Ambrose goes optimist

Some mistake, surely? Has Armageddon Evans-Pritchard been sniffing too many geyser gases on his trip to Iceland? He actually sees hope somewhere. The print version of his piece today is headlined "Iceland turns the corner, saved by its currency and unfettered by the EU".

As his report contains numbers it is naturally hidden away on page B5 of The Telegraph's business section. Of course a 50% devaluation against the euro doesn't come without pain - he gives only a few examples - but his central point is that the macro adjustment is happening fast.

It is those caught in a deflation trap with fixed exchange rates that face slow asphyxiation, and deeper social damage. Youth unemployment is already 34pc in Spain, 28pc in Latvia, 25pc in Italy, 24pc in Greece, and rising.

Ambrose's argument is that EU membership may look attractive to Icelanders now, with their economic pain still raw, but devaluation will allow their healing process to start far sooner than in the eurozone with its fixed rates.

In their angst, Icelanders look wistfully at the apparent safe port of EU membership. The Althingi has voted to start entry talks. But the storm will have blown over well before an EU referendum is held in two or three years. By then the delayed cluster bomb of Europe's unemployment will have detonated. Try selling EU protection then.

Saving people from themselves

How much should taxpayers spend to save people from themselves? A diabetes charity claims that people living in the poorest parts of Scotland are more likely to get type 2 diabetes than those in affluent communities, reports the BBC.

Incidentally, this isn't because they're poor.

Deprivation is strongly associated with higher levels of obesity, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, smoking and poor blood pressure control.

All these factors are inextricably linked to the risk of diabetes or the risk of developing serious complications for those already diagnosed.

You don't have to be rich to be thin. Everyone knows exercise is good for you. It doesn't have to cost money. Smoking does cost a lot. A healthy diet on a low income may take more effort than an unhealthy diet - but hey they seemingly prefer to spend their money on smoking, a well known health hazard.

How can you shake people out of such stupid stubbornness? How far should the state go?

Let's all be above average

Says the BBC: "The UK has the fourth-highest level of poverty among over 65's in Europe, behind countries like Romania, European Commission figures have shown." Scandalously they headline the report "UK elderly fourth poorest in EU".

Really? British pensioners poorer than Romania's?

Well.... in the very next paragraph we are told that "The figures show many pensioners here are living on incomes that are far below the national average". So we're talking about relative poverty. This bleat phrase says that if your income is more than a certain percentage points below average income, you're "poor".

Thus we have the continuing dishonesty of "child poverty", and now we are to have "pensioner poverty". Someone has to be poorest.

The spin takes some arbitrary level of income relative to the average and casually labels people below that average as poor. Advocates for each interest group say this is a scandal, and government stakes out the moral high ground with solemn promises to "abolish poverty" for those groups by some safe date in the future.

You could only abolish so called poverty for all these groups at once by a massive compression of the population's incomes, involving huge redistribution by the government.

Which, of course, the Scots controller and his equality fanatic deputy would be perfectly happy to do.

They would change society by stealth, step by step, with no public consent to the strategy ... just as they did with immigration.

What man-made global warming was that?

Some excitement on Watts up with that about a new peer reviewed scientific paper claiming that the surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean (the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO). The paper is described as "presenting a head on challenge to man-made global warming claims".

So doubtless we can expect widespread media coverage....

One of the authors says

The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.

Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.

Tax credit fraud

The latest figures for tax credit fraud are reviewed on the benefit fraud blog.

BBC, we're not that stupid

The BBC's controller of drama commissioning says they "need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn mindedness, left-of-centre thinking".

Challenged, he claimed:

When I used the term "left of centre thinking" I most certainly did not use the phrase in the context of any political meaning or "left liberal" mindset.

Like left-field, it is a phrase that I use with frequency when talking to the creative community to encourage them to develop and approach their ideas from a completely new perspective - where centre is used to convey the sense of the expected or the formulaic.

Humpty Dumpty would be proud. We know what people listening to him think he means.

And we know what he means. To add insult to injury, Ben Stephenson patronises us too. He should be sacked, but he won't be.

Fake charities

Melanie Phillips is on the trail of fake charities this morning. Surreptitiously this government has made the Charity Commission an agent of social change.

Its attack on private schools will probably be stopped in its tracks if Michael Gove really gives parents vouchers to spend on any certificated school they wish.

Presumably they could use them for independent schools. With increased demand, there might then be less argument for those schools to continue to be charities.

She also points out that "last year the Commission relaxed the rules so that charities can now go in for political campaigning".

As she rightly says, this is not what people give their money to charities for - especially as the charities will inevitably want more money to be made available for their objectives from taxpayers. This may be the opposite of what donors intend. They may want the provision to come from private donations rather than from taxpayers as a whole.

There's yet worse still. The Government is now throwing money at those charities which campaign in accordance with its policies. For instance, the Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne has said it will give £750,000 to small charities with 'innovative ideas for making their voices heard on subjects such as disability and social inclusion'.

All of this enables the Government to advance controversial agendas such as the destruction of the independent schools without being seen to do so itself.

Policies which might lose it votes are being laundered through the charity world, whose programmes appear not only to be separate from politics but also to be sanctified by the unsullied altruism of 'public benefit'.

Conservatives should promise to reverse this.

Blunkett's option for elected police chiefs inadequate

David Blunkett says that directed elected police commissioners should be avoided "like the plague" following his review of police accountability.

He said that not only would it politicise the police force but could also lead to far right groups "able to play to particular issues at particular times getting elected and being in control of our police services."

The implication is that "far right" groups could command a majority. How likely is that? And if it really is likely, what does that say about British democracy?

However, he said that direct accountability of the police to the communities they serve did need to be strengthened, but suggested other methods such as strengthening the role of poice authorities, community referendums on whether to pay additional levies for extra police, and strengthening the existing 'community call to action'.

All his suggestions are fig leaves. Police authorities offer no real accountability. For instance, we have seen some recently negotiate secret financial deals for chief constables. Who knows what else their police authority does, or knows how to influence it?

Referenda on extra resources also miss the point. The issue is not about more police. The issue is: are the police we have doing the right things?

Communities have minimal influence over that. And goodness knows what "the existing 'community call to action'" is.

Communities pay for their police. They need to be able to set their police's priorities and hold them to account.

Let's have some pilot schemes and then judge.

Cheerful morning reading

Booker highlights the forthcoming power crunch. When our electricity is rationed, we should remember that politicians of all parties agreed with the present government's daft policy. They are also celebrating pledges to spend more of our money on restricting rises on global temperatures by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, and with that economic activity - even though carbon dioxide isn't a driver of climate change.

These gods can rein back global warming but did they foresee the results of the new sickness benefit test? The Financial Times reports that the test - at present for new claimants only - is turning applicants for sickness benefits away "in droves". In 2010 officials will start testing the 2.6m people already on incapacity benefit - and probably many will be rejected at a time when the economy is still in recession. The right policy, says the paper, but at the wrong time.

A greedy little shit

The Mail points out how greedy rich heir Jonathan Djanogly is. He "claimed £77,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund his second home while living rent free in a mansion owned by his parents".

David Cameron - not sparing with his own mortgage claim - seems unperturbed. Just as he is unperturbed by the expenses of the puffed up inadequate Alan Duncan.

Is this really the team which is supposed to bond with ordinary voters?

A chamber echoing in emptiness

What grabs the attention of the House of Commons? Not the historic, low key surrender to the EU of our freedom to regulate the City. How they must be sniggering in Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and Brussels. No, that somehow doesn't come up at PMQs.

Not the surrender of the Civil Aviation Authority's power to the EASA, as Richard North lucidly explains. Don't remember an MP challenging the PM over that.

What seems to float MPs' boat is talking about themselves. The Speaker. Expenses. Police raids. Supervisory bodies. How very important we are.

Funny how we don't seem to think much of them. We'd expect them to have opinions about the great issues.

Funny too how journos don't seem to have been falling over themselves to hack the voicemails of MPs.

Now why would that be?

Bill Wiggin MP forfeits any respect or credibility

Guido highlights the untidy hypocrisy of Bill Wiggin, faithfully captured for ever for the world by the local press.



Will he do the decent thing and hold a truly public meeting in a big enough venue?

Until he does, he is just a man who falsely claimed a meeting would be public, and then - oops - the room was too small. A clumsy liar deserving no respect.

Exactly!

The Times carries revelations about private top up deals for chief constables done behind locked doors. If ever there was an argument for abolishing cosy police authorities, this is it (see The Plan). If ever there was an argument for compulsory accountable transparency, this is it.

Stephen Bett, the chairman of Norfolk Police Authority, said: “If chief executives of district councils, with very limited direct public accountability, are paid £120,000 a year, what would attract anyone to be Chief Constable of Norfolk, with all his direct accountability, for £129,000 per year?”

Well now. First, that's a big if. Are they worth £120,000? Second, with the power the chief executives have, should their direct public accountability be "very limited"? - especially if their main accountability is to undemocratic pushovers like Mr Bett. Third, did Mr Bett try to find someone without offering the undemocratic secret top-up? Fourth, does he worry at all about deceiving other members of the police force about their chief's pay? Or taxpayers? And fifth, what does this say about the probity and morality of the man he's employed?

Both men - Mr Bett and the chief constable - have shown themselves unfit to hold public office.

Migrationwatch highlights rising immigration

Migrationwatch has suggested that there has been a sharp increase in the number of illegal immigrants from Pakistan. "The number of illegal immigrants from Pakistan in the UK could be as high as 200,000 according to a new report out today which has compared official statistics on the number of Pakistani born workers with a dramatic increase in the level of remittances being sent to that country."

An examination of workers remittances shows that they are now more than six times higher than in 2001 but, according to the Government’s Labour Force Survey, the number of Pakistani born workers in Britain has risen by only 67%.

Note that "only"! Meanwhile, the number of those born in the Philippines and in employment in the UK had trebled in the same period.

Illegal workers can undercut British workers. Who can deny that immigration is out of control? The last thing this government wants on immigration is transparency in the numbers, and the Conservatives are scared of raising the issue for fear of the damage it might do to their image.

The political elite in crowd seem to feel it is their privilege to ignore voters' concerns with impunity. What do BNP voters think?

They have too much power over you

Labour thinks it and its managers are better than the rest of us, and know better than the rest of us. Local authority bureaucrats will decide where your children go to school, NHS managers who aren't even public figures, let alone elected, will decide the health priorities for your amorphous catchment area.

And when something goes wrong? Tereza Tosbell's ward was so filthy that she got out of bed and cleaned it herself. And what do the hospital say?

A Colchester Hospital University NHS spokesman said: 'In the annual health check ratings for 2007-2008 we scored maximum marks for safety and cleanliness and we have also been praised for our very low levels of infections such as C. difficile and MRSA.'

This isn't even a non-denial denial. They're more interested in the marks they got from their fellow bureaucrats than they are in the state of their wards. They won't soil their lips with comments about Ms Tosbell's ward. They don't need to. She pays taxes which pay their salaries, but they're not accountable to her.

For the record, the Patients' Association said what Miss Tosbell had experienced was 'nothing unusual'.

Are Ms Tosbell and other patients to have an 'entitlement' for their ward to be clean? In the unlikely event that they do, how will it be enforced? Gordon Brown had to admit that the government has announced the headline without knowing how the policy will work.

It's not as if we know the bureaucrats are doing an outstanding job. As the Burning Our Money blog points out,

We are spending many tens - possibly hundreds - of millions on patient safety programmes and monitoring systems: the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) alone costs us £30m pa. Yet the reams of figures they produce are virtually useless.

The bureaucrats also have far too much power over the elderly. They can refuse to let a patient go home to his wife.

Serfs, rise up. They don't know best. Even if they did, you are supposedly free people. We don't need a monolithic health provider - we just need a powerful purchaser working on our behalf to procure a range of facilities we can choose from. We shouldn't be instructed by an official where our children are required to go to school - as Tory MP Douglas Carswell writes:

It's disgraceful that we have this system of rationing in the first place. We wouldn't put up with the state rationing jobs or houses, so why do we tolerate them telling us where and how to educate our kids?

Rather than use the law against mums and dads, parents need a legal right to control their child's share of local authority funding if they're not happy with what's on offer from the council.

Margaret Thatcher enabled many people to opt out from local authorities controlling their accommodation. They wanted to take responsibility for it themselves. The next step is to extend freedom of choice to education and health - not by people losing free provision at the point of use, but by having a real and effective choice of where they go to get the free healthcare for their family, and the free education for their children.

The present state apparatus is oppressive and unaccountable. And that's not an accident. It's an inevitable result of how the system has been designed.

Update on Irish benefit fraud

Recently I highlighted the role which cutting benefit fraud is to play in reducing the unsustainable deficit in Ireland. In support of this initiative, their government is now publicising the extent of benefit fraud practised by non-Irish nationals. The story is here.

The UK economy and benefits bill are, of course, considerably larger. But the problem for the UK government is that a large number for overseas benefit fraud would make their published pseudo-totals for UK benefit fraud look even sillier.

Local homes policy wrongly focused

A comment on the new headline policy of 'local homes for local people' suggests that a crackdown on illegal sub-letting of social housing could have an impact on housing queues - a policy suggested by the National Fraud Initiative, which proposed a change to the law.

The Brown regime disintegrates

Famously Brown referred today to a 0% rise in spending over a period. But it's worse than that. Fraser Nelson points out it's a 0% fall!

At PMQs today his worst answer was about the disabled college facing funding problems, where all he could do was rattle off general budget numbers and - as an afterthought - grant a meeting with a junior minister. Paul Waugh has the right assessment of Brown's general PMQs performance today, as well as the comment from the head of the audit commission that the NHS (& education) shouldn't be protected from cuts.

Meanwhile "entitlements" and the new housing project collapse before our eyes, with no one knowing where the money for the houses is coming from.

Frank Field tracks the disintegration of the Parliamentary Standards Bill.

Brown seems to have no concept of how to do politics or policy right. Amazing. You couldn't make it up.