The Labour Party - what is it?

I just went to the BBC's iPlayer thingy to watch Friday's episode of New Tricks. It wasn't listed separately so I clicked on "Drama and Soaps". One of the programmes listed was the Scottish Labour Party Conference.

Drama or soap?

A word about the Millibands

Irrelevant.

There, that's a good word for them. Now I can address something almost as absurd as the Millibands (but perhaps not as absurd as the unions appointing Brother Ed to head their political party).

Apparently the BBC has commissioned a survey about how its programmes portray people of a homosexual disposition. My first reaction is "why"? Why should a broadcaster think it necessary to portray people of any sexual tastes in any particular way? The whole concept strikes me as bizarre. Allow me to let them into a secret. Homosexual people are just like heterosexual people except in their choice of bedroom partner. There are happy ones and sad ones, friendly ones and icy ones, sociable ones and loners, placid ones and violent ones, some can sing in tune while others can't, excellent sports players and hopelessly uncoordinated specimens, clever ones and thick ones, loud ones and quiet ones, law abiding ones and mass murderers. Find a human character trait and you will find homosexuals who have it. You see, sexuality is not character it is only one facet of character.

How does the BBC portray heterosexuals? That's easy to answer. It doesn't portray heterosexuals as such, it portrays people of widely different character who happen to be heterosexual. Their sexuality doesn't get a mention because no one cares (or even thinks about) it. No one would think of asking whether heterosexuals are portrayed positively or negatively in BBC dramas because they are not portrayed. People are portrayed. They are portrayed as kind or unkind, intelligent or stupid, fit or unfit; they are portrayed as each drama requires in order to tell the story.

There will always be a problem in dramas portraying minorities of any particular ilk because drama requires exaggeration. Happy couples must be that little bit more happy than they ever would be in real life otherwise they would appear ordinary rather than happy. Misery must be constant or it will risk losing impact with the audience. After all, real life is pretty drab and no one will be entertained by thirty or sixty minnutes of actors being drab. Drama has to catch the attention of the audience and that necessarily requires little foibles to be magnified and specific traits to be dominant features of the character.

It is said that the survey concluded that "lesbian, gay and bisexual people wanted to see more authentic depictions of their lives". What does that mean? More scenes of people doing the washing up, struggling to pair socks after doing the weekly laundry or waiting two minutes for someone to answer the door rather than four seconds? Strictly Come Dancing to be cancelled and replaced by Strictly Come Fisting?

Obviously one would have to know what questions were asked in order to know how that conclusion was formed but it seems to be inevitable that the expressed desire could never be met because of the need to exaggerate for dramatic effect. The conclusion, as expressed in the quote I have just given, suggests that the true conclusion is somewhat different. I would suggest that it would be more accurate to say "lesbian, gay and bisexual people don't like their sexuality being portrayed predominantly by camp and promiscuous stereotypes". That's fair enough and allows the BBC to save a lot of money by not employing hugely expensive artistes like Graham Norton and Dale Winton to mince all over the country's Saturday evenings. But it is nothing but a dream if it is really a desire to avoid exaggeration of a trait that is central to the character being portrayed.

Of course the biggest error the BBC makes is to assume that there is such a thing as a standard opinion held by homosexuals, still less that they can have a shared view of how persons of their sexuality should be portrayed on screen. I might be wrong because I don't have inside knowledge, but my guess is that the vast majority of them just want to be treated as people and will see exaggerated portrayals as necessary dramatic devices rather than insults.

The thing that tickled me most in the report of the survey was a quote attributed to the head of a pressure group called Stonewall which claims to have the right to speak on behalf of homosexuals. He is reported as saying this about BBC programmes: "it's right that everyone in modern Britain should be reflected in its output". How refreshing it is to hear the head of a special interest group insisting that those who condemn the activities of his group should be given airtime by the BBC. Religious fundamentalists who believe homosexual activity to be so wicked that it should be outlawed can now expect to be portrayed in a positive light by the BBC and, indeed, by Stonewall. No? Why not? It's what he said. And I would guess that the numbers holding those fundamentalist views aren't much different from the numbers of a homosexual inclination.

That's the problem with picking on a minority interest and treating it as something worthy of special treatment. Whether it is sexual proclivity, pigmentation, physical infirmity or any other of the selected minorities chosen for special treatment by the self-proclaimed "progressive" elite, it is impossible to make a principled stand for special treatment for one minority without extending the same privilege to others. Exclude others and you undermine the case for your own cause. There is an unassailable case for equal treatment but no case for special treatment

Incidentally, this exercise is a classic illustration of how tax-funded spending can be cut without necessarily affecting the delivery of "front-line services". If the BBC is fed less money it can stop wasting cash on commissioning idiotic surveys, it can abandon the backroom teams dedicated to ensuring "diversity" in its programme output and thereby save a packet. I wouldn't mind betting a packet (of pork scratchings) on it also having a department dedicated to reducing its "carbon footprint". That can go too. More on that another day.

Contentment and the common enemy

Casting my mind back several decades to my student days I recall observing a phenomenon associated with communal living. Almost all my fellow students spent some time in college accommodation before finding a flat to share with others. In the normal run of things three or four would share because money was extremely tight and the overheads of rent, rates (now council tax), water rates, standing charges for electricity and gas were little different for a three-bedroomed flat than a two so it made sense to get a bigger place and spread the cost three ways or more. I found a flat together with two friends. From the very day we moved in one of them became marginalised, as we would put it today, it was me and my chum against her whenever a dispute arose. Interestingly, the same was seen with all trios of sharers I knew. Indeed when four shared it was three-against-one.

As far as I could tell there was nothing intentionally malicious about it, it was just how things worked out. When there was a dispute about what colour to paint the living room or whether to buy logs or coal for the fire a decision had to be taken and the majority would rule. What I found interesting at the time and find interesting still is that being in the majority added to the pleasure of life. Had we all agreed about everything there would have been no sense of victory or accomplishment in getting ones way. It goes without saying that on a great many matters we were all in agreement, disputes were few and never bitter nonetheless I found elation in being on the winning side when push came to shove. The victors went to the pub and gloated, criticising their common enemy in order to boost their egos. Without a common enemy that experience would have been lost, there would have been no victory and no elation, life would have been less enjoyable.

What was absurd about the whole situation was that our flatmate was not really our enemy at all. She was a lovely girl and, I presume, is now a lovely middle aged lady; but she was our enemy for certain limited purposes and in that capacity she enhanced our lives. Sadly I have now lost contact with both old flatmates, for all I know they are in contact again and bitching about me.

We see the same phenomenon in all sorts of circumstances. In the workplace the foreman or manager is seen as the enemy of the serfs and forcing him to reverse his position gives pleasure far beyond any temporary material benefits that are received. A football club goes through a bad run and the supporters turn on the manager or owners. They get their way and cheer the replacement manager/owner to the rafters until next season when the exercise is repeated. Do they really cheer the new manager or owner, or do they cheer themselves for having won a battle whether or not the club's fortunes improve? British Airways cabin crew seem to be following this pattern with their current series of strikes. They might or might not gain long term benefits if the strikes result in their present demands being met, but you can be sure their greater pleasure would be winning the battle rather than enjoying what happens next.

It is only a short step to offer the prospect of winning battles as a political strategy to gain support. It matters not whether winning these particular battles will benefit those whose support you seek because they will support you for the chance of enjoying victory even if it leaves them out of pocket or out of work. This has been seen over the last couple of years with calls for penal rates of tax on "The Rich". No one can be certain that the future will mirror the past but all experience from around the world indicates that taxing income at more than around 40% results in a fall in tax revenue (because some move overseas to avoid it, some deliberately earn less and others find it worthwhile to spend a few quid on a specialist accountant to reduce their tax bill to the absolute minimum possible). That evidence suggests that a proposal to tax income at 50% would be counter-productive and should not be tried because it is likely to require higher taxes on the non-rich to make up the shortfall.

The policy has nothing to do with raising revenue and everything to do with gaining support from those who are encouraged to believe there is a group known as "The Rich" against whom a victory can be won. Support is given because the non-rich smell the sweet scent of victory, they sense the chance to get one over an opponent. The opponent only exists as an opponent because he has been described as such by those who invent the battle. Once the policy becomes law those who were persuaded to support it have won, they feel good, their lives have been enhanced by being a winner. Yet it seems likely from past experience that they are the very people who will have to pay when the policy backfires. That doesn't matter to the politicians, they will put forward a different excuse for having to raise taxes on the non-rich, their concern is getting votes by any means they can.

Lest either of my readers is tempted to tell me of Mencken's hobgoblins don't bother, I know them well but my point is different. He asserted, I believe correctly, that setting up mythical ogres gains votes because people want to be protected from the threat those ogres appear to pose. My point is that the prospect of victory against a fictitious enemy gains votes because victory is a benefit in itself whether or not the defeated person posed any threat. Promise the thrill of victory, any victory, and people will say "yes please, I'd like a slice of that". They say it because they know it will make them feel good. The more bitter, envious and spiteful they are, the better it will make them feel. It is a perfect tactic for the political left.

Taking money out of the economy

Sometimes I read something so obviously upside-down that I think I must be missing the point. So it is with the result of the long weekend's thinking by the current government spin team. In a nutshell, the government plans to increase employers' National Insurance contributions whereas the opposition say they would increase them by less. The Prime Minister and Chancellor mounted a twin attack, both of them saying the Conservatives' approach would "take money out of the economy". It's so very bizarre that I have had to wrap a cold towel around my chins in order to try to make sense of it.

As a general rule it's sensible to start at the beginning, so I will. Employers' NICs are a tax payable by an employer as a penalty for having the effrontery to give someone a job in the private sector. Income tax and employees' NICs are deducted from the gross wage or salary so that the employee receives less than the headline amount they earn. Increases in these taxes do not require the employer to pay more for the same job. But employers' NICs are a tax payable by the employer in addition to the contractual wage or salary. Any increase adds to the costs of the business.

Call me a simple fellow if you will, but it seems to me that when Mr Patel has to pay extra to employ old Doris on the till that money must come from somewhere and go somewhere. We know it comes from Mr Patel because he's the mug who pays her wages. So, paying this additional tax takes money from the economy in that it reduces Mr Patel's spending power and might mean he has to satisfy himself with fewer extras when next he visits Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky-Panky Parlour. In the language so beloved of our Keynesian friends, it reduces aggregate demand. The other side of the coin is that the money goes to the Treasury to be spent on something, we know not what. On the face of it the reduction in spending power caused to Mr Patel is matched by an increase in spending power for the lucky recipient of his largesse. One set all, new balls please.

It follows from this that if Labour wishes to bleed Mr Patel for an extra £15 a week and the Conservatives want to take only an additional £7.50 nothing at all is lost from the economy. The same amount of cash is sloshing about except that on one proposal £15 of it sloshes at the Treasury and on the other that £15 is split equally between the Treasury and Mr Patel. You see my problem? Where is the loss?

No doubt you could invent ways in which leaving money in the private sector amounts to a loss to the UK economy, for example if it is paid as dividends to overseas investors and therefore leaves these shores (subject to such tax, if any, that they pay on it over here). There could also be a drop in aggregate demand if some of the money is saved rather than spent and, on a particularly warped view of reality, that could be said to be a loss to the economy. Again, however, that is to look at only one side. Marginal businesses can be tipped over the edge by modest increases in their staffing costs and a reduction in profits reduces the money available for investment (I mean real investment not government-speak investment). And what happens to Mr Patel's money once the government has it? We know it will be spent but also know that a lot of it will not be spent on anything that adds value. We also know that interest payments on government debt will not all stay within the UK economy.

The argument that taking less tax removes money from the economy is moronic humbug. If they were concerned about taking money from the economy they would not have racked-up hundreds of billions of pounds of debt on which interest must be paid. And if they were honest they would say "we need to take more tax because we are spending too much and we think there might be more votes in taking it from filthy capitalist pig employers than by raising taxes that the little people will feel directly."

It seems to me there is something more sinister behind this piece of spin. Taking it at face value they are saying that government spending is of net value whereas private sector spending is a net cost to the country. It is obvious nonsense and we know it is nonsense because they claim recovery from recession will be fuelled by private-sector economic growth. Nonetheless, it sets the scene and tells the lie they want the little people to believe, namely that everything government currently does is essential and beneficial and once we are over the current difficulties the government can be even more beneficial by doing even more things. There is not a hint of them looking to cut-back the number of things government does in order to balance the books and make a start on repaying the enormous debt their incompetent profligacy has created.

What is even more worrying is that the Conservatives do not seem to want to grasp this most essential nettle either. We can argue about the benefits of street football consultants, grants to the arts, five-a-day advisors and carbon footprint investigators until the cows stop farting. Perhaps there is some benefit perhaps there is not. What is certain is that these sorts of activities are fripperies, they are luxuries, they are most certainly not essential. The only way we can make any serious inroad into the annual deficit and then into the massive accumulated debt is by cutting out spending on non-essential things.

I wonder whether the heart of the problem is the seductive concept of aggregate demand. An awful lot of UK GDP depends on consumer spending. In the private sector wages and hours are being cut so that businesses can survive and one consequence of that is that the employees have less to spend and, therefore, their local shops and eateries are suffering. There is a superficial attraction in maintaining levels of public-sector pay and employment so that the detrimental effect of private-sector belt-tightening is not exacerbated by public sector employees also spending less. The attraction is only superficial because the private sector is dealing with reality whereas the public sector is seeking to avoid reality.

There is no escaping the fact, for fact it is, that we simply cannot afford all the things we enjoyed three years ago. One could say we couldn't really afford them then but that is beside the point. We did pay for them and now we can't so we have to cut them out of our budget. There is no escaping that in the private sector because there is no magic money tree - you cut costs or you go bust. If you go bust everyone loses their job so people have agreed pay deferrals or pay cuts or reduced hours or to cover a vacancy using existing staff without any additional pay because they know the short-term saving in costs might allow them to have a job next month and next year. It is a great example of the benefits of breaking union power, a task which cost lots of jobs in the 1980s. The result is that businesses which would have had to fold a generation ago can now survive. They will still have to keep their fingers crossed about what the future holds but at least they now have a future.

You can bleat as much as you like about aggregate demand but that won't keep alive a struggling business. Only cutting its costs will keep it alive. You can say "you must keep paying your people the same amount otherwise they can't spend and other businesses might fold" to which the answer is "so you want me to fold instead and guarantee that those other businesses fold too". That is the reality.

Maintaining public sector spending will mean more cash in the tills of the businesses the public sector employees frequent but it comes at a cost. That cost is the need to raise additional taxes to pay the shortfall between current tax receipts and government spending and that has an effect on future spending power which necessarily dampens future aggregate demand which, in turn, makes it all the more difficult to generate the income from which those additional taxes are paid.

I've been more than usually circuitous today, but we are now back where we started. Taking one amount rather than another in tax does not take money out of the economy. But taking money out of the private sector inevitably prevents as much wealth and money being generated as would occur if you left that money where it was. The reason for that is that only the private sector can make the stuff to replace what we consume every day. A factory making bread doesn't just pump-up aggregate demand by paying wages that are then circulated around the system, it also makes something that is needed. Take tax from the business and from its employees and you reduce their ability to spend thereby reducing aggregate demand. Pay that tax money to a five-a-day advisor and there is no change to aggregate demand because it is taken from one person who would spend and given to another who has exactly the same amount to spend. But you don't get any bread from a five-a-day advisor's work. We are worse off not better off by keeping these non-value-added jobs.

That is what the politicians should be debating because we simply cannot afford roughly a quarter of what the government currently spends and that proportion will increase as they continue to overspend and incur further interest charges.

When in a cesspit, stop digging

The latest corruption scandal to hit the Labour government should come as no surprise to anyone. The rot set in at the first meeting of the new cabinet back in 1997 when the then Prime Minister said "call me Tony". This might just seem like a decision to avoid pomposity or unnecessary formality but it was actually much more. It marked a failure to distinguish between the man and the office he held.

Two consequences flow from that failure. The question every government minister should ask on every issue of policy is "what is in the national interest"? He will undoubtedly form a personal view when an issue arises but merely being a minister does not give you carte blanche to impose your personal opinions, you have to weigh your opinions against all relevant circumstances and reach a policy decision in what you consider to be the national interest. If you fail to acknowledge the difference between you and the office you hold, this exercise can easily go by the by. Secondly, and more damagingly in the long term, if you think the ministerial office is you rather than that you are temporary custodian of the office, it is easy to see the office as being for your benefit.

The corrupt offering by former ministers of insider links to government was exposed today in the Sunday Times and will be reported on further in a television programme tomorrow. Undercover reporters posed as having interests they wanted brought to the attention of government and given special preference. Part of what is reported is that the former ministers boasted of being able to by-pass what always used to be known as "the proper channels". The proper channels exist for good reason, just like the convention that ministers should address each other in cabinet by their ministerial office not their personal names. Going through the proper channels ensures that everyone is in the same position if they wish to make representations to government. Of course we shouldn't be naive about this, obviously the representations made by some people will be heard louder and faster because of who they are, but buying the ministerial ear is something the proper channels prevent because they require openness and full disclosure of any relevant financial dealing.

None of this is new, plenty have already made substantially the same points already while commenting on this story. There is, however, one aspect of it that has not gained the publicity it deserves. You see, once the former ministers were tipped-off and/or the influence they claimed to have exercised in the past was investigated and found to have been either wholly false or at least wildly exaggerated, they back-tracked and admitted to having overstated matters to the undercover reporters. One could hardly expect them to say anything else once they had been rumbled. But it doesn't stop there.

Whether or not they would be able to persuade current ministers and senior civil servants to look favourably on their clients' special interests cannot be determined by whether they had done so successfully before. Maybe they have never by-passed the proper channels on behalf of fee-paying clients but that does not mean they would not be able to do so in the future. They quoted fees of £3,000 to £5,000 a day for their services (I would guess VAT at 17.5% would be chargeable on those fees, taking them up to £3,250 and £5,875). It is hard to imagine that they would ask for such substantial sums in order not to achieve anything for the paying party. After all, if they never achieved a favourable outcome the gravy train would come to an abrupt halt. In order to earn their fees they would have to act corruptly, but that is not the point I am interested in. I want to go back one stage.

In order to earn fees at all the former ministers would have to satisfy potential clients that they should be engaged. At meetings held to discuss the prospect of their being engaged they made representations about having assisted others to achieve favourable results that could not have been achieved without their intervention. Now they accept that those representations were lies. In other words they were seeking to gain work by telling lies. That used to be "attempting to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deception" under the Theft Act 1968, it might now be worded differently and feature in a Fraud Act but the substance of the offence has not changed. They are in exactly the same position as Mr Hardup who tells lies about his circumstances in order to obtain a job or to obtain benefits he is not entitled to receive.

Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems to me that either they were telling the truth about their previous lobbying successes (in which case they were admitting to past corruption in order to gain fees for engaging in future corruption) or they were telling lies (in which case they were committing a criminal fraud in order to gain fees for engaging in future corruption). What is so peculiar about it is that their corrupt activities are not necessarily criminal offences, whereas telling lies to obtain money most certainly is a criminal offence. They just made their position worse.

"When in a hole, stop digging" is wise advice. In this instance the wording merits the change I have used as the title to this musing.

The inevitable dictatorship of causes

Perhaps the biggest difference between conservatives (with a small "c") and socialists is that conservatives do not pursue a cause. They do not seek to impose anything on anyone, preferring to just leave people alone and trust them to live as they see best with a fall-back of penalties for causing harm to others. In contrast, socialists must of necessity take a fight to the people. They do not trust us to live responsibly because they have a vision of the perfect world and are compelled to mould us, by force if necessary, to comply with their vision.

One problem with the socialist approach is that the vision can never be complete. There are always new situations for which no blueprint exists and new opportunities to extend the existing plan into areas previously immune from interference. Most tellingly, when the stubborn little people refuse to comply with the vision it is necessary for new ways to be found to enforce compliance. In the more brutal regimes that means physical assaults and even state murder, in a relatively civilised country like the UK it takes a different form.

What should not be presumed is that socialist politicians bully and coerce for the sake of being unpleasant. Of course there will always be some who do, but they do not reflect the real theme of their cause. The real theme is that life for everyone can be improved with careful guidance by the machinery of the State. Once you believe that, especially if you believe it passionately, no bullying or coercion are involved there is only the perceived need to take whatever steps are necessary to open the eyes of the little people to the benefits of the ideal society.

To a socialist there is only one acceptable way for people to live, which is according to his current view of the ideal State. When he changes his mind about something the new ideal becomes mandatory. Dissent, debate and variance are inconsistent with the attainment of the ideal State, so means must be found to ensure compliance. The single most important factor is the need for the little people to believe that the path set by the State machine is correct. If they are persuaded that this is so, they will follow that path without rebellion. But how do you persuade them? Conventionally three methods are used.

First comes genuine persuasion using words. That will attract a certain number to the cause.

Secondly come rewards for those who toe the line. No adverse consequences follow from not being on board, but those who have adopted the cause get benefits; these days that includes jobs sitting on Quangos and career advancement by showing dedication to the pet project of the day whether it be "climate change" or "diversity". Some will sign-up because they want to receive those benefits.

The third method is both inevitable and sinister. It is punishments for those who dissent. The punishments need not be particularly painful because they are more about setting the atmosphere than about causing people pain. After all, the first purpose of the exercise is to persuade people to board the train to utopia, only secondarily is the punishment intended to coerce. The atmosphere they need to set is one of agreement that the State knows best. Without the people agreeing that the State knows best, socialism can only be maintained by violent repression.

It is inevitable that the line between persuasion and coercion is easily blurred when your mind it fixed on the result rather than the method of achieving it. "We must persuade people that we are right" rests on the presumption that "we are right". When you hold that attitude no one can be surprised that you will use every avenue you can, including unlimited amounts of taxpayers' money and the criminal law, to assert your correctness and, necessarily, the incorrectness of those who do not agree with you.

And that is where "causes" become so useful for socialists. Causes are all about enforcing a particular pet interest by force of law. If you believe passionately that something, anything, must be done the most effective way to satisfy your urge is to get the law behind you. So socialist governments love to adopt causes because they add to the weight of the State. The longer the list of "thou shalt nots" the more power the State has over the little people. In order to make this a palatable approach it is important to concentrate on causes that already have a degree of assent so that the dissenters are maginalised not only by their chosen activity becoming illegal but also by being a numerical minority. The State strengthens the message that it has the best judgment by putting into law the suppression of activities that a majority either actively disapprove of or, at least, do not like to engage in.

What is more, the State benefits from a double-whammy. The majority, unaffected by the new prohibition, sees the law as reflecting their way of life and the minority turn from being a minority acting within the law to a minority acting against the law. If they do indeed act against the law they might face prosecution. If all they do is argue for the prohibition to be removed they are faced with a fight against the majority. And the authority of the State is strengthened by the knowledge that the majority accepts the position it has taken, even though the majority might have been wholly unaffected by the minority activity when it took place.

In a country of 60 million people there are countless causes to be added to the statute books. Every time one is added a new minority faces the choice of complying with the law or risking prosecution. "Live and let live" does nothing to aid the socialist cause whereas banning one previously lawful activity after another emphasises the authority of the State. It is a slow, creeping process and the nature of the British is to obey the law. But what about those whose previously lawful activity is now a crime?

Their dissent might fade away because they believe that complying with the law is more important than their personal interest. Not everyone will fade away even if they do comply with the new law, they might still argue for repeal. Not everyone will comply with the new law. Not everyone who disapproved of or was indifferent to the newly banned activity will believe it should be prohibited. Every ban breeds dissent, some passive and some active.

More importantly every new ban is, almost by definition, more petty than the last. Outlawing murder and theft is not difficult. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who would argue against those prohibitions. The more marginal the harm done by a newly-banned activity the more likely it is that people will respond by asking why it was necessary for the law to step in at all. Sadly for the socialist, the correctness of the State in all things never has been and never will be accepted by human beings. They can pander to any number of single issue fanatics by passing prohibitionist legislation but still there will be dissent.

The more petty the ban, the greater the risk of it being defied in deed as well as in word. The State machine has only one course open to it once it has imposed a prohibition, namely to enforce the prohibition. In principle it could undo the ban, but that would be to admit that the State was in error, something that is anathema to the socialist brain. The only course it can follow is to impose greater and greater force against those who continue to dissent. But there is a problem because the more petty the ban the less the majority is likely to look on it with favour. "It doesn't affect me or people I know so I don't care" is overtaken by "I don't do it but my uncle and brother do, and they are decent people". Then questions are asked about the justification for earlier prohibitions. The socialist State has only one answer "we are right, it is for your own good, you must comply". That position is unsustainable in the long term. Sometimes the very long term. Eventually Ceausescu's Christmas Day arrives.

A true charity

Last week we received a sad reminder of what real charities do. The former footballer and football manager Sir Bobby Robson died at the age of 76 after having suffered from one type of cancer or another for more than fifteen years. During that period he set up the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation to fund research related to cancer and, in particular, to assist in clinical trials of new anti-cancer drugs and treatments.

The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation is funded by private and corporate donations, using Sir Bobby's name and reputation and those of many other figures from the world of football to persuade people and companies to part with their cash. This type of charity is the very epitome of what a charity should be. The work it funds could be funded out of taxation if someone in government chose to do so, as it is Sir Bobby decided he wanted to see more spent in the field so he went about raising money specifically for that purpose. Could other aspects of cancer research make a case for additional funding? Could other areas of medicine make a case? Of course the answer to both questions is that they could, but that is nothing to do with it because it was Sir Bobby's decision what should happen to the money raised in his name.

It is reasonable to infer that those who have given to this charity would not have volunteered to pay additional tax in the same amount. Even if they had paid voluntary additional tax they would have had no say over where it went once it was in the hands of the Treasury. Instead they chose to delve into their post-tax income to fund a specific area of work regardless of whether the government considers it of sufficient priority to warrant additional money.

That is at the heart of true charities. They are about individual priorities rather than priorities laid down from on high. This reflects the position that has been taken consistently through time, until very recently. The law has not asked the question "is this organisation a charity"? Rather it has asked "is the purpose for which this organisation exists a charitable purpose"? The distinction is extremely important because it places the emphasis on the general purpose for which an organisation exists not on the specifics of how that organisation seeks to attain that purpose. The reason for this is that different people have different views of the benefit of certain types of activity which are considered by law to be charitable. Because charitable donation is an individual thing, reflecting the values of individual donors, the law does not claim to have better judgment than the individuals who make voluntary donations. Provided the general purpose of the donee falls within the established categories of charitable purposes, the wishes of individual donors are respected.

For example, preventing suffering to animals is a charitable purpose, both under the old law and under the Charities Act 2006. Those of us with the good sense to despise cats can recognise that others take a different view and an organisation dedicated to preventing suffering to cats is, on the face of it, fulfilling a charitable purpose. Of course there are certain formal requirements to ensure that such an organisation is indeed concerned with its stated charitable purpose before it can be registered as a charity, but all of that is secondary; if its stated purpose is not charitable it doesn't get off the starting blocks.

As with so many things, the current government considers charitable status to be a political matter and has placed one of its most loyal Labour Party puppets in charge of the Charity Commission so that only those organisations that further Labour Party policy will be afforded the tax and other privileges that go with being a registered charity. Recently they decided that education is only a charitable purpose if it accords with the Labour Party's view of what schools should do. This was never an issue before because government recognised that all educational facilities are beneficial to some children and that was sufficient in itself for bona fide educational establishments to be afforded charitable status.

The danger with this new approach (which is almost certainly unlawful) is that it introduces narrow political considerations into a field which, for more than four hundred years, has stood outside factional politics and has respected the values and judgments of the little people whether or not they accorded with the views of the government of the day. Part of the process of politicising charities has been to refer to them as "the third sector", the other two being government and private business. Instead of charities being numerous separate organisations dedicated to specific charitable purposes they are lumped together and even have their own Minister of State. Once they have been classified in this way the government can seek to justify ever greater regulation and control, citing the amount of money charitable organisations administer as justification for any amount of interference. Once that is accomplished it is inevitable that the "third sector" is treated as something for government to control in ever increasing detail; in effect making it a tool of government policy rather than a diverse collection of individual organisations each with its own priorities, procedures and aims.

Where does the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation stand in this brave new order? At the moment it can operate as Sir Bobby wished it to - adding research facilities which did not otherwise exist and concentrating its work in the north east of England. But for how long? When will it be required to merge its work with other cancer research conducted within the NHS? When will it be required to limit its research into only those matters government considers a priority? Who knows, but I'm not holding my breath.

Others write about the misuse of charitable status by overtly political campaigns, details of many of which can be found at fakecharities.org. That is bad enough. To subvert the very essence of charitable work by seeking to impose value judgments based on political considerations over and above the values and judgments of individual donors is to deny the very basis of charity.

Lying takes skill, amoral scum tend not to have skill

If you think your very survival depends on telling lies it is very unwise to commit your thoughts to print without taking a little peek at the rushes to make sure you are not making a complete pigs' breakfast of the whole thing.

Gordon Brown has lent his name to a simply astonishing piece of mendacious codswallop in today's Sunday Mirror. It's necessary to put it in context. The Shadow Health Secretary said that ring-fencing government spending for health and overseas aid in 2011 would mean cutting the total amount spent by all other departments by 10%. He was not setting out his own party's position, he was using the current government's own figures. In 2011 Gordon Brown's government would have to cut spending by 10% across all departments other than health and overseas aid if it kept to the spending commitments it has made but excluded health and overseas aid from reductions. That is a fairly simple proposition. The government has said how much it intends to spend. It has not said how it intends to spend it. But if health and overseas aid are not to suffer reductions the amount available to all other departments will be 10% less than it is now. What's difficult about that?

In today's article poor Gordon has turning himself into pitiful Gordon. He claims that his spending plans are different from those Mr Lansley was talking about. That is a blatant lie. It doesn't stop there. Then he says the purpose of cutting government spending is to provide "a £200,000 tax cut for the richest 3,000 families". What a stupid line. Is it really his case that the Conservatives would hunt for the 3,000 richest families in the country and arrange things so that they each pay £200,000 less in tax? Has anything more absurd ever been written by a serving Prime Minister?

Then he made his worst mistake. He wrote this: "David Cameron ... would actually make the recession worse, by slowing public spending at exactly the time we need it most." How very insightful that sentence is ... or is it? The reduction in spending of 10% over all but two departments relates to 2011. Does pitiful Gordon think we are still going to be in recession in 2011? If he does it conflicts with everything he and his puppet Chancellor have said on the subject. Or was he saying that cutting government spending this year would make the recession and/or the consequences of recession worse? If he meant the latter he should have saved some ink because the Conservatives are not in power this year so his point has neither form nor substance.

When you start lying it is very difficult to stop. Were government expenditure (save for health and overseas aid) to be cut by 10%, as Labour plans, that reduction could be effected in numerous different ways. Stopping funding for all quangos and charities would achieve something like the reduction pitiful Gordon wrote into the last budget. Yet in his article today he says it "would mean" reductions in the numbers of teachers, police officers, soldiers and university places. That is another blatant lie. There is no scope for misunderstanding here, it is a lie. Were he an honest man he would have written (with a disgraceful amount of spin, albeit honest spin) that such a reductions would be equivalent to the cost of the number of teachers, police officers, soldiers and university places that he mentioned. But he did not say that, he said it "would mean" actual reductions in those fields. A disgraceful, deliberate lie by a man who wouldn't know how to tell the truth if his pathetic sham of a life depended on it.

To make sure there could be no doubt about the depth of his dishonesty he wrote this extraordinary sentence in winding up what must be one of the shabbiest pieces ever submitted by 10 Downing Street to the national press: "They will cut the services you and I rely on so that they can redistribute resources to the 3,000 richest estates in the country." Let's start with a simple question, one even a supported of pitiful Gordon might be able to answer. What services relied on by pitiful Gordon himself will be cut even on his fairyland view of what a Conservative government might do? Hmmm, that's a bit of a toughie. Maybe he means schools for his children; no it can't be that he'll just arrange for them to go to a private school at public expense as his predecessor did. Maybe he means ... no, the list is already exhausted.

"...redistribute resources to the 3,000 richest estates in the country." That is an absolute corker. On no possible basis of fact can it be asserted that keeping to pitiful Gordon's own spending plans - involving as they do sucking a greater and greater amount from everyone in tax to pay for the unprecedented debt his incompetence has accumulated - will result in anyone getting richer. No doubt one could take the cash value of the cuts pitiful Gordon plans and pretend they will be paid to the richest 3,000 families in the country and calculate that each of the 3,000 will receive £200,000 in Monopoly money, no doubt fairy dust is a more appropriate currency in the world of pitiful Gordon. But no one is planning to cut the taxes payed by anyone and no one is planning to give hand-outs to rich people.

The man has descended to the sewer. At long last his words have reached the level of his moral compass. He is a shocking piece of scum, utterly dishonest filth, unfit to lace his own boots let alone anyone else's.

What not to do about the BNP

Labour chose one of its smoothest liars, Peter Hain, to represent the party on Question Time this week. Unlike some I don't object to Mr Hain's permanent orange pigmentation or to his history of engaging in illegal actions to further causes in which he believed. If someone is prepared to say "I believe strongly in this and am prepared to break the law and face a fine or imprisonment for doing so" they are, in my view, acting honourably if, perhaps, foolishly. It doesn't matter what their cause happens to be nor how many others support it, having the courage of your convictions, even if it leads to criminal convictions, is to be commended. Of course now he is a fully-fledged slime machine and all principle was discarded long ago in his search for personal fame, power and glory. Once an honourable man he has followed the well-trodden path of losing his honour in order to gain the title "Right Honourable".

Tonight he was on fine form. Talking with a straight face about the government's plans for spending he adopted what appears to be the official line of speaking only in cash terms without making any adjustment for inflation. So he spoke of increases in spending until 2014 when the government's own figures, published at the time of the budget, make clear they plan a modest cut within less than two years from now once inflation (at a very modest predicted level) has been taken into account and quite a substantial cut by 2014. This is exactly the same tactic used by Gordon Brown at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. There was a simply bizarre exchange in which poor Gordon accused the Conservatives of planning a 10% cut in public spending when all the opposition had done was point out that by ring-fencing spending on health and international development all other spending would have to fall by 10% in order to match the government's own announced spending plans. So his plans, announced by his puppet Chancellor at the budget, are treated by him as an increase in spending if carried into effect by Labour and a cut if carried into effect by the Conservatives. This is not just spin it is a calculated and deliberate lie which Mr Hain was happy to adopt and shout to the rooftops.

I mention that as an example of Mr Hain's blatant dishonesty but it is not what I actually want to discuss today. I want to discuss his approach to the election of two BNP MEPs. For any visitors from overseas I should explain that the BNP (British National Party) is a fringe party of malcontents. On the two great policy areas, the economy and foreign affairs, their position is identical to that adopted by the Labour Party under Michael Foot in the early 1980s. They argue for widespread nationalisation and a state-command economy combined with withdrawal from the EU.

If anyone is minded to doubt the comparison, take a look at the published policy statements. Keele University helpfully archives manifestos from the main parties and Labour's 1983 manifesto can be found here. If you have the patience to read through the document you will see that they argue for the state to have a command position in the economy. Of particular interest is the section headed "Rebuilding our industry" in which they planned not just the nationalisation of certain industries that were then in private hands but a wholesale creation of new industries by the state and under direct state control. Included in their plans was requiring the banks to do what the government wanted or be nationalised. On foreign affairs their headline policy was withdrawal from what was then the European Economic Community.

The BNP's manifesto for the recent European Parliament elections dealt clearly with their plan to withdraw from the EU, although it said little of substance on anything else. Their economic policy is set out in their "mini-manifesto" from 2007 which calls for the economy to be run by the state and in an article they published in April this year entitled "How the BNP Will Rebuild Britain's economy". Their approach is for the state to manage the economy in the same way that Labour wanted in 1983.

One major difference exists between the BNP in 2009 and Labour in 1983. It is that the BNP wants to exclude people of dusky hue from the country and "repatriate" many who are already here. Ironically the BNP wants to press the bankrupting forces of state socialism on only pasty-faced whities whereas Labour wished to spread the misery more widely. The reason I mention Labour's 1983 Manifesto is that Peter Hain first stood for Parliament in 1983, without appearing to distance himself from the party manifesto. Of course he stood for election subsequently on different policy bases but he can hardly complain about the BNP being an extremist party when its central economic and foreign policy platforms are the same as those on which he first sought election to Parliament.

When asked to comment on the recent success of the BNP in the European elections he expressed distress that Britain has sent two "fascist" (as he called them) MEPs to Brussels. I happen to agree with his definition of the BNP as a fascist organisation but on a wider basis than him. It is not just their absurd policy about pigmentation that makes them fascist but their demand for state control. The latter has been the constant feature in fascist regimes, not all of which have also included a racial or pigment-based element to their platform (although almost all have added one at some stage in order to secure their power-base through the practice of divide-and-rule).

That, also, is not what I really want to say today. What I really want to say is that he is wholly and hopelessly wrong in saying that this country is sending fascists to the EU Parliament. The two men in question won seats because individuals voted for their party in sufficient numbers in two of the voting areas. We can never know how many of those individuals did so because they want to kick the "darkies" out, or because they were persuaded by the policy of withdrawal from the EU, or because they want a control economy, or because they support any of the other things the BNP argues for; nor can we know what combination of factors every individual found persuasive; nor can we know how many of the votes were pure protest votes against the government or the current Parliament or, indeed, anything else. All we know is that sufficient people voted for the BNP to allow two of their candidates to win seats. They are validly elected MEPs, just as much as any MEP wearing a different party badge. This country is not sending any MEPs to Brussels, the voters are sending them.

All the pious hand-wringing in the world cannot change the fact that politicians are subservient to the electoral system and have no right to complain about its result. To argue that the outcome has produced an undesirable result is to argue for a different electoral system under which the views of the little people should bear less weight and have less ability to upset the established elite's apple cart. That is to approach the matter the wrong way round. The question is not "what can we do to prevent the country producing these results?", it is "what can we do to persuade those who voted in this way to vote differently?" Fiddle with the electoral system and you cannot quell discontent all you can do is prevent that discontent being expressed through the ballot box; other methods will be found by those sufficiently angry and the rest will fume at being marginalised.

Mr Hain and senior figures in the other major parties must address the reasons for discontent if they are to justify their continued existence at the top table. Condemning the outcome of an election is to condemn the voters, always an unwise decision for a serious politician.

A fine day Part 2 - the democratic deficit

A few days ago I waffled on about how Gordon Brown's authority comes primarily from his party rather than from the last general election and that his position is necessarily weakened by fractures appearing in the party itself. Friday's forced "re-shuffle" was a direct consequence of that weakness, not least because it was not expected to happen until Monday and had to be brought forward to try to stop the snowball effect of ministerial resignations and divert attention away from criticisms of the Prime Minister.

It is important to put current events in context. Criticisms of the Prime Minister and the government are only part of the picture, there is also a massive constitutional issue about the way parliament has been sidelined by an over-powerful executive which whips its backbenchers into voting for all but the very most absurd policy initiatives. The last thing a beleaguered leader should do in the face of such a serious issue is make things worse. Oh dear, step up poor Gordon.

The cabinet traditionally contains one member of the House of Lords, the leader of the government party in that House, and in days of yore it contained a second in the Lord Chancellor. Neither of these had conventional departmental responsibilities and were not front-line policy spokesmen. When Tony Blair decided to abolish the established role of Lord Chancellor he used the incumbent (his old flatmate from student days, Lord Falconer) as a spokesman on any number of issues and received criticism for undermining the elected House by doing so. For a year we have had a member of the House of Lords running the Department for Business, the first time a major spending department was headed by an unelected politician since the mid 1980s.

Friday saw the breathtaking constitutional change of Lord Mandelson being promoted so that he now holds the second most powerful position in government and another Lord is now in charge of transport. But that wasn't the end of it. In addition to the cabinet itself there are now five other ministers who attend cabinet meetings and two of them are unelected, Lord Malloch-Brown and Lord Drayson and the Attorney General, Lady Scotland, attends when the agenda includes matters within her departmental responsibilities. Out of twenty-three cabinet ministers three are unelected and out of the twenty-eight ministers who attend all cabinet meetings five are unelected, that will soon be six when the new Minister for Europe, Mrs Kinnock, takes her seat in the House of Lords. So Gordon's answer to the gap between government and the little people is for almost a quarter of his top table being appointed rather than elected.

And it doesn't stop there. Are ministers going to be responsible for forming policy? One might think that is the way to ensure democratic validity, but no. Gordon announced three new policy quangoes to guide the way forward.

Things have quietened down a little over the weekend. It might be that all those who were inclined to resign have done so. Gordon is enjoying a couple of days of breathing space while everyone reflects on what to make of last week's turmoil. What I see is a widening of the democratic deficit. Not only does Gordon have his own democratic deficit by being a party appointee without endorsement through a general election, but his deficit has widened through his party being fractured. More than that, the gap between the top of government and the House of Commons has widened and the gap between policy formation and our elected representatives has also widened.

Gordon is bleating more and more about constitutional change, his anti-democratic moves last Friday will come back to bite him. If, indeed, he lasts long enough to be able to put forward whatever half-baked plans he has.

A fine day Part 1 - neither MacMillan nor Forsyth

When I went to bed on Thursday night the cabinet was one member light of its compliment at the start of the day because James Purnell resigned in the old-fashioned way - by saying "I resign" and leaving office on the spot. It also contained two ministers who had announced they would stand down when the Prime Minister decided to change his cabinet. So they were still in office and garnering a few hours or days of ministerial pay, they knew not which, despite being the lamest of ducks. Their announcements came before Mr Purnell's which gave rise to the delicious possibility of Gordon Brown not changing the cabinet and leaving them in place. He might as well have done for all the responsibilities they had for the formation or implementation of policy.

By bedtime on Friday the upper ranks of our government had been decimated. Four cabinet members exited in addition to those who announced their departure on Thursday, and two non-cabinet members who have been louder spokesmen for the government than many of their more senior colleagues had also resigned.

Those of us of a certain age talk about "the night of the long knives" when Harold MacMillan dismissed seven members of his cabinet in 1962. None of them showed any sign of wanting to leave government to spend more time with their second homes or of being overtly dismissive of the ability of Mr MacMillan to carry out his responsibilities. He sacked them because he needed to present a new face of government under his leadership. He also needed to assert his authority because whispered questions had been asked about his ability to steer the ship. A radical step was taken to say "I'm in charge". Those of us of a certain age also know that "I'm in charge" was a catch phrase used by Bruce Forsyth when the game-show part of a live television programme he presented needed to be pulled back from mayhem to meet time constraints.

Poor Gordon is no Harold MacMillan, nor is he a Bruce Forsyth. His replacement of seven cabinet ministers was forced on him rather than him forcing it. The clearest evidence of this is that he was forced to promote the multiply corrupt Lord Mandelson who is now the holder of the title "First Secretary of State". One can only speculate about what Lord Mandelson had to do behind the scenes to prevent even more cabinet resignations but he must have done something in order to have been able to persuade the Prime Minister to give him an additional half a department and a title that makes him the government's undoubted number two (such a worthy title for the man).

On Friday afternoon, at around four o'clock, a press conference was held at 10 Downing Street with the apparent intention of allowing poor Gordon to explain how his new appointments were part of a master plan of refreshment and renewal and would strengthen the government as it ploughs towards glorious victory at the next general election. Instead we saw a broken man being berated by mocking journalists.

The normal protocol of Prime Ministerial press conferences is based on common courtesy. Whatever the journalists might think about the Prime Minister, he is still the head of government and will be treated with courtesy and reserve. Not on Friday afternoon he wasn't. I was struck by the similarity with the final showdown that caused the Speaker to resign less than three weeks before. Speaker Martin tried to placate critics with a statement only to find that the inadequacy of his words and delivery added fuel to the fire and open rebellion followed on the floor of the House of Commons. The same pattern of behaviour was witnessed on Friday. Normally poor Gordon fails to answer questions or answers them with assertions that are demonstrably false. The journalists know that they have to put up with the answer they are given and will not normally contradict that answer to the Prime Minister's face (although they will do so in their newspaper columns). On Friday they answered back, heckled and openly challenged the truth of answers they were given. It was unprecedented in modern times, just like the overt challenges to Speaker Martin's authority on the 18th of May.

It had been such a fun day that a meal at the splendid local Thai restaurant was warranted. On taking my seat the waiter said hello and asked "has Gordon Brown gone yet?" He is an MBA student who works in the restaurant six evenings a week to pay his way, he hadn't been able to follow events during the day but read the Evening Standard on his journey from college to work and knew the writing was very much on Gordon's wall.

Harold MacMillan's night of the long knives succeeded in giving his government new vigour because he was able to promote people of quality whose own strengths caused the whole government to be strengthened. As a result MacMillan's authority was itself strengthened. The new entrants to Gordon Brown's cabinet are mere makeweights. Peter Hain, forced out of office less than eighteen months ago by exposure of corruption, has returned. Tessa Jowell was demoted twice by Tony Blair and is married to a convicted fraudster, so she is perfect material to be brought back to high office. A junior minister of no great distinction, Bob Ainsworth, has been catapulted into the important position of Secretary of State for Defence despite showing no sign in his seventeen years in the House of Commons of having the gravitas required for a cabinet position. Two party yes-men, Ben Bradshaw and Lord Adonis complete the new entrants to the cabinet. Bradshaw is a former journalist who rose through the ranks by knowing how to evade questions with the slimy charm of Tony Blair, but has never said a single thing of substance on any contentious issue of policy. Adonis is an academic who twice chickened-out of standing for election (once for the Liberal Democrats and once for Labour). He's a clever chap, one of the few in the cabinet, but apparently spineless.

There is no sign of new strength in the new cabinet. Everything points towards poor Gordon simply filling places for the sake of filling places. In one way it makes no difference to him because he dictates policy in every field. All he needs is someone prepared to sign on the dotted line. This "re-shuffle" does not set the scene for the death of the current government, the press conference does.

It's only a matter of time and I am going to enjoy every minute.

Why poor Gordon's authority is shot

As I start writing this piece today is set to be one of the most memorable politically. An incompetent and dishonest cabinet minister announced her resignation this morning, the day before local elections. She is the cabinet minister responsible for policy on local government which makes the timing particularly embarrassing for the Prime Minister. Like so many of the present cabinet she has never actually achieved anything in government and is merely a dedicated party functionary employed at vast public expense to further the interests of the Labour Party. As such her departure, and that of the equally useless Home Secretary yesterday, has special significance to the authority of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.

We all know the conventional theory. The leader of the largest party in the House of Commons is invited to form a government and a change in the balance of seats in the House or in the identity of the majority party leader does not require a general election for the new Prime Minister to be validly appointed. When Brown took over from Blair the same constitutional process occurred as when Eden took over from Churchill, MacMillan from Eden, Douglas-Home from MacMillan, Callaghan from Wilson and Major from Thatcher. There was, however, something different about the practical effect of the change.

Callaghan was the first of those I have named who was elected leader of his party, the others assumed leadership at the invitation of party grandees following meetings in smoke-filled rooms, ordinary party members and even backbench MPs had no real stake in the appointments. Callaghan's election made him beholden to the party machine far more than any of his predecessors because the "grass roots" could say "we put him there so he must do as we wish or we will remove him". In fact this was not much of an influence because he did not command a majority in the Commons and needed to tailor his policies to what he felt he could push through with the help of the Liberal Party. When John Major was elected leader of the Conservatives in 1990 he was under pressure to keep the party happy although the issue of Europe and the growing EUSSR project meant he could only ever seek to satisfy one wing of the party. For Mr Major things changed in 1992 when he led the party into a general election and received his own mandate as Prime Minister. No longer could it be said he was beholden solely to the party for his position.

Although a general election does not involve a direct vote for Prime Minister it does involve candidates standing on a platform that implicitly includes "my party's policies are as set out in our published manifesto and the Prime Minister will be Mr X if we win a majority." A Prime Minister who led his or her party through a successful general election has a personal democratic legitimacy as well as a pure constitutional legitimacy. In answer to his party saying "we put you there" he can answer: "no, the result of the general election put me here". Without that personal democratic legitimacy he will be beholden to his party for his role and will not be able to point to any other factor as the substantive basis for his position. We are now seeing how that affects the practical authority of a Prime Minister who commands a working majority in the House of Commons. He has no ammunition with which to fight discontent in his party because he owes his status to the party and to no other entity.

Those who can exploit this situation best are loud-mouthed party functionaries like Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears. If the cabinet included any people of real substance things might be different because they would be governing for the country rather than for the party. The current shower don't know the meaning of the concept. It was noticeable that on news breaking of Blears's resignation this morning the radio phone-in I listened to featured a number of callers extolling her work for the Labour Party and no one with a single word to say about what she had actually done as a minister. Indeed, her letter of resignation emphasised the party above all else.

When you owe your very existence in office to your party machine, any attack from prominent members of that machine challenges your authority to the core. That is why I believe Hazel Blears' decision to stomp off in a hissy fit is particularly significant and far more significant than that of Jacqui Smith who only ever does what she is told and has neither the personal courage nor the intellectual ability to take the initiative on anything. Hazel Blears is an absurd figure of no substance, a laughing stock of a minister who would be out of her depth in a soup spoon, but she has a loud mouth and the sort of blind, stupid loyalty to a corrupt party that gives her special authority within just such a party. Poor Gordon's authority is so dependent on people like her that we might now be entering the final few weeks of his disastrous tenure as Prime Minister.

Perhaps Hazel Blears has actually done something useful for the first and last time in her self-serving and non-achieving ministerial career.

I don't know where to place my "X"

It's getting close to the time I have to decide. Where should I place my little "X" on Thursday? The only elections in London are for the Euro-Parliament, so the outcome is irrelevant to anything. I'm not concerned about the results, it will make not a jot of difference to my life or that of anyone else in London if the eight available seats all go to the Conservatives, Labour or even the Monster Raving Loony Party; the Parliament has no real power and individual MEPs have no effective representative role to play. For me, Thursday's election is not about the European so-called Parliament, it is about momentum in the run-up to the next general election.

I can discount four possibilities immediately. Voting for Labour, the LibDems or either of the national socialist parties, BNP and Green, is a non-starter. I'd rather urinate into the very fine mulligatawny soup I made this afternoon. So should it be Conservative or UKIP?

Voting UKIP this time is something of a two-edged sword. In the past it has been a fair bet that UKIP's strong showing in Euro elections was evidence of the degree of distaste for the EUSSR project. It achieved little in swaying the main parties towards the Eurosceptic cause in their avowed policies however it is noticeable that neither Labour nor the Conservatives has argued for further centralised power to be held in Brussels (although some of us might think their actions have achieved exactly that end). Sending a message has always been part of local and Euro elections as well as Parliamentary by-elections. The issue of one-world, post-democratic government has never been more serious and the chance of extricating ourselves from the stranglehold of Euro-fascism hasn't been greater since the 1975 referendum. A strong showing for UKIP could help to move the argument away from the pro-EU consensus dominating the official line of both Labour and the Consevatives.

I am not much deterred by UKIP being essentially a one-man show. Nigel Farage, for all the tales of his drinking and womanising, is a highly proficient operator and a good spokesman for his party's cause. I know virtually nothing about any other UKIP candidate but that really doesn't matter because, as I have explained above, for me this election is not about the European Parliament. The more the main parties seek to portray UKIP as a one-trick pony, the more attractive a vote for them appears because it allows UKIP votes to be seen for what they usually are - votes to get out of the deeply corrupt EUSSR regardless of any other policy they have.

Things are rather complicated by the MPs' expenses issue; not because UKIP has anything to do with glittery lavatory seats and "flipping" but because a vote for a fringe party can be construed as a protest vote and nothing more. The benefit from signifying disgust with the EUSSR will be diluted.

The other option is to vote Conservative, which is not an easy choice because of my firm opposition to their official line on the EU. Yet if I cast my mind forward to the general election, the wider the gulf between them and Labour this week, the greater the chance of the Labour machine becoming even more demoralised than it is already. For me there is no more important political task than to replace this bankrupt government with something better. Then I have to ask what the replacement will be and it's not exactly a cornucopia of sweetmeats. They are still wedded to the EUSSR project, they are still wedded to the concept of big government, they are still too mindful of opinion polls to put forward the sort of radical shift in power from the State to the little people that we need. Mr Cameron says some encouraging things from time to time but he said some awful things when he thought they would be popular; it is hard to see a strong vein of principle running through his various pronouncements.

So it's either UKIP to try to shift the debate firmly in the Eurosceptic direction or Conservative to try to screw down the lid on the Labour coffin. The former might reduce the momentum required to achieve the latter and the latter might be premature and allow a bounce-back by encouraging all the sad old Trots to put aside their superior disdain for the democratic process and turn out to boost the leftist vote. After all, we must never underestimate the power of religion. Socialism is the opiate of the people, nothing else can explain the current government being able to command loyalty from around a quarter of the populace in opinion polls. Hit them too hard now and they might be able to rouse the apathetic troops of the hard left.

It's not an easy choice. What is easy is to say that I will not disclose how I vote. I am happy to let anyone who cares to listen, and even more who don't, know where my general sympathies lie, but my vote is a very personal thing. It is mine. All mine. I have it because people like my father risked their lives to quash a previous plan for the EUSSR. I will walk to the polling station with a spring in my flabby step and remember how lucky I am to have the right to apply the pointy end of a stubby pencil to a piece of paper and exercise my tiny little bit of influence. With any luck I will have made up my mind by then.

What do we vote for?

I received my voting card today, informing when and where I must go to vote for the forces of good in the forthcoming European Parliament elections. It got me thinking about something I find both interesting and amusing.

The very nature of our electoral system is that we cast our vote but there are no rules about what we should or should not take into consideration when deciding where to put our mark. There is a very obvious reason for this because we can decide on whatever grounds seem important to us, or on flippant grounds or on no grounds at all, we can vote tactically to prevent the election of someone we don't like even if the result is that someone we dislike a little less gets in, we can vote for a candidate knowing they have no chance whatsoever of being returned; it is a complete free-for-all. There can't be rules about it because there is no one to make such rules and no way of enforcing them.

One effect of free votes is that a particular candidate can succeed despite a clear majority not supporting any of his policies. If you need 15,000 votes to win and can attract 1,000 votes each from single issue fanatics on fifteen different issues, despite them not supporting anything you say on any of the other fourteen fanatical issues or any other issue, then you will be elected. Fair enough, although it's probably unlikely to happen. At least it's unlikely to happen in a general election where core issues tend to come to the fore, particularly if there is a realistic chance of a change of governing party. Nonetheless, it is inevitable that inconsistent reasons will lie behind the majority achieved by each successful candidate.

During every election campaign I can remember there have been debates on television and radio about what people think their vote is for. Some will argue that we should all vote for the candidate who will be the best representative for the constituents, others will argue that choice of party is more important and others still that a general election is really a vote for your preference as Prime Minister. People get quite unnecessarily heated about this when the reality is that each argument is valid to those who find it valid. If Mr Ordinary uses his vote for his party of choice and Mrs Ordinary for her preferred Prime Minister, each is equally in the right because it is a free choice to do what you want with your vote according to your personal judgment. In all but the most extraordinary of circumstances nutty and emotive issues are swamped by more general considerations, hence the changes of governing party in 1979 and 1997 and the fluctuating majorities held by those parties during their recent periods in office.

I still read suggestions that the current government is somehow illegitimate because it only polled 35.3% of votes cast at the last general election and each time I do I sigh and think of apples and oranges. They received 35.3% of votes cast under the current system of first-past-the-post constituency elections rather than proportional representation. Having won a majority of seats they are the legitimate government, no matter how much I dislike that fact. No one can say how many votes they would have received under any of the many versions of proportional representation nor what effect it would have had on seats won in the House of Commons.

I also read assertions that Gordon Brown is not the legitimate Prime Minister because he was not leader of his party when the last general election was won and Tony Blair said at the time that he intended to serve a full term in office. That assertion, too, is without substance. Under the system we have the leader for the time being of the majority party is invited to form a government, if he or she stands down and a new party leader emerges that new leader will be invited to form a government. You can't sensibly ignore one aspect of the whole process and claim that it removes legitimacy from someone appointed under the process that was in place at the time of the election. Poor Gordon is the legitimate Prime Minister, albeit a hopelessly incompetent holder of that office, just as he would have been had Tony Blair been run over by a bus a week after the election.

A highly visible aspect of voting decisions being affected by differing considerations is the way things happen in by-elections compared to general elections. The issues are different and having the spotlight on a single constituency allows attention to be brought to particular local and topical matters on which the incumbent government has a less than unblemished record. Innumerable examples exist of protest votes at by-elections resulting in the governing party losing the seat, only for it to be regained at the next general election - of course that doesn't always happen but historically safe seats for one party tend to revert to their usual holder.

European elections raise yet further issues. Support for the UK Independence Party soars far above its level at general elections because all three major parties seem keen on Belgian gravy being a fatty product whereas the people would prefer it to be weak and watery. In a way it is curious that elections to the European Parliament tend to revolve around our views of the EU and its institutions rather issues of policy because something like 80% of our laws now come from Europe. But then it is not really curious because any views on policy expressed by the electorate of one country out of twenty-seven are of no importance to the Brussels machine.

It will be interesting to see how far the vote swings against Labour at the upcoming Euro elections. There is little difference between the position of all three major parties on the EU so there is no reason to read a loss of votes for Labour as reflecting anything about their position on matters continental. Of course we can never know why people will vote as they will, but that won't stop the speculation, and jolly good fun it will be too.

The irrelevance of MPs' additional income

The latest government initiative is to try to deflect attention from the dishonest profiteering of Labour members through the generous MPs' expenses rules. Gordon Brown wants MPs with paid employment outside the House of Commons to declare how much they earn because he believes, probably correctly, that more Conservatives than Labour members have such jobs. As I understand the current rules they have to declare sources of additional income but not the amount received. On tonight's Question Time we had the usual "balanced" panel of two Labour Party supporters, one hard-left Welsh Nationalist, one Lib Dem and one Conservative. On this topic being reared we heard exactly the type of confused, ignorant and envious arguments Gordon sought to elicit.

Those arguments were three: (i) MPs should work only as MPs otherwise they can't do the job properly, (ii) they get paid enough so taking other work is just greedy and (iii) they shouldn't do other work because being an MP is a career in itself.

The first of these points is quite stunningly absurd, yet it was pressed to the hilt by the Labour MP on the panel, Hilary Benn, a cabinet minister. Perhaps the heat of the studio lights caused him to forget his own position. He has two jobs. He is an MP and he is a government minister. I have never heard anyone suggest he is unable to represent his constituents adequately because of the time taken to do his other work. I have to be fair and acknowledge that ministers receive additional secretarial assistance to help them deal with constituency correspondence. No doubt some routine enquiries from constituents which would otherwise be dealt with by the MP himself are instead delegated to assistants, but that does not mean that the heavy burden of cabinet office leaves the minister's constituents unrepresented.

In any event, whether a particular MP represents his constituents adequately cannot be judged by whether he has other interests (be they paid work, needlepoint or watching large ladies wrestling in mud), it can be judged only by how he does his job as an MP and his constituents are the sole judges of that. Some MPs don't do a good job as constituency MPs even though they devote all their time to it, others have the ability to do all sorts of additional things without ever providing a less than first class service to those they represent. I would rather have as my MP someone who is able to do a lot of things well than someone who is either frustrated by being limited to only one role or struggles even to do that. We have all met people with extraordinary amounts of energy and who operate at a level of efficiency we could not dream of meeting. You see it in every walk of life and no one would think of saying that those who are capable to doing more should be prevented from doing so (although the EU does its best through the working time directive).

On the second point a lady in tonight's audience bristled at the thought of the Conservative MP on the panel earning £24,000 from a non-executive company directorship in addition to his MP's salary. She observed that many can only dream of earning £24,000 for their only job at which they work long hours. No doubt that is true, but it is neither here nor there. After all, those people would not be filling the vacancy if the MP were forced to resign that directorship. I wasn't sure whether her point went any further than just expressing envy at the MP's fortunate position. I suppose it is possible that she was arguing for an absolute income cap at the rate of pay received by MPs (£64,700, I believe), no, that can't be possible, it's just too absurd for words. It seems to be part of the character of many Brits these days to act with spiteful envy towards those with more money than them. Perhaps this is not surprising given the levelling-down culture that permeates state education and much of the output of television, it will take a long time to turn it round if ever the will exists to do so. In the meantime all that can be done is to argue against it point-by-point. In the case of the MP earning an additional £24,000, there is no benefit in depriving him of that income (and the Exchequer of the top-rate income tax paid on it).

In relation to this second point a further and very important issue arises. Learning how much MPs earn from consultancies or directorships tells us the cube root of nothing about anything relevant to how they do their work as MPs. As I mentioned above, some have the ability to undertake all sorts of additional work while representing their constituents very well, others do not. Take two MPs of identical ability who each can take on one consultancy or directorship requiring twenty days' work a year and still be good MPs. Twenty one days and their constituents suffer, nineteen days and they have a wasted day on their hands. One takes a consultancy for twenty eight days and received £10,000, the other takes an identical job for twenty days and receives £25,000. The amount paid to them tells us nothing, indeed it is entirely misleading because the one earning less is compromising his role as an MP whereas the other is not. The figures of how much they earn are meaningless except in stoking envy among Labour's core voters and, presumably, increasing their chance of voting Labour at the next election.

The third point is, perhaps, the most worrying of all. For a good twenty years we have seen a steady fall in the calibre of MPs and ministers as more and more "career politicians" have filled the House of Commons. Only one member of the current cabinet had anything even vaguely approximating to a successful career before entering politics. Some of them practised law at a junior level for a few years, at least one was a teacher for a decade or so, the rest (apart from Alan Johnson) have been full-time career politicians since university. Mr Johnson was a postman and rose through the ranks of a Trade Union to a senior position. Only he had a career first and then entered politics, all the rest have so little experience of the outside world that it is hardly surprising the current government is a complete shambles with no grasp of the real consequences of their policies.

I am sure poor Gordon will shore-up a tiny part of his party's core support among the bitter and envious by this measure, but it is yet another piece of shallow and meaningless political gesturing from a man who is proving every day how he has nothing else to him.

It's the court of public opinion again

Some ideas are just bound to result in confusion and disappointment. Today I read of a plan to consult "the community" on various aspects of criminal justice, not as a consultative procedure prior to enacting new laws but as an on-going part of the system of justice. The plan is set out in detail on the Ministry of Justice website (here). At first glance it looks like a lot of well-meaning guff, my fear is that it is rather more dangerous than well-meaning.

It doesn't help that the announcement is framed in management-speak twaddle, including such concepts as "proactive and accessible community-facing district/borough Crown Prosecutors" and "a toolkit ... to raise awareness and streamline processes". Digging through the nonsense, the plan for "community" consultation seems to involve three parts. First, employees of the Crown Prosecution Service will have to consult "the community" when deciding whether to prosecute in particular cases. Secondly, "Community Impact Statements" will be used at all stages of the criminal justice process. And, thirdly, "Citizens' Panels" will be involved in deciding the type of work done by those sentenced to carry out community service.

What isn't said is what "the community" means. Of course it's one of those cuddly words our government likes to use but which doesn't really mean anything and tends to divide people rather than unite them, as I mentioned a few months ago (here). What is it meant to mean in relation to the prosecution of criminal charges? Who counts as part of "the community" for that purpose? Are you disqualified from being consulted if you have a criminal record? Is there one local community when considering theft from shops and another when considering domestic assaults? And what criteria will be sued to select those to be consulted? Will it be for us to put our views forward or will they seek us out? I don't know. But my guess is that we will find special interest groups pressing their positions and the little people being sidelined. So, what of the three proposals themselves?

I have enormous difficulty with the first idea - Crown Prosecutors having to consult the public when deciding whether to prosecute and, if so, for what offence. In any given case either there will be sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution or there will not. The test to be applied cannot change just because "the community" wants more people to be prosecuted for particular types of crime. After all, in the court of public opinion it is not prosecutions that are called for it is convictions. Calls for more prosecutions where the evidence does not justify prosecution are in effect calls for more acquittals and, therefore, for greater public disappointment. No matter how reasonable it may be to demand a crackdown on shoplifting or stabbing, it achieves nothing to prosecute more people only to find that the rate of convictions falls from, say, 70% to 50%; the public perception will, quite rightly, be that the crackdown has backfired.

"Community Impact Statements" are new to me, although the Ministry's website suggests they have been compiled by the police for some time. I can understand them being useful to the police who have to be able to identify particular types of criminal behaviour that are weighing heavily on Mr and Mrs Ordinary in order to adjust their policing strategy to address topical local problem, how well they achieve this is open to debate but in principle it is sensible. How, though, does that affect anything other than policing? It can't affect sentencing otherwise you have convicted people being given potentially radically different sentences in different parts of the country which is fundamentally incompatible with the administration of justice being even-handed. I mustn't overstate that point because the prevalence of a certain type of criminal behaviour in a particular area has been a legitimate consideration for decades and can justify a slightly higher sentence being passed by way of deterrence to others. However, the scope for increasing a sentence on this ground has always been limited otherwise you can find someone being given a substantially greater punishment than his conduct warrants because of what other people have done not because of what he has done, which is wrong in principle.

The third idea might have something going for it but only if it applies in a particular way. There is sense in "the community" identifying worthy projects to benefit from the free work of those serving community sentences. In reality, of course, it will be individuals or existing groups who identify such projects and bring them to the attention of the Probation Service and I can see a benefit to creating a simple channel through which their ideas can be put forward. Selecting which projects are appropriate must remain in the hands of the Probation Service themselves who have to consider the resources they have available for supervision and the suitability of those projects for the unskilled attention of a group of spotty glue-sniffers.

If this whole scheme is pursued with any promise that "the community" will get what it wants there can only be two consequences. Either the lynch-mob will be kept happy, in which case the whole thing will collapse under the weight of the Human Rights Act before you can say "disproportionate"; or the lynch-mob will find itself ignored in which case the system will be held in even greater contempt than it is already. There is no half-way house because there is no way of preventing a promise of contentment from giving rise to a lynch-mob mentality.

Without a promise that "the community" will get what it wants, the exercise can be nothing more than window-dressing.

If we want a true measure of "community" involvement in the criminal justice system we have to look at other things. For more than twenty years criminal charges that were once heard by a jury have been transferred to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Magistrates' Court, that process has accelerated over the last decade. Although lay Magistrates are members of the public rather than of the professional judiciary they are more remote than a jury from Mr and Mrs Ordinary. A further change has taken place with increasing pace over the last five to seven years. There are some Magistrates who are full-time professional judges, they used to be known as Stipendiary Magistrates and are now known as District Judges. In most cases they sit alone without any other Magistrates being involved in the cases, hear the evidence and decide everything that has to be decided. "Stipes", as I will always think of them, generally get through cases much faster than a bench of two or three lay Magistrates and help keep delays down. Most of them are astonishingly good at their job. It cannot be ignored, however, that they are professional judges and their massively increased numbers have removed "the community" from the decision-making process in more and more cases each year.

Against that background it is hard to take seriously the pious pronouncements of the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary that they are dedicated to the notion of the little people having any serious role in the criminal justice system.

No electric cars for "ordinary motorists"

Electric cars have hit the news today with the announcement by the eponymous Geoff Hoon of a plan to offer subsidies towards the purchase of electric cars as and when they are more generally available than at present, currently estimated to be in about two years' time. As usual the BBC report tries to put this in what it considers the best possible light for the government, describing it as "Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000". If one digs a little deeper, it seems all is not quite as the BBC portrays.

The Department for Transport website carries the details (here). It becomes clear from the government's own account that there are no firm proposals to give anything to motorists. The main article says it is "an initiative to help put electric cars into the reach of ordinary motorists by providing help worth £2,000-£5,000 towards buying the first electric and plug in hybrid cars when they hit the showrooms". I wonder what "help worth £2,000-£5,000" means, it doesn't sound much like money to me. Not that it really matters what it means because we find important clarification in the "notes for editors" section at the bottom of the page: "Consumers will be able to receive help from the government worth in the region of £2,000-£5,000 to allow for the maximum choice of which car they buy. We are beginning discussions with the automotive industry and financiers to determine how best to deliver this help." No longer are we in the realm of subsidies being given to "ordinary motorists" for them to use as they will, we are firmly in the territory of giving cash subsidies to the motor manufacturers. And we mustn't ignore than the headline figure of £5,000 is now "in the region of £2,000-£5,000". It is the reference to "ordinary motorists" that troubles me most because I can see that only extraordinary motorists are likely to benefit from any such scheme.

I rather like the idea of electric cars. It would be wonderful if we could reduce our dependence on oil so that we are no longer at the mercy of the OPEC cartel and reliable electric cars would help achieve that. An additional benefit is that the need for a reliable supply of electricity would be even more important than it is today, thereby rendering even more absurd the current lunatic plans for windmills and waves to be substantial sources of electricity generation. To that end I can understand tax breaks for research and development, but it all gets rather tricky once you start fiddling with prices of manufactured products.

There is no reason to think that, left to their own devices, the manufacturers would bring out a product until they are satisfied that it is reasonably saleable. What we usually see with novel products is that they are very expensive when first launched because the manufacturers need to try to recoup some of the R&D costs and they know some people will pay a lot either out of interest in the concept or out of snobbery. It soon becomes clear whether the product is capable of being a long-term profit maker and if it is, the unit price falls as some R&D costs are recouped and the remainder are spread over substantial anticipated future purchases. With electrical products we sometimes find that novel ideas don't take off, hence there are attics around the country containing dusty laserdisc players, betamax recorders and novelty peppermills. The position is rather different with electric cars because, for different reasons that appeal to different people, it is necessary to wean ourselves off oil and the only alternative with any reasonable prospect of being workable in the short term appears to be electricity. So the manufacturers can be fairly sure that a reliable electric family car with a reasonable range is likely to be a long-term success.

If, as the government suggests, such cars should be available as early as 2011 (I'll believe it when I see it) it is hard to see that the manufacturers could sensibly price them in line with petrol and diesel cars because they would then forgo the additional price that could be commanded through sheer novelty value. If we assume (and I pluck these figures out the the thinnest of airs) that a petrol driven car will cost £14,000 and the closest equivalent electric model could sell for £20,000, they would be mad to price it at anything lower than £20,000. As the novelty value wanes and production increases we might find it can sell for £17,000 and make the same profit as the £14,000 petrol vehicle, it might even be that further technological developments would allow it to undercut the petrol powered car. The market will determine price as it does for petrol and diesel cars and as it has for other new products such as flat-screen televisions and those frightfully complicated mobile phones that can make you a cup of tea while you talk.

Where does subsidy come in? Perhaps the manufacturers could be given £3,500 per car to start with so that they sell at £16,500 instead of £20,000. This might accelerate demand and lead to additional early sales but it would also mean that those prepared to pay £20,000 get a bargain. Those who were not prepared to pay £20,000 but were prepared to pay £16,500 enter the market earlier than they otherwise would. What is the value of those accelerated transactions? Is it sufficient to justify the taxpayer chipping-in £3,500 per vehicle? I don't know, but it is worth considering what the earlier purchase of goods really means. Say you would buy at £16,500 two years later when the price naturally fell to that level and now you can buy immediately because of the subsidy. You are not receiving £3,500, you are spending £16,500. The seller is receiving £20,000 now rather than £16,500 in two years' time, so he is getting the same lump sum from the same customer that he would otherwise have to wait to receive and he is being paid £3,500 for the privilege. Those who would pay for novelty value - which with high priced items like cars means people of quite substantial means - receive a bonus, manufacturers and/or retailers receive a bonus by making sales early and being paid for doing so, and the ordinary motorist gets only the fun of having a new car two years early. Then he has to get his next new car two years earlier than would otherwise happen and over time his benefit is negligible. And we mustn't leave out of account the possibility that the manufacturers/sellers will price the product at £23,500 so that it can be sold at £20,000 thereby ensuring they get both the full potential of novelty value and the taxpayer subsidy. They will do their sums and decide whether they are better off cashing-in on novelty value or on accelerated future sales.

However the scheme is arranged it will most assuredly not result in "ordinary motorists" receiving a benefit anywhere near close to the cost they pay wearing their other hat of "ordinary taxpayers". Oh, I must add something else. Those with chauffeurs, nice ministerial vehicles and grace-and-favour homes provided free of charge probably don't know this, but most "ordinary motorists" can't afford to buy new cars.