Dizzy Thinks

Brown's on Apprenticeships

2009-07-06T12:15:00.011+01:00

According to the "key deliverables for 2009/10" document of Gordon Brown's latest relaunch, "Building Britain's Future", on the matter of "Real Help Now" there will be,

An extra 35,000 apprentices start work bringing the total to over 250,000

Now, this is not a new announcement, it was first made in January this year (BBC News), but what else has Brown said on the subject of apprenticeships?

Well, twelve months before that in January 2008, he said,

"Our first step is to get 90,000 more young people taking part in apprenticeships by 2013" Downing Street

Six months prior to that, in June 2007, he said, in his Mansion House speech,

"For those who need more support we will provide pre-apprenticeship courses as a stepping stone to a full apprenticeship of which there will, over time, be 500,000." (HM Treasury)

Three years previously in May 2004, he said,

"Apprenticeships, which were dying a few years ago, have now already risen to 255,500 in England." (BBC News)

And then, in his June 2002 Mansion house speech he said,

"Apprenticeships, which a few years ago were dying, have risen in number to 227,000 today, increasing to over 300,000 by 2004." (HM Treasury)

So, just like with his projected borrowing figures, he changes as often as the wind blows.

Update: Research and quotes for this post were inspired by a comment in this post that noted the 2002 Mansion House speech. I have quite rightly been taken to task for not mentioning this below.

£1.5bn cut to fund new housing?

2009-07-06T11:48:00.002+01:00

According to John Denham, the Communities Secretary, on the "Building Britain's Future" website.

An additional £1.5 billion will be invested over the next 2 years to deliver 20,000 new affordable homes, creating 45,000 jobs in the construction and related sectors.

According to Liam Byrne, on the Building Britain's Future" blog,

This involves no new borrowing, no new money - and I'm pleased to confirm that the resources for the announcements in Building Britain's Future - such as the £1.5 billion on building a new generation of social housing - have all been found within existing budgets.

So, if the money has been "found in existing budgets then that must surely mean they've cut £1.5bn from somewhere else.

Something tells me, with the public borrowing the way it is, they don't just happen to have £1.5bn lying around as a small change.

Worth noting too that when initially launched, they said it was going to be £1.2bn but it was still TBD (to be defined). Frankly I reckon they're just making it up as they go along.

Swine flu in the Armed forces?

2009-07-06T09:28:00.003+01:00

A curious response,

Mike Penning: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many members of the armed services have been diagnosed with swine flu.

Mr. Kevan Jones: I will answer shortly.

Either they havn't clue or they know iand it's not good news.

Demerge, remerge....

2009-07-06T08:57:00.004+01:00

It's no surprise really that there are now questions being asked of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills about ow much it is going to cost for them to merge the former Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform together.

As one would expect the Government is not answering the question, or even acknowledging what they think the estimate will be, instead just saying that the cost "will be published as a note to the Annual Report and Accounts in 2010".

Typical really, but worth remembering that when Brown came to power he scrapped the Department for Trade and Industry and created the split up into DIUS and BERR. Now he's remerged them together two years later. So here's a question worth asking.

Is it not an admission of departmental and organisational failure to have split up one organisation into two then remerged it again later with a new name?

Brown loves to bang on about how spending constraint in back office functions will be necessary, yet here we have evidence of an absolute waste of money over a two year period. Thank God he's not go time to split it up again before he loses office.

Brown briefs against Johnson - hacks lap it up?

2009-07-05T07:45:00.005+01:00

If you want to have a good chuckle at a classic example of 'journalists' regurgitating a briefing against someone and passing it off as news, then have a look at Melissa Kite's and Patrick Hennesey's piece in this morning's Sunday Telegraph. The structure of the piece is sublime.

Start off by talking about Johnson 'going off the reservation' on policy.
Humanise Brown by mentioning his latest strategy of 'come dine with me' lasagne nights with Sarah and colleagues at Downing Street.
Suggest that Johnson is a back stabbing bastard because he ate with Brown and then went "off piste"
Have a Brown loyalist (unnamed, natch!) reinforce Johnson's treachery by saying he;s heard thing from othe unnamed people.
Throw in at the end a bit about Miliband just in case he's up to something too.
Finally have an official spokesman from Downing Street say there is no problem between Brown and Alan Johnson to create plausible denial.

Hey presto! Now all you have to do is find some compliant (if possible lazy) hacks in desperate need of copy. Take the hit on the "rift" angle of the story because you've just (a) portrayed your boss as an ordinary bloke that invites his colleagues round for dinner, and (b) portrayed him as a victim of a backstabbing bastard that eats at his table at aforementioned dinners designed to make him seem "normal".

Politics huh? Don't you just love it!

Time for emission equality in London

2009-07-03T07:26:00.003+01:00

It would appear that Volvo cars - that's the very safe but often box-like looking cars that have sidelights on even when you don't want them - have launched a worthy campaign about a new for getting some sanity in the London congestion charge, and are trying to drum up support to lobby Boris.

The campaign is pretty simple really and works like this. Hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, get all sort of special praise for their lovely tree-hugging environmental credentials and are thus exempt from the Congestion Charge.

However, there are quite a few non-hybrid cars out there that have much lower C02 g/km output than the hybrids that don't get exemption at all and the rules really ought to be changed. The problem is that people hear "hybrid" and think it must be clean, but in reality they have emission output that can be just as high as the biggest engined cars going.

Volvo obviously have a vested interest in this because the S40, along with the C30 sports coupe and the V50 estate, have emissions rating of just 104g/km, which is the same as a Prius, but they have to pay still. Likewise, the Lexus RX400 4x4 is a hybrid with emissions of 192g/km and is exempt from the charge.

It's pretty clear that "hybrid" is a completely meaningless yardstick with which to decide who does and who does not pay the congestion charge. Put aside for a moment the fact that the CC was not meant to be a charge based on environmental impact anyway, it's pretty obvious the scales for charging are out of date with car technology.

So basically it's time for EEquality, and the campaign can be found on Facebook here, on Twitter here, and you can sign up on the Volvo site here.

DISCLAIMER: I am not being paid to do this post, nor am I getting a freebie for it (not that I wouldn't mind a car of course). The campaign was brought to my attention by a PR person and it's something I genuinely support.

Gordon "pants on fire" Brown - he can't help it

2009-07-02T06:55:00.004+01:00

Isn't it interesting that Gordon Brown is now desperately putting out the line of "I have always told the truth"? Interesting for two reasons primarily. Firstly because the statement itself is a lie for every single bloody one of us, which makes it quite hilarious frankly.

Secondly, it's interesting because the fact he feels the need to do interview where he insists he's telling the truth, is because he's finally realised that everyone thinks and knows he is a liar and if he just blusters on with his lies it just makes him look worse.

As I say though, the worst thing anyone can do, especially a politician, is tell you that they have always told the truth, because by implication they're saying they have never ever lied, and only a complete idiot would not know that that itself has to be a lie.

Lib Dem naughtiness of the day

2009-07-02T06:37:00.001+01:00

Whoops

A Bristol councillor who insulted her rival with the racial slur "coconut" has been suspended for a month.

Black Liberal Democrat Shirley Brown called colleague Jay Jethwa, who is Asian, a coconut during budget debate in February...

She told Mrs Jethwa at the meeting: "In our culture we have a word for you, a word which many in the city would understand, and that's coconut.

"At the end of the day I look at you as that."

Via BBC News

Lord Michael Martin? WTF?

2009-07-01T07:25:00.001+01:00

Imagine, if you will, that an Executive board member of a FTSE 100 company was found to have been presiding over a massive accounting misdemeanor in the company, that meant most of the staff were constantly taking the Michael (no pun intended) and submitting dodgy claims for taxis, food, and other expenses from the company.

Imagine too that this Executive board member decided that given his position in the whole mess he should resign. Now imagine if he resigned and he was suddenly made a non-Executive director of the same company by the Managing Director. Meanwhile, in the lower ranks of the company the others caught up by a scandal were looking for new work and packing up their desks in disgrace.

That would be a pretty poor state of affairs wouldn't it? Yet the so-called Mother of Parliaments has done just that with Michael Martin, the disgraced Speaker of the Commons who oversaw the shambles that is the Expenses scandal. As a result of "convention" he gets to wear a silly cloak and take a life peerage in the Second Chamber.

Gordon Brown has no shame, and the UK is become a basket case of democracy where the elite at the top not only gorge themselves on our taxes but laugh at us when we catch them out by promoting someone to a sinecure for the rest of their life when they've quit in disgrace.

There is only one word for them. Bastards.

Another non-answer on Brown's gift shop

2009-07-01T06:50:00.004+01:00

Some people might remember the posts I have done on the Downing Street Gift Shop. These all started because Francis Maude asked some questions and got stonewalled answers. I then sent through an FoI to get a product list which then meant Downing Street finally put the list of products in the Commons library.

Well, it seems the non-answers are back. On Monday, Francis Maude asked the Cabinet Office, pursuant to earlier responses, how many of the branded wallets they had sold from the Gift Shop. The response from Angela Smith was simply,

I have nothing further to add to the earlier answer.

OK, so a skip back to the previous questions shows they had nothing to do with his new question really and could not, as answers, in anyway, be said to be linked to his new question asking for a figure.

OK, so non-answers is the standard these days, but why do they persist in the smoke and mirrors about something as benign as a bloody gift shop? One can only assume that it is because they rarely sell anything and it's embarrassing to admit it.

Mind you, why would anyone want a Downing Street branded wallet? It would always be emptied or at best contain IOUs right? I think, when I get back to the UK, I may have to submit an FoI for the sales figures from the gift shop for each of the items.

Brown's elbow confused as to what arse is doing in relaunch

2009-06-29T19:06:00.010+01:00

Hilarious. The new Building Britain's Future plan has a handy download (no longer working but see below) containing the following "key deliverables" (quoted verbatim natch!).

£1.2 billion support for affordable housing to buy and rent [TBD]
[Launch of new £xm Innovation Fund]
Free entitlement to 15 hours of high-quality early education every week for every 3 and 4 year old [check]
London G20 deliverables [to add]

Does that install faith in you that Brown has a plan? Thought not. Even his own policy is not sure what it is about.

Just in case they fix it and realise what the arse is telling the elbow to do, the original they uploaded is here for your enjoyment and amusement

UPDATE: As expected, the link to the document is no longer working. Lucky I grabbed a copy huh?
Via email

Purnell joins Demos

2009-06-29T07:08:00.002+01:00

Now this is interesting, apparently, James Purnell has taken up a job at Demos. Some might recall me mentioning Demos the other week here in relation to a number of tabled questions by Tom Watson about the think-tanks link with Government.

James Purnell has gone off to join, amongst others, Alan Milburn, George Osborne, David Willets, Vince Cable, Will Hutton. Looks like the organisation is going to be a hotbed of anti-Brownite thinking for some years too come. An ideal opportunity for Osborne to woo Purnell into potentially crossing the floor as well isn't it?

Minister says 'we must deceive our own supporters'?

2009-06-28T07:08:00.004+01:00

There is a rather excellent piece in the Sunday Times today about Brown and his constant lying on spending that is well worth a read. Most tellingly in it though is the following quote from an unnamed minister about the real driver behind the entirely stupid dividing "line of cuts vs ~~cuts~~ investment" (my emphasis added)

We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us... This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again."

Do they really hold the intelligence of their own core-vote in such contempt that they'd even admit their intention is to deceive them?

Like I and many others have said before, the next election is not about "cuts vs investment", it's about Tory honesty on what needs to be done, against Labour deception about what they too know needs to be done.

DWP applies for jobs with fake CVs in dodgy experiment

2009-06-28T06:40:00.002+01:00

Sometimes I don't know why I read the Sunday papers when they annoy me so much. This morning, according to the Mail on Sunday, the Department of Work and Pensions has been sending out fake job applications and fake CVs to real employment opportunities as part of an experiment to see if the companies are racist/sexist.

The basis of the screening is that they send in an application with, for example, the name Patel on it, and see if it get knocked back. The same applies in the case of putting a female name on it.

A DWP spokesman said the department had responded to 1,000 job vacancies using false identities but with very similar CVs to see if a person’s name was a factor in whether they were given an interview.

Typically, officials put in two or three applications per job, with one under a traditional Anglo-Saxon name and others using an ethnic minority-sounding name, The Mail on Sunday understands.

Applications under women’s names were also submitted to ‘keep it realistic’, the spokesman said.

This has to be the crappiest social experiment I've ever heard. Firstly, the DWP notes that the CVs are only "similar". This makes sense because they can't just put the same CV's in. However, the decision on who gets interviewed cannot, from that alone, then lead to the causal conclusion that it was "the name that won it".

Apparently, this is all to do with plans to bring in some legislation that means that prior to interview it will no longer be a requirement to put your name on the CV. Not a bad thing per se, although I can imagine where it might be a good idea to know such things, especially gender, if the job is one that has no choice to but to be gender specific.

I'm thinking here of say someone who will be a nurse giving bed baths in an old folks homes full of women, for example. You wouldn't be wanting men to apply for that post now would you? The thing is though, this idea that you can assume that a CV with a foreign name on it that is knocked back is because of the foreign name remains bollocks.

Social 'science' at its very worst.

Can't the Home Office do basic SQL and basic maths?

2009-06-27T14:36:00.000+01:00

You know how we're constantly being told about the wonders of Information Technology by the Government? How they're going to create these wonderful databases that can help us with identity, benefits, child protection etc through marvelous and automagical data-sharing across department?

Putting aside the Orwellian overtones of such things I've always though it sounded like a pipe dream because they're too incompetent, and having just read Hansard I think I might be right.

When Alan Johnson, the new Home Secretary, was asked by Chris Grayling, how many people not convicted of a crime have their fingerprints recorded on the National Fingerprint Database the response was as follows.

The National Fingerprint Database does not hold criminal conviction data; it stores biometric data and basic identity details which can be used to align identity with records on the Police National Computer (PNC). The PNC is an operational tool and not designed to produce the information requested. To obtain the information would incur disproportionate cost.

Hmmm, so we have two databases, one storing fingerprints (NFD) and another that contains identity details on the Police National Computer (PNC). Apparently the fingerprints can be "aligned" with the PNC data.

This suggests that there is some sort of referential key in the PNC that can map to records in the NFD. If the PNC holds data on convicted criminal then all you actually need to do is take the total number on the PNC and subtract it from the total number on the NFD, and hey presto, you have the number of people on the NFD who have no criminal conviction on the PNC.

Can they seriously be saying that it will cost more than £700 to do a record count on two database and then subtract one value from the other?

Place Your Bets......

2009-06-27T07:17:00.003+01:00

Who will be the first MP to waste £300 by posting an Early Day Motion mourning the death of Michael Jackson? Will it be Lembit Öpik, a man renowned for his love if cheesy pop? Will a counter-motion be tabled expressing concern at the idolisation of an alleged Gary Glitter character on a global scale?

Come on, you know it will happen. There was once an EDM mourning the passing of a celebrity chef's dead dog, so surely the "King of Pop" will deserve a few hundred quid wasted on him to show that Parliament is "in touch" with us proles.

Amending the Smoking Ban

2009-06-26T08:34:00.001+01:00

A new campaign launched the other day which I am pleased and proud to be a supporter of. It's called Amend the Smoking Ban and has been launched by a coalition including consumers' rights organisation Forest, the liberal think tank Progressive Vision, the Adam Smith Institute, and the Manifesto Club.

The basic premise is this. Repealing the smoking ban is never going to happen, but it is far too arbitrary and ought to be amended so that individuals who choose to can go somewhere, like there pubs and clubs, and still have a means to smoke that doesn't mean they have to go outside.

The pub trade is dying out these days in terms of "regulars" because of the ban, and its certainly not unworthy to campaign for the anally retentive rules to be amended in a way that protects individual liberty and choice.

Jacqui Smith - I won't say its because I'm a woman but it is

2009-06-26T00:21:00.003+01:00

Quote of the Day from a Jacqui Smith interview with the BBC World Service,

When your colleagues on one of the sort of flagship political programmes, the Today programme, described me as being stroppy I think there’s something, dare I say it, gendered about that description ".

Anyone know who called her "stroppy" on Today?

A difficult fiction

2009-06-25T07:26:00.003+01:00

Oh how I love going away, not only do you get the sunshine (40 degrees and upwards by midday) but you also get to read some books. One of those books has been A Useful Fiction, which labels itself with the sub-title of "Adventures in British Democracy".

Written by a BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio 4 broadcaster, Patrick Hannan, it's general thrust is meant to be that no one has really appreciated how much devolution has buggered up any possible concept of Britishness, especially the main two parties.

The problem is that it doesn't really do that at all, at least not for me. I found myself wondering, as I ploughed on through the book, "what is the argument being made here?" and the feeling carried on right until the end.

Hannan does his best throughout the book to deal with the different aspect of devolution in Scotland and Wales that have meant that England has become a shadow of its former-self. However, you're never actually sure what Hannan thinks is the necessary end of the game.

Much of the analysis is plain commonsense things that almost every political commentator has written about before. The West Lothian Question; the impact of RBS and HBOS on Scottish independence now that they're owned by the British Government; and why didn't Thatcher/Major go for English devolution when it would have been its electoral interest to do so?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is a bad book. More that the question it poses - and often they are not explicitly so - are not new. Perhaps the book represents the first time that they have been collated in one place?

Maybe I'm missing the point though? Perhaps the fact the book seems to make no clear argument either way on the impact of devolution and the endgame of that impact, is actually the point?

The book is available to order from Amazon.

Off for a few days.....

2009-06-22T05:54:00.000+01:00

Will be in transit for the next few hours and then out of the country for a couple of weeks. Blogging will be light because the sun will be calling.

Prosecuting the liars revisited?

2009-06-19T14:31:00.005+01:00

Does anyone remember the Ministry Of Truth? Not the left wing essay blogger, but the BBC documentary that put forward the proposal for a bill to stop politicians lying by having criminal legislation? They had a law drafted which was sponsored by a number of MPs that would make it possible to prosecute a politician for lying.

Many people at the time thought it was a crazy idea, but apparently the campaign, in the wake of expenses, has gained much more support. Dom Jolly seems to be heading it up online as well now (see below). Seems to me that this kind of law, along with recall laws, are going to be a thing of the future... maybe.

Uncensored Cabinet Expenses

2009-06-19T12:14:00.001+01:00

The Telegraph has published the uncensored expenses they have. And provide a handy comparison between their chosen blackout of addresses and the Parlaimentary one with Gordon Brown's claim form.

Read them in full here.

The few in the many

2009-06-19T11:57:00.006+01:00

From Shaun Woodward's receipts.

It's a hard life ain't it? ~~I just hope that receipt isn't evidence of him trying to claim back interest he has had to pay on his £300,000 overdraft. Sadly the rest of the receipt is a big black block.~~

Update: The Telegraph have a slightly different blacked out version. For some reason they blacked out the words "of a debt, other than an overdraft, of". Odd.

Update II: My bad, as the comments point out, I missed the commas in the sentence. Still, must be nice to be able to afford a £300K mortgage.

Timewarping expenses claims?

2009-06-19T10:20:00.012+01:00

From April 2007 to December 2007, Tom Watson MP made the following claims under the ACA for mortgage interest/rent.

Submitted: 18/04/2007

Submitted: 03/07/2007

Submitted 07/08/2007

Submitted: 4/10/2007

Submitted: 10/12/2007
So, this covers 9 months, from April 2007 to December 2007, at a consistent monthly cost of £805.78. Then the following ACA claim was made (red box added by me).

Submitted: 29/04/2008
That figure isn't a multiple of £805.78, so doesn't that look like a claim for mortgage/rent for the entire year during which claims for mortgage/rent had already been submitted and received?

What do you do when your BT account is in credit?

2009-06-19T09:03:00.006+01:00

Well they may have ~~censored~~ redacted the MPs expenses, but it doesn't stop you figuring stuff out. Take Vera Baird MPs receipts. Throughout the Additional Cost Allowance claims she submitted a value of £17 for telephone usage with BT (there is also one claim where she requested £24). Yet, also throughout the receipts she submites the BT bill and everytime it has exactly the same figure on it.

So, her account was in credit by £87.95, consistently in fact. So why was she still claiming for the money each month and not getting BT to use the credit balance? After all, that balance is taxpayers money sitting in BT's bank account.

On the more amsuing side she spent our money on bathroom lightbulbs, masking tape, paintbrush, varnishing of doors, along with £4570 on distressed look Toulouse oak furniture. Nice!