New Labour, proud to the end

I'm not sure whether I'll find the strength to read all 76 pages of the Labour Party Manifesto 2010.

I think the introduction says it all:

We are proud of our country and the way it has changed since 1997.
...
We changed our country because we rejected the philosophy of the 1980s which said that government should just get out of the way

Whatever we may accuse them of, we can't say they lack chutzpah.

UK Debt Clock Tour

The TaxPayers' Alliance have launched their UK Debt Clock Tour.

The custom-built clock, is one metre high by seven metres long, and mounted on the back of a 14m lorry. Its 80cm (32 inch) red LED display will count up the nation’s debt at a breakneck speed:

• £5,169 per second
• £310,212 per minute
• £18,607,306 per hour
• £446,575,342 per day

The Debt Clock will start the tour on the morning of Monday 12th April showing a national debt figure of £781,512,328,767 and by the time the tour ends on Monday 26th April, it will have climbed to £788,210,958,904 a staggering increase of £6,698,630,137.

Political correctness and the Great Ignored

On the day the election was announced, Gerald Warner wrote:

The great charade begins, for that is what this election is. The “modernising” of the Conservative Party has deprived the electorate of choice. As the weasel terms “centre-right” and “centre-left” indicate, the two main parties have informally merged into one: the consensual Centre. Anyone advocating a programme that departs from the EU-approved, soft-totalitarian liberal-left is branded as “far-right”. The filleting of the Tory Party of any philosophical core by the Cameronian gang has left it an empty husk, manipulated by the Pavlovian reflexes of Political Correctness.

It is a sad spectacle indeed. Even those who don't live in a safe Labour seat do not have the option of voting for a true conservative.

Political Correctness is an evil force that is now beyond satire.

Laura Midgley, co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, has written an excellent article for Critical Reaction. The brilliance is in the fact that she gives voice to those who supposedly benefit from our PC culture, with quotes from decent people who want to be treated as individuals, rather than members of 'underprivileged' groups. We hear from a female journalist, an Asian councillor, a black police constable, and a gay actor.

Midgley concludes:

I want this piece to show that those who push political correctness often do so without the consent or agreement of the particular group they seek to “protect”. Second hand offence and indignation on behalf on another has become the norm. At best these are well intentioned but misguided efforts. At worst they are part of a dangerous, controlling trend resulting in social engineering which is going to take a long time to unpick and put right.

Those who doubt the seriousness of the problem should consider the furore over Chris Grayling's recent comments.

Randall: Honesty is the first casualty when there's an election to win

I came across an article in The Telegraph by Jeff Randall, remarkable for its reference to Karl Hess:

More than 40 years after Karl Hess identified the internal contradiction of "free gift" politics, the concept is thriving among those who seek our endorsement. Focus groups tell ministers and their would-be replacements that the public expect both higher benefits and lower taxes. But when pressed about who should pay for an expansion of social services, almost no one volunteers. Picking up the bill is someone else's task.

For the modern British politician, this means taking a position that is outwith criticism, preferably one that can barely be identified, while delaying all the difficult choices. Little wonder that our pension system is crumbling, and welfare reform exists only as a subject for academic discussion.

Things look bleak indeed.

Why work?

James Bartholomew has highlighted a Telegraph article by Fraser Nelson:

If an unemployed Pole gets a job as a barista in Starbucks, even for 15 hours a week, his situation improves dramatically. A young man in Britain would be just £10 a week better off than if he stayed at home on benefits. Why break your back for an extra tenner?

Why indeed?

I'd be interested to know how long immigrants must reside in the UK before they qualify for benefits. I had assumed that EU migrants, at least, were immediately eligible.

Good figures are hard to come by, but my own experience echoes Nelson's: waiters and bartenders in Oxford are disproportionately Eastern European. If these migrants are eligible for benefits, why do they choose to work instead? Probably because they have a certain amount of pride, don't feel the same sense of entitlement as native Britons, and have not yet been caught in the welfare trap.

As Nelson notes,

The situation is even more pernicious for young women who leave school with low qualifications, because the alternative to low-paid work is pregnancy. A woman with one child and on benefits has, on average, more disposable income than a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it's more than a receptionist or library assistant. With three, it's a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper. So there should be no mystery about why Britain came to have so many children in workless households (one in five, the highest in Europe). The young mothers, and the young men on benefits, are walking down a road to dependency paved for them by the state.

This is a peculiar definition of compassion. What Beveridge denounced as the "giant evil" of idleness is now being incubated on a mass scale by the very welfare state designed to eradicate it.

Procreation has always been a choice, but this is more true today than ever. Abstinence is no longer required. Contraceptives are widely available, and even subsidised. Abortions are legal, and likewise subsidised. Parenthood should not be undertaken lightly, and it should never make you better off.

You don't have to be a eugenicist to see that our government is encouraging exactly the wrong sort of person to breed. Their progeny benefit from neither nature nor nurture, and we all suffer for it — directly, in spiralling welfare payments, and indirectly through ever-increasing crime and classroom disruption. Of course, nobody suffers more under this system than the welfare children themselves. It is a peculiar kind of compassion indeed.

Let us hope that if the Conservatives win power, they will rediscover a bit of their "nastiness". Sometimes, as good parents know, you have to be cruel to be kind.

Wash-up 2010: Labour get their way on DNA

Yesterday I wrote:

It's great to see [the broadband tax] killed off (along with the increase in cider duty), but I dread to think which terrible laws will get rushed through in return.

Today The Register reports:

The Conservatives have dropped their opposition to the government's planned changes to the National DNA Database for fear of being branded soft on crime in the run-up to the election.

The opposition had planned to use the Parliamentary "wash-up" this week to insist fewer DNA profiles be retained from people arrested but not charged or convicted of any crime.
...
The Tories' acquiescence goes against comments by Grayling in January, when he said: "The DNA issue is a real point of principle... in the final days before a general election, there will be no deals to be done.

It is of course possible that the Conservatives will rediscover their principled objection after the election, but I wouldn't bet on it. In any case, they were only quibbling about details:

Now they plan to agree to government proposals to cut retention to six years for innocent people, from the current indefinite period for everyone arrested. The Tories had argued for only a three-year retention period, for those arrested for a violent or sexual offence - the same regime already in place in Scotland.

There's a sting in that last sentence, for Scottish MPs continue to vote to deny the English and Welsh freedoms enjoyed by the Scots.

Wash-up 2010: broadband tax gone, for now

The Register reports that Labour's broadband tax has not survived wash-up:

The Tories forced the government to drop a 50p-a-month tax on every landline last night as ministers made deals to get their budget plans through before the election.

The levy had been intended to pay for rollout of fibre optic cables in rural areas.

The Conservatives hailed the outcome as a "victory for consumers". The measure had been the centrepiece of last year's "Digital Britain" report.

The government folded because it is under pressure to pass remaining legislation this week in a bout of legislative horse-trading known as the "wash-up". Opposition parties use the scramble to win concessions, although it is unusual for the government to drop parts of the Finance Bill.

It's great to see this tax killed off (along with the increase in cider duty), but I dread to think which terrible laws will get rushed through in return. What a dysfunctional process.