8

the wrong target (fare’s fare)

the price of public transport has gone up (again) over and above the rate of inflation (again).  although the train companies are making profits for their shareholders they claim the rise is necessary. even though their service has not improved they claim that the price rise is good for passengers.

quite what world they are living in is anyone’s guess.

two sunday papers carried attacks on different transport ministers. the mail on sunday and the sunday mirror. what is surprising is that the mail on sunday attacked the right target while the sunday mirror picks on the wrong person.

the mail onsunday ran with a story about simon burns, the rail fares minister, who uses a chauffeured driven government car to travel to work each day. the cost of the car is £80,000 a year (though not all of that can be laid at the feet of mr. burns as the car maybe used by other ministers during the day). his excuse for not catching the train into work is that he can’t work on his ministerial papers in public places; this restriction has been denied by the cabinet office. he further justifies his use of the car because he has given up his second home in london and commutes to and from work. well bully for him.

a spokesman for the passenger campaign group railfuture said ‘it would be nice if the person who is setting these fare rises was also experiencing some of the congestion and overcrowding endured by ordinary hard-pressed travellers.’ of course as a minister he could claim back his transport fees (£5.400 a year for a first class ticket. the mail have even worked out how much it would cost for him to get a daily taxi - £36,000 – but are very large savings on the £80k the departmental car costs) it is the fact that, as railfuture point out, he is avoiding the hassle that he is in part responsible for. it is yet another example of the con/dems being out of touch with ordinary people.

meanwhile the sunday mirror chose to attack norman baker, a liberal democrat transport minister, they say he has claimed £7000 in transport expenses, compared with this is a pittance. the mirrors case is made even weaker when you realise that the total is from when mr. baker took office in may 2010. to put it another way he is claiming approximately £230 a month in travel allowance to travel between his constituency and london.

mr. baker doesn’t appear to have his snout in the trough.

while politicians didn’t cover themselves in glory when it came to the expenses scandal and they now have only themselves to blame when it comes to the press jumping on them. they are also in the press firing line simply because of leveson report. there is a large chunk of the population who are furious about the above inflation price rise for their transport prices. all of this adds up to a bit of a perfect storm when it comes to transport ministers. it is just a shame that the mail on sunday got it right and the sunday mirror got it wrong.

7

brass neck

you just have to admire the brass neck of some tories.

pretty much ever since the coalition took power there has been an underlying attack on those on benefits, mostly it has been aimed at the poor.

george osborne has been quick to talking of the shirkers and spongers.

in a rare move the con/dems are cutting child benefit to households with incomes of more than £60,000 a year. this has caused a certain amount of consternation among those who do have more than £60k (many of whom will be the same sort of people who will claim that teenage pregnancy is a result of wanting to get a council place and child benefit).  the reason why the con/dems have made this move is to help cut the welfare bill and to show that those with the broadest shoulders will bear their share of the pain.

noble words.

you may not know this but george osborne is worth some £4 million pound. he doesn’t have this from all his years of hard work (he hasn’t really had much experience in the world of work – so perfect choice for chancellor); it is as a result of a trust fund.

you could say that mr. osborne is not a classic striver: he was born into wealth.

his current salary is in the region of £145,000 a year. his wife is a successful author.

in short: they have spare cash, and then some.

yet the osbornes have been claiming child benefit on their two kids, because they were entitled to it.

given the changes he has brought in mr. osborne has decided that he no longer feels that he should be getting child benefit. so he had waived his right to collect it. they say that timing is the essence of comedy and perhaps it is the same when it comes to sacrifice – you make a big song and dance about giving something up just at the point when you have brought in rules that say those over £60k can’t have it. “i renounce my right to this benefit i am no longer entitled to!”

it must be a great skill to be able to attack people for being spongers and abusing the benefit system when you have been needlessly claiming child benefit because it is an entitlement. while he has been talking of cutting the benefits of the poor he has been trousering his child benefit. you have to admire his ability to do that and look at himself in the mirror every morning.

no wonder he always has that smug grin on his face.

no wonder he has always claimed we are all in it together.

6

say it like you mean it

i’ve got a mate who likes to debate; he’ll say things for effect. he likes to provoke. when you call him on a previous statement he’ll brush it off as banter. suddenly they are not his true views, only problem is it soon becomes hard to know what is true and what is just a bit of debating bluster.

social media has made this a widespread problem as people rush to tweet, blog, post their first thing that comes to mind. little or no consideration is given to what they say or even what they mean.  in part this has been encouraged by the, often, narrowcasting of the internet. however the ability to copy and repost information means that the old adage of ‘count to 10’ should be adhered to, if not amended to ‘count to 100’.

this is especially true if you are a tory councillor who is trying to argue that those suffering poverty in the uk are an ‘insult’ to those who die of starvation in the third world. furthermore, for this councillor, food banks just allow those who can’t (or won’t) budget to get food while they buy more fags or booze.

“the fact some give food to food banks merely enable people who can’t budget, or don’t want to, to have more money to spend on alcohol, cigarettes etc.’ so said chris steward, a conservative councillor for york.

he was quickly condemned by many including chris mould of the trussell trust. mr. mould points out that with things such as heating costs rising by 65% in the last five years and food costs rising by 35% it is unwise to claim that those on low income were using their money unwisely.

mr. steward is not alone among conservatives; edwina currie on the stephen nolan 5live radio show also doubted the existence of fuel poverty and was doubtful of any who contacted the show to say they had to make a choice between heat and food.

as mr. steward is a stockbroker and ms. currie is an author and celebrity talking head they probably don’t have to worry too much about the price of food or heat, and because they don’t have any trouble making ends meet they can’t see why anyone else does.

a funny brand of compassionate conservatism.

as with all things like this mr. steward later ‘regretted’ his remarks, which, of course, did not reflect his true views.

the question is if they were not his views to start with why on earth did he write them down? could it be that he wanted to say what he thought his tory constituency wanted to hear (feckless shirkers being the current tory narrative), knowing that although he didn’t believe what he was saying it would play very well with the tory faithful? or is it that actually he does believe what he said but has been shocked by the outrage it has caused and is now backpedalling: a coward with no courage of his convictions.

maybe he is just a big mouth who speaks before thinking.

he either looks to be a shifty politician or just a bit stupid.

however as he is singing to the current tory tune of ‘bash the poor’ he is just another reprehensible conservative who has little in common with those he represents. he has done his bit to maintain the myth of feckless wasters who are living high on the hog on benefits.

plus he has done the internet thing of ‘regretting’ and ‘apologising’, so all is well in his world. i am sure the poor and needy of york are happy for him.

5

not worth the paper they are written on

every now and then when i am listening to the radio i just wish that the presenter or the commentator would just go ‘what? did you really say that? really?’

why only the other day there was the story of alex ferguson accusing spurs of manipulating the price of a player. spurs had apparently baulked at man united’s asking price of £6m, the player was let go to a foreign club for a small compensation fee. now the player is back in the uk and signed for spurs for £3m.

ferguson sees this as being evidence of malpractice.

another way of looking at it would be evidence of man united’s greed over a player they let go cheap, perhaps if they had been reasonable in their dealings with spurs they would have done alright.

yet when the story is reported – no one suggests that perhaps man united made the mistake and because they were greedy they missed out on a deal.

the same is true of a recent story about mobile phone contracts.

at this point i have to say i don’t know squat about mobile phone contracts as i am a billy no mates and just need a pay as you go jobbie.

ofcom are proposing that if your phone provider hikes up the price of your contact while you are in the middle of it then you should be able to exit the contract without penalty charges.

seems perfectly reasonable to me.

it isn’t fine as far as the network providers are concerned.

they are already started to talk about how such a proposal would mean greater upfront costs for users. one reason given is that it would mean more staff and paperwork to track the changes in contracts. why? call me stupid but isn’t it just a case of ticking a box in a database programme that says you pay this amount from now until then. seems simple to me.

another reason cited was that their costs increase and they can’t always afford to absorb the costs. so if british telecom ups the price of a 0845 then the network provider would lose out. that tends to show a weakness in the model and the easy solution would be not to have such long contracts because if you can’t guarantee certainty then you shouldn’t be offering out the promise of it. as energy companies and mortgage companies can manage to deal with fixed or variable pricing you would have thought that the phone companies could do to. obviously not.

a brief piece in the city am (yeah i don’t know why i read it either) champions vodafone for speaking out against the proposal. the piece goes on to say that penalties to break contracts are oppressive – but only to the consumer. the company can break a contract as easy as pie.

the piece goes on to say that the £150m cost that which? magazine says that consumers incurred from fee rises last year only amounts to £2 per phone, there being close to 82 million handsets in the uk. oh that’s ok then just £2 you hadn’t expected (even though it would be more than that as the number of phones includes pay as you go, but why quibble). if it is such a small amount then perhaps the phone companies could absorb it.

anyway, concludes the author, it is unlikely that people will switch anyway – look how few changes banks.

if that is the case then what have the phone companies got to lose? well a £150 million for a start.

you would have thought that in today’s climate of social media whinging that companies would go out of their way to make sure that everything was done to placate the customer and to keep the customer wanting to come back to you.

rather than being a story about how companies are inefficient and unable to provide their customers with the best service possible it has become another of those ‘oh look at how big business is being attacked and being called nasty names’. the phone companies will claim that changes are too complicated (but probably not as complicated as the methods used to avoid tax) or that to make these changes will lead to higher upfront costs.

the problem is: they are not vigorously challenged about their claims.

bottom line is that the lesson to learn from this is that contracts are only worth the paper they are written on when the companies benefit.

4

the price of safety

you may wonder what the price of safety is. perhaps it is your insurance policy. perhaps you think you can't put a precise figure on it.

boris can. the price of safety is about to go down by 7p a week, or £3.64 a year.
boris wants to give hard pressed londoners a reduction in their council tax of 1.2%, which is 7p a week or £3.64. every saving helps. it is a shame that the 7p a week is eaten into if you decide to catch a bus (fare has risen 5p), or tube or rail (increase of between 10p-40p a journey).
boris giveth.
boris taketh.
seems to be the moral of the story.

but wait there is more.
that 7p cut works out at being close on £350 million cut from the mayor's budget. where is he going to make those savings?
remember i told you that the price of safety had decreased by 7p, well that is explained in the how. boris plans to take a huge chunk out of the budgets of both the fire and police services.

£3.64 is a large cup of coffee, mocha, with an extra shot. in the grand scheme of things it is not much. it is even less when you consider the hike in transport fares. this is just a political game for boris, he'll be able to say he kept a tax down and even cut it, even if the cut is minimal. in return for one large fancy coffee is a smaller police force and fewer fire stations.

boris keep the 7p and make sure london stays safe with adequate emergency forces cover, sure it will mean you can buy a small treat for yourself.
me i'd rather know that fire engine response times were not going to suffer all because i have a a few pennies in my pocket (though i could use the seven pennies to lay a bet on when someone sues boris for damage after a fire has broken out. at lest that way we can all be winners.

3

fighting the flabbies

as one of the many overweight people in the country i am always interested in fat news and obesity scaremongering. i know why i am fat – it has little to do with being intelligent or sitting in front of a computer for long stretches of the day. nor does it have anything to do with being around other fat people. nope the reason i am a porker is i eat the wrong food (and sometimes lots of it) and i don’t exercise properly.

it is a combination that piles the pounds on.

one of the talking points of the olympics was how to get more elite athletes – when really it should have been more about how to get most of us up and at ‘em, getting us just a bit fitter.

two greats of british sport are sir clive woodward (coached england to rugby world cup glory and had a hand in the olympic success of team gb) and sir david brailsford (supremo of british cycling and in no small part responsible for the success of sirs hoy and wiggins), both talked about 1% improvements, the small things you can do to improve. this is one of those mantras that all people who are trying to achieve something need to remember but is often forgotten – sometimes you have to do it one baby step at a time.

so a lot of people in the uk are fat, and a lot of those fat people make me look slim (and i thank them for it), most of us fat people are fat because of the dreaded combo of poor diet and poor exercise.

if it were just a problem of ever expanding waistlines then it wouldn’t be that much of a disaster – sure it would mean some people couldn’t use the tube, or fly or go to the cinema (seats too small) or wear the latest fashion (it is never made in large sizes and is always designed for stick insects). sadly though being fat, fatter and fattest also leads to a variety of health issues.

these health issues cost money and money is something that the national health service doesn’t have in abundance.

in a sense these medical complaints are self inflicted and are sometimes compared to those issues thrown up by smoking. (smoking is an easy one to use because it has successfully been demonised, the problems caused by drink isn’t quite as often used in comparison – because drink is still very much loved by the middle class).

as, in the main, obesity is self inflicted there is an argument that people themselves should do their bit to ‘heal’ themselves.  government would have a role to play in this ether through legislation or through the nudge principle.

funny enough a report called ‘a dose of localism’ is all about this.

jonathancarr-west, acting chief executive of the local government information unit, described the report’s proposals as being win-win as they were about "finding innovative ways to both improve people's lives so they don't suffer from these conditions, while also saving money for the public purse".

the basic idea is to encourage the overweight to do something about their situation, including having their gp prescribe trips to the gym or local swimming pool. good idea. encouragement and the means to carry it out. win. i could easily see local libraries running council led weight watcher style programmes, or schools and colleges allowing the overweight to use their gyms.

it could be the big (ahem) society writ (ahem) large.

as ever with these sorts of things it is not the idea that is at fault but the presentation and the potential implementation.

in this case it looks like westminster council has decided that it will take the idea of encouragement and turn it into a case of carrot and stick, it being a tory run council the stick is the way they see it working.

of course westminster being a tory council see it as, yet another way, to punish those on benefits (those tories do love to attack those on benefits – compassionate conservatives my fat arse).

their idea is that any of the overweight and obese who refuse to go to the gym, swimming or exercise, or do not live a healthy lifestyle will lose some or all their benefits. fantastic plan – starve them thin!

the implication of all this is that the only people who are fat are those on benefits – people who are working are all within their right weight ranges. hey they are tories so their world is like that, the rest of us live in the real world.

a spokesman from westminster council was trying to defend their (potential/ alleged) position by focusing in on the positives of the plan, he wasn’t so concerned with the health issues but the fact that money could be saved and that is important because we pay taxes (and of course those on benefits don’t pay taxes).

if it were just about health then the solution would be to send every fat person who came into  the doc’s off to the gym, swimming pool or have them eat 5 a day. after all middle class fatties are more likely to demand more from the national health service – so they are even more of a potential burden. it is not like they can’t be hit with the council’s financial stick either: don’t follow through with the plan then increase their council tax. simple.

but not the sort of thing the tories do.

there is nothing wrong with the council/state encouraging people to take charge of their well being. nor is there anything wrong with pushing them to exercise and diet. hell it makes perfect sense, even if some would see it as being the nanny state.

healthier people mean less of a burden on the resources of the national health service.

healthier people mean a better standard of life for people.

healthier people also means (to make the capitalist argument) a better workforce.

councils and the government should also be making the argument with companies getting them to provide showers on site so that staff could go out for lunch time runs, or run/cycle into work, they could provide cheap membership to gyms, bonuses to those people who don’t miss work through sickness,

councils could stop flooding the high street with fast food joints. the government could legislate that all food manufacturers comprehensively mark on their foodstuff the health rating.

however if westminster council are going to press ahead with their scheme then let them put their money where their mouth is and challenge that fat tory, eric pickles, to lose weight or lose his state salary.

go on eric – you can do it. shed pounds or lose pounds. (see what i did there).

(strangely fat becomes a bit of an issue in today’s times. camilla cavendish has an opinion piece about how the government needs to step in and change things in order to help people, and help them off the addiction to sugar and trans fats. considering the newspaper it is a pretty bold statement. it is somewhat ruined by her claim that she is ‘educated, genetically thin person with a high metabolism’ which of course means that there has to be genetically fat people. still at least she isn’t blaming the poor – so score one for camilla).

2

bash the poor

i always had a sneaking regard for iain duncan smith, especially when he became that caring compassionate conservative who wanted to make the lot of the poor and dispossessed better.

oops bit of a mistake on my part, but then i have never been that good at judging a person's character.

in principle i have no problems with the idea of a universal credit, a benefit system that is simple to use would be a dream come true. a system in which those who were in need of benefits were told what they were entitled to by people who knew what they were talking about. which is not quite the case at the moment.
in principle i have no problem with workfare, anything that helps make unemployed more employable is a good thing providing it is being done properly - there is little point in taking a graduate who is doing voluntary work in a job sector they are interested and have them stacking shelves in a poundland or charity shop. workfare shouldn't be about providing companies with a cheap work force it should be about enabling the unemployed to gain skills they need to move out of benefits and into paid permanent full-time employment.

the whole shirkers vs strivers debate is about bashing the poor.
the attacks on 'benefit culture' is always couched in terms of those who are feckless and unemployed, even though large bulk of benefit spend is on pensions, and that is quickly followed by the benefits being paid out to the working poor.

such an amazing phrase: the working poor.
think about it.
say it out loud a few times.
think about it some more.
then shout it out: the working poor.

the working poor - are those people who have a job, but are not earning enough to get by on without receiving state benefits. these are the very strivers that cameron, osborne, duncan smith et al are praising. matters not they are also going to get hit by the con/dem changes because ideology must always triumph over commonsense.

the much smaller cohort of benefit claimants who are just getting jobseekers allowance (jsa) are currently under attack. the recipients of jsa are shirkers. they are sitting at home doing nothing living large on their ever increasing benefits. look the the daily mail and the sun say so: it must be true.
today's headline was all about the increase. jsa has gone up by 20% in the last 5 years, while private sector earnings have only gone up by 12% in the same period. a person on the dole has almost seen their money increase twice as much as someone in work.

many years ago around this time we were having the usual talk about christmas bonuses, and nick, an old colleague, argued that those who got paid less should get a bigger percentage bonus because they were paid less than we were. he was right - it isn't about the percentages it's about what you get.

jsa going up 20% in 5 years is an approximate increase of £12, or to look at it another way it is just under two hours work at minimum pay. that 20% means that jsa is now the kingly sum of £71pw. living large.

the con/dems want to make work pay. most people would agree with them - that work should pay and that each and every worker is entitled to a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. to me it seems that the conservatives are more interested in making work pay by making sure that people who are in receipt of benefits can't afford to have a very basic level of subsistence.

very few people stay on the dole because it is nice and comfortable, most people are on the dole because there is no work for them to do. cut benefits back as much as you like and that won't change the fact that without the jobs there people can't actually become employed.

not that it matter to cameron, osborne and duncan smith - they are relatively well paid by the state so that they can provide one sided solutions to a very tough problem.

i used to think that maybe iain duncan smith had it in him to at least go some of the way to creating a system that might have worked to cut the number of unemployed while giving support to those that need it. in the end he has turned out to be just the same as cameron and osborne: blinded by ideology and trapped in a vision of a world that doesn't exist. 

1

political future

the conservatives won't see 2012 as a vintage year. their pals in coalition, the lib dems, will regard it with horror.
if it wasn't bad enough that they had to suffer through plebgate, leveson and the omnishambles of a budget the coalition has also had to suffer it's first hit single

the conservatives have also had to put up with their own backbenchers getting all kinds of frisky over things such as hunting bans, gay marriage and, of course, europe.

you almost feel a pang of sympathy for david cameron (almost).
as for nick clegg - he might as well be wearing a sign saying 'dead man walking', while liberal democrat parliamentarians have got to be wondering what their next job is going to be (don't worry too much for them i doubt if many of them will be having to worrying about the new universal credit scheme that they are helping to give to the country).

it is good that the labour party is benefiting from this, a recent poll suggests that if the results were to be mirrored at the next election they would win a majority. that is heartening news, even allowing for the fact that people respond differently in polls to the way they do at elections.

yet the real winner isn't labour, it is the united kingdon independence party (ukip), they are currently on course to becoming the country's third biggest political party and thus giving nigel farage even more media coverage and the prospect of having to be involved in the election debates between the leaders of the main parties.

that is a scary prospect. (though he would get my vote if he promised to ban piers morgan from the country).