was pulling out of Dublin Bay). Home again for a couple of days, before heading up to my grandmother's house for a night.

And the realisation I was finally, finally settling into the area as we pulled off the M25 onto the A12... I was thinking "finally, we're home".

Education....

2008-08-14T21:52:00.003+01:00

I was a bit puzzled by the stupidity displayed by Caroline Flint in her Newsnight video:

But according to her Wikipedia page she has a "BA (Hons) in American Literature and History combined with Film Studies from the University of East Anglia."

I'm not puzzled any more.

UKIP and 42 days

2008-06-12T10:35:00.005+01:00

The recent UKIP policy document on Criminal Justice Policy says

We regard detention without trial as in improper state of affair

That would explain Bob Spink, UKIP's only MP support for the government in last night's vote to extend the period for locking up terrorist suspects for 42 days without trial.

Watching Prime Minister's questions last night - I couldn't believe that Gordon Brown had the cheek to lecture the Conservatives on the risks of terrorism. It was clear which side won the argument - sadly, they lost the vote because the Prime Minister saw fit to maintain the old Irish tradition of bribing MPs (or TDs) to vote with the government in exchange for supplying their constituencies with cash.

Irony....

2008-05-14T14:34:00.004+01:00

So, I'm spending a few minutes glancing through Hansard from the early days of the online archives, and I found this gem from Defence questions:

Mr. Darling : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he has any plans to strengthen the security of sensitive defence computer systems.
Mr. Archie Hamilton : Yes. For security reasons I am not prepared to disclose details.

Mr. Darling : Can the Minister tell us whether British defence computer systems have been interfered with? Can Britain's defence computer system be infiltrated as happened in the United States when computer hackers spread a virus in the system and so compromised defence? The Minister sounds a little complacent, as if he is seeking to hide behind a shroud of secrecy. Will he answer my question and give the House the assurances it needs?

Isn't it somehow ironic that years later, Mr Darling was the Chancellor when HMRC managed to lose the details of 26 million people?

But who chose them in the first place.....

2008-05-12T13:06:00.002+01:00

Tim Worstall points out (rightly) that the MEP Tom Wise, who was the subject of a rather damning report in the News of the World about MEPs "riding the gravy train" hasn't been a member of UKIP for some time. Ashley Mote, the MEP who was sentenced to nine months in jail for benefits fraud and attempted to avoid prosecution by claiming immunity as an MEP, had the whip removed by UKIP within weeks of his election. As for Robert Kilroy Silk, I'm sure that UKIP would feel the less said, the better. In 2004, UKIP had 12 MEPs elected. In other words, they've lost 25% of their elected representatives, mostly under a cloud (and Godfrey Bloom isn't exactly a walking advertisment for a modern political party either).

This does rather beg the question though - what does it say about the party that thought the three of them were fit to nominated in the first place?

It's called democracy, dammit.

2008-05-08T15:03:00.002+01:00

Two recent political stories make me wonder about how democracy in this country is going to shake out over the next few years.

While the likes of Iain Dale are correct in pointing out that whatever else it is, Boris Johnson's election is not a bad day for democracy, there are a couple of other stories that indicate other things might be.

Take for instance the news that Stuart Wheeler has successfully obtained a judicial review of the government's decision not to hold a referendum on the European Constitutional/Review Treaty. While it would be rather entertaining seeing Gordon Brown getting slapped down by the courts - and why not, everyone else is giving him a good kicking at the moment so it's only fair the judges should have a turn - I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that a court can presume it might even have the power to strike down parliamentary legislation on the basis of an election promise. (Side note to the likes of the Devil's Kitchen complaining about Boris banning booze on the Tube - it was in his manifesto. You don't get to cheer when Gordon gets a shoeing over failure to keep his election promises, and simultaneously complain when Boris keeps his - at least be consistent).

The other issue that concerns me even more is the report in last night's the London Paper about the anti BNP protest at City Hall yesterday - with the paper reporting one protestor as saying their aim was to "force" Richard Barnbrook "out of office". I loathe the BNP - and I have little time for any party that would refuse to have my son or daughter as a member simply because of the colour of their skin. However, I am equally uncomfortable with the idea that in a democracy we should seek to "force" someone who was democratically elected out of their office simply because we find their politics odious. Apart from the fact it will simply harden the hearts of those who voted for the BNP as a protest vote (the whole "anti political establishment" mentality can only be reinforced by this kind of thing), the democratic solution is to wait four years and then campaign hard to get rid of him (either that or change the system so that minority parties find it harder to gain Assembly seats - just like Westminster! I some how think the Greens might not like that though!) I also suspect that the people protesting this would be the same people who defended Ken's association with Sheikh Qaradawi on the grounds he was a moderate next to those who were so disenfranchised they took to blowing up the Tube. Hows that for double standards - why is associating with those who would behead homosexuals better than associating with unpleasant racists who advocate the voluntary "repatriation" of any one with dark skin?

10% tax rates

2008-04-08T10:33:00.002+01:00

Haven't been blogging for a while due to the recent birth of my daughter.

I meant to blog last week about the evilness of the CBeebies controller in taking "In the Night Garden" out of the bedtime (and in the week when the clocks went forward as well - moron!)

However, the bigger bunch of morons are the Labour backbenchers. Have cheered and cheered when Gordon Brown announced the rate cut from 22% to 20% - they are now, a year later complaining about the fact he's partly funding it by abolishing the 10% band. So it was okay when it got good headlines last year, but now it's actually going to hurt people, they are complaining. Typical!

The West Wing and Obama

2008-02-28T00:03:00.002Z

A lot of bloggers have been pointing out that the similarities between Barack Obama and Matthew Santos, and how the story looks so familiar (brokered convention, Republican candidate mistrusted by his own base, up against a party insider in the primaries etc). A number of reports even comment on how the "Obama candidate" won.

Just a piece of advice to whoever Obama might chose as his potential running mate - make sure you're in good health. Sadly, John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry who Matt Santos chose as his running mater, died while filming the final season of the West Wing - just before he would have been due to start filming the climax of the election campaign. West Wing executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell has suggested the original plan was for the Republican to win it, but the death of John Spencer forced a rewrite.

Though am I being too nasty in suggesting that maybe that could be the best reason for picking Hillary?

Beer and water

2008-02-14T12:22:00.003Z

They are at it again. This morning I caught an interview with some idiot on the Today programme on the subject of binge drinking and young people - I think said idiot was Kevin Barron MP, but I'm not 100% sure. Said idiot was however advocating increasing the taxes on booze and complaining that water in the supermarkets is more expensive than lager.

I call the guy an idiot for a number of reasons:

It is simply idiotic to suggest that the reason kids are getting drunk is because water is more expensive, which is what is being implied by this comparison.
It is also untrue. The last time I bought Sainsbury's basic water, both still and sparkling 1.5 litre bottles cost 18p. The Sainsbury's basic lager was 22p for what (I think) was a 0.5 litre can. So in fact it would appear that you can by buy three times as much water for 4p less.
Why should I pay more taxes on something because the government is incapable of enforcing its own legislation.

I am getting fed up of the lie - for that's what it is, a lie - that supermarkets are charging more for water than for beer, and that being used as a justification for increasing taxes. Politicans should maybe go and do some research before repeating it (after all, it should take a reasonably bright young researcher on 22k a year about five minutes in Sainsburys to realise it's not true).

Of course expensive waters like Perrier cost more than cheap lager, but expensive beer may cost more than cheap wine.

Manchester United and programmes....

2008-02-11T20:06:00.000Z

I don't think I've explicitly stated this before, but I have the good fortune to have season tickets for Manchester United (*).

Yesterday therefore I had the great fortune to attend the Manchester Derby, which for those of you who have been living in a cave with no connections to football news, was also of course the 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster. Credit must go to the fans and supporters of both sides, who paid a proper and respectful tribute - particularly moving was the chorus of "Frank Swift - there's only one Frank Swift" from the away end, which was met with huge applause from the Stretford End.

Infuriatingly, despite queuing for 15 minutes, I was unable to get a programme. I was so annoyed at the fact that they are now appearing on Ebay at starting prices of up to £20 - with one seller claiming he had bought 36 of the things - I wrote an irritated email to the Manchester United membership services - politely suggesting that in future they should ration the programmes on big occassions, or stick to selling them inside the ticket gates to stop people without tickets buying large quantities of programmes.

To my surprise, despite sending the mail at 4:30 this afternoon, I got two replies sent after seven pm. The first one seemed to be a bit of a thank you for your mail response, the second one however was much better (and stronger):

Secondly I would like to apologise and also
express my disgust that people have been buying multiple programmes and
are now selling these programmes on eBay. Here at Man United we are
completely shocked at those doing this and are making money from such a
terrible disaster.

That's pretty much my reaction. We have two beautiful scarves from the match, which I am going to treasure.

I was however keen enough to get a copy of the program on the day that I held my nose and placed a reasonable bid for a copy of the programme on Ebay (four pounds, as opposed to a normal price of three). I have however just received this email:

Please be aware that the following auction-style listing:

230221962474 - Man United v Man City. Munich Remembered programme

has been removed by eBay for breaching of one or more of our policies. Any offers or bids placed on this are now null and void. We advise you not to finalise this transaction with the seller. As stated in the eBay User Agreement, neither seller nor buyer should engage in transactions that breach the law or eBay policy.

Looks like there might even be pressure on Ebay to drop the listings - a quick search shows that a lot of the listings that were there earlier have now been dropped - most of the Munich related programmes relate to programmes printed in the 1950s.

more nonsense

2008-02-11T12:22:00.000Z

Anne Cryer MP is quoted in todays Telegraph:

The issue of birth-defects and cousin marriage was first raised in parliament two years ago by Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley in West Yorkshire. She said marriage between cousins was a "to do with a medieval culture where you keep wealth within the family".
She said: "If you go into a paediatric ward in Bradford or Keighley you will find more than half of the kids there are from the Asian community. Since Asians only represent 20-30 per cent of the population, you can see that they are over-represented."

I hope, I just hope, that she's been misquoted by the Telegraph.

Otherwise, she's a moron. The second paragraph has nothing to do with the first.

Birth rates are not connected to whether or not there is a "close" genetic relationship between the parents. We already know that the birth rates amongst Pakistani born mothers is much, much higher than that of the population at large. So it's not surprising that in an area which is 30% asian, that over 50% of the children born are Asian.

It has nothing - repeat nothing - to do with whether or not the parents are cousins or not. It has everything to do with the wider cultural values that are held by that community. To prove otherwise, you'd have to show that Pakistani couples who are related have a significantly higher birth rate than those who don't. Odds are they don't.

Abolishing PMQs?

2008-02-07T11:51:00.000Z

From politicalbetting.com, an entry suggesting that Gordon Brown might try to abolish PMQs:

Another Wednesday and another PMQs for Gordon Brown to have to endure. He clearly doesn’t like them and being open every seven days to the fierce blasts that Cameron is able to master cannot be very pleasant.

You mean at a time when the government is (mis)handling Northern Rock, talking about reforming the education system and has just lost a minister over inability to apply their own rules on campaign funding, the opposition scrutiny is intense and question? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to discover that the parliamentary system is working as it should be. If you can't stand the heat, maybe you should reconsider whether or not you should even be in the kitchen.

Ever since a piece appeared in the Indy a couple of weeks ago about Brown’s views of the weekly ritual I’ve been pondering over whether we are being softened up for a proposal to change the structure.

You mean the fact that Labour can't spin this one is embarrassing, so they are just hoping to make it go away.

Maybe they could find a way of blaming Cameron for the need for change because of the way the Tory leader handles the event

That appalling man - he has this odd idea that Prime Minister's Questions is about, well, asking the Prime Minister questions. Perhaps they should remember this is a democracy, not a dictatorship where you can sweep awkward questions under the carpet. Clearly Cameron forgets his place, that it is not his role to question the way those who have been raised to high office conduct their affairs.

The Indy suggested Gordon Brown is telling friends that the public is being increasingly repelled by the event and that the Commons exchanges are now of little use in discussing the issues of the day.

Indeed. It's damn difficult to discuss the issues of the day at PMQs when the PM tries to turn it into Leader of the Opposition questions.

For example, Sky reported that yesterday the Prime Minister was asked a straight question three times by David Cameron (about the PM's views on A Levels). The PM three times ignored the question, and asked Cameron a question. The exchange with Nick Clegg was even more bizarre - Clegg (correctly) raised concerns about the way this country is turning into a surveillence state, only for the PM to start raising questions about the LibDem policy on CCTV.

A lot has been made out of the Prime Minister's father being a minister in the Church of Scotland - perhaps, when it comes to looking at the reasons why the public might be put off by Prime Minister's questions, he should look up and reflect on Matthew 7:3.

Clearly there would have to be something in it place but, no doubt, something could be devised that sounded fair and reasonable but took away the Opposition Leader’s six questions.

It wouldn't matter if the entire half hour was Opposition Leader's questions, the chances of the Prime Minister actually answering a question are slightly slimmer than that of Iain Dale attending a Champions League semi final using his West Ham season ticket.

Not actually burning our money

2008-01-31T01:15:00.000Z

According to Wat Tyler, the cost of NHS treatment for foreign born mothers is currently run at 350 million a year. This is apparently 25% of the overall cost of maternity services.

My response is, so what? This figure is completely meaningless with out a bit of context (for instance - what constitutes foreign born? In my parish church, there at least three kids under two who were born to foreign born parents - one Irish, one Malaysian and of course the darling wife who is from Singapore). Two of those children however "rejoice" in British born fathers.

More to the point, all three were born to working parents who pay their taxes (indeed, being in this area of the country the chances are those parents are paying a lot more into the exchequer than the value of the services they take out).

AS Dr Crippen points out - if this is health tourism, it does need to be stopped. If it's legal, tax paying immigrants , then so what?

One other thing. Wat Tyler makes the point that:

The average native British woman has 1.6 children. The average immigrant woman has 2.2. And the average Pakistani woman in Britain has 4.7 children.

So what? To maintain the population as is, we apparently need 2.2 children per woman. In the future, we'll need those young people to man and support our healthcare and pay for our pensions - there's no point even in private pensions if there's no one working to earn the money to pay into the funds. If British born women - for whatever reason - aren't having enough children, then it's not reasonable to complain that the immigrants are making up the numbers for them.

New Man United purchase.

2008-01-28T11:32:00.001Z

Sir Alex Ferguson today announced a key new purchase ahead of next week's derby game against Man City.

He's off to Toys R Us to buy some balloons.

BBC, the Pope and Galileo

2008-01-15T11:06:00.000Z

The BBC are reporting that

Lecturers and students at a prestigious university in Rome want a planned visit by the Pope to be cancelled as they object to his position on Galileo.

The protest is because

Pope Benedict was in charge of Roman Catholic doctrine in 1990 when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he commented on the 17th-Century Galileo trial. He has been quoted as saying the trial was "reasonable and just".

Except he wasn't. As this posting by John Allen on the National Catholic Reporter's site makes clear, he was quoting another philosopher, Feyerabend. The article appears to be a review of the views of several philosophers about the Galileo case and an attempt to draw a conclusion from that - not about Galileo, but about 20th century views of science and truth.

This was easily discovered in about five minutes with google - it's rather disappointing that the BBC journalists couldn't be bothered finding out if the claim was true, but then perhaps it's not surprising given the ignorance bias shown in the last line of the report:

Fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II officially conceded that in fact the Earth was not stationary.

This almost has echoes of Regensberg.

Fisking Tim Worstall

2007-12-24T09:52:00.000Z

Tim Worstall writes :

The value of any job in a market economy is set by supply and demand. We have a (relatively) fixed demand for MPs. Some 630 or so (roughly, isn’t it?).

According to Wikipedia, it's actually 646. For someone who spends a lot of time complaining (correctly) about the sloppy figures of Polly Toynbee, it's a pity Tim didn't spend thirty seconds looking the number up on Google.

At the last general election some 3,000 people stood for one of those seats. Some will say that some were markedly unqualified (from Monster Raving Loonies to Trots of various types) but this isn’t, in a democracy, a valid position to hold. Any and every one of us is qualified to be an MP: that’s what rule by the people means.

This is incorrect - yes anyone is eligible to apply to be an MP - that doesn't mean you're qualified to be an MP. To qualify, you have to convince the largest number of people on the "interview" panel to vote for you. Simply being qualified enough to apply for the job does not mean you're suitable.

So as we have 3,000 qualified applicants for some 600 jobs, clearly, we are overpaying those who do it. MPs pay should therefore be cut, radically.

Again, this is faulty logic - just because you get lots of applicants, doesn't mean you're over paying them. Looking at my own field, that of Information Technology, the higher paid positions are naturally going to have more applicants. What this means for the employers that pay above the market rate salaries is they get more chance to cherry pick the best people in the field, not that they are somehow overpaying them. I like the thought that we get a higher class of applicant to be an MP by paying more. I'm still not sure how that explains John Prescott though.

In fact, back in the day when being an MP attracted no salary at all (only Ministers were paid) we had no shortage of MPs. Thus we would have no shortage now if MPs were unpaid now (that is arguable, but do you think there would be a shortage if this were the case?).

Possibly not - but as has been pointed out on numerous occassions, the other side of that is that only the rich could then afford to become MPs. By running this policy, you'd effectively ensure that "every one of us is" no longer "qualified to be an MP". So you'd end up moving away from the main starting point of this discussion. Either that or MPs would have to take "consultancy fees" from vested interests, which I'm not convinced would be an improvement on the current situation.

Cut MPs pay and cut it now!

If the problem is that MPs are incompetent, then that is a decision for their constituents to deal with. The fact that you may not like someone's choice of MP is not a reason to reduce that MPs wages (again, a certain former deputy Prime Minister comes to mind). It's called democracy.

Well he is Scottish.....

2007-12-13T14:02:00.000Z

Football 365 have this report on their Mediawatch page (Sir being a reference to Sir Alex Ferguson):

"To manage a national team you need to be a certain age with plenty of experience and with a presence and a CV that is indisputable" - Sir on Don Fabio.

Could you not have said that 18 months ago, Sir?

Well he is Scottish. He's probably spent the last 18 months having a very good laugh. Mind you, he's in good company.

Prime Minister fails in his duty....

2007-11-21T11:28:00.000Z

According to the Sun via Football365.com:

'Gordon Brown WILL stay away from England's crucial Euro 2008 qualifier - amid fears he is jinxed. The PM has been on hand to see our football and rugby teams crash to defeat in recent months. He also saw Scotland get knocked out 2-1 by Italy at Hampden Park on Saturday'

Surely that's failing in his duty as a Scot?

Racism and the political spectrum...

2007-11-05T13:29:00.000Z

Dizzy correctly draws the comparison between the attitude of the Labour party and the Conservatives over race and the point about racism on the political spectrum.

I annoyed a couple of people last week by pointing out the BNP are not making their strongest gains from the Conservatives, but in traditionally Labour heartlands (such as Tower Hamlets or Barking and Dagenham).

The only thing he's missing is the letter by Norman Tebbit to the Telegraph last year in which he pointed that when you ignored the race issue, in many ways they are hardly right wing. (Note, for some reason I can't find the actual letter on the Telegraphs site - the relevant page for the date is not showing the letter, so I'm using Melanie Phillips' quote).

Telegraph ... oops

2007-10-24T18:34:00.000+01:00

Perhaps not the best combination on the Telegraph's homepage:

That idiot Celtic fan....

2007-10-04T15:31:00.000+01:00

Rumour has it they've found him, identified him and banned him for life.

They should just send him into the home end at Ibrox wearing a celtic shirt at the next Old Firm game.

Pit bulls and border controls

2007-09-04T21:29:00.000+01:00

Last weeks Panorama on illegal dog fighting was fascinating - partly because it demonstrated the flaw in the constant flag waving about a border police by various members of the cabinet, including the PM himself.

For those of you who didn't see, the BBC reporter easily smuggled a pit bull into the UK by the crafty means of flying the dog to Dublin, where it was the driven up to Northern Ireland and carried accross to the UK on a sailing from Larne to Stranraer. (Note to future BBC reporters doing this trick - it's quicker to take the dog to Liverpool on the fast ferry from Dublin port either direct to Liverpool or to Holyhead and driving through North Wales. You've about as much chance of being stopped as well - at least if our experience of driving through Holyhead is anything to go by).

And this is the fundmental flaw with the Border controls - the UK has a common travel area with the Irish Republic. Even if you police the ports into Britain, you still have this very long land border along which there are no effective controls.

To impose them would be to undermine much of the work that has been done in Ireland - the Irish Nationalists would regard it as a show of bad faith, and the Unionists would be annoyed at losing access to the cheaper petrol in the Republic. The only sensible solution is for the two governments to combine together to agree a common policy for the combined borders, and allow freedom of movement within the two islands.

So why is it the only reference for "immigration" on the British Irish Council Website is about immigration into the Isle of Man?

Princess Diana

2007-08-29T00:22:00.000+01:00

Alex Massie has an excellent posting as we approach the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's life. My own memory of the event is still quite clear - the weekend before Princess Diana's death, I had been in Paris at the World Youth Day celebrations - the previous Sunday had seen a fair amount of world attention directed at Paris because of the million plus people who turned out for Pope John Paul's final Mass. The following Sunday I arrived at church to find the curate who had been in Paris the previous week preaching. He kept mentioning the "tragic event in Paris this morning" without elaborating, and it wasn't until we got home and put the radio on that we realised what had happened. That didn't stop me heading off to the U2 concert at Lansdowne Road that afternoon. By the time of her funeral the following weekend, I had got so fed up of the mawkish emotionalism that was dominating the Irish radio and news papers that I frankly couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over (it must have been hellish for those in England who wanted to watch television and didn't like the sentimentality of the thing) and jumped at the chance to spend the Saturday doing an extra shift of tech support for the ISP I worked for at the time. The effective canonisation of the Princess in the week when a real saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, died just annoyed me more.

One thing I would take issue with Alex over is this:

"....one wonders how long it would have been before the public began to see her as, not to put too fine a point on it, a tart. Hypocritical perhaps, but there are different rules for Princes than there are for Princesses."

Indeed there are - as I was in college for most of the 90s as the marraige of the Waleses fell apart, and the typical offerings in the GMB at Trinity College Dublin were the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Times, the Guardian and occassionally the Telegraph and the (London) Independent, I had the good fortune to miss most of the tabloid nonsense that accompanied the breakup. I was quite surprised therefore to realise that in fact I could easily count four "former lovers of Diana, Princess of Wales" - namely James Hewitt, Will Carling, Dodi al Fayed and that heart surgeon whose name escapes me. Prince Charles, rather than having a "string of love affairs" with women "of questionable suitability" had one long standing affair.

It's always struck me as odd that Charles has been villified for his single affair with one woman, while Diana was effectively canonised despite having had a string of them. It does indeed seem that even these days "there are different rules for Princes than there are for Princesses."

Living in England....

2007-08-24T02:01:00.000+01:00

Iain Dale's post and the comments thread left me somewhat bemused at the long discussion of why people are leaving the UK. It's worth noting for a start that net immigration is still positive, and that nearly half of those leaving the country are foreigners returning home.

But it got me thinking - a number of the commenters were commenting on leaving England for Ireland. There were a number of reasons I did the opposite move, partly due to the Darling Wife, but also due to the fact that there were more opportunities and better money in the field I work - I'm a CCIE in case you're curious which (supposedly) means I'm very good with those network things. Having been born in England to British parents, I'd always felt an affinity to England and had wanted to work over here for some time before finally making the move. Despite all that, when I did move over, I had moved with thoughts about moving back to Ireland after a few years. Those plans have been put on hold for the foreseeable future.

The reasons though run deeper - for all the complaints about the reliability and the punctuality of the train service from Ingatestone to London, it's no worse than commuting on the DART was in Dublin. Yes its more expensive, but I get paid a lot more over here, so I can live with that. Property prices in Dublin are as bad as most of London. The Republic's electoral system gives you essentially a choice between Fianna Fail and the "Not Fianna Fail" coalition[1] - at least in Britain there are two main parties, even if it is getting harder to tell them apart. The overall tax burden isn't much different. The weather is a lot worse (there are actually vineyards near Chelmsford - there isn't enough sun or heat in Ireland to grow grapes).

Dublin itself is also getting over crowded - the city has been badly planned - there are major issues with layouts, and the M50 is apparently driven in first gear all the way from Bray to Dublin airport if you're travelling during the morning rush hour - presumably because some loon thought two lanes on the main motorway around Dublin was enough. The planning process for new roads is a nightmare - in that plans are made, approved, go through a public enquiry, and then just as the builders turn up to make the road, somebody discovers a medieval rubbish dump and insist the road be rerouted or delayed for two years while it's excavated. And all this under a system where the government spent a lot of money hiring a consultant from Madrid to tell them if they could avoid the three year planning process and worked 24 hours a day on building infrastructure as opposed to working 8 hour days they'd get stuff done within a year instead of taking five years.

In addition, the huge influx of Polish immigration is putting additional stress on, well, everything. Housing, transport, education - one calculation is that 5% of the Irish population is now Polish. [2]

Last year, my sister and I did our first driving tests within a couple of weeks of each other. We both failed. I failed several more attempts before finally passing earlier this year. My sister is still waiting for her second attempt.

And while we're on the subject of public services, the NHS, with all its faults, is a huge improvement on the Irish Health Service. I had to pay €40 for the privilege of visiting a doctor the last time I went to one before moving over - not paying my NHS doctor was a mighty relief and the removal of a source of stress.

There is an old saying, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It may look like the grass is greener on the other side of the Irish Sea - but in Dublin at least, it's definitely not much an improvement on London and the South East.

[1] This is the reason Fianna Fail have ended up in government after every election since 1987. It was only a falling out with their coalition partners and the fact the numbers just worked that led to the only two and a half years they've not been in power in the last 20 years.

[2] It should be pointed out I don't think that Polish immigration is a bad thing - I just think that Dublin wasn't coping very well when I left three years ago, and I can't imagine a huge increase in the population since I left is doing the place any favours in terms of infrastructure.

logic, what you can see and conclusions.

2007-08-22T00:39:00.000+01:00

The long and frankly rather tedious debate between Dizzy and Tim Ireland over at Dizzy's blog reminds me of the old joke about the Engineer, the Physicist and the Mathematician on a train in Scotland. It's their first trip.

They see a black sheep on the side of a mountain. "Look!" says the engineer, "all the sheep in Scotland are black". "No, no" says the physicist, "some of the sheep in Scotland are black". The mathematican intones "In Scotland, there is a sheep, at least one side of which is black".

My training is in Maths by the way!

"Right wing" mayors....

2007-08-21T11:50:00.000+01:00

Chuka Umunna(via Comment is Free) informs us that

"If those of us who hanker for a fairer, more equal and democratic world fail to draw attention to Johnson's views and re-mobilise London's progressive consensus, we could end up with the most right-wing Mayor of London in living memory."

Any mayor who is less left wing than Ken Livingstone will qualify as the "most right-wing Mayor of London in living memory." The office was only established in 2000.

More Labour dishonesty

2007-08-20T11:12:00.000+01:00

The BBC is quoting Public health minister Dawn Primarolo as saying "It's misleading or dishonest to, on Friday, for the Tory party to support £21bn worth of cuts from public services in supporting the Redwood commission proposals and then come back and say suddenly not only are they not going to do that...."

Nearly as misleading and dishonest as trying to suggest a policy proposal is the same thing as a defined party policy. Not that Labour would ever be guilty of such deceit and spin of course.

Incidentally, perhaps the £21 bn of cuts could come from cutting some of the quangos that have expanded under the current government.

Labour spinning figures.

2007-08-17T22:52:00.000+01:00

Andy Burnham is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and was on Newsnight tonight, blathering nonsense. In particular, he made the claim "we've had 60 consecutive quarters of growth under this government".

I find it rather worrying that the number 2 minister in the Treasury isn't aware there's only been 41 quarters since May 1997. More to the point, if he can't even get that piece of simple arithmetic right, how are we supposed to trust any other figures that he comes out with?

Update: immediately after posting this I found this on Iain Dale's blog where he accuses the Tories of "threating Britain's economic instability". The word I'm now looking for can be found here. But I won't use it on this blog as my wife reads it.

Telegraph and sports comment

2007-08-06T10:06:00.000+01:00

Rather disturbingly, the Telegraph's sports columnists seem to have had a rather bad weekend of getting things right.

Sue Mott started off on Saturday by blaming the alleged corruption around a recent tennis match on the practice of allowing "betting on losers in any sport" - which rather ignores the fact that tennis is one of those sports where by betting on one player to win the match, you are effectively betting on the other player to lose the match (as opposed to, say, football where you have the option of a draw). There maybe issues around the fact that Betfair effectively allow you to bet on a horse to lose, but this doesn't have anything to do with the tennis issue.

Patrick Barclay manages the impressive feat of making two factual errors in two successive paragraphs. Firstly he repeats, with approval, Neil Warnock's comment that "Carlos Tevez, football's equivalent of a murderer out on bail, scored the goal that kept West Ham up and sent us down. So much for the integrity of the Premier League.'' If Warnock is referring to the goal Tevez scored at Old Trafford, he's talking rubbish. West Ham went into that game knowing that a point was enough to save them. If you're going to blame the result at Old Trafford, rather than the fact you lost at home to Wigan, then the anger should be directed at Manchester United's forwards for failing to score. Even if Tevez hadn't scored, West Ham would still have stayed up. (Incidentally, United were attacking the Stretford for the second half, and as they kicked off, the Stretford end chanted with one voice "Send them down!")

Barclay then follows that with the statement that all of the clubs in foreign ownership - but Fulham - have been taken over since the Glazers acquired Manchester United. This might come as a shock to Claudio Ranieri, who was sacked by Roman Abramovich a year before.

To be fair, he then makes an excellent point about the row over Thaksin Shinawatra's record, comparing it with the treatment Roman Abramovich received.

The Telegraph on Ali Miraj

2007-08-01T12:11:00.001+01:00

George Jones gives a brief overview of the political career of Ali Miraj, who has deservedly been booted off the list of approved candidates for the Conservative Party. He fails though to mention the irony in the whole row over the Witham selection process - at the end of it all, Priti Patel was elected.

If you're going to play the race card when complaining about not being selected, try and make sure the candidate fits the "white, middle class male" stereotype before making a fool of yourself in the national media.

Caroline Hunt: Commitment Matters

2007-07-31T11:01:00.000+01:00

Caroline Hunt
sums up my views on the rights for cohabiting couples very well.

Particularly good quotes are:

if a co-habiting couple wants the same rights as a married couple they should get married. There is no need to have a religious ceremony of any type.

Exactly what I was going to blog!

A majority of MPs....

2007-07-17T23:36:00.000+01:00

I turned the radio on this morning and heard the second half of an interview involving Lord Winston and an anti animal testing campaigner whose name I didn't catch.

The anti animal testing campaigner lost all credibility with me straight away when she said that "a majority of MPs" and then went onto say something about 250 of them.

Given that Labour won 271 seats in 1992, that presumably means Lord Kinnock is now a former Prime Minister?

EU Constitution

2007-06-25T15:28:00.000+01:00

The original treaty proposing an EU Constitution was negotiated by the Irish during their Presidency of the EU (the Irish media at the time even referred to it as the Dublin treaty, hoping it would lead to Dublin taking its place amongst the other European Cities with a treaty named after it, such as Amsterdam, Maastricht, Nice and Rome).

So it's interesting to see that according to the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, "“The substance of what was agreed in 2004 has been retained" and “Really what is gone is the term constitution."

So although the Telegraph is wrong that the implications of Ireland having a referendum implies anything for the UK situation (Ireland always has referendums on the EU - they'd have a referendum if there was a treaty mandating the sort of chocolate biscuits to be served at the Council of Europe meetings), it does seem that the Irish have backed their main point.

This is clearly a disgraceful attempt by the EU to ignore the democratically expressed will of the French and Dutch people on the treaty. More to the point, the wiggling by Brown and Blair about their election promises is basically saying "we don't need to vote on the duck any more, because we're now calling it a chicken".

Which is a pretty good analogy for the two PMs.

Sexism and the Apprentice

2007-06-08T14:49:00.000+01:00

The process for getting Brentwood's most popular job is under fire over the questions asked of the two female candidates. Specifically, Katie Hopkins and Kristina Grimes were both quizzed over their family commitments.

Liberal Democrat women's spokesperson Lorely Burt ... "This is a classic example of the kind of casual discrimination still faced by working women every day."

and from Brendan Barber from the TUC said:

"had last night been a genuine interview, Kristina and Katie could have had real grounds for complaint against Sir Alan".

Except for one minor problem. Kristina was put through to the final, and it was (according to the show) Katie who chose not to join her there. It's a bit difficult to claim the decision not to "hire" you was sexist, when you were in fact hired.

Now, it is certainly the case that we didn't see the male candidates being quizzed over their family commitments, but two of them didn't have families and the one that did lived in Loughton, which is practically next door to Brentwood anyway.

More to the point - it was Kristina who raised the subject of her family commitments - "my son has grown up, and now I have the freedom to do what I really want and to take the extra risks" is a fair paraphrase of one of the things she said during the interview.

So this leaves us with Katie - now, I could be wrong, but as a married man with a young child, I would expect that if I were to interview for a job in Manchester (or maybe even Devon) then the employer might well ask about the impact of such a move on my family. This is a relevant concern to the employer - if my wife and kids are not happy with the idea of moving to a different area, this could have a significant impact on the amount of time I'll spend working for them. The idea that this is not of concern to an employer is ridiculous - he or she should be allowed to ask questions about the impact of relocation on the candidate's family, regardless of the gender of the candidate. Katie was the only candidate with a family that would have had to relocate - the questions didn't seem particularly outrageous to me.

Remember also, that earlier in the series, a candidate was fired because his family commitments were preventing him working effectively.

As for the quotes - it does seem it's yet another case of politicans seeing a bandwagon and trying to jump on.

Talking of reality tv....

2007-06-07T16:13:00.000+01:00

During last night's Apprentice, Katie Hopkins remarked she wasn't sure if she was ready to uproot her family to move from Devon to Brentwood.

There is a God.

MPs and bandwagons

2007-06-07T15:58:00.000+01:00

So, a Big Brother contestant has been thrown out of the house for using the n word. From all accounts, Channel 4 acted relatively swiftly - program makers consulted station bosses, and she was removed from the house at 3:30 this morning.

Keith Vaz is an MP who disappeared from sight in the days when being caught out breaching codes of conduct was actually a bar from being in Tony Blair's cabinet, only to reemerge during the Shilpa Shetty controversy earlier this year. Naturally he was asked for a quote.

"After the Ofcom decision I thought Channel 4 had learnt all the lessons it was possible to learn.

"But I'm afraid they haven't and there's more to be looked at in this whole sorry episode," he added.

Um, what exactly were Channel 4 supposed to do? Drown the offending house mate in the Big Brother garden pond? Throw her into a vat of boiling oil? Make her move to the house next door with only Jade Goody and Jo O'Meara for company? (Actually, come to think of it......)

It seems to me they have learnt the lesson - the housemate offended, and the first anyone heard of the controversy was when she was booted off the show. Quite else they could have done is beyond me.

Funny is.....

2007-06-04T23:07:00.000+01:00

when you get told off by the wife for describing the London Olympic logo in terms of Lisa Simpson doing something rude, and then Newsnight ask "is it Lisa Simpson doing something rude" in their intro.

Irish election reaction

2007-05-29T22:09:00.000+01:00

Via Iain Dale, I came accross this rather interesting rant (warning - language alert) about the result of the Irish general election.

However, while the rant is not surprising, neither is the fact that large numbers of people voted for Fianna Fail (indeed, as a former member, it would have been the party I would have voted for, though I should also add that the two Fianna Fail TDs in my constitutency have never had their integrity questioned).

Michael Moore, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administrations mis handling of the crisis, posted a long rant, aimed at those who had voted for him, asking how they could now justify that decision and if they would still do it. The answer in many cases has to be "John Kerry". In much the same way, the Irish electorate were faced with two choices - keep Fianna Fail and Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach, or replace them with a Fine Gael led Rainbow Coalition led by Enda Kenny (a man by the way who is insisting that he can still form a government, but that almost certainly means he's either very bad at maths or he's keeping open the possibility of inviting Sinn Fein into government, neither of which reflects well on him).

To express surprise at the fact that the Irish electorate didn't punish Fianna Fail for their "corrupt" behaviour is to affect a total ignorance of how Irish politics has worked for years - especially outside Dublin. The fact that Michael Lowry has been returned for three successive elections despite being expelled from Fine Gael for corruption, and that Beverly Cooper Flynn was returned in Mayo after being slung out of Fianna Fail when she lost a libel case against RTE means that even today Irish voters will accept corrupt politicans assuming they look after their constituents (in addition, both have been able to play the Dublin elite trying to put down the culchies card). This is nothing new - it is a fact that Charles Haughey used to be met by his constituents as they left Mass on Sunday morning with the comments "Charlie, you're a corrupt man, but we love you anyway".

With all that in mind - its then no surprise that Fianna Fail held up its vote and its number of seats. They've always been good at "managing" the vote (a concept foreign to the UK political system where we have the First past the vote system - parties don't try to split their vote between your three candidates to maximise the effect). More to the point, despite the many issues identified in the rant, they've presided over one of the best periods of economic growth in Irish history - when I did my Leaving Cert 15 years ago, Ireland was still exporting people to the UK and the US, and there was concern about the knock on effect to Ireland of German reunification, which had effectively closed off one popular destination for Irish emigrants. Now, it's immigration that is the issue - the streets of Dublin when I left three years ago were filled with Chinese, Filipinos and Nigerians, and in the three years since EU enlargement Ireland has become 5% Polish. The alternative to Fianna Fail was the Rainbow coalition, led by Fine Gael. Plenty of people had reservations about Enda Kenny as Taoiseach (though to be fair, not as many as had them about Michael Noonan who led FG to their worst result in decades in 2002), but those with long memories would also remember that one of the worst periods for the economy in recent Irish history coincided with the FG/Labour coalition of 1982-1987 - one of only two periods in the last 30 years that Fianna Fail have not been in government. FG would have been leading a coalition made up of the Labour party and possibly the Greens. Its possible that many people thought that a coalition including left wing parties could be more damaging to the economy than the existing government.

If the answer to why lots of people voted for George Bush in 2004 was "John Kerry", then equally, the answer to why lots of people voted for Fianna Fail last Thursday is almost certainly "Rainbow Coalition".

Race and schooling

2007-05-28T23:35:00.000+01:00

I'm just back from a long weekend attending a friend's wedding in Poland - tips on how to survive to come later - and while browsing Conservative Home, I notice a report on the BBC saying that David Willetts is proposing a policy that will allow schools to choose their pupils on the basis of race. (The report adds that "Government figures in the Observer show some schools in England have a pupil majority from one ethnic group." - really and truly it's time the BBC got some decent editors - the statement taken literally is hardly a shock as England has a majority from one ethnic group - white English).

Comments about the BBC aside, I would strongly urge the party not to go down this line. My wife is Singaporean, which means that my son is of mixed race. I do not want him to be defined in terms of his race, but simply in terms of him being what he is - a British citizen, who I hope will grow up to be a credit to this country. I want him to be given the education he deserves - not because he's mixed race to suit some equality or integration, but because it's his birth right as an Englishman. The first step to ensuring that he feels different is to draw attention to his "difference". So please - lets not go down that road.

(Just to note - the boy actually started walking more than a step over the weekend - including a fairly good walk during the wedding party itself. Being a Polish wedding, he was actually walking better and falling over less than some of the adults at the end of evening!)

Korea, dogs and football songs

2007-05-23T12:55:00.000+01:00

It was the one, incredibly predictable fact about last weeks cup final was that the Man United fans would sing a song on the subject of Jose Mourinhio and his dog. What was nearly as predictable was that references to Man United's Korean striker, Ji Sung Park, would be made in the song.

Like most Man United players, Park has his own song which can be regularly heard from the Stretford End at Old Trafford. The lyrics are (to the tune of Lord of the Dance):

Park, Park, where you may be,
you eat dogs in your home country,
but it could be worse, you could be Scouse,
eating rats in your council house.

The lyrics are aimed at United's old rivals from down the M62 - but the fact remains that part of the lyrics touch on a subject which is rather sensitive for the Koreans. I don't know if Park's English is up to understanding the song (it's not always possible to make out the lyrics to songs like this at football grounds) or if anyone has explained it, but he's probably also managed to work he's rather popular with the United fans.

For the cup final, predicatably there were a couple of songs - the one I heard quite regularly while queuing for the programs was another ditty to the tune of the Lord of the Dance:

Jose, where ever you may be,
Ji Sung ate your dog for tea,
Special One, your dog is dead,
maybe you should get a cat instead.

Jim White in his report on the FA Cup final also reported this variation on Winter Wonderland:

Mourinho are you listening
You know your dog went missing
Well we heard it bark
So we fed it to Park
Eaten in a stir-fry wonderland

The thing about all these chants is they, are by the standards of football chants, vaguely funny and pleasantly free from the sort of language and aggression that is often typical of the average football song. But, in all cases, they rely for their humour on a blatant stereotyping of Koreans - so it begs the question "why aren't these chants covered by the anti racist chanting rules that are now in place in football?"

Faith schools and marraige

2007-05-23T11:53:00.001+01:00

The Telegraph reports today that some faith schools are using "intrusive methods" such as asking parents for copies of their marraige certificate. This apparently is a form of "social selection".

Actually, it isn't. Assuming that faith schools are in fact attempting to ensure that they are in fact taking kids whose parents are serious about raising them in the relevant faith, its actually quite a reasonable question to ask. If a child's parents are cohabiting rather than married to each other, the chances are they aren't particularly serious about the faith in the first place.

This leads to a wider point about faith schools - their whole purpose is recognising that education is about more than how many GCSEs and A levels a child gets, and recognising it's about a more holisitic approach, which covers such things as values and personal development. Faith schools do that development in the context of the faith they teach - this is true regardless of whether the school is Catholic, Church of England, Jewish or Muslim. That has to include the teaching of the relevant faith in the home. And an over subscribed faith school is being quite reasonable when it says it wants to choose kids who parents want them to attend because it's a faith school, rather than because it gets better A level results than the "bog standard" comprehensive down the road.

One other comment was "In Roman Catholic schools, more than 90 per cent of children were found to be Christian". Well there's a shock. Catholic schools have long had a selection criteria that said "Catholics first, then other church going Christians". In any case, the Telegraph report isn't clear, but given that the sentence is then followed with "in Jewish schools all pupils subscribed the faith." it must mean this is true for some schools rather than an assessment of all Catholic or Jewish schools. It's certainly not true that all Jewish schools are 100% Jewish - as David Cameron recently reminded us.

New Wembley

2007-05-21T23:03:00.000+01:00

We had the good fortune to get tickets for the FA Cup Final - so it was a most impressive sight. Rather disappointing however that the loos were over flowing by the end - a couple of comments were over heard along the lines of "somethings at Wembley never change".

Getting away afterwards wasn't too bad - as Man United fans, we decided to leg it on the full time whistle as we didn't want to hang around feeling miserable and then get stuck in the middle of the Chelsea queuing for the tube. Quite impressed we were back at Shenfield by 7:30 considering we only left Wembley at 5:45.

One comment on the match - I was rather disgusted at the cynical behaviour of the Chelsea players for what was left of the game after Drogba's goal - three bookings inside six minutes means they also accrued enough bookings for an automatic disrepute charge.

Zimbabwe and the UN

2007-05-18T12:54:00.000+01:00

So it's confirmed that Zimbabwe have been elected to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

Isn't this the equivalent of asking Iain Huntley to chair a committee on Child Protection?

Whats a bad result?

2007-05-15T23:06:00.000+01:00

I've just noticed that the local LibDems are claiming that they had a "successful night" in the recent local elections.

Considering they lost two seats, including their deputy leader getting beaten by a chap studying for his A levels, I wonder what they'd regard as a "bad" night.

West Ham, Southend, Tevez and injustice.

2007-05-15T23:00:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting point that was made by someone on the Southend United mailing list.

It has been suggested that the compromise made by the Premiership over the Tevez affair would be to allow Sheffield United and West Ham to stay in the Premiership, making a 21 team league affair next week.

If this happened, the knock on effect could be that Southend are "saved" from their relegation, in order to keep the Championship at 24.

It's probably wishful thinking, but given that Leeds deliberately went into administration before the end of this season so their ten point penalty didn't affect their League 1 campaign, it would be tempting for the League authorities to say to the Blues to stay up. With my Man United hat on - great news. With my Southend hat, better news.

Value for money

2007-05-15T12:58:00.000+01:00

I saw Hazel Blears yesterday - briefly - on Sky News as she was discussing her campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. She was arguing her job should be about the party and campaigning, and not neccessarily a ministerial post.

She was then asked if that meant she'd refuse the Ministerial Jag and the perks of office. Obviously she didn't want to answer, so she started waffling on about the importance of the public seeing value for money.

While value for money has never been a strong point of the current Labour government (NHS, IT, the Dome, the Olympics) is this Blears admitting that maybe Labour made a mistake allowing John Prescott to cost the tax payer two million per annum for his non job?

Classic FM

2007-05-11T14:43:00.000+01:00

Apparently, lots of under 15s are listening to Classic FM. And when I say lots, I mean half a million.

Probably won't make Simon Heffer very happy though.

Ruth Kelly and majorities.

2007-05-11T12:02:00.000+01:00

Ruth Kelly was asked a question in Parliament earlier this week by Brentwood MP Eric Pickles, in which she was asked about the implementations of the Lyons recommendations.

Her response was a classic piece of New Labour denial, in which she claimed that Labour "increased our majority" in Bolton, and took seats from the Conservatives, and this was a sign that the Conservatives were failing to make progress.

Funny, that's not what the BBC report. I'm not familiar with the individual ward results in the Bolton area, but according to the BBC, the Conservatives made a net gain in Bolton (albeit one seat, but its important to allow for the fact that only one third of the seats were up for grabs to start with). Labour also gained two seats, but both parties gained at the expense of the LibDems.

But it does rather beg the question of what she means by a majority when her local Council is a No Overall Control council.

Interest rate increases.

2007-05-10T22:37:00.000+01:00

It is hard not to feel a slight amount of smugness at our decision two years ago to get a fixed rate mortgage - as of today, we're now at a rate lower than the Bank of England's base rate.

Watching the 10 o'clock news, which has been mostly focussed on the (long overdue) departure of Tony Blair, they did only a short piece on the rate increases. But couldn't the BBC have found a slightly more sympathetic person amongst the millions of home owners for whom the increase is not good news. They interviewed a young woman, who owned what looked like a very nice house in Hertfordshire. She had borrowed five times her salary and the report said that she had an increase of 150 pounds per month over this time last year (there's been a full percentage increase since last August). A quick calculation based on this article indicates that her mortgage must be about 230,000 - or her annual salary is about 46,000. She's worried because shock horror, she might have to take in lodgers.

Funnily enough, I'm not really that sympathetic that she might have to take lodgers - I did it myself in my single days as a deliberate strategy to get a slightly bigger property. And frankly, as a single woman earning that sort of money she's hardly the typical first time buyer. Surely the BBC weren't so distracted by the non news story of Blair's resignation* to not be able to find a better human interest/sob story about the rate rises.

Having said all that, it's faintly ironic the Gazette was carrying a front page article this week about how Brentwood was the most expensive borough in Essex, and expressing concern about the ability of first time buyers to get onto the ladder in the area - and the fact that the lack of first time buyers could be bad news for those of us who already own houses in the area.

* It's not "news" when the papers have been saying all week he's going to resign today.

Young councillors....

2007-05-10T22:35:00.000+01:00

Haven't had a chance to blog for a few days, but I should say congratulations to William Lloyd, who has become one of the country's youngest councillors. And extra brownie points for taking his seat off the LibDems.

Priorities

2007-04-25T16:15:00.000+01:00

The BBC is reporting that the Attorney General has ordered a review of the sentences handed out to the mother, aunts and grandmother who encouraged a two year old and a three year old to hit and punch each other, while filming it and clearly enjoying it. They were each given suspended sentences of up to twelve months.

My darling wife bought a copy of the Sun last weekend to read in the car as we drove up to Manchester (honest, I much prefer the Telegraph) during which she started to read parts of the newspaper's report on the case. In the end, I had to ask her to stop as I was getting very irate at what was being reported - a mood not enhanced by my own little bundle of joy happily burbling away in the back seat at the time.

What really bothered me though was a few pages on there was a report on a guy who had been convicted of cruelty - he was also filming fights in his living room, and was sent to prison for four months. The difference - he was filming dog fights, not toddler fights.

Exactly what sort of a country is it where we send people to prison for cruelty and abuse of animals, but only give suspended sentences where children are involved?

Iain Dale's Diary: The Irish Should Not Be Able to Vote in UK General Elections

2007-04-18T17:23:00.000+01:00

Iain Dale's made a bit of a booboo with his The Irish Should Not Be Able to Vote in UK General Elections - as he acknowledges, UK Nationals do have the right to vote in the Dail elections, though not in referenda or Presidential elections. My father, a UK National, tells the story that the day the referendum was held coincided with a European election, and he turned up to vote in that election. He was given a ballot paper for the referendum, and when he pointed out he was British, the teller said "ah sure, then you'll definitely want to vote". I also remember one local politican calling to the house during the 1982 elections and saying "ah, they've never actually fined the Brits for voting" (for some reason my parents were still getting polling cards for the Dail elections).

There is another point that needs to made that may be relevant to Iain's posting. Before 1984, the anamoly was that UK nationals couldn't vote in Ireland, but Irish nationals could vote in Britain. At that point, many Irish citizens were probably able to claim UK nationality anyway, but Mrs Thatcher felt it was unfair. It is suggested that she told the Taoiseach (presumably Garret Fitzgerald) that she felt the anamoly should be corrected, and it was up to Garret which way it went (ie, the Irish could either give the UK nationals vote, or she'd revoke their rights).

Recognising a courageous decision when he saw one, Garret took the safe option.

Some interesting history

2007-03-31T00:03:00.000+01:00

I've not been posting much recently - a combination of sport, work and the boy serving to distract me from politics and having time to post. I'm rather looking forward to the long Easter weekend, when I can relax a little.

The Daily Telegraph has recently been carrying letters on the theme of the clergy and railways. Typically, most of the letters have been about Anglican clerics (the Anglican clergyman most famous for his love of trains is of course the Rev W Awdry). However, a few days ago they carried a letter from the archivist of the Diocese of Brentwood, in which he suggests that part of the reason for the siting of the Diocesan head quarters in Brentwood was it's proximity to Shenfield junction.

Air taxes

2007-03-13T23:04:00.000Z

I was in Ireland for the weekend, and was rather stunned to read on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph a report suggesting the Tories were going to propose rather punitive taxes on "excessive" air travel. The suggestion is that we'd each be "allowed" one short haul flight a year.

There are a couple of issues with this proposal. My family are in Ireland, so I suppose I could take the boat over instead - of course, I'll spend the day driving to Holyhead to meet the ferry. But if I look around at the group of people I work with - in my own team alone - we have people with family in India, Ghana, Nigeria, Barbados, Australia and Germany. Four of us are predominately UK/Ireland based, but as I've noted before, my wife is from Singapore.

So what exactly are we supposed to do when we want to visit our families? And no, the standard "now you've an excuse not to visit the mother-in-law" joke doesn't work when I actually enjoy going!

Update...

2007-02-09T15:32:00.000Z

I was away in France last week attending the Cisco Networkers conference in Cannes. No, it wasn't just a jolly on the Med in January, I actually learned something as well.

Coming back, I see David Davis has been warning that a future Conservative government will can ID cards and cancel any contracts for the rolling out of the ID card system. This provoked a cross letter from the head of Intellect complaining that it was unreasonable for the Conservatives to make such a public statement. David Davis has responded with a letter - the full text of which has been published by Conservative Home.

The summary is pretty straight forward - stripped of its political niceties, what Davis is actually saying is "don't threaten me you over paid, under performing, unable to deliver projects on time and on budget bunch of self interested incompetents".

Newspapers and Business Coverage

2007-01-23T23:00:00.000Z

Just thought I'd post a link to this review of the Business sections of the various daily papers (including the FT).

The author of the review works in the City, so it's an interesting take. He's offering to do the Sundays as well - I do hope so!

Eric Pickles on Local Government Reorganisation

2007-01-22T15:23:00.000Z

Eric Pickles, who as well as being as MP for the area is also the Shadow Minister for Local Government has given an interview to the Waendal Journal about the government's proposal for Local Authority Reform.

Band wagon

2007-01-19T23:20:00.000Z

Dizzy has a link to this press release by Ken Livingstone on the Big Brother controversy. Clearly Ken hasn't watched Big Brother, as Dizzy points. Also, Dizzy - who is a self confessed Big Brother fan - wasn't paying attention as the word used was etiquette.

However, it does prove the point that the most dangerous place on earth is between a leftie politician and a bandwagon on the race issue. Surely the more serious issue on Channel 4 was the Dispatches programme quoting radical Imans with their vicious anti Semitic and anti Western views. Jade Goody may be a bit of a thicky - but it is actually reasonable clear that despite her butchering of the English language, she is far less of a threat to good community relations than Imans who blame AIDS on the West and suggest that the West put AIDS into medicines.

Ruth Kelly and Ofsted

2007-01-15T13:26:00.000Z

Ruth Kelly has come under a lot of criticism over her decision to send her child to a private school - Croydonian amongst others pointing out that "one might note that Ofsted's last report on Bolton judged its special needs provision 'good' or 'highly satisfactory' (page 29) on all measures."

That's all very well, but while Ruth Kelly's constituency may be in Bolton, she clearly doesn't live there. Her wikipedia entry reports that her children attend a Catholic primary school in East London (in fact, the same Catholic primary school I can see out of my office window) which confirms the suggestions I've heard that she lives in a rather exclusive development on the river.

The school itself is reckoned to be one of the best schools in Tower Hamlets (note: a long way from Bolton) and Tower Hamlets have argued that ""We are proud of the quality of education we offer to all children. We have a strong record in helping children with a wide range of learning needs to succeed."

All well and good, but here's another thought. Tower Hamlets is also one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. If a well off parent decides to withdraw a child who has particular needs out of their schools and send them to a private school, then they are freeing up funds within a deprived area for dealing with kids who need it more.

One final point. Some years ago a family friend who lives in Tower Hamlets borough withdrew her children from a different Catholic school in the borough to homeschool them because she felt that the standard of education they were receiving was unacceptable. Although the family friend has an Oxford PhD, she suffered a huge amount of harassment from the Local Education Authority as a result of this decision - including the insinuation she was not fit to teach them. Some of their schools may be good, but they are not perfect.

Gordon Brown is arrogant.

2007-01-14T15:17:00.000Z

At least, that's the only conclusion I can come to after the weekend. Brown is suggesting that the proposal for only English MPs voting on English only issues would be bad for Union, and could kill it.

Unfortunately, thats simply not true. John Hutton managed to spectacularly miss the point on the Politics show this morning when he commented that as England has over 500 MPs out of a total of 659 it wasn't as big an issue.

But it is - if the government was formed based on English votes, we'd have a hung parliament (and please note New Labour - you had less votes in England than the Conservatives).

This is total arrogance on behalf of Gordon Brown and his supporters. They endangered the Union in the first place when they rushed into devolution for Scotland and Wales in the first place without properly thinking through the West Lothian Question. The upsurge in demand for a equitable solution is coming from an England that realises it is about to have it's education and health policies decided by a government led by a man whose own constitutents won't be affected by the policies. It's coming from an England that believes it is subsidising things like tuition fees for Scottish students, while our own children have to graduate from university with large student loan debts. It's coming from an England that is fed up of the total contempt shown for its views by an arrogant and out of touch Labour government.

In short, it's coming from an England that's getting fed up.

The iPhone and trademarks.

2007-01-11T10:35:00.000Z

You'd think they'd know better. Apple, who have recently been taking action against companies who dared use the word "pod" in their name, announced earlier this week they have launched a new mobile phone, called the iPhone. (One wonders exactly how long the marketing guys took to come up with that name).

Unfortunately, it appears some one else already had a trademark on the name as applied to phones. The suggestion is that their trademark goes back as far as 1996, when the iMac, the first of the "i" products, was merely a gleam in the eye of Steve Job's goldfish.[1]

This isn't some tiny little company either that's suing Apple. It's Cisco. A company bigger than Apple, and so far has rarely been in direct competition with them. The Register has more here.

Hypocrisy

2007-01-10T12:02:00.000Z

The Witanagemot Club has recently had a debate about whether or not to admit a BNP blog to the Blog Roll and membership. In the end, the decision was taken to reject the blog in question, a decision I support.

This is not a free speech issue - no one is denying the BNP their right to express an opinion - its about whether not a private club choses to let them join.

Naturally some of the BNP blogs have gotten a little upset about it - and one member resigned from the Witanagemot Club over the decision arguing that "the only thing that mattered in deciding whether or not to admit him to Witangemot was whether or not he believed in an English parliament."

Actually it doesn't - Hitler was a anti hunting vegetarian but one suspects that the animal rights veggies wouldn't particularly want to be associated with him. And it ill becomes the BNP to complain about excluding people because of their other views when their own website states "Membership of the British National Party is open to those of British or kindred European ethnic descent. While we welcome contact and co-operation with nationalists and patriots of other races, and with the many non-whites who also oppose enforced multi-racialism, we ask them to respect our right to an organisation of our own, for our own, as we respect and applaud their measures to organise themselves in like fashion."

Average IQ in Ongar has gone up

2007-01-06T22:23:00.000Z

Yes folks, it's official. The average IQ in Ongar has gone up by two points.

Jade Goody and her family are currently living in the Big Brother House.

Quite amusing.

2007-01-06T12:20:00.000Z

An acquaintance I've shared an email list with for some years recently had a problem with an Iranian tech site deliberately embedding a picture hosted on her site in (presumably) his technical blog.

A couple of attempts have been made to resolve this - and have failed. As a result, she's changed the URL of her own image, and updated the image to one commerating the Holocaust.

You can see the updated version of the blog here. I do have a screen capture if this guy ever notices.

Happy New Year

2007-01-04T13:03:00.000Z

It's been a very busy Christmas, what with the Darling Wife returning from Singapore with The Boy and just spending time together, installing furniture and generally trying to get the house in order.

The Christmas Concert went well, and now it's time to prepare for the next concert, namely the Messiah in Chelmsford Cathedral. I haven't sung it in a while, so it will be nice to do again (one of the complaints we had when I was at university was that we did the Messiah too much, but the last time I sang it was probably the year after I left when I kept attending rehearsals.

One rather useful thing I've discovered over the Christmas break is Google's Blog Reader, which makes keeping up with my favourite blogs very simple. Now, if only I could find a way to get Firefox not to hang everytime I open Tim Worstall's blog at work.

Why I'm not a LibDem.

2006-12-14T16:25:00.000Z

A couple of years ago - before making the decision to join the Conservatives - I did one of those online "what party are you" questionaires which had me smack between the LibDems and the Tories.

In case I had any doubt that I made the right decision, Iain Dale is reporting that LibDem MP Sandra Gidley has called for a ban on school sports days as "Those children who are towards the end of the queue when the teams are being picked soon get the message and decide that they do not want to exercise" and it's humilitating for those who finish last.

What a load of ridiculous, PC, twaddle. I can speak from personal experience here - I was usually one of the last picked at sport (though for a strange period at around 13 when we did mini rugby during PE, I turned out to be pretty good at it and didn't get picked last - and I admit that felt great). However, it didn't stop me taking part - I was (and still am) rather proud of the fact that I managed to finish the 3000 metres every year at the school sports day - though I only avoided finishing last in my final year, and even that wasn't very impressive as a sporting achievement (a seventeen year old finishing ahead of only two 13 year olds doesn't exactly rank up there with the sinking of Bayern in extra time).

Life is full of adversity - we can't all be multi millionaire city traders, sports stars or thickos like Jade Goody. Children should enjoy their child hood, but don't wrap them up in cotton wool. Its a tough world out there, and they have to learn that at some point.

The fact that a LibDem MP can come out with this sort of garbage is exactly the reason I prefer the Conservatives.

Education

2006-12-11T17:23:00.000Z

I've been known, on occassion, to blog about the state of education. This Verizon Math blog is an outstanding example of why maths is important - even if you simply end up working in a call centre. The entire misunderstanding is based on the ability to understand the difference between 0.002 cent and 0.002 dollars.

What worries me is I could easily see the same experience happening in a UK Call Centre.

Living in a Siberian cave.

2006-12-11T14:41:00.000Z

Do you live in a Siberian cave with no access to the print or television media, or are you incapable of understanding it? Then there's a job at Basildon Council's Planning Department for you.

A few weeks ago, a group of travellers were given five years temporary permission to stay at plots
they developed in Cranfield Park Avenue, Wickford. Basildon Council is appealing the decision because (according to the Southend Echo) of the travellers is Freddy Eastwood who "is a well-paid professional footballer earning £100,000-a-year and this may have affected the outcome."

Now that would usually sound fair enough - I don't expect local officials to have an in depth knowledge of the football team in the next town - even their goal scoring hero whose goals got Southend United promoted last season for the second season running and scored a vital freekick in the game that put Southend in the Carling Quarter Finals for the first time.

Except I do expect them to notice when a) the goal was against Manchester United and b) the result of said goal was a bunch of national newspaper articles talking about how he was about to get evicted from his house by Basildon Council.

Cheeky

2006-12-08T12:13:00.000Z

A friend on IRC drew my attention to this report about Irish publicans complaining that random breath testing of drivers is hurting their income. They are demanding compensation.

So let me see if I have this straight. For years and years we've been watching ever more gruesome "Don't Drink and Drive" adverts. Despite this, plenty of fools have continued to do this, at the risk of destroying Christmas not only for their own families but for the families of the innocent people they kill. The Guards initiate a regieme of testing designed to catch the fools before they hit someone. This one actually works - in the sense that it appears it's reducing the number of people who are being fools.

And the publicans want to be compensated for the fact they are no longer serving drink to people who shouldn't be drinking.

Coming next, the local drug dealers ask for compensation for the losses incurred as the result of the most recent drug haul.

Greenbelt

2006-12-06T10:48:00.000Z

I read in the Telegraph that a member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee is calling for green belt land to be made available for housing, "particularly in areas where house prices were the highest." Well, that puts Brentwood fairly high up the list then.

Anyone care to speculate as to what proportion of Green Belt land in Conservative and Lib Dem constituencies will be rezoned as opposed to Labour ones?

Making it up as you go along.

2006-12-05T17:54:00.000Z

One Railway appear to be making the timetable to make their punctuality figures look better.

I arrived at Ingatestone station this morning to catch the 0933 to find there were delays. The screens weren't showing a 0933 service, but were showing a 0948 service that doesn't actually exist on the current timetable.

Are they taking lessons from Labour on how to massage the figures to look good?

Elitism

2006-11-30T16:05:00.000Z

The BBC is reporting that the government is going to encourage more schools to offer the International Baccalaureate - amidst concerns that amongst other things, so many students are getting top grades the good universities are have issues distinguishing the top students. This has been condemned by one teaching union as "elitist".

The suggestion is that A Levels have been made easier to facilitate higher pass rates. Perhaps the unions are worried that if more kids start doing the IB, the much vaunted increase in pass rates will slip.

In any case, if it's elitist to want our brightest children to be challenged and stretched during their education, then I'm proud to be elitist.

(I should note that one of the 46 state schools already offering the IB is the Anglo European School in Ingatestone - always nice to get a local spin on a national story).

Train companies and tickets

2006-11-29T16:41:00.000Z

As both the regular readers of my blog know, I work in the City and commute from Ingatestone to Liverpool Street. I decided to take advantage of One Railway's Season Direct scheme - mostly because it actually saves me money on buying a monthly ticket.

As I pulled into Liverpool Street yesterday morning, someone asked if it was true that the tickets gave free travel at the weekend and Bank Holidays - I answered yes.

Only odd thing about this is that the guy asking the question was a ticket inspector. Now, personally, I question the sense of doing ticket inspections on a train that's about to pull into a gated at Liverpool Street station. But it's even more dubious if the guy doing the inspections isn't sure if it's valid or not. Perhaps One should consider briefing their staff on the features of new tickets.

Live longer, live in Brentwood

2006-11-22T11:02:00.000Z

The Telegraph is reporting that Brentwood has the nineth highest life expectancy in the country for men.

Academics and Bishops

2006-11-20T00:50:00.000Z

There's been quite a strong reaction in both the media and the blogosphere to the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent remarks on women's ordination. The impression is given that he's had second thoughts on the issue, and that the Church of England might even need to rethink it.

A few things do need to be born in mind when considering this though. Firstly, the Archbishop made the comments to the Catholic Herald in the run up to his visit to the Pope in Rome next week. Secondly, the comments were made in the context of a wide ranging discussion about the prospects for future Anglican-Catholic dialogue. Thirdly, what he actually said was on reconsidering the matter was "I don’t see how there can be. I could just about envisage a situation in which over a very long period the Anglican Church thought again about it, but I would need to see what the theological reason for that would be and I don’t see it at the moment."

At no stage during the interview did Archbishop Williams suggest that it had been the wrong thing to do, though he did acknowledge that the divisions caused within the Anglican Communion had tested the decision. Further, in the wider of context of the discussion, the "just about" situation could appears to be the point at which the only outstanding issue between Rome and Canterbury was the existence of women priests - in other words, the much more significant issues dividing the two Churches concerning the Eucharist, the role of the Papacy, authority within the Church, etc had all been resolved to a mutually satisfactory level. In other words, in the context of a situation that is pretty unlikely.

Part of the problem here would appear to be that Archbishop Williams is an academic - he's regarded as a pretty good theologian (Archbishop Cramner on his blog remarks that "both the Archbishop and the Pope are (whether one agrees with them or not) highly accomplished academics and renowned theologians." While I disagree with him far more than I agree with him, its clear there's a pretty good mind behind that blog - and he's hinted on Conservative Home he himself is a theology lecturer).

But academics have a habit of making speeches or giving interviews where quotes are pulled slightly out of context and then made into the story. Indeed, Archbishop Williams will be meeting with a man next week who knows all about that - given the recent fuss over comments Pope Benedict made on his recent tour to Germany.

More on Yarmouth

2006-11-14T20:48:00.000Z

Conservative Home is reporting that Brandon Lewis is now the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Great Yarmouth. Does this mean he'll be moving to Yarmouth (which I seem to recall is a requirement for A list candidates who have been adopted) and if so, will that have any impact on the party in Brentwood (yes I am a member, but to quote Manuel, "I know nothing").

In other news, the Hutton and Shenfield Choral Society are doing a performance of Verdi's Requiem at the Brentwood Centre on Saturday evening. Do try and make it!

Parliamentary seats

2006-11-06T11:27:00.000Z

I was a little surprised to see that Brandon Lewis, the local Council leader who is on the Tory Party's A List wasn't on the "extended" short list for Witham, given that it's just down the road. The answer to that appears to be partly because he's on the short short list for Yarmouth. All I can say is "Good Luck".

Labour and marginals

2006-10-24T12:03:00.000+01:00

A letter in today's Telegraph reads "I cannot help thinking that the problem with rural post offices is that they are not in marginal Labour seats. ".

Over the weekend, the Telegraph reported that hospitals in Tory seats were twice as likely to be closed as Labour ones.

John Prescott wanted to do massive building programs in parts of Essex and the South East that were as Blue as the sky.

Is there a pattern here?