Marcus Wood

2009-07-13T14:13:00.007Z

Is it Time
to end
this
TV TAX?

Is there a better way of funding the BBC?

I have just had another reminder for the TV licence in my flat in London. I am not an MP and don't have this luxury paid for by the taxpayer, so I have to pay a total of £285 to be able to watch TV all week and all weekend; regardless of the fact that we prefer Sky and ITV.

The current fee of £142.50 represents a rise of over 50% in the last ten years. The BBC argue this increasing amount is necessary because of the extra costs of providing new technology and the growing number of new channels they have. Currently they say the fee provides:

the television channels BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, CBBC and CBeebies;
five network radio services, plus BBC Asian Network, and digital radio services BBC 1Xtra, BBC Radio 7, BBC 6 Music and BBC 5 Live Sports Extra;
regional television programmes and Local Radio services in England;
national radio and television in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland;
BBC Red Button, BBC Mobile and the BBC website (bbc.co.uk).

This is a very long way from the original purpose of the BBC which was brought into existence in 1922 as a non profit making corporation owned by it's founding shareholders (including Marconi, Vickers and General Electric) to experiment with public broadcasting. Later, in 1923, it was given a Royal Charter and financed from 1927 via the licence fee "to enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain."

Sadly the basic service has been allowed to mushroom and complicit Governments have voted for the BBC licence fee to balloon to keep up. From a few pounds in the 1970's the fee is now a substantial chunk of many homes entertainment income, and while the politicians of the left go on about poverty, latterly 'energy poverty' and now even 'water poverty' none of them seem keen to address the fact the for many poorer households the TV tax is a serious and growing expense they should do without, but can't.

The House of Lords reviewed the charter in 2004 and their Lords report says "Using television receiving equipment without the appropriate licence is a criminal offence subject to a maximum fine of £1,000. In 2003 a total of 96,872 people were prosecuted in the UK for licence fee evasion. No-one can be imprisoned solely for licence fee evasion. However, if an evasion fine is not paid, then magistrates have the power to impose a prison sentence. In England and Wales, 28 people were imprisoned in 2004 for non-payment of licence evasion fines (the average sentence was 14 days). In Scotland 18 people were imprisoned in 2004."

Every time I raise this subject someone pops up and says 'but the BBC make good programmes' and I always reply the same, the BBC don't, the people who work for them do. Those people work for the BBC but could and would work for other broadcasters if the BBC wasn't there. I have never agreed that the BBC is somehow essential, it might have been in the 1950's when it was BBC1 or ITV but today when there are 900 channels I just don't see that it deserves special status.

Having to pay for the BBC is even more galling for those of us who subscribe to Sky or Virgin, it's the equivalent of being obliged to pay for a Jaguar first if you want to buy a BMW, just to keep the firm going.

The time has come I believe to radically review why the BBC exists and consider new ways of providing the public service output that some people say would not be made if there were only commercial channels (still wondering why we need special 'public service' broadcasts but not 'public service' newspapers or magazines, but there you are) .

I have a suggestion. Firstly, we could make the licence fee optional to people who want to watch the BBC, possible now with digital technology. Second, sell off the corporation except radio 4 and BBC2 , estimates vary hugely but SKY - with half the viewers and none of the valuable TV archive material- is worth £8bn, so the money raised from a partial BBC privatisation could easily top £15bn.

Properly invested £15bn would yield enough to finance a decent news and public service broadcast service on one national radio station and one TV channel in perpetuity, without costing you and I a penny, and without needing the expensive TV licencing service, and without cluttering up our courts and prisons with thousands of unfortunate fee dodgers.

If you still wanted to watch Eastenders, Strictly Come Dancing or Holby City then you'd have to pay the BBC subscription; but if you wanted to be "enriched with public service programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain" you could do so on radio and TV for free, forever.

2009-07-08T11:54:00.007Z

A picture is worth 1000 words, (part2)

I am grateful to the UK Public Spending.com website ( here ) for supplying this revealing chart.

The Government is on course to control more than half the economy by the end of 2011.

Government spending as a percentage of the total economy has only gone beyond 50% during wars. Even during the disasterous 1970's the ratio remained (just) below the half way mark.

Why is this important? The long-term fastest growing economies in the world are all those with the lowest percentage of Government spending in the economy, places like China (27%) and America (37%). The long term low growth countries have the highest general levels of taxation and Government spending, culminating in the Soviet Empire which collapsed through economic failure. Also the lowest growth ( or most recession-prone) periods in our own history have been when tax-and-spend is at it's highest.

Non-Government economic activity is what drives growth in an economy because private economic activity creates profit, thus creating larger enterprises making and selling more goods, employing more people who then buy yet more goods with the money thay have earned.

As the Government spends more the productive economy is squeezed, and with a smaller pool of profit to create future economic growth from the potential for growth is reduced; as we found to our cost during the 1960's and 70's.

A way of illustrating this is to compare a private motorway with a Government one. When roads are built as business ventures on a pay per mile basis a successful (busy) motorway like the M6 extension makes it's owners lots of money and they have both a huge incentive and the income to finance improvements to increase traffic flows and revenue. On the other hand when the Government owns a busy road there is no profit and funding for growth is not created, in fact the reverse happens- more demand creates wear and tear problems and we soon end up with the M25.

When British Rail was wholly state owned in the 1970's Sir Peter Parker, it's chairman, acknowledged that when the trains got too busy his only solution was to increase fares to 'put people off' because new trains would have cost the Government millions that it didn't have.

But there is more bad news, Government spending is also inflationary. The countries with the highest long-run average inflation rates tend to have the highest levels of public expenditure and Government debt.

When the Government spends more it creates other forces that create inflation and suppress future economic growth. When the Government expands spending it goes into competition with the private economy, for example it competes for labour - driving up wage costs. And because Governments run on debt they also compete for money - in borrowing more of the finite money supply they are reducing the capital available to private business, constraining their growth and eventually pushing up interest rates.

The Economist Keynes believed that temporary Government intervention in a recession could prevent deflation and mass unemployment. His theories were born out of the Depression but economists remain split on whether his theories actually work. It is claimed that Keynsian policies followed by British Governments of all colours after the war led to chronic inflation and our relative economic decline until Mrs Thatcher turned her back on his theories in 1979. His fellow economist and critic Hayek claimed that what starts as temporary governmental fixes usually become permanent and expanding government programs and that keeping taxes low and Government spending moderate were the key to expanding economies. History -and the chart above - prove Hayek to be right.

Labour are claiming that their trillions in spending is a 'return to Keynes' and will prevent a recession and unemployment - I believe the reverse, that a deep but short recession has been swapped for a prolonged period of economic instability, inflation and stagnation as the bloated public sector stifles the private sector and civil society.

It's time to dust off the flared trousers and the platform shoes, the 1970's are back.

2009-07-06T08:28:00.007Z

Scrap Idea

The problem with democracy is that elected people are drawn to grand schemes that try and address more than one problem at once, and in doing so fail to properly address any of them.

Environmental concerns are a classic case in point. Tapping into fears about the sustainability of current levels of industrial activity is too tempting for many politiciansto avoid. And now there is a recession and ministers see opportunities all around to tap into fears of unemployment too. So we end up with bonkers initiatives like the car scrappage scheme.

According to the Government this will:
a) replace polluting old cars with environmentally friendly new ones - saving the planet
b) increase sales of new cars, saving lots of jobs

Now I must confess to having a special interest in all things motoring and I know a lot about cars; and this scheme is the biggest load of hogwash I have ever heard.

For a start it is a myth that buying a new car is ever environmentally friendly even if the new car is massively more economical than the old one. Manufacturing a car is hugely energy consumptive, estimates vary but according to research by Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research facility actually making a Toyota Prius uses roughly the same amount of energy the car consumes in 60,000 miles of driving. So even if your new Prius used half the fuel of your old car it would still take 120,000 miles of motoring to get back to square one in planet- saving terms.

What about CO2? Well it's a bit of a myth that new cars are always more CO2 efficient than older ones. Sure old cars like Ford Cortina's are disasterous environmentally but we aren't talking about taking classic cars off the road, the scrappage scheme is aimed at ten year old motors, all the cars on this page are qualifying for scrappage under the scheme. These are cars designed in the environmentally conscious 1990's and which must pass a stringent emission test every year.

New versions of a car model are usually bigger, faster, better equipped and heavier than the old model and often the CO2 figure goes up with the newer car. And in any case the scheme is not linked to CO2 emissions so you could scrap a 1 litre Ford Fiesta and use the money to buy a 5 litre Range Rover if you wanted to.

From an envirnmental point of view the last thing you should do is encourage a new car to be born. Keeping your old car properly serviced, tyres fully inflated, driving carefully and using it as infrequently as possible is infinitely better for the planet than trading it in.

So if it isn't good for the planet it must be good for British jobs. Well, not neccessarily. The truth is that only 15% of the cars sold in the UK are made here, and many of the components they are made from are imported. From a jobs point of view keeping your existing car running is probably more worthwhile, the numbers of people employed in making new cars in Britain is dwarfed by the number of people repairing and making and supplying replacement parts for old ones.

Aside from the environmental issue and the jobs issue there is another important reason why this plan sucks. At a time when consumers are already burdened with too much debt why is our Government spending £300m encouraging people to run up yet more debt?

Good quality marques just don't wear out, rust, or break down like they used to. A ten year old car from a maker such as Mercedes, Toyota, Volvo, VW and BMW is probably only half way through it's design life, even with 100,000 miles on the clock. To encourage perfectly good cars like these to be scrapped while encouraging consumers to pile into a new HP agreement is utter madness.

Trust me, your ten year old car is probably in far better shape than you think. There are some people who believe that this is the real reason car manufacturers needed the car scrappage scheme in the first place.

2009-07-01T12:57:00.003Z

'A picture tells a thousand words' caption contest

This is a frame capture from Prime Ministers Questions today at the House of Commons. Ministers are becoming accustomed to their man comprehensively coming second in his weekly contests with Cameron but today was spectacularly bad by any standards.

Here Mr Brown has just blurted out that his forecast for Government spending growth is 0%, seconds later the House erupts into laughter but look at the stony expressions from Harman and Jowell.

I think Browns expression is a classic as well. I think he looks like a bloke who has just called his new girlfriend by his ex-girlfriends name; but what do you think he is thinking?

2009-06-30T20:58:00.001Z

Engine Room to Bridge

"Its worse than I thought, Captain"

The Times has this tomorrow:

"The economy slumped at its fastest pace for 50 years in the first quarter, plummeting by 2.4 per cent, according to revised figures released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday. This is far worse than previous estimates which had showed an already savage 1.9 per cent decline. "

It might be worse than the Treasury thought, but not to those of us operating in the real world.

My business is executive recruitment, we manage jobs in the £50-£150,000 salary range. On-an-off I can trace the history of my firm back to 1964 so we have plenty of other recession experience to fall back on.

The number of speculative unsolicited CV’s sent to us has gone up eightfold in the last 18 months. Traffic to my website pages offering ‘redundancy advice’ is up 288% on this time last year, which was already up 200% on the year before.

We have become blase about listed companies going bust recently, but until last year it had never happened to us. I can think of at least four of my own clients -all major plc’s- that we used to do business with who have gone bankrupt last year alone, and I know of several others in retail and the pub/leisure sector who are a gnats whisker from closure.

One of my biggest clients trades in residual (unsold) FMCG stocks. They buy all the unsold batteries and cleaning materials and sweets and crisps that manufacturers made but can’t sell, and sell them on to bargain stores. Their business is dependent on a supply of excess stock being available. Last year was all all time record (they have been going since the war) because manufacturers had record unsold stocks; they expected a slowing of availability this year as manufacturers slashed production while demand levelled.

Manufacturers have indeed slashed production, as we know by the unemployment numbers, but very worryingly for the economy residual stocks are still piling up all over the place and my client is breaking new records week after week. This means only one thing, as fast as production is falling demand is falling faster.

New Labour have been the most nakedly partisan Government this country has ever had. They set out with a clear mission to stamp out the Conservatives forever and they damn near succeeded.

And now the strategy has failed they are operating a scorched earth policy in the vain hope of destroying anything and everything that could aid an incoming Conservative Government.

They are like the tenants from hell who having already wrecked the flat and stripped it's fittings when they were finally evicted stuck rotting fish under the floorboards to contaminate the place for years afterwards.

2009-06-29T09:49:00.008Z

Are minorities self-segregating?

For all of my adult life the goal of Governments of all political persuasions has been to encourage social cohesion by integrating all citizens into a single, classless, British Society of equal opportunity. In my book this means encouraging all British citizens to live alongside each other regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or colour; giving them an equal opportunity to make the best of it, and then celebrating success on merit.

Great efforts have been gone to over the decades to ensure that no minority suffers discrimination, or that no-one is disadvantaged or prejudiced against. By and large this is a job done, in law at least.

In our own English way this has led to many politically-correct rules and tortured language designed to avoid embarrassing anyone by highlighting a difference, but it has also led to an infinitely better quality of life for many minorities, whether you are a disabled person needing the loo or a black person needing a job.

In recent times we seem to have moved on to a new stage, though. The buzzword when talking about minorities has been a classic New Labour phrase: 'celebrating diversity' which by my reckoning seems to be a short step away from saying: 'staying different' .

An example of this is Gay Pride events. It seems to me that having told the world how proud you are to be gay you are inviting the population to treat you differently to someone who is straight. Having spent 100 years demanding the right to be treated the same as everyone else some gay people are creating a gay society that demands not just equal, but special treatment.

The National Black Police Officers Association was formed in 1998 with the express aim of promoting the interests of Black Police Officers. This is creating a distinction that up to that point didn't exist (there has never been a White Police Officers Association in this country thank God) and has subsequently led to a far greater resentment and tension amongst officers than ever existed before because some white officers now feel that Black officers have special advantages.

Make no mistake I don't think there is anything wrong with being different, nor about celebrating it. Where I have an issue is when people choose to celebrate being different and then complain whenever anyone notices. There are lots more examples, the BBC's Asian Network and 'Miss Black Britain' contest are two more that come to my mind of where 'celebrating diversity' comes dangerously close to segregation. The acid test is would it work the other way round? What would be the response to a 'Miss White Briton' contest for instance?

Some of the more belligerent pressure groups have been the tail wagging the dog for a long time - there is a very real danger that this Governments total inability to say 'no' to any minority campaign will end up creating the very state in society we have spent the last 40 years trying to get rid of.

2009-06-23T16:14:00.008Z

"You want to sit down during your flight? That will be £30 extra, Sir."

I have had yet another irritating experience booking a flight on line with a local well known budget airline. Imagine my surprise when the credit card debit was £30 more than the quoted price because, it turns out, I had been charged an extra £15 each way for..... my seat.

I have always seen the need for businesses to treat consumers fairly and honestly and I am becoming concerned that many are failing to do so, although they are obeying all current legislation.

I am specifically concerned that a large number of online and call centre based commercial activities including financial services, online booking sites and air and train travel booking services are creating a new class of 'unfair trading'.

One example is the practice of quoting 'typical' APR in finance adverts. There is now widespread blatant misleading going on, a very low 'typical' APR quoted on adverts to draw applicants who then find a much higher interest rate quoted "in their case" - by which time they are already partly committed (having agreed to a credit check) creating unreasonable conditions for a fair deal to be struck in my view.

The whole area of variable pricing as pioneered by budget airlines like Easyjet and now frequently employed by hotel companies, train operators, car hire firms and especially credit card and loan companies is also becoming a minefield for consumers in my view. I accept the principle that some firms may want to create bargain basement fares by charging extra for regular services (like going to the toilet!) on the basis that those who don't want to pay for these luxuries(?!) shouldn't have to subsidise others that do but at all times the pricing needs to be fair and clear.

The basic principle of the open and transparent price offer enforced by the earliest consumer legislation is now being routinely bypassed and that many consumers simply aren't able to make comparisons, or even determine accurately what price they will be paying for a service, especially when booking or buying on line, before making a binding commitment.

I also have a concern over the practice of making additional charges to change or cancel bookings even when the customer may have either made a simple mistake, or not quite have clicked all the right buttons. I suspect that some organisations are now routinely making their booking procedure unnecessarily complex in order to catch out the unwary and increase their margins in this way. There should be an opportunity for consumers to change or amend online bookings without charge after they have received confirmation of them.

I have taken this up with the Trading Standards Institute but their main focus seems to be on rogue traders and criminal activity, they complain of not having the resources to deal with campaigning for fair trading legislation as well as trying to enforce the existing law.

They have a point, fair trading rules were written originally to protect local people from local rogue traders, and the law is enforced via local authorities with town hall sized budgets. This is wholly inadequate for policing multi-national companies often operating via call centres on other continents or virtually on the web.

In the meantime, 'buyer beware' remains the best advice.

2009-06-16T11:10:00.004Z

Vital Matters of State.

Ever wonder why your MP needs a staff of five?

Here we are in the middle of the most important economic crisis for sixty years, with unemployment skyrocketing and many local residents facing financial ruin.

Our local economy is desperate for a share of the dwindling Government economic stimulus package. The EU seems hell-bent on ignoring our fishermens plight and forcing even more of them onto the dole, and what industry we do have left is being strangled by high taxes, low skills and red tape.

What many people want to know is what is our MP doing about it, and so I was somewhat surprised to find out that Adrian Sanders thinks that the plight of rabbits (yes, those white furry things with big ears) is the most pressing issue on his constituents minds just now.

The MP for Torbay asked this of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs yesterday:

(1) what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of regulations governing the welfare of farmed rabbits; and if he will make a statement;
(2) what recent research his Department has conducted and evaluated on the rabbit farming industry;
(3) if he will bring forward proposals to increase the minimum requirements for space allowed to farmed rabbits

And his reply?

"The welfare of farmed rabbits is adequately provided for by way of the general provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007, which has a specific schedule relating to rabbit welfare. DEFRA also has a welfare code for rabbits which provides good husbandry advice, which producers have by law to be familiar with and have access to. DEFRA has not carried out any recent research on what is a relatively small rabbit farming industry. The Council of Europe's Convention on the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes is currently developing recommendations for the welfare of farmed rabbits, which will include provision for space allowances."

By the way, the cost of our MP, his staff, office, housing and allowances has been in the region of £4,000,000 since he got elected in 1997.

2009-06-16T10:05:00.003Z

The Labour recipe for disaster:

What you will need:

Several student politicians who have gone straight from university to Westminster with nothing in between.
A very large quantity of spin
A sprinkling of spite
One or two ready divided opposition parties
A thriving economy left over by a previous Government

The method:

1) Make your economy hopelessly uncompetitive through high taxes and ant-business legislation
2) Mask this by inflating property prices and encouraging a consumer boom financed by credit
3) Disassemble your banking regulator so that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, thus allowing your banks to recklessly expand
4) When it all goes bust borrow trillions against future tax revenues, nationalise the banks and print lots of money
5) Fall out with your colleagues, split the party from top to bottom and render the government completely paralysed by internal feuding and positioning for power.
5) Fight a series of increasingly pointless and bitter battles with public sector trade unions causing widespread disruption and bringing what is left of the economy to a grinding halt
5) Quickly leave office so that someone else has to clear up the resulting hyper inflation, unemployment and public debt.
6) Spend twenty years in opposition
7) Repeat endlessly.

2009-06-15T08:32:00.004Z

EU shame.

This is how 'democracy' works in the European Parliament.

Since becoming leader in 2005 David Cameron has stuck to the decision he made at the time to pull our MEP's out of the centre-right European Peoples Party coalition in Europe.

The EPP is a convenient grouping for Conservatives, the largest (and therefore controlling) coalition is made up of the right and centre right parties of all the main EU states like France and Germany, most of whom are currently running Government in their own countries. You would imagine that Conservatives would share much with them; and by and large in national politics we do. However a founding and central principle of the EPP is a commitment to ever closer European Union leading to a single, federal state. David Cameron felt that remaining in the EPP was incompatible with our party's belief in decentralised Government and an EU made up of independent nation states co-operating for mutual benefit so he declared that unless that part of the EPP's constitution could be changed, we would be leaving.

The EU are, frankly, terrified of the implications of this. At the moment virtually every mainstream political grouping in the EU is pro-federal. The one thing that the European Parliament never says when facing a new piece of legislation is "actually is this a power that we should give back to the nation states" because none of the groupings oppose the march to centralise power in Strasbourg and Brussels.

On our own there is little that British Conservatives can do. However many in Europe recognise that their own polulations are heavily split over the direction the EU is taking. In France and Germany significant minorities of the population oppose greater integration but their views are not being represented by their mainstream political elite. The fear amongst the European political class is that if Cameron goes ahead there will be a large number of MEP's from all over Europe and spanning the political spectrum, who may be sympathetic and tempted to join the fledgeling group eventually creating a proper 'opposition' in their midst to the relentless drive to centralise power.

So everything is being done to prevent the Cameron project. Firstly there were the scare stories about some of the initial potential partner parties being 'extremists' - when that didn't work they changed the rules. Standing orders requiring politicians from six countries to be in a grouping for it to qualify for official recognition were upped to seven as soon as Hague found six partners, for instance.

Now we read, according to press reports, that even this may not be enough. The Observer had this yesterday:

Leading figures in the EU assembly said he would not be allowed to form the group unless he could show that its members had a deep political "affinity" and shared the same basic principles. Martin Schulz, chairman of the socialist group in the parliament made clear Cameron could not expect to cobble together a group of disparate rightwingers and claim its members were broadly of like mind in order to secure group status. "We will be looking carefully at the formation of this group. It is very early and I do not have a clear view as to what they will do. But the contraditions on the right wing are obvious."

So never mind that democratically elected politicians want to form a group of their own. Consensus politics obviously means in Europe that unless there is a consensus amongst the cosy cartel already there to 'let you' form a new group or do something new you will 'not be allowed to' go ahead and do it.

And people wonder why we get frustrated at the lack of democracy in Europe!

2009-06-08T14:47:00.002Z

Labour, RIP

I have been reflecting on Labours performance last night down here in the South West. Perhaps someone better at maths should check this but from what I can see:

Labour were on 7.7% - that is just one in thirteen voters - but only a third of eligible voters turned up and bothered to vote.

Which means Labour secured only about 2.5% of the voters eligible to vote.

So of the people who *could* have voted Labour on Thursday only one in 40 actually did so; to support the party that is running the country.

2009-06-05T09:19:00.009Z

Is it the end?

Many cruel comparisons have been drawn between the way Gordon Brown operates and the manner in which dictators grab and retain control.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Tito, I have heard Gordon Brown compared to them all (for dramatic or humorous effect, of course, in reality Brown is nothing like them) but in recent days I think Gordon Brown is beginning to resemble ( in more than just appearence) Rumanian president Nikolai Ceauşescu.

Wikipedia says this about the last days of that regime:

"By 1989, Ceauşescu was showing signs of complete denial of reality. While the country was going through extremely difficult times ... he was often shown on state TV entering stores filled with food supplies, visiting large food and arts festivals where people would serve him mouthwatering food while praising the "high living standard" achieved under his rule.

Some people, believing that Ceauşescu was not aware of what was going on in the country, attempted to hand him petitions and complaint letters during his many visits around the country. However, each time he got a letter, he would immediately pass it on to members of his security. According to rumours of the time, people attempting to hand letters directly to Ceauşescu risked adverse consequences, courtesy of the secret police."

Labour Veteran Barry Sherman was on the radio this morning complaining that, having yesterday called on Labour backbenchers to demand a secret ballot vote of confidence in the PM, his constituency committee were bombarded with phonecalls from No 10 Downing Street overnight urging them to take action to get rid of him.

The resigning cabinet members and anyone else who has dared to publicly criticise the PM have been subjected to vicious and repeated character assasinations and hostile media briefings, and then of course there was the secret 'McBride' smear unit until fairly recently.

Of course the Ceauşescu regime came to a sudden and decisive end:

"On December 21, the mass meeting, held in what is now Revolution Square, degenerated into chaos. The image of Ceauşescu's uncomprehending expression as the crowd began to boo him remains one of the defining moments of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. "

Is it possible the dear Gordon is as out of touch and uncomprehending as Ceauşescu was in his final days? Or is it that his iron grip on the Labour Party has not weakened sufficiently and the party will fail in it's bid to unseat him, in which case there may be genuinely hideous retribution meted out to the revolutionaries and 'enemies of democracy' who have dared to show their insolence?

Either way, the Labour Government is headed for oblivion. Sooner or later the party will face the voters and as things stand today they may well be facing the kind of once in a generation wipe-out that could really change the political landscape. Gordon Brown might not just make history as the shortest serving Labour Prime Minister ever- he could be the last.

2009-06-02T09:20:00.004Z

What can we expect on Thursday?
Will we be celebrating or commiserating?

The European elections loom this Thursday and we have been busy for weeks canvassing for votes.

Have we been 'stirring up apathy' as Willie Whitelaw once said in a famous gaffe?

I think the appetite to vote at all for the European Elections is very low indeed. It's never a particularily passionate election and since the PR system was introduced, breaking the remaining link between the voter and candidate, it has become even more uninteresting.

This time we have the added disincentive of the expenses scandal, which has meant that votes are currently simply turned off all politicians. We have had a good team out canvassing and when we talk about national politics and the next General Election we are getting an exceptionally good response, but if the conversation is based on the Euro's (and for obvious reasons at the moment it is) we get mostly apathy.

To be honest that is hardly suprising. The European Parliament seems completely irrelevent to most voters. It's powers are limited, it's debates boring and the place hardly ever makes the news, and when it does it usually falls into the 'Euro madness/straight banana' category.

The only people who seem to get excited about the EU elections are -bizarrely- anti EU campaigners like UKIP. Why on earth do people who oppose Britain being in the EU want to spend millions of pounds and hours of campaign effort to get elected to it's Parliament?

Even the count is a huge washout. As a political activist finally getting to the count is one of the best bits, seeing the slow but steady emergence of the result - the judgement of your work - is exciting and invigorating even if you lose; but the Euro count is a complete let down.

Firstly it doesn't happen after the election on Thursday, but on Sunday when the rest of Europe have finished their voting, and then the 'result' is not announced here in Torbay but a hundred and fifty miles away in Bournemouth by TV link, meaning that all that has happened locally is an administrative function.

And in the end most of us who are there just don't care what the result is, the PR electoral system uses a complicated mathematical formula that means, unless there is a revolution, the outcome is a certainty, the winners and losers long ago pre-determined by their rankings in their own party hierarchies.

I suspect for the record that UKIP will do well on a dismal turn out. I doubt either as a vote share or vote number they will come close to the 12,000 or so they racked up in Torbay in 2004 but then I don't think we will come close to our 2004 figure either.

The Lib Dems locally and Labour nationally will once again be humiliated and once again dismiss their poor showing as irrelevant - citing previous years when they did abysmally at the Euro's and then went on to win the General Election that followed.

The real political action in Devon this week is on the County Council side, where Conservatives are hoping to take control of Devon, but we in Torbay are standing on the touchline of that particular battle.

2009-05-30T13:15:00.003Z

South Africa

I have just got back from a short business trip to Johannasburg, a part of the world I have never been to before.

I was hugely impressed with the place, the people and the atmosphere; it is a city that seems at ease with itself, and as often turns out to be the case, feels a million miles away from the image given to us by the media.

There is huge inequality there, as is common throughout the world, but there isn't the kind of unsettling quality to it that you see in some other parts of Africa. The Government of SA really do seem to be trying to do the best for all their people - even the shanties are looking as if serious money is being invested to improve the properties and provide sanitation and electricty for everyone in the city.

I had long talks with people (S Africans are so friendly and open, it's hard not to get chatty with everyone you meet!) and the problems they do have ring strangely familiar. One of my drivers told me about the fact that millions of immigrants have flooded SA from other parts of Africa looking for work "lot's of our people are lazy" he said "so the Somali's come here and get the jobs because they are willing to work hard, and then our people say they are taking all the jobs, but there is work and money here if you are prepared to get up and do the work"

Johannasburg is a wealthy city which looks and feels very American, it's mostly low-rise and very wooded, with spread-out modern gated industrial and residential developments connected by big freeways interspersed with gigantic shopping malls. The only difference is that at most junctions there are scores of animated traders dicing with the cars hawking anything from sunglasses to clothing.

And as a European who grew up at a time that South Africa generally seemed to be a hotbed of racism and inequality I was expecting to see remnants of that today. I thought all the rich would be white and all the workers would be black. How wrong can you get!

I felt truly humbled and astonished at how comfortably the people live with each other today, no resentment on either side, white and black South Africans seem utterly passionate about their shared country.

Quite puts some of our local feuds into perspective, really.

2009-05-22T17:21:00.002Z

Anthony Steen

As Anthony Steen disappears into retirement many people have asked me what I think of his behaviour because I haven't commented on him earlier.

This is because for a few days before his standing down became public knowledge there was a very great deal of discussion about what the Totnes Association could, or should do if Anthony refused to go. I felt that weighing in publicly in the affairs of a neighbouring constituency would neither be appropriate or terribly helpful while that process was going on, although in private all along I have been saying that he must go .

Now that he has done the right thing and decided to step down I can say what I think, which is that however hard he has worked, however many constituents he has served well over the years it is not enough to justify the morally indefensible and I think his claims were just that, morally indefensible.

Anthony is a wealthy man in his own right and cannot possibly have needed the money so what on earth was he thinking? Perhaps the lawyer in him couldn't separate out the legal right from the moral wrong. Either way he has been the sole architect of his own downfall.

It is not legally possible to force him to repay the money as some have suggested because, as with most of these cases, he was acting entirely within the rules and therefore has committed no offence and breached no agreements, so unless he makes a goodwill gesture (hardly likely, judging by his public comments) there is no way the money can be returned.

But the main thing is -along with two others he is going; and hopefully a few other disgraced Conservative MP's will go as well this weekend because I really do think that this is the best way out of this for Parliaments sake.

But what of his neighbours? I learn that Tory Gary Streeter and Labour MP Alison Seabeck have posted all their own expenses on their websites today, so is clearly nothing to hide there.

Younger Ross is guilty of exactly the same 'offence' as Steen - and as much money, too. No doubt there will be howls of protest from some that he wasn't as 'bad' as Anthony but why? Because he doesn't live in such a big house? Because he used the money to buy fancy mirrors and expensive furniture rather than tree surgeons and water pipes?

And what about our MP? Will he now do the right thing and get on and publish his own expenses? And if not, will his own party take tough action against him?

Somehow I doubt it. Clearly -in spite of Nick Cleggs fine words- they don't have the determination and guts to act and that won't be forgotten by voters at election time.

2009-05-18T18:01:00.002Z

Relics, on life support.

Conservative Politicians aren't supposed to be radicals. Tradition and maintianing the status quo are supposed to be hard-wired into our DNA.

So I would imagine that I might be a bit of a lone voice in suggesting that the entire Palace of Westminster is dangerously close to making itself unfit for purpose.

The trouble with all great institutions is that over their very long lives they can become self-serving, and obselete. Over the years traditions and customs that were introduced in response to a particular need become pointless and anachranistic and yet our obsession with past greatness means that we hang on to them regardless. We are not alone in this, of course, the great Christian religions suffer exactly the same affliction and as a result suffer exactly the same fate - dwindling engagement by the modern public.

Much that goes on in the House of Commons falls into this category. The place is a labrynthine building filled with obscure and equally labrynthine customs - in many cases that now inhibit free debate and restrict the Parliament from doing what it is supposed to do.

Ordinary members of the public who occasion to watch the proceedings on TV or even more infrequently -visit to watch their law makers at work- see an ancient ritual couched in 19th century language that seems utterly alien and unrelated to their lives.

Like Tower Bridge our Parliament building is a bit of a fraud. It was built in the 1830's, the Georgians created some of the finest archetecture since the Romans but Pugin designed Parliament to look like a building hundreds of years older, a dark forbidding church-like monolith.

Compare and contrast our Parliament with Holroyd House, or the London Assembly Building both modern debating places made for the 21st century. Here you will see (easily- because unlike the unward-looking Westminster- both buildings are light, open, accessible and made of glass) normally dressed people talking to each other in language that you will understand, they sit behind desks, in a semi circle and have modern tools to hand, computers, phones, email to do what they are supposed to do, represent their constituents views.

When the Germans bombed the Commons chamber in 1942 there was a decision to restore the building brick by brick rather than modernise it, more recently another opportunity was missed. The recently completed Portcullis House was built in exactly the same style as Parliament itself, secure and closed - inward looking and private. A modern castle designed to keep it's occupants safe from the hoardes of peasants at the gates. What a pity the authorities didn't form a new light, and open debating chamber when they had the chance.

But the fabric of the structure is less an issue than the activity that goes on there. Because of the raw anger against almost all sitting MP's I have a feeling that the next Parliament will have a record number of freshmen and women taking their place. A new Parliament made up of a majority of new MP's might just be able to bring itself to modernise the practices of the place in a way that no Parliament has done for nearly 200 years, in the process proving to a sceptical public that what happens there is important and relevant to their lives.

I hope so because change has to come. Whatever happens to Speaker Martin this week, whatever they current House decides to do about expenses, mere tinkering at the edges is not enough.

2009-05-17T16:10:00.003Z

Expenses Row. Why did no-one act earlier?

I have been watching the slow car crash that is unfolding before us that is the expenses scandal.

As MP after MP finds the grubby details of their domestic shopping and furnishing habits splashed across out national and local newspapers they trot out the same lame excuse 'it was a rotten system'.

Well it wasn't as if they didn't have plenty of opportunity to change things. Some of us have been telling them it's rotten since 2002.

After the rules were radically overhauled (read that as 'made much more generous') by the newly re-elected chamber in July 2001 my then MP Michael Trend came to see me. I was, at that time, the Chairman of his local Conservative Association in Windsor. He wanted to discuss using the new allowances to improve the constituency operation which, at that time, was run entirely on donated and privately raised funds, about £500 per month of which came from the MP himself towards the costs of work done by our staff on his non-political constituency business. Using what he told us was a new office costs allowance Micheal said we could enjoy the benefit of having another full-time secretary on site, £12,000 towards the costs of the office premisis and a new computer system all on the taxpayer.

However it quickly transpired that he intended the new secretary to be his wife, a proposal which was immediately vetoed by all of us on the management committee, because we felt it could create intolerable pressures if there was ever trouble between the MP's wife and our long-serving agent Jackie Porter and also because it was a practice we all found unacceptable .

This led to a deeper curiosity about how the new rules worked, we were frankly curious about some of the claims Mr Trend was making for the new system and noted that the Government payments would replace the voluntary donations he traditionally made from his own resources. In short, we smelled a rat.

Weeks of wrangling went by as we tried and tried to get legal clarification as to what the rules were - and to be honest we never did. The green book, any record of expenses and the rules were all still completely secret to non-parliamentarians at that time and we were invited merely to accept the advice of hour Honorable Member, whom we suspected had a hidden agenda. Every time we raised questions about how lax the system appeared to be we were fobbed off or even more often told it was basically none of our business.

Two things then happened which broke our trust. One, we were told that the MP had been employing his wife ever since the new rules had come in and two, we found out that he was trying to force his long-serving veteran Parliamentary Secretary to retire from her job, which she did not want to do.

This was in August, the very month when I was in the process of being selected for the job of PPC here in Torbay. Although none of us imagined I would be selected for the first and only seat I had ever applied for we did agree that if I was, I would hand over the chairmanship to my deputy David Hilton and he then took the reins in September.

As some people may remember within weeks of this details were leaked to the Mail on Sunday of Mr Trend claiming for a second home when in fact he lived and commuted from his house in Windsor.

There was an emergency executive, at which I urged members to take a hard line. The Conservative Party was still only five years on from the sleaze of cash for questions and this scandal would, in my view, have gifted the seat to the Liberal Democrats if Mr Trend were allowed to contest the seat in 2005. Others agreed and when the mood of the local party became clear the MP voluntarily agreed to stand down.

His defence was 'but everyone does it' - and not one of the people in that committee room believed him. How wrong we were!

From that point on I have been a vociferous, public and frequent critic of the whole expenses and allowances regime at Westminster. Every time a scandal has been uncovered, about MP's employing their wives, about MP's claiming for non existant homes, about MP's using our money to fund luxury lifestyles I have warned that the system needs changing before trust in politicians is fatally damaged.

Time and again I have askedMP's to be open, really open, about what they have claimed and what they have spent our money on most of them doggedly refused to do so.

Well as the truth slowly and painfully emerges I can see why.

2009-05-12T11:54:00.002Z

Who would want to be an MP now?

The expenses row seems to go from strength to strength as the general public find out what some of us have known for a while, the Westminster expenses system is rotten to it's core.

Complaining about it (and believe me, PPC's have been!) has got nowhere, the MP's have simply failed to recognise that the system they settled for in 2001 is wide open to accusations of corruption and abuse.

The essential problem is that most MP's believe they 'should' be being paid a lot more than £64,000. Way back in the mists of time the House agreed to link Members pay to a civil service grade to avoid unseemly accusations of gravy train activity; but then every time the civil service review board recommended a pay rise it was politically inconvenient, so MP's voted against.

Many MP's now privately believe they would be earning nearer £100,000 - and the allowances have become a convenient way to make up the difference.

It's dishonest, if MP's believe thay are worth £100,000 then they should stand up and defend it openly, not hide behind expenses and hope to get away with misleading the public.

Now the whole lot of them are tarred. I went to a wedding this weekend and all anyone said was 'I bet you are looking forward to getting a place in the trough' - and who can blame them for thinking this?

I cannot see any way that this discredited House of Parliament can sort this out and restore public trust. We need an new election, and freash mandates for every MP and then the new Parliament needs a bonfire of the expenses, and not just the housing costs - MP's have appointed themselves a huge staffing liability with some MP's having four or five members of tax paid staff -this is madness, when several MP's manage with one good PA.

It's all got to go, the communications allowance, the office costs allowance, the postage allowance, the IT allowance, the first-class travel, the central London parking costs paid for, the curtains and the CD holders.

Only by proving value for money for itself can any future Government call on the rest of the civil service and public sector to take care of our money.

2009-05-03T09:54:00.001Z

It was 30 years ago .....

The 3rd May 1979 was a watershed in British political history, not only the first women PM but the first time in a generation that the direction of political travel changed.

Since before WW1 the country had been travelling steadily leftwards, regardless of the political party in charge. The role of the state in society has grown exponentially after the two world wars, to the point by the 1970's that most people felt things had gone too far.

Mrs Thatchers government was ground-breaking in several other ways, for the first time since Disreali the Conservative party adopted a political dogma - instead of being simply the party of the status quo we became committed to actively rolling back the state and taking Government out of whole areas of British life, car manufacturing, running airlines and telecoms businesses became once again things that people, and not Governments, did.

The BBC ran the election night coverage from 1979 in real time all day yesterday on the Parliament channel.

I did not watch all of it but even in the bits I did see several things became clear:
1) Labour - indeed no-one, had any idea that the Tories would be in office for nearly 20 years.
2) The men of the Left were marginally less keen on the reality of upcoming gender equality than the men on the Right.
3) Everyone looks old for their age.
4) BBC left wing Bias - perhaps journalistic left wing bias, was more obvious then than now.
5) The country was in a worse condition then than now - and yet people seemed less aware of how bad it was, compared to public opinion today.
6) “Who” mattered a lot less than “what” in peoples minds when voting.

But the big lesson for me from 1979 is not the result, it is the quality of politicians and the calibre of their debate.

We absolutely have to restore a functioning democratic debate based on issues and competing solutions if democracy is to have a purpose - and for the population in 2040 to look back and be able to be see a relevance in the 2010 election night.

Too much of modern politics has become about spin and presentation, threats and intimidation about what the altenative might mean, challenging the integrity of one's opponents and digging dirt rather than an honest debate about alternative visions.

That is another, less welcome, Thatcher legacy. New Labour didn't invent spin they simply refined it to a new level.

2009-04-28T08:36:00.002Z

Welcome back Kevin...

In a plot line that the scriptwriters of Dallas would be proud of Kevin Carroll is back at the helm of the Conservative Group at the Town Hall barely seven months after being voted out of the job by the narrowest of margins.

Having discovered that they have the power to sack him at will I am glad that the councillors have also discovered that he also their best choice for the job, someone who clearly has the leadership qualities that they need.

Much of the goings-on at Castle Circus look daft to the outside world and this twist probably adds to that appearance; but as I have posted on here before much of this is connected with the local political system adjusting to an entirely new form of local Government.

The leader of the local Conservatives in Torbay is not the leader of the group, it is the mayor Nick Bye who is directly elected. The councillors on all sides have grappled with the implications of this power shift for two years or more - and many still don't fully get it, particularly on the Lib dems side.

The role of councillor is changed in the mayoral system - and their chosen leader has to be the link between councillors and executive, a role that is closer to chief whip in the Parliamentary system than leader of the council under the old system.

Kevin is well suited to the job, and he knows I wish him well.

2009-04-26T22:53:00.000Z

Is a Lib Dem revival underway?

I reproduce a chart from Anthony Wells' excellent ukpollingreport website showing all the poll figures from every polling organisation since the last election.

Two things strike me as interesting about 2009 to date, the catastrophic drop in Labour support and the recovery in support for the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Cleggs leadership had not been giving the Lib Dems the bounce they might have hoped for. With all the usual caveats - Lib Dem vote shares being lower in the polls than in elections, - Lib Dems always do better during an election campaign than the other parties -etc, the Lib Dems have been struggling to maintain mid teens throughout most of last year which suggested a very dire General Election performance indeed, perhaps halving their representation at Westminster.

However so far in 2009 their polling averages have picked up markedly, late teens at least, which would be enough to preserve maybe 40 existing Lib Dem MP's and gift them a score of new ones from Labour.

The polling suggests that Conservative support begins to top out at around 45% and any further loss of Labour votes seems to be transferring to the Liberal Democrats.

Could it be that we will see at least one poll this year that has the Lib Dems scoring higher than Labour?

2009-04-23T08:31:00.004Z

Budget Day.

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car - I'll tax the street;
If you try to sit - I'll tax your seat;
If you get too cold - I'll tax the heat;
If you take a walk - I'll tax your feet.

Written by George Harrison in 1966 - revised version by Alistair Darling in 2009.

2009-04-22T16:41:00.001Z

Dumb Politics.

My opposite number in neighbouring Totnes, Liberal Democrat PPC and councillor Julian Brazil, has found himself 'in trouble' following allegations that he bullied a council officer and breached a national code of conduct.

He faces a potential six-month ban from representing the people who freely elected him if he is found 'guilty' by the non-elected Standards Board, a situation I think is grossly undemocratic regardless of the political allegiance of the councillor concerned.

At best the very expensive Standards Board has become little more than a way to slur opponents and at worst it risks crushing democratic accountability which is why the Conservatives have pledged to do away with it.

Liberal Democrats will surely agree with my view that it should be for voters to decide if the behaviour of their elected representatives is to an acceptable standard or not. The Leader of the Lib Dems in Local Government Cllr Richard Kemp (pictured) certainly does.

He called for the closure of the Standards Board for England in February this year, saying "The standard of decisions that are made by officers inside and outside councils relating to standards issues is diabolically low ....Officers make arbitrary decisions based on a whim about what action to take in what circumstances."

So it was really dumb politics for Liberal Democrats here in Torbay to seize on a Torbay Conservative councillors recent one-month ban (for doing exactly the same thing as Mr Brazil is accused of) and plaster lurid headlines about it across their leaflets.

Either dumb, or shockingly Hypocritical.

At the request of the person who made them, I have removed some comments from the comment section.

2009-04-20T10:43:00.005Z

New Labour - The Goodwill gauge is empty.

The Easter weekend has been extra-ordinarily bad for the Government in general, and the New Labour project in particular. For weeks the papers have been hammering away at MP's and cabinet members in particular for mean-spirited and in some cases very questionable expenses claims, culminating in the Mail openly accusing a serving British Home Secretary of being a thief and a liar and challenging her to sue them (she hasn't).

The bank holiday weekend then opened up with revelations that Gordon Brown has employed a man who spends his tax-paid time concocting made-up slurs against senior Tory MP's to anonymously spread them round the internet. This was bad, but the further revelations about the nature of the slurs enraged the press and led to an avalanche of further stories from senior Labour figures who said that they, too, had been the subject of attacks and innuendo from the same 'hit squad'.

A lot of my non-political friends wonder why this story has qualified for day-after-day coverage for two weeks, the reason is that it exposes the squalid core at the centre of the New Labour project for the first time. One of the main complaints about the New Labour project has always been that it relied too much on the dark arts of rubbishing enemies and not enough on having a decent plan to run the country. They have been rightly accused of being stuck in opposition mode ever since 1997 - relying on spin rather than substance.

Not only that but it has re-opened the old wounds between the Brown camp and the Blairites who always complained of dirty tricks against them when this lot were working for the Chancellor in his ten years at the Treasury.

And this morning the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson as good as called Ed Balls a liar for playing down his relationship with Damian McBride; it is obvious that people at Gordon Browns right hand were in this mess up to their necks - Labour would do well to remember with Watergate it was the denials and the cover-up that cost Nixon the White House, not the bugging of his rivals.

The reason this is all very important is that the public are scathing of politicians who they think are more worried about their own jobs and careers than with running the country properly. The Government have suffered a humiliating collapse in their poll support just weeks after the world's media were being told that Gordon Brown had saved the world.

Watching Labour deteriorate into an unseemly scrabble for the post-election job of leader of the opposition while Britain slowly becomes once again 'the sick man of Europe' is frustrating and depressing.

Sadly we have another year of this to go.

2009-04-06T13:25:00.011Z

More on expenses

Since my original letter to the Herald Express reminding voters of my promises concerning the allowances -and especially the bloated staffing and office allowances- being claimed by MP's both the other main parties have kicked up a huge fuss. I have had to reply to a letter from Labour in the Herald Express, and today, a letter from the Lib Dems.

This is my reply after Labour's press spokesman Barry Kaye complained last week:

"Barry Kaye, the press officer of the Newton Abbot Constituency Labour Party, seems to have been stirred up by my promises last week concerning what I would do concerning my own allowances if I am elected as Torbays next MP.

Having worked in business for twenty five years during which I have had to account for every penny it irritates me as much as the next man how lax the regime for MP's is, but I cannot promise to -as he so graphically described it - "ride into town and clean up Dodgy City'" - that is not what I said in my letter.

The only people who can ever 'clean up' Westminster properly are the electorate by considering carefully who they vote for. If people continue to elect people like Labour minister Mr McNulty who think it is all right to claim £60,000 in allowances for a second home that is nine miles away from his main home, or Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith saying her sisters spare room is her 'main home' so that she can claim £116,000, then that is their democratic choice and I am not going to interfere in it.

In the meantime, I am standing for election here, so I have told everyone clearly what I will do about my expenses if they decide to send me to Westminster. Long ago I invited the our existing MP to join me and make a similar pledge and he declined, so Torbay residents will have to compare what I have pledged with what the competing candidates offer, and make their own decision."

And today I have replied to the Lib Dem chairman who has penned a fairly tedious attempt to distance her MP from the expenses controversy in todays Herald. I have replied as follows:

The chairman of the Torbay Liberal Democrats Jean Cope weighed in from the yellow corner on Monday to attack me for making a clear statement about what I intend to do about my Parliamentary Allowances if I become the Bays next MP, she joins the Labour press spokesman who had a go at me for the same thing last week.

Both the other two parties have now had a high old time complaining about the promise I made (originally in 2003)to use the staffing allowance properly - to employ only essential staff in published job roles working exclusively on non political constituency matters; and to advertise any vacancy openly (including salary details) so that anyone qualified can apply. In addition I have said I will not employ family or political colleagues on the taxpayer and to publish all claimed expenses - including the detailed receipts.

I specifically did not mention the existing bay MP's staffing arrangements in either of my letters - so her claim that I have attempted to link Mr Sanders with the 'proven dishonest practices' of some MP's seems strangely paranoid. Perhaps Mrs Cope was unconsciously reflecting on her own members disquiet about their MP employing his political colleagues and his partner all these years on our taxes, or perhaps she was thinking about all the people looking for one of the good quality jobs that Mr Sanders is always saying Torbay needs - who have never been given so much as a sniff at working for him.<

As Jackie Smith has established, however immoral, claiming £40,000 from the public purse to pay your spouse is neither dishonest or illegal; but that does not mean it is right, or fair.

It's still not too late, Mrs Cope. Your MP could kill this off as a political issue tomorrow by simply matching my promise.

This is a really easy problem to deal with. Any MP who thinks the expenses are too generous really doesn't need to claim them. Banging on about how wrong the system is whilst milking it for all it's worth is the epitome of Hypocricy - which is why I really shouldn't be surprised at the letter from the Lib Dems.

What is a really interesting giveaway here is that in spite of massive hand-wringing and complaints along the lines of 'you have MP's on your side doing it too' neither the Labour candidate nor the Lib Dem MP have attempted to deal with this properly by matching my pledge.

Which tells you all you need to know.