Alive, Well and Solvency Too

Just thought I would pop a post up to let people know I am alive and well. Currently enjoying the similarities between Solvency II for the insurance industry and other regulations that I have looked at in the past. Hence, busy.

Practical Illustration Of Leftist Rhetoric Inciting Disorder

On Monday evening, as it was already clear that violent criminals were gathering in the target-rich and labyrinthine streets of Birmingham city centre, Central News took the deeply unwise decision to give airtime on its evening bulletin to Mathew Raines (pictured below) a spokesman for a far left organisation which endorsed public disorder.


In this video the relevant interview starts at 1:32. In the background you will see a young black male in a red and grey tracksuit nodding along to the Leftist apologist. Next day amongst this selection of riot images in the Evening Mail, this image pops up.

It is being reported that Mathew Raines is the partner of Penny Holbrook, a Labour councillor for Stockland Green in Jack Dromey's seat of Birmingham Erdington. Mr Raines should be done for inciting violence.

Bruno Brookes Birthday

Ever wondered what Bruno Brookes first birthday would have been like.
Here's a couple of excerpts.

Your Choice In Thursday's Electoral System Referendum

How we decide who represents us in our democracy is a critical question and one that ought to be answered by the public, not politicians whose opinions will naturally be skewed by self-interest. For this reason, I am delighted that one outcome of the coalition is a public referendum on electoral change.

Being a local association chairman for the Conservative Party and a supporter of Yes2AV since last year, I am in the unusual position of having a foot in both camps for the referendum campaigns and an insight into both.

Talking to 'ordinary voters' and to supporters of each side, it appears that many people have felt insulted or patronized by the Yes and No campaigns. Some may even decide their vote on that basis, or due to a particular dislike for Baroness Warsi/Nick Griffin/David Cameron/Chris Huhne/Ed Miliband/Nick Clegg/Insert as appropriate. My view is that we have a chance to vote on an issue which is more important than one individual, party or campaign and that we should look at the issue itself. I think we would all do well to consider the issue on its merits.

Personally, I think that the merits of AV can be illustrated by asking ourselves pertinent questions about the system.

1. Will AV be a system that engages more people in politics?

First-past-the-post is a misnomer. There is no post. A party needs only beat the second placed opponent and can win by ensuring its core vote gets to the polling station and attracting a few tactical voters by warning of the dangers of the main opponent. Under FPTP when door-knocking, if you encounter a non-supporter the temptation is to get to the next house or persuade the voter that their planned vote would be wasted. These are not a viable tactics under AV. In seeking to pass the 50% support test under AV, a politician who wants to win has to be interested in your other preferences and is therefore likely to engage with a wider group.

At the macro level, FPTP has led to a focus on ‘key voters’ in swing seats reducing the number of people parties engage with over the years. The electoral calculus doesn’t work like that under AV forcing parties with ambitions to win seats with 50% support to spread their nets more widely.

2. Under AV will more people walk away from an election feeling like their vote/participation was worthwhile?

Unambiguously, AV gives voters more choice. Whilst some people who have always voted for one party and wish to continue to do so will not see the personal benefit, many will appreciate the opportunity to vote with their heart (first preference) and their head (next preferences) or simply to rank candidates. By elimination of the phenomenon of wasted votes, barriers to entry are reduced, meaning that our politics is likely to become more dynamic with new ideas coming to the fore and a greater range of options at the ballot box.

What’s more, AV provides more information to politicians. MPs who were elected after several elimination rounds will know where their residual support came from and second placed candidates will know where they failed to garner the support. To use an example, we all know how Ed Miliband passed David Miliband on the later rounds of the Labour leadership vote which provided both with a great deal of useful democratic information.

3. Will AV be a system that strengthens Parliament?

Whilst I don’t think that politicians elected on FPTP are illegitimate, there is a perception problem when people can keep a straight face whilst questioning the mandate of a coalition government which jointly commanded 60% or so of the votes in the 2011 General Election. It is the case that under AV all MPs will need support of at least 50% of those expressing a preference. That has to improve the legitimacy of MPs to be our elected representatives.

As mentioned above those elected will know exactly where their support came from as a result of the information provided in the count. If somebody ran on a single issue platform (say a planning issue), the true importance of this issue to voters is likely to be concealed under FPTP because of the risk of wasting your vote. This is less so, under AV where voters can use their first preference to make a ‘protest’ on an issue of importance to them safe in the knowledge that they can still influence the overall result.

Downsides

The fact it isn’t used in many countries is irrelevant. It may lead to a tendency to moderation (not extremism as Baroness Warsi argued) leading to insipid all-things-to-all-men characters being elected, but I suspect that exciting, radical candidates can still break through.

Yes, AV costs a little more (it’s marginal), is more complex (it’s marginal) and incorporates delay (it’s marginal), but these are prices worth paying for a better system.

Conclusion

In summary, AV is a system which strengthens Parliament, supports a dynamic free market in ideas, is likely to engage more people in the political process and make more people feel like their vote was worthwhile. In my opinion, these are good reasons for any Conservative to support it, but most of all anyone who is a fan of true democracy. What do you think?

True Up Uk plc's Accounts

Sometimes I prepare blogs which I don't publish. Here's one I found from last March. Quite interesting with hindsight.

A key lesson we can learn from our local government electoral successes is that when we take over from Labour administrations, we need to communicate to the electorate the true nature of the Labour legacy. We need to make the case for truing up UK plc’s accounts as soon as we get a chance to open the books.

Anyone who consumes political news can see that Labour is eager to frame the economic debate - which is the key battleground at the coming election - in terms of Tory spending plans. This is a problem for us. The Labour government has shown that they will unleash the machinery of a politicised senior Civil Service to attack specific ideas, but being overly vague on our deficit reduction plans sends a poor message to voters.

In respect of the inevitable future spending reductions, the media have taken up this what/when/how line of questioning on Labour’s behalf, and time after time we see Tory spokespeople on our screens walking a delicate tightrope between realism about and over-enthusiasm for cuts. It rarely looks pretty and in the context of a deficit of trillions, has, at times, descended into heated arguments over line items which are, in relative terms, minutiae.

The simple truth is that without sight of the books, we won’t know the true extent of the deficit problem or be able to diagnose the consequent action required. To fight on this territory before the election is like going into battle blind-folded, and it isn’t good strategy.

Therefore we should seek to reframe this debate by describing our approach to deficit reduction. Whilst certain cuts can and should be made from day one of a Conservative government, the larger part of the deficit reduction programme needs more groundwork.
In my view, the first step in this programme is to true up the national accounts. It may seem like a long time ago, but New Labour’s golden rule was that debt should not exceed 40% of GDP. First mentioned by Brown in the 1990s for over a decade, many major government projects and policies have been structured in ways with adherence to this rule as a prime objective. Classifying spending as investment, PFI projects where unavoidable future costs are not recorded as government liabilities and the non-recognition of future pension liabilities are the best known tools in the government’s box of accounting tricks, but they may be just the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Like Enron, the UK government has used the letter rather than the spirit of the law to present their numbers in a favourable way.

To reveal a fairer picture of our finances, we should engage an independent firm to prepare a May 7 2010 UK plc balance sheet under private sector standards valuing our assets at their market value and recording our liabilities in full. A summary of the adjustments made to take the leap from our predecessors’ records to get to this truer picture should not be difficult to set out.

Armed with this realistic information, we can have a proper public debate about future fiscal decisions. It may well be the case that after ring-fenced budgets and unavoidable commitments, the percentage cuts required in other areas to get our finances back on track are even greater than previously estimated or advertised. Or we may need to renegotiate onerous contracts entered into by the previous government. But that’s a question for the future.

These interminable arguments about what, when and where to cut which do so much to switch off the electorate can be extinguished, if instead, we answer such questions by describing our approach. It can also be used to put the onus on Labour on whether or not they support our sensible approach. If we can put this inane deficit debate to bed, perhaps we can focus our attention on the important business of recreating the excellent conditions for economic growth in the private sector which we provided last time we were in government.

Another reason for taking the approach I describe is to manage public expectations. If we don’t go through this exercise, I fear that financial grenades will be exploding for years to come. I’d hate to see us caught in the same cycle of obfuscation and form over substance that we have come to expect under New Labour. We wouldn’t be forgiven by the electorate for that.

Robert Higginson For Soho

For the second year in succession our local candidate in Birmingham Soho ward will be local campaigner, Robert Higginson.


With his extensive knowledge of the people and the area, Robert has come to the conclusion that Soho ward has been let down over the years and effective advocacy is what is missing from their political representatives.

A good example of this came up at a recent Winson Green Neighbourhood meeting, there were several complaints about the quality of council houses. This struck myself and Robert as strange as we knew that the decent homes programme across the city is almost complete. Well we did some digging and found that Soho's decent homes completion was 89% at the end of 2009/2010 compared to an average of 96% in the other wards in Ladywood constituency. The city-wide figure is 98% compared to 35% when Labour were kicked out in 2004.

Another can of worms opens up when you look at section 106 money. There are a variety of reasons (or a catalogue of disasters) which explain why various pots have not been used effectively in Soho, but the root cause is the rank incompetence of the three Labour councillors.

Vote Robert Higginson the local Conservative candidate in 2011 for an effective voice for Soho.

Election Flashback

Feeling nostalgic for the 2010 election? This picture relates to a general election story. Does anybody know which one and where it took place?

Political Reform Debate

Some of you may know that one of the listed panellists is in fact me! Do sign up if you can attend.

Olton By-election - Lib Dem Last Minute Literature

Since the General Election the Solihull Council has been run by a Lib Dem/Labour coalition despite the Tories being the largest party. I believe it is the only Lib Dem led authority in the West Midlands. However, control is on a knife-edge. At the start of the day, the coalition had a working majority of just one. This is what makes today's by-election in Olton - a contest over a Lib Dem held seat in which the Lib Dem and Conservatives are regarded as the main contenders - a fairly important political event in local government terms and in West Midlands politics.

Here is an interesting type of campaign leaflet. Printed in Conservative blue and distributed on the day of the election, from the cover page below, it looks like a note of apology from the Conservative team.


It was no such thing and the Conservative team who ran a positive campaign have not apologised and have absolutely nothing to apologise for. Inside is a note from one of the incumbent Lib Dem councillors (note that neither the candidate herself or his ward colleague felt able to sign it) apologising on behalf of the Conservatives, which of course he has no right to do. Cllr Windmill even brings a dead body into the Lib Dem message.


This evening the Conservative campaign office was inundated with calls of complaint from voters (some of whom were previously Lib Dems disgusted by this particular leaflet). One mentioned that he's been through all the literature to see what the author of the literature was getting at, but couldn't find anything. On the other hand, we'll probably never know how many voters were fooled by these nasty tactics. I don't think we've heard the end of this matter. The first question is of course who authorised this disgusting and dishonest piece of literature.

Update 21 January 2011 0034hrs

LD 1188, Con 1179, Lab 280, Ind 228, Green 115.

Grrrrrr!

Last Thursday's Student Protests

I vowed not to, but ended up watching these activities on Sky and BBC. We are asked to believe that these are peaceful protests, but the people leading these protests have encouraged violence. The NUS labelled the first demo 'Demolition', a very popular placard at all protests is 'bring down the government' and the chanting is all about fighting back.

Predictably, violence ensued. The following is what happened.

1. Fairly early on, protestors diverted from the agreed route and head towards the Houses of Parliament.
2. Barriers surrounding Parliament Square were torn down by protestors and they headed into Parliament Square. Still over 3 hours from the vote, the prospect of further police lines being breached and protestors invading Parliament looked possible.
3. Protestors tested the police lines separating Parliament Square and the Houses of Parliament. Considerable violence was being used by this time.
4. The line appeared to be holding firm and a considerable number of the troublemakers headed towards the opposite corner of Parliament Square around Westminster Abbey. A very thin police line formed there, which became a flashpoint, as the number of troublemakers and police bolstered on either side. Sticks, paint bombs and railings were used as weapons against the police here.
5. It's from this point that the containment had effectively started.

A few points about this. One - anyone caught between the Houses Of Parliament and Westminster Abbey wasn't where they were supposed to be. Two - the number of thugs who were on Oxford Street causing mayhem and mobbing the Royal car would have been far higher if the police had failed to contain these people.

As far as I can see, once the protestors had breached Parliament Square, the police tactics were exactly right. I don't understand why some arguing that kettling failed - it prevented far greater disorder. My main criticism is that the police allowed protestors into the target rich environment around Parliament Square. In other words, they should have been more firm earlier on.

The protestors and media are talking about further activities, but as the legislation is now passed, I doubt that future events will be on the same scale and certainly there will be less 'peaceful protestors' who provide useful camouflage for anarchists and criminals cover to operate.

Nonetheless, I am disturbed about the diversion of police resources away from the neighbourhoods they are supposed to serve to police these demos.


Here's the pictures of 14 people who Scotland Yard would like to speak to. Recognise anyone?