The stench of filth at the heart of government

Over my career I've been offered just about every reward and inducement you can imagine. As the bloke leading the contract award team and the bloke signing-off contractors claims and stage payments, and a lot of the time the bloke leading the design team as well, I am a natural target. Apart from end-of-job boozeups (at which I always contribute to the pot) I've turned them all down. One poor sod charged by his board with 'grooming' me grew desperate after I'd turned down Wimbledon, a hired superyacht, a table at the Cafe Royal and a tank driving weekend and asked me outright what it would take. "Your firm making the most advantageous bid to my principal" was my frustrating answer. I'm not a Puritan, it's just far easier to sleep at night if you're dead straight. Plus you get a reputation, and employers know they can trust you with their millions. 

I guess many of you feel fine about both taking advantage of such offers and properly representing your own side; I've been told many times that such things are just part of the mutual perks of business, just oiling the relationship. For others working in the private sector this may be true - I can only say I can't work with it. 

When of course those gifts, inducements and rewards are made to planners, government officials, elected ministers and those charged with stewardship of the public purse, I'm sure my view should prevail; there should be a zero tolerance of such things. This is not now the case. All that's required is that the recipient of such largesse declare it on a public register. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian exposes the threat to national probity of such corruption;

" ... the hospitality showered on (Westminster Council's Planning) committee’s chairman for 16 years, the amiable Robert Davis, was breathtaking. Five-hundred freebies, including 10 foreign trips, in just three years. At least 150 of these were from a who’s who list of property industry figures. Even Harvey Weinstein is on the list. Entertaining Davis was clearly a Westminster cottage industry. He can hardly have had time to down one glass of champagne before raising another.

The NHS is awash in inducements to doctors to prescribe branded medicines. Arms company boards are stuffed with generals. The banks that fund private finance initiatives keep the Whitehall doors revolving. Declarations of interest by members of the House of Lords read like a lobbyists’ congregation. It clearly pays companies to lobby. The irony is that it was David Cameron who made great play of curbing this in his Lobbying Act. It was, he said, “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. Yet the only scandal was how the act was watered down, and how Cameron’s transparency register for lobbyists was lobbied to oblivion."

Yep for the dilettante Eton-boy Cameron his chums always came first and controlling lobbying went the same way as Localism and all the rest of his early lies. If Blair is the father of fake news and unjust war, Cameron is the father of nepotism, cronyism and corruption. An honour for his hairdresser was a final finger thrust in the air at the rest of us. 

Lobbying carries the stench of filth into the heart of our democratic processes, feeding on the avarice, rapacity and vanity of weak and credulous people in public office. It leaves both the giver and taker beshitten. It must be ended. 

Ignore fake Gouta 'outrage' - it's a smokescreen

With Agent COB revelations bubbling away as a foretaste of more news of Corbyn's past stupidity to come, as the deep establishment has now decided it's time to cut him off at the knees, it's a good time to take a look over to Syria. 

The manufactured horror in the Western media is peaking with 'humanitarian concern' over a rebel held pocket on the outskirts of Damascus. The press forgets that Russian-backed Syrian army re-taking of urban areas is brutal but thankfully rapid, with ground forces clearing house-to-house shortly after bone-numbing artillery and air attacks. Unlike US / Iraqi faffing about, with endless attritional bombardment including US White Phosphorus causing mass casualties because the ground forces won't risk themselves in combat. Not only is Syria's approach ultimately kinder, but the civilian population in the rebel area has already had every encouragement to move out into safety in the Assad-held areas but has chosen to remain. 

Media concern here is manufactured and is a smokescreen. Take a look at the current war map; ISIS have been all but vanquished, the Kurds have occupied territory from the Turkish border to the Euphrates, and the remaining US-backed Islamist rebel enclaves are shrinking. Assad must eliminate the rebel pockets around Damascus before a major offensive against the US / Turkish backed rebels holding land east of Latakia. We are now entering into the most dangerous stage of the war - in which Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli and American ground and air forces are at high risk of direct conflict. 

 Der Spiegel has a good taste of the confusion now emerging on the ground;

What do a counterfeiter from Syria, an Iraqi-Afghan militia fighter under Iranian leadership and a Russian Cossack have in common? More than you might think. They all took part in a strange offensive involving around 300 men on Feb. 7 -- an attack force that was bombed by the U.S. as it crossed a pontoon bridge over the Euphrates River in an effort to capture one of largest natural gas fields in eastern Syria for the Assad regime. Located near the city of Deir ez-Zor, the so-called Conoco field had been wrested from Islamic State (IS) last September by Kurdish-led troops -- with the help of U.S. Special Forces who have been stationed in the area since then.

The Americans are using the Kurds to promote their own interests and the Turks, in addition to their own soldiers, are using anti-Assad rebels to fight on their behalf. Iran, meanwhile, has a diverse mixture of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani recruits under its command, in addition to its own people. Since 2013, the tens of thousands of troops under Iranian control have been propping up the regime of Bashar Assad. They are commanded, trained and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which wants to keep its Syrian ally in power at any price. One of these multinational Shiite militias was also involved in the attack on the Conoco gas field -- a collection of fighters straight out of a dystopian catastrophe film. 

Two local tribal militias also took part in the attack, including one controlled by counterfeiter Torki Albo Hamad. Once wanted in Qatar for murder and document forgery in Saudi Arabia, he was known in Syria for being the leader of a gang of highway robbers. In 2013, Damascus offered him money and impunity if he and his men would place themselves at the service of the regime.

This is the real story; the big boys are now playing out the end game for land, gas and oil, and our sucker media is just too easily distracted by planted fake news intended to turn our focus away from the important stuff. With the BBC still soundly smarting from the spanking it got over its wholly fake White Helmets reporting from Aleppo (there weren't any) they've fallen straight into this one. Perhaps when Czech intelligence officers branded Agent COB 'stupid' they didn't know he was representative of a whole cabal of 'stupid' at the heart of the British establishment.

Give to charity, but don't buy from an OXFAM shop

I am very grateful to commenters on here who have described how to donate efficiently and get aid to the people that need it. Just to prove their point I've been through the accounts filed for 2017 by OXFAM to find possibly the least efficient way yet devised of giving aid - buying those cute 3rd world sofa throws, gourds or greetings cards from an OXFAM shop or OXFAM online. Here's what happens to every £1 you spend:-

You Spend	£1.00
Less 20% VAT*		£0.17
Sub total		£0.83
Less cost of trading		£0.66
Less OXFAM admin costs		£0.05
Sub total		£0.12
Less 5% political campaigning		£0.01
NET TO AID		£0.11
*VAT charged on gifts, cards, commissioned goods but not on donated items
Source: 2017 accounts submitted to Charity Commission

First point is that VAT is chargeable on all those commissioned gift items - but not on donated goods. So if you're buying an old frock rather than a new greetings card, the net will be bigger. Oxfam shops are really just PR - a subtle way of pretending that the charity gets most of its money from public gifts and donations rather than from central government aid. Once you take off the costs of running the shops and the website, and the costs of HQ staff and executives, you're left with just 12p of that £1.00. And then OXFAM skims off a further 5% for its domestic lobbying and anti-poverty campaigning - leaving just 11p to go on aid and development.

For anyone paying £3 a month by direct debit, your yield is a bit better. But be aware that OXFAM has 11 executives earning over £100k pa. Assuming they're all at the midpoint of the first £100k+ band, it takes 37,000 x £3 direct debits just to meet their salary bill each month. News that 1,000 folk have cancelled their DDs as a result of the sex scandal will hardly dent them - unless another 36,000 join them.

Looking at the figures really does bring the waste into sharp contrast. The lesson is, if you want your money to reach the people in need, follow the suggestions in the comments, and please, please, look at the accounts before you spend.

Rejecting moral relativity is not Puritanism

I don't want to ban the Lithuanian hookers who hang-out in the marble-clad cocktail bars of the 4* 'international' hotels around Euston Road. I certainly don't want to ban grid girls, darts dollies or the lady in the bikini on cards of peanut packs. I don't want to stop Max Mosley hiring tag-teams of prostitutes to cater for his deviant S&M sexual preferences (though because he funds the fake press regulator Impress, I do want to retain the right to report on his activities). And as some of my most stably married friends met whilst working together, I certainly don't want to stop office flirting or tea-room romance. 

But I do want to stop 'aid workers' in their 40s, 50s and God help us '60s using their positions of power and trust to sexually use very young girls from some of the most vulnerable, poor, disadvantaged and helpless places in the world. Paying women for sex is not a good thing, but where there is a degree of power equality and willingness on both sides it degrades only those involved. This is not the case in aid zones, in places where the UN flag flies, where the gross disparity in situation of the abuser and the consentor to sex makes it, in my eyes, rape. And please don't tell me that 'those girls look older than 13' or 'those African girls mature quickly, you know' - it makes you part of the problem. 

When I look into the helpless eyes of a person barely out of childhood who has nothing, absolutely nothing, and is dependent utterly on external aid and assistance, I really do believe that any man who harms or abuses such a one is better off throwing himself into the sea with a large rock tied to his neck. They certainly have no place in our society or that of any other people. They are pariah dogs, outcasts, lower than snakeshit. 

The UN has seen ill-disciplined African 'peacekeepers' rape very young girls to a disgraceful extent in DRC and other intervention zones, but at least has a Code of Practice which just needs to be enforced. Unlike Oxfam, which has said in recent days that it does not prohibit its field staff from using local prostitutes on human rights grounds. This is reason enough for DFID to withhold all funding from Oxfam until it not only imposes this COP on all its field staff, but has the structure to enforce it. If Oxfam aid workers want to use whores, they can wait until they get back to London, Brussels or Copenhagen. 

Boris laid an egg fit for a curate

Yesterday was vintage Boris. I usually imagine him assuring anxious aides who are begging to see the text just hours before a speech is due to be delivered "Don't worry. Got a few ideas scribbled on a napkin. I'll wing the rest ...". Yesterdays speech, I suspect, was actually written in advance and cleared first by Mrs May. No cod Latin, no jokes about the War and only a hint of seaside postcard (sorry, Thailand). 

There was also nothing for Remoaners to pick apart; it's hard to criticise someone bestowing hope, love and best wishes to everyone. What are they to protest? "No, we don't want good relations with the EU, we want, er .." so it was clearly written as a proper speech, all sunlight, optimism and rolling uplands. That's fine. I can buy into that. But it's not premier league stuff - mostly forgettable in ten minutes. 

With one exception. The edible part of this curate's egg was the Foreign Secretary's warnings of the danger of a nation polarised by the Brexit vote. He's right. It's not enough to dismiss the 48% with "You lost. Get over it."

First, we have to leave. All the Soros money and the Gina Millar show need to play out, the Lords need to make their red leather benches damp and we need to get to March of next year. After that we have serious work in re-building a nation; those 48% are Britons, our brothers and sisters, with a share in and commitment to the United Kingdom every bit as great as ours (if mistaken or confused). Boris was spot-on with this one warning; our most urgent task after Brexit is not to secure trade deals, but to rebuild One Nation.

A post Brexit vision? About time ...

News that the cabinet's Brexiteers are to go on tour doing some speechifying on the benefits of a post-Brexit Britain. And about time. If stories are true that Rudd and Hammond have been restrained from spreading gloom whilst this is going on, then all the better. So just to get the ball rolling, here are just a few of my own hopes for our post-Brexit realm;

Exemplar
An example to Europe and the world of fairness, equity, tolerance and the rule of law. One nation needs to stand apart and show what freedom, justice, liberty and democracy really mean, particularly at a time when Europe's nations again face the most fundamental challenges to their national and cultural identities. Our law, our courts, our judicial independence, our language and our values stand head and shoulders above the pygmies of the Berlaymont.

Alacer
Europe's sclerotic and glacial systems of governance, dependent on serried ranks of bureaucrats reaching consensus in the absence of democracy, doesn't make for an agile government, to abuse the middle management buzzword de jour. I don't really like the term agility; it's too much like what monkeys do, rather than what statesmen should do. So alacrity then - from the latin alacer - that without Europe's lead weight we may respond and react to world events with greater speed and clarity.

Defensor
A nation with teeth that can bite - military, of course, but diplomatic, cultural and scientific, too. We are defending not just an Island but a system of post-enlightenment rational belief, free speech and freedom of expression and a way of life. We remain foremost in technological development. We must be proud of who we are and what we stand for - and that includes Britons of every creed and colour, across the political spectrum. Integration and social coherence within the realm are vital.

Mercator
A favourite word, this, embracing both merchant / trader and the dominant system of map projection vital to understanding world trade. The last time Europe imposed a trade boycott on the UK, back in old king Henry's time, our merchants simply sailed farther and wider to find replacements, and in the process established a system of global trade that sustains the nation today. These early merchant venturers also developed capitalism as we know it today, with the practice of jointly investing in speculative voyages in a way that shared risk and reward. You've really only to stand and listen in a crowded, beer puddled, jostling City pub on a Thursday night to find that we haven't lost it. 

Domesticis
Leaving the EU will also mean divorcing our metropolitan elite from their EU support network; they face a separation from the main body of the cancer that has eaten at our society and people. Our abused working class, so despised and feared by the privileged neolibs, can rightly take credit for winning - and need be ever more vigilant in protecting universal suffrage and the secret ballot from the wheedling, corruption and manipulation of the Grayling class. Just as their efforts in two world wars won hard-fought rewards, they will also bear the immediate brunt of leaving the EU, and we must be absolutely explicit that we will make changes as fundamental as were the NHS and post-war housing to ensure they are valued and rewarded, and that the benefits of Brexit don't simply accrue to the sharp-elbowed metropolitan elites who suck the life out of everything else.

If you read just one thing today, read this

I cannot write without subtracting from the clarity and cogency of AEP's column in the Telegraph today. Please, if you read just one thing today, read this.

As a private citizen, I have made up my mind. The current negotiations with the EU have become intolerable. Britain should walk away immediately. It should ask for nothing from Brussels beyond a smooth handling of the switch-over and common-sense treatment of technical issues such as landing rights, Euratom, and cross-border finance. It should withhold the exit fee until the EU has complied. 

Edit - just this once...

"The nightmare recurs. Call it the British Versailles. Theresa May is ash-white and exhausted after sixteen hours of cliff-edge talks. The grim ordeal lasts deep into the night on Friday, October 19.
Britain’s friends around the table at the Justus Lipsius – named after the stoic Flemish author of "De Constantia" – wince with pain and sympathy at the emotional spectacle. Yet they say nothing. The sum of the European Council is of a different character from its parts.

The document sitting before Mrs May spells out the terms. There is no bespoke deal, and no market access for services. The "Canada plus" model has degenerated into a deformed variant of "Canada colonial" with a permanent EU veto over larger areas of British law and policy. It is the worst of all worlds: a limited trade deal under draconian conditions. Medieval historians would call it suzerainty.

The ghastly error of British negotiating strategy is laid bare. Either Mrs May signs, or she walks away and invokes the sovereign fall-back option of the World Trade Organisation. But by then it is already too late for the WTO. The customs machinery cannot safely be activated in the four months left before the Article 50 process expires in March 2019. There is not enough time for the necessary global diplomacy. With Treasury warnings of a sterling crash and a "Gilts Strike" ringing in her ears, Mrs May buckles to overwhelming pressure.

It is a diplomatic defeat of the first order. It brings about three quarters of the alleged trend damage to UK economic growth suggested by Treasury forecasts – 6pc of GDP over the long run under a free trade pact – without securing the central objective of British parliamentary self-government.

Note that the alleged damage would be only slightly more at 8pc under a WTO clean-break, an option that would still be possible (only just) if set in motion today. So even if we accept the Treasury figures – as a Gedankenexperiment  – the difference between a WTO deal that upholds British independence and a "Canada colonial" deal that ties down the UK in perpetuity is barely noticeable when stretched out over fifteen years.

Perhaps my dreams deceive me. Perhaps there will be a fudge of sorts. But what if the nightmare comes to pass?  Paris and Berlin have not retreated one millimeter from their core condition: that there can be no deal on services unless Britain accepts the Norway model (EEA). The UK must swallow the single market package, with euro-judges, and open-door migration, and EU directives forever.

The torrent of leaked EU strategy papers from Brussels are a disturbing foretaste of the relationship that awaits the UK as a "demandeur", pleading for leniency from a position of psychological defeatism. They strongly indicate that the EU is not only insisting on an asymmetric deal that locks in its £80bn goods surplus with the UK, but also that Britain should be bound by sweeping extra-territorial control and should pay annual tribute for the privilege of its own infeudation. It is not a Canada option at all. Canada would have rejected such terms without compunction.

Theresa May hopes to muddy the waters, arguing that the summit "breakthrough" in December refutes the critics and shows that deals can be struck after all. The cold truth is that she gave way on almost everything, and agreed to pay an £50bn exit fee on EU terms, largely in order a secure a transition that does not even allow Britain to strike fresh trade deals with the rest of the world.

As we are learning fast, even this transition is toxic.  The EU’s text threatens suspension of market access, the imposition of tariffs, curbs on banks, and the loss of landing rights, if Britain drags its feet on implementing new laws over which it has no control or is deemed to have violated transition terms, with the EU acting as judge and jury.

This follows leaks of internal papers last week that spoke of Britain almost as a pirate state, so depraved that it might start poisoning its own workers in chemical plants or starting belching black coal smoke from power stations in order to gain a competitive edge after Brexit. 

The text leaves no doubt that the EU aims to control Britain’s future tax policies, regulations, employment laws, and industrial regime, in fine detail – beyond any normal governance codes set by the WTO and the OECD – and that this deviant island should be watched, coerced, and brought to heel. These demands are self-evidently at odds with the supremacy of Parliament. In my opinion the language is indecent.

Some on the Remain side might say "I told you so", but such an argument will not carry them far in British politics since most voters ultimately put some value on such old-fashioned notions of country and national honour. The tribe of footloose "Anywheres" with a high reflexive loyalty to the EU idea, to borrow from David Goodhart’s sociology, makes up 20pc of the population, and most would probably display deep reserves of patriotism if push ever came to shove. Real "Global Villagers" with few qualms about the humiliation of their own country are just 3p

 

My question to Anna Soubry and the hard Remainers in Parliament is how they imagine that Britain would function as a colony inside the EU single market over time, and under the sort of regime that Brussels has in mind. Is it not a formula for perpetual conflict? Is it not bound to further poison relations between Britain and Europe, and to compound error upon error?

I say this as somebody who previously supported a Norway model, at least for a decade until the UK had secured other trade deals and become less vulnerable. Yet events have moved on and trust has been shattered.  As ex-EU commissioner Lord Hill told the House last week, the status quo ante no longer exists.

The act of Brexit has itself changed the political dynamic in Europe, leading to a dirigiste, anti-market, anti-City, and anti-innovation lurch in Brussels – which must lower the EU’s economic speed limit over time, nota bene. It is therefore even more urgent for Britain to reassert self-government. “For an economy that is as dependent as ours on services, how could we in all seriousness subcontract all our rule-making to someone else?” he asked.

The leaked EU documents tell us that Germany and France will not allow the UK to have a Norway deal on anything like Norwegian terms because the UK economy is much larger and – in their mind – poses a much greater danger to the EU project. Our trading rights could be revoked at any moment without the normal protections of the WTO."

There should be no online Safe Space for the political class

I suspect it is true that an individual's motivation to stand as an MP is a mixture of a desire to do good and make the world a better place and a desire for personal aggrandisement. The balance between these two drivers will be different for each MP. They are not necessarily contrary, nor incompatible. I have never had any desire to enter Parliament (except to visit its infamous bars) because I have neither the front nor the requisite talent for dissembling and neither a hunger for fame, power or wealth nor a skin like a rhino. I do though have a desire to do good and to make the world a better place, and that is why I write. We all do what we can.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain, and it is that no MP should end their life being butchered in their surgery car park, like the late Jo Cox, and no MP should go in fear of such violence and threat. We must rightly protect our MPs from crazed killers, terrorists, death threats and the vilest intimidation. We must also protect them from vexatious prosecution, civil or criminal, for what they say in Parliament - and for this we have Parliamentary privilege. Thus empowered, thus protected, they can go about their business, which is our business. 

However, every MP now sitting knew fully well that with their ambition would come both restrictions on how they can behave in their personal lives, and political abuse. Not one sitting MP was so naive as to believe they would be immune from vituperation, anger, frustration, contumacy, criticism, argument, dislike and insult. At one time this came only from journalists writing in newspapers and periodicals, and from crowds at public meetings. Now it comes also via social media. Well, that's a challenge, but not novel or different enough to require a new degree of protection for MPs. We can't create a safe space for the political class without also enacting censorship of valid commentary and opinion, however crude, however illiterate. 

Nor can blogs such as this be fora for prolix balanced consideration. One has a reader's attention for perhaps a minute, often less, and must be both succinct and direct, employ hyperbole and emotion, to opine clearly and memorably on any issue. I've tried equivocal posts, perfectly balanced posts, kinder gentler posts and they don't work. People don't read them and they don't attract comments. 

I wrote above that I don't have a hide like a rhino, and that's why I use a pseudonym. This way I can fully preserve free speech here in my little kingdom and anyone may comment just about anything without wounding the real me. MPs have no such padding. We must ensure that their legal protection from criminal intimidation, and their safety from physical violence, is as absolute as we can make it. But we must preserve also our right to call them fatuous, vacuous talentless sheep without the imagination to run a whelk stall, should we so wish.    

Remainer elite frothing at the mouth in frustration

So, the two former heads of the civil service have been in the news to demonstrate the consummate professionalism, suave self assurance, nuanced diplomacy and utter impartiality of the Home Civil Service. Puce-faced with anger, one described the 52% of electors who voted for Brexit as being like Nazis in 1930s Germany; frothing at the lips, the other described voters with whom he disagreed as 'Snake oil salesmen'. 

Some professionalism. Some impartiality. If they've achieved anything, it's to leave the entire nation in no doubt whatsoever that our mandarin elite wants nothing more than to ignore the democratic will in just the same way as their close chums in Brussels. 

For anyone else on the leaver side, these crude and desperate ad-hominem attacks on voters are the forlorn actions of those who simply have no more rational arguments to muster. Phase II of Project Fear, like the doomed Ardennes campaign, has collapsed in the winter snows with Remoaner assets smoking and destroyed on the battlefield. 

As we close in on Berlin, their resistance will still be determined, their counter-attacks attritional, but ultimately vain and futile. As the realisation dawns that they have lost, their determination will grow to cause the greatest harm to the United Kingdom in their downfall. We must be both vigilant and tenacious in moving with alacrity to identify and counter such sabotage from wherever it arises - and that includes from within our civil service.  

Brexit - the fork in the road

The fork in the road ahead is within sight. And now is when the Brexit saboteurs go into overdrive, and we get distractions such as that 'leaked' Treasury report. It appears that Treasury civil servants, without ministerial approval, authored an economic forecast document of unremitting gloom which was then somehow leaked. There is speculation in the press that a fifth column of Brexit saboteurs deep within government is throwing everything into the battle to secure membership of the Customs Union and possibly Single Market. Only this is simply not possible without abandoning Brexit. 

So, adopting the responsible position of government, we deny absolutely any wrong doing on the part of the civil service, which maintains a strict political impartiality that had earned it the finest reputation in the world. Then we'll find the bastards in the Treasury responsible and post them to our mission in Chechnia.  

This is just a distraction from the decision that the cabinet - including Hammond - must now agree. Which fork to take. AEP in the Telegraph is clear. Germany is refusing the UK even the pretence of a reasonable deal; they're taking the piss. The long term interests of the UK will not be served by accepting a humiliating deal that destroys our remaining economic advantages. We need to take the path of a clean Brexit, and WTO rules.

Sure, it will cause pain, confusion and chaos in the short term, but we will emerge strong and the EU will lose. And if Mrs May is not woman enough to take the plunge, then the parliamentary party will defenestrate both her and Hammond within a few weeks.

Now it's getting interesting.

Postscript: Crapita and Smart Meters

Just a swift PS to the post below; it turns out that the whole infrastructure of smart gas and electric meters (new generation of which will use a common comms hub in each house that works with all power and gas suppliers plus 'enabled' appliances ..) is being rolled out by DCC Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Crapita plc, now reportedly approaching a Carillion crisis. Hey ho.

There are two WAN options - one for South and Central UK and one for the North, based on radio transmission. And the documentation is interesting, confirming exactly the configuration of metallic shielding / faraday cage that will block the meters (well done, Steve) for anyone interested. 

And from a skim through the technical docs, they're building in a lot of room for expanded functionality for those 'Comms hubs' - including an option for TCP/IP via packets carried on the hard power lines themselves, making wireless / radio HANs and WANs redundant.

Smart meters will hurt the just coping

The Mail carries a story today that reveals the electricity companies are recruiting charity muggers - chuggers - to doorstep householders and pressurise them into having smart meters fitted. 

I've written before about the risks posed by smart meters - chiefly the ability to remotely connect / disconnect the supply. A year ago, during yet another supply shortfall scare, the power companies let it slip that they needed smart meters to allow 'load management' - i.e. to impose rolling blackouts when demand exceeds supply, but to avoid disconnecting hospitals or households with dialysis machines. In a Ratner moment, they also let slip that wealthy customers who pay extra for their power could be exempt from 'load management' disconnections. Which is a useful reminder of the social effects of smart meters. 

For the wealthy and comfortably off, smart meters pose few problems except alerting hacker burglars of times when the house is empty. No sooner have they left for a weekend in their Welsh cottage than burglars are alerted that the kettle and toaster haven't been used and bosh! that's the Philip Stark spiraliser gone.   

For the poor, smart meters will add nothing to their misery. They're not allowed credit. They are already on smartkey supplies and pay pound-by-pound in advance for their power. At a rate significantly higher than the rest of us. If you've never stood behind some poor woman in the queue at the co-op as she empties copper coins on the counter to get another £3 on her key and not inwardly wept you have no soul. 

No. It's the borderline strugglers, the financial jugglers, the overdraft army who will really feel the impact of smart meters. They will already have switched from a fixed monthly direct debit (that always gives the power company a balance of around £1,000 of one's money) to payment on actual readings. By massaging-down their self-readings they can give themselves some wiggle room until the annual compulsory reading by the energy firm - and even then can delay the catch-up reading by a week or so. Then they can wait to 'pay on red' and even then can wait until the 'notice of intended disconnection' arrives. All of which currently allows them to juggle enough to keep a clean credit record and avoid disconnection. But not with smart meters. 

No wonder the power companies are so keen for smart meters. No more meter readers, and above all no more need for magistrate's warrants to break into a dwelling house to disconnect the supply. Just wait seven days after the red bill and -flic!- power disconnected. This will even give them the chance to charge, say, another £100 to -flic!- the power back on, so trebles all round.

Lords abolition - options

If it's not clear now, it will become astoundingly clear to the nation over the next few weeks that we must abolish the Lords in the form in which it is now constituted. The House has been so grossly polluted with thieves, peculators, placemen, barrators, perjurers and all the crooked corrupt filth and refuse from the political class that the scum of their crookedness has irredeemably befouled those who by honour, virtue and service are really deserving of elevation to the peerage. As it is practically impossible to cull the filth, we must seek more radical solutions.

There are three options for an upper house; elected, appointed or mixed. The problem with an elected upper house is that we create a rival to the Commons with democratic legitimacy - less easy to uphold the supremacy of the people, particularly if upper house members are not elected for life. Appointed runs into the familiar problems of opening an honourable system to the faecal touch of the political hand, unless appointments and all influence over them is removed from politicians. 

I have already suggested that we rescue our honours system from political debasement by banning politicians from anything above BEM. In return, we should create a new, special order for political service limited to say 100 members appointed for life with annual nominations to any vacancies by the sitting prime minister, but with no rights for the order to sit in an upper chamber. They would get colourful cod-mediaeval robes, a glittery breast star, post-nominals and a church service once a year with the sovereign. Candidates should be limited to Privy Councillors, to restrain the basest instincts of prime ministers to pay back big favours. 

The much needed renovation of the palace of Westminster offers a useful opportunity to start the change. While works take place at the east end, the Commons should move into the Lords chamber and take over their offices and canteens. The Lords can go to the Excel exhibition centre in Docklands, fitted out as a chamber in that ghastly EU semi-circular configuration as a lesson in how we should never adopt this style for the Commons. 

It's high time we bit the bullet on this. The Lords must go.

Would you really want to shake Lord Rennard's hand? Without gloves?

Crime up: Plod can go back to work.

There is no direct link between the number of police officers in post and the number of crimes committed. If this were the case, police numbers would have been slashed from those in post in 1996 rather than having remained fairly constant; the UK crime rate has plummeted mostly because the age cohort of the population most likely to commit crime has grown up. 

Now the crime rate is starting to rise again, the knee jerk call is for more police. But wait. Think. What have all those police - whose numbers have hardly changed, remember - been doing since 1996, when there haven't been enough burglars, car thieves or muggers to keep them busy? Isn't it obvious? They've all been sitting at the station watching porn on their computers and patrolling Facebook and Twitter for people being rude. 

During the working day, Twitter used to be the preserve of unemployed people in their underpants. Now you can't move for tweets from plods, bored out of their skulls looking for racists. Well, their time has come. The British criminal has come to their rescue. They can now lever themselves out of their rotating chairs and bloody well get back out on the beat. 

Internationalism vs Globalisation

As comments to the post below demonstrate, words matter. I am a patriot, not a nationalist. I am both British and European. I am both enlightened and can speak the words of the Nicene creed in full belief. And I am a passionate Internationalist who loathes globalisation. It is this last distinction that often causes confusion.

The global corporates and their political dags, including the puppets Merkel and Macron, characterise those opposed to globalisation as nationalists who would build a trade barrier around the nation, cut off from the world. Globalisation means free trade, they aver, and open borders. It is, of course, like so much of what they say, a lie.

Globalisation means big business working hand in glove with supranational government, subverting democracy. Globalisation means International organisations of which you've never heard, cannot influence and do not elect making rules that change your life. Globalisation means the corruption and moral relativity of the UN and its spawn, and the trade protectionism of the anti-democratic EU. Globalisation means ever greater barriers to entry for new business and innovation, ever more restrictive regulation preventing free trade and commerce, ever greater central State control over an ever increasing part of our lives. 

At Davos, the Euro puppets are worried. Their concerns need a little translation, though. Macron said 

"We haven’t established an organisation at a world level which looks at artificial intelligence and automation. We allow private companies to control this. We are encouraging technological change, and we are in danger of living in a Darwinian world"

Translation

"We haven't yet globally regulated AI and automation, so the field is still open to independent innovators and venture capitalists. The technology is outside the control of the existing global corporates. This innovation threatens the existing economic power of established global actors and the power of their puppet politicians". 

Of course, had we allowed the EU and UN to regulate tech advancement forty years ago, we would still be dominated by IBM, the internet would not have happened and Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay and Paypal unborn.  Merkel also spoke wistfully, no doubt wondering if the Stasi hadn't been a bad thing after all;

"Data will be the raw material of the 21st century – the question is ‘who owns that data?' In China there is very close co-operation between those who collect the data and the Chinese state. They are almost one and the same"

Translation

"The State and the established global corporates in Europe are losing control of computing innovation. All the innovators are anglophone and the EU has no silicon valley, no silicon fen, no M4 corridor. Trade and commercial advantage will increasingly come from a market of individual economic actors moving toward 'perfect knowledge' and from the removal of barriers to commerce. The State needs to protect its power."

Take a look at the members of the ERT, the shadowy unelected cabal of Euro corporates that really shapes EU law and guides the EU Commission. Not one single tech leader, not one single global innovator amongst them. They are the past.

Are we negotiating the wrong Brexit?

Trade and commerce post Brexit has been the core of all discussion since 2016. But when it's discussed, what is discussed is B2B - bulk trade; tankers and shiploads, containers, cheese by the thousand tonnes, wines by the lake. It's all based on the traditional model of shippers, wholesalers and retailers. But just exactly how robust is this model? 

We know that web-enabled B2C - business to consumer - trade volumes are substantial enough to have hollowed out our high streets, and the effects do not stop at national borders. Once every ten days I place an order with Screwfix, and kit - including radiators - is delivered to my front door from the UK four days later. For Christmas I ordered a mixed case of Port from Portugal at about €8 a bottle compared with about €25 locally. English crisps, French cheese, Italian stone tiles are all ordered either directly from producers or their local agents. My music CDs are from the Netherlands and my English bookseller ships via a postal aggregator in Hungary. My work shirts are ordered direct from the US. When I ordered a knock-off Poulsen light from China at a quarter of the £500 price tag of the real thing I had to pay thirty-odd Euros in import duty and VAT - to the postman, all of whom carry cash wallets here as COD remains common in Austria.  

It's not just postal-sized items, either. I saved €1,200 including transport by ordering loft insulation from Germany rather than locally; my snow blower was €250 cheaper from the Czech Republic and I source other plumbing and heating kit from Kotly.com in Poland - a building store that has embraced a Europe wide B2C trade model. The cost of a pallet load from the UK is about £160.

I'd be really interested to know just what the figures are for this sort of business - including the post and pallet-carrier and courier firm jobs. From my point of view, the global consumer market place is now so well established that it is impossible to sever a single limb. And if, after Brexit, I buy my goods from Screwfix at Zero VAT rate and the local postman has to collect it here, the cost is the same to me - but the frictional costs of the tax transaction pass from the UK to the EU. Of course, if vehicle fuel prices increase substantially it would wreck the model - but what are the chances of that?

If anyone has a source for UK-EU B2C trade balances, please do share them.

Indirect Fire

I like stories about Russian ingenuity. I know they're probably not true, but they really ought to be. NASA spent five years and forty million dollars, the story goes, developing a biro that would write in space. The Russians used pencils. That sort of thing.

The most recent is about indirect artillery fire - the sort in which the gunners fire hopefully into the air relying on their maths skills to predict where the shell will land. Thankfully the cerebral activity of gunner officers is usually augmented by forward spotters, who can report where the shell lands and instruct corrections. A hundred years ago, frail canvas biplanes would hover above no-man's land, or poor sods would be hoisted in balloons. Today we've spent millions developing highly skilled forward observers, trained special forces, equipped with high frequency burst radios, laser target designators and the like. The Russians use drones from eBay with go-pro cams. 

Modern steels, unworn gun tubes and munitions assembled by sober workers are century old technologies easy to achieve today. Add simple electronic fire calculators and eBay drones and you have - or rather the Russians do - an indirect fire artillery capability that recently destroyed two Ukranian mechanised infantry battalions in the space of fifteen minutes. 

Our generals are worried. Defence development in the UK is like the Great War; we fling another billion of public money into research and advance a few millimetres. Or not at all. Our ships are equipped with fire control systems that can track a cricket ball but not a Russian or Chinese boosted missile. We simply can't seem to produce the bangs for the bucks any more, whereas Russia, with the GDP of Italy, races ahead with advanced weapons and systems. 

Service chiefs naturally call for more money in much the same way as they call for reinforcements. And I agree that more men, more ships and more tanks are better (the army now has more horses than tanks). But will throwing billions more at defence contractors produce results? It hasn't so far. 

So here's a suggestion. For as long as I've known we've resisted Russian and Chinese spying on our miltech and hardware. Now is the time to turn the tables. Now that we want to make exactly the same leaps without doing the research - i.e. by stealing their secrets - we need to invest more in spies, invest more in bribing their scientists and call for the flower of English womanhood to volunteer itself to staff honey traps for Chinese generals. We should send a battalion of plane spotters to Ukraine, mount 'scientific' research expeditions, equip our trawlers with GCHQ spy gear. Any of which, I suspect, would pay greater dividends than throwing cash at the fatcats of our second rate defence companies.  

Diehard Remoaners will drop to 15%

The polling is becoming consistent. Michael Ashcroft, a businessman from Belize who takes an interest in British politics, has recently carried out his own polls. These reflect the many ongoing polls collated by the ESRC at What Britain Thinks. Both find by a clear margin that we don't want another referendum. And the indications are that a growing number of Brits are now accepting the last one; the Leavers have hardly changed their views, and moderate Remainers are joining us in accepting that Brexit will happen.

There is also a prediction that a rump of diehard Remoaners will continue; currently estimated at twenty something percent, half the referendum total, this rump is predicted to shrink to some 15% or fewer of implacable EUphiles, some of whom will devote every second of their lives and every pound of their fortunes to punishing their fellow citizens for disobeying. 

These are not ordinary people. These are the wealthy, the powerful, the influencers and manipulators who are used to pulling the levers of society. With access to money and media and the support of global finance and government, they remain incandescent and consumed by bile, derision and contempt for we ordinary folk who dared to disobey them. Gina Miller, her face contorted in fury and hate, on live TV becoming a caricature of a bitterly unhinged woman now showing her years. AC Grayling's very public and ongoing meltdown on Twitter. Blair. Campbell. Adonis. All will be part of the 15% that will never let it go.

Gina Miller before and after the Referendum

They will of course destroy their own lives and happiness with this obsession. It will be a ginormous national sulk that will be turned to humour by a British public. That, at least, is something for which to look forward. 

The dangers of the media echo chamber

We have moved into an age in which the traditional news media no longer merely report the news but seek to shape it. Newspapers and broadcast media have become political actors, campaigns and even parties. As a consequence, the trust that the public used to invest in establishment entities such as the BBC, or the 'broadsheet' press, has disappeared. They are all guilty of disseminating 'Fake News', and public trust of journalists and journalism is now in the gutter. Alongside that of politicians. 

The consequence of this is that most of us now communicate only in echo chambers, with those who share our views and beliefs, using sources that confirm such opinions. The more pronounced this becomes, the more polarised our nation and society, the greater the mistrust and the more egregious the Fake News. From both sides.  

I have written before that I respect greatly the journalistic integrity of Der Spiegel, an openly left-liberal publication but one that fights the loss of journalistic professionalism in a way that the Guardian would simply not understand. It takes a certain courage for Spiegel to ask 'Is there truth to refugee rape reports?' and then to answer the question in a conditional affirmative. Something I suspect strongly that the Guardian would never do. 

Germans are particularly sensitive to notions of mass rape. Antony Beevor helped lift the lid on the extent of Soviet rape in Berlin - the Downfall, bringing to a popular audience hidden records that both German and Russian authorities would rather have remained hidden. Rape and conquest, rape and invasion, are linked in German historic memory, so sex crimes attributed to migrants are big news. In the German echo chamber, no mainstream news outlet references the website Rapefugees.net - but Spiegel sought to challenge what it displayed.  

They found that though many of the rape reports were either false or referred to sexual assaults that fall short of rape under German law, many others were based in fact. Now after finding this unwelcome result, a dishonest media outlet would have shelved the result. All credit to Spiegel for publishing. They write;

The classical media find themselves in a quandary here. If we don't write about the issue and about the rumours circulating on the internet, skeptics see that as proof that something is being hidden. Yet if we do write about specific websites like the one covered in this story, we run the risk of enhancing the profile of pages meant to incite hatred online.

So yes, the pandemic of sex assaults carried out by migrants is based on reality. Police statistics back this up. But the real benefit of honest reporting across the echo chambers is to challenge prejudice and preconceptions; migrants commit sex assaults not because they are Muslims or brown, it is suggested, but because they are "more frequently young and male and are more likely to live in a large city, lack education, be unemployed and have no income".

Well, to a point, Lord Copper. I think why they commit such a high level of sex assaults is still open to judgement. But acknowledging that there is a problem is a good start for both polarised sides. And perhaps our UK media, including the BBC, can even learn a lesson that will allow them to raise their own gaze from the gutter. 

EU to ban stun fishing. For the second time

The EU's identity as a corrupt but inept bureaucracy was confirmed yesterday as French, Belgian, Irish and British MEPs dealt a kick to their Dutch colleagues in requiring the Council to add a new ban on stun fishing to a change in fishing rules. The Dutch fishing minister now faces another kicking from Dutch trawler owners who have spent over £300k per boat converting vessels to electric stun fishing. The vote was 402 to 232 - by no means overwhelming, indicating nations other than the Netherlands have a snout in this eco-destructive trough. 

The story to date is this. First, the EU banned stun fishing in 1998. Then produced a scientific / technical report in 2006 recommending continuing the ban. Despite which, Dutch lobbying, blackmail or string pulling managed to get an exemption for Dutch trawlers - with the effects described in a previous post HERE.  However, British, French, Belgian and Irish fishermen have mounted an effective and concerted campaign to expose the deep harm caused by the Dutch - with the result that MEPs, fearful of the political reaction at home rather than out of principle, I suspect, have acted. 

However, the law will be written by the EU Council. This leaves the Dutch some wriggle room to water down the requirement, delay it or fail to implement what the EP have requested. These delaying and blocking tactics are all part of the wonderfully corrupt way in which the EU works. 

For the UK, one major problem remains. As I wrote in November:-

One current problem is that Dutch boats can fly the red duster and take UK quotas; the previous requirement on UK flagged vessels being owned by Brit nationals was overturned. Our 1988 Merchant Shipping Act was challenged by the European Court of Justice in the Factortame case and overturned - requiring us to register foreign-owned fishing boats.  A single Dutch owned and crewed vessel, the Cornelis Vrolijk, but UK flagged, accounts for almost a quarter of the entire English catch and about 6 per cent of the total UK quota. It lands all catches - some £17m annually - in the Netherlands.

Michael Gove must act now to prepare to reverse the effects of Factortame and to restore the 1988 Merchant Shipping Act to the form in which it was agreed by our sovereign parliament. 

Carillion - sub contractors and suppliers

For the construction arm far more than the FM concerns, intelligent journos have started to pick up on the impact of the firm's collapse on other than direct employees. The real pain is likely to be felt by sub contractors and suppliers - with an impact on tens of thousands of people working for smaller firms carrying out specialist works for the fallen behemoth.

Subbies are always the last to be paid anyway, and have the longest wait for their money as main contractors will generally not pay until their own monthly claims have been passed, and even then may pay only a percentage, with their own retention in place. Main contractors who have won work by underbidding will also squeeze subbies already contracted. I know from personal experience how very close to the edge many subbies on big jobs walk.

Ideally, if the job is to be finished, the subcontractors will be novated to the new main contractor on the same terms - but even this takes time, and when it is likely that Carillion haven't paid them for three months (and they may end up with nothing) the prospect of waiting another three for a payment from a new principal contractor will force many to the wall. 

Clients will only find main contractors to replace Carillion on cost-plus terms if continuity is to be maintained; there is simply no time to cost and negotiate new contracts. And rescue firms will know they must secure rock solid fee agreements now, up front; clients happy to agree crash costs at times of crisis will always backtrack once the hiatus of the rescue is over; getting it sewn up tight whilst you have the advantage is the only way. 

And make no mistake, it's the clients that will pay. As long as the crash costs now are equal to or less than costs of demobilising the schemes, mothballing, re-tendering and re-mobilising, with all the substantial costs of delayed delivery, they will pay. And that means us - taxpayers - in many cases. There really is no alternative. The least-cost options will still cost us a fortune.

When construction pigeons come home to roost

Balfour Beatty must be breathing a sigh of relief this morning that Carillion's recent takeover bid was not successful. BB was lined up to follow Mowlem, McAlpine and Eaga to boost Carillion's sales and potential profits in a process that only works so long as there are more companies with which to merge or take-over; once the music stops, the whole thing generally collapses. 

Carillion was overburdened with debt and major construction contracts were simply not providing the profits to service them. This was disguised for a while by accounting for 'other receivables' i.e. money expected to be released from construction contracts, but never materialising. And this is a tale that is common throughout the construction industry. 

I once let a large contract to a subsidiary of a well known mega firm. It was a newish subsidiary run by set of very confident managers, but with no great track record. Still, their bids were excellent value and they were underwritten by their parent. Shortly after my contract started, rumours came in of heavy time over-runs on another job. They moved key contract management staff from my job to the problem job, and as a result they fell behind on my job. Their solution was to bid low for yet another job; the ever-growing order book made the risk of losses look unimportant. They failed to perform adequately on the third job, too. All the while they were reporting expected contract out turn as close to budget - even when they were into LADs for late completion. A few weeks after my job finished and the final account on their first job became clear, they submitted requests for additional payments of several millions. All the while they were still reporting to their board high levels of profitability - the cost claim was 'income' and contrived to maintain the fiction for as long as possible. 

Well, we demolished their silly claims without breaking sweat, but that took time. By the time their major losses on all three jobs became clear, the parent company decided to close down the subsidiary. The very confident managers became ex-managers. The fact is that they were able to continue forecasting profitability long after the point when it was blindingly obvious they'd cocked up hugely.

In effect, the head company shareholders subsidised my scheme by their cocky managers underbidding and hoping to make up the profits from changes, additions and variations. The form of contract I used didn't allow very much scope for that. 

Well, I'm sorry for all the good folk at Carillion including those I know and have enjoyed working with. But that's mega construction firms for you.  

Brexit - FAQs

Given that Project Fear is achieving peak risible on social media, now may be an appropriate moment to answer a few Remoaner points;

Brexit will mean Brits are banned from travelling in Europe
Brits will be able to travel in Europe visa-free but with passports, just as we have been since 1947, with stays of up to 3 months. No change.

British people will never be allowed to live abroad
Brits can live wherever they like in the world, and do. Generally one needs a source of income, health care arrangements and the consent of the country in which one wants to live. There has NEVER been an absolute, unconditional right to live in another EU country. Nor is there is a single  EU wide standard, and individual national standards are likely to remain as they are now. No change. 

Our children will be barred from the ERASMUS programme
UK access to ERASMUS will continue unconditionally until 2020. After that, the British Council, which funds and runs the UK programme, is committed to facilitating reciprocal access to Europe and the Commonwealth for young Brits. 

Our children's access to EU universities will be restricted
This is probably a good thing if it happens but is sadly unlikely. EU universities are utterly second rate and rank way below the UK's HE sector. The EU27 don't have a single university in the international Top Ten; the UK has four. However, if young Tarquin is so irredeemably stupid that he can't even get a place on the media studies course at Steeple Bumstead, I'm sure that the University of Ibiza will still give him a place on the English degree course. For a fee. 

Brexit will mean food prices will rise
The EU is deeply protectionist and maintains high food prices to ensure good incomes for EU farmers; imports to the EU are therefore heavily taxed. After Brexit it's entirely up to the UK whether to maintain these trade barriers or not - though there are implications for UK farm incomes if we scrap them. Whatever, the UK government will have its hands on the levers that determine retail food prices - and you can be reasonably certain that they will ensure no overall price rise, though the mix and origin of the nation's shopping basket may change. 

The NHS will collapse after Brexit without EU staff
Simply, Bollocks. See the NHS' own breakdown of staff origin. Many EU staff who have gone home since 2016 - a small part of a small part of total staff - have done so because the £ used to buy €1.40 but now only buys €1.12. That's quite a drop in incentive for a Polish nurse working in the SE and also having to pay rent. EU churn will be compensated for by additional worldwide recruitment.

Right. I'm fed up with this now. The remoaners talk so much bollocks one could continue indefinitely.

Winning back the seas

For a nation with links to the sea as strong as the UK, nothing raises such visceral protectiveness as our territorial waters and fish. Oh sure we can get a little bit excited about the economic benefits of passporting for the City, but it simply doesn't raise the blood to battle as does the prospect of a Dutch trawler stealing our cod. Gaining economic sovereignty (I won't say regaining) of our 200 mile commercial limit in 2019 is therefore a big deal.

For UK fishing fleets to take up the catches currently taken from our waters by the EU27 will take time. Boats must be built, crews must be trained, shore facilities must be expanded - and most importantly, vessels to patrol and police our waters from foreign poachers must be built and crewed. If new keels are not laid this month, we simply won't have the last capacity in March 2019.   

I'm not surprised that the EU27 want to hold onto their right to take British fish during the 2-year transition period, nor that the government seem prepared to concede this. If not the CFP then some form of licencing would realistically have been needed to allow continental fleets to wind-down their operations. However, our lost licence fee income from these two years must be deducted from the financial settlement - after 2019 they'll be taking our fish, not a common EU fish stock. 

And one measure we can take, one piece of legislation we can prepare, is to reverse the judgement in Factortame.  Requiring red duster flagged vessels to have a majority of UK national owners would at least halt the despoliation of stun fishing, and ensure that within reasonable time the full economic benefits would return to the United Kingdom.

Impress and Ipso

This is a story in which there are no heroes, only villains. Press 'regulation' does absolutely nothing to eliminate fake news, bias, distortion, omission or misrepresentation in our national press; such things are accepted as part and parcel of newspapers. Some editors, such as Piers Morgan, unashamedly even faked photos and printed fiction when the real thing was scarce. For anyone of any sense, the best approach to newspaper reporters is to shun them utterly; anyone stupid or naive enough to believe that a newspaper will tell their story the way they describe it deserves the monstering they will undoubtedly earn.

So who exactly do the competing regulators Impress and Ipso protect? Well, the establishment for a start - politicians, fixers, political dags, the wealthy, the powerful, and then of course luvvies - actors, musicians and the like, those who seek to use the press for their own publicity. Them. Not us. Press regulators do absolutely nothing for you and I; absolutely nothing. 

So the Press are heroes then, fighting the rich and powerful on our behalf? Uhm, no. The papers are owned or directed by the same rich and powerful. Their aim is to stay rich by printing stuff that people want to read - and what people want to read about are other people, if not the establishment and the rich and famous then at least those endowed with enormous buttocks. Private Eye used to push the boundaries a bit but under Hislop has become flaccid and toothless, a sort of downmarket Punch with dirty print.

One of these pointless regulators was actually founded by Max Mosley who has spent much time and effort ridding the internet of images of himself naked and undergoing a sexually perverted act with a number of prostitutes. As a wealthy man who can afford to indulge his perversions, Mosley asserts his right to do so without fear of exposure. It's not an argument with which I care to engage. 

So there you have it. Impress and Ipso. Utterly pointless and nothing to worry about.

Tax funding for political parties ... again

Yep you guessed. The political establishment is gearing up to have another go at getting tax funding of the established parties onto the statute books - or rather, enhancing the tax funding provisions that already apply. This time around the Conservatives, down to a rumoured 70,000 members, are listening. 

The previous crooked proposals from Christopher Kelly, building on earlier crooked proposals from Hayden Phillips, would have given all parties with at least one sitting MP about £3 a year from taxpayers for each vote the party got in the previous general election. Protests that this entrenched incumbent parties, discouraged tactical voting, discouraged all voting, inhibited political change and gave Labour, LibDems and Conservatives a sort of quasi-constitutional status beloved of establishment mandarins such as Kelly and Phillips fell on deaf ears. In the end it was Labour's refusal to accept a cap of £50k on individual donations - hobbling Union cash - that froze the scheme. 

Back in 2014 I wrote of my dislike for Carswell at the time of his defection - and was admonished by UKIP readers. I called him caddish, I think. However, had the Kelly / Phillips tax funding proposals gone through, he could have earned UKIP some £12m a year in party funding. Without him, 4m votes would get UKIP exactly nothing. Still a turd, perhaps, but possibly a gold plated one. 

Now of course wealthy individual LEAVE funders are being hit for 20% inheritance tax on their donations - donations tax free for global corporates and their UK incorporated dags, for trade unions or if made to (you've guessed it) political parties with at least one sitting MP. HMRC may be applying the law, but it is a dubious law that has the effect of implementing crooked and underhand tax funding of some points of view, wholly against the will of the public on tax funding in general. It's bent, it's corrupt and we didn't vote for it. It's the introduction of tax funding by the back door - and the lever that the establishment will use to move to the next stage. 

The political landscape never remains static. When I started writing this blog, the Conservatives had some 250k paying members, Labour was suffering and down to about 160k and the LibDems scraped some 60k. The 2010 coalition brought chauffeured jags for the LibDem top dogs but a massive hole in party funding from the loss of opposition Short money. Party membership in the UK had reached a nadir with just 1% of an electorate of 45m being party members. 

In 2018 we face a Conservative party with fewer than a third of the members it had ten years ago, a LibDem party on the verge of extinction, with only the disproportionate number of LD peers giving them any parliamentary presence at all, but a reinvigorated Labour party replete with individual memberships and backed with big union money from the TUs that would dearly love a Marxist in the Treasury. 

Party funding is in desperate need of a complete rethink; social media in particular makes a joke of much of the existing framework. But no more Kelly and no more Phillips - no more establishment mandarins, crooked civil servants, bent globalists or Blairite managerialists. 

Who would you nominate to chair a new, fair enquiry into party funding? My own nominees are both from the left; Simon Jenkins, who ran a membership organisation with over 4m paying members, and Helena Kennedy, whose seminal Power inquiry was squashed by the very establishment it sought to reform.