Romford police harass young photographer

Play the clip and check the comments.

Basic welfare numbers

8.3m people are unemployed, on incapacity benefit, or economically idle - which is about 21.5% of the adult workforce. (That's from the mouth of Will Hutton, no right winger he.)

We can't afford this.

As it usually did, the last government ducked the problem. When this one takes a crack, remember it's a burden that has to be tackled.

The bleeding hearts oppose cutting welfare payments

The bleeding hearts are coming out in force. Cutting welfare budgets could cost lives, say researchers.

Analysis of European data showed that a £70 reduction in welfare spending per person is associated with a 2.8% rise in alcohol-related deaths and 1.2% rise in deaths from heart disease.

One expert said that social support was vital for health. And Professor Alan Maryon-Davies, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, said:

Health is much wider than the health service and social support is crucially important.

It would be tragic if we find ourselves in this recession dismantling the welfare state.

Hands up, whoever is suggesting that. Anyone? Thought not.

Advocates of high state spending argue that keeping it high is in some way essential to health. For every £70 drop in spending per person, we are told, there was a 1.19% rise in overall deaths. Conveniently, we are not given total UK numbers to allow us to see whether this is good value for money.

What is going on here? Oddly, analysis of European data showed that a £70 reduction in welfare spending per person was associated with a 2.8% rise in alcohol-related deaths. Were they spending more on drink, with less money coming in? What was their behaviour?

And why would reduced welfare payments increase heart disease?

We cannot save people from themselves. Everyone already has plenty of chances to know that drinking too much is bad for you. There's been plenty of propaganda about "5 a day".

At some point these people have to take some responsibility for themselves as adults - even though academics in cosy jobs may get a nice warm feeling from recommending that working people have to continue to support welfare payments at their present levels.

More state spending waste

More indications today just how sloppy and expensive the state machinery became under incompetent Labour management. Eric Pickles is abolishing council league tables to save money.

Mr Pickles said the assessments - conducted jointly by the Audit Commission, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HM Inspectorate of Probation and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary - were an example of "unnecessary red tape and paperwork".

For example, he suggested, Tory-run Leicestershire County Council faced 83 inspections a year and had assigned 90 full-time staff to prepare information for central government - at a cost of £3.7m.

The Today programme is inviting suggestions for cost cutting. This morning they referred to a suggestion from a worker for an unnamed local authority. When they have a disabled council tenant, they convert the kitchen, bathroom etc for them. Only when that's done do the occupational therapists or other professionals become involved.

Sometimes the disabled person still can't use the facilities, because the conversion isn't suitable for them. So it has to be done again.

If this is frequent, it's amazing.

Her suggestion is that the health professionals should be involved before the conversion is work is done. Why not? Would they be obstructive, or want to over-provide for their clients? We don't know. But at the very least it's interesting to see these internal tensions becoming public.

Biased BBC

Biased coverage of pension reform proposals on BBC1 News at Ten, starting with headlining a union 'work till you drop' claim completely unsubstantiated, not making clearly the case that it's a financial issue, then interviewing a few people who surprise surprise don't like it.

Then over to France, where some are demonstrating (how many? Gavin Hewett doesn't trouble to tell us) against raising the pension age from 60 to 62. No mention of the Danish system, where the pension age rises with projected life expectancies.

State sector pay still out of control

The former boss of a Kent NHS trust where 90 people died in a superbug outbreak has been awarded more than £190,000 in damages, reports the BBC. Cheryl Baker is right to be appalled. Clearly the coalition has a lot of work to do on NHS contracts - if it is determined to try to manage this unmanageably large organisation. Whether Andrew Lansley is up to this task is debatable.

Another Labour legacy is Network Rail, which has just announced £2.4m of bonuses for senior management, despite a patchy record. Because of the way G. Brown set the company up, Transport Minister Philip Hammond can only criticise them. He won't want to find himself in that position again.

Ben Brogan has early whispers of the Sir Humphreys' doubts about certain ministers - which don't include Mr Lansley. Honest concern or parti pris? IDS has a huge job, while Liam Fox always looked lazy and underpowered in opposition.

Runaway state sector out of control

Who's been throwing taxpayers' money about? We knew about the ludicrous spending of £71m on 66 motorcycle test centres, but it's back in the news as the coalition has ordered a review. Given that the centres have already been built, it's not clear what cost savings may be available, but the story is good politics.

The tale is put across as Labour ministers taking their eye off the EU ball, saddling us with a need for these centres - which also seem surprisingly expensive at over £1m each.

But that is what civil servants are for. Do we really expect ministers to scan pending EU regulations and take charge of every project?

Certainly it was an offensively farcical cock-up. Ministers were tired, or feeble, or just not up to the job.

But the machine failed in a major way.

By all means see if anything can be retrieved from this mess. But the process needs to be turned inside out. How can government make expensive mistakes less likely in future, without burying ministers in paper?

Similarly the six week course teaching students to walk in high heels makes a good story. South Thames College is paying Chyna Whyne, author of Mastering The Art Of Wearing High Heels, £60 an hour to pass on her expertise to 16-year-old pupils. But again, what was the underlying process?

Hard to imagine the pupils are paying for this out of their own pockets. So do the college have freedom to offer any worthless courses they can get sign-ups for? What is the incentive for the pupils? - there must be one.

Ministers have to address the process. They can't vet every course at every college. A labyrinthine state sector is always full of disasters waiting to bite ministerial ankles. Junior ministers have to do more than firefighting or mopping up afterwards.

They have to do the unglamorous but essential job of making waste less likely in the future.

The simple answer is to centralise all decision making. Simple but wrong, and ultimately ineffective. The incentives in the system have to be got right, and officials making egregiously bad decisions have to be open to exposure.

So ... who pushed for this course? Who approved it? Why did it make sense for them? How can others be - ahem - encouraged not to repeat such folly?

Those are the lessons to be learned.

Old habits die hard

The press reports on Suffolk's new head of communications on £700 a day. What is David Cameron going to do about it, ask Daily Mail commenters.

Nothing, one hopes. Are the voters of Suffolk sheep, or citizens? Isn't it up to them and their elected representatives?

Separately, a charity Grandparents Plus is suggesting that the UK values grandparents' childcare contributions less highly than some other european states, though the person in charge of compiling the survey said on the Today programme that they had been surprised at how patchy state support for grandparents had proved to be.

This comes, says the Mail, as one of the country's top family experts will raise her fears that grandparents are being turned into a 'cheap safety net' for childcare.

Stop and look at this. The assumption is that childcare is somehow an obligation of the state. Indeed, Dr Katherine Rake, who is chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, is saying that "many grandparents are being exploited by the State", according to the paper (my italics).

Not so. Childcare is the responsibility of families, not the state. But ravening interest groups circle government, seeking to feed off taxpayers.

You may not have heard of Grandparents Plus - they had a donated rebrand in 2008-9. They had income of £148k that year. £49k was to cover "the senior management of the charity", mainly from the (Catholic?) Waterside Trust.

The Big Lottery Fund gave £35k for "the creation of a network of grandparents raising their grandchildren across England". Why is this a priority use of lottery money?

Lloyds TSB felt able to afford £10k "to fund the production costs of 'Rethinking Family Life' and survey".

Our Equality & Human Rights Commission gave £30,000 of our money "towards 'Rethinking Family Life' and a Poverty Project which includes funding for some new research".

You can see what's happening here. The donations are coming indirectly, through other organisations - not swept under the carpet, but certainly spread out for all to see. I don't see evidence of grandparents donating lots of money to an organisation campaigning for more state involvement in their care of their grandchildren. Instead, this looks like a circle of unaccountable purseholders campaigning for more state and taxpayer intervention - some of the campaigning done with taxpayers' own money.

This isn't charity work. It is lobbying. We can't afford the policies this unaccountable charmed circle are advocating.

In Whitehall or in Suffolk, it's not enough for central government to say no. Governments pass, as the unaccountable do gooders keen to 'do good' with our money - not theirs - are well aware.

In Suffolk the voters need to reassert their rights.

In Whitehall the Equalities and Human Rights Commission needs a good look, and certainly shouldn't be funding lobbyists disguised as charities. Put the morally superior begging bowls away.

And this lobbying funding and process needs to be repeatedly dragged out into the light, so that voters can see it for what it is.

Balls loses his way

Great opening to Balls's Guardian interview

I have arranged to go to Swindon with Ed Balls on the first excursion in his four-month Labour leadership campaign. There is just one problem. He has gone to Euston instead of Paddington. When he arrives, half an hour late, he apologises, explaining that he's having some difficulty adjusting to life without a ministerial car and half-a-dozen staff explaining where he needs to be. "I suppose you have your intro – 'Ex-minister doesn't have a clue where he is.'" Yes, I do, thank you. "Oh well, that's life."

David Laws stole our money

David Laws is all over the web after saying today that he has paid a high price for keeping his sexuality secret.

It's nothing to do with his sexuality. As someone has well phrased it, he put money in his lover's pocket. Forget the sophistry about was he or wasn't he a partner. Clearly he was. Even if a legalistic case could be made (which only further disfigures any notion of honesty), the moral position is crystal clear. They've been partners for years.

That was £40,000 of taxpayers' money. Our money. He put our money in his lover's pocket. Not just the rent - some of the other claims submitted before receipts were required look questionable too.

Several writers are pointing at him as a benefits thief - who should all get prison or community service.

The tragedy of David Laws is that he felt able to steal taxpayers' money for several years. Fairness? New politics? Bah humbug.

Do eurozone debtors need to deregulate?

Bill Jamieson has a tightly written piece in The Wall Street Journal. Summarising the problems of some eurozone countries, he points out that

The very austerity programs intended to cauterize the rise in debt are as likely to make it worse, as domestic spending is depressed, tax revenue falls and more citizens become dependent on state welfare.

Thus for Spain the risk is that further austerity will enlarge rather than shrink the deficit: "a perverse and deadly spiral that could entrap the economy in low growth for years ahead".

If Spanish unemployment is already running at 20.5%, why is there not widespread social unrest? Jamieson offers anecdotal evidence of the large size of the black economy there.

He reports a study which found that the more expensive and complicated are taxes and regulations, the bigger is the informal economy as a share of GDP. "That explains why, among rich countries, Spain, Greece, Italy and Belgium have some of the largest gray economies and why America, Canada and Switzerland have much smaller ones."

This may also provide the best hope for Spain and others to avoid a vicious social explosion. But ironically it will also provide further impetus for those who see labor market deregulation as the urgent and long-overdue way out of despair.

In theory that could see a needed rise in tax receipts. But longstanding customs of paying in cash may take decades to change.