Better government and a better deal for the taxpayer

I have been neglecting this blog of late. I have been very busy with Taxpayers' Alliance work and this has taken up all of my free time. It has been time very well spent though and the branch is starting to grow and we are getting some positive media hits.

These past few weeks have reinforced my opinion that the way we do government in this country is fundamentally wrong. I have received cooperation from the LibDem Leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns, but unfortunately he is an exception to the rule. I wouldn't go as far as saying finding a council leader who is willing to be open is like finding a needle in a haystack, however, they are not in plentiful supply. The East Riding of Yorkshire Council is a local authority that needs to let the light into its proceedings. It has 48 out of a total of 67 councillors who claim a special responsibility allowance. I am starting to get to the bottom of this, but it has only been with the help of the local press. Transparency is needed and transparency we will get, no matter how long it takes.

There are too many people in public life who feel it is their God given right to spend public money in any way they see fit. They do their best to hide their spending from the public. They authorise expensive consultations, when a little common sense could solve a problem. They just don't seem to understand the money they spend is not their money, although I am sure they control their personal purse strings in a more conservative way, than they do the public purse.

In this time of recession, we have to tighten our belts. We will have to put up with higher taxes. All the Taxpayers' Alliance wants, is for the taxpayer to get the best deal possible. We want to cut out waste. We want public spending to be kept at a minimum. This is something - as a dyed-in-the-wool Tory - I believe passionately in. Join us in our campaign for transparency, lower taxes and better government.

Happy Independence Day

A very happy July 4th to all my American readers. Have a great day!

Sarah Palin resigns as Alaska Governor

Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin is going to resign this month. Speaking in the royal 'we', she said she can effect positive change outside of government at this moment in time.

In other words, she is going to raise her profile on a few campaigns, making sure she is ready to run for president. She has prayed about this. Perhaps we will hear God told her the world could not survive without her. Watch this woman. She doesn't have the brains, but she has the guile. Read a little more HERE.

The Public Sector needs cutting

I have stated on this blog many times before a samurai sword needs to be wielded to the client state. We simply spend too much money on public services. There is too much waste. There are too many of our citizens in non-jobs. There are too many of our citizens claiming state benefits.

One would have thought this was obvious to anyone, even those of a socialist persuasion. Gordon Brown knows this, and he is steadily cutting back on public spending, hoping no-one will realise and calling David Cameron Mr '10%' in the process. There are rumours those nasty Tories will be cutting the NHS budget, freezing the pay of doctors and nurses in the process. Well, I hope this is not a rumour. I hope this is true. We spend far too much on health in this country. The NHS is cumbersome in the extreme. Too many managers and support staff. The NHS doesn't get a good deal on its drugs budget. Pharmaceutical companies know they can more or less charge what they want and the good old taxpayer will pick up the bill. For those who have lost their jobs, or like me, wonder if they will still have one in a few months time, the idea of a pay freeze for a couple of years sounds like a good deal.

Now more than ever is the time for honesty in politics. There will have to be cuts in public services. If the cuts are thought through, the public will not see a significant reduction in services. Now is the time to cut out waste. If you have any doubts we can do it, read the Taxpayers' Alliance's book, 'The Bumper Book of Government Waste.' It can and must be done.

Lack of blogging

I've been very busy with Taxpayers' Alliance work this past week. Hopefully this week I will be able to return and give my attention to this blog.

John Bercow

I always believe in giving someone a chance. It what defines me. I believe firmly in the human spirit. Before you sense a 'but', well there is one. Watch this and tell me John Bercow is not an arrogant, little shit. Unfortunately, he is the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Hull and East Riding Taxpayers' Alliance

Check out the new blog for the Hull and East Riding Branch of the Taxpayers' Alliance.

Speaker John Bercow

Although he is not my choice, I wish the new Speaker, John Bercow, well in his new role. For the sake of the House and the country, I hope he succeeds.

Young vs Bercow for Speaker

So, it's down to a two-horse race between Sir George Young and John Bercow. After Alan Williams' plea for other candidates to drop out, thankfully we will not have to wait until midnight before we know who the next Speaker will be.

I had hoped MPs would for once vote with their consciences and try and choose the best person for the job. Sir George Young will be a steadying influence and if he is true to his speech earlier this afternoon, he will reform our chamber.

John Bercow - quite frankly - is too cocky. He has not got the support of his honourable 'friends' and he will not unify the House. I hope and pray he is not elected Speaker.

Taxpayers' Alliance, MPs Expenses and Mr (or Madam) Speaker

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I went back to work on Tuesday after being off ill with food poisoning. As usual, I failed to pace myself, and by Thursday I felt as ill as I had done the previous week. Since then I have been taking it easy.

I have been doing some work in my new capacity as Organiser of the Hull and East Riding Branch of the Taxpayers' Alliance. I have been quoted in the Hull Daily Mail twice and yesterday the newspaper printed a letter of mine. The new branch is getting off to a flying start, thanks to the redacted expenses claims of our MPs.

Those redacted documents have proven once again parliament is not willing to be honest with the public. If it was not for the Daily Telegraph, we would not have heard about duck houses, moat cleaning, flipping of second homes and alleged avoidance of capital gains tax. Those who said the Telegraph did not need to print the details of expenses claims must never have heard of the word 'redaction.'

The Speakership election is proving to be a about as exciting as a wet weekend in Blackpool. The one thing I think is certain is the Commons will not get a reforming Speaker. Bercow is not going to win, neither is Beckett, and neither is Beith. After that, it is down to Haselhurst, Young and Cormack. I can't see how any of them can be a reforming Speaker. Time will tell.

Iraq inquiry to be held behind closed doors.

Gordon Brown, the man who is going to shed light through the workings
for parliament, has decided to have an inquiry into the Iraq war
behind closed doors, and no-one will be compelled to give evidence.

It hasn't taken him long to revert to his old ways. This man doesn't
know the meaning of the words open and transparent. Does he really
think we trust him to be the architect of change? If he does, then he
is more deluded than I thought he was and I didn't think that was
possible.

--
Sent from my mobile device

How much do your councillors cost you?

Thanks to the Taxpayers' Alliance, you can find out how much your councillors claim in allowances. Click here to get the details.

£185,000 a year for the Kinnocks

Do you remember a Labour politician in the 1980s who wanted Britain out of the Common Market and wanted the House of Lords abolished? I'm sure you remember the former Vice-President of the European Commission, Lord Kinnock. 

According to the think tank, 'Open Europe', Lord Kinnock and the his wife, the future Baroness Kinnock, have managed to acquire £185,000 a year in state funded pensions. The Kinnocks certainly know what a gravy train looks like.

Taxpayers' Alliance Action Day

The sun is shining in East Yorkshire and temperature is around 23C. It has been great weather to have the first action day for the new Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire Branch of the Taxpayers' Alliance. Half a dozen of us braved the heat (it's not often I can say that) and handed out leaflets in Beverley. We had a positive response and we will be having further action days. If you want to come and join us, please e-mail me. 

Hazel Blears has regrets

She may have done it her way, but now it seems Hazel Blears is regretting some of her actions. I am sure this has nothing to do with the mood of her local party in Salford who has the power to deselect her. 

Why not raise the voting age back to 21

The old chestnut of lowering the voting age to 16 is rearing its head once again, thanks to the government. You cannot marry without parental consent, join the armed forces without parental consent and still not go on active service, buy cigarettes or buy alcohol, until you are 18. If you are not deemed responsible to do any of those things, how can you be deemed responsible to cast a vote in an election? 

The debate that never takes place, is raising the voting age back to 21. I know it will never happen, but why not? The majority of those aged between 18-20 don't vote. They don't have an understanding of politics and the political process. They generally lack life experience. Why not let them make their way in the world, get off to university or training or the workplace and get opinions of their own, and then let them vote at 21? Just an idea. 

How do we deal with the threat from the BNP?

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Phil Andrews. He is a councillor representing the Independent Communities Group in Hounslow. I don't know much about this group, but I have found out reading his blog, that he was a leading light, along with Nick Griffin, in the National Front. Mr Andrews saw the error of his ways, for want of putting it another way, and in this post gives his views on how to deal with the BNP threat. I have published his full blog post for you to read. I have also been busy with my mobile phone and recorded my views on the voting system that gave us two BNP MEPs. I am not saying changing the PR voting system is the simple way of solving the problem, but it has given European Parliamentary representation to a party that only polled around 6% of the popular vote. 

As an aside, I know the picture quality is not great when I use my phone and I know there are times when my lips are out of sync with my voice, however, I find it an easy and convenient way to express my views straight to you. Give me your comments on what you think.

Old mucker of mine though he may be, I can understand why there are people who would want to throw eggs at British National Party Chairman Nick Griffin. Denounced for years as the leader of a party which can trace its genealogy directly back - via the National Front, John Tyndall's Greater Britain Movement and Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement - to Arnold Leese, the man who first conceived of gas chambers as the solution to the "problem" of Jewish people living in the world and who rejected Sir Oswald Mosley for his moderation, Griffin is now one of two men representing the BNP at the European Parliament.

The problem with Tuesday's egg-throwing protest of course, quite apart from the public order problem it presented, was not only that it allowed Griffin to emerge as the poor innocent victim making a stand for free speech against an intolerant political establishment, but also that he was granted airtime to talk about the egg throwing which he would otherwise have spent having to explain his confused and contradictory policies.

Rather than allowing him the opportunity to explain to the world why his "non-racist" party refuses to admit non-white members, or how it defines "Britishness" according to skin pigmentation rather than place of birth or length of residence, Nick Griffin was able not only to present himself as the champion of democracy and free speech, but even to implicate the three major parties in the egg-throwing protest by virtue of the fact they have given in-principle support to the organisation he alleges to have been responsible for it.

As such there can be little doubt that this exhibition, provoked as it may have been by the powerful call of a justified indignation, came across to most as a display of petulance and an own-goal of not inconsiderable proportions.

But own-goals are what the thing once known as the "Labour movement" has become rather good at. Let us not forget that in both the North West and Yorkshire & Humber the number of votes received by the BNP actually decreased. In both cases the BNP was able to scrape home as a direct consequence of traditional Labour voters, embittered by the betrayal and arrogance of their elected representatives, staying away in protest.

As a result of Labour's failure the rest of us are compelled to share the humiliation of having sent two men to Europe to make common cause with all manner of madmen and lunatics, with all the taxpayer-funded financial benefits that will bring to themselves and their organisations.

But if the failure today is Labour's, then at other times and in other places it will be someone else's. The cyclical nature of British politics is such that the big parties take it for granted that they will have their years in the limelight and their periods in the wilderness. Who is to say that after a spell in governement it will not next time be Conservative voters who are sitting at home sulking, while the BNP sends its people to Brussels on the strength of the votes of three percent of those on the Register of Electors?

Allegiance to the big political parties, allegiances which once were handed down from father to son and which centred around whole communities, are breaking down. There is no longer any clear ideological water separating the main protagonists, and it is not today a contradiction in terms to speak of a working-class Conservative or a "socialist" millionaire. With the advance of internet technology which creates a more level playing field between those with the resources to print and distribute millions of leaflets and those without, smaller parties are becoming less small. At last Thursday's Euro elections nearly 43% of those who voted in the United Kingdom placed their cross next to the name of a party outside of the big three.

In consideration of all this, those who would have us believe that the big established parties are our only defence against the relentless onward march of fascism are short changing us. A few more votes for UKIP or the Green Party in the North West and Yorkshire & Humber would have kept both successful BNP candidates out of Europe. Big party politics didn't protect us, it failed us.

In the London Borough of Hounslow we have six political groups on the local authority where once there were two. Our own, the Independent Community Group (ICG), holds six seats and with it the balance of power on the council. In the community we talk about the issues that local people want to talk about. We get things done. With 1,500 members spread out largely over two wards signed up to a program of positive community action, radical but outspokenly anti-racist, imaginative, unconventional and people-centred there is no space in which the BNP or any other racist party could successfully operate.

And yet this is the Politics That Dare Not Speak Its Name. A popular anti-fascist blog on which I frequently post only ever blocks my contributions when I dare to suggest that it is the community itself, not the Labour Party, to which we should be looking in the fight against fascism.

The concept is not restricted to my own neighbourhood. There are residents' groups and action parties springing up all around the place which strike the same chord as we do with voters who are fed up the mainstream politicians and their parties. They are organic, supported and often joined by those whom conventional politics could never reach, and are fairly much insulated against the ebb and flow of political trends. There is not the slightest shadow of a doubt in my mind that they are, by some considerable margin, the most effective defence against organised fascism taking hold in our communities.

The problem for us for the moment is that, anti-fascism nothwithstanding, we still have more eggs thrown at us than the leader of the BNP does.

Lady Thatcher taken to hospital

The Telegraph is reporting Lady Thatcher has fallen in her home in London and has been taken to hospital. She has apparently injured her upper arm. Get well soon.

NEW Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire Branch of the Taxpayers' Alliance

Margaret Beckett as Speaker? No, No, No!

When you see her in her office, with a picture of herself on the wall, you can easily tell what sort of a person she is without knowing anything about her. 

Margaret Beckett is one of those people who can wind me up as soon as I see her. She has an attitude that states 'I know better than you do.' I cannot think of one reason why she could become Speaker. She was first elected to parliament in 1974, lost her seat in 1979 and then returned in 1983. She has undertaken many government roles. When Brown fired her as Foreign Secretary, I thought this would mean I wouldn't have to see her very often on my TV. But up she popped again, this time in the lowly role of Housing Minister. Brown then fired her again last week. She has finally gone, I thought. No, wrong again. Now she wants to become Speaker. Is there anything this woman will not do to get herself in the news? She will not become Speaker, and then hopefully she will decide the next general election is the time she is finally going to go, although I am not banking on it. 

Below is a clip with her explaining her reasons for wanting to become Speaker. Try not to hurl objects at your computer screen. Anything to do with Margaret Beckett should come with a government health warning. 

Ann Widdecombe for Speaker?

I have thought for some time Ann Widdecombe would make a good Speaker of the House of Commons. Although she is standing down at the next general election, I think the idea of someone with a no-nonsense attitude, who has not be tainted during the expenses scandal, becoming an interim Speaker is worth considering. I would have liked her to go to her constituency and tell them under the circumstances she would like to be re-adopted for her seat. I know this would have caused problems for the candidate who has already been selected, but in the current circumstances, it is justifiable. Also, Helen Grant could easily find herself a safe seat, with so many of them going begging at the moment, with the probability of more to come. 

As Ann's retirement plans are well advanced, this senario is not going to happen. Below is a clip from Sky News, where she explains her reasons for throwing her hat into the ring. 

BNP Exposed- What Nick Griffin and his party are really like

On 15 July 2004 the BBC broadcast an undercover documentary about the BNP. Andy Sykes was once the Bradford organiser of the BNP, praised by Nick Griffin, but he couldn't tolerate what he saw. He then turned into a double agent. To remind you of what the BNP is really like, here is the programme for you to watch again. 

What Diane Abbott thinks of Keith Vaz's sucking up to Alan Johnson

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/video/Diane-Abbott-MP-Slurps-In-House-Of-Commons/Video/

Unite Against Fascism on Newsnight

I have just watched the spokesman for Unite Against Fascism, Martin Smith, argue his case with Lib Dem, Simon Hughes on Newsnight. If you want to watch it, use the link below and go 16 minutes into the programme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00l5pcs/Newsnight_09_06_2009

Mr Smith proves he is just as much a fascist as the BNP. Denying a democratically elected MEP the right to hold a news conference is not the way forward. As I said yesterday, all this has done is play into the BNP's hands. The BNP got far more publicity as a result of eggs being thrown at them, than it would have done if it had been allowed to hold the press conference.

We have to engage in debate with the BNP. We have to expose its policies not only on race, but on defence and the economy. It has policies that would isolate Britain from the rest of the world and turn us into an economic basket case. Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are intelligent, articulate men. The only way to beat the BNP is to argue back with intelligent, articulate arguments and expose the party for what it is.

Brown the Great Voting Reformer - I don't think so

Gordon Brown wants voting reform? No, he doesn't. Nor do I think introducing the Alternative Voting (AV) system for general elections would save his skin. It is a theoretical question anyway, as none of the proposed changes could be in place for the next general election. What we are seeing is Gordon Brown desperately trying to appear as if he is a reformer. We are probably also witnessing the price Brown had to pay for Alan Johnson's loyalty.  

Changing the voting system for general elections is a major constitutional change and therefore justifies a referendum being called, but what about the Lisbon Treaty? This also involves major constitutional change. The prime minister is at sixes and sevens. He doesn't know which way to turn. He would have lost a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. That's why he didn't give us a chance to air our views at the ballot box. As for voting reform, I don't think he has thought about winning or losing a referendum. I don't think he is bothered at the moment. All he is trying to do is prop-up his government in anyway he thinks will work. It won't work and the voters will see through this at the next general election. If you want to change something, you need a clear idea of what the change should be, and be able to muster strong arguments in its favour. Once again, Brown is found wanting.