The Crux of the Issue
Iain Dale got there before me:
Having worked for an MP doing constituency casework (OK, it was 21 years ago!) I know what kind of confidential problems constituents approach their MP with. Imagine you had written to Damian Green a few months ago with a complaint about the Police and he had taken it up for you. Imagine how you would feel this morning, knowing that in all likelihood some anonymous Detective inside Special Branch is at this moment trawling your correspondence on his hard disc.
Imagine you were a battered wife, seeking advice on how to get redress against your violent husband, who just happens to be a Police Officer. That correspondence would now be being read by a Police Officer.
Imagine you are a constituent wanting urgent help on an immigration case, or that your benefits have been miscalculated and you are urgently waiting for an answer. You won’t be getting one very quickly…
Presumably Speaker Michael Martin thought about this when he gave the Police permission to enter Damian Green’s office. This is why people across ALL parties are so concerned at what has happened. It’s not Conservative v Labour. It’s about Parliament v The State.
The issue ultimately is not about the guilt or innocence of Damian Green, although the law under which he is being held raises some serious questions. The problem is that the police have acted in such a manner as to threaten the confidentiality of privileged communications between an MP and his constituents. Anyone who has used a BlackBerry or an email client will know that it is almost impossible not to sift through emails determining which are subject to privilege and which aren’t without violating said privilege in the process. That is why the law and the policing have to work on the presumption that the confidentiality of an MP’s communication is more important than the desire to get results at any cost.
The very fact that the police have cast their net so wide as to include taking love letters between Mr. Green and his wife suggests that they have not acted in a manner that respects the basic principle that the privacy of communications between an MP and his constituents are sacrosanct. If they are not afforded the same level of protection as communications with a doctor, lawyer or priest, then the functioning of Parliament is weakened.
Parliamentary privilege cannot be suspended for mere political or policing expedience. The Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms had no authority to do so unilaterally.
Sphere: Related ContentJon Snow
Over on Channel 4 Jon Snow, having thought it was a good idea to reveal information that threatened the lives of British soldiers, has now surpassed himself.
Referring to the Mumbai attacks:
The killers, announced Jon Snow at the top of the show, showed a “wanton disregard for race or creed”.
Really? Is that why they demanded British and American passports in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel? Did they murder the inhabitants of the only Chabad Jewish centre in the city because there was .
Perhaps in Mr. Snow’s world however this was the most politically-correct of atrocities. The terrorists, keen on demonstrating that they were killing for reasons that had no creedal or racial basis, singled out specific national and religious groups for killing to ensure that they met sufficient equal-opportunity-to-be-butchered quotas? In that sort of view the Jewish centre was targeted not because of a pathological anti-semitism, but to make sure they weren’t excluded from an infamous part of Indian history.
To be fair though, that doesn’t demonstrate the “disregard” that Mr. Snow refers to. For it to be disregard they would have to have not targeted anyone. For that to be the case the events would have had to unfolded differently.
Bad reporting at the best of times, but considering that the targeting of the Chabad centre was widely known and that most witness accounts referred to the demands for British and American passports, this crosses the line into either stupidity or a more sinister wilful ignorance of the facts.
Sphere: Related ContentGovernment to Create Tax on Tax Cuts
Setting: The Future
The government today announced that a new tax to be imposed on money gained from previous tax cuts.
Speaking outside the Treasury, the Chancellor said:
“After introducing our tax cuts last year we found that people had more money. That increase in income led us to believe that we should tax it. If we didn’t give our civil servants something to do in order to appear frightfully busy, people might start questioning whether it was right for them to have gold-plated index-linked pensions at a time when more of the population are in penury than ever before, the direct result of the previous Tory administration, despite all the statistics to the contrary and our having now been in government for a thousand years”
“We were shocked to discover that rather than frivolously spending all their new-found money on the High Street and maintaining the boom based on excesssive and unsustainable spending patterns, citizens were putting their money aside in sound, stable investments and savings accounts.”
The Chancellor continued: “The case for big-government profligacy has never been greater than it is now. It is clear that the public do not understand that the purpose of having large sums of money is to fritter it on gimmicks. We know better than them how to waste vast sums of money, so we’re going to take the money back and continue to spend it on boondoggles, PowerPoint presentations and costly re-branding exercises of things you’ve never heard of before.”
Sphere: Related ContentSharing the Proceeds of Recession
Having seen a shop on the high street advertising that it would pass on the proceeds of the VAT cut, one wonders what will happen when it gets raised to 18.5% later on.
Will they continue to pass the costs on, resulting in reduced trade, or will they keep their prices down, reducing their profits and thereby risking downsizing? Either way, any apparent recovery will be stymied.
It looks more and more like cynical positioning than sensible economics.
Sphere: Related ContentExploiting the Market
Looking at the VAT reduction and its timing there appears to me something of a cynical motive.
I may be completely wrong. But given that much of the mini-budget has dates that would appear to cooincide with electoral periods, it is an idea worth exploring.
I have had a job in retail, fluctuating between full and part-time employment, for the last year and a half. It is in a sector that is particularly sensitive to the state of the economy.
There has been a noticeable slump in sales this year. This is in part due to the recession, but the extent of the silence on the high street is also the result of people saving their money to buy their Christmas presents closer to the holiday.
The high street expected sales to increase in the next four weeks regardless of the PBR. Those sales will be higher this year because people are condensing their Christmas spending period. The cut therefore seems to be an attempt by the government to take credit for the actions of the invisible hand and the Christmas season. But as Freakonomics points out, correlation is not the same as causation. It is unlikely to be some sort of market rally inspired by Mr. Darling.
People spending more in the next four weeks appears more likely to be the result of Christmas than the state of VAT. The government should not be allowed to take the credit that easily.
Sphere: Related ContentPub Taxation
Courtesy of Tory Bear (who in turn copied it from somewhere else), an interesting way of thinking about taxes.
Sphere: Related ContentSuppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.So, that’s what they decided to do.The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
“Because you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”
Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got one dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!And that is how our tax system works.
The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Tumbleblogging
I’ve set up a mini-blog on Tumblr that incorporates my Twitter feed, this blog’s RSS, and the occasional jotting down of ideas, links, photos and so on. It’s probably not to everyone’s taste, but it might find a use for itself.
You can find it at http://benjamingray.tumblr.com/
Sphere: Related ContentOnce Upon a Time
There was a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer committed to sound money, tax cuts and free trade. “He was raised in an atmosphere which regarded borrowing as an evil and free trade as an essential ingredient of prosperity”. He was subsequently expelled from the Labour Party.
A prize to whoever works out who it is.
Sphere: Related ContentBlogging Type Analysis
Thanks to Typealyzer:
Sphere: Related ContentINTP - The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
Guest Blogging on Tory Bear
I’ve written a post on the NUS over at Tory Bear.
Sphere: Related ContentI’m basing this argument on the premise that the new constitution for the NUS gets ratified. If it doesn’t then disaffiliation may well become necessary, and I will be proposing it in my union. It is also comforting to know that I am a masochist; political involvement is not about personal comfort.
We should first dispense with the notion that the NUS is some EU clone. It is not. The NUS has virtually no ability to dictate the policy of individual unions, and acts instead as an umbrella organisation to represent their interests. It bears closer resemblance to the LGA than Brussels. The idea that it is “bloated” is also a myth; in the past few years the organisation has undergone drastic efficiency drives and downsizing to balance its budget, to the point where they sold off their headquarters building. It has a budget far smaller than some of the unions it represents.
Far from being a mere collection of unwashed, unshaven, oppositionalist placard-wavers keen on demonstrating about whatever it is trendy to be against this month, the NUS performs roles that are vital to many student unions. It provides training and a forum for sabbatical officers to share ideas that many individual unions simply could not afford. Through NUSSL and NUS Extra it helps provide services to and discounts to unions and their members.
When those on the Right are organised, we have successes. It may surprise some to learn that the NUS has had two CF members on their executive in recent memory. We don’t know if we could get more on because we haven’t tried. When the Right are on top of their brief and in command of the facts, we are able to make valuable contributions to the debate. The fact that our ideas are neither the empty rhetoric of the left, nor the stereotype expected of the right, gives us a distinct advantage in discussions.
Though the idea that a CF defeat in the NUS would affect our party’s standing in a general election is absurd, there is the genuine possibility of the NUS becoming the focus of future opposition to a Conservative government on education policy. The only way to reduce such knee-jerk automatic hostility is to have people inside the Union making the case for such policy. Even if the NUS retains a left-wing slant, which it will for the forseeable future, better that their ideas encounter stiff opposition than the unanimous approval of an audience unaware of any alternative.
It has always been something of a bogeyman to demonise the NUS as the front group of a band of revolutionary Trotskyites. Though disproportionately represented, they still remain in a minority. That minority is shrinking year on year, as witnessed at the last annual conference, where they suffered a major rout from the NEC. A vast swathe of delegates belong to no faction whatsoever, and are willing to vote on the merits of the argument. We owe it to them, as well as the students we represent, to make that argument.
The idea that we should spend more time and effort organising and campaigning on campuses is indeed a laudable one, but it does not come at the exclusion of conservatives organising for and within the NUS. Part of the reason the hard left are disproportionately represented is because on many campuses they run the strongest campaigns. Were CF members to offer organised, sustained, issue-focused opposition we could reap similar rewards. The divisive politics of the hard-left are off-putting for many students. We are in an excellent position to offer a viable alternative.
Fundamentally, the idea of organised national representation for students is a good one. We cannot simply keep out of the organisation that does that because we disagree with its current policies. Conservatism, if it means anything, is about working within flawed systems to reform them, rather than seeking to overthrow them in a utopian fantasy or fit of pique. A new rival to the NUS isn’t going to come along. Education policy is currently severely flawed; we have to remain in the NUS to explain why, and how we would improve it. We have to remain in to make sure that left-wing dogma does not go unchallenged. Above all, we must remain in because to leave would be to silence ourselves.
