Sepoy Agent

Well, the Broon government is pretty pleased with itself.   It thinks it has satisfactorily bribed the electorate, and as the icing on the cake it caused Frank Field to make an abject apology.   That’s bad.   He had nothing to apologise for.

But let’s look at what they have done.

The Darling man has gone much further than he suggested when he said he would help the lowest paid workers.   He has simply raised the personal tax allowance.   On the face of it a clear and easy option, but one which will cause chaos for those people who actually handle the monthly or weekly payroll.   They will need to change PAYE codes and tax systems part way through the fiscal year, and this will spell real problems for already overstretched small business unpaid tax collectors.

And is there a legal problem?   Oliver Letwin has suggested this one-off tax cut could fall foul of electoral law coming as it does one week before a by-election.

The “tax cut” is being provided for by increased government borrowing to the tune of £2.7 billion.   This will take borrowing very near to the Chancellor’s rule that net debt should not exceed 40% of national income.

By putting the country in hock to lenders to the tune of another £2.7 billion, it seems that 4.2 million of the original losers will be fully compensated, or better, while the losses of the remaining 1.1 million will be at least halved.   (They originally lost £230, get £120 now, so will still be £110 worse off.)

As ever there are losers, and by and large as ever they are the poor sods who don’t fit that terrible description, “hard-working families”.

1.1m people who earn between £6,635 and £13,355  will be worse off, and that includes childless workers who are under 25 or work less than 30 hours, and some female pensioners under 65.

The claim that raising the personal allowance benefits all income tax payers does not quite add up.   Yes, under the proposal the first £6,035 of earnings will be tax-free, and the basic rate of 20% will be payable up to £40,835.   They will gain £120 this year.

But our Darling has reduced the threshold at which the 40% tax band kicks in by £600.   Since this is supposed to be a one-off measure, it should be put back to its existing level, (ie plus £600), for ensuing years.   Any takers that it will be? 

And these changes apply only to taxpayers who are under the age of 65.   So those of 65 and over, who are living on pensions grossly depleted by Brown’s earlier raid on pension funds, and on low fixed interest from their savings, will not be helped.   Their plans of saving for a comfortable retirement have been well and truly hit by Labour, and now, because they do come within the tax bracket, they will be stung by this latest horror.

Incidentally, this is the first time in living memory that income tax has changed within a financial year.   Panic anyone?   Crisis anyone?

The dustmen, (or as they probably should be called the Environmental Services Refuse Collection Engineers), have just been.

Here, they opened the wheelie bin, took out the two small supermarket bags of unrecyclable rubbish and threw them into the truck, leaving behing assorted single unrecyclable containers like orange juice cartons, and leaving the lid wide open.   That saves them wheeling the bin to the back of the truck, putting it on the lift to be raised and emptied, and then giving it a push in what they vaguely think is the direction of the house, but actually takes it some way along the road.   They did the same at my neighbour’s across the road, who also lives by himself and therefore has a minimal amount of rubbish.

A few things strike me about this:-

1.  One of the reasons for wheelie bins was to stop the collectors having to handle the rubbish;

2.  Actually they are showing quite a bit of sense in minimizing the work at homes like mine;

3.  But they are not collecting all the rubbish;

4.  As I’ve blogged before, I don’t get much in return for my hefty Council Tax.

In other parts of the country, although thankfully not yet here, the Council imposes swingeing fines for perceived “refuse offences”.   One of those offences is to leave your bin out with the lid not properly closed.   But it is apparently all right for their operatives to leave the lids open.

Another is to put your bin out on the wrong day, or too early.   But on several occasions we have all dutifully put out our bins on the correct day, and the Council has not come until the next day.   Now everyone understands about truck breakdowns and so on, but it does seem that there is one law for us, and one for them.    I don’t see us having much luck in trying to fine them for not collecting on the right day!

And another great little piece from Hugo Rifkind today in the People column of The Times, about a Scottish hotel’s “politically correct pillows”:-

The Brown  -  “for tossers and turners”

The Darling  -  “a pain in the neck”

The Balls  -  “Ed down”

The information comes from someone called Stephen Carter  -  not that one surely  -  who runs a place called Cameron House. 

Can’t be genuine, but a great way to brighten up Friday and start off a good weekend.   A bumper day for Rifkind’s People.

Good story in The Times’s People column today.

It seems wee Dougie Alexander had gone missing when he was due to make an emergency statement on Burma in the Commons yesterday.

And amazingly the Speaker or whichever of his deputies was in the Chair suspended the sitting for five minutes while he was hunted down.

In the good old days, before Labour started abolishing all Parliamentary tradition, the Speaker would have moved on to next business, and when the wee laddie did turn up he would have got a pretty severe reprimand.

Conservative Ministers were always told in no uncertain terms that Parliament was sovereign, and if they were required to attend, then attend they did and punctually.   All their civil servant staff understood that, and made sure their Minister stuck by the rules.

Have just heard James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, on Question Time.

The panel was answering a question about Scotland  -  Referendum  -  wee Wendy, and a member of the audience talked about Scottish members voting on English matters, but not the other way round;  no prescription charges in Wales;  and so on.

So little James bravely speaks up about the virtues of preserving the United Kingdom, and then says that with devolution they have tried other forms of government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so they can “work out what is best for each country”.

There’s something missing here isn’t there?   What about England?   It seems we are not old enough or responsible enough to have the self-government the other three countries of the United Kingdom have.  Labour doesn’t have to bother to “work out what is best” for England.   We just have to put up with having Brown’s scottish comrades make the rules for us.

Just how blinkered are these people that they can’t see the unfairness of having a completely different constitutional framework for England than for the other three countries?

A Parliament for England now!

Well, we’ve waited all day for the London result, and it was sure worth waiting for.

A high turnout, one of the highest ever in London;  over a million first preference votes for Boris;  and a majority of almost 150,000 on the first preference votes, and 140,000 on the combined first and second.   53% of the vote for Boris and 47% for Ken.

The London Mayoral election is quite unlike any other.   The media attention and the pressure are enormous.   I was there for the first ever Mayoral election in 2000.   We had a basement headquarters office for our inner team, and every time we stuck our noses outside there were a couple of TV crews there.   I know how hard Boris’s team has worked this time.  If it was anything like us it was 18 hours a day, seven days a week.   So congratulations to Boris’s team, and to all the London Conservative Associations for their hard work.

I have to be a bit biased and say that Steve Norris was a strong and popular candidate on two occasions.   I believe that if he had stood again, in the current political climate, he would have won.   But that takes nothing from what Boris has done.

The first Conservative Mayor of London  -  congratulations and we’re expecting great things from you.

What a day!   Splendid results for Conservatives in terms of the number of Councillors elected, the number of Councils under Conservative control, and most importantly the Conservative share of the vote.    44% for Conservatives;  24% for Labour;  and 25% for Liberal Democrats.   Yes, Liberals overtaken Labour.

I remember, back in 1970 when Edward Heath and the Conservatives won the general election, it seemed as though the dark skies had cleared and there was a blue sky over England.   Oh well, you can’t be right all the time.   Well, the blue sky has come again, (pity it was raining most of the day), and this time we must do it justice. 

These results tell us two things.  

First, the voters got bored with the Tories after 18 years.   It seems they are bored with Labour after 11 years.   Fashion and change are everything today, and affect politics as much as anything else.   The voters thought Labour had had their chance. 

Second, the results are a  vindication of what David Cameron has been doing to change the party, and to work on new policies.   David and his team have shown they are a credible government-in-waiting. 

Did you read the news today that prisoners are to get a pay increase?   If you did, you may have noticed that will include an increase in maternity leave as well.

Maternity leave, really!   It’s bad enough out in the big, wide world where the poor suckers of men and non-childbearing women have to pick up all the work of those engrossed in nursery decoration, cots, new buggies and disposable nappies.   But in prison?

Of course, they really mean prisoners’ maternity pay, which is set to increase.   But the mind does just wonder whether “maternity leave” could mean more than a few weeks not working and could mean leaving the gaol’s confines for a spell at home! 

The trouble with this and any Labour government is that it doesn’t allow for people like Mr Womble on Tour and me.

I see the question of “assumed consent” for organ donation is being raised again  -  this time by the Royal College of Nursing.   And that is despite the very clear statement on Mr WoT’s blog that nobody is to assume his consent.

You see that’s the thing about people like me.   I have carried a donor card and been on the central register since the scheme was first set up.   But as soon as the government sticks its great boot in to try to take control over what I’m doing, then I immediately think oh well, I won’t do it then.   I’ll withdraw my donor registration and refuse consent.  

Governments, particularly Labour ones, want sheep who meekly do what they tell them.   But Sepoy and Mr WoT are not like that.   We like to run our own lives, and any move to compulsion or assumed consent has a negative effect.

I bet there are many elderly gentlemen in the country, and a good few ladies too, who would like to have a son like Mike Hammond.

Mike’s father, 88-year-old Jack Hammond, recently had to move into a residential home.   He found there was only one other male resident, and he had nothing in common with him.   What Mr Hammond liked was to take a friendly drink in the local pub, but he couldn’t go by himself.

So son, Mike, advertised for a drinking companion for his father.   There were many applicants, so Mike drew up a shortlist, and then interviewed them with his Dad.   They’ve ended up with two people who will job share taking Mr Hammond to the pub.   One is a retired doctor and the other a former army man and both seem to get on well with Mr Hammond.

Mike had offered £7 an hour plus expenses.   The two applicants were so keen to be Mr Hammond’s drinking chums that one said he didn’t need the expenses, and the other is doing it for free.

So now Mr Hammond gets convivial evenings at the pub several times a week, because not only are his new companions going to be with him for three evenings each week, but Mike himself takes his Dad out twice a week.

Mike said he was convinced he had found the right gentlemen for the job  -  “Dad’s now going to be going down the pub several times a week  -  three with his new friends and twice with me.   He was an extremely social person before moving into the care home and I want to give him some of his old life back.”

What a son to have.   In no way neglecting his father, taking him out himself twice a week, and prepared to pay someone for several other nights!