Dr No says yes?

I was going to write this one up before I went to bed, but alas power cuts intervened. In short it looks like Dr Ian Paisley is set to accept power sharing with Sinn Fein which may well have looked like being on the card for a while, but is still stunning news.

It appears that they have already met this morning and are going to release a joint press statement soon.

The Guardian trailed the meeting here, on its front page (The only paper to do so, which is surprising as it is such big news) whilst the BBC has this here.

I don't know what shocks me most. Dr No saying yes, or the face to face meeting. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams have been the big political figures in Northern Ireland for a generation yet have never before met.

Power sharing is set to resume on the 8th of May after a bit of DUP brinkmanship that saw Peter Hain's last never to be shifted deadline of today shifted.

I just hope it all works out in Northern Ireland.

Power Cuts!

I was writing an article about Dr No and Gerry Adams last night but I had a power cut!

Then when the power came back on it when off again a few minutes later!

Anyone but Brown

It is interesting to see that the anyone but Brown camp have had a bot of a splash in the media today. For example the Observer has this story reporting that Blair believes that if David Miliband stands, he will win, whilst this from today's Mail on Sunday reports that Miliband's people have received signals from Tony Blair that he should stand.

We also now know that Jack Straw is going to be Gordon Brown's campaign manager. That seems tacit acceptance that there will be a campaign. Personally I still have doubts. Mind you I did bet Mike Smithson £10 that Brown would win unopposed!

This morning on the BBC's Sunday AM program, we had Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw discussing the leadership, Peter did not look comfortable in the shots I saw. Mind you Mandelson is an EU commissioner who was supposed to have committed to leaving party politics behind so you have to wonder why he is sticking his oar in. Then again Mandelson and rules do seem to be strangers.

What does it all mean? Well the most telling quote is in the Mail piece:

"David has not ruled it out completely but realises that it is a huge gamble. If he lost badly, it could be ruinous and if he won, it could cause such a violent backlash from Brown that it may not be worth it."

Or in other words Labour are just gearing up to tear themselves apart.

Nominated for blog of the month

I have have noticed that I have been nominated for blog of the month by Central News in this post here, after having been blog of the week.

If you fancy having a look and a vote, the link is here, with links to the other nominees.

Cash for Peerages, Tony Blair was to be questioned under caution

According to this article in today's Sunday Telegraph the police wanted to interview Tony Blair under caution when they interviewed him for a second time on the 26th of January this year. They were advised by political intermediaries not to do so as that would make his position untenable, so he would have to resign.

Downing street have of course denied this, but they would wouldn't they?

The interview was recorded and a transcript sent for approval to Number 10, but as yet there has been no reply. Number 10 says "witness statements are being drawn up in the usual way". What? 3 months to agree the transcript of an interview? Pull the other one, its got bells on!

This puts a completely new complexion on things. At the time the interview was played down, he was interviewed as a witness, there is not accusation of wrong doing etc. ad nausiem. Well if in fact they wanted to caution him that is all out of the window.

It also seems that the police are surprised the Lord Levy and Ruth Turner have not been suspended given the seriousness of the investigation.

I wonder what Lord levy and Ruth Turner would say if charged?

Politics is good exercise!

Yes it is. I have just been out delivering some more leaflets in Ashenground ward in Haywards Heath, and I can say that it certainly is good exercise.

I just wish it was warmer, and not drizzling. Still the clocks go back forward tonight so at least it will be lighter for the rest of the campaign.

Thanks for the Anonymous correction!

The Budget's dead cat bounce

The big question in politics at the moment is how much of a poll bounce will Gordon Brown get when (or perhaps if) he becomes Prime Minister.

Some have it that he will get such a bounce that he will call a snap general election, others have it that he will be cautious. Some, (including me) have it that the bounce will be a dead cat bounce. As in none at all.

Interestingly enough we have some early poll results from the Times here, covering how well the budget went down.

Dead cat bounce? Frankly it seems to be squashed. There is no poll bounce at all.

Regardless of how much people will be better or worse off, only 11% of people think they will be better off whilst 26% think they will be worse off. What is shocking is that the people least affected either way are high wage earners whilst those on low incomes can actually be worse off!

Hat tip to "me" on politicalbetting.com for the Times poll details.

How our returning soldiers should be treated

Whether you agree with the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts, our soldiers fight for us, and are prepared to die for us. This surely is how they should be treated when they get home, not left lying in their own excrement in an NHS hospital with people popping by to tell them how bad they are.

Yes I know it is a commercial, but the point still stands.

Hat tip to Iain Dale, who also has it here.

Bob Woolmer's murder

I was very sorry to hear that Bob Woolmer, former Kent and England player, world class coach and indeed coach of Pakistan died. I was also surprised to hear Pakistan got beaten by Ireland.

I was doubly shocked to hear that it looks like he had been murdered. This is obviously a difficult time for his family. I am sure we all send our condolences.

However what irritated me was the news coverage on BBC News 24 when I got home last night. Clearly this is big news. However, I got home about midnight, and by the time I had gone to bed I don't recall having heard any other news at all. Nothing on the budget, Iraq, the Middle East, any murders that may have happened in the UK, and no newspaper review.

Surely there is only so much speculation you can do about this murder? Surely with a 24 hour rolling news program you can fit in other stories?

Well, thank goodness for the web. At least you can find out what else is going on there!

The Bremner take on the Budget!

Looks good to me, the Telegraph has this take on the budget by Rory Bremner.

So far it seems fairly accurate to me.

I am looking at the effects of the budget on people on tax credits, if you want to email me anonymously I will try to work out if you are better or worse off.

Hat tip to Witan on politicalbetting.com for the link to the Telegraph.

Budget bombshell, Defence spending has been cut!

Many thanks to Elliot who in my previous article provided this link to a very useful piece of work that he has done on the defence spending promise.

If you recall from the budget, Joseph Stalin Gordon Brown announced a £400 Million increase in defence spending. Well according to Elliot if you actually look at the numbers last years numbers for defence were £40.8 billion total, this years budget for defence was going to be £40.4 billion, so add the extra £400 million and you get last years numbers, a real terms decrease in spending of £800 million.

So let us get this straight. Our boys are fighting on two fronts in a major way and deployed over the world and yet they get this kick in the teeth.

Of course the Sun are just too daft to spot this cut or else they would be up in arms. However they just have this daft sycophantic editorial here.

The Budget, The devil is in the detail

The problem with Gordon Brown's last budget is that the devil is in the detail.

We already know that the 2p cut in the headline rate of income tax is offset by the removal of the 10p band, leaving single people who don't or can't claim Working tax Credit worse off until they earn over £18K per year.

We know that big business has had a cut in corporation tax, but small business has had a hike.

What I did not realise until I read this on Iain Dale's blog is that the 2p cut in income tax does not really apply to people in tax credits, because the claw back has gone up by 2p from 37p to 39p to compensate. Obviously those who get more tax credits may well be a bit better off, but this is clearly going to take some getting to the bottom of!

This is real smoke and mirrors stuff!

The Budget, some analysis

Firstly this budget is mostly neutral. It was only ever going to be that way, because there is no money to give away.

Indisputably there are some useful things in it, but some bad ones as well.

Overall the budget seems to simplify things which is good. However it does beg the question why did Joseph Stalin, sorry, Macavity, no wrong again, Gordon Brown make it so much more complex over the last 10 years?

Big Corporation tax is down by 2p, good, it will hopefully help the economy. This in part is paid for by simplifying allowances for big business so is broadly neutral.

Corporation tax for small business is up 2p, and will rise again, ostensibly to stop tax fraud where people who are effectively fully employed try to make out they are a company.

This is offset by allowing a 100% allowance on certain types of investment to all companies of up to £50,000 per year. Gordon trotted out some numbers on the effective corporation tax for small businesses who take up the offer of the tax relief on investment.

There is a big problem here. Firstly 53% of all private sector jobs are in businesses this size, so that is a huge part of the economy that has just had a tax hike. Also, small businesses do not necessarily need or want to invest £50,000 per year in new equipment. Small business comprise a very diverse sector from small niche manufacturers who may be in that niche for using old fashioned methods, like hand made pottery manufactures, to others like small scale foundries supplying castings to the model engineer community, to window cleaners, florists, gardening contractors. There are many businesses which will not benefit at all or seldom benefit from the tax break, yet will be hit by the tax hike.

Small businesses are the engine of the economy. They employ more people than any other sector, and have the capacity to employ a lot more, if the environment is right. So that aspect of the budget is a very bad thing.

Green taxes are up a bit, but lower as a proportion of GDP than under the Conservatives.

Cigarettes up by 11p a packet, great news for tobacco smugglers, I expect they are ecstatic. Beer and wine up, but bizarrely spirits (mostly produced in Scotland) frozen for the 10th year running. Is Gordon Scottish?

There is a rationalisation of National Insurance and Income Tax rates so that they cut in and out at the same levels. Looks good from a simplification point of view, seems to benefit those around £35K per year and gets neutral at around £42K, so bar some losers in odd places, fair enough.

The basic rate of income tax has been cut by 2p. On the face of it very good news, but as ever the devil is in the detail. The 10p band is cut. It looks like a simplification and indeed is to some extent, but those currently on the 10p will now be paying 20p rather than nothing.

In short if you earn between £5,250 to £17,800 you pay more tax. That in principle is wrong, as I said here. There is more detail though, some of those affected will benefit from more tax credits.

Well, lets look at that a bit. Firstly there seems to be a combination of fraud and mistakes in the tax credit system running at a colossal scale, I have heard estimates that 50% of the payments are wrong. That is bad. Secondly whilst those who have children are better off with more tax credits, those with out suffer from two problems. The increase in their tax credits still leaves a lot of them worse off, then the fact that people without children just do not claim working tax credit even when they are entitled to. The take up rate is 20% (See this here, table 10). You do not have to look that far or that wide to see why. People just do not need the grief of dealing with tax credits unless they really have to.

In short, tax cuts for the rich, big companies, "working families", tax rises for the poor, but childless, and small businesses.

Hat tip to Neil for the take up rate on tax credit information.

Brown robs the poor to give to the rich!

During Joseph Stalin's Gordon Brown's last budget, he has on the one hand reduced the basic rate of income tax by 2p to 20p in the pound. Good news you might say, but on the other hand has funded this by scrapping the 10p in the pound rate altogether which puts up tax for all those who earn less that £17,000 per year.

Those on less than £11,500 may well be able to claim Working Tax Credit, but those not able to will be hit.

One person I know will be £8 a month worse off as a below average wage earner, whilst an above average wage earner (but not higher rate) will be better off!

Why is Gordon robbing the poor to pay the rich? It's a bit regressive isn't it?

That Brown Budget

Corporation tax down to 28%, though small business tax rising from 20% to 22% and rising. The reason is that he thinks lots of people are not real companies paying their due in taxes.

Does Brown not understand how much growth small companies provide to the economy?

Also Brown has reduced the 22p rate of income tax to 20p. Sounds good, but it is mostly funded by scrapping the 10p rate of tax so you have to be earning something like £17,000 to be better off. If you are not you are worse off.

Apparently working tax credit will offset this. Why bring people into a tax credit system when you don't have to? If you are going to give them the money back, why not just leave them with it in the first place?

What Gordon giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other.

The BBC has this, and I will be writing more when I have had a chance to look at it in more detail.

Lenin on Gordon Brown

Before Vladimir Lenin died he became increasing concerned about Brown's Stalin's character and wrote a testament in which he suggested that he be removed. "Comrade Brown Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his hands: and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. I therefore propose to our comrades to consider a means of removing Brown Stalin from this post and appointing someone else who differs from Brown Stalin in one weighty respect: being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, more considerate of his comrades."


You have been warned!

Hat tip to Icarus on Politicalbetting.com

Image originally by the Spine, Via Dizzy thinks.

For more on Comrade Brown Stalin see here.

That last Brown Budget in Full

Today Gordon Brown will announce his last budget. That is a certainty. He will not be chancellor next year no matter what happens. Either he will graciously accept the invitation to be Caesar and have rose petals strewn in his path, or he will face a serious challenger for the job of Leader of the Labour party who will win and will go off in a sulk that will make Ted Heath look like a good loser, and he will take his bitter cohorts with him. However what he will say tomorrow will be like this:

Ukrainian Tractor production* will be up again by 328.35%

(Gordon's forecast for growth will be met or surpassed, because he measures the winning figures. What won't make it into the speech is that whilst growth according to treasury figures is on or ahead of target, tax revenue is below target, and therefore borrowing is higher than forecast.)

Prudence, prudence, prudence, investing for the future .. cont. Page 04.

What he will fail to mention is Eddy George's evidence to parliament yesterday when the former head of the Bank of England admitted that the recession that every other country faced between 2000 and 2002 was avoided by a massive consumer and public borrowing boom leaving problems for the future, including very high house prices (See Sky article here).

Green taxes to protect the environment blah..

Bizarrely we have heard this before, because this budget like many new Labour ones has been leaked. Chancellors have resigned for this. You can read this here.

One billion to raise 200,000 children out of child poverty! (See another leak in the Guardian here).

This according to the article is because Gordon feels bad about how we got on in that UNICEF report. Firstly that amounts to £5,000 a head EXTRA per child. Secondly it assumes that whoever that money is going to is going to do something with it, or indeed that mere money is the answer.

The plan seems to be fiddling at the edges, more money for working tax credits and so on. The fact is that it is less the individual wealth of the family that counts but how cohesive the family is that counts, and where that may be in doubt, how cohesive the community is around it. For example how able a neighbor is to watch over your children? Mine are, are yours? In quite a lot of communities this is not the case because we are all scared of the consequences of telling off an errant child, or applying a sticking plaster to an injured one. We do not need to throw money around as if it will solve all our problems. We need to apply a bit of thought.

*I have no idea whether the Ukrainians make tractors or not and if they do, how that business is going, the expression "Ukrainian tractor production" is shorthand for silly government statistics that look a bit Stalinist.

More Mandarins Attack Brown!

I have just been listening to BBC Radio 4's World at One, which is covering the story first carried in the FT (see here) featuring Lord Alan Turnbull's attack on Gordon Brown, describing him as Stalinist.

Well, we now have Sir Stephen Wall, formerly a senior civil servant at Number 10, on Radio 4 agreeing with him. Apparently under Thatcher the treasury was strong and brutal, but open to discussion. Since 1997, it hasn't been. There is a complete lack of discussion between the Treasury and anyone else in Whitehall including Number 10. Ridiculous.

Sir Stephen pointed out that whilst there are claims that Joseph Stalin Gordon Brown will be more collegiate once PM there was no evidence this was the case. He also seems to think that Labour should think long and hard about whether they want Gordon as their Leader and PM.

Hard hitting stuff. The knives our out for Gordon with a vengeance!

Turnbull slams Brown as Stalinist

According to this article in the Financial Times, Lord Turnbull, former Chief Permanent Secretary to the treasury and then Cabinet Secretary slams Gordon Brown for being Stalinist, of having a “very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues”, and in essence forming government policy himself to the point that if you want something done, you don't ask the minister concerned, but the Treasury.

He went on: “He cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process,” Lord Turnbull said. “The chancellor has a Macavity quality. He is not there when there is dirty work to be done.” Ouch!

Not Gordon Brown's week is it? Next week isn't looking good either. You do have to wonder if the knives are not sharpening for Gordon.

Update 09:46

In error I described Lord Turnbull as former Chief Secretary, he was not, the title is permanent secretary.

Also according to BBC Radio 4's Today program Lord Turnbull claims he was speaking off the record.

Conservatives build massive poll lead

The Guardian ICM poll for the month is out, giving the following poll breakdown:

Conservatives 41
Labour 31
Liberal Democrats 18,

In terms of seats, these numbers give the Conservatives 329, Labour 251, and the Liberal democrats 39 with others at 31 an overall majority of 8, according to the election predictor from the UK Polling report website and the seats work out like this Conservatives 362, Labour 239, and the Liberal democrats 18 with others at 31 an overall majority of 74, according to Martin Baxter's election predictor here.

However when asked who you would vote for with David Cameron leading the Conservatives, Brown Labour and Ming Campbell the Liberal Democrats, it comes out as:

Conservatives 43
Labour 28
Liberal Democrats 18

In terms of seats, these numbers give the Conservatives 374, Labour 213, and the Liberal democrats 35 with others at 28 an overall majority of 98 according to the election predictor from the UK Polling report website and the seats work out like this Conservatives 415, Labour 183, and the Liberal democrats 21 with others at 31 an overall majority of 180 according to Martin Baxter's election predictor here.


That is a fantastic lead. It has taken David Cameron a while, but now we are consistently either around or above 40% whilst Labour seem to drift between the low 30's to high 20's.
Hat tips all round to those on Politicalbetting.com, especially Ted and Andrea!

Update 21:04

The Guardian report on the Poll is here.