Not many people will remember Brian Walden, he was a centrist Labour MP who became the presenter of Weekend World and then a commentator for the Sunday Times.  For younger political obsessives he was like Rod Liddle, sounded right wing but instinctively and tribally to the left.

Any way his point on Margaret Thatcher’s NHS reforms was that the NHS would always be creaking, so the Tories should leave the NHS well alone and let it gently decline until the public and professionals woke up and demanded reform – or a Labour government came in.  It was cynical, but Labour would use it cynically too.  But Margaret Thatcher was not the sort for managed decline, she didn’t see it for the country, for Liverpool or for the NHS.  She pushed forward with the internal market, which later on became the basis for Tony Blair’s reforms (after an initial dismantling).

That is where the comparison with Cameron’s reforms end.  The logic behind the internal market could be understood, knowing where the money meant so that you could increase the efficiency of health spending.  You could be for or against it, but you knew what it was aiming at and you understood its logic.  So much so that Labour would repackage it when it realised that the NHS was not responding to the enormous amounts of money that was being poured in.

So what’s the logic behind these reforms?  I can understand bringing some private capital or expertise in, but I don’t see that as a compelling narrative.  I also see the GP commissioning coming in and can see that as an improvement over unelected health quangos, but is that it?  I listen to the ex Labour minister Alan Milburn laud the (old) plans - although devastating the amended plans for not being market centric enough.

What is the narrative here?  As someone who’s followed politics closely since I was ten I usually can grasp the arcane issues.  But I can’t grasp this.

What I can grasp is the argument by Conservative Home and Ipswich’s own Gavin Maclure that these reforms will not improve healthcare by enough to escape the blame for the continuation of sixty years of disapointment with NHS health outcomes. 

When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.  So all I’m asking is fo the government to say, in terms that those of us who do not work in politics can understand, why it is necessary to change.  Why is all this political capital being spent?

It’s hard to disagree with Gavin Maclure most of the time.  He’s usually very level headed.  Of course he’s wrong on the High Speed rail projectl, but then so is most of the rest of the local politicians – not simply the usual crowd of in-denial Tories like Alastair Ross and Gaia worshippers like Ben Gummer but also usually sensible people like Kevin Algar and Paul West.  So I just had to say that I was the only one marching to the right tune.  And in twenty years time there are only two certainties, I will be two decades older (or my corpse will be) and I will be proven right on High Speed 2 being another collosal waste of public money.

If it’s hard to disagree with Gavin Maclure on much, it’s even harder to agree with Ben Gummer when also disagreeing with Gavin.  It just goes against nature.  So I’d like to skate over the fact that Gavin is wrong on the bonus and Ben is right.  It is distasteful to pay someone just short of £1 million, even if it is in three year’s time, but if the alternative is to signal to the markets that RBS is going to be run as a less commercial organisation (and so knock around half a billion off the share price) then let’s remember that we don’t have much of an economy to play with.  Let’s keep Britain open for business during the recession.

The real issue is that we now have a large Scottish albatross around our neck with the Royal Bank of Scotland.  It was probably politically impossible to hold the line on the bonuses, but this now signals that the Royal Bank of Scotland – and other brands such as NatWest bank – are going to increasingly become very expensive political playthings.  The bonus is the start of it.  We will see the loan book become more and more oriented towards keeping jobs in marginal constituencies and less about making money.  This may sound good in the short term, but it will end in the same way as Tony Benn’s industrial loans to motorcycle co-operatives, or for that matter Stephen Byer’s loans to the four dodgy directors of Rover.  Only this time there are billions and billions to play with.

Over the long term this will become a drain on the system, as the only way that the Royal Bank of Scotland can hope to pay off the vast amount of our money that Gordon Brown poured into that other badly run Scottish led institution is if RBS returns to a consistent profit.  And that’s before we look at the long term cost of the Corporation Tax that we will be losing by letting it stay an unprofitable crony lender. 

The decision by Alastair Darling and Gordon Brown, two Scottish politicians, to save two Scottish banks – rather than to focus on saving the depoitors (which is what you would normally do) will go down in history as a criminal waste of money – almost as criminal as the systematic deficit spending that put us in this mess.  However we are where we are.

The government’s plan to quickly return RBS to the private sector has clearly failed.  The longer it will stay the more corruptible it will be.  It is generally a good idea to move banks away from political control, even in a relatively clean political culture like England’s.  Politician’s should bear the words from the Lord’s Prayer in mind, deliver us from temptation (or as my more literal minded wife says “deliver us from the time of trial”).

So we need to hive off the really awful loans into a bad bank, which can wind the loans down in a way that would be impossible for a government owned commercial bank to do.  Let’s recognise the loss early while our credit rating is still good for it.  The investment banking and niche lending arms should be closed down, sold off or given to the employees as co-operatives – the senior employees seem to extract most of the profits anyway so it would be nice if they also took a hit when they maded a loss.  As for the Nat West and RBS branches, surely these can be floated off – just remember to Tell Sid.

This may sound a bit far out and radical, but it’s not as far out as expecting RBS to come back into the private sector in one profitable piece and it’s not nearly as radical as what will have to be done in ten or twenty years time if its still lingering on the government books.

Some people that I respect, Gavin Maclure, Kevin Algar and Paul West (err, and Alasdair Ross) all took an incredibly stupid stance on HS2 because they again missed the elephant in the living room.

Let’s not worry about the nimbys.  Sometimes they have a point, often they don’t.  In both Boris Island and the High Speed 2 cases they are wrong.

The problem is that both these incredibly expensive projects are based on massive government financial backing.

Governments are remarkably bad at making decisions about investment.  This is why people clamour for government investment.  Essentially it’s an easy ride.  There are no shareholders hustling for a return.  Risk will almost always be far too steeply discounted.  Over-runs will be tolerated.  Unions will be allowed to thwart cost control.  Decisions will be taken on political rather than economic grounds.

In short the majority will pay through their taxes for a minority’s financial advantage.  In even plithier form, Bob Crow’s in favour.

If Boris Island could be privately financed (without a government guarantee) then it would be an elegant and radical way of sorting out the Heathrow headache.  However at the moment it is just une grand projet, and we simply should not be getting involved.

Forget the annoying Nimbys, this is a massive misallocation of capital – that’s why it should be stopped.  It’s not a good time to grow the deficit.

To stop this unfairness it’s time for Ipswich’s own camel lookalike, David Ellesmere, to come to Ed Miliband’s rescue. 

So here’s my proposal.  David Ellesmere should get his picture taken with Ed Miliband.  A lot.  I’ll plaster them all over this site, just as I did with Gordon Brown and Chris Mole.  All in the interests of fairness, you see.

In this way people will realise that Ed Miliband is not Britain’s ugliest man.  That’;s beacause this individual will be in the photograph.

So go on David, use your unique powers to scare young children and turn milk sour to your party’s advantage.

Time to take up the load, Ellesmere

1. A market rate is set by the government, somewhere near the actual average price
2. People go to the landlords with government money offering the market rate for lower than average properties
3. The rent of lower than average properties goes up
4. The fact that lower than average properties are now higher means that the market rent is now higher
5. Go back to step 1

Who benefits?  Well social tenants can afford rents that people without housing benefit cannot afford, but that is a side effect.  After all if people with out of proportion housing benefit do get a job then they will find most of this going in the rent – unless they find somewhere worse to move to.  What sort of incentive is this to get a job?

The real people who benefit are the landlords.

Is your tenant angling for a rent reduction because the kitchen is unsafe? Get someone on housing benefit.  Is your price seen as unaffordable by a young working couple?  The housing benefit will pay the false market rate. 

This is why rents are rising at a time of rising unemployment – and in any rational universe a time of lower rents.

The government is quite right to break this ratchet when they control 40% of this market, and it’s an indictment on Labour that their philosophy of spend without consequence has reached this stage.  If amateur landlords find out that owning a house is a business rather than a high interest bond, well that’s just a beneficial side effect.

• It’s higher than necessary to secure shelter
• The benefit of this overpayment goes to people who are already rich enough to own at least one rental property
• If you are holding down a job at lower than the median income you are now being priced out of the rental market…
• …oh, and you’re paying for that through your taxes

The figures for London are broken down by Guido Fawkes, with a somewhat more forthright view from Tim Worstall.  Essentially in some parts of the country (not Ipswich, yet) you are in one benefit getting about what the person on an average wage gets – after the adjustment.

It’s like uncontrolled immigration – it’s those at the top using the bottom to squeeze the middle.  And the left support it because they always hated anyone who had to get a job.

Miliband new Prime Minister

Staff Reporter- AP, 12 December 2012

Ed Miliband has just left Buckingham Palace after meeting with the queen in order to form a new government.

This lays the cap on a dramatic fortnight of political maneuvering that started with an unprecedented intervention in British domestic politics from the Socialist President of France, François Hollande.

It is understood that in four way talks between the then leader of the opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister, the German chancellor and M Hollande that Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg were told to put aside their differences “for the good of Britain in Europe”.  This meant that there has been a dramatic switch for the Liberal Democrats from membership of a Conservative led coalition to an enhanced role in a Labour led coalition.  A General Election has been ruled out as “unsettling at this time”. 

The core issue is said to be the European demand for a £75 billion commitment from the UK to shore up the southern European government bailouts as well as the nationalisation of the top three French banks which are all technically insolvent.  Controversially this is three times larger than the IMF bailout that was rejected this time last year, as well as being twice France’s contribution despite France being a larger economy.  France and Germany have made it clear that this support is open ended. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats agree that this is in Britain’s “strategic long term interest, if at a short term cost”.  The Conservatives had previously rejected this as both counter productive as well as “unpopular on a poll-tax level”.

On their own the two parties together do not control enough votes to pass legislation but there have been an “agreement on resourcing” with Plaid Cymru and the Democratic Unionist parties that will mean that planned expenditure cuts will now fall entirely on England in return for the parties’ votes.  The Scottish Nationalists are seen as having driven a harder bargain with the “agreement on resourcing” supplemented by an agreement that the referendum on Scottish independence is binding, run by Holyrood and that the Liberal Democrats and Labour party machines will not participate in any vote. 

Kenneth Clarke and Andrew Tyrie are also said to be in talks to lead a breakaway pro-European centrist Conservative bloc of between nine and fifteen backbench MPs.  The new group will enter a “confidence, supply and Europe” arrangement with the government.  The group is backed by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major and former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine as well as a number of former Conservative Cabinet Ministers in the House of Lords nicknamed the “Elderly Eight” by Conservative backbenchers.  Seven Conservative MPs including Clarke and Tyrie have already lost the Conservative whip with at least three others facing deselection votes inaugurated by the executives of their constituency associations.  The Conservative Party has said that all MPs who join the new grouping will automatically lose the Conservative whip and that any association that does not deselect them will be put into “special measures” with a deselection certain.

The tortured parliamentary arithmetic and the European guarantee has meant that Britain has suffered two downgrades of its credit rating in the last two weeks and is currently on a negative outlook with all three major credit rating agencies.  Yields on UK government gilts have more than tripled since M Holland’s call.

David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, has condemned the new coalition as “an undemocratic coup, as bad as Greece or Italy”.  Nick Clegg, who has failed in his bid for the Premiership but retains the Deputy Premiership as well as being the new Foreign Secretary has said “for the life of me I cannot see why he objects now, when he was in favour of the necessary changes of government in Italy and Greece at the time.  Securing our place in Europe is far more democratic than bending to the whims of opinion polls.”

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have sharply scaled back their previous demands due to the need to find money for the European guarantee, and an emergency budget is planned for next Tuesday, the burden of cuts is understood to fall on the Health and Social Security budgets.  It is understood that Germany and France have vetoed the “insufficiently pro-European” Ed Balls as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his wife Yvette Cooper will take his place. 

It has become clear that there will be a number of new non-economic priorities:

• A “Milly Dowler law” which as well as introducing a statutory right to privacy will controversially put limits on the political stances that can be taken by the press.  This is also intended to cover blogging, twitter and other electronic modes of commentary.
• A voting reform package that will “tip the balance from the Tories”. The details of this are not yet clear although the most likely result is likely to be an AV type system which will benefit the two governing parties.
• State funding of political parties and a ban on private donations of more than £1,000 per person per year.  Union donations will not be included in this regime.  Earlier plans to designate Ken Clarke’s breakaway group as the official Conservative Party for funding purposes are understood to have been dropped.
• A new law which will allow the Cabinet to delay a General Election for a period of up to five years if there is an “enhanced economic danger”.

Ed Miliband has said “Although we have very real economic constraints, this is an exciting programme of government that will ensure a progressive government for at least the next generation, as well as anchoring us in Europe beyond all doubt”. 

 It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going.

But if the Euro crashes, all bets are off.

This is stupid, for two reasons.

The first reason why its stupid is that bets are on.  Odds on in fact.  The odds that the Euro will expel Greece (the minimum requirement for a breakup) have been odds on since November.  The more dramatic events, from an expulsion of Ireland and Portugal, to a Spanish and or Italian collapse, to a northern Europe break out, to Germany re-establishing the mark are all very much in the frame.  If the government is not planning for this then it’s in real trouble.

But there is another reason to worry, we’re told.  That is that the Euro zone is Our Biggest Trading Partner (TM) – if you don’t count direct investment.  But the collapse of the currency will not be the collapse of the Euro zone, whatever Ben Gummer and the Liberal Democrats would have us believe.

What would the collapse of the Eurozone mean?  Well for all the places like Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Italy it would mean a new currency and a revaluation.  They would actually be able to find a level.  Of course as well as cheaper holidays and imports it would also mean harder to crack export markets, but the deflationary spiral that the Euro has forced on these places can ease and so we’d be seeing properly recovering export markets within months.  With Germany and the other northern European countries then we would see their (relatively) cheap currency climb and so our exports would become cheaper in an already reasonably healthy set of economies.  Exports would increase almost from the day of exit. 

In short each economy would be able to find its own natural level which is why all those advocates of European Monetary Union and Britain joining the Euro were so stupid in the first place. 

That would be a full on crash, which is unlikely to happen.  But any decoupling of the two bits of Europe will see this virtuous result, just in smaller doses.

But what about the debts denominated in Euros?  Isn’t this going to put a lot of banks out of business?

Well it won’t be pretty, but the British banks have been busy rebuilding their capital reserves.  You may have noticed that when looking around for a better mortgage.  This means that there is some insulation for what in effect would be a Southern European partial default.  Ireland is a different story, and that may involve some more re-capitalisation – I really hope that the government has thought through how it would deal with an Irish exit from the Euro.

There is a reverse side to this.  The fear of something like this happening is almost always worse than it actually happening.  Currency unions fail remarkably regularly, and the sun still rises in the morning.  Counterparty risk will go down dramatically once we know which (French) banks have survived rather than simply assuming that all of them are vulnerable.

We can’t stop at least a partial collapse of the Euro.  If it does get through with all member countries then it will be against the smart money.  All bets are not off if the Euro crashes.  The sun will still rise in the morning, even if a few dreams are finally shattered.

However within that article we have defending the union’s rights to take council tax money a certain “Graham White” a man who seems to revel in the fact that although we pay all his wages he “now only spends about half a day each week in the classroom”.  Now where have we heard from him before?

It was when he was comparing the politically motivated violence with the democratically enacted public sector cuts, saying that violence was by far superior.   It is the sort of rhetoric that Mussolini used, and it’s not isolated to Graham White.  It’s not surprising that he loves a bloated state sector when he’s one of the main beneficiaries.

But just remember this, when your street lights have to be cut back that Graham White is getting a senior teacher’s salary for a 10% teaching load.  It is why Labour love a big state, so many of them get paid to do so little.

It may be great to be plugged in to the Suffolk Labour machine, but this looting of our council tax money for the benefit of a tiny, unrepresentative and incestuous elite has to stop.  And it has to stop now.