BURNING OUR MONEY

Moving Back To Blogger

For reasons to complicated to explain (but mainly my technical incompetence), I've moved back to Blogger. Here is the link:

Burning Our Money

Hope to hear from you there.

Best wishes

Wat

New site- David Davis for leader

I've set up a new site to gather together DD leadership links and supportive blogs.

Comments/contributions welcome.

It has to be Davis

Yes, we all accept that none of them are ideal, but Dave has the following key advantages:

• Regular guy with normal voice, wife and kids
• Meritocrat who rose from humble origins- council estate and state educated
• SAS trained killer with sparkly blue eyes- just like Pantsdown- didn't even need a length of wire to dispose of Hughes and Blunkett
• Good experience- business, government whip, Minister for Europe, Chair of Public Accounts Committee, Party Chairman, Shadow Home Secretary
• Strong interest in small government/public sector reform- set up excellent Reform thinktank
• Sound on Europe and Justice
• Represents Northern constituency so actually relates to whatever it is goes on up there

It is concerning that he's the bookies' favourite, but surely it's time to buck the favourite's curse.

Rifkind? Too old, too John Major, and too much of a toff.

Fox? Maybe, but...well, what with all that stuff about Natalie Imbrog...Emrogl...that pop star bird, he comes across as a tubby self-satisfied ponce.

Hague retread? You can't be serious.

Cameron? Osborne? Too inexperienced and unknown.

So Dave's my man. The sooner the better.

English independence

The election has given a big boost to the campaign for English independence. As is now widely known, the English voted for a Tory government, but have been condemned to a further five years of socialism by those communists in Scotland and Wales.

Even worse, the English- particularly in the South East- are taxed to buggery to pay for the whole thing. Last time I crunched the numbers, the Scots were getting a fiscal transfer from down South equal to 10 per cent of their national income.

So I find myself nodding agreement with today's Times article by the 128 year old William Rees-Mogg. (This is very disturbing since I'm old enough to remember the sixties, when Rees-Mogg was a ludicrous creature from the distant planet Posh; when he conducted that flickery black and white TV interview with Mick Jagger about drugs, with Jagger arriving by helicopter on the front lawn of Moggs' country mansion, and being so overawed that he forgot to talk Estuarial and ending up sounding just like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Ah, great days.)

At least Blair pretends to be English, but once the controls are wrested away by Mary Queen of Scots, our subjugation will be complete.

Do the Labour barons understand what's happened? Listening to Peter Hain this morning, you'd have to say they probably don't. Of course he's been given vast new estates across the Irish Sea to add to his lands in Wales, so his intermittently orange head is now a full-on Halloween pumpkin. But to suggest that Labour have won a great victory suggests he finally has slipped the surly bonds of reality.

'Well you know, it's still a good majority. It's bigger than the majority Margaret Thatcher had in 1979.'

Hmm...yes, but didn't she win 44 per cent of the vote?

Notting Hill Tories visit the suburbs

During my sojourn on the doorsteps (yes we did beat the Lib Dems- hurrah!), I met a couple of guys who came down from the Smoke to help out. Now, one...well, naturally one doesn't like to ask on a first meeting, but I gained the distinct impression they might have been...you know...a couple of those Notting Hill types.

Anyway, they were in despair about Mikey's 'liar' tactics and general Nasty Party campaign. And I have to say, they had a point- it didn't play at all well on many of the genteel Home Counties doorsteps I visited. Even those that Voter Vault had scored as pretty solid C.

These Hillistas reckoned we will never break through until we recreate a 'positive brand of opportunity and meritocracy'. We should have spent this election playing the long game and investing in that brand.

I chomped my lay-by sausage roll (a good trick if you can do it), and countered that Mikey didn't have the luxury of the long game. I wasn't sure we had it in the constituency either.

They shook their heads, and glanced at one another.

'Well now, look,'  I said, 'don't think I'm not a political sophisticate. Oh no- no worries on that score- my antennae quiver as much as the next man's. It's just that an awful lot of people are very concerned about crime and immigration. So, you know, we have to address it.' We'd already seen a couple of BNP posters on an estate that very morning.

'Hmmm. Just because the tabloids go on about it, doesn't mean most people are genuinely that concerned. It's simply not the stuff that decides elections. We have to create a positive vision: not get cornered into negativity by the Daily Mail.'

And of course, they're right. Absolutely right.

You can definitely see their point.

You can see it that is, except that flogging and immigration is really all we've got right now.

Because the beating heart of the Conservative brand- the economy- is just not beating like it used to. For all sorts of reasons, under Gordo, incomes, employment and house prices have all risen, and inflation has been subdued.

Yeah, there are a few gripes about taxes, but then the NHS is getting all that extra dosh.

Consequently, most people don't see the economic problem that needs a Tory fix.

And sadly, all the positivism in the world ain't going to change that. Which is why we're forced back onto some secondary-if less appealing- brand values that Labour hasn't managed to incorporate. Crime, school discipline, and immigration control.

But we do at least know that deliverance is out there somewhere. As Ken Clark puts it, all Labour governments eventually run out of money. And this one has nearly maxed out.

So let's have no more despondency in lay-bys. Let's have no more wailing and gnashing in the bistros of Notting Hill. The day is coming, my children. The day is coming.

Trust me. I'm positive.

Well...fairly.

Tories back with 28 seat majority

As predicted the Conservatives have been re-elected with a substantially increased majority.

The (almost) final results are:

Conservatives: 119

Labour:               74

Lib Dems:           17

Analysts say the continued failure of the two socialist parties is no surprise. This is one of the world's most dynamic countries, which now boasts the sixth biggest economy in the world, and where income per head is second only to the US. Here we have an electorate that really understands the importance of freedom and enterprise.

Commenting on the result, the Conservative leader said: 'This is a vote for liberation from big government. The people of the South East have spoken, and they demand independence now. They are no longer prepared to slog their guts out paying taxes to support a bunch of communist wasters up North. It's time for action!'

Yes!

Draw that giant arc from the Wash to the Solent. 21 million of us. 35 per cent of the UK population peddling away to produce 42 per cent the output.

We have just re-elected a Tory government. But instead of getting stuck into the business of rolling back the state, we're actually stuck into another five years of socialism imposed on us by the rest of the country.

We're bullied and robbed blind to prop up a fantasy workers' paradise up North.

What do we get out of the deal exactly?

It is time for action.

Postal voting fiasco

Two sons- both away from home- both applied for postal votes.

One arrived last week. The other has gone missing "due to clerical error". He's been told nothing can be done to rectify it, and the advice is to vote in person.

Yeah...ummm...the only thing being, see...ah, he's not actually at home...which is why he...umm...

Arrrgghhh.

Will there be a check to make sure it's not used by Tony's legions of postal ballot fraudsters? Nobody seems to know.

Banana anyone?

Doorstep politics eats time

The trouble with getting involved is that it takes up so much time. Since I started doorstep canvassing for the Old Firm, it's seriously eaten into my blogging activities.

It's not just the doorsteps (all that walking has given me thighs like tree trunks), but the town centre leafleting ("Get out of my way, you tosser"), the envelope stuffing (I've definitely got Stuffers' Wrist), and...well, just dealing with the pesky public (I mean, I thought I was getting involved in politics, but all these people keep getting in the way).

I've also found myself drafting responses to the avalanche of letters and phone calls which come in every day from the punters. Absolutely fascinating stuff- problems that never seem to make the news, questions about Tory policy, suggestions for new policies, advice on what we should insert into our own anatomies- it's all there. And after the Election, I'm going to blog some of it.

In terms of results, there's a good feeling that we're going to win the constituency, but nobody actually wants to say it, just in case. And nationally, I think we're all resigned to another five years of Socialism.

Still, as Matthew Parris first pointed out, this is probably not an election to win. It's just such a shame that that we all have to suffer such horrific damage before we can at last kick them out for another twenty years.

Protect and survive

With two weeks to go, the doorstep vibe agrees with the bookies. Labour to win with a 70 seat majority.

Hopefully, between now and 5 May this can be whittled down to a Callaghan-style LibLab gridlock. But the punters aren't convinced.

So we need to batten down the hatches for a bumpy few years.

First of course, taxes will ramp up again. The IMF agrees with the Wat Tyler envelope- £12 billion for starters. Say, another 1.5p on uncapped NI contributions for employers and employees. The archetypal tax on jobs.

But it won't be enough, and government borrowing will bust right through that old golden rule, pushing up borrowing costs for everyone. The virtuous public finance circle of Gordo's early years will go into reverse as tax revenues sag, and debt interest payments notch up.

Current housing market weakness will intensify, and negative equity will return to stalk the land. Consumers will retrench by hiding under the stairs, and refusing to answer calls from the bank's Indian call centre. Rivers of blood will flow down the High Street, with the CEOs of M&S, Sainsburys, Boots, Woolies, Smudger Smiths etc etc all found hanging from lamp posts.

Emergency spending cuts will follow, although obviously they won't be called that.

Unemployment will rise as public sector jobs are frozen and more private sector jobs head East. The economic engines splutter and flame out, and we plunge down towards the icy grey waters of the North Atlantic...

What to do?

Now.

Not when it's too late.

First, sell the house, and repay all debts.

Second, ship all remaining assets into an offshore account.

Third, move into the cash economy.

Fourth, dig up the lawn and plant subsistence crops. Or perhaps specialist cash crops such as opium.

Fifth, arm yourself.

You will have to last out until 2010 at the earliest.

Local Income Tax grab

Voters in the Lib Dems' target seats across the Southeast should familarise themselves with the proposed Local Income Tax (LIT), and how it would impact them.

Vince Cable and others keep telling us that LIT would be 'fairer' than the Council Tax, gainers would outnumber losers, and the average family would be better off. But that is the national picture. In London and the Southeast the outcome would be very different.

Nationally, the IFS estimates that 49 per cent of families would gain, 27 per cent would lose, and 24 per cent would remain broadly unchanged. As you might expect, most of the losers are in the top quartile of the income distribution. But not all of them. Surprisingly, given all that pious stuff about 'fairness', 1.5 million of the loser families are on incomes below the median. They would lose because they currently receive Council Tax benefit, which the Lib Dems would abolish.

Overall, the IFS estimates a small average net gain of £1.37 per week. Although Cable likes to crow about this, it's nothing to do with the magic of LIT: it arises solely because the Lib Dems would contribute an additional £2.3 billion from general taxation to soften the switch to LIT, thus ensuring gainers outnumber losers. £2.3 billion amounts to half the additional revenue they reckon would flow from their new 50 per cent top income tax rate. So while presenting the net gain as an attraction of LIT, all they're actually doing is to reduce one tax by increasing another. Bribing us with our own money to accept their pet scheme.

And these are national figures. The big problem for voters in the Southeast is that many of their incomes are significantly above the national average, so many more than 27 per cent would lose out. According to ONS's Regional Trends, average household income in London and the Southeast is about 30 per cent higher than the national average (and before anyone says they don't care about rich bastards in the stockbroker belt, remember that the cost of living is also much higher- housing costs are about 40 per cent above the national average).

Take Guildford. In 2001, the Lib Dems ousted the Tory MP for the first time since 1428, and they are doing their damnedest to retain the seat.

Yet the average household income in Guildford is more than ten grand above the national average- a gap of 35 per cent which puts the average for Guildford in the top quartile nationally (eg see here).

Now, the IFS and others reckon the LIT would need to be charged at an average rate of about 3.75 per cent. So with their higher incomes, the average household in Guildford would be paying about £400 pa more than the national average. And more than their £1300 average Council Tax, which is in itself way above the national average.

Of course, in theory, the point of LIT is that it's a local tax, so given their higher tax base, the local authorities in Guildford would have scope to set a lower rate. Hmm...that hasn't worked with Council Tax, and it's unlikely with LIT. Central government controls the big purse strings, and routinely 'equalises' tax resources between authorities by allocating rate support grant away from affluent areas like Guildford. There's no reason to think a Lib Dem government operating LIT would be any different.

No, whatever the national picture may be, that average hard-working family in Guildford would be worse off under LIT. As would the average family in Maidenhead, Newbury, Reading, and a host of other Tory/Lib Dem marginals across the Southeast.

There is no doubt.

It's just that somehow we have to get it across without making voters nod off.