UKIP suspends Tom Wise

The UKIP chairman has issued a statement that -

The decision has been made today to suspend Tom Wise from the UK Independence Party group in the European Parliament, for failure to provide information regarding alleged financial irregularities that are now under investigation by OLAF (the European Anti Fraud Office).

Party Chairman John Whittaker said, "This decision should in no way be interpreted as prejudicial to the outcome of that enquiry.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the MEPs in Brussels," said Dr. Whittaker, "which was the first opportunity we have had to discuss this matter."

This follows on the statement a couple of days ago when UKIP offered no support to Wise. With his bank statement now in the public domain, the evidence against him looks strong.

Also unmentioned is UKIP's own stage managed enquiry, which was refused access to Wise's account. Hence UKIP could say that their enquiry hadn't found against him.

Presumably the leadership knew what the evidence was before. But now it's in the open, and Wise seems to have been cut adrift to fend for himself.

EU finance ministers say companies 'must redistribute wealth'

Europe’s economic ministers have attempted to persuade European companies to give a ‘fairer’ share of their increased profits to their employees, with Peer Steinbruck, the German Finance Minister, saying that unless Europe’s companies begin to share their profits more evenly with their workers Europe’s economic model could sufffer a “crisis of legitimacy”.

These views were echoed by the French Finance Minister, Thierry Breton, who spoke of the need to “redistribute wealth created by companies”. One EU Official noted that the press conference at the end of the ECOFIN meeting sounded “like a trade union meeting”.

The Financial Times comments that the push to put more profits into workers' hands has strong political overtones: Mr Steinbrück is a social democrat anxious to show that his party is looking after workers' interests in the German grand coalition government, while Mr Breton was speaking ahead of the French presidential election.

And they had no concrete proposals. Indeed, they would not want inflationary pay rises. As the FT points out, European Commission reports have underlined the loss of competitiveness in countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal through wage rises not matched by productivity growth.

Even if this is just political hot air, the danger is that it starts to create a climate of opinion which calls for yet more regulation.

If individual ministers want to call for misguided action in their own countries, fine. But why suggest it in an EU context?

Maybe because that ensures they can't be held to account for their political pieties.

The reach of the unions

Damian Reece reports in The Telegraph on a speech given by one of the economists who sets our interest rates.

Blanchflower's argument goes, unemployment has declined, allowing employers to blossom. Statistics showed union membership has fallen from 13.2m in 1979 to 6.7m in 2005. Union density, having reached a high point in 1980 of 50.7pc, is now 29pc. In the private sector, only 17.2pc of workers chose to be in a union in 2005 compared with 58.6pc of workers in that paragon of efficiency and productivity, the public sector.

Which adds to the case against direct provision by the public sector.

GBH on the NHS

This was the theme of last night's Panorama, but it is also GBH on the taxpayers' pockets.

An estimated 75,000 NHS staff were attacked last year, costing the Nationalised Health Service (that's you and me) £100m - equivalent to the salaries of 4,500 nurses or more than 800,000 paramedic call-outs.

The comely reporter "spent nine months at two of the UK's busiest hospitals", though why it should have taken her nine months, goodness knows. The NHS supposedly has a zero tolerance policy towards violence against staff, but fewer than 2% of attacks on staff result in prosecutions, and staff say much of the abuse is not even reported.

The programme shows CCTV footage of a number of incidents of violence and also highlights the case of convicted rapist and kidney dialysis patient Donald Gibson, who was sentenced to nine months in prison for abusing nursing staff at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

The hospital had to spend £42,000 on security measures last year because of his abusive behaviour.

Hang on, they've got CCTV and they still don't prosecute? Gibson is conveyed by taxi to and from the hospital (we pay, of course) and they've made a room specially secure to treat him in. Staff apparently want to be caring and treat everyone. And so our money is spent.

If Gibson medically can't help it, fair enough. But that wasn't the message of the programme. The NHS's message to yob patients should be, If you're violent and there's no medical reason for it, you won't get treated, especially if you do it repeatedly.

The "caring professions" love to lavish their care at the expense of the taxpayers they don't meet. The taxpayers should have a voice too.

Pompous judge criticises minister

Sadly this blog has to agree with John Reid. Inadequate sentencing for evil crimes is all too common, and the Lord Chief Justice has now said it is "not appropriate" for ministers such as the Home Secretary to criticise sentences.

The Telegraph reports (no link) that the Home Secretary had been commenting on the case of Craig Sweeney, a paedophile sentences to life with a minimum term of six years for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a three-year-old girl. "Within four hours of sentence being passed, Mr Reid said he would seek to have it increased."

But the Attorney General did not ask for Sweeney's sentence to be increased because it was "perfectly proper", Lord Phillips said, according to The Telegraph. "That case demonstrates that it is not appropriate for ministers to criticise sentences."

Not only pompous but also wrong. There is too much over-light sentencing, and it is good that ministers should reflect public disagreement with it.

For instance, Inspector Gadget has criticised the decision of Appeal Court judges to reduce the sentences on two louts who left a policeman in a coma.

But while Jack Turner and Lance Samuels can expect to return to society in less than five years, the reality is very different for PC Coffill and members of his family.

Describing her son’s existence as an “empty shell”, Margaret Gardhouse says there is very little chance her son will ever recover. She feeds him through a straw.

Sentences on people who kill pedestrians by driving dangerously are also far too light. In the case of this paedophile, he received a shorter sentence for pleading guilty.

Now the judges may feel pinned in a corner because they are only following the rules. But they appear to obey them passively. It is right for the public to protest, and it is right for ministers to reflect that view.

That climate, it just keeps on changing

It's worth remembering that the Earth was warming before global warming was cool.

When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.

Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.

During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.

Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, "which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet" and Bjorn Lomborg suggests that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."

Separately, look out for "The chilling stars", a book to be published next month. Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder, the former editor of New Scientist, will point the finger at cosmic rays. Calder says "More cosmic rays [equals] more clouds. The sun's magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world... We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle the book 'A new theory of climate change'."

A bias for spending - health visitors

Last Friday the Today programme ran an item about health visitors. It was typical BBC treatment - interview groups who want more money spent, and give an example where a health visitor has proved useful. (Doubtless spoonfed by the pressure groups. And if you can't find even one example, perhaps health visitors should be abolished! So an example doesn't make the general case.)

Then interview a minister. Don't ask him about numbers. I suppose they bore the listeners. Thus the interview becomes a form of shadowboxing, where the key issues of value for money aren't addressed. This unilluminating process must be pretty simple for a minister to handle.

What this formula for treating an issue fails to address is that there are competing demands for money. If you spend more on health visitors, you spend less on something else. Or you increase taxes or government borrowing. But this makes a less pleasingly focused journalistic item.

Thus does the case for reining in spending go by default.

And who pays for the organisation providing such unbalanced coverage? Er, the taxpayers through the government.

Cost of regulation rises again

The Sunday Times reports on the new “burdens barometer” compiled by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). The cumulative cost of regulation on British business is now £55.6 billion, up from £44.8 billion last year.

One of the biggest costs on business comes from the EU’s working time directive. But the problem is often the sheer scale of red tape faced by businesses, particularly smaller firms. The latest estimate of the burden, which does not include the minimum wage, lists 77 separate groups of regulations that have a significant impact.

The BCC said the increase was particularly disappointing in light of the government’s pledge to make 2006 the “year of delivery” on cutting red tape.

Cabinet Office officials pointed to a commitment to reduce administrative burdens by 25% by 2010 and undertake 500 simplifications of regulations.

2010 is conveniently far away - and mere simplifications are only going to scratch the surface. And that's where the EU allows changes.

Regulating for the world?

As the EU introduces ever more regulations, one of its claims has been that it's regulating for the world. We have seen examples of US and Japanese importers having to conform, at significant cost.

But here's another take on this, from the UK head of a Chinese investment company.

On a recent flight ... I was sitting next to a businessman from West Africa, who previously used to trade with Europe, but was now trading exclusively with India and China. In his words "the problem with the Europeans is they are always haggling over price, and there are more and more restrictions and procedures you have to go through. With the Asians, they are always placing new orders, with bigger orders each time, and happy to pay. We have closed all our European offices and are focusing on where the future is".

UKIP in the press

Plenty of press coverage this weekend of UKIP's internal affairs, usefully summarised by Richard North here.

P.S. Richard North adds in his comment thread -

Knowing what is coming - and there is a lot more to come - I would say that the Party is finished. It is only a matter of time. And, if I had to point fingers, Farage has to be high up on the list. He has been getting away with it so long, he thought he was invulnerable. Now the whole Party is going to have to pay the price for his hubris.

I would imagine there is not now a long queue of noble Lords desperate to associate their name with UKIP. I wonder how long the recent recruits will stay?

UKIP's donation problem

The Electoral Commission has applied to the Court for UKIP to forfeit £367,697 of "impermissible" donations. They say the party broke the law by accepting money from a donor whose name was not on the electoral register. UKIP say the donor, Alan Bown, was eligible to be on the register and simply didn't realise his name had disappeared from it.

His name was apparently missing from the electoral register between December 2004 and January last year. This feels odd, especially as it covers a general election period.

When parties receive a donation which they are prohibited from accepting, the have 30 days from the date the donation was received to return it, otherwise they are at risk of forfeiture. UKIP never has returned the money. They say they never realised that the donations were ineligible.

The money wouldn't get returned to Bown. It would go to the Treasury.

UKIP says the forfeiture would be disproportionate punishment because it didn't know that the donations weren't eligible. But breaking the law by mistake isn't usually a good defence unless intention is essential to the offence, which it isn't here.

UKIP wants strict compliance with auditing standards when it comes to the EU and its institutions, so it's not on awfully firm ground.

But confiscation does seem draconian. Yet what is the alternative? If they're just told to return the donations, the money will doubtless simply be donated again and UKIP will have suffered no penalty greater than embarrassment.

So that's probably why the law is as it is.

The Electoral Commission has doubtless decided that it is not for it to decide to waive such a penalty when the amount is so large. What sort of precedent would that create for the larger parties? Any major leniency should be exercised by a court, not by officials.

It's a tricky call for the magistrates.

Meanwhile, Richard North provides some oh so helpful context.

Under siege last weekend from two Sunday newspapers, and with further investigations threatened, from the police (over certain sexual irregularities) and from the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF, it is no understatement to say that the party is not having a happy time of things at the moment.

No wonder Nigel Farage has been seen tired and emotional in Strasbourg recently.

Red tape's hard to remove

EU industry ministers have dealt a blow to the European Commission's "better regulation" agenda by refusing binding targets to cut national bureaucracy, reports euobserver. They "gave the green light to the commission's aim to curb the EU regulative burden by 25 percent by 2012 but failed to take up their own share of the burden".

The commission believes red tape reduction would boost the EU economy with the equivalent of 3.5% of GDP and free up an estimated €150 billion for investment.

It may be recalled that Brussels initially proposed the massive number of 46 pieces of legislation for scrapping or simpliciation. But only five have received the necessary go-ahead by both the European Parliament and member states.

The UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark argued in favour of the national red tape cuts, but most other delegations were against any fixed goals. Of course, if you're France for instance, national regulations can be usefully protectionist.

In effect, then, even Verheugen's pitiful initiative is failing and the EU is stuck with red tape sclerosis.

Some diplomats indicated that the initiative could run the risk of making the administrative burden higher not lower for companies.

"We need to calculate the real benefits of this exercise so that we won't end up asking the companies - especially small businesses - to carry out analyses of national legislation costing them more than what we would save if that piece of legislation was changed," one diplomat said.

Another difficulty is the actual method by which the administrative cuts should be measured, with some countries suggesting their own calculation is different from the commission's method.

Sir Humphrey would be proud.

Bad management

Ruthlessly ambitious politicians don't necessarily make good managers. And good managers at the top of a busy government department are important.

It was already well known that John Reid was a political thug and a bully. How strange, then that his junior ministers at the Home Office seem not to tell him things. Could it be that they get bawled out? Yes, according to a recent leak to the Financial Times. Mr Reid is clearly more concerned about his own political image than he is about running his department properly.

If a junior minister brings you bad news and you chop them off at the knees, are they going to tell you next time? No, they'll keep their heads down as long as they can. And then someone else will tell the media first.

In Patricia Hewitt's Department of Health, only 16% of its senior civil servants think it is well managed. What chance, then, for the rest of the Nationalised Health Service, which employs over 1 million people?

The reality is, no manager, however talented, could make such a huge organisation efficient. And the stories coming out of the NHS show its managers are really not especially talented.

The organisational set-up of government isn't conducive to good management and never will be. So the bigger it is, the more wasteful it's going to be.

More nonsense about poverty

"One in six Europeans lives below the national poverty line" is the claim, drawing on the European Commission's annual social inclusion report.

This turns out to mean that 16% of EU citizens lived under the "poverty threshold", which is defined as 60% of their country's median income.

Never mind that what is "poverty" in the UK might be considered a comfortable existence in Romania. This isn't about any measure of "poverty" at all, it's about distribution of incomes.

Equality good, inequality bad.

Whatever happened to the free market?

An ineffectual poppinjay

As Richard North points out, "the road charging petition finally closed at 1,791,363 signatures, ever so slightly more than the petition calling for a referendum on continued membership of the European Union. This closed on 15 February 2007, with the grand total of 4,805 signatures".

You have to wonder what UKIP was doing. This is a lot less than their just their own membership - but they don't seem to have done anything effective about this petition at all.

How's that for campaigning?

The MEPs are more interested in puffing themselves up. As it is, 4,805 is risible. UKIP should be ashamed, but I'm sure it won't be.

Is cheap solar power on the way?

Perhaps, or perhaps not, but this speculative piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard gives food for thought. What would the consequences be for the man-made contribution to climate change - whatever that is?

An illegitimate poll

The Telegraph makes much of an ICM poll it reports about, discussing it under the heading "Blair's legacy: envy, inequity and selfishness" in a piece written by a Professor, no less.

But the poll is illegitimate. To take the questions in order -

1. Asks about the gap between highest earners and average earners. 69% answered Too Big. There was no option for "should be set by the market", however.
2. Oddly asked, "Is Britain a country where people's wealth [note - not income] is based on their talent?" Oddly, only 47% said No, and as many as 43% said Yes. The proposition is clearly untrue of any country (what about inheritance? luck? on the other tack, couldn't laziness be a factor?). So what?
   
3. Asked "Do you think that people in Britain have become more or less selfish since Labour came to power in 1997?" 43% think people have become more selfish - but 47% identified No Change. Hardly strong evidence for anything.
4. This is the key bad question. "Are the bonuses paid to the financial elite in the City of London excessive and should something be done about them?" This is putting into people's minds a concern that may not have been there, and indeed strongly conducting them towards the answer Yes. And even if all 73% who said Yes had already reached that view, how important is it to them? How salient is it?
5. When we come to the fifth question, "Which of the following do you think should apply to City bonuses?" and ignore the Don't Know's, we are left with four answers. Three of them suggest courses of action, and only the fourth suggests No Action. Not surprising then that we get a majority in favour of action - especially after they have been primed by question 4.

Shame on The Telegraph for reporting and highlighting such a defective poll.

It has no significance at all.

Motoring taxes rise under Labour

This is the theme of a piece in The News of the World.

British drivers now pour a whopping £45 billion a year into the Treasury's overflowing coffers. When Labour came to power in 1997 it was £25 billion.The nation's 31 million drivers now hand an average £1,400 a year each to government — that's nearly £30 A WEEK.

But it's going to get worse, says the paper.

Cash taken off speeding motorists has already gone up EIGHT-FOLD since 1997 to £120 million. Yet that is about to rocket again with the number of speed cameras set to TREBLE in the next six months to 18,000.

After April 1 greater freedom and flexibility will be allowed in the deployment of the cameras. They will also no longer have to be visible —even being fitted in "cats' eyes" on roads.

And, despite a million-plus online petition against plans for pay-as-you-drive charges, the government looks set on bringing in the controversial scheme.

They break some numbers down.

• FUEL TAX raises £25.2 billion — up from £19.4 billion 10 years ago


• ROAD TAX brings in £5.5 billion, up by £1 billion.


• VAT on car sales (£7 billion) and fuel sales (£6.8 billion) now raises £13.8 billion, an increase of £4.5 billion.


• PARKING CHARGES and fines add another £1.2 billion — nearly double the 1997 total of £638 million.


• COMPANY CAR TAX, which was introduced by Labour, brought in £2.7 billion last year.


• SPEEDING FINES now add up to £120 million, up from £15.6 million in 1997.


• CONGESTION CHARGES in London rake in another £200 million per year.

Then they move on to more general ground.

WHERE'S IT ALL WASTED? THE government's review into waste showed £21.5 billion a year could be saved. The government now claims to have saved £13.3bn, but £8.2bn is still being poured down the drain.

Another study said £82bn is wasted, meaning £1 out of every £6 you give the Treasury is squandered. The MoD alone has overspent by £2.7bn on contracts while 20,000 extra administrators cost the NHS £500 million.

You can argue with individual statements, but they know how to put a case over.

UKIP's money in the news again

Now you see it, now you don't? Two Sunday papers have asked questions about UKIP's money today, following the story last weekend.

The Telegraph has the story of the Ashford call centre donations failing to reach party HQ. The man who is now deputy leader said that 15% of the Ashford money had reached HQ.

Five former members of the party's national executive committee, Ukip's governing body, have told this newspaper they believe about £500,000 is unaccounted for in the party's head office accounts.

These claims are disputed by Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage. "All the money raised by Ashford can be seen in the accounts for the south-east unit - no money has disappeared," he said.

Here are some questions.

1. Why was the Ashford call centre run through a separate private company, which allowed minimal financial disclosure? What was Alan Bown's involvement? How could the expenses have been so high, what were they, and where did they go?
   
2. Did people who subscribed and donated through the Ashford call centre know that only 15% of their money would go to the party centrally?
3. If the centre received only 15% of subscriptions taken or renewed through Ashford, but had to pay 100% of the costs of servicing those members, were those members financially profitable to the centre, or a drain on it?
4. How was the 15% figure arrived at?
   
5. Did the SE Region accounts (available through the Electoral Commission site) clearly show how much had been received from the Ashford operation and how that money had been spent?
6. Who audited the SE Region accounts?
7. NEC members "said for a nine month period in 2004 and 2005 Mr Farage declined to provide the NEC with details of how much money the call centre generated". Why would he do that?
8. Did Nigel Farage oppose the closing down of the Ashford call centre?
   

The Sunday Times focuses on the case of the disappearing donations.

UKIP is being investigated over donations totalling £118,000 that apparently disappeared.

The Electoral Commission is looking at why the donations, made by individuals in five instalments, the biggest of which was £50,000, never appeared in any of its four main bank accounts and bypassed UKIP’s treasurer.

The new Treasurer evidently threatened to resign unless full disclosure of a secret account was made. Strangely -

This weekend, Lawson declined to answer whether he was given access to the account that received the money.

Farage said he could not say whether Lawson had been given access to the account.

Here are some questions.

1. He's still the treasurer, so presumably he's satisfied now. In that case why not say so?
2. Why could Nigel Farage not say whether the treasurer had been given access to the account?
3. We know why nuLab doesn't tell its treasurer about loans. Why didn't UKIP tell its own treasurer about these donations at the time?
4. Why would the donors have used a separate bank account?
5. Who opened the separate bank account without the treasurer's knowledge? Why? Who operated it? Where did the money go?
   

It's difficult to think of acceptable answers to all these questions.

Yes, but not in the south

It's easy to titter at the unfunded promises of candidates in the French presidential election, but the UK has its own trouble politicians.

Cuddly Cameron has been spreading cotton wool again, arguing that the well-being of families and children is now more important than economic competitiveness. Companies must come to terms with their significant social responsibilities, presumably code for protecting employment and gradually making the economy more sclerotic, though at the same time the fork-tongued one says he recognises that a "dynamic" economy is essential, not least "in order to eradicate poverty".

This must set some sort of record for cramming contradictions and wooliness into one speech. One question is, does he think poverty can be eradicated? In other words, is he naive and stupid, or merely hugely cynical?

If the choice is to be between Cameron and Brown, no wonder abstentions are rising.

Mr Cameron is not the only one who affects to favour a dynamic economy. Peter Hain suggested a few days ago that a high proportion of City bonuses should be given to charity. Lo on Friday he ate a large portion of humble pie in a letter to the Financial Times saying that The City is, and must remain, pre-eminent. How we laughed, especially at his hubristic claim that

Indeed, because of this, in Northern Ireland and in Wales I have successfully encouraged global financial companies - especially from from India, China and the US - to invest in the UK's financial sector, creating thousands of high-quality jobs.

The man's self-regard seems unlimited.

This is almost as amusing as the effort of the speak-your-loyalty machine Hazel Blears to recast herself as a champion of middle England in preparation for a tilt at the deputy leadership herself. Brown and Hain, Brown and Blears ... what a ticket either of them would be.

They all represent parts of the UK subsidised by the South.

Londoners on average pay £1,700 more to the Treasury than they receive in public expenditure, while people in Northern Ireland, Wales and the north-east of England get over £2,500 more on average from the exchequer than they contribute.

The total subsidy Londoners paid to the rest of the country in 2004-05 was £13.1bn - the equivalent of the capital running a budget surplus of 8 per cent of economic activity, even higher than Singapore, often regarded as a paragon of public finances.

In contrast, if the north-east was an independent country, it would have had a crippling budget deficit of almost 20 per cent of economic activity in 2004-05, worse than any emerging or advanced market economy. The deficits in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland were also very high at 27 per cent, 21 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.

As the FT comments -

The figures will fuel the debate on the future of public expenditure as the government makes its allocations in the current comprehensive spending review.

They go some way to explaining increasing discontent with Labour in the south in recent local elections and will add fire to the campaigns of southern regions for more public infrastructure money.

Labour is popular in the subsidised regions - but not in the south.

Why Martin Wolf is wrong about road pricing

Martin Wolf argues in the Financial Times (subscription only) that 1.5m petitioners are wrong about road pricing. Road space is inevitably scarce on a small island with 33m vehicles. Price is usually the best way to allocate scarce resources. Fuel tax hits all road use equally and "it is a principle of economics ... that one needs two stones to hit two birds". Road pricing could cut congestion significantly by 2025.

The most important objection, says Wolf, is that "any such national scheme would be technically complex and vulnerable to failure and fraud". I'll say. It's mind bogglingly hard to imagine the government getting this to work effectively. Richard North has already pointed out the flaw in depending on the EU's Galileo.

Another objection is that charging would discriminate against the poor. Wolf's response that the poorest 25% of the population are four times as likely to rely on public transport as the average misses the point. The tax is likely to hit the rest of the poor harder than the average population. This would lead to a further increase in the 2m vehicles which are illegally on the road.

Wolf follows the advocates' usual line that "the right response is to invest some of the proceeds in buses, trains and trams". But - even if we could trust this government not to weasel out of any such pledges, most car journeys could not be made by public transport. We probably have one of the worst and dearest railway systems in Europe, so pledges here are likely to ring especially hollow.

(Crowded trains could leave 130,000 standing in London's morning rush hour by 2014. The government says increasing capacity on the busiest rail routes "remains one of the government's long-term priorities" (my italics).)

Wolf finds threats to privacy hard to take seriously. Here I agree with him. Law enforcement is already inefficient and undermanned, and it's hard to imagine them having the manpower to take an intrusive interest in the motorists criss-crossing the country.

Wolf acknowledges the objection that charging is "just another tax". That, he says, can be met by "a targeted programme of road-building, along with offsetting tax cuts elsewhere".

I don't recall anyone saying the tax would be offset by tax cuts. Gordon Brown considers it his divine right not to be questioned about tax policy between budget speeches - and then to give only part of the story anyway. The suspicion that this would go to increase the government's tax take is doubtless absolutely well founded.

Wolf says the public would come round, but is he right? We can see where the losers are - all drivers. Some will be priced off the road, while others may be financially crippled. At the suggested rates, one couple publicly estimated their annual mileage would cost £34,000 a year. But the tax has first to cover its costs, and low rates won't cut congestion.

So who are the winners? Can't think of any. This was the problem with Charles Clarke's proposed merger of police forces - it was easy to identify losers, but very hard to spot winners.

What will any winners gain, anyway? Slightly faster journeys. And many of the losers may be forced off the road altogether. So expect minimal rapture from any winners that can be found, and fierce opposition from losers.

Getting the basic politics so wrong is a sign of a tired government.

Petition against a tax on rubbish

With the support of the Mail on Sunday, the TaxPayers' Alliance has submitted a Downing Street petition on the proposed bin tax, which is being introduced without consultation.

The petition is now live, so please click here and sign up.

The TPA say that campaigning against green taxes is going to be a big theme for them in 2007 (hurrah), and with the help of the Mail on Sunday, this petition may yet prove very popular - especially since this campaign issue ties in so well with general resentment already over local government waste and scandalously high council tax bills.

Traffic management

Everyone but Douglas Alexander (he's the Scot responsible for transport in England) must applaud Peter Roberts, who set up the Downing Street e-petition against road pricing. Over 1 million have signed.

Alexander's first reaction was that he was going ahead with the experiments anyway. Suddenly now he is on a mission to explain. Every signatory will receive a "personal" email, which my ISP will doubtless identify as spam.

"Unless motorists and families can see the benefits of bringing in a national road pricing system then it simply won't happen," he said. He thinks public transport is the key. "The only circumstances in which we will be able to see public acceptance of road pricing is if this accompanied by investment in public transport."

Is public transport a substitute for most car journeys? No. Dream on, Douglas.

Traffic policy continues to flounder. Richard North naturally highlights the increasing role of the EU, but his history of accident policy and speed cameras shows that UK policymaking was also of pretty low quality. Strikingly

In 2004 - the latest year for which Home Office figures are available - 2.1 million motorists were booked for speeding. Drivers forked out £114.5million in fines last year, with a £60 ticket issued every 15 seconds. The number of cameras, from a mere handful in 1999, has grown to over 60,000, earning on average £36,000 each year.

The results have been all too obvious. From an annual level of 4,753 in 1991, death had dropped by over 1200 annually in 1999, to 3,564. But, in 2000, the decline started slackening off to 3,580. In 2001, it increased to 3,598 and in 2002, the figure was 3,581, still higher than the level in 2000. By 2003, it had only reached 3508 and the figure stood at 3,221 in 2004.

Clearly there are many factors. Ireland says it is suffering more road accidents because immigrants don't understand the road signs. Dr North highlights the local factors causing most road deaths in different areas. Not surprisingly, the main causes are different in urban Glasgow and in rural mid-Devon, where 11 people died. The next step is to ask, how much are they spending on cutting road deaths and is it cost effective? That is, has anyone considered spending less?

Richard North reminds us that "there has developed a kind of motoring "underclass" of two million drivers who evade camera fines by driving unregistered and uninsured vehicles". Government windbaggery about this (which I discussed here) only shows that they have no policy for seriously tackling this evasion. These vehicles will be older than average and will hardly be subjected to regular MOT's, so they are more dangerous and are probably involved in more accidents.

Maybe Mr Alexander would like to produce a realistic policy for clearing the roads of these 2 million vehicles, which should make a difference to congestion. The criminal justice system is already overloaded, with as few as three uniformed police officers available to patrol the streets, respond to 999 calls and tackle night-time disorder in some towns and city areas, according to research reported in The Telegraph. That's why enforcement needs to be farmed out to private companies who are paid by results, with brisk summary justice for offenders and the vehicles.

Why does snow close down schools but not shops?

This is the excellent heading to a piece by Janet Daley in The Telegraph. The main thrust is that central state provision stifles choice and innovation.

The driving force behind taxpayer-funded monopolies is uniformity of provision: no one must get more or less than anyone else anywhere in the country at any time. Uniformity is thought to equal perfect fairness. So the very things that would offer both real choice and real acceleration of quality across a service sector – diversity, pluralism and innovation – are ruled out as inherently unjust and unacceptable because they vary from the uniform standard that the central planners have decided is optimum.

... The philosopher John Stuart Mill anticipated our problems in health and education with startling perspicacity: such structures tends to suppress alternative solutions to problems, so improvements are less likely to occur; there are fewer outside experts to criticise and evaluate the system, and ordinary citizens become more likely to look to government to solve their problems rather than to their own energies and skills.

When government provides services rather than simply regulating them, they become less innovative, less pluralistic and less responsive to individual needs. And that means that they become necessarily poorer in quality: the incentives to engage in critical inquiry of existing practice, to experiment with new solutions and to diversify services are actually stifled in favour of a flattened, evenly distributed mediocrity.

The case for "market forces" – competition and a plurality of providers – in services is not about the selfish lust for profit. (... Selfishness is a fixture of human nature that raises its head as notably in a producer-dominated public service as in a private one.) A variety of provision is fundamental to the freedom of the individual if he is to determine the most significant and personal areas of his own development and that of his family: health and education.

Just imagine if one supermarket chain had a monopoly on food retailing and that all food was paid for out of general taxation. SuperTesco would offer only enough bread to provide each person with one mandatory loaf per day (or maybe every other day) and you would queue to receive it, just as you now queue for a hospital bed for the operation that the doctor says you require. Food would be rationed in the interests of "fairness" as it was during the war, and as healthcare still is because the NHS was born out of a wartime command economy.

Instead, of course, we have a food retailing sector that innovates and competes for specialised tastes (organic produce, exotic cheeses, gourmet ranges). And it even manages to open its doors on time in the snow.

Let's remember the headmaster of a Northamptonshire prep school whom the BBC interviewed. His "customers", he said, expected them to open, and open they did, with some teachers out at 6am clearing and gritting the drives. If the incentive is there, it can be done.

What's happening to the Today programme?

I turned on and caught the last part of an item about the re-forming of the group Police. Radio 2 fare, surely? This was followed by an interview about size zero ballet dancers at a ballet school. "We've all read articles about thin ballet dancers", says Caroline Quentin. No, not me, Caroline, not interested, especially as the interview covered the same ground three times over.

Is Today turning back into a light magazine programme? Is there no news?

Apparently not. The news summary that followed included no fewer then two trailers for BBC programmes. Here's one.

There is to be an interview with the woman who ran the disastrous assets recovery agency, which has cost so much money that even this government can't stomach it and is shutting it down. In the clip she was explaining that they had been hampered by the legislation and had been unable to go after assets over 12 years old.

And if they had? Just how would this have improved the agency's appalling record? Explanation and context came there none.

Hello - this is supposed to be a summary of the news.

Being in the EU is like being in one country

The Polish Ambassador says it's hard to tell how many Poles now live in the UK but that the official estimate of 307,000 was an underestimate; the true figure is about 500,000 to 600,000. She insisted that the Poles living in the UK significantly contribute to the British economy, while acknowledging that those working on the “black market” remain a problem. Migrationwatch, of course, have made a detailed argument that immigration has merely increased the size of the UK economy, and not raised living standards for the indigenous population.

The News of the World reported that according to a report from Europol, at least 150 serious criminals have moved to the UK from Bulgaria since the country joined the EU in January this year. The report states that “Intelligence shows large numbers of major criminals convicted in Bulgaria are now moving across the Continent.... We estimate 150 of them have started living in the United Kingdom since January.”

The article reports that 80,000 prisoners were pardoned and freed last week from Bulgarian jails, and notes that despite John Reed’s attempt to enforce quotas on migrants from Bulgaria and Romania, “none of them can be deported unless they are convicted of a crime in Britain.”

Meanwhile, David Miliband has stated that a ban on poultry imports would breach EU rules. Miliband said an import ban would have been in contravention of the EU free trade treaty, and "if we had done that, the EU would have taken a very dim view of what we had done and may well have taken measures against us". Giblets sans frontieres.

And the deputy chef de cabinet for the EU Agriculture Commissioner Marian Fischer Boel, has felt able to promise farmers that they will continue to receive EU subsidies after 2013. So much for governments negotiating. The officials have decided it already?

(htp Open Europe)

Greenland's melting glaciers?

From an account of a research paper about Greenland's glaciers. My italics.

I asked the lead author of the paper, Ian Howat of the University of Washington, for some perspective. Here's his take: "Over the past few years there has been a major revolution in the way scientists think about ice sheet response to climate change. Previously, it was assumed that the big ice sheets react very slowly to climate, on the order of centuries to millenia. This is because surface melting and precipitation was thought to be the dominant way in which ice sheets gain and lose mass under changes in climate. However, over the past five years we have observed that the flow speed of the ice sheets, and therefore the rate at which the ice flows to ocean can change dramatically over very short time scales." By short, he means months or less.

I also asked Dr. Howat about the argument that, since Greenland went through decades of relatively warm weather in the first half of the 20th century without catastrophic consequences, it's unlikely that the glaciers are suddenly going to plunge into the ocean because of the current warming. His response: "Greenland was about as warm or warmer in the 1930's and 40's, and many of the glaciers were smaller than they are now. This was a period of rapid glacier shrinkage world-wide, followed by at least partial re-expansion during a colder period from the 1950's to the 1980's.

Of course, we don't know very much about how the glacier dynamics changed then because we didn't have satellites to observe it. However, it does suggest that large variations in ice sheet dynamics can occur from natural climate variability. The problem arises in the possibility that, due to anthropogenic warming, warm phases will become longer and more severe, so that each time the glaciers go through a period of retreat like this, they won't fully grow back and they will retreat farther the next time."

That sounds like a reasonable concern. But for now, with the glaciers moving in fits and starts, it's wise not to make any sweeping predictions based on a few measurements. Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was criticized for not incorporating the recent scary data from Greenland into its long-range projections, these new results seem to vindicate its caution. As Dr. Howat and his co-authors warn: "Special care must be taken in how these and other mass-loss estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends.

Why can't the BBC respect its audience?

The excellent Biased BBC blog tracks examples of BBC bias (many of them unconscious). It's stuffed with informed commentators listening very carefully to what the BBC says on subjects they know about.

Increasingly it seems the BBC is talking down to us. Its weather forecasts feature ever more homely warnings about wrapping up warm and taking an umbrella. But this week's programme The Truth about Food really got my goat.

They took ages to demonstrate the obvious. For instance, we surely all know that we get tipsy faster if we drink without eating. But the BBC has to spend about five minutes demonstrating this. Cue chubby chortling presenter giggling with an academic over several glasses of wine. To show something any adult BBC2 viewer already knew. It was quite interesting to find out why this was the case, but that took only a few seconds. Do they think their audience's time is so valueless?

Twins spent what seemed like ages eating the same food to show that drinking 2 litres of water a day doesn't do anything for your skin. Now, we could have been told this in a minute or so, but again we had to sit through an account of the "experiment" - which wasn't actually an experiment because they knew the answer already.

And so with the detox diet. I don't care what the girlies who featured at such length thought of it. I'm mildly interested to know that it did nothing for the liver or kidney functions (though I did wonder if these were the claims that were being made for it).

Which leads to the thought - who was this programme intended for? I'd guess most viewers would never try a detox diet or drink litres of water for the benefit of their skin.

Maybe some of them might eat strawberries to try to improve their memories. The trouble was, after a typically meandering account of this trial we were told that the results weren't statistically significant. Why was it in the programme then?

Then we had people eating spinach for the good of their eyes. Again the programme wasted time showing spinach being prepared. This did seem to produce a result. But then there was a casual throwaway line that other foods were good sources of the required substance, including egg yolks. How many, pray? No, no, that was it and on we rushed to the next little tale.

This is infantilising the audience, and telling us Your time isn't valuable so just sit there while we tell you things v e r y s l o w l y.

The BBC seems to think a BBC2 audience tuning in to a programme about food must have plenty of easily digestible human interest if they are to stay with the programme. No. We want to be told useful things about food. That's why we're there.

Questions over UKIP's accounts

According to The Telegraph here and here, the Electoral Commission is looking at UKIP's accounts, which were submitted six months late.

The paper highlights donations from Alan Bown - which it describes as perfectly legal. It seems rather exercised by the fact that he is an ex-bookie, but given the company that other parties keep I don't see why this should be a cause for concern.

The Electoral Commission "says that it is concerned that (UKIP's) most recent accounts were filed more than six months late. It is also investigating a series of "separate issues"."

So - pace Tim Worstall - the issue is not that UKIP was raising small amounts from the citizenry.

UKIP has some 18,000 members. The large sum of some £280,000 was apparently donations - not subscriptions, therefore - to one of UKIP's regional branches (the Region controlled by Nigel Farage) - a figure far outstripping donations to all other UKIP regions combined.

How so? Was this, as some claim, to do with contributions made through the national Ashford call centre, an operation run with minimal transparency through a separate private company with which Alan Bown was involved? David Bannerman said during the UKIP leadership election that only 15% of the money contributed through Ashford had reached the party. So where did the rest go?

And how did South East Region spend the money it received? The accounts are far from clear.

Nigel Farage is quoted as saying

"We are discussing three or four other compliance issues with the Electoral Commission, concerning the validity of donors and how we have listed them. I am confident we can resolve these issues."

So these "separate issues" may not have anything to do with Alan Bown at all.

The Chairman in his statement pretends, however, that it is about Bown. He says of The Telegraph piece

"They claim an 'investigation' found that Alan Bown has donated over £1million - yet the next paragraph accepts that he has done nothing improper. I can't see much need for an 'investigation' as all his funding has been openly declared."

The UKIP chairman has a brain, so he will realise that he is deliberately ignoring what his own leader has said.

The Telegraph did say that the Commission was investigating "a series of separate issues". Presumably The Chairman knows what they are, but he pretends that the investigations all refer to Alan Bown's prefectly legal donations.

If all the electoral commission's concerns were about Alan Bown's perfectly legal donations, surely one exchange of letters would have closed the matter.

One poster on The British Independence and Democracy Forum calling himself arden forester opines

I wouldn't be too bothered. This newspaper was run by a crook, namely Lord Black. ... It is now feathered nicely by snobs and snooty people.

Well, Black owned it (he didn't run it, as his editors have made clear). When his dealings emerged, he was forced to sell. It has many more readers than UKIP has members. But hurling low quality insults rather than trying to win people over appeals to a certain bunker mentality. Maybe that's why UKIP gathered all of 8 votes in a recent local election.

What UKIP should be talking about is the revelation by Booker that the Commons EU Scrutiny committee considers papers submitted to it secret. And -

The farce does not end there. It has long been scandalous how often British ministers and civil servants do approve laws in Brussels, either before the Scrutiny Committee has had time to study them at all, or in defiance of its considered views. Lord Pearson recently asked how many times ministers have overridden the wishes of the committee in this way. The shocking answer given by Lord Triesman for the Foreign Office on January 30 was that, in the latest period for which figures are available, between 2003 and 2006, it happened on no fewer than 180 occasions.

Or UKIP could highlight the complaint of an MEP picked up by Dr North that he and his colleagues do not have enough work to do to keep them busy over the forthcoming year.

This is attributed, according to Watson, to the commission "pushing ahead with efforts to slash business red tape" and its attemps to "cut the burden of regulation for European companies". "We have all these people, and the commission has taken its foot off the accelerator," Watson complains. "There are very few substantial pieces of legislation this year."

But UKIP are too underpowered to run effectively with these issues, since their intellectually challenged leader won't tolerate anyone who won't kowtow to him.

Another honours meeting?

Here's another news item which Sky and the BBC don't seem to want to touch. The Times reports "Honours ‘cover-up’ meeting revealed". Key extracts -

Scotland Yard detectives who are investigating the cash for honours scandal have uncovered a private meeting held last summer at which key Downing Street aides allegedly plotted a cover-up.

The meeting was attended by four of Tony Blair’s closest aides, including Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, Lord Levy, Labour’s chief fundraiser, and Ruth Turner, a senior adviser.

It is understood that Levy was questioned about a note of the meeting, said to have been held at Downing Street, when he was arrested last week for allegedly conspiring to pervert the course of justice. One source described the note as setting out an “action plan” for dealing with the police inquiry.

Blair is understood to have been “copied in” to the note of the meeting. However, the police have not yet established whether he was present during the discussions.

The key meeting, which is not thought to have been attended by lawyers, is understood to have been held early last summer after the first arrest in the cash for honours investigation.

Detectives suspect that crucial e-mails and other documents were initially withheld by Downing Street although No 10 has strenuously denied that it failed to co-operate.

According to the source, a note of the “cover-up” meeting was presented to Levy by police after his arrest last Tuesday. He is understood to have declined to comment on that meeting and on the note — or any of the other questions put to him — during the four-hour police interview. It was Levy’s second arrest and his fourth interview under caution.

All four aides have been interviewed under caution in the past three weeks. Levy was arrested on suspicion of “conspiring” to pervert the course of justice. Turner was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice — not of conspiring to do so with others.

P.S. The Today programme writes

It's based on "a source". Without that same source there's no way of checking the accuracy of the report/s. All we'd be doing is apeing the NoW - and that's not what most listeners would expect us to do without first verifying the story. And even the Times story, on closer examination, rather hedges its bets.