Ken has recently embarked on another class war - this time against the drivers of “poluting” cars. A new “environmental” charge will be levied on vehicles with emissions greater than 226g/km of CO2. And that got me thinking. Just how much of an environmental tax is this new “environmental” charge? And how much is it a thinly disguised class war? Those on Labour Home seem to be in support of Ken and his war (on whatever it is, whether the environment or something else), and it appears that as soon as anyone comments in favour of car driving, the insults are thrown at them.

So just how polluting are London buses? According to an anti-4×4 campaign group, a common double decker London bus emits 1406g/km of CO2 and the bendy buses apparently emit 1585.7g/km - yes somewhere between 6.2 and 7 times more than Ken’s tax threshold. However, on the surface, one might expect there to be more than 6 people on a bus at any given time, so it doesn’t seem too bad at all. Until, of course, you check the figures.

According to Ken’s own propaganda, the average London bus has an occupancy of 15, meaning CO2 emission is something between 93 and 106g/km. So it would only take 2 people to be in a car above Ken’s threshold before it nearly pays off, or three to be saving on emissions. Considering the average occupation of a car in London is 1.6, it would not require a very large increase in occupancy before we break even. And you know what - if those 3.6L petrol Porsche Cayennes have three people inside, it would be more environmentally friendly than a bus ride, and the journey would be much more pleasurable.

So will Ken be giving a discount to those in large 4×4’s if their occupancy is high? Hardly. In the bid to be more environmentally friendly, will Ken discontinue those buses with an occupancy of less than 7? Hardly. Will Ken embark on a publicity campaign to encourage car sharing? Hardly. Is this a thinly disguised class war? It’s looking like it, isn’t it? Will Ken be kicked out in the next elections? Let’s hope so.

It was an emotive speech, was it not? Accordingly, Blair accosted the Conservatives - under a subheading “The Conservative Record” he stated that

• One in seven 21 year olds have trouble reading, and one in five has problems with basic numeracy.
• 42% of 11 year olds are below the expected standard in maths, and half below the expected level in English
• Half as many pupils get 3 good GCSEs and two good A levels as their German counterparts.

All true, I am sure. But what of the record of the Labour government, these last 10 years or so?

• 16% (greater than 1 in 7) of the population are not functionally literate,
• 22% of 11 year olds fail to achieve the expected level in English and 19% in maths
• 90% of pupils in Germany leave school with the equivalent of 5 GCSE’s or more, whereas only 58% of UK pupils get satisfactory grades in their core subjects at GCSE. In 1997, only 45% of pupils received 5 good GCSE’s, whereas now it is 58%.

One should note that although the second point on Tony Blair’s list appears to be improved, one must realise that the standards today are somewhat different to 12 years ago (the speech was in 1996) and at each key-stage level, the number of children achieving a satisfactory grade in English changes from 83% at 7, to 78% at 11, to 67% at 16. The same can be said for Maths - 87% to 81% to 71%.

So from the figures above, it seems fairly reasonable to assume two things:

1. The money put into school education in the last 10 years has not lead a large improvement of grades. In 1997, the education budget was £37bn whereas today it is £77bn.
2. Too many people are still not literate, with the overall percentage of those that cannot read in the country larger than when Labour came to power.

So is it a surprise that Labour are willing to throw the best part of a billion pounds at a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place? Of course, I am speaking of the £800,000,000 spent on keeping university students on their courses, which had little or no effect on the drop-our rates. This money, taken directly from the teaching budgets of the UK universities, was supposed to prop up the government’s failing policy of getting 50% of 18 year olds into university. A commendable ambition, one might think, but only if the students are sufficiently skilled in the first place. This £800 million has been diverted from the teaching laboratories of our science courses, and put into foundation level teaching - which includes basic literacy and numeracy - to make up for the fact that the students did not get a decent education at school. A yearly £30bn increase in the schools budget didn’t improve our children’s basic skills, so what wally thought £0.8bn of ring-fenced university budget would?

In this situation, a government must carefully think about what universities are for. Are they there to mop up the inadequacies of the state-schooling sector, or are they there to educate our brightest and best to a very high level? Is it right that the government takes money out of our science teaching, where we have a well documented shortage, and put it into basic literacy, numeracy and foundation-level media studies students? Perhaps I am being a subject-snob. Or perhaps these students that require the foundation level courses are not suited to university education, but feel they must go on studying because “it’s the thing to do”.

Given 22% of students quit their university courses, perhaps lowering the goals from 50% to 30% of 18 year olds going to university would be a more efficient use of money. Lowering the number of school leavers going to university from 43% to 30% would instantly increase university budgets by around a third (if the budget is kept constant irrespective of student numbers), giving them more money to improve teaching. This might just reduce that drop-out rate too.

Back from blighty. All in all, a good trip - lots achieved (both work and family matters). Am very tired after the 1000km drive, so more posts tomorrow.

My family and I are off to Blighty for a week, so a short blog break is on the cards.

One allegation that has infuriated me is the allegation in the Times, regurgitated without thought on Guido’s blog, that a Labour Minister has dodged tax law. Guido even labels it as “Definitely dodgy, unethical rule bending”. Apparently James Purnell has dodged tax by claiming his London flat is his main residence when selling it (hence avoiding the 40% capital gains tax) whilst previously claiming £20,000 in secondary home allowances on the same home.

But you see, this isn’t sleaze and it isn’t wrong, illegal or anything of the like. It just goes to show that you have to think about what you read, rather than simply repeat it (or in fact, not selectivley read an article because of Ones agenda, as all of the explanation below is contained at the bottom of the Times article). Much that I dislike to admit that a Labour minister has does nothing wrong, he has followed both the House of Commons and HM Revenue & Customs rules to the letter.

It’s all a matter of timing. He bought his Manchester constituency home in June 2002, before which his London home was his primary residence. His primary residence transferred from London to Manchester at the time of this purchase, and since then he claimed the expenses for his London home. He sold his London home in October 2004. No capital gains tax was due on that sale, because the HMRC rules state that there is an exemption from capital gains tax if the property was a primary residence within three years of the sale. This comes from the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992.

So not really a tax dodge, just a sensible way to manage one’s finances - selling an asset 6 months or so before it became taxable. If only the government ran the country in such a prudent manner. I personally find that it is very upsetting that journalists, and their young padawan bloggers, are hell bent on sleaze. It might increase one’s page impressions, but other than to cosset one’s ego, what purpose does repeating false allegations serve? All this crusade will result in is politicians retreating further into their holes, reducing the chances of introducing real transparency, which is what we desperately need. There are a few bad apples in the barrel, but most politicians are hard working individuals that deserve our respect.

In the current climate of media bias against MP’s expenses, I do wonder just where this is all going to end up. Will it be that MP’s are only from rich backgrounds? When we have so called journalists balking at the £400 per month allowance that MP’s get for food, I do wonder what planet they are from.

You see, a £400 per month food allowance constitutes around £20 per day (assuming the MP’s are away 5 days per week with 4 weeks in a month). Since the vast number of MP’s are living away from home for the days they are attending parliament, is it all that bad they get an allowance? Can you imagine feeding yourself three square meals for £20 per day in London, when you work coming on for 15 hour days? When exactly are MP’s supposed to cook in their working day?Just because your average office worker can get home in time to cook does not mean an MP does. They, along with those that are running our corporations, work many more hours than normal people. Is it fair that we expect our MP’s, on a miserly salery of £60K, to eat out every night at their own expense when the very fact that they have to eat out is because of their jobs? When I travel (4 months last year) I get around 50CHF per day for food - comparible to the MP’s allowance. It is the same for a vast majority of those that travel on business - they get a ‘per day’ allowance for food.

And yet our journalists seems hell bent on tarring all MP’s with the same sleazy brush, when in fact they have a very important job for very little money (considering the responsibility). Just ask yourself how much a CEO of a multinational earns, and then compare it to an average minister’s salary. And the result of this tarring is the vitreol coming out of the comments section of Nick’s blog. A quick scan results in little - if any - support for our MP’s.

And if we are really in the game of ensuring tax-payers value for money - how much does Nick earn?  It appears to be more than an MP, since the average pay of a male ’specialist’ news reporter is £65K, and Nick is the Chief Political Editor of the BBC. And I bet he also gets expenses when he is on location somewhere. Looking at the FOI requests, we are not at liberty to know how much individuals earn. It’s the public’s money, yet the BBC will not answer the questions put to them. How is Nick any different to an MP, apart from the fact that than he earns more?

Today I had the misfortune of being sent some data in Excel. I never use Excel for anything scientific, but for the easy management/organisation type tasks. The data in question was spread about all over different sheets, so I thought I would manually copy/paste the relevant data to a new sheet and save it into a text file. That way I could plot it with something sensible (like Matlab). This took about 30 minutes and I saved it as a “space delimited text file”  which means a space should be put between the different columns of data. And here is the result: Yes that’s right - Microsoft have f*cked up. What simple part of “space delimited text file” can they not understand? It means: PUT A SPACE BETWEEN THE ENTRIES IN EACH COLUMN. It does not mean put a space sometimes. It does not mean put random carriage returns between rows. It does not mean create a file that cannot be read by any other application. Why oh why do people use Microsoft products?

Goodness me, but can this be true? 

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

If so, then there can only be one explanation: someone is doing it on purpose. Quite why, I do not know. But I wonder, no reputable news source is picking this up. Either they have been told not to report it (unlikely, considering the diversity in the world-wide media), they are not interested/aware (also unlikely, imho) or we have ourselves some fabrication.

Gordon Brown claimed £17,017 on a second (non-constituency) home last year. Since 2001, he has spent £99,161 of tax payers on a second home and every single minute of that time he has had access to a government apartment in Downing Street. And I bet that it has been the case since 1997. So seeing as at the moment we are in the business of investigating all the ‘dodgy’ dealings of our MP’s, I wonder if the next victim will be GB himself? 



p.s and it seems Tony and John weren’t much better, although at least John’s grace-and-favour flat was paid for by the unions. 

Since my last posting on this subject, a 4th communications cable has been “damaged” in the Middle East. This time it is in Qtar. And, despite the recent speculation that the first two cables were cut by a ship’s anchor, it transpires there weren’t any ships there at the time of the cuts! So what are the USA up to? Four cables down in 1 week, all in the Middle East? Something is afoot I tells you.

We learn today that a Muslim Labour MP has been bugged by the security services in a meeting with a constituent in gaol. Apparently he is outraged. Well who gives a shit whether he was outraged or not? If an average run of the mill person has no option about being bugged, why should it be any different for an MP that is visiting someone in gaol? The said inmame is Babar Ahmed, incarcerated since August 2004 and is one of the UK’s most well known terrorist suspects. He is wanted for extradition to the US for running terrorist websites and arranging financial support for jihad in Afghanistan. In other words, the authorities believe he is a nasty peice of work, suporting groups that want to change our way of life, for good.

Whether he is innocent or not is not at issue here. The authorities believe that he is a threat to national security and it would make complete sense that he would have his conversations monitored, especially when in prison! In fact, it is standard practice to monitor prisoner visits. So it comes back to the question of why are MP’s different? If they are meeting with suspected terrorists, then they should expect to have their conversations monitored.

I have added a new section to the gallery that is for displaying my hobby - that is, photography. Way back when, I used to love taking photographs. I had two cameras - a workhorse completely manual Eastern European Praktika SLR (it had no batteries) with 5 different lenses, tripod, two flashes, filters and a Minolta 2xi SLR (a bottom-end autofocus, auto-everything camera from the mid-90’s). Both use film. In the day and age of digital photography, I consider film to be a rather expensive luxury. Also, having a 2.5 year old daughter, not all photographs turn out as I would like and lugging around copious amounts of equipment is not very practical….

So now I simply use a 7.2Mpix Sony compact. Takes OK’ish photos considering it only cost £200, but it is no SLR. At some point, I will treat myself and purchase one of these, but not for a while. So a new addition to the gallery can be found here, and as a special treat, I have included some examples in this post.

Only a couple of days ago, we learned that two internet backbones were cut, linking Europe with the Middle East. The first to go was FLAG and the second SEA-ME-WE-4, both of which will take until mid-February to fix. Now we learn that a third cable has been cut, also linking the Gulf with Europe. A quick check of internet services shows the reality of the situation: One cable cut is bad luck. Two is a coincidence. Three, on the other hand, is something fishy. Are the USA planning an attack? Are the CIA up to something to stop a terrorist strike, by hindering communications? Are they trying to put political pressure on Iran to start playing ball with the West? Or does this come from Iran itself? Perhaps someone is planning to take control of the country, by less than civilised means? Perhaps it’s a group trying to disrupt Iraq some more. Or could it even be the Russians, or Chinese, trying to tension relations even more between Iran and the USA, playing the two sides off against one another. Who knows, but something is up. Three cables do not get “cut by dragging anchors” all within a few days.