Clegg sacrifices the future of children to appease his Guardinista Lib Dem party members

Onto the bonfire go children's futures as that most selfish of parties insists their ideological hatreds are placed ahead of the good education of our children.

Clegg thinks he's being clever trying to save his job by making an issue out of stopping profit for free schools.

But what is he really saying ?

That schools should not be run efficiently, effectively and have parents choose them if they do. ( Which is what the profit motive ensures ).

Remember schools run for profit would have to achieve that by being run far better than other schools.

Here of course is the real objection of the selfish Guardian reader class, many of whom are employed in our education industry who prime objective seems to be employing and paying teachers well, rather than providing a good education.

The Unions and the left are scared to death that our children might be allowed a good education achieved without using the Stalinist approaches they approve of.

Choice is good - profit ensures that the choices are good.

The Lib Dems should hang their heads in shame for the nasty way they are sacrificing the futures of many children just because some of their own membership can't get its heads round basic ideas and facts.

Again the Lib Dems show why they are such an unpleasant political party of selfish people.

Brown and Darling could force Shell and BP to leave the UK

There is a lot of emotional nonsense being spoken about Shell's profits today.

People like Unite and the AA ( for goodness sake) are trying to link petrol prices at garages to oil company profits. This of course not true. Even refining in general is less profitable - note BP selling Coryton recently to Petroplus.

Gordon Brown damaged the long term future of the North Sea oil industry as chancellor when he raised taxes and made clear that there was no longer going to be stability from the government. The problem is that areas like the North Sea require long term and high investment - you don't make it if you think the likes of Gordon Brown are just going to steal it when it suites them. Shell and BP have already made substantial moves to pull back from of the North Sea.

Now there's at least £8Billion missing from government revenues and making a popular so called windfall tax will look tempting to Darling. But remember its peoples pension schemes that own Shell and BP. So he's really stealing from peoples pensions when he does this ( not that you can expect left wing organisations like the BBC to explain this as the report from a garage forecourt having interviewed angry voters - I have no idea if they've done that this time, but I think they will ).

And there is a further risk Shell and BP may move. Shell completely to the Netherlands ( it is already registered there and its technical operations based there - the Dutch have for a long time got the better deal out of Shell ), BP to the US.

Then HMG will no longer benefit from taxing the profits that these companies make over seas. Less British people will work for these companies and out skills base will decline further.

But just because a decision is pig headily stupid in the medium to long term doesn't mean that Alistair Darling won't get permission from his master Gordon Brown to do it to keep them in their government jobs for a few more years.

Update: See this quote from Sunday 3 Feb Telegraph

"Shell is withdrawing from the North Sea operations because oil and gas reserves are in decline. On Thursday the company said it was planning a big increase in capital expenditure this year, using money from disposals to invest in more productive oil and gas fields around the world."

MiaS would argue that it is also because of uncertainty about operating in the UK created by Gordon Brown.