It’s policies like these that tell me the current Labour government do not want to win the next election or they are so out of touch they shouldn’t. A sixty quid fine plus 3 points on your license, for taking a swig from a water bottle whilst driving? For listening to music too loud? For eating a chocolate bar? Do the ministers not realise that this policy has the kiss of death about it?

And in other news, according to the BBC News At 10, the economy is shrinking at the fastest rate since the recession of the early 1990’s. So that’ll be the last recession then…. Plonkers.

Ever since the banks were bailed out, I was worried that the government could not resist micromanaging their way through this mess. The difference between the Libor - the rate that banks lend to each other - and the BOE base rate - the rate that the BOE lends at - cannot be clearer. Generally speaking, banks don’t borrow from the BOE but from each other, so the rate that they pay for credit is the Libor and not BOE base rate. Yet our government do not understand this and are embarking on a policy of interference and micromanagement. The 1.5% cave in is all the evidence we need:

It was a difficult meeting… Right at the start the chancellor’s people thrust unflattering newspaper headlines under the executives’ noses. We then had to make it quite clear that just because rates fall it does not mean we can afford to do the same with our products… The issue was unresolved.

Bankers do not care about headlines. They only care that their business is viable and sustainable. Admitted, there is sometimes a correlation between bad headlines and poor business performance, but this it is not the place of the government to point this out. But what is perhaps more worrying is that it is “treasury officials” that are pushing the banks into a very political corner. Civil servants should not be worried about the papers - why are they doing political dirty work? Does this not break the rules?

Yesterday evening, for the first time in my life, I went to a football ground. Not to watch or play football, but to listen to a speech by Dominic Grieve MP, the Shadow Home Secretary. And I was extremely impressed with him. Not only was his speech 1st class, the 30 minute chat I had with him impressed me even more. His knowledge of a plethora of issues was well  in-depth and informed. He even managed to sidestep the awkward comments and conversations that can be so common when speaking to some of the older clientele.  But there was one thing that he said, which had nothing to do with policies or fixing the Labour mess, but represented precisely what Labour truly stand for. And that is media manipulation.

I have already blogged about how I believe Labour, Gordon Brown specifically, used the timing of the US elections to political advantage. By calling the Glenrothes election 2 days after the US election and 1 day after a massive 1.5% interest rate cut (although that could not be predicted, the date of any possible cut was known. Lucky, but as we all know, you make your own luck in life), the news agenda was dominated by these events rather than the fate of Glenrothes. However, a quick look at the papers reveals that the day before the election, there was apparently no chance that Labour would win (see for example here, here and here). And apparently, Nick Palmer, the Labour MP for Broxtowe said

I don’t know any Labour MPs who are expecting us to win - the range of opinion is from “Well, we’ve given them a run for their money” to “Bloody byelections, what can you expect?”

Yet only a couple of days earlier, according to Dominic Grieve, there was not a single Labour Minister that thought they would loose. Most thought they would win by a healthy, but reduced, margin. It seems that the Labour spin machine was in, well, full spin. By letting it be known that they thought they would loose, Labour have managed to turn the headline “Labour reduce their lead by half” or “Despite Brown bounce, Labour still on course for election loss” to “Labour’s tale of the unexpected” from the Beeb. In fact, a swing towards the Conservatives of the same magnitude in the general election could result in a small, but very real, majority for them.

Despite what I would call a disastrous result - despite all of the resources in the World thrown at the seat, they still lost half their majority - the media are full of “Brown Bounce” stories because he fed them with a “we are going to loose” line the day before the election. It’s a perfect manipulation of the media.

I certainly don’t remember hearing about the convenient timing when the date was announced, the media all ran with the same story the day of the election (that Labour will loose) and now the media are full of the Brown Bounce. And this is the culture that is true New Labour - no strong policies, just media manipulation and plenty of coverage. And is has got to end. The media must be independent, free to investigate and report on their own. They should not be bullied into running the politician’s particular spin that day. Enough of the “Tomorrow, the Home Secretary will announce…”; enough of the same stories blanketing all of the news papers; enough of the bullying tactics. If a particular policy is not strong enough to win on debate and strength of arguments alone, it is probably the wrong policy.

A few million here, a few tens of million there. The bonuses earned by our bankers are a King’s ransom for some, but chicken feed for the banks. Gordon Brown, as it is him that is behind this fiasco and its “rescue” (and not his Darling puppet), has insisted the banks should not pay “cash” bonuses this year to their executives. But the bonuses are chicken feed. They have not caused this problem in any way - the money that that the banks have lost is trillions, not hundreds of millions. Not even billions.

So what has actually caused this problem? Not enough regulation perhaps? Apparently, Brown has been calling for Worldwide regulations for years. Bullshit - as is shown in his Mansion House Speech where he calls for the exact opposite. Despite Brown’s talent for being economical with the truth, is more regulation the answer? 

I would say, and so would a number of others, is that the problem was that banks have been lending to people who cannot service the debt. They have been lending to high risk individuals - according to the BBC this morning, even those without a job. Under whose bidding? Well, Gordon Brown’s, of course. In his pursuit of equal opportunities for all, whether it’s in the best interest of those that are given the opportunities or not, Gordon’s economic policy, far from allowing the practice of it, has been actively encouraging lending to high risk individuals. It’s everyone’s right to own a house - after all, one can extract more tax from the population if more of them own a house.

And guess what the other string of these new proposals to “help” the banks? Yep - in order to accept the government’s money, the banks have to increase lending to those without very much capital (i.e small businesses) and individuals who wish to purchase houses (in a market that is currently in freefall). The root cause of this crisis - a large and sustained increase in access to credit - is the very policy that Gordon is attempting to sell to the world as the fix!

And what about that regulation? Has there been a failing in regulation? Perhaps - if banks were not involved in the practice of buying and selling packaged up debts, then the good and bad debts would not have been mixed together and there would not be the same crisis in inter-bank lending. If the practice of consolidating debt was banned, those banks that did not purchase bad debts would be insulated. Whilst there would still be a crisis, as the lending in the first place would still have taken place, the banks that only traded in “good” debts might still be able to borrow money. Perhaps better regulation could have reduced some of the severity of the crash, or changed the nature of it, but regulation alone is not the answer.

The crux of the matter is that banks need to go back a few decades and reduce access to credit, so that those that can service the loans are the only ones that are lent to. But of course no politician - even those in the Conservative Party - has the balls to tell the poor that they can never own their own home. So I worry about the nationalisation of the banks - with such large shares of the banks, can ministers stomach the one thing that will stop a crisis like this ever happening again? Politician’s imply they want to punish the bank’s executives for taking too many risks, but the real risk of the last decade was lending to the poor.

Update 15.06:

It appears that my hunch of Government’s not understanding the route of the problem is correct. And it seems that I was also correct about ministers not wanting to leave well alone, content only if they can micromanage from the bank’s policy so that it meets their own agenda. You see, another condition of the money is for the bank’s to return to lending at the 2007 levels. Labour will not admit the fundamental problem was caused by lending to those that cannot afford it.

In the last 10 years, we have reduced the public sector debt, from 44% GDP to 37%.

Gordon Brown, 9.50am Sunday 21st September, BBC1 Andrew Marr Interview.

Taken from the Office for National Statistics. Isn’t it interesting that the only time that public sector debt has gone down in the last 10 years has been when Gordon Brown was following Conservative economic policy. From 2001 onwards, it has soared to beyond the starting point.

Gordon Brown, you are a liar, coward and fraudster.

How can taxing a company more reduce the cost of its services? Of course, things are more complicated than this, because in fact Brown is not suggesting that he should “encourage” businesses to lower their profits in order to avoid a windfall tax - the policy that Brown has just “announced” might be a replacement for one a few weeks ago, that on the most part, received public condemnation. 

What Brown proposes to do is give families* £150 extra this winter to help pay for their energy bills. All well and good, one might say. Money from the government is always good. Until you realise the cost - this money might be borrowed, resulting in higher taxes for future generations. And of course what happens to money that goes into the government’s coffers? Well half of it stays there, or be magically turned into smoke. Of course, the real cost - when interest and government waste and whatnot - is much higher. So it’s caution to the wind, let’s mortgage our children’s future - that is the current way of thinking. Effectively Brown is taxing companies and the workforce more to pay for the give away, even if it is not direct.

But maybe this policy is not a replacement for the “windfall” tax policy. Maybe the two will be combined and there will be no increase in borrowing. Maybe it would be a direct tax for a direct subsidy. Would this be any better? Would a windfall tax on the energy companies, with half of the money disappearing into thin air and the other half distributed to the target group that Brown thinks he needs on side to win the next election (e.g parents, especially the middle class ones), be any better?

Of course not. But is it more likely than funding this give away through borrowing? Probably.

So what effect would a windfall tax have on energy bills? Of course, it will push them up. Companies have a mandate to make a profit. If they don’t, then shareholders oust the board - or worse - the companies become a take over target. And of course, profit margins matter when it comes to stock market prices. In effect, company directors will do all in their power to ensure the company has a good profit margin, as they want to maximise their bonus and retain their position. 

It appears that Brown thinks he can get away with increasing the whole country’s energy bills in order to pay for a give away to whatever particular group in society that he needs votes from. Perhaps the title of this post should have been “Brown fails to understand politics, again”.

* I am surprised that hard working ones were not mentioned, but I guess this was because the policy announcement was a mistake

What would you rather have? A minister with 100% of his or her attention on running their department, or one that is forced to spend weeks concentrating on winning a by-election. To send some 80 ministers to Cheshire to try to retain a single seat in the house of commons, when those ministers have a duty to the country, is wrong. If ministers spent more time running the country, rather than having to worry about part politics - whether a by-election, funding events or schmoozing powerful people - then the country would be in a much better shape.

And maybe even Brown would not be facing the problems that he is facing now. The 2p tax cut was purely a party political measure, aimed at sniping a resurgant Tory party. It backfired on him, and Labour, but more importantly it has backfired on the country. For purely party political reasons - as there is a by-election in a few days - Brown’s puppet has increased the tax paying threshold and is paying for it my borrowing from future taxation. If it were not purely party political, then Darling would have reversed the 10p decision. As it is now, middle income families benefit twice - once from a reduction of the tax rate by 2p and again by the increase of the tax threshold. The net effect for low income earners is still negative - the removal of the 10p rate is a bigger effect than the increased threshold for coming on for 1 million of the lowest earners.

So what is the solution? How do we divorce party politics from running the country? We don’t, but at least we could negate some of the effect of the party by not holding by-elections. What the solution is I do not know - but perhaps since people tend to vote for a party rather than individual, then the party incumbant party keeps the seat. Alternatively, perhaps one should have a vote without a campaign. Simply 1 week after the funeral, a vote is taken.

The more I think and read about modern UK politics, the more I realise that we need to take the party out of politics.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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? 

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.

Read it here. I especially agree with no. 1 on this list.

I am a neutron scatterer by profession, and whilst I do not expect you to fully appreciate what that entails, let me assure you that the benefits to science, the economy and to society as a whole that neutron scattering can provide is immeasurably high. It goes without saying that in our “knowledge based economy” that politicians of all flavours band about, a strong science output (some of which is from neutron scattering) is essential. Measured by the number of publications per instrument at the UK’s only neutron source ISIS (and the world’s most intense source), ISIS is the world leader.

And as a consequence, the UK government has been funding several projects recently. In addition to the existing facilities (opened by one M Thatcher), there has been funding for an additional neutron target station at ISIS (effectively doubling the number of neutron instruments) and an X-ray synchrotron. To put it into perspective, the capital budget of the STFC (the Science and Technology Funding Council - a government quango recently set-up with somewhat disasterous consequences, responsible for funding large scale science projects) is £1bn. When taking into account the operational budget of the facilities, we are talking big money.

However, recently there has been a budget crisis, to the tune of £80m. I am unsure why or how this came about, but apparently, according to third hand information, the running costs of the facilities were underestimated. And how, pray tell, are the STFC going to deal with this budget shortfall? Well a couple of weeks back, a report was released by the Chief Exec that had the following paragraph:

“ISIS is the world’s most productive pulsed neutron spallation source. In the short-term, given financial constraints, we may have to consider reducing availability to UK users in universities. The precise scale of this reduced provision will be determined over the next 3 months. “

One might ask how limiting UK users can save money. Well, if you are from a UK university you are paid expenses - a train fair, about 15 quid per day for food and the on-site guest house fees. It averages to something like £80 per day per UK scientist using the facility. At 650 experiments per year, 1/2 from the UK not based at ISIS (no expenses paid for these), an average of 5 days per experiment and 2 scientists, that is a whopping £300K. Of course, my numbers might be a little off, but you can see that it is chicken feed when compared to the capital expenditure and running costs.

So in other words, the government spends BILLIONS on building and running a facility, only to tell UK researchers they can’t use it to save a few hundred thousand (at best). It gets worse than that - word has it on the street that scientists jobs are on the line, meaning we spend billions on infrastructure and will have no one to run it.

The full “delivery plan” on the funding crisis can be found here: