Actually governing

This seems to be beyond the Lib Dems. It reportedly slipped Clegg's mind that he would be in charge while Cameron was abroad, so he went skiing. Cable is too puffed up with self-regard to knuckle down and do his job seriously, while Laws, perhaps the most talented of them, fiddled his expenses.

So we can write off the Lib Dems.

But traditionally Conservatives assume themselves born to rule.

After no one seemed to notice for several days that there were Britons in Libya needing help - help which other countries seemed able to provide for their nationals - Cameron rang Hague and Fox. Hague is reportedly to set about carpeting officials, as if no blame could attach to him for having failed to notice such lackadaisical incompetence.

Or maybe Hague was busy picking fonts:

At the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, civil servants must write to ministers using the “Ariel” font, except when writing to William Hague, the Foreign Secretary himself, for whom documents must be in “Georgia”.

Anyway, right on cue James Forsyth is obligingly spinning the line that much of the civil service just isn't up to snuff.

As a senior figure puts it: ‘Ministers are pulling levers and nothing is happening.’

Oh this again. This is almost word for word one of Blair's excuses. If the opposition front bench had been paying even slight attention, they would have heard this and prepared for it. Indeed Francis Maude was reconstructing the governance of departments to ensure that things got done. That's worked well, hasn't it.

Ministers seem to assume they can pronounce and then turn their backs. No. Every policy decision and exploration needs to be managed as a project, with ministerial oversight.

This needn't mean complex project management software. It need only mean a persistent junior minister, empowered by the Secretary of State, with A4 pads.

Junior ministers are among a Secretary of State's most precious resources. Chris Mullin's diaries show how the civil service will take them over and run their lives if they are allowed to. A Secretary of State needs to decide what their junior ministers are for, and then empower them.

The civil service still recruit high quality people, so they have the pool of talent. Ministers need to make them do their jobs.

Douglas Carswell writes that the mandarinate are the Coalition's biggest problem. Well no, their biggest problem is that they disregard the views of the electorate and don't do their jobs very well. Carswell's proposal to haul mandarins before select committees has superficial attraction, but so toothless and manipulable are select committees that they would continue to be fleabites.

However, one announcement today does shine a light on what seems to be civil service complacency. Philip Hammond is expressing concern that that anti-car campaigners have for too long used 'road safety' as a convenient excuse to stop motorway speed limits being raised and to push for more 20mph zones in urban areas even when they are inappropriate.

In future, Mr Hammond will demand that safety alone cannot be the sole determining factor when changing limits and that a thorough cost-benefit analysis which takes into account the economic impact must also be carried out when deciding such matters.

It seems that the bureaucracy had been conspiring with politicians to take the easy route of responding to politically correct pressures, rather than attempting decision making using a rational framework. Questioning this requires a minister who wants to - well - ask questions. (Maybe he'd also like to ask questions about traffic lights.)

Let's hope Philip Hammond follows this through. Otherwise it's just another headline.

School lotteries increase

To be clear, these are not fundraising lotteries by schools. No, these are lotteries about children's lives, about which secondary school they will go to.

Thirty-eight local authorities admit to having schools which use lotteries or "fair banding". The results suggest, says The Telegraph, that, across all 150 councils up to 180,000 pupils are applying in areas where their admission could effectively be decided "by a roll of the dice" or fair banding.

This evil state manipulation smacks of East Germany. With huge understatement, Jennie Varley, of the National Grammar Schools Association, says

It seems wrong to decide the fate of children on the roll of a dice. It means that children might end up with the wrong education which can have a damaging impact on their lives.

This arrogant top down lottery treats citizens as passive clients of an all-providing state.

Citizens are not there for the state. School lotteries disempower citizens, and place huge power in the hands of unelected state bureaucrats.

No decent democratic government should get away with such a policy. Let alone a government which claims to believe in individual choice and initiative.

The quality of Irish politicians

Ruth Dudley Edwards is well worth reading on this, and on Irish society in general:

Taoiseach Brian Cowen, for instance, was a solicitor before inheriting his father's seat at 24; his deputy, Mary Coughlan, was a social worker before succeeding her father at 21; Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, was a barrister who won his father's seat at 37; and while Micheal Martin, now leader of Fianna Fail, became a full-time politician after a year as a teacher.

Now they will get Fine Gael. "Enda Kenny was a schoolteacher for four years before he succeeded his father as a member of the Dail. His party is no more ideological than Fianna Fail, and is similarly awash with teachers and lawyers, but is more middle-class and honest. It has, however, almost no experience of government."

Read the whole piece.

Hm, there people who have spent practically all their adult life in politics. Remind you of anyone?

Yes, we must leave the EU

Richard North has an important post this morning. Not because it says anything new, but because it summarises an example of something important.

We mustn't lose sight of the important.

Richard's blogging on the case of the UK homeowner who's trying to regain possession of his home from squatters. "The group of foreigners who have taken possession have been granted legal aid to fight an eviction order - while Mr Hamilton-Brown has been forced to represent himself."

And now we come to the money quote. The group occupying Mr Hamilton Brown's home qualified for legal aid because they are EU citizens and unemployed.

As Richard says, this exemplifies why we must leave the EU.

Scorpion has nothing new to say about this either. But we have to keep saying it - loudly and often - to stress that it matters.

Hague says Gaddafi must go

... reports the BBC. The world titters in embarrassment and moves on muttering, They think they matter?

Entirely unembarrassed is the French Foreign Minister:

Embattled French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has announced her resignation after weeks of criticism over her contacts with the former Tunisian regime.

But she said she had done no wrong, and launched a strong attack on the media.

As the elite do in France.

She had initially offered French help to quell the uprising in Tunisia, and then "at the end of December, as the pro-democracy uprising in Tunisia got under way, but before its significance was apparent, she visited the country on holiday, and, it emerged later, twice flew on a private jet belonging to businessman Aziz Miled.

"It also transpired that on the same trip, her parents signed a property deal with Mr Miled, a man with close links to the former Tunisian leader."

She's likely to be replaced by Defence Minister Alain Juppe. In 2004, he was convicted of mishandling public funds.

Pointless Paul Burstow

This is Paul Burstow, a minister at the Department of Health (DoH).

The NHS is running a leadership course for gay, lesbian and bisexual managers. The two-day course manages to cost £1,000 a head, which means it can be run at Ashridge Management College. Jolly nice.

Where to start? First, the NHS shouldn't be running courses where selection depends on sexuality. At work, a manager is a manager, not a gay. Leave your sexuality at home.

Second, if you must run the course, the prestige Ashridge Management College can't be the cheapest venue.

Third, NHS trusts are queueing up to tell us they are going to have to cut front-line jobs.

So even if this course was a good idea - which it is NOT - the available budget should be NIL, not £36,000. You and I - taxpayers - are footing the bill.

Step forward Paul Burstow, who clearly handed in any brains he has when he collected his ministerial red box. Mr Burstow seems to think it's fine, commenting that the programme would give “targeted leadership support” to lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.

A DoH spokesman dug the hole deeper:

We are funding this programme to create a network of skilled and senior people to promote lesbian, gay and bisexual equality at local and regional levels.

Hello ... it is not the job of the NHS to promote sexual equality, it's their job to cure people of illnesses. Sexual discrimination at work is an offence. Full stop.

Responding to criticism about the luxury nature of the accommodation, the spokesman said it was the responsibility of (the homosexual campaign group) Stonewall to identify an appropriate venue within the budget allocated.

Why did someone allocate a budget which made Ashridge affordable?

Paul Burstow has evidently become a prisoner of his department, which makes him pointless. Here's what he should have said:

This is an unacceptable use of taxpayers' money, especially when all areas of government have to be careful over every pound they spend. I will be making it clear to managers that this spending is completely unacceptable, and it is not to happen again.

I will publish the names of the officials who authorised this waste.

But Paul Burstow is a creature of the system.

Peter Hain

Peter Hain - dishonest and a bully, as his performance on Question Time last night showed.

No connection whatever

Inspector Gadget has a cracking post about a police diversity training day (and do not miss the picture).

And GWPF reports that estimates of the amount of oil left in the North Sea have risen sharply and the rate of decline in oil and gas production is expected to slow dramatically over the next few years. Welcome news indeed in these uncertain times:

The trade body’s annual activity report found that North Sea reserves in known oil and gas fields have risen to 11.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), up by 1.3 billion boe on last year’s survey. Estimates of as-yet-undiscovered fields bring total probable reserves up to 24 billion boe, about two thirds of the amount extracted in the past four decades since oil was discovered in British waters.

Ming pompous as usual

Menzies Campbell's pompous self-righteousness resurfaces:

British politician Sir Menzies Campbell says there should be an inquiry into how the UK has handled the evacuation of its nationals from Libya: "Now, the concentration should be on rescue and not recrimination. But we will have to have an investigation when these matters come to a conclusion. And we certainly have got to ask ourselves whether we did everything that was possible in the circumstances."

Self-importance is second nature to him, whereas in reality he continues to be a man of no importance at all.

British workers stranded in Libya

A British oil worker, stranded in the middle of the Libyan desert with some 300 others, has said the UK government is ignoring their desperate pleas for rescue.

James Coyle told the Today programme that they only have one day's supply of food and water, and no means of protecting themselves from armed looters, who have already raided nearby camps.

"At the end of the day we are living a nightmare," he said. "We are here, desperate for the British government to come and get us".

This summarises an interview on the Today programme. They are saying the British Embassy is useless and is now ignoring them.

The BBC do not trouble to mention this story on their main web news page.

Update 11.05 on the BBC's rolling news page:

Britain's foreign office has been trying to reassure Britons stranded in Libya that everything is being done help them. A statement just released from the foreign office tells Britons stranded in camps in the desert to stay where they are for the time being if they are safe there. "Communications are very difficult in Libya at the moment, but we are doing all we can to contact every British National in Libya so that we can help them," the statement says.

Still useless.

The wind swindle

Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation links to a Daily Mail piece by Johnny Ball, who has suddenly found himself an agw sceptic celebrity.

And Delingpole has a German travel piece. They are related. In Germany they have stationary wind turbines too.

Ball uses his space to put the costs of generating energy by wind in straightforward terms:

If it costs 2.3p to produce one unit of electricity using gas, it costs 2.5p to produce the same electricity using nuclear energy and perhaps 2.9p using coal. Using wind power, the cost is an astonishing 9.8p.

Readers who don't believe that the trace gas CO2 is going to heat human civilisation out of existence can note that

Gas-powered power stations are now twice as efficient as they were 18 years ago, while the safety record of nuclear power in Western Europe is second to none. We ought to be investing in these, not ridiculous and highly inefficient wind farms that are only being built because of the huge government subsidies and guaranteed profits that are being offered.

And gas itself will become cheaper as we start to exploit shale, shifting the balance even further away from wind.

And yet the monolithic establishment continues to force us to pay for this ugly, pointless technology.

North remarks in a different context that our parents "told the élites where to get off".

We, he says, have to learn how do the same.

Police forces are not fit to run themselves

Do you believe in the autonomy of police forces?

That they should be left to run themselves?

That they should have no accountability for how they spend your money?

Then read this and change your mind.

A fine fauxmance

The jury's out on how this word should be spelled. Fauxmance? Fomance? The latest in showbusiness is in "Dancing on Ice", where two contestants pretended to have fallen head over heels for each other in order to boost their viewer votes.

We are hearing tales of unlikely flirtation in the political arena too. We're asked to believe that ministers and advisers are just starting to find out how much autonomy the political class have signed away to the EU.

Thus James Forsyth writes that

Oliver Letwin, Cameron’s mild-mannered and cerebral Policy Minister, has become so frustrated by this constant interference that he has told colleagues he thinks Britain should leave the European Union if it won’t give us all the opt-outs the Government wants.

To be clear, this is not "constant interference" by some outside organisation. Ministers invited the elephant in and gave it a suitably large seat at the table. Letwin doubtless voted for it.

Which would be worse? If this is a cynical (and transparent) non-flirtation flirtation with euroscepticism got up to impress Tory backbenchers? Or if, through all his years in high politics, the "cerebral" Letwin never garnered any notion of how much power had been signed away to the EU?

Letwin is not alone in thinking this. In one department, a recent meeting between a Secretary of State and a junior Minister ended with the pair agreeing that the only solution to the problem they were discussing was to get out of the EU.

Ground-breaking! And have they said this in public? Will they? I think not. A Secretary of State should have known better (unless it was Vince Cable, who has to peer round his ego to see the world). Of course if it had been Ken Clarke he would have known, but shrugged with indifference.

Cameron’s strategy guru and close friend Steve Hilton is getting fed up with the way Brussels bureaucracy is blocking his agenda for a post-bureaucratic age.

Did Steve Hilton not know the EU was here?

But there is another layer to this government's fauxmance with euroscepticism. This will make you gasp. Shock and awe aren't in it.

Even the Lib Dems have been shocked at how much influence Brussels has on decisions that should be taken at a national level. Nick Clegg was appalled when officials told him that the EU wouldn’t allow VAT to be set at a local level.

See? The Lib Dems - ardent supporters of our EU membership - had no idea what they were talking about. Who would have thought it?

The usually levelheaded Iain Martin has heard this tosh too:

It seems that leading figures around the Prime Minister are rediscovering their Eurosceptic roots.

Oh please! But Martin hasn't quite swallowed the line. David Cameron, he writes, "is in love with being a European leader".

Merkel and Sarkozy did a very good number on him when he was in opposition, lavishing him with attention at various points and persuading Cameron that he would have tremendous influence once he was in power. Since the election they have treated young David as an equal, flattering him with regular calls and bolstering his standing at summits. Leaders absolutely love this stuff–the high-powered trips to Brussels where they can leave petty domestic concerns behind and play the statesman with other statesmen. The last thing Cameron is going to want to do having gained entry to the leaders’ club is to jeopardise his position.

So perhaps the tales of fauxmance are aimed at an audience across the Channel rather than at Westminster. That doesn't make them any more convincing.

If the fauxmantics are still in shock at the discovery that the EU is over here rather than over there, they should sit down before reading Mary Ellen Synon's excellent account of what the Irish have let themselves in for in their pact with the hierarchy of the EU.

Ministers can't say they weren't told. But they probably will. It's all deniable, you see.

English Defence League behave better than students

I'd got the impression from the BBC that demonstrations involving the English Defence League tended to be violent.

Here is one that was evidently disciplined.

A stupid politician

Yes, I know, it's not a gripping headline, but it's still early.

Anyway, Sir Richard Leese says the struggle to produce a balanced budget after the Pickles pruning has been more painful than dealing with the aftermath of Manchester's IRA bomb.

Does this stupid man not realise that the debt the coalition inherited from his party is still going up?

How does Sir Richard propose that the debt his party left should be dealt with?

Coalition Lib Dems don't care about deregulation

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) have warned that new employment laws coming into force over the next four years will cost business an implausibly precise £22.9bn.

• Plans to give agency workers the same pay as permanent staff after just 12 weeks in a job will lead to an annual cost of £1.5bn, the BCC said. The UK regulations stem from an EU directive, but the Government has been accused of "gold plating" the law
• Giving staff the right to request time off work for training "will cost £175m a year from April 2011"
• Pensions reform – including automatically enrolling employees onto a workplace scheme from 2012 – "will result in a recurring annual cost of £4.5bn".

The BCC also warned against the constant "tinkering" to employment law. Three changes are being planned to parental leave in the coming few years, each with their own price tag for industry, the business group said.

(The civil servants tend not to get this, because regulating is their core job.)

The government's response to this was telling and is worth quoting.

The Government is taking dramatic steps to reduce the burdens that regulation places on our businesses, removing barriers to growth. We are removing or delaying unnecessary measures wherever possible and have introduced the revolutionary one in, one out system that will cut the costs that businesses face in dealing with bureaucracy.

We are removing ... unnecessary measures wherever possible, they say. Wherever possible? When is it impossible to remove "unnecessary measures"? Could this be a reference to the EU elephant in the room? If so, any serious government would set out a list of measures it considers unnecessary but which it regretfully cannot remove. It would then go ahead and cancel the rest. It's not doing that, and we'll see why.

We are ... delaying unnecessary measures wherever possible, they say. This surely can only be a reference to the EU. Any mildly curiously journalist would have probed what this meant - but from The Telegraph's Louisa Peacock (Jobs Editor, no less) we get nothing.

The Department for Business spokesman goes on to say that they have introduced the revolutionary one in, one out system that will cut the costs that businesses face in dealing with bureaucracy.

As I have argued before, there is nothing revolutionary about this at all. Most recent governments have promised it. Note there's no promise that the one in will be less burdensome than the one out. Indeed, one out at a time is far from good enough when they have all these unnecessary regulations waiting to be annulled.

Could this be why the government hasn't had a bonfire of unnecessary measures? Because they want to abolish them one at a time, to get maximum political value? Never mind that, meanwhile, business has to keep observing these regulations that are unnecessary.

You might think a Business Minister would be onto this like a hawk. Ripping the burden of regulation should be a good way to make your name. But it does need a minister who truly thinks that there's an important goal here and is prepared to put in the work. (Truly not much at Secretary of State level. It's what junior ministers are for.)

LibDems like freedom headlines. They like the easy grand gesture. But Clegg notoriously passed most of the suggestions for a Freedom Bill over to the Home Office. Too much like hard work, you see. And Vince prefers tweaking George Osborne's nose in interviews over pursuing the serious business of being a minister and getting things done. So much more satisfying to the big ego.

We need a business minister who wants to make his name by delivering. And, Louisa, we need journalists who will ask questions rather than copy out releases. Maybe Louisa needs a spell in Cairo or Tehran to remind her what her job is.

Unbelievable numbers from the NSPCC

The Telegraph's version is

Nearly one in five secondary school children has been severely abused or neglected, a survey by the NSPCC found.

Unbelievable. A BBC summary gives us a peek under the bonnet. "The study also says a million secondary school pupils have faced "severe maltreatment" during childhood. Children in poorer households and those in homes with separated parents are significantly more likely to face violence and abuse, says the charity."

The study defined "severe maltreatment" across a wide range of measures. It included young people who had been subject to rape, attempted rape, forced sexual contact, sexual abuse, physical harm such as a black eye and being hit with a weapon.

But it also included "serious emotional neglect or lack of physical care or supervision", which it defined as including "parents never or hardly ever asking their child who they were going out with or where or what they were doing".

Now I'm not saying there aren't problems. But the NSPCC is arguably over-egging them.

Their chief executive said: "The scale and impact of child abuse requires a major shift towards earlier intervention in child protection".

We continue to learn of instances where social workers' diligence and judgement in child protection cases have been appalling. And we know from Booker that the system is too secretive, so it can operate unjustly.

And a major shift towards earlier intervention would cost significant money. This small and questionable survey does not provide a basis for that.

Welsh taxpayers' money no object

Sometimes a report reveals such breathtaking arrogance by all the officials involved that comment is superfluous.

A £107,000-a-year auditor spent £464 of taxpayers' money on chauffeur-driven Mercedes to take him to conference on how to cut public spending.

Anthony Snow ordered the limousine for the 290-mile journey for a meeting with the senior auditors from around Britain.

Mr Snow claimed the £464 expenses as chief operating officer for the Wales Audit Office. where his job was to check on £20 billion of taxpayers' cash.

The 51-year-old civil servant was able to "self-authorise" his expenses claim for the chauffeured car for the trip.

Mr Snow jumped in the Merc at St Asaph, North Wales, to travel in style to the auditor's public spending meeting in Poole, Dorset.

The conference was called "More for Less – Meeting the Challenges of a Changed Environment" for top Government auditors from across Britain.

Mr Snow was the £107,00-a-year top official at the watchdog responsible for making sure the Cardiff-based Welsh Assembly spends taxpayers' money wisely.

Assembly member Leanne Wood said: "It is staggering that Wales' public spending watchdog authorised £464 for a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

"I've been told that this trip was arranged at short notice to attend the National Audit Office's senior management conference.

"It was called "More for Less – Meeting the Challenges of a Changed Environment" which is ironic.

"I find it difficult to understand why his appearance at the conference should need to have been at short notice, and even if it was, he could have got there for a lot less."

Mr Snow has since left his job – and officials yesterday said there is little they can do to get the money back.

It followed a row when Mr Snow left his job more than a year ago – and picked up a retirement package worth £750,000.

His package was authorised by former Auditor General Jeremy Colman, who is currently serving a prison sentence for possessing indecent images of children that were found on his office computer.

Mr Snow will get pension contributions until he is 60 worth a total of £618,614 plus a year's severance pay.

Just months after leaving the WAO, Mr Snow landed another highly-paid job as chief operating officer for the Financial Reporting Council in London.

Miss Wood, a Plaid Cymru assembly member, investigated his expenses after discovering details of his pay off.

She said: "Another £170 was spent a few months earlier on the same chauffeur service.

"Hiring a car, if a car had to be used, would have been a far better use of public money.

"The people at the very top of Wales' public spending scrutiny body were having a laugh at the expense of the public purse.

"I sincerely hope these further revelations of excess will make sure that future spending rules are firmly tightened up.

"Most people would agree that public servants hiring a chauffeur service is excessive."

Conservative AM Darren Millar, who chairs the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee, said: "Costs of this nature do seem pretty extraordinary.

"We will be keen to secure an explanation as to why taxpayers picked up the tab for such luxury travel arrangements."

Mr Snow, now working in London, has declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the Wales Audit Office confirmed it was allowed for him to authorise his own expenses.

She said: "The value for money of this decision is unclear and appears highly questionable.

"Owing to the time elapsed since the expenditure was approved and since Mr Snow's departure, it would be neither practical nor a prudent use of public funds to try to recoup the expenditure."

The officials played a blinder, leaving the lawmakers floundering helplessly in their wake.

South East England subsidises Wales.

Please Sir ... More

State sector employment is a racket ratchet.

Public sector spending cuts could lead to an exodus of graduates from regions outside the Southeast, impeding economic recovery, according to the Work Foundation

Graduates in the North and Midlands are disproportionately employed in the public sector (we know why that is, Labour bumped up the numbers of state sector jobs there), so "spending cuts are likely to result in a ‘flight’ of university leavers away from these areas to places with stronger private sectors in the Southeast".

Well yes, it doesn't take a research assistant to tell us that. His report warns that patterns of improved graduate retention in cities and regions outside the Southeast "risk being reversed altogether". Well there's a risk that anything could happen. He chooses to highlight the alarmist case. He says:

High-skilled graduates are vital for urban innovation and growth. With the scrapping of schemes such as the Future Jobs Fund, the coalition must now focus on developing strategies aimed at integrating the highly skilled into local private sector jobs.

Not doing so risks exacerbating regional divides between successful cities and regions (mainly located in the Southeast) and those in the North and Midlands.

Hm, would this be the Future Jobs Fund which the coalition claims is very expensive? Why would a research assistant choose to highlight it, I wonder?

If a Labour government pumps up economies in its constituencies with unsustainable government debt, just how much more money are taxpayers required to throw at this imbalance?

If some cities are chronically unsuccessful, how much money should taxpayers in the successful areas have to continue to throw at them over the long term?

Justice delayed is justice denied

After she was hit by a tram, the probe into Cheryl Flanagan’s death was ‘a shambles’, said the coroner after hearing that all British Transport Police CID based at Birmingham had been given the day off.

A detective was eventually dispatched from Bristol, almost 100 miles away from the scene, only to be turned back by a senior officer, the inquest heard.

Meanwhile, the 30-year-old victim’s parents were standing by her body, waiting for a detective.

There is also a question why the police didn't arrest her fiancé.

Cheryl Flanagan died in December 2003 but the inquest is happening only now.

BPAS takes the government to court

We've so many fake charities (charities funded by government) that when I see a charity doing political activism the first thing I reach for is the accounts, to see where the money's coming from. Too often it's taxpayers stumping up.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has taken the government to court, and today it lost.

No sign of the accounts on their website, so I asked if they could send me a copy. The response from Victoria Merriman, "Contact Centre Quality & Performance Co-ordinator", was that

The latest published accounts for bpas can be downloaded from the Charity Commission or Companies House website.

So helpful, Victoria.

And indeed there they are. No sign of taxpayers' money. In fact it looks like a serious business to me. Indeed most of their goals seem business related. Maybe that's unsurprising when total income was over £25m, with a trading surplus of more than £1.2m.

Who benefits from your charity's work?

Women with unwanted pregnancies, people in need of contraceptive support and advice and those in need of sexual health services such as screening, testing and treatment benefit from the charities work. bpas provides care for almost 60,000 clients per annum.
The charity also benefits the NHS as more than 90% of the treatments it provides are commissioned by the NHS, ensuring value for money. bpas also provides information to journalists, parliamentarians and other policy makers as well as bodies that represnt medical professionals such as the Royal Colleges

In other words, yes it is a business. It just pays tax like a charity. But doubtless Dame Suzi of Charity Commission, one of the wimmin, approves.

BBC Storyville: Meet the Climate Sceptics

The BBC has now replied to my complaint about Rupert Murray's programme - I don't say "answered" the complaint, because they have ignored some of what I wrote, and parts of their reply are breathtakingly dishonest.

Thank you for your feedback about Storyville: Meet the Climate Sceptics broadcast on 31 January 2011.

Meet the Climate Sceptics was an authored film, clearly presented from the personal perspective of the film maker, Rupert Murray. He focussed on Lord Monckton because he is a high profile and key figure in the debate - as indicated when the Republicans put him forward as the sole witness in a hearing about climate change.

During the film, the film maker gave Lord Monckton the opportunity of presenting his case, also including a right to reply. The film maker was rigorous in his journalism and having trawled the peer reviewed papers on both sides, he discovered that substantially more papers gave evidence of man made global warming. He therefore drew his own conclusions about the issue.

We hope this explains our position on the matter and thank you once again for taking the time to contact us.

Yours sincerely

The Storyville: Meet the Climate Sceptics production team

If the film chose to focus on one man, it should have called itself "Meet a climate sceptic". We know from Delingpole that Murray saw the weighty and moderate Lawson carrying a debating audience against AGW. How odd that he chose not to use that.

The film maker gave Lord Monckton the opportunity of presenting his case, also including a right to reply

I did not see Lord Monckton given the chance to present a scientific case against AGW at all. Nor did I see a right to reply - indeed, Monckton felt so strongly he had been denied any right to reply that he went to court.

The film maker was rigorous in his journalism ...

Risibly untrue, as Delingpole showed in his account of his contact with Murray.

... having trawled the peer reviewed papers on both sides, he discovered that substantially more papers gave evidence of man made global warming. He therefore drew his own conclusions about the issue.

This implies that Murray came to the film project open minded about AGW and made up his mind on the basis of the numbers of papers he found on each side of the argument!

With this straightfaced adherence to untruth, the (anonymous) responder could have gone far in Pravda, or Mubarak's Ministry of Information. What's especially galling is that we pay this person to write this stuff.

Gove in court

Councils defeat government over school buildings, says BBC News education reporter Hannah Richardson, with a picture showing a prefab with doors with flaking paint.

James Forsyth calls it A win for Gove.

Michael Gove has won on the substance in the judicial reviews of his decisions on Building Schools for the Future. The judge has rejected the claim that Gove acted irrationally and found that he has the authority to make the decisions he did.

There will have to be reviews of six of the decisions because of a failure to consult fully and a full equalities assessment will have to be done - yet another example of one of the traps that Labour has left behind and that the coalition needs to scrap as soon as possible. But this is hardly the victory that it is being portrayed as by some.

Crucially, the judge has ruled that “the final decision on any given school or project still rests with him [Gove]. He may save all, some, a few, or none. No one should gain false hope from this decision.” This means, in effect, that Gove’s original decisions can stand.

The BBC may wish Gove had lost on the substance. But he didn't. The programme was hugely expensive and inefficient. And in any case new buildings do not a school make. That requires good teaching to motivated pupils.

But how much easier for activists to draw up shiny schemes for spending other people's money rather than get on with the necessary but unglamorous work.

Daily Telegraph front page

Above the fold the Telegraph's front page tells us we can get a £5 voucher tomorrow to spend at Body Shop, and highlights Pete Oborne's piece about Cameron and Europe. But clearly Oborne hasn't followed North's link to Mary Ellen Synon's excellent article. Obone tells us so much less.

Below the fold we are told we can read

• Hannah Betts on Kate's new style - Gone is the drippy Sloaneiness and in its place an admirable sass
  
  
• Matthew Norman on muzak - Why do restaurateurs think inept covers of Abba will enhance a meal?

Why do editors think such tripe will enhance a newspaper?

The Egyptian coverage includes a staggeringly misjudged Matt cartoon of someone in Tahrir Square saying "Surely we can't all be from the BBC?".

Misjudged first because I've not heard anyone complain about the BBC numbers, secondly because CNN and Aljazeera have at least as many covering this key story, thirdly because the BBC has oddly sent some reporters from Egypt to Israel, fouthly because coverage of the rest of Egypt seems to be non-existent, fifthly because it demeans the Egyptian demonstrators there, who are being pretty brave in large numbers, and lastly because it lends support to Egyptian government propaganda that it's all got up by foreign satellite television stations.

But the biggest clunker on the front page today must be in the Egyptian report, where their correspondents write:

But those in Tahrir Square were dumbfounded by the president's address.

No, they shouted in loud fury. As a glimpse at the television coverage would have told them.

Deregulation - too hard or just unglamorous?

An enjoyably pointed post from Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, suggesting the best thing the government can do for business growth is to "get out of the way".

The trouble is, though, that deregulation has been found too difficult. Nick Clegg's intended repeal of outdated laws has been put in a drawer because there's too much outdated law for him to get his head round

The trouble is, it's grinding, detailed work and it's not glamorous. Clegg's non-department was the wrong place for this task. The Business Department should be driving it, but goodness knows what they're doing. Maybe Vince's ego is obstructing micro measures.

Strategically it's perfectly clear what the government should be doing. However, they've been criticised for lacking a growth strategy, as if that was a macroeconomic issue. So expect something botched in the budget.

In fact the government has had plenty of micro input. They don't need to do the whole thing at once, they just need to make their masters officials get on with it.

Local libraries are local

Libraries aren't as important as they used to be. Little point in traipsing to the reference library when you have the internet at your fingertips. Books are far cheaper than they were when the library movement was at its height. And now we have radio and television too.

But Oxfordshire's libraries are nothing to do with me.

Ed Miliband's line is that if a council decides to close a library, that's a poor reflection on central government. No. If a council's grant is going back to the level it was in 2007, has that library been opened in the last four years?

If not, why does the council prefer to keep a newer service going rather than the library?

Let's be clear, this is not a question for a government minister, or for The Commons. It's a local council, and this is a local choice for local voters. What choices do local voters want their local council to make?

This is what localism means.

But doubtless Labour will be back next week deploring another spending cut without proposing any of their own.

Fake charities

Don't miss this post from yesterday by Raedwald on fake charities.

He rightly argues that charities should not be paid taxpayers' money so that they can lobby governments. Bang on. (As Richard North has repeatedly shown, the EU does this too.)

This dependency on government is pernicious. It allows politicians to tell charities what they should do:

Greg Clark ... addressing the National Council for Voluntary Organisations annual conference, ... told delegates that all organisations must make climate change central to their operations.

And we have recently seen Oxfam opining on the levels of benefits in the UK, where we can assume that no one on social security is forced to starve.

As I wrote at the start of this year, charities should be funded by people, not by government. Government funding is nice and cosy for them. Too cosy.

P.S. Gregg Beaman agrees.

Why buy The Telegraph?

Today the two attractions offered at the top of the Daily Telegraph's front page are:

- Esther Rantzen "You can't beat a hero with a handbag"

and

- Sarah Mower "The return of the trouser suit".

Buyers with brains wanting a newspaper can look elsewhere.

Further down - still on the front page - we can read a report about the important topical subject of herbal tea. (Egypt? Try inside.)

Sales of herbal tea have risen by 60% in a year....

So say Whittard of Chelsea, hardly typical tea suppliers. So what proportion of the tea market is made up by sales of herbal tea? The Newspaper of the Year cannot be bothered to tell you, preferring instead to mention Jennifer Aniston.

If you still want more Chelsea after that, fear not. We are told at the bottom of the front page: "Three cheers! Chelsy Davy is back in town". Yes, you can read Bryony Gordon on page 21.

Newspaper of the year?

B&B 2

This morning's second B is Brown.

Thanks to Brown's simultaneous merger and cost-cutting at Customs & Excise and the Inland Revenue, HMRC is ‘almost stretched to breaking point’, the Treasury Select Committee has been told.

It employs badly-trained staff who regularly give out the wrong advice, lose letters or simply do not know what they are talking about, they heard.

And only last week the Public Accounts Committee found that HMRC caused uncertainty, worry and unfairness to millions of people through their “mismanagement” of the PAYE system. In December 2009, their system suggested that 7 million people had mispaid in 2008/09, but the state sector woodentops made no public statement about the situation until September 2010, when it said 4.3 million people had paid too much tax, and 1.4 million too little.

Bravo, Brown.

We now know that Brown's government coached Libya on how to persuade the Scottish government to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber. Nothing to do with us, they said at the time. That was a lie.

And in yesterday's Commons debate, where was persistent absentee Brown? Still spurning the parliamentary duties he's paid for.

As usual, Macavity's not there.

B&B 1

Would you like Hosni Mubarak as your holiday host? As we know, French PM Francois Fillon saw no problem. And:

Tony Blair caused controversy when prime minister by accepting a Christmas holiday paid for by Mr Mubarak in 2001. Mr Blair, his wife Cherie and children Euan, Nicky, Kathryn and Leo, stayed at villas in Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh. Accommodation and flights were provided by Mr Mubarak. In exchange, Mr Blair records that he made “donations” to a charity chosen by his hosts.

They were guests of a dictator who tortured his opponents and stole billions from the Egyptian poor.

How upsetting for Cherie Blair, who made her money from legal cases on human rights.

State sector woodentops

As the lamentable response of the emergency services to the 7/7 London bombings continues to be laid out for public display by the inquest evidence, today we read that they were not helped by poor communication from above.

Andrew Barr was clearly ludicrously over-promoted as "gold commander" in charge of London Underground's response to the attacks, but evidently he is still in post. As The Telegraph reports:

A review by the chief operating officer at London Underground ... found that some members of staff found out more about what was happening from television news than they did from the Network Control Centre that was supposed to be co-ordinating the response.

Asked if he was confident that the problem had been solved, Mr Barr told the inquest, "I believe there is an awareness of what is required".

In other words, No. If this mess of a response happens again, it will be the responsibilty of the London Mayor. Watch out, Boris.

Meanwhile, up in Scotland Dave points out that South Lanarkshire Council has been forced to call in police for the second time in six months after falling victim to a sophisticated mobile phone scam.

Crooks have racked up thousands of pounds worth of calls at the taxpayers’ expense after stealing sim cards from alarm systems installed by South Lanarkshire Council.

It comes just months after the authority, which is facing £55million worth of budget cuts, was stung for more than £100,000 by an African crime gang after officials were duped into paying money into a bogus account.

Bosses at the Labour-run council are reportedly furious after hearing about the costly scam only last week following a tip-off from the public. Evidently Strathclyde Police made initial inquiries with council staff six months ago, but details were only recently passed on to managers.

How much else are the staff concealing? Sackings are in order but I doubt we'll see any.

Highways Agency not fit for purpose

The BBC mangles the basic story:

A project to widen two stretches of the UK's busiest motorway could have wasted £1bn of public money, MPs have said.

"Could have" but it didn't? Do they mean "may have"?

It took nine years to negotiate the PFI contracts. That cost £80m. Now, you get no road for this at all. The agency spent £80m on consultants and advisers, firms that directly benefited from delays in the process, the report said:

More should have been done to limit the costly delays to the project and the amount spent on advisers who will have benefited from the drawn-out procurement.

Guess what? The incompetent official in charge of the project, a Mr Scholey, is now a consultant doing work for Balfour Beatty, which runs PFI projects.

How cosy.

The Highways Agency said the project was progressing on time and under budget. Which just shows what an easy touch they are.

Have you ever noticed any sense of urgency at all in road works - that is, once the speed cameras have been installed?

And what about the quality of work? The M25 road surface is already poor on the M11-A12 stretch - just where work has been done.

But the complacent Highways Agency are cosily satisfied. No wonder their officials can find work with PFI companies after they leave.

Benefit fraud investigators - fighting for taxpayers

The Guardian has written a long piece about the role of benefit fraud investigators, labelling them "spies in the welfare war".

I critique it here.

A climate sceptic still fizzing with indignation

The juvenile journalism of last night's Meet the Sceptics on BBC4 still has me fizzing with such indignation that I've complained to the BBC, which you can do here.

Biased, juvenile programme with poor journalistic standards.

See Watts up with That for how a contributor was solicited and dealt with, and the link to James Dellingpole. Clearly the programme had an agenda and was not unbiased.

In more detail:

To take one small but interesting example from this juvenile film, they showed Monckton reciting elements from the periodic table to the tune of “I am the very model of a modern major-general” and then proceeded to play the G&S original in the background, implying Monckton was a dilettante. Actually what he was doing was reciting the well known parody by Tom Lehrer. Question: were the narrator and all the filmmakers so ignorant that they did not know of the Lehrer original? Or were they deliberately misrepresenting what Monckton was doing? Answer: almost certainly the latter.

There was also juvenile stress on members of Monckton’s audiences being “elderly”. Allegedly they seek refuge from the knowledge that their generation’s life’s work has been in vain and will have to be undone. This was stated as a fact. (So younger people all accept the Green agenda? Tell that to the Republicans.)

The climategate emails had been “hacked”. No reference to the possibility that they had been leaked. Academics were allowed to claim that critics of AGW should be ignored unless they published peer reviewed articles, with no reference to the systematic blocking revealed in the climategate emails.

We had an Australian academic using the argument from ignorance, saying we couldn’t think what else it could be other than CO2. And we were treated to an Oregon schoolteacher preaching the precautionary principle on a whiteboard without once mentioning costs.

And the topic of “forcing” was introduced as if it was new to the filmmaker, with him expressing astonishment that the whole argument came down to this. Which of course it doesn’t.

The floods in Pakistan, China etc were signs of “climate change”. And look at Australia, the film said, look what a dustbowl it is. Er….

Such shoddiness would have disgraced an amateur. Yet you paid (our) good money for it. By no stretch of the imagination did this film or the practices in the making of it meet the BBC's stated criteria of fairness.

P.S. Richard North has kindly linked to this post, suggesting it is evidence of "a classical education (sort of)". I'm baffled! :)