Grubby constitutional deals done dirt cheap

So if it get Alex Salmond to lose the Scottish referendum in am manner that suits David Cameron 16 and 17 year old can have the vote, but potential Scottish Nationals living quite legally and honourably in the rest of the UK will be denied the vote.

Why because the SNP think more inexperienced voters will help their cause, where as those who understand the United Kingdom will hinder it. This is the low dirty standard to which the SNP operates.

But what of David Cameron and his Lib Dems friends ? They are willing to sell out both points as they are fairly sure the SNP are going to lose anyway, and they want full control over any British constitutional tidying up that comes afterwards. they certainly don't want the English Question getting even starker under another one sided anti-English devolution settlement that Devo Max ( or Independence Later ).

As the SNP will have to lose Alex Salmond (again ) sometime shortly ) and the rest of the political talent is pretty low grade this is no doubt seen as the high tide of Independence sentiment, and if basic constitutional principles like the age of franchise have to be traded for narrow sectarian advantage then so be it.

Its dirty, cynical and treats the United Kingdom and its peoples with utter contempt.

Gesture politics

The Coalition has just put through two actions that I would have rounded on with avengeance if they had been carried out by the last Labour government.

So I'll savage this one instead:

1) The Carbon limits suicide note
Never mind the lazy short hand we have all adopted about talking about the element Carbon as shorthand for green house gases. The Coalition has just decided to go with Huhne and Letwin's destroy the economy option of laying down and dying- or at least promising to do so at some time in not so far off future, but beyond the life time of their political careers naturally. ( Come to think of it many things may be beyond Huhne career life time, but I digress .. )

2) Declaratory legislation
Instead of action and progress we get legislation promises. The environment will be looked after - sometime in the future, soldiers will be decently treated - sometime in the future, and overseas aide will be kept high - binding the future.
This is the worse type of use of the law. It will be great for the cult of human rights lawyers and their fat fees and egos to feed off, but its undermining our society. Its a new form of national debt of promises - where today's politicians get the credit, but leave the pain for tomorrow. It is also a subsitute for action.
I always find the more someone promises things the less reliable they are. Your word shoudl be you bond, not legislation.
Jill Kirby does a good job of arguing against this than I can here.

Not good, not good at all.

Worth a read - how local councils are cutting public services rather than their own lifestyles

Somebody in the Coalition needs to start the business of politics going seriously, as this article point out.

This isn't a triangulation emoting issue. Tell Steve Hilton to shut up and wheel out those who can communicate directly and with aggressive force.

The public debate must be won and parasitic town hall socialism defeated.

High inflation is govt policy - just not official policy

One of the key lessons of the Wiki leaks episode is there are open secrets that everyone except the voters knows.

Here's an obvious one - higher inflation is a deliberate policy to reduce UK wage costs and inflate away debt. Reducing the wage costs will bring the recovery closer as we have to work harder for our iPhone and flat screen 3-D TVs and actually sell the rest of the world something in return.

Inflation is also they way governments default on some of our societies debts.

But it all requires the pretence that it isn't happening.

That's now stretching credulity to breaking point..

Personally I'm against this policy as the greatest mistake I see the Conservative part of the current government making is not levelling with the general population about our true condition. We have instead gone for triangulation and slight of hand - and when the time comes to say "trust us there is no alternative" the credibility will be missing and we may fail as Ted Heath did.

The government needs to make an honest case, not carry out a policy in the hope no one will notice.

See also Mark Field MP "Have the authorities decided that tackling inflation will be too painful?"
James Kirkup "Inflation, the BoE and the Coalition: something's got to give"
Fraser Nelson "The inflation crisis deepens"
Allister Heath "You can’t fool everyone all the time"

( All MSM - anyone have any not MSM blog posts on this ? )

Its Labour's selfish hypocrisy that's the enemy of poor students getting to University

At last the Coalition has started fighting back at the muddled thinking and just plain ignorance of much of the "make taxpayers - including poor people who never went to Uni" pay instead of the future middle class.

There is a spectacularly good offer for financing University education with no risk and nothing to pay unless you succeed.

So the future careerist left wing hypocrites are left with just one self for filling and self serving argument. "The idea of debt will put off poor students" - well it might when you say it like that without explaining all the safeguards and no win no pay parts of the government loans offer. In fact its the left who are putting poor students off by wilfully misinforming them and running scaremongering schemes. But then what's new - the left's relationship with poverty has long been that of a drug pusher with his clients.

Now its true that anyone who aspires to go to University should be able to see through the naked political manipulation of the NUS and Labour cases - after all why do we want stupid people at Uni. ( And by the way weren't many of those interviewed over the last few weeks depressing for the shear scale of their ignorance. )

But we should all be supporting fair opportunities to succeed for all - like the Coalition is doing.

Lets also remember, if by some awful disaster, Gordon Brown had carried on as PM they would have been implementing the Browne review instead, and all the selfish careerist student politicians who hope to be Labour parasite MPs one day would have played their opposition down as it impact their future snouts in the trough of what we now call politics.

The changing terms of the debate now Labour have been defeated

Two key areas of the political debate look like they are on the move not that Labour have been removed from office - at last !

1) Debt.
Its no longer "the credit crisis" or the BBC approved Labour not at fault "downturn". The attempt by the left to say its "all the banks fault" is ongoing. But there is a realisation that Debt is the problem and that we in the west have been using it to steal from our children for at least the last decade.

Take a look at the articles in this weeks Economist that has a special report on debt ( private and public ).

A long time ago I called this as a debt crisis, but the left wing media has been desperate to stop that happening as they know where this will lead - to a change in the default ever increasing state controlled spending.

Now we have all much of the developed world taking the Conservatives approach ( you remember the one Gordon Brown used to ridicule us about at the dispatch box as being only followed by the Tories in the whole wide world ). Even the Lib Dems have finally understood the situation ( or at least those Lib Dems who have seen the books ).

2) Afghanistan.
Again this blog has been highly sceptical about the ongoing military activity in Afghanistan and more recently has come out against it. The move into Helmand was shown to be anything but the bloodless policing operation Labour sold to us.

Questions about the war have been asked for a long time. I can remember reading an Economist article about the impact of foreign military presence on the Pashtun population at least 4 years ago ( found it here - economist subscription required I'm afraid ). But its been too much trouble for the Labour to admit its potential errors, especially with the sunken cost of blood and treasure. Instead they have tried to hide behind the uniform with things like "Armed forces day" to make it hard to criticise the deployment.

The armed forces have issues warning about almost eternal deployments that its quite clear would never be politically viable - but our then Labour masters didn't want to deal with the short term consequences of admitting this. ( Easier to just let the cortèges drive through Wotten Basset every day. )

But again many Conservative leaning commentators are now questioning the war ( and calling it a war ), including the interesting character of the new MP Rory Stewart.

The current Conservative govt appears to be preparing the ground for a withdrawal, or at least a withdrawal of most of our military. The UK military and diplomatic commitment to Afghanistan has the momentum of a super tanker, but the signs are that the order to change course has been given and the rudder is now over, even if it will take time to see the results.


Both these issues are major departures from Labour's policy and key issues for our country. And these change in the balance of the debates are very much welcomed by this blogger.

How the BBC makes the news

There's an interesting post by Dan Hannan today where he describes the sort of calls he's been getting from BBC researchers who are fishing for evidence for the story they want to run - read Dan here.

We know from former BBC employees and from facebook profiles that the BBC is an institutionally left wing organisation many of whom's staff go on to careers in left wing parties.

So when they try to create the news like this ( in this case splits with David Cameron and the new coalition ) its going way beyond their brief.

Its fine for the Guardian, Mirror and Independent to do this sort of thing - after all they are left wing newspapers, but the BBC is supposed to be impartial and operate to inform opinion not lead it.

But we all know the reality is very different.

So here's one of my greatest disappointments about the new Lib Dem - Conservative coalition, which is that the BBC won't get sorted out this time as the Lib Dems will protect it.

The day of reckoning is now at least 5 years hence and that is a great shame for our democracy and for the licence fee payers.

An independent line

It certainly felt good to see David and Sam Cameron enter Downing street. I'm a Conservative party member who campaigned for a Conservative government, and whilst this isn't precisely what I campaigned for it contains many of the key elements.

During the campaign I've mostly targeted my comments at other parties and avoided any issues I might have with my own, except for the English Question.

Well here comes the but - normal service will be resumed shortly.

I'm still a Conservative, but I'm not a slavish follower and we're not under election conditions so I'll be speaking my mind here.

I'm economically liberal, but socially conservative. I'm patriotic but pragmatic. I willing to give the benefit of the doubt but not to be taken for a ride. Lets see how the coalition works out, I won't hold back from criticism where I think its warranted.

Two major areas of disagreement I expect to have with the new government are on;

1) An English Parliament - its very clear we should have one. I also think this would make our country stable again and save the Union. A lot of Unionist seem to oppose giving the English their national recognition, but they are making a fatal mistake.
2) The Climate Change Fallacy - Sorry guys I am very far from being convinced that the Warmest argument is true, indeed the majority of reliable evidence (known as the geological record) points the other way.

These are the two main points but there will be others.

We are setting of into the unknown with the coalition - but independence of thought and opinion will continue here, though I'll not be unnecessarily unhelpful - apart from this ;-) .

PS I've a lot of work to make up after the last month, so forgive me if blogging is a bit more sparse. In many ways the next month or two will belong to Labour bloggers anyway as they try to react to their defeat and need for a new leader ( hint - this time try having an election ).