Comments on: Labour will not “learn the lessons” of Glasgow East

By: Grant Grant

Grant Grant — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:34:12 +0000

Thnx this helped you have a really good voice

By: nick

nick — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:02:53 +0000

Why's the DVLC a success? It employs thousands on a make work scheme.

Abolish VED (car tax) and put it on petrol. It can't be dodged, which VED. Saves all the costs of employing people on a 'make work scheme'

Nick

By: John

John — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:54:00 +0000

Oh dear! Who would have thought it.

"Gordon Brown answered my question in a measured and thoughtful way."

John, how could you be so gullible. It is obvious to anyone that he has, no doubt very expensive, advisors and coaches to try to improve his image. You have fallen for it. Our PM is a cunning inept politician who is not fit to run anything let alone a country.
Get a grip.

By: Neil Craig

Neil Craig — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:33:41 +0000

I believe that almost all civil servants at the top got degrees in classics or arts. Very few politicians studied any form of science – a plurality, in some cases a majority being lawyers. By comparison almost everybody in the Chinese Presidium is an engineer.

As regards the Scots – the Tories don't get half the votes anywhere, neither do Labour & both are relying on a bit over 40% to get a majority of seats. The SNP have undoubtedly picked up a lot of votes which elsewhere would be Conservative now but though the party has managed to alienate itself from most of the people that does not mean that on isues we differ much from the English. In my opinion the proportional system in the Scottish Parliament gives an opportunity for the Scots Tories to establish a strong, though not majority, position by adopting less consensual policies than Mr Cameron finds necessary. Particularly since the other 3 parties share a big government social democratic agenda. They have not done so.

As a historical note the Conservatives are the only party to have had over 50% in Scotland since the war, in the 1950s. The last peacetime government to have had over 50% in the UK as a whole was the National government of the 1930s.

By: nick

nick — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:57:31 +0000

There is an easy way of dealing with with the EU and UK organisations.

Pass a law that says no taxpayer's money goes to organisations that have not passed an official audit.

The second part of the law, is to make it illegal to allow this to go on when it involves UK tax payers money.

If the EU complains about it, we just start extraditing them under the European extradition treaty. Jailing a few EU commissioners, Kinnock springs to mind, head of the CAP being another, will quickly bring about a resolution

By: Puncheon

Puncheon — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:57:41 +0000

As a both classisists and ex-civil servant I feel obliged to join this debate. People like me have been forced out of central government over the past 12 years or so and is the country any the better for it? My generation were taught to offer objective and non-partisan advice on how political objectives could best be met and implemented. Under Blair we were pushed aside by a system of government by press release – ministers would simply announce a policy and we would be told to get on with implementing it. Very soon the more savvy and ambitious civil servants realised that it was better to be involved in drafting the press release than implementing the (usually duff) policies. The conscientious among us just left, one way or another. This goes some way to explaining the mess we are in today. On computerisation, I agree that there have been some spectacular failures in the public sector, but this has usually been due to Ministerial incompetence, eg merging Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue. Also, there have been some successes, eg the DVLC and NSI websites are two of the best interactive service site around, in my view. But I agree that generally the public sector performance has been dire, although the private sector is not without its catastrophes.

Reply: How right you are – the changes to the professional civil service have weakened it.

By: mikestallard

mikestallard — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:00:53 +0000

Are you really saying that most politicians and civil servants are classicists? As a classicist myself, I have watched my subjects crash over the past thirty years. Think of any politician – except Boris Johnson – and ask yourself – would they understand the perfect passive?

Also, are you really saying that the Scots are half Tory?

By: Derek

Derek — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:31:00 +0000

I agree, the Tories do win seats John. Unfortunatly for them, it would would seem, no longer in Scotland.
It will be interesting to compare notes after the next general election. I suspect that 'nil pointe' might well be the result from the Scottish judges.
I've always been a supporter of the Conservatives (since the 1970 GE when I first voted) but I'm having serious doubts about DC.
My only hope is electoral wipe out north of the border at the next GE with a win in England. Then maybe the Tories will start to take English support seriously and cause them to give serious attention to the democratic deficit and make government democratically accountable to the electorate once more. Just to keep repeating parrot fashion 'an English Parliament would destroy the Union' and coming up with no other acceptable proposals is not good enough.

By: Derek W. Buxton

Derek W. Buxton — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:00:52 +0000

I do admire your postings but I must comment on the seven measures you suggest. Some make great sense but others questionable;

"Cut interesrt rate to 2.5%", so sterling plummets, costs rise again and up goes inflation. In addition, we have huge debts, government and private, low interest will only make this bad situation worse.

"Reform CAP"; This is an EU competance and we cannot alter it, the French, Germans, Italians and Spanish will not hear of taking their easy living away from them. It was, after all brought in to give French and German farmers the chance to scupper British farming, it worked too.

Keep up the good work though.

By: Neil Craig

Neil Craig — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:10:02 +0000

Regarding computerisation the problem is not the software but the jellyware. For a century & a half the future leaders of the civil service have been recruited from students doing classics at Oxbridge on the grounds that only they are fully rounded people. Whatever the merits of that in the 1850s it means that almost nobody running things has much knowledge of enginering, accountancy or computerisation (the MPs average no better) which obviously makes efficient running of things difficult & leads to billions being wasted on, for example, computer systems unnecesarily.

Regarding Scotland's inherent socialism: Reform has, over the years, done many regional opinion polls & it turns out that the Scots average about 3% to the left of the UK with the interesting exception of whether cutting business taxes would stimulate growth where we are more supportive. 3% is both small & explicable by the fact that we are a bit poorer. The business tax is explicable because we take more notice of what goes on in Ireland. Most English & indeed most Scots think we are more leftist purely because of the destructive influence of the FPTP electoral system which gives the impression that we all vote Labour merely because only Labour MP get in while everybody in the south of England is assumed to be Tory for the same reason.