The Scandal of Gift Aid
The thinktank, ResPublica estimates that charities are losing £750million in donations because of the antiquated Gift Aid system, run by HMRC. Read about it in The Guardian.
Surely, it is better for charities to spend the money on what they do, rather than spend it on back-office administration.
Blair on Fox Hunting
This is in the Guardian’s report on Tony Blair’s new book.
He regrets the hunting sort-of ban, incidentally. He hadn’t understood how important it was to many people. Careless Tony; he should have known. But banning hunting is a class issue of great totemic importance for parts of the Labour tribe and he went along with it. Typical Tony in his early years: inexperienced, ill-read and eager to please.
In other words he didn’t let the truth get in the wayof his gut feelings. How many other decisions he took would have been different, if he’d properly researched the subject and also listened to those with alternative views?
Sarah Brown is an Optional Extra at £12,800
I do find it very tasteless when former useless Prime Ministers tote their services as speakers on the after-dinner circuit. Books are one thing, as you have the choice about buying them and they may contain some interesting nuggets, but who’d pay Prudence about £64,000 for a speech. Perhaps, an arse-licker of the first level might, but I prefer to kick arses rather than lick them.
What however got me about this story, was that Sarah Brown is an optional extra at £12,800 and she will present a prize for that! Most of the women, I know would consider this a supreme insult. C would be laughing like a drain at the ludicrous nature of it all!
The Shambles of the Regional Fire Control Centres
NuLabor wanted to bring in a set of nine reginal control centres for the fire services across the country to replace 46 control rooms. That was the theory, but read this article in The Daily Telegraph, which details the shambles. The buildings are ready, but the software is not, so they are just standing idle and costing about £1.5 million a month.
I was alerted to this by an article on the BBC local news about the unused centre at Waterbeach. The new government is now saying that councils can opt out of the new centres. In a way, that is compounding the problem.
Surely, one of the main reasons for having a network of identical centres, is that this woulds mean that if say an operator had to move say to another part of the country, they could then be reemployed if necessary at another centre without retraining. I once met a doctor, whose wife was an ambulance controller. When he had moved to Cambridge, she had taken a year to be retrained because all the systems were different. That is rediculous, as we need standard systems for fire, police and ambulance all over the UK. I have heard reliable reports of Chief Constables, who want the best system money can buy, as long as no other force has it.
It should be one size that fits all! As an aside here, when we designed Artemis, there was essentially one system, that could manage projects ofd all sizes. You just specified it with bigger discs and more terminals for larger projects. But then we knew how to design systems properly so they worked. When I see the words government and computer system, because of my bad eyesight, I always read it as a gravy train to disaster.
So these fire control centres should be got up and running as soon as possible and if they are late then the contractors should be liable for the losses. I suspect though, that that is impossible, as the idiot who specified the system and wrote the contract forgot to put in a penalty clause. He or she should be fired! But they won’t be!
That’s a Fine Mess You’ve Got Us In!
I knew the NuLabor project would all end in tears with us footing the bill and the report on the front page of today’s Times, says it all. Why don’t all these failed politicians crawl away into some hole somewhere and not bother us. But once they have tasted power, I suppose they want to keep it!
Lord Heseltine
Lord Heseltine is on Radio 5 at the moment. What a sensible man! I did like his comment about Labour being good in opposition, but hopeless in government. How true? He also said they will be pumping scare stories about the Budget like mad and the media will dance to their tune.
Is Lord Heseltine the best Prime Minister we never had? Possibly, but his views may well come to the fore. He’s just been taling so sensibly about how we reinvigorate our great cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and others.
He’s just giving very sensible views on Iraq and Afghanistan.
The First Welsh-Born Prime Minister Since Lloyd George
Julia Gillard has just become Australian Prime Minister, as Kevin Rudd has stood down. She was born in Barry in South Wales, so becomes the first Welsh-born Prime Minister since Lloyd George.
When will we have a foreign-born Prime Minister? We already have! He was Bonar Law, who was born in the crown colony of New Brunswick, which is now part of Canada.
It’s Just an Exit Poll
The exit poll is saying that there will be 307 Conservative MPs, 255 Labour, 59 Lib-Dems and 29 Others.
I don’t believe it as the Lib-Dem seems far too low. And the exit poll was conducted on just 130 polling stations.
So what do I think the figures will be. Tories a bit down on the 307, Labour and Lib-Dems to swap a few seats and perhaps a few more others.
But then who knows.
Coalition of All the Losers
Could we really have a coalition of all those who lost the last election?
Brown thinks so!
But would it last more than a few months? Clegg and Brown have big differences and will the British public stomach another unelected Prime Minister after Brown?
I don’t like it! And a lot of other people won’t either! And what if they bring through an anti-Tory voting system to keep power for the near to mid future?
We just have a lot of questions and no answers.
Coalition of all the C’s
Will it work? Perhaps!
A bit of history should be injected here. My father was very much a left-wing Tory and there are quite a few of them still about; Kenneth Clarke for one.
They have always been pro-welfare and the NHS and Cameron has been saying this all along. They are usually for small government with less state control. I don’t think that the Clegg would object to that.
But Cameron is pro-Trident, pro-business, anti-PR, anti-Euro and anti-Shengen.
I voted for my local Tory candidate, but I’m anti-Trident, pro-Euro and pro-Shengen. John Gummer once described me as a classic libertarian, who should read Hayek. I never have. Perhaps I should.
The problem lies with business and the economy. Here they may well have a lot in common, in that one of the real business problems in this country is all of the regulations that envelop small businesses and stop them growing. And where do eighty percent of all private sector jobs come from? The small to medium business sector. Get this right and this would create their place in history.
They may differ on how much to cut the economy, but perhaps two new brains, Osborne and Cable, may well find that the common-ground they must find actually works.
I wish them well! On the other hand anything will be better than NuLabor.
Remember too, that Vince Cable is a widow, although he has now remarried. He understands pain more than most.
The Anonymous Widower 