Less UK born people in work now than in 1997?

It is, it has to be said quite some claim. That is that there are less British born people in work in the private sector now than there were in 1997.

All those jobs that were created went to foreign born workers apparently.

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator has this preliminary article and this one with more detail.

The implications are of course staggering. I have always thought that the Brown boom was built on hideous amounts of debt and immigration. What is more of a concern is that worklessness amongst those born in the UK has stayed at around 5 million and is now set to climb. We simply have not addressed that issue for over 12 years.

Now we need to.

Local homes for local people?

Well, it is kind of what people expected from local housing policy, at least for the most part. That is, that housing provided out of local funding would be primarily for people who had a connection with the local area.

As an example, a house in say Mid Sussex would be prioritised for a family with a good local link, not a family from say, Arbroath. The reverse is also the case.

Of course, if a family in Arbroath want to swap with a family in Mid Sussex, then there are (and always have been) exchange schemes available.

So now this is what this government is proposing.

What is interesting is how they, and the ridiculous left wing media treated this issue 10 years ago when Conservative councillors in Hammersmith and Fulham were proposing exactly the same thing. Now of course Donal Blaney would like an apology. He will not get one though, as he is dealing with mendacity at its best.

Labour promises 100,000 new teachers?

I heard this on a BBC Radio 4 on Friday, but could find no written information on it, but today the Daily Telegraph steps in.

In its article it suggest that Labour and in particular, Gordon Brown will try and spend his way back to number 10.

So, what about 100,000 new teachers? What will they do? Well apparently they are a part of a child's right to learn. So if they are not getting on well enough in English or Maths they get one to one tuition.

What will 100,000 teachers cost?

Well, if they cost £20,000 each a year that's £2 billion. If, as is likely they cost £30,000 a year (take into account paying them, employers national insurance, desk space and admin fees and that is a conservative estimate) then that makes £3 billion a year.

Where is this money supposed to come from? £3 billion, in terms of the amounts that has been thrown away by New labour over the years may seem like small beer, but it is still £3 billion that would need to be borrowed or printed by the Bank of England.

However, I personally doubt the veracity of the claim or its ability to achieve anything useful. For a start it looks like they are going to claim it is a right, which means only switched on parents will claim it, and those will have more successful children, and so the cost will be less.

Then again the idea is not wrong in itself. Had it been carefully proposed a number of years ago you could make a great tax saving case for it, but only if it was not a right of the pupil, but the duty of the state. (How are we going to work that out?)

Prisons are full to bursting with the thick, mentally ill and unemployable. If you could treat the failed education system, then surely that would reduce the cost of the prison estate and hey presto the scheme would over time pay for itself. However as we are talking about New Labour education, A level history students appear not to know what a despotic tyranny is, so it is somewhat doubtful what 1,000,000 new teachers would be able to achieve.

Meanwhile in other news..

Whilst it is sad that Michael Jackson has died, it has to be said that the way 24 hour news organisations cover this sort of thing is ridiculous.

If you were hoping to tune into something like BBC News 24 for catch up on such trivia as the death of Farrah Fawcett, continued demonstrations in Iran or the collapse of the UK economy, forget it.

The only news in town is the death of Michael Jackson.

Ridiculous.

Michael Jackson is dead?

Rumours and reports are surfacing that Michael Jackson is died.

Confirmed reports indicate he was found not breathing, and was taken to hospital after having CPR administered.

This is very sad news. He may have been an oddball, but there is no doubt he was a great talent as well.

TMZ.com has this and the Los Angeles Times has this.


The BBC has this.

Bank of England Governor slams government borrowing!

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervin King said today that the governments plans to reduce the governments deficit were not ambitious enough.

In other words, spend less or borrow more. Possibly both.

Considering that Labour's published plans, based on possibly optimistic growth forecasts are not fiscally tight enough. The problem is that the governments plans on spending are harsher than Thatchers as it is.

Meanwhile the OECD thinks we are going to have a deeper recession than they previously forecast and much worse than the governments own assumptions.

In short, there are grim times ahead.

The BBC has this.

MP's to get an easy ride for fraud?

One of this Labour governments great ideas for "reform" is to introduce a series of criminal offences specific to members of parliament the most notable of which is to "knowingly make a false claim", which if found guilty. could lead to a sentence of 1 year in prison.

This is reminiscent of section 112 of the 1992 Administration of Social Security act (possibly as amended) which supposedly deals with benefit cheats. These offences are mostly dealt with in a magistrates court on the assumption that the accused is also the guilty regardless of the facts, after all it keeps the proles in line.

This is a case of making laws to grab headlines. Fraud has been a criminal offence for a very long time, as has obtaining pecuniary advantage by deceit. Those sort of offences command a far higher sentence but no more intent.

So what is going on?

Well, as I have discussed at length (particularly with CaptainFF) it is a case of New Labour grabbing headlines with new laws making what was already illegal more illegal but with knobs on, though in this case, with a considerably reduced maximum sentence.

Not only that there will be a committee of the great and the good appointed to oversee MP's expenses.

Hold on, I thought we already had that, we the voters! All we need is the information, without all that black ink.

I do not want some patsy telling me that everything is OK. I will look at the raw data and make my own mind up.

The BBC has this, Guido has this.

No prayers for Iran's Angel of Freedom?

Neda Agha Soltan was just someone in a crowd in Tehran, yet a sniper took her life. All this is now on Youtube.

She has become a symbol, and so the Iranian government dare not let her have a memorial service.

Are they that scared?

Apparently, yes they are.

Protests continue in Iran, and now even the Iranian government admit there were some "irregularities". Those include at least two districts with over 100% turnout (Impressive, but Saddam never managed that!) 4 at pver 90% and a level of switching between reform candidates and Ahmadinajad that is simply not plausable.
The Telegraph has this.

Good luck to Speaker Bercow.

So John Bercow has become speaker of the House of Commons. I wish him luck. It looks as if he s going to need it as both the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are attacking over his expenses already.

Still, he promises change. Lets see what he brings.

The BBC has this, Iain Dale has this. Apparently Quentin Letts is not impressed either.

Vanessa George, Angela Allen, female paedophiles and denial

Something that irritates me is the way that people like Harriet Harman discuss issues like paedophilia and domestic violence as an issue of wicked evil men, for we men all are wicked and evil.

However as I have noted in the past domestic violence is a two way thing, carried out by women as well as men, though that is seldom talked about and seldom taken seriously.

Suddenly we have two cases of alleged female paedophiles, Vanessa George and Angela Allen, both aged 39. The police are investigating.

I would like to assure readers that unless there was clear and unequivocal photographic evidence, the police would not investigate. They simply don't because every one knows women don't do this kind of thing.

Except of course that they do. Paedophilia is an aberration, but it is one that affects men and women, just as domestic violence does.

Curiously before both cases cropped up there was an interesting magazine article on the BBC website about female paedophiles. To show how much in denial some women are I will quote one respondents comments.

Hang on, I think we need to put this into perspective here. Female sexual abusers are very rare. I'm not saying we should ignore their existence and deny the victims but lets not whip up a media frenzy and start fearing every old lady on the bus who hands out sweets to kids.

The problem here is this: Sally (for that is her name) seems to think female paedophiles are very rare, yet we have had two turn up in a matter of weeks. Perhaps they are very rare because people are not looking for them? Do we know if they are rarer than male paedophiles or not, and if so, by how much?

Iran: Another call for a general strike!

From the twitter feeds, it looks as if things are gearing up again.

Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for a general strike if he is arrested.

What is interesting is that there were demonstrations today, and the demonstrators are gearing up for more.

My thoughts and prayers are with them.

Iran: Another day of protests?

So the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decread that the elections were fair, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won and protests must stop.

Well, today we find out if anyone is going to take any notice. It is clear that if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad busses in support he can muster quite a bit of it. On the other hand Mir Hossein Mousavi doesn't have to primarily because he has support in the big cities and his supporters are more motivated.

The Bassij are already about on the streets, but curiously there are not many reports of the Revolutionary Guard turning up. That said one of the defeated candidates was a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, and Mousavi was and still is quite well connected.

The odd thing though is that the twitter feeds seemed to have slowed down or dried up. We know that the regime in Iran is trying to arrest as many people as possible including bloggers. Perhaps they are getting to them or they have gone to ground a bit to avoid being captured.

My thoughts and prayers are with the protesters.

The BBC has this.

Police to investigate MP's!

I have to say that I was surprised that the police previously issued a statement saying that they would not investigate MP's expenses. As I wrote here there is clear evidence to suggest a very reasonable suspicion of fraud in some cases and they obviously should be investigated.

Well,now eventually, and far far far too late the police have decided to investigate, having given people the opportunity to get their stories and paperwork straight.

The BBC has this.

Expenses blackout!

I had a look at a few MP's expenses earlier, and frankly they were so "redacted" that you could not tell what was going on.

Obviously Ben Brogan now of the Telegraph points out that we would not have known about non existent mortgages and dry rot in Southampton from these publications.

You do have to ask why they were published in this way.

Sir Stuart Bell a senior Labour backbencher on the committee responsible said it was nothing to do with him or his colleagues and put it down to "officialdom".

Umm... Strange.

Who to believe.

The BBC has this.

(I may even get a free lunch!)

Iran:Why rig the election?

Protest over the rigged election continue in Iran. No surprise there, the rigging appears to have been obvious, inept and ridiculous.

However you do have to ask why it was rigged.

The thing is that the election was pre rigged. Only those candidates acceptable to the Guardian Council could stand. Mir Hussein Mousavi, as ManWiddicombe points out is no bleeding heart liberal human rights activist.

So if you have fixed the election by hand picking all the candidates, why not stop there?

Besides which, it is entirely possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have won the election in a fair election.

Instead of which what they have got is a potential revolution and a weakened state.

The BBC has this.

Banking regulation

I was quite interested in the reports of the Mansion house speeches by Mervin King, the Governor of the Bank of England, and Alistair Darling the alleged Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The bottom line appears to be this:

Alistair says that his predecessor is not the bringer of doom, and there is nothing wrong with the current regime, though obviously the Bank of England has to take responsibility to make the system stable.

Mervin says that's all well and good, but if you want us to make the system stable, is there any chance we could have the powers back that the bringer of doom took away from us when he created the ridiculous tri partite system back in 1997.

Needless to say Alistair is in a difficult position, because his boss is Gordon Brown, the bringer of doom.

The BBC has this as a report and this from Robert Peston.

Another one bites the dust: Kitty Usher resigns

You do have to ask how careless a government can get but it appears they have lost another minister over expenses.

The BBC has this.

Protests continue in Iran

Protests are continuing in Iran over the stolen election.

Perhaps that is not news. However what might be news is that Admiral Shamkhani was going to be arrested but wasn't because Iranian Marines told the police where to go.

This comes from this twitter feed from Iranian Student.

I did hear that the admiral had been arrested on other twitter feeds earlier in the day.

What is clear is that nothing is clear! It seems the "ruling class" are split on what is going on. The brighter want to continue the Islamic revolution and recognise it needs to move forward, the perpetually thick think they can hang on to Ahmadinejad.

The BBC have this.

Mousavi rejects recount promise

According to sources in Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi has rejected the offer of a recount. Good call. The ballot boxes will have been well and truly stuffed by now.

Iran is in turmoil right now, demonstrators have been killed and the government is doing what it can to crack down on protests against the rigged election.

There are also rumours that Mir Hossein Mousavi has called off a demonstration today because of fears of staged violence.

See my previous post for twitter news.

The BBC has this.

Updates on Iran

You can get updates on Iran in various places.

Some twitter feeds are:

Here, here, here and here.

There is also a useful blog here.

You can be part of a denial of service attack on pro Ahmadinejad websites by viewing this blog though it will CPU hog until you click stop.