A culture of dishonesty - by Richard... Friday, May 14, 2010

A culture of dishonesty - by Richard... Friday, May 14, 2010

A good test for this new government will be a reportproduced by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College, London. 

It is picked up by, amongst others, The Daily Mail, from which we learn that police are using dishonest methods to boost their pay. 

Over the last decade, the number of police officers employed has risen by more than 15,000 to 142,151 with more than 16,000 police community support officers also being recruited. Yet, contrary to expectations, there was no decline in overtime.

Instead, we have seen spending on overtime soar to almost £400 million last year compared with £209 million in 1999, in the overall context of spending on police having risen from £9.3 billion in the financial year 1998/9 to £14.55 billion in 2008/9 - an increase of 50 percent.

Interestingly, most of the bill has been picked up by local taxpayers through the police precept element of their council tax, which is something we have seen year-on-year. 

We have, thus, a situation where, each year, the police put their hands out for more money – essentially to fund corrupt practices – and then turn up on your doorstep to arrest you and put you in jail when, finally, you refuse to pay for a service that is rarely provided.

Unwilling to go to jail yet again, we take the stance of refusing to pay until the bailiffs actually turn up on the doorstep, a small but ritual annual protest that at least makes a point, even if it is routinely ignored by officials who issue warrants in the name of "customer services".

The test for the government, then, will be whether it can break from the Labourite cycle of throwing more money at public services in the expectation that they will get better, and impose a discipline that seeks to obtain better for less, cutting the huge amount of waste, flab and – in this case – corruption that has accrued.

At this stage, our expectations are extremely low, not least because we still see the ritual cry for more spending on "dog whistle" issues such as law and order and defence, and very little appreciation of value for money. When, or if, we actually start seeing improved services AND a decrease in taxes, then we will have change we can believe in.

For the moment, the evidence is that we are to plenty of increases in taxes, and none at all – as yet – that there will be any improvements. We watch and wait.

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Happy days are here again - by Richard...

An unfortunate choice of tie colour signals a change of the guard as the Supreme Leader of the Cleggerons eschews Mark Francois and selects in his place David Lidington (pictured) as Europe minister.

This is supposed to be taken as a sign of a Tory "thaw" on the EU. Liddington, as a former Foreign Office adviser, is thought to be less eurosceptic than his shadow predecessor.

However, Bruno Waterfield has already informed us that the EU is planning to dump on the not-so-supreme-leader (on an EU scale) by demanding early negotiations on plans for an EU "economic government", just at a time when he wants to reassure his back-benchers that he hasn't completely sold out (which, of course, he has).

With absolutely no concern for the not-so-supreme-leader's domestic problems, France and Germany are also planning to push through controversial hedge fund regulations next week after turning down British pleas to defer a vote in Brussels.

This will be the first serious challenge for little Georgie Osborne, who will have to try to convince the "colleagues" to go easy on the regulation – which will be decided by QMV – to avoid fatally damaging British financial services and making him look a bigger plonker than he does already.

Should he survive that bruising experience, he then has to deal with Herman Van Rompuy, the EU council president. He has set up a task force to build a new "gouvernement économique" to cover all 27 member states of the Union. The new body, with strong support from France and Germany, holds its first meeting on 20 May and little Georgie will be expected to attend and give it his blessing.

Not least of the issues which is likely to disconcert a man who would prefer not to have anything controversial to hit him just yet is a proposal that will mean that Britain would have to submit budgets to the EU for vetting before they are debated in the House of Commons. 

This won't make any practical differences, as the Treasury has long cleared most of its measures with Brussels before announcing them, but it looks bad on paper and rather stuffs a not-so-supreme-leader who wants to be in Europe but not ruled by Europe.

Nevertheless, it will certainly give the emollient Mr Liddington something to do. He can explain to his counterparts that, with an amount of grumbling in the ranks of the former Tory party, it might not be terribly helpful at this particular juncture for the Cleggerons to be seen to be caving into Brussels.

Whether this will make any difference at all, though, is moot. With the euro on the slide, the "colleagues" have their own problems and may be less than sensitive to the political needs of the not-so-supreme-leader. But still, there is always that nice Mr Clegg who can tell all those happy former Tory back benchers how much nicer it is to be nice to all those nice Europeans – or something to that effect.

I've always wanted to see what an eviscerated Lib-Dim leader looks like.

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Not one of them - by Richard... Thursday, May 13, 2010

"Vince Cable has been forced to let George Osborne take responsibility for reform of Britain's banks as the first cracks started to emerge at the top of the new coalition government," says The Guardian.

And you can see why ... look at the hand. He's not giving the secret Cleggeron salute. He's not one of them. By comparison, pictured right is the Supreme Leader, producing the classic salute. Note how many times in photographs, where he responding to cameras, he is seen to adopt exactly the same hand sign.

Now that the secret is revealed, of course, we will see many Cleggerons seeking to disguise their true identities. But, no matter how hard they try, in due course, the latex will crack. The truth will out.



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