Baby P and the dangers of a knee jerk reaction

Whilst it is clear to me, and no doubt all of you, that with the benefit of perfect hindsight, baby P should have been protected, what we have to remember is that we do not want a knee jerk reaction. Children brought up in care have very low life chances, (for a whole number of reasons) and we do not want to condemn children to that fate without good reason.

It does, however seem to me odd that alarm bells did not ring. If you read this from the Independent on Sunday, you will see what I mean. It is clear that there were plenty of warning signals.

I am a bit concerned about the involvement of Baby P's father and indeed the father of his three sisters.

Baby P spent a night with his father in late July according to the Independent report.

Did his father not notice? If not, why not? If so why did he not act?

Did the fact that you can no longer get legal aid in family matters on a routine basis mean that he could not afford to ask the courts to give him custody?

One thing I have learned in the British courts is that we have the best justice money can buy. Did that contribute to killing baby P?

George Osbourne, the pound and Labour's mendacity

In an interview in Saturday's Times, George Osbourne expressed concern that the pound could face a proper sterling crisis, a run on the pound.

In fact the article says:

There is also a more immediate risk. “We are in danger, if the Government is not careful, of having a proper sterling collapse, a run on the pound. The danger of that is that it pushes up long-term interest rates. The more you borrow as government the more you have to sell that debt and the less attractive your currency seems.”

Rather obviously there already has been a run on the pound, in the last four months it has collapsed from a value of $2 to the pound to $1.47, from €1.25 to €1.17 against the Euro (though in January £1 bought you €1.40) and against the Yen we have gone from £1 in July buying 205 Yen to 140 now.

To some extent this all helps our exports, except that no one is importing much right now so it doesn't. What it will do is raise inflation again suddenly forcing interest rates up.

What is worse is that Gordon Brown is looking to borrow even more hideous amounts of money for an electoral bribe. George Osbourne is right to say this will hammer the pound. We will be paying for the last Labour government for years to come. With a bot of luck there will not be another one.

The BBC has been angling on Labour criticism of George Osbourne's comments in such a way as to indicate that they would really like to have the BBC charter withdrawn altogether and be thrown to the free market.

Fraser Nelson has this on the Osbourne row, whilst Adam Boulton has this and John Redwood has this on Labour mendacity.

Baby P and Gordon Brown

I don't want to make this party political, because clearly it isn't. Instead I want to make this personal.

Gordon Brown is a tit.

I have just watched yesterday's Prime ministers questions, in which he failed to agree with Ed Balls, the children's secretary, that it was not good for a department head to investigate whether their own department had failed.

Gordon Brown was crash in suggesting that David Cameron was making a party political point.

Gordon Brown kept saying that the executive summary of the self report or Haringey council had said that there were failures in the system, and those would be looked at.


The problem here is that the head of the department that potentially messed up not only commissioned but was heavily involved in a report which said her department did nothing wrong, and that there is a problem with the "system".

Is there? How come despite 60 visits over 8 months, no one spotted the abuse? The missing fingernails, fingertip, gauge to the head, broken ribs and broken back?

What system can there be that is so fool proof that if individuals fail to spot these things the system can be blamed?

The report also highlights the difficulties of "lying parents".You jest surely? If a parent abuses a child they will first of all lie to themselves, convincing themselves that what they are doing is not abuse, after that they will obviously lie to anyone else. very seldom will an abuser confess to a social worker.

At least Ed Balls has some balls and has called for an urgent inquiry. That said on Channel 4, whilst Michael Gove was broadly supportive of Ed Balls, Ed did refuse to answer the question, "are children safe in Haringey tonight?" Rather obviously no one could confidently say they were.

The BBC has the full PMQ's here, comment here and news of Ed Ball's inquiry here.

The sad case of baby P

We do not even know his name, apparently for legal reasons, but we all share the horror at hearing how baby P died.

He had 8 broken ribs, a broken spine, was missing fingernails and a fingertip and had bruises all over his body.

I pray for him.

However we have to ask why this happened?

The government has ordered a review of child protection. This, whilst well meaning is ridiculous. The faults are clear, that the existing rules were not followed and people did not do their jobs.

No amount of procedure can compensate for not following procedure.

What is needed is not so much a general review but a close review of who did what and did it meat the procedure.

The other issue of course is Haringay council. They seem to have cropped up too often here. Is there a systematic problem.

The BBC have this.

For the fallen

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.


For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon

Remember Armistice day, and the millions who have given their lives to keep us free, from this country and throughout the Common Wealth.

Please also support the Royal British Legions appeal to mark Armistice day.

How to cut spending, and tax without affecting public services!

Here is a quick "How to" or "howto" cut public spending by 5% without hurting so much as a fly, or making one nurse, doctor, teacher, police person or indeed diversity officer redundant, and therefore pass this on in tax cuts.

It also has the great benefit of allowing the various departments of government, local government, quangos and all to plan more responsibly whilst getting better value for money for our cash!

Its a bit of a win win all round, but with one small catch which I will come on to later. Here is the plan;

End the hideously stupid rule that any budget needs to be spent by the end of the budget period or else not only will that money be lost but the next years budget will be lowered by the underspend.

This will stop government departments year end blow outs, incentivise them to look for value and allow them to roll over budget surpluses to spend on larger projects.

The one downside is that private companies that look to grab March spending splurges will be hit and that will have a knock on effect.

Tax cuts now!

There has been a debate in the Conservative party ranks for a long time, about tax cuts, or rather their timing.

I think we all agree that there should be tax cuts, and I think we all agree that the burden of taxation is too high. The problem was, and to some extent still is how do you pay for them?

If you intend on cutting public expenditure by £1 billion by say, losing people with ridiculous job descriptions, Labour will try and paint that as axing hundreds of nurses, doctors or teachers. That is a narrative that needs to be broken.

We, as a party have promised to promised to "share the proceeds of growth". That was fine. Times have however moved on. The car crash that is Gordon Brown has happened, the economy is hitting a brick wall at great speed and we need to look afreash at what we do and what we propose.

Firstly we need to cut taxes, and at the low end first, by reversing the increase in taxes on small companies and by reducing taxes on lower incomes by upping personal allowances or other similar moves.

The second thing the Conservative party needs to do is nail the idea that spending money equals results. It doesn't. This government is looking to raise spending on education, per child, to that spent in private schools. As a policy objective that is nuts. It also wanted to, and indeed has achieved, raising spending on health to the average across Europe. That is the policy objective, rather than looking for results.

This is where we need to attack Labour. If you can buy a car for £10,000 spending £20,000 on the same car does not make it a better car.

Yet another poll lead for the Conservative party

According to the Telegraph on Sunday an ICM poll reports a 13% lead for the Conservative party.

This is good news, and points to a Conservative overall majority of between 76 and 80.

You have to wonder if that will burst Labour's bubble and change the media narrative? It ought to as the media narrative was made up anyway.

Politicalbetting.com has this and Iain Dale has this.

Government controlled banks

Dizzy has gone off one one here, about the government control of banks and how bad an idea that really is. Quite right to.

Some banks did pass on the rate straight away like Lloyds TSB who's deposits are similar to its lending. Others have not, primarily because their deposits don't. They are trying to improve their books by reducing their mortgage books.

Cutting interests rates will also have a severe perverse effect and that is to reduce the amount of savings people put away, possibly making the banks deposits worse.

Having said all that the pound has not tanked badly as a result of the cut in bank interest rates though it is not as stable as I would like. Libor rates have dropped which is good. However what will happen as Dizzy points out, is that banks will just tighten their lending policy. They already have. They now will not lend to people who have nothing or little in the way of a deposit. That is still a constraint on lending and that position will not change until house prices start to rise which in turn will not happen for for some time.

Bank of England's pointless interest rate cut of 1.5%

The Bank of England has cut interest rates by 1.5% to 3.0% which is below the Eurozone interest rate which has also dropped today to 3.25%.

This cut is pointless. British banks for the most part don't have enough deposits to cover there lending by a gap of some £700 billion. They have to borrow from the Libor markets which ultimately means from people who do not care what the Bank of England base rate is.

The net effect of course is that banks who have to honour tracker deals will have less money available to lend on new deals.

In other words Gordon Brown has lost complete control of Tue economy, unless he can replace the £700 billion the banks have got from overseas.

The BBC has this and this.

Congratulations to Senator Barack Obama, President elect

It would be churlish to start with anything else.

He has ran a very good campaign, and at least he is not Hilary Clinton.

That said I am still concerned that he may be an American Tony Blair, though a Liberal Democrat friend of mine has pointed out that he does not have Tony Blair's punch me in the face insincere smile that both he and I have seen since day one but few others noticed.

I am also concerned that Barack Obama may be a bit of a protectionist which would be a disaster if that really is the case especially in these economic times. Protectionism deepened and lenghthened the great depression and what we do not need is a great depression.

Many people think that all of a sudden American foreign policy will change.. it won't. What it will do is come from a more palatable tongue. That is a good thing. For too long American politicians have used a domestic megaphone in foreign policy which causes problems. As Theodore Roosevelt once said "Walk softly with a big stick" or to put it another way, have the means to do what you want, but talk nicely, it might work.

Is America about to elect its own version of Tony Blair?

I must say I am amused that so many British Conservatives seem to like Barack Obama. To me he is exactly like Tony Blair. I could just see a victory rally for Obama featuring the song "It can only get better", except that as we have learnt here it didn't.


That said Carl Rove seems to be predicting a landslide for Obama according to Channel 4 news. This is not good news.

McCain or Obama; Who is going to win?

Well, personally I don't care, as I had this down as a McCain/Obama race from the beginning of the primaries and placed my bets accordingly (bar a chicken bet on Hilary Clinton just in case).

I did not get on as early on the Obama betting bandwagon as Mike Smithson of Politicalbetting.com who tipped him as a runner at 50/1, which gave Mike a fantastic trading position, so he also will probably win either way.

However I still think McCain is in it, for a number of reasons; firstly he has been dead and buried before, secondly there appears to be an almost Sheffield style victory party for Obama on Monday (USA time), thirdly the polls seem potentially to have a systematic errors and lastly the breaking news in Pennsylvania that Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry. If that gets traction in the last hours could it swing it?

Well, we may know soon, I hope so, or it could go to endless litigation!

There is one certainty though and that is that this American election will see the highest turnout for many many years. I predicted that as well. It is good for democracy.

For more on American elections see here.

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross: Who thought that was funny?

I see that Russell Brand has resigned from his show on BBC Radio 2 and Jonathan Ross has been suspended.

This all stems from phone calls to Andrew Sachs' answering machine giving details of a liaison between Andrew Sachs' granddaughter Georgina Baillie.

This does leave some strange questions, like just who thought that was funny? Has Russell Brand no manners? After all he should not have discussed his relationship with Georgina Baillie in such terms with anyone, let alone use it to taunt her grandfather and then broadcast it.

Who at the BBC thought this was fit to broadcast? Why have they not been sacked yet?

The content of the BBC is becoming increasingly worrying, especially that aimed at children and the younger audiences. The latest CBBC logo animation features farting. Why? Dick and Dom is puerile and vulgar as well. Perhaps the attitude that allowed Russell Brand's show to be broadcast is endemic in the BBC.

The BBC has this.

EU: Mandelson did nothing wrong!

Apparently the EU has insisted that Lord Peter Mandelson did nothing wrong as far as his relationship with Oleg Deripaska is concerned.

The question is; Does this say more about Peter Mandelson, or the EU which has failed to have its accounts signed off for years?

The BBC has this.

Bank Bailout looks OK so far.

Markets around the world look very positive over the frankly massive bank bailouts world wide.

However we have two issues.

The first is excessive debt in the west, particularly in the USA and UK, and excessive savings in places like China all leading to massive trade deficits funded by fiddling currency rates and the savers lending us the money to buy what they produce.

Expect tight times ahead.

The BBC has this.

Government admits defeat on 42 days?

The government admits defeat on 42 days, but wants to keep a bill in its back pocket to bring out at a moments notice to blackmail parliament into passing it at a moments notice.

You just could not make it up.

As a previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Cheerful Charlie Falconer has pointed out, its not needed because if the prosecuting authorities have a reasonable belief that the evidence will become available, they can charge someone much earlier then gather the evidence. The bill as it now stands includes provisions for post charge questioning as well.

So where is the problem?

This is obviously just political posturing, and trying to look hard.

The BBC has this.

No more boom and bust!

Prudence is our watchword.

I knew it was claptrap at the time, and I screamed it from the rooftops. I, and indeed anyone with a brain, could see we had a looming problem built on a debt mountain, joyless economic growth built on immigration and so on.

I won't say I told you so, because even I did not think it would get quite this bad.

Last year I had a building society account. This year it appears I own ten banks. Bizarrely they probably will not lend me my own money. Quite amusingly they won't borrow from me either.

Our banking institutions seem to me to be schizophrenic. They will throw money at people who they know can't repay their credit cards, or they will not lend at all. There seems to be no sensible middle ground. The reasons for this are obvious. Whereas a junior member of a bank had a final say over a certain size of lending, and a bank manager much larger, now a bank manager has to do what he is told by a computer operating on a model built by a mathematician who has never lent money to anyone. The system is simple in its wrongness. The more money you have available, the more victims you seek, the less, the harsher your lending criteria. At no point in this is there the opportunity for individual judgement. That is what is missing from the system.

The Big Bank Bailout: Will it work?

That is of course the £500 billion question.

I suppose the answer depends on what you mean by "work".

Will it bring on days of endless economic sunshine?

No. Emphatically no.

What it may do, and by goodness I hope it does, is stave off a depression. It will not stave off a recession, I am afraid for reasons I will state below.

You have to start by asking where we are. We are a debt ridden country with a debt ridden government. Money supply has been out of control. We may as well have been printing the stuff, but we haven't, we have been borrowing it from the Chinese and the OPEC countries to buy their exports. This is the fundamental root of the problem.

We have hideous amounts of private debt, something like £500 billion on credit cards and unsecured loans, let alone what we have in mortgages at horrific income multiples and/or self certified housing debt quite a lot of which was based on what now seems very optimistic valuations.

The bottom line is that we have to pay back at least £500 billion in foreign debt. We also need to encourage local savings. That will hit the economy hard for many years to come.

Still, at least we can bank on our banks, but with a bit of luck we can reduce the number of regulations they have to comply with whilst making them more effective. Less can definitely be more here.

The irritating thing about all of this is that both the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats have been pointing out this car crash for years, though none expected it to be either this bad or this costly.

The BBC has this.

Sir Ian Blair resigns!

My position is clear. Sir Ian Blair should not have resigned. That is a tragic error.

Left leaning twits have accused the Conservative party of making things party political. This is tosh.

Sir Ian Blair should have been sacked, long ago for dragging his office into politics, and indeed so should have this government, for dragging the police into politics especially over various bits of anti terrorism legislation.

The fascinating thing was watching Chris Huhne's comments. he basically said that if Blair did not have the confidence of London's mayor, he should go. The reason for this approach is obvious. It distances the Liberal Democrats from a direct link to the ousting of a pratt, whilst supporting it, because Liberal Democrats have also been irritated by Ian Blair dragging his office into politics.

So when New Labour freaks (and anyone who is still new Labour is a freak) shout about us Conservatives dragging the police into politics, perhaps they might consider how they have dragged them in first.

For my first article on why he should go see here.