I hope this serves as a valuable lesson to you. For a government that claims to be so interested in listening to the public, the fact that your original proposals for reforming capital gains tax were met with such anger and disbelief in the business community shows how fake your promises are. Anyone with a shred of business acumen would know that your proposals would have damaged small and large organisations across the whole country, which begs the question of how you came up with it in the first place? Maybe the books aren’t quite balancing at the moment, thanks to Uncle Gordon’s complete inability to run our public finances correctly, so you thought you could sneak through some tax increases without anyone noticing? Nice try.
At long last you might be coming under a bit of pressure. You have somehow circumvented the issue of why you exist for a considerable period of time, but much as I loathe the Labour government they are thankfully starting to question the value you add to society.
You are classed as charities because you claim to offer a ‘public benefit’ and therefore are exempt from paying VAT. If taking bright students out of mainstream education whilst ignoring those who probably need your help the most classes as a ‘public benefit’, then I must be living in a dreamworld. How about this - let’s take away your VAT exemption because private schools only benefit a small fraction of the population and force every private school to allocate 10-20% of their intake to local schoolchildren regardless of their intellect or ability to pay. Only then can you even begin to justify your existence because you will be spreading your resources over a much wider catchment.
I know that traditionally, many conservatives support private schools - I went to one myself. However, their impact on society and on educational standards in this country is not as clear cut as some would have us believe. If I was Prime Minister, I wouldn’t politely ask you to change your ways, I’d force you to. It’s about time you started helping those who genuinely need your help.
To my mind, the phrase ‘extraordinary development’ should be reserved for important areas such as advances in scientific understanding, international crises or sporting upsets. To use this precise phrase to describe how you accidentally miscalculated the number of foreign workers in this country by a mere 300,000 people strikes me as incompetence rather than an extraordinary development.
The government can talk all they want about extending the controls on Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants. With 1.1 million people arriving in the UK since 1997, the pressure on our public services is obviously going to be crippling. The growth in our economy is all well and good, but if the price we pay for economic growth is the complete breakdown of community cohesion and quality of life for British citizens then how can we accept this? An open door policy to immigration represents the most terrifying ignorance of how ordinary people in this country are affected by immigration. One wonders if you’ve ever spoken to someone on their doorstep about how they feel the situation is developing. What will it be like in a generation’s time, or two generations? British people already feel like they are strangers in their own country and I sincerely hope that when the Conservatives come to power they deal with this issue in a decisive manner.
Ouch. You really stuck this knife in this morning in The Times about the Lib Dems. Even though I have no problem with them as a party, I do tend to agree with you by questioning what purpose they actually serve.
As I see it, their support over the last few years has come down to three fairly independent factors:
1. The Iraq war - they opposed it, the voters respected that and probably agreed to some extent, but now the only debate is how quickly to get out of Iraq which renders their arguments irrelevant.
2. Apathy towards Labour and the Conservatives - they will always pick up some protest votes if people get bored of the other parties, but the Brown and Cameron bounces have left them trailing.
3. Charles Kennedy - I, like many other people, had great respect for Charles and he had a wonderful way with the public and media. Sadly, he has gone and his support among swing voters has deserted the Lib Dems.
I agree with you that the third point may work to the advantage of the Lib Dems with a new and more dynamic leader in place. Your belief that there will always be a place for Liberals is undoubtedly true, although bizarrely their place may well be in the Conservative Party rather than the Lib Dems.
Your strategy of addressing the West Lothian question is the correct one. No drama, no glamour, no hype - just asking the sensible questions. Alex Salmond has made some fairly inflammatory remarks this morning. He may well be right about Scotland becoming considerably richer should they have control of their own oil, but this is no cause for concern.
There are two ways of looking at this problem, both of which support your stance. Firstly from a financial point of view, England would probably suffer in the short term if we lost control of oil revenues. However, North Sea oil has not got more than a few decades of revenue left and when it dries up, we do not want to be anywhere near the situation because it will collapse whichever economy is in control of it. Secondly from the perspective of the union, this does not have to cause any ruptures or strain between England and Scotland - in fact, I think handing them the North Sea oil while rebalancing the Barnett formula in favour of England (if not making Scotland financially autonomous) will probably improve relations between us. Matthew Elliott and the Taxpayers Alliance are the people to speak to about the sums of money involved, so use their expertise and knowledge to your advantage.
Stick to your guns, Mr Cameron. Alex Salmond will fight to the death for Scottish interests, but always remember that English and Scottish interests may well turn out to be one and the same thing.
Come on, Jack. Labour trying to convince the public that you care about civil liberties? Obviously we have been living on a different planet for the past 10 years, because here on Planet Earth the government has been eroding civil liberties at every available opportunity and shows no signs of stopping yet.
Speed cameras, proposals for ID cards, getting captured by a couple of hundred CCTV cameras a day, everyone’s phone records being available to every civil servant, holding the DNA of people who haven’t even been charged with a crime - have you forgotten all this? You and Gordon Brown saying that you want to ‘write a new chapter’ in our country’s civil liberties history at the same time as you are proposing to increase the detention limit for terrorist suspects without trial is staggeringly two-faced. It is Labour who have cynically used terrorism to start spying on every aspect of our lives and the Conservatives are absolutely right to label this as “desperate” spin.
How about listening to civil liberties groups and seeing what they have to say and what recommendations they have - I thought Uncle Gordon was quite into listening to the public, isn’t that his mantra these days? Oh right, I forgot. He only listens when he knows that he’ll get the answer that he wants.
Your fortright but sensible views on abortion in this morning’s Leader were much appreciated. Abortion is a desperately sensitive subject and you gave it the respect it deserved. So often, people lose perspective on this issue as they get tangled up in their own strongly held and commited beliefs. Thankfully you took a step back and looked at the realities of the situation we are facing.
Across the country there are very very few abortions that take place as late as 24 weeks, and are normally done so when the mother’s health is at risk. The vast majority of abortions are done before 13 weeks, which offers some comfort. But having given the numbers, I’m glad you turned your attention to where we go from here. Contraception campaigns and better support networks are absolutely crucial if we want to make sure that people understand how serious abortion is. I agree that there is an alarming casualness about abortions, especially amongst young people, and many are still unaware of the possible health risks involved. Even though I’m glad to see that religion is finally being put to one side in this debate, the physical and psychological impact of abortion is not to be underestimated.
Your soft and comforting words in today’s Guardian are worthless, I’m afraid. Your failure to act decisively in Burma led to the deaths of huge numbers of innocent protesters, and here you are trying to make out that you are fighting the military regime.
Bearing in mind you are Prime Minister, you are still shockingly naive when it comes to international politics. In your article today you talk about how the UN Security Council is right behind the work of their Special Envoy, and how the EU is imposing even tougher sanctions on Burma. Are you so removed from reality that you think this will stop the regime from continuing on their previous course? Unbelievable. If the best the UN can muster is a single individual being sent to have a chat with the military leaders and say how unhappy we all are, I doubt they will be quaking in their boots. And why do you think sanctions will help? As was proved quite conclusively in Iraq, sanctions hit the people you are trying to protect hardest of all - the government goes relatively unscathed.
I’d like to think you cared about the Burmese people, bearing in mind they are being tortured, abused, detained and murdered - especially when the Labour Party used precisely these justifications to invade Iraq. I’ve said all along that your tough words were no consolation to the Burmese people, and tragically I was right.
Thank you for trying to hold the government to account for their failure to back their rhetoric with action on deporting foreign criminals.
To me, it’s rather simple. If a foreign national commits a crime in this country, they get sent home and are never allowed to return. None of the rubbish about their human rights being threatened if they are sent home - if they were so worried about their human rights, perhaps they shouldn’t have committed a crime in the UK in the first place, and what about British people’s right to live in a safe society?
More than 11,000 of the 81,000 prisoners in this country are foreigners, which means the taxpayer forks out around £500 million a year to keep these people in the UK. I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how this is acceptable. Some common sense wouldn’t go amiss - so please Mr Herbert, tear up the stupid human rights legislation that keeps these people in this country.
With the effort supposedly being expended to try and bring the key players in the Middle East to the negotiating table, it is saddening that the Palestinian factions are turning on each other at a time where we need them to put their heads together. I always said that excluding Hamas from political circles was going to end in disaster and their frustration is now boiling over, leading to a complete breakdown in communications. I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: you don’t stop terrorism by blowing people up and torturing them - you solve it by listening to people and working with them, not against them.
I give up. You just can’t make your mind up about education. This nonsense about the diplomas is getting out of hand, because you haven’t thought your plans through.
The new 14-19 diplomas are a joke. That’s not my opinion; it’s the opinion of the universities and employers who are incredibly reluctant to accept them because the qualifications are not sufficiently rigorous to be put on a par with A-levels. So what is your solution? Scrap A-levels. Great plan, honestly. I can really feel all the time and effort that’s gone into this. Your new diplomas do not have anything like the academic challenge that A-levels provide, despite A-levels being made so much easier over the past decade or so.
What your ridiculous plans fail to accept is that we need a strong academic and vocational route through compulsory education, but this is not possible if you try to make them somehow ‘equivalent’. Academic and vocational studies are clearly not comparable in terms of the skills and knowledge that pupils acquire, so will you please let this socialist nonsense go and finally admit that you cannot have exactly the same qualification for two completely different areas of study and you do not have to give everyone the same certificate. We need to design parallel systems of training for further study and workplace training (like France, Germany and Sweden) instead of trying to put it all under one umbrella heading. Vocational training is just as important to this country as academic studies, so stop trying to bring academic studies down to the level of your terrible vocational qualifications - why not start improving workplace training and apprenticeships (which are also a joke)?
Some of your points in today’s Telegraph voiced what a lot of people are feeling about Gordon Brown at this moment in time. The confusion and disillusionment is there for all to see.
I certainly agree with your assessment of events over the last few months. No-one seems quite sure who Gordon Brown is fighting these days; I’m not entirely convinced Gordon Brown knows who he is fighting. He stormed into office with promises, sometimes supported by backing away from Blair’s policies such as super casinos, in a clear attempt to fight off the shadow of Tony Blair’s reign as Prime Minister. It was not long before he also started fighting the Conservatives, as exemplified over the conference season and beyond. His need to steal policies was a huge feather in the cap for the Opposition, and shows how desperate he is to fight them off and nullify their threat.
But amongst all the political posturing, the voters are still unsure of what he stands for, as he seems to spend a lot of time fighting himself. He talks about British jobs for British workers, making him sound like a fascist, and yet behind the public persona he starts to reign back public service reform designed to introduce the market and refuses to lay a finger on the Tube, train and postal unions - conjuring images of a rampant socialist. In theory, his simultaneous movements to the Left and Right cancel out and leave him somewhere in the Centre, but we just don’t know.
The last thing a Prime Minister wants to do is sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the electorate. At least with Tony Blair we knew where we stood; he was a lying, deceitful scumbag, but at least we knew that. Gordon Brown is nothing more than an empty vessel floating on very choppy political waters.
It was only a matter of time before the lawyers got their teeth into the blogosphere and even though it didn’t exactly grab the headlines today, it seems as though the mask of anonymity provided online is about to be taken away. Have a read of the story, and leave your reactions in the comments box. I have a bad feeling this might be the beginning of the end….
I feel a lot of admiration and sympathy for the work you do at the Taxpayers Alliance. When you see evidence of inequality and unfair taxation, you try to bring it into the media spotlight. I was wondering whether you think there is any chance of changing the approach of the government with regard to the Barnett formula, seeing as yet again English people are being heavily discriminated against as reported by the Daily Telegraph.
How any government can let one portion of the population subsidise another portion to the tune of £1,500 a year per head is beyond me. As I understand it, the funding formula works on the basis of how impoverished an area is. Scotland has got serious problems, especially in its cities, with drug use and unemployment so the formula rewards them extremely generously - and the same applies to Wales. Furthermore, the South of England also generously subsidises the North of England because of poverty measures as well. As I understand it, 75% of business taxes on companies in the South also get sent up to the North of the country. My question to you Matthew is how can you stop this?
Are the Conservatives the answer? The only way that I can see this ending would be a Conservative government deciding that taxes must be raised locally. Each local council could set its own rate of local income tax and collect and spend the proceeds, thereby cutting out central government from the loop (for at least part of their tax funding, anyway). This would mean that there would be no cross-subsidisation from one area to the next, bringing the problems of the Barnett formula to an end. I thought Scottish devolution was the stepping stone to financial autonomy, but it is clear that this has not happened - and Labour are unlikely to do anything to jeopardise their Scottish votes because without them, they’d lose an election in England.
So, do you think local income tax would help? Is full Scottish independence likely, or will Labour cling on to Scotland for as long as possible?
I’m sure your first instinct as a Labour minister is to pretend that you care about equality and try to appeal to voters by not looking as though you are cracking down on black people. Let’s be honest, Labour are so desperate for votes that this will be hard to ignore - you wouldn’t want to lose the ethnic minority voters with the poll ratings so poor for you already. But when a respected organisation that in the past has stood up for such groups apparently supports the police targetting them in a bid to lower crime levels, you don’t really have anywhere to turn because ignoring advice from key organisations within the police force would be foolish.
Personally, stop and search is fine with me. If I’m walking around late at night in a notoriously bad area where crime rates are high, I don’t see how anyone can complain if the police want to see what they’re up to. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re from an ethnic minority or not. The shocking incidents of murders, especially of black males, in London particularly is a good enough reason to start being more proactive in keeping weapons off the streets. I’m not saying everyone should become a suspect. However, the police have a duty to protect the public and they cannot wait around for these problems to happen.
Let this letter be a stern warning to you - I don’t like you, this country doesn’t like you, we will never forgive you for the mess you left this country in.
If you even think about trying to get yourself into a position where you can drag Britain even further into the joke of an organisation that is EU, you will face a serious backlash from the British people. Gordon Brown is already lying to us and undermining our trust in him thanks to his incompetence and deceitful actions (did he learn that from you?) but I am strongly urging you to stay out of the EU for fear of making other European leaders think that we actually like them and are happy with the EU as it stands. There is no doubt that economically, socially and politically, the EU is heaping misery on this country - in part, thanks to your desperation to pull us deeper and deeper into further integration - and if you get involved, you’ll only make things worse for this country.
On behalf of the British people, please stay away from the EU. You’ll only make things worse for this country - just like old times.
Your thoroughly justified anger in today’s Telegraph was verging on an educated rant, and consequently made for good reading.
Although you touched on many recent news stories, your point about public services was the most cutting. The fact that many ministers have never done a ‘real job’ means that they are completely detached from the ‘real world’. Labour ministers have no concept of serving the taxpayer, they have no concept of morality and decency, and even if they wanted to do a good job I’m not sure they’d be able to. You are right to highlight the danger of individuals spending their whole working lives in and around the Westminster village without venturing into other fields of work and acquiring expertise - especially in public services - to help inform their decisions at ministerial level. The apparent detachment with reality when Labour announce their latest policies is always mind-boggling.
The only solution, as any Conservative will tell you, is to put the power back in the hands of the people. If you make the money follow the people, rather than people always trying to follow the money thanks to the centralised government we have now, politicians and their cronies will be cut out of the loop and everyone will be the better for it. Thankfully the Conservative Party have realised this and would make changes along these lines should they be elected, but it will be interesting to see how much power they can relinquish should they be in control of the purse strings themselves.
I am writing to you with the greatest sympathy, seeing as you are clearly suffering from memory problems despite your tender age.
I read this morning that in order to stamp your authority on the Lib Dem leadership contest, you will put it to the party that they face oblivion unless they broaden their appeal. Crikey, talk about over the top. The phrase ‘broadening our appeal’ is becoming a bit of a cliche these days, seeing as it always translates as ‘we need to win more votes because I’m terrified we are going to get shafted at the next election’. Gordon Brown has been frantically trying to broaden the appeal of the Labour Party since he took charge, and thankfully that has spectacularly backfired. But your memory problems are most evident when it comes to David Cameron and his actions since become leader of the opposition. Apparently you will say today that “we will have to be bold. We will have to move outside our comfort zone, and take more risks than ever before” - isn’t that exactly what Cameron has been saying about the Conservatives for two years?!?! Talk about deja vu. You’ll also state that “The leadership election gives us a great opportunity to talk – plainly and directly – to the British people, an opportunity to be an outward-looking party again”. Is there a book of Cameronisms that you’ve lifted this all from?
Everyone knows that you’d like to take the Lib Dems to the Right, despite enlisting the help of Steve Webb; and you - like David Cameron - are all too aware that repositioning a party on the political spectrum can be at best complicated and at worst a disaster. It took Cameron two years to get it right. When is the next General Election? Oh yer, it’s in two years.
If I was Prime Minister, I would go after you like there’s no tomorrow. A ‘fat tax’ would be introduced, whereby any food - be it from a fast food outlet, restaurant, supermarket etc - will be heavily taxed if it contains above a certain level of fat (especially saturated) or salt, depending on the weight of the food. How high would this tax be? Probably a 50% tax in addition to the shelf price, maybe moving it up to 75% or 100% in future.
The strange thing is that I don’t believe the government should interfere in our everyday lives, but at the same time the goverment has a responsibility to protect taxpayers’ interests. The NHS is already paying out huge sums to treat adults, and increasingly children as well, for obesity and weight-related illnesses, so the government is perfectly within their rights to start recouping some of that money. Furthermore, the massive increase in price of unhealthy food will force people to consider healthier alternatives, which society will benefit from enormously. Some people might be tempted to ban unhealthy food but I think people should still be given the choice of buying it. However, the cost must reflect not only the costs to the producer - it must reflect the negative externalities created by the poor quality of the food.
Just pray I don’t become Prime Minister anytime soon.
Does anyone know what odds are being offered on England failing to qualify for Euro 2008 plus England losing the Rugby World Cup Final plus Lewis Hamilton failing to win the Formula One World Championship?
I doubt you are a very popular man in and around the BBC at the moment. 2,800 jobs are to be chopped and you are the one who has instigated it. You’re probably in for quite a lot of flack over this, but I find it astonishing that even an incident such as this is not acting as a catalyst for a wider debate about the BBC.
As far as I understand it, we pay our license fee to the BBC because they provide a ‘public service’. To my mind, this means that they will produce a range of programmes that would not otherwise be produced in a free market for television companies. Educational programmes for children, the Open University, awareness campaigns, charity events - these are the kind of programmes that would be probably become few and far between in a completely open market where broadcasters produce what they want to. The BBC should therefore focus on the programmes that provide a public service. It is baffling to note the crap quality of programmes that the BBC produces. Jeremy Paxman did a wonderful job of highlighting shows such as ‘Help me Anthea, I’m infested’, which are obviously a disgraceful use of taxpayers money. Not only should those programmes all be cut, but there are several other pertinent questions that need to be asked alongside this: Why do BBC3 and BBC4 exist, when BBC1 and BBC2 contain so much rubbish that there is plenty of room for better shows? Why do the BBC provide services such as GCSE Bitesize when this service would clearly be provided by private companies (and already is, but they cannot compete with the BBC)? Why are Radio 1 and Radio 2 not commercial radio stations, when they are clearly able to survive on their own and do not provide a ‘public service’?
The BBC should not produce programmes and should not offer additional services that would be provided by private companies in their absence, including other television networks. The BBC is almost granted monopoly status in some areas of broadcasting, which is NOT what the BBC is supposed to be doing. Most of the BBC should be sold off, the license fee should be slashed, and the focus should be turned back to public service broadcasting which was the original attention.
Much as you’d like to shout from the rooftops about how wonderful your ‘open door’ policy on immigration is, the Home Office report today provides scant evidence to support your claim.
Your argument revolves around some media-friendly figures. Apparently, migration produced £6 billion of economic growth last year, migrants had high skills levels and were hardworking - resulting in them paying more tax than UK-born workers. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Wrong wrong wrong. Any economic benefit was nullified by the extra costs of schools and hospitals, so their tax receipts had no overall effect on our economy as the government had to spend all the extra cash they received. Your report also mentioned that almost every region in the entire UK is now having problems with crime and housing thanks to the levels of immigration under Labour. Furthermore, the report mysteriously de-emphasised issues such as integration and community cohesion (which have been the biggest losers), making claims that the UK has ‘benefited’ from mass immigration look rather shaky. To say that migrants have “complementary skills” to the UK workforce must be some kind of joke, seeing as many other reports have documented how migrants are displacing UK workers, especially in low-paid jobs. You may also remember the headlines not so long ago about how crime has massively increased in some areas due to uncontrolled immigration. And I wonder if you took into account migrants’ access to our benefits system, which as we all know results in taxpayers’ money being sent to other countries. Have a read of THIS if you would like to find out more.
This report does nothing to detract from the seriousness of the problems caused by mass immigration. Migrants make a net contribution of almost zero to the government but have contributed to the breakdown of communities around the country. Well done, Liam - nice work.
The argument seems to be this: smoking and alcohol kill lots of people, most other drugs don’t kill lots of people, so let’s legalise all drugs because smoking and alcohol are worse than most of them. Oh dear, how very deluded. How about we start cracking down on smoking and binge drinking, instead of flooding the country with INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS drugs that fry your brain and cause serious physiological damage in most cases. Cannabis is much more dangerous than nicotine, despite what the propoganda wants you to believe, every ecstacy pill destroys brain cells that never grow back - need I go on? If you legalise these drugs, lots more people will start dying from them. What’s more, many more people will suffer long-term damage to their health, and guess who pays for that? Exactly, I do, and so does every other taxpayer.
Honestly Jacqui, I really don’t like the Labour government but I hope that this time we can stand side by side and silence these idiots who have no idea how serious opening this Pandora’s Box could be. Legalising drugs will unleash misery on society and our health services, so instead of listening to these lunatics I suggest we focus on cracking down on smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.
