Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear The Sun,

Yesterday, both Sky News and the BBC were fixated with your story detailing how the mother of a dead soldier was said to be upset by Gordon Brown’s letter of condolence to her, in which he made several spelling mistakes including the soldier’s name.  You also attacked Brown for failing to bow at the Cenotaph.  The story is still running today after you published the transcript of the conservation between Brown and the soldier’s mother from Sunday evening.  While these incidents are all regrettable, your suggestion that this amounts to evidence that Gordon Brown does not care about Britain’s armed forces is absurd.

First, the Cenotaph.  I don’t think anyone will be particularly thrilled with Brown if questioned about it, but before you tried to make a big deal out of his failure to bow, I didn’t see a single newspaper, blog or website make an issue out of this – presumably because they didn’t even notice.  I also think it’s ridiculous that you extrapolated from this minor error and used it to attack Brown’s commitment to our armed forces, as there is clearly no link between the two.  In fact, I could reasonably argue that Brown was so caught up in a moment of reflection and sadness during the service that he was unable to think straight and therefore forgot to bow.

Second, the letter to Jacqui Janes about her son’s death. 

As you noted, PMs write to all next-of-kin of the fallen and Brown telephoned Jacqui yesterday to apologise for his mistake.  However, you didn’t think this was good enough.  Jacqui apparently said: “He couldn’t even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry. Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie’s name. The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right. The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It’s just disrespectful.” You went on to gleefully detail Brown’s errors: spelling Jamie incorrectly and then correcting it by scrawling over the last letter, committing four other spelling mistakes (greatst, condolencs, you instead of your, and colleagus) and writing the letter “i” incorrectly 18 times – mostly by leaving the dots off them but once by using two in “security”.

Jacqui went on: “In the days after Jamie’s death I got letters from Prince Philip, Buckingham Palace, the Defence Secretary and his regiment. They were all written from the heart and made me feel Jamie’s death was important to them. Then I got Gordon Brown’s. I only got through the first four lines before I threw it across the room in disgust. I re-read it later. He said, ‘I know words can offer little comfort’. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer NO comfort. It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me that disgraceful, hastily-scrawled insult of a letter? He finished by asking if there was any way he could help. One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier’s family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right.”

I understand why Jacqui is upset, but a little bit of common sense often goes a long way in situations like this.  A spokesperson for Brown said last night: “The PM takes a great deal of time writing letters of condolence. The reason he personally writes to every family is to acknowledge the debt of gratitude owed by the country to those who have died. He would never knowingly mis-spell anyone’s name.”  Yes, Brown could have typed it, and yes, he should not have made so many mistakes, but I can almost guarantee that if Brown sent out typed letters then some parent somewhere would complain that he doesn’t even care enough to write the letters himself as they would assume that it was just another standardised letter sent to all families of the deceased.  The fact that Gordon Brown has very bad handwriting is presumably down to the fact that he only has one eye and, unlike some other bloggers, I think it is appalling to attack Brown for his disability and make reference to it (Iain Dale pointed out that he has to write in felt tip because of his poor eyesight).  Sure, Brown could get someone to check his letters but apparently he writes them himself and personally puts them straight into an envelope to be posted.  Does that sound like a man who doesn’t give a damn?

I think this entire episode is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves.  There are a million and one reasons to have a dig at Gordon Brown right now, including his funding of the military and failure to come up with an effective strategy in Afghanistan.  Sadly, you have stooped to the lowest common denominator (no change there) and taken aim at his disability and suggested that he doesn’t care about our armed forces, even though the evidence that you cite suggests quite the contrary.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Voice of the Resistance discusses the smoking gun that is immigration.

2. The Great Simpleton bemoans another government attack on our private lives.

3. The Appalling Strangeness says privatisation does not always mean privatisation.

4. Ambush Predator regards everyone with great suspicion (sort of).

5. Terrible Tory Girl has got her hands on Gordon Brown’s school report.

“We don’t have an open-door policy. It is misleading to say we have got one or that we have ever had one. We manage immigration.”

- Alan Johnson, who clearly has not heard of the European Union, speaking to the Independent (full article HERE)

Dear Alistair Darling,

After Gordon Brown was humiliated on the international stage over his unexpected proposal for a so-called Tobin tax on the financial sector, it falls to you to try and convince us that everyone still loves his idea.  Unfortunately, as with every announcement on cracking down on tax havens, rogue bankers, greed, excessive bonuses and just about everything else that we’ve heard in the past two years, it will take you months to reach any sort of agreement – and that agreement will ultimately achieve nothing.

Today you have pledged to step up the fight for a new international tax on banking despite an initially frosty response from Washington.  You claim that there is ‘broad agreement’ among Britain’s partners in the G20 that it was worth exploring new curbs on global finance, and said that remarks from Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, that the US would not back a “day-to-day financial transaction tax” did not mean the Obama administration was ruling out any form of global financial sector charge.  Indeed, Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister’s opponents had failed to grasp how the political mood had been transformed by the financial crisis and indicated the focus on the Tobin tax had obscured the extent of international agreement on the need to ensure the financial sector contributes more to insure against the costs of banks failing.  Apparently, Brown accepts that there is no consensus yet about what should be done, with the Americans more interested in imposing some form of compulsory insurance on the banks and Europeans more sympathetic to some form of Tobin-style taxation. However, you insist that consensus is possible and suggested that Geithner was in “broad agreement” with the general principle on a banking tax. “He is very clear that institutions rather than individuals should bear the cost of this.”

You don’t know when to quit, do you.  It wasn’t just Timothy Geithner who crapped on your famous doorstep.  As well as Geithner’s discouraging response, Dominique Strauss-Khan, the head of the IMF, said he thought such a measure was unlikely to be adopted and Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister, said his government was interested in lowering taxes, not raising them.  In addition, you have been forced to deny that this was a pre-election stunt as well as facing accusations that the Tobin tax itself is completely unworkable.  While it is true that the IMF recently commissioned a feasibility study into a global banking tax, no country is going to sacrifice its economic recovery to save Labour’s faltering credibility.  The only reason that Brown floated the idea is that he knows full well he will never see it come into force and can use it as an election tool to attack the Conservatives for ‘not doing enough’ or ‘making the wrong call’ or some other nonsense along those lines.  The best that Downing Street could muster was that there was still ’some prospect’ of Brown’s plan being implemented.  Yer, right.  Not only is the plan destined to fail, I find it tragic yet strangely amusing that you and Geithner are demanding that institutions rather than individuals pick up the tab for any new insurance or tax, seeing as the costs of such a scheme will be passed onto the public rather than being allowed to hit profits.  Duh.

You and I both know that Brown is not interested in financial reform.  Every promise and every international conference on the banking crisis has produced nothing more than hollow commitments, vacuous plans and political posturing.  Today is no different.  If Brown was serious about a Tobin tax, why has he waited until now to support it when other lunatic lefties have been championing such a move for years?  It’s all just a political mindgame to him, as he desperately struggles to save face and outshine the Conservatives.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“doing God’s work”

- how Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, described bankers in his interview with The Sunday Times.  Mr Blankfein, the son of a Brooklyn postal worker, believes that banks serve a “social purpose” and argues that the return of big profits and bonuses should be welcomed as proof the economy is recovering: “We’re very important. We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. We have a social purpose.”  While he says he understands people are angry at banker’s actions, he argued: “Everybody should be happy. Companies are looking to grow again and raise money. That’s where we come in. The financial system may have led us into the crisis but it will lead us out.” (full story HERE)

Dear readers,

I have returned from my extremely sunny holidays to find that, somewhat to my dismay, that Britain still does not have sunny weather in November.  Thankfully, I was glad to see that my ten predictions for things that probably wouldn’t happen while I was away all passed with flying colours.  Having flicked through a few websites, I have also attempted to summarise the week’s news that I missed thus:

1. David Cameron dodged the bullet over his predictable retreat on the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

2. Some nutter in an American army base sprayed bullets at his fellow soldiers.

Anything else I should know about?

Dear readers,

Sadly I am taking a blogging break while I grab some much needed sun, sea and sand (possibly simultaneously) until Sunday 8th November.  In the meantime, I leave you with a set of predictions for the 10 things that will probably NOT happen while I’m away:

1. The collective IQ of postal workers suddenly breaks into double figures, and they subsequently come to the realisation that every day that they spend on strike makes it less likely that they will actually have a job to return to.

2. Gordon Brown will go to work one morning and tell everyone that he’s just remembered how much Tony Blair hates him and how much effort Tony Blair put into holding back his political career for over a decade, and has thus decided to withdraw his support for Blair’s candidacy as EU President.

3. Nadine Dorries declares that actually she wasn’t that offended by Smeargate after all, and hands over the damages that Damien McBride paid her to a pro-abortion campaigning group.

4. Under a cloud of confusion, Sir Christopher Kelly brings an abrupt halt to his investigation into MPs expenses.  It emerges several days later that he and his family have recently moved into their very own second home with the added promise of duck ponds and unlimited access to porn, all courtesy of Parliament.

5. Nick Griffin sends out a press release stating that he will never appear again on Question Time because he is worried that he might say something that could “hurt other people’s feelings”.  He also announces that he has a black friend.

6. Watford Council decide to overturn their own decision to ban parents from their children’s playgrounds after they realised that the ban won’t do anything to stop paedophiles and will “cause unnecessary inconvenience to so many law-abiding parents”.

7. An increasing number of earthquakes are reported around the world, arousing suspicion that Gordon Brown’s claim that the world is going to end in 50-odd days after the Copenhagen conference on climate change is in fact true and the apolocalypse is now inevitable.

8. The Territorial Army storm Downing Street and take Gordon Brown’s family hostage as a reminder that they are still perfectly capable of doing a good job provided that the Government doesn’t screw them over.

9. President Obama tells the media that he “can no longer be arsed” with healthcare reforms.

10. Our G7 partners fire their entire public sector workforce – thereby sending unemployment through the roof, crippling GDP and triggering nationwide riots - because they felt so guilty that the UK is the only G7 nation not to have emerged from recession and wanted to give us a chance to catch up.

I will, of course, be seeing how accurate these predictions prove to be when I return.

Take care

A.Tory

1. Bleeding Heart Show has more evidence that Ed Balls is a bungling idiot.

2. Raedwald reckons public sector fat cats are quivering in their boots right now.

3. Lord Elvis suspects that Labour and the Lib Dems are two cheeks on the same arse.

4. The Adam Smith Institute claims that trade unions want to ban jobs.

5. Obsidian declares that Mandelson is on course for an epic own goal.

“a weird coincidence”

- Aaron McLear, Governor Schwarzenegger’s press secretary, trying to play down an email Schwarzenegger sent to one of San Francisco’s Democratic Assemblymen.  At first sight, the message that Schwarzenegger sent to Tom Ammiano, explaining why he’d vetoed a boring bill about financing the city’s port, seems straightforward enough.  However, a vertical reading of the first left-hand letter in each of the seven lines of the main body of the email suggests that the Governor was passing on an altogether less statesmanlike message.  The mathematical probability of the phrase seen below appearing by chance is about 8,031,810,176 to one. (full story HERE)

H/T Mr Eugenides for the image

Dear Alan Johnson,

Having presumably given up on any short-term leadership ambitions, you are now rejoining the fold by announcing that local councils are to get the power to seize the assets of minor offenders.  Home Office claims that seizing “ill-gotten gains” are a key part of the fight against all kinds of crime is misleading and deliberately designed to silence doubters of what is without question another brutal assault on our civil liberties.

Under this new move, ‘Accredited Financial Investigators’ – which include customs officers, Department of Work and Pensions investigators, trading standards and other local authority workers - are to be given the power to seize assets worth more than £1,000 ahead of a court ruling on their origin and to execute search warrants. At the moment, these powers are executed on the investigators’ behalf by police officers.  A spokeswoman said the powers would not be used against people in arrears on their council tax or parking fines, as has been reported. She said: “We are determined to ensure criminals do not profit by breaking the law. Seizing ill-gotten gains is a key part of the fight against criminals — whether it is from small-time offences or organised crime. Accredited Financial Investigators have played an integral role in the recovery of criminal assets since the Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced in 2003, they are fully trained and their powers carefully controlled in law. By giving them some new powers we are extending the fight against crime and freeing up valuable police time.”  Oh, how noble of you.  Thankfully, the backlash against your plans was immediate and poignant. 

Paul McKeever, of the Police Federation, said: “The Proceeds of Crime Act is a very powerful tool in the hands of the police and police-related agencies and it shouldn’t be treated lightly.”  He added that there was a “behind-the-scenes creep of powers occurring” and the public “would want such very intrusive powers to be kept in the hands of warranted officers and other law enforcement bodies which are vetted to a very high standard rather than given to local councils”.  Too bloody right.  Law enforcement is the concern of the police and a select few other individuals, not some pen-pusher from the local council.  ‘Power creep’ is a wonderful way of describing this sop to local authorities, who should have no right to enter people’s homes.  To think that some insignificant little council worker could execute a police search warrant is truly chilling.  Far be it for me to agree with Caroline Spelman on a regular basis, today I will make an exception.  She rightly pointed out that ”surveillance laws designed to tackle terror and serious crime have been routinely abused and over-used by town hall officials” to snoop on local residents and prosecute them for minor offences that have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.  Furthermore, when the Proceeds of Crime Act was introduced it was meant to be used to deprive major organised criminals of their lavish lifestyles, so I hardly think it is appropriate to extend such far-reaching powers to unaccountable jobsworths in the local council.

1. Anna Raccoon reminds Gordon Brown that he now only has 40 days to save the world.

2. Mr Eugenides watches the Scottish government try to revamp a turd.

3. They Are Joking prays that President Klaus stands firm.

4. John Ward explains why the Financial Times is really struggling.

5. Obselete discovers the real reason behind the Blair presidency.

“Only in a place as mad as Westminster can MPs make fat profits playing the property market with taxpayers’ money and get away with it.”

- Nick Clegg, responding to the letter he received from the Speaker John Bercow in which Bercow turned down his request to widen the scope of the audit of MPs expenses amid concerns that some of worst abusers of Commons allowances – including those who ‘flipped’ their second homes and avoided capital gains tax – are escaping punishment.   Bercow, who was elected as Michael Martin’s replacement after claiming he was the right candidate to clean up Parliament, has admitted to personally using a legal loophole to avoid paying capital gains tax. Now he has ruled against broadening the Legg inquiry, claiming such an investigation would take too long.  The decision was approved by the Members Estimates Committee, a group of senior MPs including Harriet Harman and her shadow George Young. (full story HERE)

Dear Sir Christopher Kelly,

After Sir Thomas Legg made a complete hash of approaching the issue of MP expenses a couple of weeks ago, I was hoping for something a bit more solid, respectable and effective from yourself.  Details of your report on reforming MP expenses have emerged after you discussed them in Parliament for the first time yesterday, and it is quite clear that you have got it all wrong on the issues of MPs second homes and MPs employing family members.

Let’s deal with second homes first, as this has proved to be the most controversial allowance.  You are proposing to ban MPs from claiming the cost of mortgage interest payments on second homes and will recommend that MPs rent second homes in future.  What an unbelievably stupid idea.  Do you have any idea how much it costs to rent a home in London?  Didn’t you think that it might be a good idea to check this first before coming out with such a daft proposal?  Even a cursory glance at a property site will show that it is extremely hard to find a property for less than £1,500-£2,000 a month, yet you have not given any indication of whether MPs will be limited by any sort of renting budget.  The last thing we need is a free-for-all when it comes to MPs renting homes at our expense and the potential for abuse would be enormous unless this is carefully controlled.  Furthermore, if MPs have to rent houses they could easily rack up bills of £25,000+ a year, which could and should have been used by Parliament to buy furnished properties (preferably flats) in London and allocated to MPs after each election, thereby removing the need for any expenses as MPs would each have a permanent base and the John Lewis list could be torn up once and for all.

Next comes the recommendation that MPs will not be able to employ family members.  There is obviously an argument to say that in a fair and open selection process, it is unlikely that MPs’ wives or indeed husbands would be top of the pile for every job in a Parliamentary office.  However, unions representing Commons staff say they are already considering legal action as such a move may amount to constructive dismissal and be discriminatory.  I can see no possible defence against such claims, because firing someone simply on the basis that they are related to their employer is illegal and rightly so.  Alternatively, you could ban any new family members from being employed after your report is published, but even then you risk legal action on the basis of discrimination.  Obviously the Derek Conway incident was disgraceful as he just handed thousands of pounds to his son for supposedly temporary work, but this kind of nonsense could be stopped by having Parliament employ staff and deal with contracts rather than MPs, who still exercise complete control over who works for them.  If researchers, secretaries and even interns were all allocated from an anonymous pool for each party’s MPs, there would be no need to ban family members nor would there be any need for staff allowances.

Your proposals are both ill-conceived and likely to complicate matters even further.  If Parliament bought permanent accommodation for MPs in London and allocated staff to MPs on an anonymous basis, every MP would have somewhere to live in the capital, every MP would have the staff they require to do their job, the need for second homes and staff expenses would be thrown out the window and Parliament could start to rebuild some of the moral authority that it has pissed away in recent months and years.  Your reforms will apparently be phased in over five years to appease MPs concerned that their existing arrangements might be endangered, but this merely distracts from the fact that your reforms will do little, if anything, to help Parliament get back on its feet.

Yours in frustration,

A.Tory

1. Terrible Tory Girl believes David Cameron has no choice but to talk about immigration.

2. Diary of a Geek wants eco campaigners to become as socially-unacceptable as wife-beaters.

3. Ambush Predator tells Margaret Hodge, the culture minister, to start living in the real world.

4. Tory Politico thinks Peter Mandelson might be briefing against Brown.

5. The Daily Maybe suspects that Norfolk Tories are a bunch of backwards a***holes.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better. I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating. …They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

- Lord Stern, a government adviser on global warming, who believes that people should give up eating meat to halt climate change.  The author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming predicts that eating meat could in the future become as socially unacceptable as drink driving.

Dear Anton Setchell,

To be honest I had never heard your name before I read the Guardian yesterday.  According to their investigation, you are in overall command of Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) “domestic extremism” remit.  This rather shadowy organisation raises a huge number of questions about what the role of the police is and whether it is acceptable to try and prevent crime in a very ‘Minority Report’ fashion.

£9 million a year is allegedly spent gathering the personal details of thousands of “domestic extremists” who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases.  Detailed information about campaigners is stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime.  Senior officers say ‘domestic extremism’, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.  Three national police units responsible for combating domestic extremism are run by the “terrorism and allied matters” committee of the ACPO, and their role includes deploying surveillance teams at protests, rallies and public meetings, creating detailed files on individual protesters who are searchable by name, tracking vehicles associated with protestors and monitoring their movements at protests, recording footage and photographs of campaigners and using ’spotter cards’ to identify target individuals who police believe are at risk of becoming involved in domestic extremism.

This infrastructure was set up with the backing of the Home Office to combat animal rights activists who were committing serious crimes. Senior officers concede the criminal activity associated with these groups has receded, but the units dealing with domestic extremism have expanded their remit to incorporate campaign groups across the political spectrum.  The three police units divide their work into four categories of domestic extremism: animal rights campaigns; far-right groups such as the English Defence League; “extreme leftwing” protest groups, including anti-war campaigners; and “environmental extremism” such as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid campaigns.  You claim that people who find themselves on the databases “should not worry at all”, but refused to disclose how many names were on the national database (although you estimated that you have files on thousands of people).  As well as photographs, you said surveillance officers noted down ‘harmless information’ about people’s attendance at demonstrations and this information was fed into the national database.

There is a part of me that thinks it’s blatantly obvious that the police should engage in activities that might help prevent crime before it happens.  There are several groups in society who are already ’monitored’ to some extent (in theory, at least) , such as ex-offenders, people with severe mental health problems and those who might threaten national security.  The question is does the same logic extend to ‘domestic extremism’, which includes individuals as dangerous as Plane Stupid?  As I understand it, some of the people on the database have committed minor offences in the past and the police insist they are just monitoring the minority who could damage property or commit aggravated trespass. You went on to argue that there are safeguards to protect the human rights of individuals on the database and, although it was possible that protesters with no criminal record were on the databases, police would have to give a justified reason. ”Just because you have no criminal record does not mean that you are not of interest to the police,” you said. “Everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once.”  And the penny drops.  Using surveillance to make sure that you do not miss crimes being committed and can identify offenders at the earliest possible moment is one thing – using it to create a database of innocent people in case they commit a crime at some point in future, even if there is no evidence they pose a risk, is surely a step too far.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Moments of Clarity wonder if UKIP might save Labour.

2. 13th Spitfire thinks David Cameron is Tony Blair but with flaky hair.

3. Tory Radio, a former Post Office employee, says the CWU is really testing his loyalty.

4. Ranting Stan discusses race, tolerance and immigration.

5. Curly cries “Stop Miliband!”.

“These bedroom snoopers are yet another sign of how the Labour Government has no respect for the privacy of law-abiding citizens.”

- Nick Hurd, Shadow Cabinet Office minister, reacting to the proposed 2011 census that is already being dubbed the “snoopers’ charter”.  The Conservatives complained yesterday that the 32-page questionnaire is too long, too expensive, and likely to undermine public support for the exercise, especially since anyone who does not fill in the form risks a £1,000 fine.  The questions will now include:

• Giving the sex and date of birth of any visitor staying the night that the census is filled in
• Expanding a person’s marital status from four possibilities to eight
• Asking how many bedrooms are in your home, which could affect  council tax bills
• Asking whether your central heating is gas, electric, oil or solid fuel
• Specifying the address of any second home
• New questions aimed at immigrants, ethnic minorities, and those with little command of English e.g. those not born in the UK will be asked when they arrived here and those here for less than six months will be asked how long they intend to stay

Dear George Osborne,

Having watched your performance at the Conservative Party conference, it was clear to me that you are keen to put electoral strategy and voter sentiment ahead of common sense.  While this is not a bad idea in the run-up to an election, one does wonder if you’ll ever be able to turn it off.  Your hollow remarks this morning about bankers’ bonuses are yet another example of sucking up to voters when there was no need to get involved at all.

In a speech to the City today, you will call for High Street banks to be stopped from paying cash bonuses of more than £2,000 and only be allowed to pay “significant” bonuses in shares, supposedly creating up to £20 billion of new lending for businesses and consumers.  Last week, the Centre for Economics and Business Research said City bank bonuses would hit £6 billion this year, up from £4 billion in 2008, because of rising profits and less competition.  You will urge the Treasury and FSA to ban big cash bonuses but would protect bonuses of less well paid staff who work in bank branches, hence allowing bonuses of less than £2,000.  The measure, described as an “emergency” plan, would be temporary and would work alongside the new agreement signed by the banks and the FSA, and it would only apply to retail banks, which means investment banks would be exempt (although the proposed change would apply to the investment arms of banks that also lend to consumers).  You are expected to say “emergency steps” need to be taken to support bank lending. ”The cash that would have been paid out should be put onto banks’ balance sheets explicitly to support new lending. This should be a condition of continuing to receive taxpayer guarantees and liquidity support. I am not insensitive to the need of Britain’s banks to remain competitive and retain their most talented staff.”

Right, first things first.  The announcement made by Lord Turner at the FSA last week that big bonuses will be banned was backed up with a grand total of no substance whatsoever.  Lord Turner said that if banks pay big bonuses then he has several ‘levers’ at his disposal to crack down on them, but unfortunately he didn’t specify what any of these levers were – presumably because he hadn’t thought that far ahead.  Now we have you calling for a ban on big bonuses, and the best you can muster is asking the banks really really nicely to pay bonuses in shares instead of cash.  The Treasury has criticised your demands as posturing and quite frankly I agree with them 100%.  If someone has generated millions of pounds for their employers, why should they only get £2,000 in cash? Why not £5,000 or £10,000?  Just plucking a figure out of the air as if you are some kind of moral arbiter for the financial sector is just another example of back-of-the-envelope calculations that got you into so much trouble over the raising of the retirement age when you got your sums spectacularly wrong.  You are assuming that if cash bonuses were banned, banks would simply hand out bonuses in shares and start ramping up their lending, which to my mind is absurd as banks are perfectly capable of finding other methods of renumeration. 

I read in the papers last week that despite almost £200 billion of quantitative easing, the money supply in the economy has risen by just 0.2% – yes, o.2%.  Why?  Because the banks are busy repairing their damaged finances rather than shedding tears at how many businesses and homes are not getting the support that they need.  Will you please stop engaging in this ‘Who can appear tougher on bankers’ bonuses?’ charade while sucking up to Guardian readers and ask yourself whether anything that you say demonstrates common sense and is likely to work in reality.  The sad truth is that I don’t even think you bother with the ‘common sense’ test anymore as political posturing, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never have to implement any of this stuff, is the only way that you know how.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“You can’t do anything about your race, age or sexual orientation, but if you’re so incredibly fat that people point at you in the street, there’s always the novel concept of going on a diet.”

- India Knight, reacting in today’s Times to a recent run of stories on obese people (full article HERE)

Dear readers,

Of all the things I could have done with my extra hour on Sunday morning, I chose to spend time updating my blogroll as it’s been ages since I went through it.  Sad, I know.

The new additions are: Adam Collyer, A Very British Dude, A View From Middle England, Anna Raccoon, Behind Blue Eyes, Bishop Hill, Cato Says, Charlotte Gore, Constantly Furious, Counting Cats, Curly’s Corner Shop, Daniel 1979, Diary of a Geek, Dick Puddlecote, Events Dear Boy, Heresy Corner, John Ward, Laban Tall, Leg Iron, Lobbydog, Longrider, Mark Reckons, Moments of Clarity, Muffled Vociferation, Next Left, Not A Sheep, Nourishing Obscurity, Obselete, Obsidian’s World, Patently, Quiet Man, Raedwald, Ranting Stan, Soho Politico, Subrosa, The Appalling Strangeness, The Daily Maybe, The Enemies of Reason, The Red Rag, They Are Joking, Tory Outcast, Tory Politico, Voice of the Resistance

1. Leg Iron thinks Halloween this year might be a case of ‘Trick or tax’.

2. The Last Ditch says Labour are unfit to live among the British people it so hates.

3. Adam Collyer doesn’t appreciate the government paying £6 million for the blindingly obvious.

4. Frank Davis worries how nannying and bullying a Conservative government might be.

5. Sara Bedford reckons some BNP members just aren’t racist enough.

“The BBC has handed the BNP the gift of the century on a plate and now we see the consequences. I’m very angry.”

- Peter Hain, Welsh Secretary, after a poll suggested support for the BNP has risen after Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time.  A YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph, conducted just after the show finished, suggests 22% more people would “seriously consider” voting BNP.  Two-thirds of the 1,314 people polled by YouGov dismissed voting for the party under any circumstances, with the rest unsure.  However, more than half of those polled said they agreed or thought the party had a point in speaking up for the interests of indigenous, white British people.  Hain, who campaigned against Mr Griffin being included in the Question Time panel, said: “This is exactly what I feared and warned about.”  Mr Griffin’s fellow panellists on the show said he had been “shown up,” but critics said the show had given the BNP huge publicity.  The BNP claims 3,000 people registered to join the party during and after the broadcast. More than 240 complainants to the BBC felt the show was biased against the BNP, while more than 100 complaints were about Mr Griffin being allowed to appear on Question Time.  Even so, more than 50 people contacted the BBC to show their appreciation for the programme.

From the Telegraph:

The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.  Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.  His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.

 The bad polling news came as Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail to prevent his Democratic party losing two governorships next month in states in which he defeated Senator John McCain in last November’s election.  Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: “The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September. Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent.”

…Mr Obama is also facing widespread criticism for his drawn-out decision-making process over what to do next in Afghanistan.  Republicans sense Mr Obama is in a vulnerable position and this week saw the return to the public stage of his perhaps most vehement opponent – Vice-President Dick Cheney. In a blistering speech on Wednesday night, he accused Mr Obama of failing to give Americans troops on the ground a clear mission or defined goals and of being seemingly “afraid to make a decision” about Afghanistan “The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger,” Cheney said at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. “Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.”  He hit out at Obama aides who suggested that the Bush administration had failed to weigh up conditions in Afghanistan properly before committing troops. “Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.”

All the hope is gone and what’s left behind is a dire economic situation (which he inherited), a faltering set of healthcare reforms (which he certainly did not inherit), a failing war that he never wanted (but is stuck with in any case) and a rather dismal attempt to secure peace in the Middle East (which he was expected to make progress on).  Is his plight the result of bad judgement or bad luck?  I’m inclined to think it’s a combination of the two.

1. Daniel1979 thinks Gordon Brown is a bit like John Major.

2. The Enemies of Reason hopes Nick Griffin and Jan Moir just fade away.

3. Obselete finds some rather frustrating newspaper hyperbole.

4. Not A Sheep wonders if Labour are about to take us into the Euro.

5. The Adam Smith Institute details David Cameron’s progressive contradictions.