Nigel Farage’s regal progress was yesterday checked on the Royal Mile. Tee hee! It came down to both sides — Farage versus the “Campaign for Radical Independence” — declaring the other was “fascist” and “racist”. Pot-ism meet kettle-ism.
Let’s not get involved in the semiotics of racism and UKIP. Suffice it to quote a nice throw-away that’s been doing the rounds of late: the English Defence League backs UKIP, presumably because of their shared views on sustainable farming.
“We’ve proved we can get votes in Wales, England and Northern Ireland. We’re still untested in Scotland,” he said. “We’ve not had an opportunity to test Ukip policies with the Scottish people for a very long time.” Asked about Ukip’s chances, he was optimistic. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we did quite creditably.”
At last! a germ of testable UKIP “truth”
UKIP’s “elected” presence in Northern Ireland amounts to one local councillor and one Assembly Member:
David McNarry was elected the UUP AM for Strangford. There was a rancorous bust-up in the UUP. McNarry was unstoolled as Vice-Chair of the Assembly Education Committee. He got huffy; and was disciplined by the UUP. It was made clear by Mike Nesbitt that McNarry was unlikely to have the UUP whip restored. McNarry went rogue; and last October announced he had joined UKIP.
Henry Reilly was also UUP, but is now the duly-elected UKIP Councillor for The Mournes. His address seems to be also that for UKIP NI — which could imply a one-man band. Councillor Reilly is currently involved in a spat with his local press:
A high-profile councillor has been criticised after claims he described regional newspaper journalists as “Provos”.
Cllr Henry Reilly, who is chairman of the UK Independence Party in Northern Ireland, has been urged to withdraw his comments which came at a meeting of Newry and Mourne District Council.
The National Union of Journalists has condemned his comments, saying they were “entirely unacceptable”…
Journalists at the meeting represented the Newry Reporter, Mourne Observer, Newry Democrat, County Down Outlook and the Armargh Down Observer.
NUJ president Barry McCall said the journalists concerned had no right of reply at the meeting and should not have been subjected to verbal abuse.
For the record, at the last Assembly election UKIP stood six candidates and garnered the grand total of 4,152 votes — six-tenths of one per cent of the goal first preference poll. The Kippers didn’t manage quite so well at Council level.
The days of Redfellow Hovel are coming to an end. The Lady in his Life and Malcolm are contemplating moving on and out of Cobbett’s —
… great wen of all. The monster, called by the silly coxcombs of the press, “the metropolis of the empire”
Where to go?
A strong probability is York.
Thanks to its ecclesiastical heritage, the centre of York, within the ancient walls, is a place of persisting character. Thanks to the rise of nearby industrial cities, York missed out on the grime of the industrial revolution. Thanks to George Hudson, it remains a major transport hub — a couple of hours in either direction from London and Edinburgh, or across the Pennines to Manchester. Thanks to Joseph Rowntree and Terry’s, there was some successful local industry. Thanks to tourism, facilities, entertainment, trade and shopping are excellent to this day. In 1617 James VI and I received a petition to establish a university at York, and it duly arrived in 1964.
The problem is finding a house of some character. Anything ‘period’, especially within the walls, is quickly snapped up — which raises the questions of whether a significant property bubble is puffing up (in London that needs an affirmative “yes”), how long can it last, and what comes thereafter?
The two competing railway routes between London and Scotland are the East and West Coast. The West Coast Mainline (as it now termed) is the more difficult, particularly the climb over Shap Summit, built by the engineer Joseph Locke for the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. The East Coast route, by comparison, is far easier, straighter and faster.
On 2nd June 1888 the West Coast announced a nine-hour (down from ten) schedule for the express to Edinburgh: thereby, for the first time, matching the schedule of the North-Eastern Railway.
On 18th July the North-Eastern reduced the timing from King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley by half-an-hour.
From 1st August the London and North-Western brought the Euston to Princes Street West Coast schedule down to the same 8½ hours. This was achieved by splitting the express at Preston, so reducing the weight to be slogged over Shap. In passing, gentle reader, you are now apprised of why Edinburgh had two major stations.
Ha! The NER had one in reserve. Two days after what was seen as the L&NW’s last throw, the NER announced the 10 am express would be in Waverley by 6 pm. Not so: on 6th August the L&NW were promising an eight hour timing for the Euston to Princes Street run. Finally, with train crews lionised and up for the competition, unofficial times were notched down day-by-day — eventually to the concern of the railway hierarchy. Peace broke out with the NER settling for the 5:45pm arrival, and the L&NW for an eight-hour trip. The Caledonian Railway, responsible for the final stretch from Carlisle to Princes Street, had a new Drummond single-wheeler, number 123, and wanted to show its mettle/metal: so consistently 123 (and she’s still gorgeous) hauled into Princes Street well ahead of the timetabled 172 minutes for the run.
This was the first “race to the North”, and made newspaper headlines in Britain — and even in the United States.
W.J.Scott, BA, goes to York
Mr Scott didn’t make the whole trip: he baled out at York (and the 10 am from King’s Cross reached Waverley at 5:27 pm that evening). Let him dilate:
For the most part, towns on the Continent are more picturesque and interesting than those in England, though the country in Britain is far more beautiful than any we find across the Channel; but York can hold its own for quaintness and grandeur with almost any town of like size in Europe. Under a bright mid-day sun, the old city with its girdling walls and crown of towers looked very beautiful: despite some stir of life, and the jingle of tram-cars, it seemed very still, its river slipping by as great Emperor Constantine saw it glide in the self same channel, lapping the walls of houses that stood where the houses one looks at from Lendal Bridge or Ousegate Bridge stand today. Never a “buried city”: a Roman capital, a chief city of the North English kingdom, and of the kindred Danes which over-ran that kingdom; a seat of Government, the “Council of the North” in mediæval days, and now metropolis of Northern England (though the Scottish Lowlands have thrown off the yoke of the English primate), and a railway capital behind London alone in importance, Eboracum, Eoforwic, Iorvik, York, in the year 200 AD or the year 1900, from Severus and Paulinus to Dr. Maclagan — and should we say George S. Gibb? — she still “sits a queen”. Only three and a half hours from London; but how utterly unlike London is the tongue one hears spoken — that strong, if sometimes rough, North English, which Southerners always call “Scotch”, though at least five English shires share it with the Lowlands across the border. In the garden of the toll-house of “Lendall Brigg” — since done away with — a small boy is trying in vain to catch a white rabbit.”Tak’ it up by lugs, bairn, tak’t up by lugs!” cries his elder brother, much to the bewilderment of a tourist from the south who stands listening.
You don’t get away with paragraphs, even sentences that complex any more. For the record:
Severus was the Roman Emperor who attempted to reoccupy the lands north of Hadrian’s Wall, invading Caledonia in 208, and dying at York in 211.
Paulinus (died 644) was the first Bishop of York, one of the second group of missionaries sent by Pope Gregory I.
The Most Rev. Dr William Dalrymple Maclagan was Archbishop of York between 1891 and 1908.
Sir George Stegmann Gibb was the innovatory General Manager of the North Eastern Railway from 1891 until, in 1906, he went on to become Managing Director of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (running the four main London underground lines). Gibb introduced statistical analysis and American business practices, but also applied collective bargaining and independent arbitration when dealing with his employees.
Oh, and all those timings involved a twenty minute wait at York for “dinner”.
It jumps out of the screen (or, if you can find a full text, the page):
If there was another way I would take it. But there is no alternative.
Yes: David Cameron has tripped off to Keighley and made a speech, saying … well, absolutely nothing. Except that he is the current possessor of Ma Thatcher’s handbag, and is prepared to filch the odd trifle therefrom.
Except:
That’s from 1980, when the Tory government was already heading further and further into the slough of despond.
Thatcher’s key economic speech of 1o October 1980 was her Conference “not for turning” address to the Tory faithful:
If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they are prepared to will the means to keep it great, a great nation we shall be, and shall remain. So, what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.
But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.
To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”
“It’s déjà vu all over again”
And Yogi Berra is still with us (now in his later 80s).
The problem common to Thatcher in 1980, and Cameron in 2013 is: who is their audience?
It is, in short, their own party — and in both cases the speeches are defence mechanisms, self-defences against an increasingly unhappy and fractious parliamentary party. We need to recall that in 1980 Thatcher was not, by any means, the autocratic Tory leader that Galtieri, his Argie military cronies, and near on a thousand unnecessary corpses made her.
Cameron’s electoral problem
It isn’t just the Eastleigh business. The 1979 General Election meant that Thatcher’s Tory benches included 22 Scottish MPs (with 31.4% of Scottish votes) — Cameron has just the one (and 16.7% of the votes). In 1979 Northern Ireland returned five (of the ten in total) MPs as Ulster Unionists (with 36.6% of the poll) — on all matters economic, the UU MPs voted with the Tory Whip: today there is not a single Ulster Unionist MP remaining, despite Cameron’s explicit involvement and rebranding of UCUNF.
Let’s continue.
In September 2012 The Economist had a definitive description of:
The great divide Economically, socially and politically, the north is becoming another country
The piece went still further back, and deeper into the socio-economics of English history:
The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In 1965 men in the north were 16% more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south. By 2008 they were 20% more likely to, according to a study published last year in the British Medical Journal. This is not just because poor people die young: rich northerners apparently live shorter lives than their southern peers…
Whereas government spending is spread fairly evenly across the country — nurses and teachers are needed roughly in proportion to the population — private-sector growth has been heavily concentrated, mostly in and around London. Between 1997 and 2010 gross value-added, a measure of output, grew by 61% in the three northern regions. In London and the South East, it shot up by 92%. According to a study by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester, the state accounted, directly and indirectly, for 64% of the jobs created in the north between 1998 and 2007, against just 38% in the south.
It also considers the electoral impact:
The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, points out that Conservatives held two-fifths of northern seats in 1951. They now hold less than a third, mostly in rural areas. In the cities, and in former-coal mining areas, the party is all but invisible. In July the Sheffield Conservative Party was forced to relocate to nearby Rotherham, as it is so short of cash…
And, of course, so much of what ConDem austerity economics has done disproportionately impacts upon the North and the devolved regions: the attacks on public employment, the squeeze on municipal budgets, replacing poor employment with even poorer-paid part-time work, lower productivity, rack-renting public housing, energy costs, transport costs … What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?
Cameron’s revolting women
This is the most jaw-dropping of the lot: women have turned against the Tories. In every post-War election until 2005 women voters preferred the Tories: it has been a declining gap (it was +12 in 1974), but in the last two general Elections, it has reversed. When one digs down into the most recent YouGov/Sunday Times poll, we find the gender gap is now a chasm:
Note that: a 12 point gender deficit for the Tories.
A curious beast
Peter Hoskin on ConHome finds only luke-warm words for Cameron’s speech (and it was an extended one) today, at Keighley:
David Cameron’s speech on the economy today is a curious beast. Here we have the Prime Minister pronouncing on growth, competition, debt and all that – but it has a thin flavour to it, as though it’s just an appetiser for the Budget in a couple of weeks. There are no new policy announcements, nor anything we haven’t really heard before. Yet perhaps that is the point: Mr Cameron emphasises, à la Lady Thatcher, that “there is no alternative” to the Coalition’s current plan. He speaks of consistency and continuity. It reads like a message telling everyone – from the restless Tory backbenches to Ed Balls and Vince Cable – not to expect a change in course.
That addresses the “what” of the speech (or, perhaps the “what-not?”), but not the more telling “where” (Keighley!) and “why?” (because he’s dans le merde!). On the other hand, that’s precisely what Nick Robinson has caught on (and saying far more succinctly and elegantly than Malcolm managed here):
Perhaps most revealing, though, is that he feels the need to make this speech at all and who it is aimed at. It is a restatement of the government’s central economic purpose aimed at:
his own party, which is why he is borrowing Margaret Thatcher’s language
the North of England
and women
Look at this paragraph to see what I mean :
“I know things are tough right now. Families are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. Some are just a pay-cheque away from going into the red. Parents are worried about what the future holds for their children. Whole towns are wondering where their economic future lies. And I know that is especially true for people here in Yorkshire and in many parts of the north of our country who didn’t benefit properly from the so-called boom years and worry they won’t do so again. But I’m here to say that’s not going to happen. Because we have a plan to get through these difficulties – and to get through them together.”
A man! A plan! A canal! Panama!
As good a palindrome as you’ll get in these parts to remind us just how much of British politicking involves going round in circles and disappeared up one’s own … canal.
This is the anniversary of the Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland, being added to Scotland.
It wasn’t a conquest. It was in lieu of a dowry.
They were the security for the King Christian of Denmark paying 60,000 crowns of the bride-money for his daughter, the Princess Margaret.
Remember: this was in effect putting the islands into pawn — though the debt has never been redeemed. But that is because of the resistance of the Scottish and then the British authorities.
In the Treaty of Breda, 1667, the status of the Scottish tenure was “unprescribed and unprescribable” — which amounts to an admission that the status has not been changed — indeed, under treaty law, cannot be changed.
Two years later, 1669, Charles II tried to rationalise the situation with his Act of Annexation, which made the islands his personal responsibility:
It is not only fit in order to his Majesty’s interests, but will be the great advantage of his Majesty’s subjects dwelling there, that without interposing any other Lord or superior betwixt his Majesty and them, they should have an immediate dependence upon his Majesty and his Officers.
By the 1707 Act of Union, the islands were transmogrified into counties of Scotland.
In 1906 Norway become independent of Denmark. An official missive from Shetland went to King Haakon VII:
Today no ‘foreign’ flag is more familiar or more welcome in our voes and havens than that of Norway, and Shetlanders continue to look upon Norway as their mother-land, and recall with pride and affection the time when their forefathers were under the rule of the Kings of Norway.
Even into the late twentieth century the Scottish judiciary was wrestling to reconcile the status of the islands. Only in 2005 was the white-cross-on-blue flag of Shetland (the same banner as the Hvítbláinn of the Icelandic republicans) authorised by the Lyon King of Arms.
Even if the SNP were to win their referendum, they may find they have secession problems of their own.
Philip Aldrick does a magnificent job frightening the un-lasagna-ed horses in his piece for the Torygraph.
What he is about is anticipating:
In its three-monthly Inflation Report, the Bank will warn that inflation will remain above the 2pc target until early 2015 but that the economy is too weak to cope with any attempt to bring prices back under control, through either interest rate rises or an unwinding of its £375bn quantitative easing (QE) programme.
It will also say that the pace of growth will be slow and that, although the major risks are receding, they remain a big threat, particularly from a resurgence of the eurozone crisis.
That sure saves us all from having to read the Report, when it is released. Prescience, a guided leak, or an ouija board?
Switching to another source, Aldrick manages one of the more remarkable definitions of “growth”:
According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 2013 has started strongly. It has estimated that growth improved from -0.3pc in the three months to December, to zero in the three months to January.
Somehow that reminds Malcolm of a bit of dialogue from Bill Forsyth’s 1981 film, Gregory’s Girl. Gregory is faffing his first encounter with Dorothy:
Gregory:…. I hurt my arm once, at the joint. Can’t get it any higher than this. [He raises his left arm to shoulder level.]I used to be able to get it away up here, no bother. [He raises the same arm high above his head.]
Enjoy Miliband winding up Cameron on the Bedroom Tax.
Remember: in Cameron’s world, it’s not a “tax”, it’s a “benefit”. That was his effort, responding to Miliband’s first question. What is the “benefit” of losing £25 a week? That was enough to shock Malcolm — and got to Steve Bell as well:
Indeed the crude brutishness of Cameron’s manner made Malcolm miscue. So back to the BBC video.
The crucial moment comes about 7 minutes and 15 seconds in. Cameron is waxing loud and lyrical about Miliband’s policy deficiencies (though why Labour needs to be lumbered with detailed policy commitments this far out from a fixed election date is another matter).
Malcolm believed he heard Cameron say:
What this Government is doing is building more houses and controlling welfare bills. But, frankly, the question is one he has to answer, too.If he opposes the welfare tax, if he opposes restrictions on increased welfare, if he opposes reform of disability benefit, if he opposes each and every welfare change we make, how on earth is he going to get control of public spending.
What the Hansard reporter heard (or was persuaded was said) is subtly different:
The Prime Minister: What this Government are doing is building more houses and controlling welfare bills. Frankly, the question is one that the right hon. Gentleman has to answer, too. If he opposes the welfare cap, if he opposes restrictions on increased welfare, if he opposes reform of disability benefits and if he opposes each and every welfare change we make, how on earth is he going to get control of public spending?
Fair enough: on about the third hearing, Malcolm concedes Hansard is probably right, and Malcolm’s hearing is adrift. Still, the message lingers.
What is fiendishly wrong here is that people in social housing are being punished for disability, or for wanting to stay in long-established homes. They are also being caned because:
wages are criminally low, and are being driven even lower by deliberate government policies;
rents in the private sector are too high, and still rising.
Let’s take those in turn, and refer to two items in this current issue of Private Eye:
1. Giz a job
SURF, Scotland’s independent regeneration group, which aims to improve health and wellbeing in deprived areas, received 400 applications in response to an advert for a part-time admin job. Chief Executive Andy Milne also received an email from the folk at Liga UK, who were keen to let him know that they were a “government-funded training provider who help young people gety into the workplace”.
Liga helpfully suggested that Milne consider converting the paid job into an “apprenticeship” placement. After all, it suggested, “If you do take on an apprentice for this role, you only need to pay them £100-£270 per week.” Liga UK also offered a further inducement of the £1,500 placement fee from the government.
What Ligaq failed to mention was that if SURF agreed to shove the poor recruit out of the promised job, Liga could also claim an apprenticeship placement “success” and pick up its own fee. Milne asked Liga why on earth the government would want it to displace a real job with an apprenticeship. He is still waiting for an answer.
… the latest stats on apprenticeships in England today, which show that more than half a million people began a placement in 2011/12.
That is costing the government (i.e. the tax-payer) around £1.4 billion — yes, billion — in 2011-12. Moreover, nearly a fifth of these placements run for six months or less. Such turn-over must be money in the bank for the likes of Liga. Moreover, as FactCheck adds:
… a few months spent learning how to stack shelves and a three-and-a-half year stint at Rolls-Royce both count as the same.
2. Gimme Shelter
Welfare reforms brought in by the coalition were already bringing down rents, said a confident David Cameron in January last year. “What we have seen so far, as housing benefit has been reformed and reduced, is that rent levels have come down, so we have stopped ripping off the taxpayer.”
But have they come down? It seemed unlikely at the time, although it reflected a widespread belief in government that the local housing allowance (the form of housing benefit paid to private renters) was somehow causing rent inflation.
A year on, and with more housing benefit cuts due in April, rents are stubbornly refusing to go anywhere but up. A report from Shelter based on the government’s Valuation Office Agency figures says rents have risen 2.8 percent in the past year. That’s faster than the 1.7 percent rise in house prices and comes at a time when wages are at a standstill.
Several areas saw double-digit rises, including an eye-watering 10.8 percent in one local authority with which Cameron should be fa,iliad: West Oxfordshire, home to his Witney constituency.
This Shelter survey, The Rent Trap, is on-line. It covers only English local authority areas (as, indeed, does the Tory party’s world-view).
Yesterday morning, Malcolm sat musing on the day ahead, munching toast and marmalade.
The bread wrapper caught his eye. It boasts:
“This loaf is made to the same recipe my father created 40 years ago. With 100% wholemeal flour, it’s not only full of goodness, it tastes great too.”
Jonathan Warburton.
Isn’t tradition a wonderful thing!
Except forty years takes us back to the 1970s, to Wonderloaf and Mother’s Pride, hardly the acme of British bread-making.
When Malcolm mentioned just that to the Lady in his Life, she capped it with a thought of her own, all the way from a Portadown playground:
If you eat Jim Davison’s bread It sticks to your belly like lead So it’s not a bit of wonder That you fart like thunder When you eat Jim Davison’s bread.
That’s pushing tradition back even further. The Davison Brothers had a bakery on the corner of Obins Street and Park Road, and were delivering locally with horse-drawn vans down to the 1930s. By then the big Belfast bakers were muscling in with advertising and mass-production (and, just possibly, a bit of black propaganda through skipping games).
The present big name in Portadown baking is Irwin’s, which started as a small craft bakery behind the grocery shop in Woodhouse Street. It has now expanded and taken over the old William Clow Mill, with its products a regular feature in supermarkets across Britain.
What Malcolm cannot get through his local supermarket is a decent potato farl, by Irwin’s or anyone else. Such an item may not appear on a healthy English breakfast table. For, as Malcolm’s good-living, jogging, cycling son-in-law described an Ulster fry breakfast: death by cholesterol.
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life …
At this stage in the post, you may well appreciate how the automatic spellcheck messes with Malcolm’s erudition.
Nookes, yards and mutchkins
Still, sticking with fardels, they were also a land measure.
Back around 1624, Charles I’s Attorney General, William Noye told us, in his Complete Lawyer (that such a wonder should exist!):
Two Fardells of Land make a Nooke of Land, and two Nookes make halfe a Yard of Land.
Noye was a Cornishman, made good, and this fardel/farl usage seems to have persisted mainly in the remoter fastnesses of Britain, well beyond where the M25 girdles decent society, sophistication, and civilisation.
Mutchkin? Another word that deserves revival: “a measure equal to an English pint” say some. The OED is magisterial:
A measure of capacity for liquids and for dry substances of a powdery or granular nature, such as salt, equal to a quarter of a Scottish pint or roughly three quarters of an imperial pint (0.43 litres); a vessel containing this amount. Occas.: an imperial pint, esp. as a measure for spirits.
More to the point, in days when beer most usually came in quarts, and a three-bottle-man was not unduly remarkable, the term implies “a small amount”.
Literary farls
The common farl makes a couple of appearances in the canon. Malcolm checks them off:
Here farmers gash, in ridin graith, Gaed hoddin by their cotters; There swankies young, in braw braid-claith, Are springing owre the gutters. The lasses, skelpin barefit, thrang, In silks an’ scarlets glitter; Wi’ sweet-milk cheese, in mony a whang, An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter, Fu’ crump that day.
Don’t expect a full exegesis if that now: suffice it to say that Burns is in full-on irony mode. His sub-title was Hypocrisy-a-la-mode, and he contrasts the holy-day gathering, with its parade of eminent preachers, and folk out on a Bacchanalian, anything-goes, over-the-top, indulgent holiday outing. Somewhat closer to William Hogarth than Billy Graham. The vocabulary, and much of the imagery, precludes the ballad from a school-text book.
Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor and its contemporary popularity was the basis for Donizetti’s now-better known opera. It was one of two Scott novels published together in 1819 as the third instalment of Tales of My Landlord. This other episode is the story of a love triangle, set in Montrose’s campaign against the Covenanters and Civil War period, A Legend of Montrose. Sadly, Scott is out of fashion; but — should one wish — there, at the end of Chapter III we find our farl:
“Do so, Captain,” said Lord Menteith; “you will have the night to think of it, for we are now near the house, where I hope to ensure you a hospitable reception.”
“And that is what will be very welcome,” said the Captain, “for I have tasted no food since daybreak but a farl of oatcake, which I divided with my horse. So I have been fain to draw my sword-belt three bores tighter for very extenuation, lest hunger and heavy iron should make the gird slip.”
Malcolm, in bedroom-decorating mode, has been attempting to formulate a pertinent comment on the Tory conference. It is a depressing distraction — though he was tempted to pursue the Scottish Tory leader’s daftness over this one:
Almost nine in ten Scots receive more from the state than they pay in tax because of a ‘corrosive sense of entitlement’ north of the border, a top Tory said yesterday.
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said it was ‘frightening’ only 283,080 households – 12 per cent of the total – pay more in taxes than they get back in public services.
She told the party’s annual conference in Birmingham that Scots are now so reliant on ‘the gangmaster state’ that the public sector accounts for more than half of the nation’s wealth.
Miss Davidson said the ‘rotten system’ of state patronage had been fuelled by Labour and the Nationalists.
The Scottish National Party, led by Alex Salmond, described her comments as her ‘Mitt Romney moment’ …
For once Wee Eck found a proper response at the end there.
Alex Massie, for the The Spectator, said all that needed to be said in a succinct headline:
Scottish Tory Leader to Scots: Drop Dead
It looks even better on the web-page in pillar-box red.
But there’s still that lurking problem: what to say about the Cameroon-fest? Well, Max Hastings knifed Mayor BoJo very effectively — so much so that yesterday’s Mail piece gets re-cycled in today’s Guardian. Mmmm … how often do you get that kind of cross-over?
Ah! but facing that, here’s the best comment on the whole charade, in the letters column:
I am not a millionaire. I am not a tax avoider. I am not a banker. I work (proudly) in the public sector. I do not hate immigrants. I recognise that most people are poor because of obscenely low wages and a chronic lack of jobs, not because they are lazy or “scroungers”. I believe that, on balance, the EU is a good thing. I fully support a woman’s right to choose whether she wishes to terminate an unplanned pregnancy, and that no one else should try to control her body or fertility. I believe that trade unions are vital to protect workers from unscrupulous employers, and that employees need statutory protection and rights in the workplace. I believe that it is ordinary working people who actually create Britain’s wealth, not a handful of business tycoons. I believe that far too much of this country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1%.
The shock of the occasional exotic apart — llamas and ostriches in Cumbria come to Malcolm’s mind — the joy of the British countryside is the conventional, the normal. Perhaps a roadside badger in North Yorkshire or beaver kits in Argyll don’t come along every day, but hares happily and commonly do. Though perhaps not for long.
Even when they don’t Malcolm is happy to take time out to watch the BBC videos of their hare-y activities. Sitting, standing upright, looking you in the eye and twitching, there is a charming anthropomorphism to hares.
Most of the hares we see, and all of them in lowland England are going to be the common brown hare. It is generally held that the brown hare was introduced into Britain by the Romans; and — thanks to the loss of hay meadows and of hedge-rows— is rapidly heading towards being a rarity. Indeed, the species may have reached extinction in parts, particularly the South-West.
Up north, and on higher ground, the mountain hare is more likely to be seen. Mountain hares are small, neater than the brown hare, and seem to be an indigenous species — which means they got here before the land bridge to the continent was drowned. Like the brown hare the mountain hare seems to be becoming far less common. Again, changes in land-use seem to be to blame — over-grazing reduces the natural heather and ground cover.
Gamekeepers, intent on protecting their land-owners’ grouse moors, cause enormous attrition among mountain hares — which apparently carry a tick which kills grouse chicks. Although snares are now illegal, shooting is a “sport”: a group of Italian “sportsmen” is alleged to have arrived in Scotland with a refrigerated truck. Their aim was to slaughter a thousand Scottish mountain hares, ship them back to Italy for sale as meat, and that way off-set the cost of their trip. Ironically, sports shooting was one reason why mountain hares thrived in Scotland: the land-owner had a vested interest in maintaining numbers to provide “sport”. The decline in numbers in recent years has been sufficiently significant for Scottish Natural heritage to have commissioned a detailed (and inconclusive) report.
Malcolm went hunting through Eminent Victorians, and didn’t immediately find the reference. Still, Lytton Strachey is generally purported to quote Palmerston on the Schleswig-Holstein Question:
Only three people have ever really understood it – the Prince Consort, who is dead – a German professor, who has gone mad – and I, who have forgotten all about it.
Malcolm feels the same way about the legal position of Glasgow Rangers and the club’s Byzantine negotiations with the various Scottish football authorities. Hats off, then, to Stephen Halliday in The Scotsman, for some degree of clarification:
RANGERS were last night finally given the go-ahead to start the new season this weekend after often tortuous negotiations between the newly constituted Ibrox club and the Scottish football authorities reached an agreement.
Shortly after 9pm, a joint statement was released by the Scottish Football Association, Scottish Premier League, Scottish Football League and Rangers chief executive Charles Green’s Sevco consortium confirming that SFA membership will be transferred from the oldco to the newco.
The membership is conditional initially, allowing Rangers to begin their new era against Brechin City at Glebe Park tomorrow afternoon in a Ramsdens Cup first round tie. Full membership will then be completed when Rangers’ share in the SPL, still held by their administrators Duff and Phelps, is transferred to Dundee next week. It will allow Dundee to begin the new SPL campaign on 4 August, while Rangers will start life as a Third Division club the following week.
You understood that, didn’t you, all about “oldco”, “newco” and “Sevco”? If so, answers on a postcard, please …
Now we can look forward to Ibrox (capacity 51,000) hosting visits from Montrose (average attendance: 3292) and Peterhead (average attendance: 3250). Not to overlook a sellout return fixture on artificial turf at East Stirlingshire (currently playing at Stenhousemuir‘s Ochilview Park: capacity: 1880 — unless the car-park is also used for overflow standing).
Rangers take over the Division 3 fixtures previously due to that other great club, Stranraer.
“Welfare tax”?
Go to the BBC video of yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
Enjoy Miliband winding up Cameron on the Bedroom Tax.
Remember: in Cameron’s world, it’s not a “tax”, it’s a “benefit”. That was his effort, responding to Miliband’s first question. What is the “benefit” of losing £25 a week? That was enough to shock Malcolm — and got to Steve Bell as well:
Indeed the crude brutishness of Cameron’s manner made Malcolm miscue. So back to the BBC video.
The crucial moment comes about 7 minutes and 15 seconds in. Cameron is waxing loud and lyrical about Miliband’s policy deficiencies (though why Labour needs to be lumbered with detailed policy commitments this far out from a fixed election date is another matter).
Malcolm believed he heard Cameron say:
What this Government is doing is building more houses and controlling welfare bills. But, frankly, the question is one he has to answer, too. If he opposes the welfare tax, if he opposes restrictions on increased welfare, if he opposes reform of disability benefit, if he opposes each and every welfare change we make, how on earth is he going to get control of public spending.
What the Hansard reporter heard (or was persuaded was said) is subtly different:
The Prime Minister: What this Government are doing is building more houses and controlling welfare bills. Frankly, the question is one that the right hon. Gentleman has to answer, too. If he opposes the welfare cap, if he opposes restrictions on increased welfare, if he opposes reform of disability benefits and if he opposes each and every welfare change we make, how on earth is he going to get control of public spending?
Fair enough: on about the third hearing, Malcolm concedes Hansard is probably right, and Malcolm’s hearing is adrift. Still, the message lingers.
What is fiendishly wrong here is that people in social housing are being punished for disability, or for wanting to stay in long-established homes. They are also being caned because:
Let’s take those in turn, and refer to two items in this current issue of Private Eye:
1. Giz a job
SURF, Scotland’s independent regeneration group, which aims to improve health and wellbeing in deprived areas, received 400 applications in response to an advert for a part-time admin job. Chief Executive Andy Milne also received an email from the folk at Liga UK, who were keen to let him know that they were a “government-funded training provider who help young people gety into the workplace”.
Liga helpfully suggested that Milne consider converting the paid job into an “apprenticeship” placement. After all, it suggested, “If you do take on an apprentice for this role, you only need to pay them £100-£270 per week.” Liga UK also offered a further inducement of the £1,500 placement fee from the government.
What Ligaq failed to mention was that if SURF agreed to shove the poor recruit out of the promised job, Liga could also claim an apprenticeship placement “success” and pick up its own fee. Milne asked Liga why on earth the government would want it to displace a real job with an apprenticeship. He is still waiting for an answer.
By no coincidence, just a week ago Channel 4′s FactCheck Blog ran the rule over:
… the latest stats on apprenticeships in England today, which show that more than half a million people began a placement in 2011/12.
That is costing the government (i.e. the tax-payer) around £1.4 billion — yes, billion — in 2011-12. Moreover, nearly a fifth of these placements run for six months or less. Such turn-over must be money in the bank for the likes of Liga. Moreover, as FactCheck adds:
… a few months spent learning how to stack shelves and a three-and-a-half year stint at Rolls-Royce both count as the same.
2. Gimme Shelter
Welfare reforms brought in by the coalition were already bringing down rents, said a confident David Cameron in January last year. “What we have seen so far, as housing benefit has been reformed and reduced, is that rent levels have come down, so we have stopped ripping off the taxpayer.”
But have they come down? It seemed unlikely at the time, although it reflected a widespread belief in government that the local housing allowance (the form of housing benefit paid to private renters) was somehow causing rent inflation.
A year on, and with more housing benefit cuts due in April, rents are stubbornly refusing to go anywhere but up. A report from Shelter based on the government’s Valuation Office Agency figures says rents have risen 2.8 percent in the past year. That’s faster than the 1.7 percent rise in house prices and comes at a time when wages are at a standstill.
Several areas saw double-digit rises, including an eye-watering 10.8 percent in one local authority with which Cameron should be fa,iliad: West Oxfordshire, home to his Witney constituency.
This Shelter survey, The Rent Trap, is on-line. It covers only English local authority areas (as, indeed, does the Tory party’s world-view).
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Tagged as cuts, David Cameron, employment, housing, Private Eye, Shelter, Welfare