Month: August 2009

I wish now I had blogged some weeks ago when it was fashionable to say maybe Stuart Broad should be dropped from the England cricket team. I have been a long term fan. I was telling my cricket friends I would keep him. He is a good batsman, often called on to rescue an innings when the specialist batsman have scored too little. As we saw yesterday, on his day he can also be a devastating bowler. For me he is the new Flintoff.

I was busy yesterday. I heard the lunchtime score and felt our chances of the Ashes were slipping away fast. When I turned the radio on again at 5.30 pm I couldn’t believe the transformation.Watching the highlights last evening, it was the most sustained spell of accurate and testing fast bowling England has produced for a long time. He has given our team a real chance of winning the Ashes. Let’s hope they take it.

Whatever the final outcome this has been a great Ashes series. Two games have seen a dominant and talented Australian side in full flight, and two have seen England on song. The tie breaker is proving compulsive.

One of the odd things is how much media power Labour still has. This week my phone has been hot with journalists acting as unpaid Labour researchers, wanting the low down on the great Tory health row that never was.

I tell each one the same thing. There is no row, debate or discussion going on amongst Tory MPs on the issue of health reform. If there were I would know. Fellow Conservative MPs often ring me up to discuss party policy. No-one has been trying to get through to talk about changing our health policy in recent weeks, even allowing for the difficulty in doing so for all the journalists on the phone.

Despite all the efforts expended to get a quote, to create tension against David Cameron, and to enlist support for Dan Hannan, they have failed to do so. You would have heard all about it if they had. There would be lurid headlines now about Tory splits, about Tory evil intents, and lies of how a Tory government would cut free health care at the point of need and make health more the preserve of those with health insurance.

One allegedely serious newspaper not only put their reporter on to me, but the Deputy Editor rang when he had failed to get anything they could use. I explained I had given the paper many good quotes about the real health story – how Labour was up to its usualy dirty tricks to damage the Conservatives and how it intended to close down all serious debate by going on another of its MCarthyite purges of improper thoughts towards the NHS. The Deputy Editor did not seem to think that was an acceptable viewpoint. I explained again it was my view, and as they thought my view so important they should report it. The parting shot was to ask if I had myself taken out private health insurance. That question confirmed what they are trying to do. Let me stress here to all who are thinking of going that route to follow Mandelson’s bidding that I do not have private health insurance. Nor do most Conservative MPs and voters. So stop lying about us. Conservatives use the NHS and are fed up with Labour lies.

It is even more curious that against a poll background where Labour is consistently 10-15% behind the Conservatives there is only one Conservative supporting newspaper, the Express. You would have thought these newspapers would start to ask themselves how good their Conservative sources are in case the Conservatives win the next election. They might start looking at what the Consertvative stories are, as well as the Labour crude spin. I explained patiently to them all who rang that our main story is the run away deficit and the need to take action to limit the build up of debt. The leadership thinks this is the main issue, as do I. I listen in vain in the morning in the hope that the BBC will start to take this seriously. Doesn’t it rate as many mentions as global warming and the health “row” that never was? Those journalists who want to understand what Conservatives are talking about and thinking about should read this website and Conservative Home. Maybe then they will ring us and talk about something we are talking about and wanting to change, instead of trying yet again again to place us in one of Labour’s pathetic and predictable traps.

I look forward to some phone calls to expalin Conservative views on the economy – or even on the surveillance society. I am not expecting the phone to be red hot on those. Such remains the power of Labour’s distorting media operation.

Today we hear from local government that some schools and shops with a monopoly are over charging for school uniforms. Councils are told to require three solutions – access to competing shops, second hand markets and offers of school insiginia and badges at sensible prices so people can turn lower priced clothes into uniform. Great ideas!

So why can’t Councils apply this logic to some of their own services, where the monopoly service can be both expensive and not of the quality we want. I look forward to the day when I can choose from a range of car parking providers using Council land for car parks who compete on price and service, and to being able to select a refuse disposal service that meets my needs at a sensible price. I am going to have a long wait.

Today we learn that the government is thinking about stopping private car park owners from wheel clamping those who break the rules. If it’s wrong for the private sector, why isn’t it wrong for the public sector as well?
I can accept that in busy places the public sector needs the power to remove a vehicle that has parked dangerously or in a way which blocks an important route. I cannot see a good reason for clamping. It delays the driver and adds to the cost of getting back to normal. Above all it means the car occupies the offending spot for longer, when the aim of the parking regime is for the person to park there for a shorter time.
The government has many ways to get money off the illegal parker, and has a record of the car and the address of its owner. That should be quite enough to get the money out of the offender, without needing to clamp the car as well.

Yesterday the BBC cleared its lunch time programme to run the whole speech of the Scottish Justice Minister, setting out in agonising detail his thought process over the release of the man the Scottish courts found guilty of the Lockerbie mass murder.
As some of you may have missed it, and as it was very long, I thought it might be helpful to capture its essential elements more succinctly:

“Today for the first time a Scottish Minister can command the UK airwaves to set out a decision which the BBC will run and run. I intend to make the most of this opportunity. I will tell you how many people I have met and how deeply I have considered all the angles.
I have the power to send a Libyan prisoner back to Libya to complete his sentence. This power comes from an agreement the London government negotiated. The Scottish government told them at the time they had done a bad job with this Agreement. I will tell them again they did a bad job. The Americans said at the time of this deal they had been promised it would not apply to the Lockerbie bomber. The UK government denies this. I believe the Americans and will not use this power to send him to a Libyan prison.
I also have the power to release him on compassionate grounds. This is a tricky one, as whatever I do some people will dislike my decision. So I will tell you the Lockerbie bomber offered no compassion to his victims, and then let him free to show just what a compassionate government we have created in Scotland.
May I conclude by saying what a great day this is for Scotland. All this shows that Scotland should be self governing, and reminds us what a mess they always make of things in London”

The following came as an email:

“These lies (about health care reform) create fear and anger, and we’re seeing the results around the country. Frightened crowds have flooded Town halls, and the office of Georgia representative was defaced …. While Americans watch their pay cheques dwindle, their (insurance) coverage disappear,and their businesses struggle…”

They should know!

Today’s borrowing figures are horrendous. July is usually a month when strong revenues exceed monthly spending. Instead the UK government borrowed another £8 billion in the month. In the April-July period last year the government borrowed an extra £16 billion. This year they have borrowed an extra £50 billion. It means we are on course to exceed the eye wateringly large sums they forecast for this year’s total borrowing.

Spending is up a massive £19 billion on last year in the first four months, and revenue is down a predictable £21 billlion thanks to the VAT cuts and the fall in activity. No wonder the Governor thinks we ought to print some more money – who is going to lend us all this? Interest rate increases to get people to buy more governent debt will be the inevitable result of this failure to hit very relaxed targets for spending and borrowing. This will be the mother and father of all crowding outs, as the cash has to go to the public sector to meet these huge bills. The private sector will continue to be squeezed.

The Credit Crunch and banking crash began when the UK (and US) authorities decided to bring the credit party to an abrupt end in 2007. In the UK they slammed on the brakes with high interest rates, starved the money markets of funds, and finally told the banks to lend less and save more. The credit binge was one they had fuelled in earlier years with low rates and their own special enthusiaism for off balance sheet financing. Suddenly we were all told that borrowing too much was not good for us. It appeared they wanted a new era of austerity, based on repaying debt and living within our means. The private sector was put through the mangle to squeeze out excess. The Chancellor and the Governor told us about moral hazard and said it was up to the banks to sort out excessive debts and over the top lending.

Two years on, and we live in a different world. The private sector is doing exactly what they wanted. It has no choice. Banks are dutifully hoarding cash and lending it back to the government. Individuals are paying off credit card debts, and striving to get the mrotgage under control. Businesses are being forced to sell off stock and stop investing as they cannot borrow more, or only at high rates. That’s what was what they wanted to happen because they ahd allowed the country to borrow too much. The sooner the adjustment is made the better, painful though it is. It is the price of big policy errors made in the “good” years.

Now we learn that the authorites do not like the high unemployment figures, the poor output figures and the rest that flows naturally from the credit squeeze and from their past huge mistakes. Who does? Why didn’t they listen when some of us warned them in time to stop the worst of it?

So they have come up with a great way to overcome a crisis of borrowing too much in the private sector – they are borrowing too much in the public sector instead. They are fighting fire with fire. All that they said about the dangers of excessive credit in the private sector applies with a vengence in the public sector. In the private sector if a business borrows too much it goes bankrupt. Only those who have decided to deal with it lose out. If a state borrows too much all its citizens are forced to pay the bills and suffer the resulting pain of adjustment to reality. When will the Chancellor and the Governor make their speeches about moral hazard in the public sector? Or does the Governor now live in a world where none of this debt is real, because he thinks we can print limitless amounts of money to “settle” the bills with no adverse consequences?

Between 2003 and 2006 they got regulation of private sector banking and credit hopelessly wrong. Now they are gettign public sector credit hopelessly wrong. Why do they never learn? Haven’t they grasped yet that all borrowing does one day have to be repaid. If you refuse to live within your means now, you will be even poorer tomorrow.

Today we pray that there will no more murders in Afghanistan, as many try to go to the polls. Our soldiers have been courageous and hard working, in an effort to offer security ahead of the election. The coalition needs the election to be as free and as fair as possible. Above all we need a result which carries conviction that it is the will of the Afghan people, producing a government with some authority.

Yesterday Sky invited me in to interview me about the war. They had read a few things on this blog which interested them. I explained I was not a specialist in the way I am on economic and financial matters, but was happy to ask some of the necessary questions about what the UK is seeking to do and what we might do next. They conducted a probing and intelligent interview without any of the usual BBC tricks of putting words into my mouth, making up views I or the Conservatives do not hold or trying to get quotes they could use out of context to prove a Labour smear. It was refreshing and much more grown up.

I argued that the UK government’s mission was now concerned with state building. Our troops are trying to win and hold territory so that the civilian power of the Kabul based national government can extend to parts of the country where other forces have been powerful. The immediate task is to create sufficiently safe streets and polling stations so people feel they can go to vote without harm. I suggested that once a new government was established following the election the UK and its allies needed to talk urgently about the timetable for transfer of more and more of these security functions to the Afghan army and police, appreciating the need for training and reform.

The interviewer pointed out that the government said we were in Afghanistan to make the streets of London safe. He reminded me that a recent report by MPs who had studied this complained of mission creep, and thought there were dangers in pledging wide ranging state building. I think we are already well into the state building mission, as the desire to facilitate elections demonstrates. I find the government’s argument about the safety of the streets of London difficult to accept. If that is the sole aim, why aren’t our troops told just to concentrate on those people thought to be planning international travel, and those camps known to be training grounds for international terror? Doesn’t such an exercise require more intelligence work and less fighting? And why is such intervention limited to Afghanistan when we know there are other countries that are training grounds for international terrorists?

The latest problem the government is encountering from its critics is over the conduct of the present Afghan government. If the UK role is to buttress the power of the incumbent government, to help it to govern more widely and effectively, critics can point to any one of a number of policies the Afghan government follows which we do not like and ask why we are supporting this? It is one of the hazards of supporting the emergence of democracy in a foreign country, that they might elect a government you do not like which does things you find unacceptable. If your troops are risking their lives to allow that government to govern, do you then have a right to demand that they change policies and laws you do not like? How do you intervene to prevent illegitimate and violent challenges to the civil powers, without stifling opposition and dissent? It is difficult and sensitive work. In the end you only succeed in helping create a democracy on the day the civil power no longer needs foreign troops to keep the peace.