Letters From A Tory

Dear Alex Salmond,

I doubt you’ll be pleased to read about how little impact you have had in trying to force a referendum on the independence of Scotland.  Even though it has always been blatantly obvious how much the Scots hate the English, you clearly underestimated how much the Scots enjoy financially free-riding off the back of our Parliament.

Scottish voters still trust Westminster more than they trust Holyrood with their money and do not want tax powers to be transferred to Scotland.  What you will also notice in the poll results is that 58% of Scots agreed that they have “the best of both worlds” by having their own Parliament but still remaining part of the UK - what a surprise!  Amazingly enough, the Scots quite like getting a block grant from Westminster using the Barnett Formula which gives them an extra £1,500 per head than English people.  54% of Scots agreed that this current arrangement was the right one, while a mere 20% thought it best for Holyrood to raise its own taxes and spend them.

Allow me to make a suggestion: as you’ll never get independence on your terms, how about you start trying to gain more financial independence by getting Scotland to raise and spend its own revenue?  Sod the poll ratings - if you’re serious about Scottish independence, I’d like to see you fighting for a more distanced relationship from Westminster in political and financial terms.  Anyone who claims to support Scottish independence but is still happy to take handouts from Westminster is a fraud, and I’m beginning to think I should include you in that category.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Faced with a ballot paper, it will come home to them that Ken Livingstone has been there too long, Boris Johnson is too much of a risk and they will vote for me. I don’t think it’s over until it’s over.”

- Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem mayoral candidate who obviously hasn’t been reading the polls

Dear David Aaronovitch,

I find it very amusing that you are trying to mount a backlash against the Labour rebels in this way.  Throughout your article in The Times today, you suggest that the “government’s natural supporters are merely whingeing - and forgetting the achievements”.  Oh dear, you really haven’t been paying attention for the last few months.

Let us look at the Labour achievements that you claim have been forgotten by the party supporters:

“mortgages had become cheapo” - yes, they have, thanks to reckless and poorly-judged lending on the part of banks.  This has NOTHING to do with the government and has played a huge part in the record levels of debt and the number of people facing negative equity.

“unemployment was low” - by some measures, perhaps, but the number of economically inactive people in the UK is around 4-5 million thanks to Labour putting people on benefits to stop them being included in the unemployment count.

“crime was, in general, falling” - a contentious statement.  The latest figures show that even though recorded crime might be falling, violent crime is rising and fear of crime is higher than ever.

“the economy was performing better than in most other similar countries” - oh please.  Propping up an economy based on consumer debt and reckless band lending is hardly ‘performing better’.  In fact, house prices are now falling and our currency is very weak compared to the Euro due to the phony growth of the last ten years.  Our service industry growth has been masking serious cracks elsewhere in our economy.

“huge infrastructural improvements, as evidenced in new school buildings and hospitals” - we now have a PFI debt of around £90 billion thanks to Labour’s crackpot building initiatives, where new schools and hospitals are underused and often empty (literally) due to Labour’s mismanagement.

So Mr Aaronovitch, the Labour “rats” may be sinking Brown’s ship as you posited, but they are doing so with good reason.  Labour has been in power for 11 years and has done untold damage to our economy and society.  If I were in their position, I’d be sending out my CV.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

If I had been asked to predict which issue is most likely to trigger an attack or Iran, or possibly World War III, I probably wouldn’t have said Barbie.  Obviously I still have a lot to learn.

Dear Greater London Assembly,

I’m glad that you have realised the potential for fraud in the postal voting system for the Mayoral elections and are trying to rectify this by training officials to spot fake signatures and votes, but I fear that you are climbing an impossibly steep hill.

Postal voting is so open to fraud that I wonder whether we can have any confidence in it whatsover.  The report released today suggests that Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi “clans” in areas such as Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley and Birmingham have been responsible for half the postal voting fraud since 2000 as they have clearly mastered the effort of pressuring family members into voting for their chosen candidate.  Ethnic minority women in particular have suffered from the lack of privacy that a ballot box provides.  These ‘clans’ abuse their patriachal roots to force family members to complete their postal votes in a communal area or even hand their voting form over to ‘party representatives’ who completes them.  As one commenter put it on The Times website, “Further evidence of how immigration has enriched our culture”.

Northern Ireland has a far superior system, where voters register individually and provide their signature, national insurance number and date of birth, which are all checked when they vote.  In addition, voters must produce photographic identification before being issued a ballot paper at the polling booth.  In my opinion, moving elections to a weekend would also help to combat this fraud.  In any case, postal voting sounds great in theory but should be consigned to the scrap heap once the Mayoral elections are complete.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Sexual addiction is comparable to the other, better known addictions, such as drugs, alcohol and gambling. Many people suffer different types of this disease. …I hope that in time people will be able to understand and forgive me as I fight this difficult, personal battle.”

- Lord Laidlaw, who has admitted to receiving treatment for his ’sex addiction’ and has apparently been fighting this terrible disease for his whole adult life which is ironic, given his surname

Yes he has, if you believe what you read in the Times and the Telegraph this morning.

“I absolutely had total belief in Tony Blair, and I felt it was a privilege to help in any way I could both he and the Labour party.”

- Lord Levy, who did absolutely nothing wrong and was completely innocent in the cash-for-honours investigation

Dear Alice Thomson,

Absolutely spot on.  In amongst the closed schools, the government’s brave face and frustrated parents, you have picked out the core reason why the NUT should indeed attend “a lesson in democracy” themselves.

Trying to blackmail the government yesterday (and now supported with further threats of strike action in today’s papers) is nothing more than childish.  Only one in four of the teaching unions and neither of the headteachers’ unions wanted to go on strike, and only 24% of the one union that did go on strike actually voted in favour of strike action.  As you rightly pointed out, schools have been closed just a couple of weeks before GCSEs and A-levels begin and it is appalling that teachers, who signed on the dotted line saying that they would teach children and support them achieve their educational goals, should walk out like this.  Not only did the strike screw with pupils’ futures, it also messed parents around and caused chaos for many families who had to take the time off work.  Your statistics were also poignant: over the last decade, teachers have received higher pay increases than nurses and the police in addition to being offered a higher pay increase than the police and civil servants this year, so for them to walk out over pay is unacceptable.

As a former teacher, I know teaching can be hard.  We both agree that teachers have a lot of things to justifiably complain about, but we also agree that pay is not one of them.  If teachers showed more of a commitment to teaching, the public would be a lot more willing to listen.  Right now, I wouldn’t even give those who went on strike the time of day.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

I can’t make my mind about whether THIS STORY shows that God doesn’t exist or shows that God just has a cruel sense of humour.  Hmmm.

Dear Justine Greening,

Thank you for pursuing the government over their ‘green taxes’ sham.  I am always happy to see the government taking a serious interest in environmental issues, but slapping massive tax hikes on motorists is designed to raise £2.5 billion of revenue for the empty Treasury coffers instead of trying to help reduce pollution.

This cleverly disguised policy was always a con and you are right to suggest that it will have “virtually no impact on the environment”.  The new showroom tax being introduced in 2010 merely adds insult to injury as any justification on environmental grounds has already been lost through increasing vehicle excise duty for precisely that reason.  However, the Conservatives are going to have to think about this carefully because green taxes are deceitful and ineffective.  Road pricing is without doubt the fairest and most effective way of combatting congestion across the country as people would be taxed on the basis of how much they use their car as opposed to whether they own a car.  In return, vehicle excise duty should be scrapped and the revenue raised from road pricing should be reinvested in improving our transport infrastructure.  Reducing pollution is best left to an emission trading scheme for each individual, similar to the one already used for businesses, so people pay for however much pollution they use or receive money for polluting less than others.

I doubt that you or any other Conservative MP has the will and the desire to make these kind of changes, but like I said in the ‘Why I write these letters’ section of my blog, it’s better to be right and unpopular than wrong and popular.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever”

- Nick Clegg on suggestions he joined a student Conservative Association while at university.

Looks like this man…

…has made our Prime Minister do a lot of this…

Although I’m obviously annoyed that the rebels didn’t carry through with their threats, maybe this sends out the right signal to the government over 42-day detention where this is no room for bargaining?

When the world is facing financial meltdown and on the verge of a food crisis that threatens to destroy millions of lives around the globe, it is comforting to see George W Bush taking everything so seriously.

BBC News website, 22nd April 2008: Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev has carried out a major cabinet reshuffle as the EU steps up scrutiny of his administration.  He sacked the ministers of defence, agriculture and health, and named a new interior minister to replace Rumen Petkov who resigned last week.  The EU has urged Bulgaria, a new member state, to take swift action to tackle corruption and organised crime. …Bulgaria is worried that the EU will cut aid if a report due out in July on its efforts to stamp out corruption is critical.

Telegraph, 23rd April 2008: Members of the European Parliament voted yesterday to cover up a report showing widespread abuse of allowances worth £125 million every year. They also threw out demands from a public information watchdog for scrutiny of generous pension perks. In a series of votes, MEPs approved plans to eventually stop putting family members or suspect companies on their staff payroll. But the proposals do not have legal force and will be buried in a general long-term review of allowances, expected to take place over the next year. “Don’t hold your breath, things have a way of disappearing like this,” said a parliamentary official. 

In February, The Daily Telegraph revealed the existence of a secret internal audit by the European Parliament that found endemic irregularities with staff allowances, which are worth £160,000 a year to each MEP.  …Many MEPs use the public funds, meant for parliamentary assistants, to legally employ close relatives or to divert the payments to family-owned companies with little or no scrutiny of the work carried out.  The parliament rejected calls, supported by the European Ombudsman, for the names of 407 MEPs who receive a second voluntary pension to be published.  Officials have suggested that “a significant number” of MEPs illegally pay their personal contributions from their office allowances.

“Hey everyone, if you look up there you can see the chances of the Democrats winning the election evaporating right before your eyes thanks to my negative campaigning”

Dear Tessa Jowell,

Please don’t patronise us.  Sometimes I really wish politicians would admit when they’ve been caught out and apologise rather than trying to weasel your way out of a situation.  When the Public Accounts Committee finds that you “misled” us about the costs of the Olympics, there are two possibilities - 1. You lied to us, 2. You accidentally missed out £5.3 billion of taxpayers’ money when doing your calculations - neither of which fill me with confidence.

It is hard to believe that your calculations managed to miss out such an enormous number of “foreseeable” costs.  The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee said that “at the very best [the estimates] were economical with the actualité, as a minister once put it, in order to win support for the bid. Parliament and the public were undoubtedly misled over the true costs of the Olympic project.”  In my eyes, this is about as damning as it can get.  In addition, private sector backing for the Olympics is almost 80% below your original estimates and you clearly feel that raiding the National Lottery Fund (created to help communities and deprived areas around the country) of £675 million is perfectly acceptable.  To then suggest that the international exchange rates and the July 7th bombings were responsible for your ‘miscalculations’ is absolutely astonishing.

Of course, Uncle Gordon can’t sack you because he can’t afford to lose a high profile figure while getting a kicking in the polls.  Even so, your performance thus far has been dismal and I hope for everyone’s sake that you somehow manage to turn this disaster into something respectable.  Please remember that it’s not just your reputation on the line - it’s the reputation of this whole country.

Yours disrespectfully,

A.Tory

“The Budget sets out clear plans to help pensioners and families with children. Even at a time of global challenges, we are able to help the oldest and the youngest.”

- Yvette Cooper, House of Commons debates, 18th March 2008

“I attach considerable importance to making sure that we help people on lower incomes. …I want them to be able to keep as much money as they can.”

- Alistair Darling, during his interview with Andrew Marr yesterday

Dear Ruth Kelly,

Looks like you’ve hit another stumbling block and this time it cost hundreds of lives every year.  In my humble opinion, the debate over lowering the drink-drive alcohol limit raised again in today’s papers has got to be one of the simplest debates to solve in modern politics, and yet Labour just keeps pandering to anyone who complains instead of doing what’s right.

The current limit of 80mg per 100ml of blood is inadequate and costs lives.  With years worth of research, how can the government not reduce the limit to 50mg, if not lower?  Even though the latest research suggests that moving to 50mg could save over 100 lives a year and could save over £100 million for our economy, you’re worried about drink-drivers losing their licenses and possibly losing their jobs.  All I have to say to that is ’boo hoo’ - driving under the influence kills over 500 people every year on our roads and you have sympathy for them?!  What?!  Evidently, the thought of someone losing their job after drink-driving is far more worrying that a drink-driver mowing down an innocent person or causing a pile-up with fatal consequences. 

We have the highest blood-alcohol limit of any major European nation and the lowest level of breath-testing in Europe but all you’re worried about it is people losing their licenses and damn those who get killed by these selfish idiots behind the wheel.  Well done Ruth, another superb decision.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Next time you’re sitting on a train or bus, make sure that you don’t make eye contact with anyone else - unless you want to end up in prison.

“Psssst….how’s the vote rigging going?”

Apparently everyone in the UK is banned from naming the member of the Royal Family at the centre of the ‘gay sex tape’ blackmail plot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t provide a link to their name instead.

Dear William Hague

Yet again, you are hitting all the right notes.  As Miliband cowers in his Whitehall Office and leaves Zimbabwe to rot, you are sending out the most powerful signal from Britain to China about their arms sales to Robert Mugabe.

I wholeheartedly agree with your statement: ”The international community must speak with one voice on Zimbabwe.  We call on China, as part of that community, to suspend arms sales to Zimbabwe.  The Mugabe regime continues to deny the right of the people of Zimbabwe to choose their leaders. To supply arms to it at time when opposition activists are being intimidated and attacked, not only sends the wrong signal, but will harm the reputation of China.  In addition, it is time that neighbouring states like South Africa made clear that such shipments are not welcome.” 

South Africa’s role in this crisis is truly saddening due to their influence over Mugabe, who is already using violence and intimidation on a massive scale to threaten the voters and supplying him with arms would be a disaster.  Miliband says nothing, Brown says nothing, yet to you and me it is obvious how destabilising these weapons will be.  In fact, all the Foreign Office has said (not via Miliband, I might add) is that Britain backs an EU ban on arms sales to Zimbabwe and was ‘encouraging’ other governments to do the same.  Well, I bet Mugabe is quaking in his boots.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory