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.

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1. A View From Middle England declares that we all need regulating!

2. Mark Reckons reviews last night’s gathering of bloggers at a debate on political blogging.

3. Heresy Corner explains why AV is just a mad trick.

4. Events Dear Boy wonders when Cameron will start behaving like a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

5. Real Street thinks ‘Broken Britain’ and ‘Bonkers Britain’ are not really that far apart.

“a charismatic guy with a Teleprompter”

- how Sarah Palin described Barack Obama during her speech at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend.  Unfortunately for Palin, though, it seems that Obama is not the only one who needs a little help remembering his lines as Palin was photographed with crib notes written on the palm of her hand during the very same speech.  A close examination of the former vice-presidential candidate revealed she had the words “Energy”, “Tax,” and “Lift Americans Spirits” scrawled in ink on the inside of her left hand.  “Budget cuts” was written and then crossed out.  She surreptitiously glanced at the words during a question and answer session afterwards when she was asked what should be the top three things a Republican majority in Congress would focus on.

Dear readers,

It is with some concern that I read in the papers that Iran could face tough new UN sanctions within weeks after it announced plans to step up its uranium enrichment programme. Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, earlier said Tehran had told the UN’s nuclear watchdog it would start enriching uranium to 20% from today.  The move heightens fears that Iran is moving closer to weapons-grade uranium.

What reaction has there been from the international community?

• Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, angrily denounced the Iranian regime for refusing to send its uranium stocks abroad for enrichment in a deal that would have met the country’s needs but removed the danger the material would be used to make nuclear bombs. “This is real blackmail,” he said. “The only thing that we can do, alas, is apply sanctions given that negotiations are not possible.” French Defence Minister Herve Morin added: “It will unfortunately be necessary to launch a dialogue with the international community that will lead to new sanctions if Iran does not stop its programmes.”  French President Nicolas Sarkozy later added his voice, saying Iran should face “strong sanctions” over its nuclear programme.
• Robert Gates, the US defence secretary said Iran had scorned “multiple opportunities” to dispel fears over its ambitions to acquire a nuclear bomb and said more sanctions were the only route left. “We are very much agreed that action by the international community is the next step,” Mr Gates said after talks with his French counterpart in Paris.  Although Mr Gates said he still wanted to “try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue”, he said: “The only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track, but it will require all of the international community to work together.”
• The British Foreign Office swiftly issued a statement warning that were Iran to take such action it would instantly be in additional violation of five United Nations Security Council resolutions.
• “It may be that the sanctions screw needs to be, or can be, turned here and there,” said the German Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.
• Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, predicted the Security Council would be asked to vote on sanctions by the end of March. He said Israel was willing to back broad international pressure on Iran but believed the need for action was urgent. “The cost of stopping Iran now is nothing compared to what it would take to stop them if they become nuclear powered,” he said.
• Even the Russian foreign ministry again called on Iran to abide by its earlier agreements to send uranium abroad for enrichment.

Clearly, we have a broad international consensus for stopping Iran.  But, wait a minute, isn’t there someone missing from this list of reactions?  Hasn’t someone recently been appointed to deal with this sort of crisis? 

What’s their name…..  errrmm….. you know…..  hold on, it’ll come to me……

1. Patently suspects that Labour have just realised that the Pope is catholic.

2. Daniel1979 takes aim at the BBC’s love of climate change.

3. Dick Puddlecote wonders what the Conservatives are going to do about the BBC.

4. The Adam Smith Institute finds another person getting the wrong end of the economic stick.

5. Anna Raccoon discovers that Labour are quietly barring their opponents from voting.

“I guess one of the reasons I did get quite upset with Andrew this morning, I feel sometimes we are treated in this media bubble… like somehow you are devoid of humanity”

- Tony Blair’s former communications chief Alastair Campbell on an emotionally charged interview with Andrew Marr.  Just to clarify, that’s Alistair Campbell accusing the media of treating other people badly.

Dear Mark Thompson and Will Straw,

I read your joint blogpost last week on Mark Reckons and Left Foot Forward about whether the MPs with the safest seats are the worst expenses claimants with some interest.  The original suggestion of a link came several months ago on Mark’s blog and it certainly provoked discussion in various political channels.  However, on looking through your analysis and doing my own version, I find it very hard to agree with your conclusions.

I’ll start with a quick recap on your main analysis:

“…in order to try and find a better way to see if the safety of an MP’s seat could be correlated with the amount of expenses money claimed we listed the 328 MPs who (after appeals and adjustments) have been asked to pay money back and ordered them by size of payment. This way we are now taking into account this wide range of difference in amounts paid back and including all the implicated MPs.

We then split this data into quartiles and looked at the average size of the majority for the MPs in each quartile. What we found is that for MPs in the top quartile (including Barbara Follett, Andrew Mackay, and many of the most controversial claims) the average majority is 8,678. In the second quartile the average majority is 7,534. In the third it is 7,705. And in the lowest quartile (including people like Mike Gapes and his 40p) the average majority is 7,276. So there is a fair bit of difference here but there is another point to note. The average size of majority for all 328 MPs implicated is 7,798 (7,613 for all MPs). This means that the top quartile is quite a way above this average (by nearly 1,000 depending on from which point you measure it) and the bottom quartile is a fair way below it (by close to 500). The two middle quartiles are clustered near the average(s).

As with Mark’s original posts, there will likely be debate over what these figures tell us the degree of statistical significance, but we feel that, at the margin, they show that there is a link between the expenses scandal and the size of an MP’s majority. Of those MPs implicated, on average the safer their seat, the more they wrongly claimed.”

Sorry, don’t buy it, and here’s why.

First, I find it extremely hard to understand why you are only discussing MPs who paid back expenses in this analysis.  Your conclusion is that there is a link between the expenses scandal and the size of an MP’s majority, yet you explicitly excluded every MP who didn’t cheat on their expenses from your statistical analysis.  What’s up with that?!  If it is indeed true that the MPs with the safest seats were the biggest cheats, surely, you cannot just cut out all the MPs who didn’t cheat at all!

Second, the use of quartiles and lumping MPs who paid money back into big groups doesn’t seem that helpful.  What you need to show is a clear, unambiguous pattern between your two variables and I don’t think this type of data really tells you much.

So here is my contribution to the debate.  Instead of excluding MPs who weren’t caught cheating, I’m going to look at all MPs because this is the only way to definitively identify a link between safe seats and crooked politicians.  In addition, I’ve chosen a scattergraph and subsequent correlational analysis to look for clues.  And here’s what I got:

The first thing you’ll notice is that the majority of MPs who paid nothing back is sizeable, hence the blue blob at the bottom of the graph.  I’m sure it would look very different if only MPs who had actually paid money back were included but, like I said, to establish a link between the safety of an MP’s seat and their propensity to cheat the expenses system you must include everyone. 

Not only does the pattern that you claimed seem to disappear from visually inspecting the scattergraph, a correlational analysis shows that link is a mere 0.05, which is about as close to ‘no relationship whatsoever’ as you can get.  I noticed that Mark carried out a Spearman’s Rank correlation test and found a “weak positive correlation” between the two variables, but this was only for MPs who had paid money back, which I don’t think is a valid test.

So there you have it: a totally amateurish Excel-powered debunking of the myth that MPs with the safest seats were more likely to cheat on their expenses.  Over to you, gents.

Regards

A.Tory

“While Pope Benedict never mentioned the Equality Bill, or even Harriet Harman, it is clear that the deputy leader of the Labour party is one of the few revolutionary idealists left on the government front benches. She still believes, like a St Paul’s girls’ school Robespierre, that the state will set us free from the tyranny of individual choice …We are asked to believe Harman’s psychic numbers, supposedly the mathematical proof that her legislation, of itself, will make Britain a better society. Whatever you think of the man in the Vatican, he has said nothing as crazy as that.”

- Dominic Lawson in today’s Times (full article HERE)

First we had this:

Ed Balls reveals his struggle with secret stammer (23rd January 2010) – Schools Secretary Ed Balls spoke last night for the first time about his lifelong struggle to overcome a stammer. He revealed that he faced a daily battle to deliver his words and had to memorise all his speeches because he could not read a script. The speech impediment has caused him to freeze when speaking and give a halting delivery to hide the stammer. …He was constantly mocked at his boys’ private school, and says that he was not given any therapy. “Being in the school play was never for me. I was in the debating society because that was I wanted to do, but it was so hard to get going. You find ways to deal with it. You coupe, but it never goes away. It’s always there, like an iceberg. No one sees what’s under the surface.”

And now we have this:

Gordon Brown weeps on TV as he talks about death of Jennifer (7th February 2010) - Gordon Brown wept in public this weekend when he talked of the death of his daughter Jennifer and spoke of facing up to the possible premature death of his son Fraser, who has cystic fibrosis – and his hope a cure will be found. Mr Brown’s wife Sarah, who was present, also sobbed in an extraordinary display of emotion when the Prime Minister was interviewed by Piers Morgan for a TV programme. The candid exchanges, which took place over two-and-a-half hours in front of a live studio audience, are to be broadcast on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories on ITV next Sunday.  Mr Brown told how it was he, and not his wife, who was first to realise that Jennifer was not going to survive. She died in 2002, at just ten days old, after suffering a brain haemorrhage. He also spoke of his agony at the knowledge that his three-year-old son Fraser may have a ‘poor life expectancy’. A member of the audience said: ‘It was remarkable to hear Mr Brown talk like that. ‘He said he was the one who could tell Jennifer wasn’t going to make it and he described how he held her tiny little hand until the very end. ‘He was asked if he was angry about his son’s illness and said, “We sometimes ask, why us? But we try not to be bitter.”‘  Another member of the audience said: ‘It was so moving, some us were close to tears as well. It was hard not to be.’

Now, I would never suggest that either of these two men’s difficulties are worthy of ridicule or jokes because they are clearly not.  To go through political life with such burdens is never easy.  However, I just can’t help but feel that the timing of these extremely personal revelations is too convenient for my liking.  It’s not like these two individuals have just appeared in politics and want the voters to get to know them better.  They have both been around for years and years, and also happen to be on the verge of losing an election.  Why did they choose now to go all Oprah Winfrey on us?  Hmmm?  I mean, the same interview could have been conducted by Brown at any point since 2002 but he waits until this moment to strike, while Ed Balls could have been honest and up front about his stammer years ago to save himself considerable political embarassment but he choose to wait until now as well.

How sad that, even in their most private and sensitive moments, Labour are still a bunch of cynical bastards who will manipulate anyone or anything to suit their own purposes.

1. Tory Radio thinks David Cameron was right to ignore Twitter after today’s debacle.

2. Tim Worstall corrects a little fallacy spread by Guido.

3. Blue Idea says that MPs who screw the taxpayer don’t deserve protection from the law.

4. Patently explains the concept of ‘consequences’ to Gordon Brown.

5. Obsidian discovers even more ammunition for the BNP.

“VodafoneUK is fed up of dirty homo’s and is going after beaver”

- a message on Vodafone’s official Twitter account, which prompted hundreds of followers to contact the mobile phone company.  The message appeared on their Twitter feed, which is used by the company to deal with customer complaints. Instead of the usual helpful hints on how to make the most of its range of handsets or direct responses to individual customer service queries, VodafoneUK’s 8,824 followers were treated to the above message.  Vodafone was forced to release a stream of apologies, replying to each user individually to say: “we weren’t hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We’re very sorry”.  ”An individual posted an obscene remark on the Vodafone UK Twitter account,” said a spokesman for the company. “The individual has been suspended pending further notice.”  The ‘tweet’ is understood to have emanated from Vodafone’s customer service centre in Stoke.

From the BBC:

There has been an increase in the number of British people who are sceptical about climate change, a poll commissioned by BBC News has suggested. It showed that 25% of those questioned did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November. The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75%. The poll, based on a sample group of 1,001 adults, was conducted by Populus.

1. Croydonian says there is nothing quite like war, famine, pestilence and death to perk you up.

2. Obselete discovers a new breed of disturbed prankster.

3. Laban Tall explains the dangers of non-existent racism.

4. Liberal England wonders if libertarian bloggers will ever grow up.

5. John Ward supports Chris Grayling in the ‘dodgy crime statistics’ row.

“David Cameron believes in meritocracy, but he hasn’t yet got the ruthless streak that will make him want to cause pain and be a great prime minister”

- Lord (Tim) Bell, who was Margaret Thatcher’s PR expert

At 11am today, we will find out which of these six troughers will face prosecution (clockwise from top left: Lord Clarke of Hampstead, Baroness Uddin, Lord Hanningfield, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine).  Rumour has it that three of them are in serious trouble while the others might escape, at least for now.  Add in the fact that yesterday 370 MPs were told to repay more than £1.1m related to second home expense claims and we have ourselves another barrage of public outrage and disgust.

Will all this affect the result of the general election?  Perhaps.  Gordon Brown was very slow off the mark in dealing with the expenses row first time around, Cameron was praised for his reaction last year but has since struggled to make an impact on this issue, while Clegg has been something of an irrelevance – partly because very few of his MPs were implicated and partly because he didn’t say anything helpful on the matter.  I suspect that the PM has the most to lose for allowing the expenses system to roll on during his watch and failing to deal with it adequately, but it would be a bold move for Cameron or Clegg to try and capitalise on this moment.  Mind you, with the polls so close to a hung parliament and the Lib Dems still facing the prospect of losing many seats in May, why wouldn’t they take a chance?

UPDATE 11am: Lord Hanningfield (6 charges), Elliot Morley (2 charges), David Chaytor (3 charges) and Jim Devine (2 charges) are all being prosecuted!!!  Morley, Chaytor and Devine have released a statement saying they are “extremely disappointed” by the charges.

1. Capitalists at Work wonder if quantitative easing actually did anything.

2. Ambush Predator finds another example of equality gone mad.

3. Blue Eyes discusses sex.

4. Quiet Man watches the betrayals over the Lisbon Treaty begin.

5. Real Street discovers some rare good news for those who love freedom.

“The authority and legitimacy of the fees office was much less than seems to have been realised by most MPs at the time. These officials were not civil servants with an independent duty to, and accountability for, the public purse. They were servants of the House and, while of course supposed to observe and apply its rules, they were also in practice expected to do so in the ways most beneficial to the MPs whom they were there to serve. …The fees office was therefore vulnerable to the influence of higher authorities in the House of Commons, from the Speaker down, and of individual MPs. In practice during most of the review period, these influences tended more towards looking after the immediate interests of MPs than to safeguarding propriety in public expenditure.”

- Sir Thomas Legg, in the foreword of his final 237-page report on MPs expenses

Dear Nick Clegg,

As no-one in the media is really bothered what you are up to right now, I thought I would take you back 12 months to an article that you wrote for the Independent explaining why you thought that Britain should consider joining the Euro as it makes for fascinating and embarrassing reading in hindsight.

“I have no illusion regarding how unpopular the euro is. The euro should never be introduced in Britain without public consent confirmed in a referendum. But its unpopularity is heavily based on a perception of its inferiority. It was easy to dismiss the fledgling euro as a “toilet currency” before we realised our own economic growth was built on sand. How different will things look if the recession is shorter and shallower in France and Germany? How different will Europe seem once millions of British holiday makers struggle to pay for European holidays? And once the immediate benefits of the sterling collapse wear off for British exporters, will they start asking questions about the value of such a volatile currency? The deeply held view that Britain’s economy is a cut above Europe’s is about to take a terrible battering. The shrill, ideological debates between pro and anti Europeans will increasingly give way to a more sober, pragmatic assessment of the economic needs of millions of anxious British families. Of course, the euro is no panacea to all our problems. The eurozone will be hit hard by this crisis too, and some of the smaller, weaker eurozone countries are especially vulnerable.  But given the gravity of the economic crisis in Britain, and our unique exposure to international financial markets, silence about the euro must end. The future has never been more uncertain. People are increasingly desperate for stability in our economic affairs. We must be ready to think anew.”

The idea that Britain was best placed to enter the recession has indeed taken a terrible battering, and France and Germany did emerge out of recession faster than us.  However, your point about the smaller Eurozone countries really has come to the fore as the meltdown across the continent becomes apparent.

Ireland has been an utter catastrophe.  Their economy was built on confidence and construction, both of which evaporated - leaving them with an economic nightmare the likes of which they may never have seen before.  Debt soaring, the loss of their AAA credit rating and massive unemployment are impossible to ignore.  Over recent weeks, it has become clear that Greece is also grappling with its worst economic crisis in years, if not decades. Their budget deficit has rocketed to over 12%, much like the UK, and despite being one of the smaller economies in the EU it is sending shockwaves across Europe.  Many politicians and commentators are unconvinced they can rein in such a terrible financial mess.  Prime Minister George Papandreou has urged the public to support his programme of tough austerity measures, which includes increases on fuel duty and a public sector pay freeze.  However, public sector workers are planning a strike next week.  Greece will face the most stringent monitoring of any EU country as it attempts to balance its finances over the next few years. EU economic commissioner Joaquín Almunia also launched an infringement procedure to ensure Greek authorities report reliable budgetary statistics, particularly as Greece’s deficit is more than four times higher than eurozone rules allow.  Ooops.  

As the BBC graphic above pointed out yesterday, there are other bigger economies in the Eurozone that face the same deficit problems and the fear of contagion is high.  While insisting that the single currency was stable and successful, Joaquín Almunia singled out Portugal, Spain and Greece, as well as “some other countries”, as weak links in the Eurozone.  For example, Spain has crippling levels of unemployment and there appears to be little respite on the horizon.  In addition, it was just announced that its budget deficit for the next three years will be higher than forecast. Fellow Eurozone weakling Portugual cut a planned treasury bill issue in the last few days as yields rocketed to almost 50% higher than January, demonstrating the market’s lack of confidence in their economy.  Eurozone countries have been adamant that the EU can handle the matter without IMF intervention, but looking at these figures I remain to be convinced that the IMF will not be needed at some point.

All in all Nick, your desire to “think anew” about the Euro is looking pretty disastrous right now.  Naturally, you have gone very quiet on this issue since writing the article as you know that it is a very weak position right now.  In fact, I doubt that we have heard the last of the Eurozone’s troubles because at some point, a national bailout may well be necessary.  Ironically, in your article a year ago you accused Gordon Brown of “short-sighted arrogance” (no pun intended, I’m sure) but it is you who has ultimately been made to look a short-termist fool.  Obviously the British economy has suffered enormously thanks to Brown’s shocking mismanagement of our national finances, but when you peer across the Channel at our European neighbours, it is clear that ’stability’ and ‘growth’ are not exactly flourishing for the countries that joined the Euro either. 

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Prodicus is not losing sleep over this ‘hung parliament’ crap.

2. Next Left takes a pop at the Tories’ supposedly dodgy crime stats.

3. Adam Collyer thinks UKIP’s latest policy proposals are good for a laugh.

4. Counting Cats tries to explain climate skepticism to Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC.

5. Cato discovers that suicide bombers in the UK have just declared war strike action.

“A person can be hurting and medical assistance does not work. We help people to locate themselves.”

- Pat Harney, a spokesperson for the Scientology operation in Haiti, referring to their healing method known as “assist”, which can involve touching parts of the body or asking a patient to stare at a wall. “It’s a special Scientology technique developed by Mr Hubbard,” added Ms Harney.  With an operation called The Volunteer Ministry Disaster Relief for Haiti, the Scientologists now plan to establish a permanent base in the country following the devastating earthquake. (full story HERE)

BBC News, 2nd February 2010: Britain’s “first past the post” voting system could be scrapped if Labour wins the general election, under plans which have been outlined by Gordon Brown. The prime minister wants a referendum on changing to an “alternative vote” system, where candidates are ranked in order of voters’ preference. MPs will vote next week on holding a referendum after the general election.

Daily Telegraph, 20th January 2010: Gordon Brown has given his strongest backing to election reform which would ensure that MPs received the backing of at least half of local voters.  …During Prime Minister’s Question Time, Mr Brown dropped a strong hint that if a referendum was held, he would campaign in favour of the alternative vote system, where electors are able to rank candidates in order of preference.

Channel 4 News, 1st October 2009:  On the final day of Labour’s 2009 party conference, the prime minister tells Jon Snow that he and the Labour party are committed to an alternative vote system of electoral reform. Towards the end of his interview, Gordon Brown agrees with Jon Snow that he will be “passionately urging people to vote for electoral reform”.

BBC News, 29th September 2009: Gordon Brown has committed Labour to holding a referendum on voting reform should it win the next election. In his conference speech, Mr Brown said Labour would hold a referendum “early” in the next Parliament on proposals for an alternative vote system.

Daily Telegraph, 11th June 2009: A sweeping package of electoral reforms, which could include the end to the first-past-the post voting system in general elections, was promised by Gordon Brown in his Commons statement.  …He was willing to abandon the first-past-the-post for an alternative system only if there is “broad consensus in the country” thought to mean a referendum.

*yawn*

I think we’ve got the message, Gordon.

1. The Tap is dismayed by the press slavishly following Mandelson’s demands.

2. Red Rag explains why the Tories must drop the 50% tax rate.

3. The Great Simpleton supports Terry Pratchett’s call for helping assisted suicides.

4. Enemies of reason think the Pope should have a chat with Geert Wilders.

5. The Cynical Tendency says that in Brown’s Britain, anything goes.

“The terrorists have won.”

- Alex Deane, barrister and director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, responding to the news that passengers using Heathrow and Manchester airports have been told that they will no longer be allowed to board their flights if they refuse to submit to full-body scans.  The advanced imaging technology (AIT) scanners went into operation at the two airports at noon yesterday, despite concerns expressed by civil liberties campaigners. Birmingham airport will follow suit later this month, ahead of a national rollout.

Dear Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle,

Yet again, I am dismayed by the lack of protection for free speech in this country.  It seems as though upsetting and offending people is still illegal in this country, yet the USA and no doubt many other developed nations who offer constitutional protection for free speech make the UK look more and more like a Big Brother authoritarian nightmare.  Admittedly, you are both complete a***holes who deserve a good kicking (metaphorically speaking) but your plight deserves attention nonetheless.

You have both lost your appeals against the UK’s first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website, for which you will serve around two years each.  Your crime was to control US websites featuring racist material.  During your first trial in 2008, you skipped bail and fled to California, where you sought asylum claiming you were being persecuted for your right-wing views, but were deported. The police investigation began after a complaint about a leaflet called “Tales of the Holohoax”, which was pushed through the door of a Blackpool synagogue and traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Simon. Published material found later included images of murdered Jews alongside cartoons and articles ridiculing ethnic groups.

1. All Seeing Eye discovers a new invention that could revolutionise US politics.

2. The Appalling Strangeness explains why voting Labour is moronic.

3. Ranting Stan rants about Cameron’s supposed flip-flopping.

4. Grumpy Optimist tries to understand the latest Brown bounce.

5. A Very British Dude explains why politicians lie.

“Parliament should be moved to a high-rise in Birmingham. It has to be taken out of Westminster. It’s not connected to normal life.”

- Chris Addison of The Thick Of It fame