Why are they so corrupt? Or have they always been corrupt, but the media have been not too interested? In the days of unpaid politicians, were they any more corrupt?
In June 1922, the Conservatives were able to show that David Lloyd George was selling Knighthoods and Peerages to the highest bidders. As a direct result of this, the infamous Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 was brought into statute, which is precisely the law that the police failed to charge anyone under just recently. Then there are the pocket boroughs, whereby land owners were able to nominate politicians to do their bidding. For example, at the beginning of the 18th Century, the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Darlington both had the power to nominate seven members of the House of Commons. Then there were rotten boroughs, where towns had reduced in size to allow bribery to dictate the member of parliament. An example was the coastal town of Dunwich in Suffolk, that had mostly fallen into the sea by 1831 and only had 31 voters. And of course, these rotten MP’s would be in it for their own good.
But actually, you can go back a lot further in European history and still discover political corruption. One need only look at the Ancient Greeks (500BC), whose politicians were guilty of lies, cheating and, curiously enough, were generally lawyers. Aristophanes, a political satirist, took every opportunity to make fun of the Athenian establishment in his anti-war play (familiar, anyone?) called The Archanians. Then there is the play called The Knights, which is an outright attack on one of the most powerful politicians in Athens.
So even the Greeks, who incidentally invented the word Rhetoric, had their fair share of media trouble. And the politicians back then were as corrupt as they are now. I am not surprised when I hear of politicians with their snouts in the trough. I just wonder, is it really a few bad apples, or are they just the ones unlucky enough to get caught?

If I were going to launch a revolutionary product to the market - one that would bring about a paradigm shift in a billion pound industry, would I announce my product to the world before getting the contracts with said industry? No, I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t spend 500 grand on the launch party, either.

A rather thought provoking post has appeared over on Ellee’s blog. She asks if men are discriminated against, citing the new “Men’s Coalition” - an organisation aimed at raising awareness of men’s issues - as a reason for the post. She thinks that men are not discriminated against. Well I beg to differ.


I am not saying that women do not get discriminated against - one must only google “equal pay for equal work” and you will see clear evidence of it. And this discrimination is not limited to the pay cheque, but this post is not about women’s discrimination. There is already enough media coverage about these issues in the UK, and one more person adding to it will not make a difference. It is about answering the question that Ellee raised “so tell me guys, do we need a Men’s Coalition, do you feel discriminated against?
 As I said, men are discriminated against. Men die on average 7 years earlier than women. Screening programs are provided for women related cancers - breast and cervical. No such screening is offered to men’s cancers - prostate and testicular. Yet deaths from prostate cancer are comparable to those from breast cancer and 7 times higher than deaths from cervical cancer. There are targets for reducing cervical and breast cancer, and no such targets for the male only cancers. The suicide rate is nearly 4 times higher for men than for women. There is no help specifically aimed at male suicides. The figures are worse for those under 20. Local councils offer women-only sessions in swimming pools. No such men-only sessions exist. There is no “men’s hour” on Radio 4. Men are routinely discriminated against in family courts, often resulting in the loss of contact with children. I don’t know whether this is because courts assume that children are better off with their mothers, or that fathers (because of some bad apples) are unreliable, or what it is. I do know that men are often expected to pay maintenance, which is enforced by the courts, yet mothers are not forced to allow access. Courts do not generally stop mothers from moving away, effectively allowing father-child relationships to be severed.  
In the work place, especially in careers that are historically dominated by men (such as the harder sciences), it is perfectly legal to give a woman an interview just because she is a woman. In fact, I know of several cases where a woman has got a job in a male-dominated profession because she was a woman when there were several better male candidates.  And actually, this is the main point of the article. It is legal to positively discriminate, yet illegal to negatively discriminate. This is illogical, as when you positively discriminate against one group in society you negatively discriminate against another. Rather than investigating why at each stage of education/career, there is an decrease in the proportion of women in science, the government tells universities that it is ok to discriminate. 
Two wrongs does not make a right. So yes, men are discriminated against. But the question is, do we need another money wasting publicly funded talk shop, or do we need an end to a government policy that legalises discrimination?

I just received a letter from the Nationwide building society sent me a letter asking me for some very personal details, under the Report of Savings Income Information Regulations (2003). Apparently, UK banks have to collect information from their customers if they reside in another EU country. Someone forgot to tell Nationwide that Switzerland is not in the EU. In fact, according to Nationwide, Switzerland is in fact an annexe of France. I do wonder what went through their heads when writing this letter…

Hey Ron….. there’s a funny foreign address here.

Oh yea? Where?

Dunno - it’s all written in French.

The French speak French, don’t they?

Yeah I think so. Must be France then.

So in response, I have written them a very polite letter

According to the Sunday Mail (ugh), the native Brits are unemployable. They quote the chief executive of the British Hospitality Association, Bob Cotton, as saying:

The local people, we find, do not have the motivation to turn up each day and once they’ve worked 15 hours a week their benefits start to be removed - so there’s no motivation to want to work more than 15 hours. If you’re an employer and have a keen person from Poland, who is bright, smiling, wants to work, who turns up every day, will work 45 to 50 hours a week against a person who turns up one day, doesn’t turn up the next, isn’t really interested, it’s a no-brainer. The people who we’ve had from central Europe are the best source of labour this industry has had for a hundred years. They’ve done more to improve standards in our industry than anything from our local schools and colleges.   

Seems pretty damning. And the statistics seem to represent that point of view - of 1.8 million employed in the hospitality, fully 1.2 million are immigrants. There are two ways of looking at this - the first is that the industry pays a pittance, so no Brit wants to work for that level of pay, and the second is that the Brits are work shy and too addicted to their benefits. And yes - the socialists do believe the former:

For this man, who is the chief spokesman of Britain’s hotels, to write off British workers like this is astonishing. The problem isn’t that British workers can’t do the job, it’s that this sector pays a pittance not a living wage. It is utterly unsustainable to rely on foreign labour that will one day dry up.  

Well first of all, this MP from Wales has completely missed the point of a market. Current market conditions dictate that hoteliers can pay the minimum wage and still get plenty of foreign workers to fill the jobs. When they don’t, either the hoteliers will go out of business as no one wants to sleep in used sheets, or they will up the wages and get the staff they need. But the main point here is not about markets, it is about the minimum wage - the minimum wage that said socialists set up.

There are around 800,000 people on “job seekers allowance“, costing us about £2 bn and a further 2.4 million on “incapacity benefit” costing us a further £12.4bn. Let’s assume that we can get 75% of the workers on job seekers allowance working in the hospitality industry, with the rest coming from those that are “incapacitated”. It would have the unfortunate consequence of us having to kick out all those Poles, but it would save us something like £2.5bn. As an incentive, and to keep both the socialists and Tories happy, let’s “share the proceeds” of benefits reduction and split £1bn between the Brits that now have jobs. That would be an extra £1250 each - a 10% pay rise - and £1.5bn for us poor tax payers. But that isn’t everything - the “real cost” of unemployment to the government is much higher. Due to lost taxes from not having all these lovely people employed, the total cost is some way above £40bn. So the real gain to the treasury would be £10bn. So, using the same principle, let’s share some of those proceeds. Say, £2bn to those newly working brits, giving them a 20% pay rise. And the treasury could give a £300 tax cut to every other employed person in the country. So we have a perfect solution - a huge reduction in unemployment, a good livable wage for those that are newly employed and a nice tax reduction to all of the other tax payers in the country. And all those without cost to the employers.

But this, once again, is not the main point. Hoteliers do not want to employ us Brits, because us Brits have forgotten how to work. So bring on the Poles is what I say. What we do with the work shy Brits is the topic of another post.

After spending a couple of hours on the computer, I think I have solved the problem with the way my blog looks. If anyone notices anything strange, please let me know in a comment or email.Thanks. 

I have just noticed that this blog looks shiiiite on a windoze computer with firefux. Right now I don’t know how to fix it, and it is bloody annoying that “one size” does definitely not fix all. Whatever happened to standards? Whatever happened to browser interoperability? I now have to spend HOURS fixing this bloody pile of crap. Update: have reset back to the original theme. Bugger.

We here that the reason Peter Hain “forgot” to declair £103k of campaign funding is that he was too busy. So what has he been doing since the failed deputy leadership bid?

Misleading Parliament . In October, he made wrote a letter to the Speaker and the opposition that said “I apologise for having to make this revision. I am sure you will understand these calculations are not straightforward,”. He admitted that 300,000 foreign citizens working in Britain were left out of official statistics, reported to parliament earlier in a written answer.1.1 million people from abroad have taken jobs in Britain since 1997 and the previous figure was 800,000. And he did it using a letter on the last day of parliament, before the closure for the Queens speech, such that he did not have to defend himself in the house itself.

 Defending Policies not in his brief. Apparently, he described the EU constitution as a ‘tidying up’process. Um, what has Wales and his pensions brief got to do with the EU constitution? And why wasn’t the Europe Minister, Foreign Secretary, or Gordon Brown himself doing the dirty work? Well, that will be ‘defending the Labour Party’s interests’ then.

 Avoiding his brief. If doing other people’s dirty work wasn’t enough, he failed to do his own. Being in charge of pensions, you would expect he would be interested in talking to campaign groups worried about people loosing their hard-earned pensions. Apparently not. 

When he does do his job… It appears that even when his eye is on his brief, he is making a pigs ear of it. WorkDirections UK, won six out of 15 contracts worth more than £85m under “Pathways to Work”, which aims to get disabled people off benefit. The group’s Australian subsidiary, WorkDirections Australia, provider of similar services, has been involved in controversy. One of the firm’s businesses was found to have underpaid staff and its star performance rating set by the government fell. WorkDirections UK won the contracts after legal advice that it did not need to apply TUPE conditions - designed to protect staff when an undertaking is transferred to a new employer - by providing Whitehall index-linked pensions, sick pay and holidays. Its rival bidders in the charity sector did factor in the cost of TUPE and are crying foul - blaming unclear advice from the DWP for the mess.

 Oh - and this group were founded and run by Therese Rein, the wife of Kevin Rudd, leader of the Labor Party in Australia and also quite prone to 

eating earwax. But more importantly, a personal friend of certain Blairites 

Parliamentary Record. And in his years in parliament, he is clearly a party animal:Has never voted on a transparent Parliament.Voted moderately for introducing a smoking ban.Voted strongly for introducing ID cards.Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.Voted very strongly for introducing student top-up fees.Voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.Voted very strongly against investigating the Iraq war.Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.Voted very strongly for the hunting ban.Voted moderately for equal gay rights.And for someone who is somewhat “forgetful” in his finances, it is no surprise he has never voted for a transparent parliament, and has strongly voted against investigating the Iraq war. What else has he been up to? If he had nothing to hide, then he would want a transparent parliament….  

So the question is, what has Hain and the Australian Labour Party got in common? Are there more skeletons in his cupboard? 

Just before Christmas I drove into a fence. Stupid thing to do, but it was a stupid fence.

Looking at the damage, I thought to myself “now that is going to cost a lot”. Two panels of the car were damaged, to a point where I thought they would need replacing. So I drove the car to my insurance company’s “help point” to get it fixed.

They called me today - the repair bill was 1300CHF (about £500) - much lower than my estimate. Unlike a UK insurer, who would take glee in taking me for a ride, the company sugested that I pay the bill myself as it would cost me much less in the long run (around 3000CHF in increase insurance premiums over the next few years, due to loss of ‘no claims’).

So the insurance company took my car away, organised its repair, gave me a hire-car while it was being repaired, and then called me up (once repaired) informing me I could save money by not getting them involved. The car is back tomorrow and the bill is in the post. Now that is what I call service!

Whilst browsing the blogosphere, the LAST THING I WANT is to have my eardrums blasted with god awful music from Flash video adverts that are impossible to block without uninstalling Flash.

So F*CK OFF Mr Tim Worstall - you are now removed from my blogroll. Much that I enjoy reading your blog, as far as I am concerned, your blog is simply not good enough to put up with such intrusive advertising. My blog might be small fry compared to yours, but at least I don’t smack my readers around the head with a pony.

No wonder people, with the means, are deserting the state education sector in droves. Certainly it is an option for my family; if we happen to be unfortunate enough to live in an area with poor schools, we will pay for an education fit for our daughter. And this is the reason.

One of the key problems uncovered by researchers was the failure to put children into ability sets or groups. Even when children were put in classes with children of similar abilities, clever children were still grouped with other “lower ability” pupils when carrying out work.

So, can it be, that the government’s policy is to prop up the poor students by getting the good students to “help”? Well according to the students, that is the case:

“They [The children] often perceived themselves as additional support to less able pupils. But the majority of children said they would have liked more opportunities to work in ability groups or independently.”

As I have always thought, the state education system is geared towards mediocracy. It’s only purpose is to teach everyone equally badly, rather than identifying the individual needs of children and acting on it. From an educator’s point of view, the best way of teaching a class of mixed ability is to split them up into smaller groups; it is simply not practical to teach individual students. Indeed, the students gain from learning in a group, but only if they work with people of the same ability. Luckily, I have not had to undergo the mindwashing that modern day teachers do. And luckily, I am not sent hundreds of “new initiatives” whose primary purpose is to keep me from doing my job. I simply use common sense - something that appears to be lacking in the modern day education system in the UK.

On ski slopes!

The Swiss authorities, in their ultimate wisdom, have decided to put speed cameras on Ski slopes. In contrast, there are hardly any speed cameras on Swiss roads. That said, I wouldn’t want to get caught speeding here - 30km/hr over the limit results in 2 years in gaol. I wonder if the same penalties will apply to those on ski slopes?

On the 27th December our dishwasher broke. That afternoon, I went to our agency to get them to call the repair man. On the 28th December we got a phonecall from the repair firm, arranging an appointment with us between 10.00am and 10.30am on the 3rd January. On the 31st of December we received a letter from our agency, informing us of this appointment. Today, the 3rd January, the repair man arrived at 10.10am and fixed the dishwasher within 30 minutes.

Now that’s what I call service. Why can’t we do it like that in the UK?

On 21st December 2007, Schengen expanded. For those of you that don’t know what Schengen is (since the UK is not a member), it is:

“Europe’s passport-free travel zone, the Schengen area … This means there will be no more border checks on people travelling between these and other Schengen countries by land or sea, and checks at airports are set to end in March 2008.”

And according to Angela Merkel:

“This is an especially beautiful moment… It is a source of great pleasure that coming generations will experience open borders as the European normalcy.”

So EU citizens will be able to travel fromto Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia and the Czech Republic without any border checks. That means the Schengen area will border with Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Russia.

Slovakia’s entry to Schengen was almost delayed due to the difficulty officials were having in meeting security criteria on the country’s rugged eastern border with Ukraine - a hotbed of smuggling, illegal refugee crossing and organized crime. Indeed, it is well trumpeted that Ukraine is the destination of choice for middle-eastern refugees. But worse is that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith lost an attempt for Britain to have a say in the policing of the Eastern EU borders, since the European Court ruled that since the UK country is not a member of the Schengen system, it has not right to a vote in how the Schengen borders are controlled.

So watch out all you people out there frightened of yet more immigration: Sangatte is only going to get fuller.