Tory RIP - Off Poster

Negative campaigning (part the thousands...)

The Tories have launched a tasteful new poster with the false mesage that the Labour Government is planning to tax us all £2000 at time of death.

However, according to the Sky News Website, there had been reports that ministers might endorse a compulsory inheritance tax, of about £20,000 per head.

But Mr Burnham told a news conference earlier: "I'm not currently considering that as a lead option for reform.

"That figure was used in the green paper last year but I do not believe that a flat levy of that kind would be the right way to go.

"I can say to you very categorically today that that is not what I am considering."

Labourmatters site has this more honest riposte;

What party? What law? What order?

The Conservatives traditionally like to be regarded as "the party of law & order". They're respectable you see. Middle class. Deferential. Diffident. Rule of Law, that's what matters in a civilised society old boy! What?

Except, it's the same Tories that ignore the law when it suits them.

Rules? Regulations? That's for the other fella, donch'know? Plebs, that sort. The hoi and the poloi. No, old chap, we make the laws, they're for our benefit, for the suppression of louts and the like. And we're not louts, obviously, ...perish the thought. So we can quietly ignore any silly little statute when it gets in the way....got it?

Last week I posted on Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary no less, issuing misleading statistics on crime, and being severely reprimanded by the Head of the Office for National Statistics.

Today David cameron launched what he thought was a blisterting attack over the politicians who are tryng to claim Parliamentary privilege over their prosecution for expense claims.

According to the BBC

here

"... the Tory leader prepared for a speech featuring a claim his Labour counterpart was tolerating the MPs' attempt to "evade justice".

Mr Cameron is also asking shadow Commons leader Sir George Young to prepare a new Parliamentary Privilege Act which "we would introduce as soon as possible, to clarify the rules of parliamentary privilege to make clear that they cannot be used by MPs to evade justice".....

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman said the Conservatives had opposed such a law coming into force in the summer.

And she warned Mr Cameron to be "careful" not to jeopardise the trial with comments that could allow the MPs to argue they could no longer receive a fair trial.

And now the Speaker of the House has issued a magisterial rebuke: this case is sub judice, it must not be discussed in any way that might prejudice a trial or investigation.

In other words: shut up Dave. Shut up Chris. The rules apply to you as well as anyone else. Got it?

partyoflornorda'

Aye right!

Broken Britain, or Wishful Thinking

Just what is it about the Conservative party and the spreading of fear and panic? Why do they think a fearful electorate will run to them?

The Tories have been banging on about what they call "Broken Britain" for months now. According to their analysis the UK is a crumbling society: crime is rising, children are being killed in unprecedented numbers by "beasts" and the public should be trembling with fear.... until Dave rides to the rescue....

Except.... Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, has been rebuked by the head of the Office of Statistics for issuing statistics for campaigning Torys that show violent crime rising. In fact the basis for gathering and reporting the stats was changed in 2002. Violent crime is actually falling, but Grayling's figures give a false impression of the actual level of violent crime. Now why would the Tories want people to think that violent crime is rising when it's not?

read more here

Another thread of the "Broken Britain" narrative has unravelled today with a report which shows that the violent deaths of children have decreased by 40%-50% since 1974. And the main reason identified was the interventions and actions of social workers.

The Conservatives have a real cheek pursuing this thread. Under Mrs Thatcher crime and poverty doubled. Violent crime increased. There was a great deal of social disorder, with riots in the streets of the major cities of England in 1981, 1982 and 1987. If Dave wants a paradigm of a "Broken Britain", he should dig up his old diaries of the time when he was a back room boy at Smith Square.

Crime, poverty, violence all up, and riots in the streets.

Now that's broken.

SNP Councillor Joins Labour

The Herald reports here that South Lanarkshire SNP Councillor John MacNamee has left the Nationalist Party and applied to join the Labour group on the Council

MacNamee's stated reasons for leaving the SNP are instructional;

He says he no longer believes in independence and that he has become disillusioned with the approach he claims the Scottish Government has taken to the west of the country.

He also

cited the decision to axe the proposed Glasgow Airport Rail Link as a crucial factor

and

the impact of the global financial collapse on small nations such as Ireland and Iceland.

He has also criticised ...

the lack of leadership and talent within the SNP at town hall level, describing the two years he has been an elected member as being riddled with in-fighting and that he has been “operating in a political vacuum”.

Mr McNamee said

I no longer believe in independence. I’ve lived abroad a bit.........and come to the belief that economies of small nations really do struggle.

All of MacNamee's stated reasons seem understandable to me. In fact I, and of course many others, have used them many times on this blog and others and in discussions and arguments with nationalists, so it's good to see that some of it is getting through to at least some who thought independence was a panacea for all ills.

Tories to Copy Tartan Tories

The Observer reports that (here) the Conservatives are intending to copy the SNP policy of freezing Council Tax.

The article concentrates on how this pledge collides with the Tories' other pledges on cutting spending and limiting tax increases. The paper does not give an in-depth analysis of the costs of the policy, but it would certainly cost at least £1.5 billions/year to extend the freeze to England and Wales.

Of course, there are other problems with the Council Tax freeze as implemented by the SNP, and these are becoming acute with the budgetary limitations on councils that are becoming necessary due to the recession.

The freeze has meant that councils have not been able to raise the tax as they may have wanted in order to pay for vital services. Now they face budget cuts: cuts which may have been unnecessary or at least limited by reasonable tax rises over the last three years.

Tax cutting is a favourite policy of all right-wing parties, specifically the Tories and the SNP, and it can appear attractive as a slogan, but in the end it's the vital and necessary services to the community that suffer.

No money equals no services: try explaining that to ordinary people who depend on these services, and who suffer when services are cut or even cancelled altogether.

Blair's Defence

In about 1 hour from now, Tony Blair will sit before the Chilcot Enquiry and be asked to justify his key role in the Iraq war.

The interrogation will go on most of the day. Who knows what shape the questioning will take: will it take a broad look at politics and motivation or will it get bogged down in the detail of who said what and who knew what and when they knew it?

In my opinion, the vital questions to be asked would be: what did he think he was doing, and why did he do it?

It seems to me that Blair's defence could go something like this:

As an opposition leader, he saw the massacres in Rwanda and the developing wars in the Balkans and the murders in Halabja being ignored by the Conservative govenment. In fact the Tories gave export credits to Saddam and were close to Milosovic.

He saw John Major and George Bush the 1st stopping short of removing Saddam when they had a golden opportunity to free the people of Iraq.

Rwanda in particular must have made a deep scar. Millions were dying and armies and weapons of mass destruction were being used on defenceless civilians. Being a reasonable person, he thought that something should be done about this, but he saw our governments were doing little to stop it.

So he decided that if and when he was in charge, he would not stand by while he could do something about these and similar atrocities.

He persuaded Bill Clinton to actively oppose and destroy Milosovic. With a limited success in the Balkans he became convinced that intervention worked, and intervention to rid the world of mass murderers was a good thing: who could argue?

And so to Iraq and the failure of the USA to have a workable policy for the peace......

You could of course argue that intervention is always wrong, but few said that after Kosovo, because it was seen as a success, whereas the howls that followed in Iraq were loudest after the failure to consolidate the peace, hindsight being a wonderful thing.

A New Scottish Online "Newspaper", The Caledonian Mercury

In the last few days a new approach to newspapers in Scotland has been launched. It is an online newspaper, called the Caledonian Mercury.

It will be interesting to see how this experiment works, and if it can be any more successful in the current economic climate than the traditional newspaper model.

One interesting story is covered today, here.

The story concerns a move by the opposition parties at Holyrood to demand a view of the SNP's capital budget. The aim is to see if any capital is being held back, or is being treated "flexibly", with the possibility of cash being released for the other partys'priorities.

The obvious target is Labour's desire to see how and if the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL) could be financed. Andy Kerr has said that he believes the money for GARL could be found. Lifting the veil on the capital budget may just reveal if he is correct.