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March 31, 2005
Un-Marketing, New Labour Style
One thing that New Labour is notorious for is its flexible use of the English language. Thus a smaller rate of increase in public spending can be portrayed as cuts and the invasion of Iraq portrayed as legal. Now they're claiming that cold calling voters on the TPS lists is not marketing, even though the information gleaned (assuming the phone isn't instantly slammed down) will be effectively used to market the Party as they freely admit...Using the information we know about people, we can send them direct mailings.
For example, we could send the target (Conservative) people a letter from someone who had defected from the Tories to Labour explaining the reasons why voting Tory is a bad idea or we could send Labour (weak) people a letter encouraging them to sign up for a postal vote.
Now I'm not the biggest fan of the LibDems, but all credit to Matthew Taylor for calling Labour on this, and kudos to the Information Commissioner for investigating the matter. Although even if Labour are found guilty of a breach of the rules, the maximum punishment of a £5000 fine is hardly significant.
At the end of the day, it's just another example of New labour deviousness. See, it's all about semantics. And that's what happens when you let a bunch of second rate lawyers run a political Party. They elevate the usual twisting evasivness of politicians to new heights. And then politicians wonder why the electorate have disenganged from the democratic process in such numbers.
Would be interesting to hear what our favourite Blairite councillor has to say on the matter, but at the moment he seems more upset by smelly buses that are as old as local councillors. Or was that local buses that are as old as smelly councillors.
Anyway, regardless of which Party you represent, cold call me and you'll get a pithy blast of obscenity free abuse. Send me unsolicited email and I might have a laugh before deleting it. Slip a flyer for a Party-related Credit Card inside your publications and I'll shred it for my daughter's rabbits to cr*p on.
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Posted by Clive at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Tony Blair - Straight Sort of Guy
Well, well, well. Look what Robin over at Perfect.co.uk has spotted:
Enjoy it while it lasts...
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Posted by Clive at 6:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bloggage
Many apologies for the lack of regular bloggage recently. My excuses are many (just like the Spanish Inquisition's weapons) and include:- Being elected to the local Parochial Church Council
- Provisional year end for my company
- Budget planning for the local C of E Primary School
- Dealing with clients who decide, at the last minute, to give the green light to significant amounts of work that they've been stalling on for the last six months
- Working on Backing Blair and a couple of other sites.
Most of the above have been sorted and put in their place so The UK Today can once again recieve the attention it deserves. Which made Blogger's outage today a darn sight more frustrating. Still, the UK Today's back now, so all I can do is say sorry and thank you for your patience.
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Posted by Clive at 5:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2005
Liar, liar
Liar, Liar was an entertaining film starring Jim Carrey as a lawyer and compulsive liar who, as a result of his son's birthday wish, is incapable of lying for 24 hours. Think just how entertaining the results could be if little Leo Blair were to make the same wish.Unfortunately such things don't happen in reality, and so we've all become used to our politicians lying, especially at election time or in the runup to key votes in Parliament. We're all familiar with such classic examples as We will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them - Labour Party Manifesto. And with the passage of time, the 45 minutes claim regarding Saddam's alleged WMDs appears to be more an more based in dishonesty rather than incompetance.
So the misfiring of New Labour's latest pre-election attack doesn't surprise me at all. As can be seen from this report, Blair has had to admit that rather than the Tories making £35bn of cuts in public services, the reality was that the increase in public spending by the Tories was going to be £35bn less by 2011 than the proposed Labour increase over the same period. So not a cut, but a smaller increase in spending.
Guido's take on this matter is here
But as we've seen before, on too many occasions, Blair and his New Labour Project have never let the truth get in the way of their objectives.
So Tony Blair is a liar, in spite of Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price being thrown out of the House of Commons yesterday for making a lesser accusation that Blair misled Parliament over Iraq.
Pretty straight sort of guy? Or compulsive liar? Your choice.
Update 10:25 - More on this at bloggerheads, including a tasty googlebomb.
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Posted by Clive at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2005
What the Chancellor giveth with one hand...
... he generally taketh with the other.First a caveat; I am not an economist.
I'm not going to dismantle yesterday's budget for two reasons; firstly because a lot of the measures had already been announced in the autumn last year, and secondly because there was really much in there. For example, the extension on ISAs is really a case of not taking something away, rather than giving or taking, a situation that covers many of the measures in the budget. And we've already had warning on the clamp down on tax avoidance measures which effectively means that is any business discovers a new way to save tax legally, they must tell the Inland Revenue about it. It should be noted at this point that tax avoidance is legally sound, but morally open to question while tax evasion is simply illegal. Gordon Brown appears incapable of distinguishing between the two, or is simply disinclined to distinguish between them. This is the sort of attitude that help America to independance.
But there's one element that caught my eye, namely the increase in the threshold for stamp duty. Raising the threshold to £120,000 his has been touted as a great gift to the housing market from the Treasury, but is rather a classic example of behaviour quoted in the title of this post.
For starters, Gordon Brown froze the previous threshold of £60,000 way back in 1997, since which property prices have in many places doubled or even tripled. In fact stamp duty was a classic example of Brown's approach to stealth tax increases by the simple expediency of freezing an allowance or threshold and letting inflation do the dirty work for him. As an illustration of this, I bought my first house (a modern 2 bed semi in Barnsley) in 1989 for £35,000 and sold it for a modest profit of £5,000 in 1993. Last year it was sold for £85,000 and whoever bought it (still considered a starter home) would have paid stamp duty.
In many areas, this measure will have little impact on the housing market, so there is no way that any claim can be made for this being a measure to benefit that.
But the interesting aspect is the way Gordon Brown could give with one hand and take with the other. The Stamp Duty threshold increase is going to cost about £250m this year, which seems very generous of the Chancellor. Yet at the same time he has abolished Stamp Duty relief on commercial property in deprived areas. This relief was part of a package of measures introduced in 2002 to try and stimulate the economy in 2,000 deprived areas, with the aim of driving regeneration. The removal of this relief will net the Treasury an additional £340m this year.
Better still (or not as the case may be), those regions considered deprived are in the majority of cases the same areas where properties can be found for less than £120,000. Isn't it marvellous? In one simple measure Gordon Brown has tried to buy votes with your own money. And from a regional perspective, you may actually be worse off. Because (takes a look around Barnsley) while things have improved, there's still a long way to go with economic regeneration around here. So while local house purchasers may enjoy a short-term gain, the longer term effects on a still-fragile economy remain to be seen. But what good is not having to find the money to pay stamp duty when the lack of economic rejuvenation makes finding and retaining employment a struggle.
And I won't even start on the one-off payment of £200 to qualifying pensioners to help with council tax bills this year, or the delaying of fuel duty increases until September. As I said earlier, this was an election budget. Don't be swayed by it's superficialities, but instead when you come to vote in May consider the bigger picture, the real performance of New Labour over the last 8 years.
Finally, if you're sat there thinking "but that nice Mr Brown will one day be Prime Minister", consider whether or not the Blairites would let that happen if they're seen to do well in this election. And consider also, the tragic case of Anthony Eden, the heir who waited too long.
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Posted by Clive at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 11, 2005
Terror - reprise
Parliament has finally passed the anti-terror legislation. All the parties can now get down to claiming victory, but to be honest the victory really belongs to all of us. While not called a sunset clause, the requirement for the agreed legislation to be reviewed in 12 months has the same effect. The question we must therefore ask is why this government persisted in its arrogant defiance of public opinion only to back down at the last minute. The cynics among us (myself included) can only conclude that Blair's strategy of trying to make the opposition parties look soft on terror by force them to scupper the bill was obviously backfiring. By allowing the latest changes he can now try and present himself as a leader who listens to the public mood. Which is bullsh!t and shows a degree of contempt for the electorate which almost defies comprehension. So there you have it; not so much tough on terror, but rather a case of re-election at any cost.Remember this when you come to vote. And consider also, that Tony Blair thinks you are at the least niave if not ignorant or stupid. He holds no respect for you, putting his personal vanity and re-election before doing the right thing. Does such a person deserve a your support and approval? Does this man deserve your mandate to govern?
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Posted by Clive at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Terror
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty not safety.Benjamin Franklin wrote those words in 1759, but they are still relevant more than 250 years later as we witness the almost surreal passage of the Government's latest anti-terrorism legislation. Who would have thought that we'd see the undemocratic House of Lords defending liberty against legislation introduced in the democratically elected House of Commons? And this in spite of Blair's attempts to fill the Lords with "cronies". There was such pleasure to be derived from hearing that Lord Irvine, Blair's old mentor, had opposed the legislation.
And so the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta (1215 - right to fair trial), Petition of Right (1628 - no imprisonment without trial) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679 - judges can command the Government to bring any person in its custody to court for trial under the due process of law) endure.
Endure in spite of the disorganised LibDems. For when the Government's majority was reduced to 14 votes last week, 17 LibDems failed to vote. And this is the party claiming that it is the true opposition party.
Endure in spite of the Government originally allocating a mere 6 hours for debating the legislation. Or less than an hour for each century that Magna Carta has stood.
And in spite of the approaching deadline of 14th March, the Government is still holding out against the inclusion of any sunset clause. Yet if the bill is truly to make us safer, then surely it is better to have the act on the statute books for a limited period of time rather than not at all. Unless, of course, the powers introduced by the bill will make us no safer. And perhaps the act is intended as a counter to Tony Blair's conduct over Iraq, an attempt to demonstrate that every involvement of British forces in the War on Terror is justified, because we are at risk. And we must be at risk, because why else would the Government be introducing such powers.
Yet I suspect the real reason for the Government's opposition to any sunset clause lies in the previous conduct of the current Cabinet members.
In 1974 Roy Jenkins, the then Labour Home Secretary, introduced the original Prevention of Terrorism Act, which went on the Statute Book in November 1974. This was at a time when terrorist activity in mainland Britain was an all-to-frequent occurence. John Prescott voted in support of two ammendments aimed at weakening the act. Yet the most significant power in this Act was to grant the police the power to detain a terrorist subject for up to a week without charge.
The 1974 Act had to be renewed by Parliament every year. And every year Labour opposed the renewal of the Act. Some of the opponents now in the Cabinet included:
1989: Tony Blair, John Prescott, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett, Alistair Darling, John Reid, Paul Murphy, Hilary Armstrong, Paul Boateng, Ian McCartney.
1994: Tony Blair, John Prescott, Gordon Brown, Margaret Beckett, Alistair Darling, John Reid, Paul Murphy, Hilary Armstrong, Paul Boateng, Ian McCartney, Alan Milburn, Geoff Hoon, Tessa Jowell, Peter Hain.
Now let us take a look at some examples of terrorist acts in mainland Britain over two periods, 1974-1997 and 2001-2005:
1974-1997:
4th Feb 1974 - 12 killed when a bomb exploded on a coach of soldiers on the M62
5th Oct 1974 - 5 killed and 50 injured in Guildford pub bombings
21st Nov 1974 - 21 killed in Birmingham pub bombings
20th Jul 1982 - 11 soldiers killed and 50 people injured in attacks in Rotten Row and Hyde Park.
17th Dec 1983 - 6 killed and 90 injured in Harrods bomb
12th Oct 1984 - 5 killed and 30 injured in bombing of Grand Hotel, Brighton.
7th Feb 1991 - Mortar attack on Downing St. No deaths or injuries.
10th Apr 1992 - 3 killed in Baltic Exchange bombing, London.
19th Mar 1993 - 3yr old Jonathon Ball and 12yr old Tim Parry killed in Warrington bombing.
24th Apr 1993 - Bishopsgate bomb kills 1 and injures 44.
9th Feb 1996 - Docklands bombing kills 2 and injures 100.
15th June 1996 - Manchester bombing injures 200.
So in the period 1974 to 1997, at least 67 people were killed and more than 500 people were injured in terrorist attacks in mainland Britain. And thoughout that period Labour opposed the renewal of the 1974 Anti-Terrorism Act.
1997 - 2005
None
Which says it all really. In spite of British involvement in Iraq; in spite of tying our colours to America's mast, we have yet to see any deaths from terrorist acts on the mainland. Yet Labour wants to introduce powers that would allow it, or any future government, to seriously restrict our civil liberties. And Labour doesn't want the powers to be open to review.
This is not about your safety or mine. It is about the transition of power from the judicial domain to the political arena. This Government is attempting to strengthen the control exercised by politicians over the populace. And given the hold that business has over politicians, then by definition any movement of power from a fairly impartial judiciary to the Government is effectively handing power to the unelected and unaccountable backers of our political leaders.
Now it's your call. If you truly believe that you just might get blown up; if you feel that politicians can be trusted with these powers; if you know that future governments will never abuse them; and if your heart and head tell you that sacrificing hard-won liberties is a small price to pay for notional safety, then go right ahead and give your support to the Government. But there are a lot of if's involved.
I for one appreciated the sacrifices made to provide us with such freedoms as we enjoy. And I'm not prepared to throw them away, or indeed see them squandered, for such feeble arguments as the Government has made.
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Posted by Clive at 8:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack