Smug, self-satisfied, self-regarding – er, who would that include?

Douglas Carswell, MP for Harwich, seems to be regarded by some as the rising star of the party;  there even being calls for him to be in the shadow cabinet, in government, leader, and so on!

He was elected in 2005, and, after his four years at Westminster, has decided it is rubbish.    He has published an A to Z of his criticism of parliament on his blog.  

Under “S” he puts “Smug, self-satisfied, self-regarding SW1″.   Having heard Mr C speak about his book, “The Plan  -  Twelve months to renew Britain”, the words “pot” and “kettle” spring to mind.

“Z” is the grade he gives to Westminster after his four years as an MP.   Well, if he doesn’t like it, he could leave and let someone else have a go.

The beaconicity of Jargon

I’ve just found the time to read the list of 200 jargon words and phrases which the Local Government Association wants to be banned from all business and council documents.

I’m all for it.   I hate these dreadful phrases that public servants come out with, but there are one or two quite normal words in the list, which it would be difficult to do without.

My favourite in the list, and right at the top for banning, has to be:

predictors of beaconicity,

 

and the runners-up are:

improvement levers;  rebaselining;  holistic governance;  customer democratic legitimacy,

and

flexibilities and freedoms framework.    

How’s that for alliteration?

Avoiding your own Smith moment

I would not want to do anything to help or support the present Home Secretary, but I feel I must just mention that the sort of media packages we all sign up to today have a lot to answer for in this.

Whether we are with Sky, Virgin, BT or any of the other similar suppliers, we pay for a package which gives us broadband internet connection, landline telephone, a TV service covering the terrestrial and digital channels, and usually with an on demand service.   So we make one payment, and it covers all the above.   Some of us will be ordering the films that are on offer as part of the service;  sometimes they will be part of a monthly fee, and sometimes we will pay per film watched.   Yes, it all gets pretty complicated.

No doubt the supplier’s bill arrives, and we say “oh yes, that’s for the internet, phone & TV”.   Probably it will be paid by direct debit, so as long as it is not at an unusually high amount, we don’t pay much attention to it.   It just gets filed.

Unless, of course, you are an MP or in another job that allows you to charge your phone and internet service.   Then you should look at all the items on the bill closely, so you don’t have your own “Smith moment”.

YouGov’s poll on spending on public services

Friday’s poll published in the Daily Telegraph shows that only 9% of people think the current level of public spending should be maintained, while over two-thirds think less should be spent on administration in public services.

This poll should, however, be taken with a pinch of salt.   It was a YouGov poll, and YouGov tends to be the home of political junkies.   Most of the people who are the biggest consumers of public services would never go near a YouGov poll.    So the poll may not be a portrait of the view of the whole electorate.

Incidentally, not all political junkies get to complete YouGov polls.   This particular political junkie appears to have been expunged from the list, cast out into the wilderness.   Sepoy joined the YouGov panels right at the beginning, and diligently completed polls for years.   But then, about a year ago I found I couldn’t log in on the YouGov website.   I tried saying that I needed to have my password confirmed.   That was done, it was e-mailed back to me correctly.   But I still couldn’t log in.   So I began a series of e-mails telling them what had happened, all without getting any reply whatsoever.   And I still can’t log in.   I have my own view why;  first my profile is probably too boring for YouGov, and secondly I have had two £50 cheques from them, and had reached over £48 towards the next one.   They probably didn’t want to pay up!

Sepoy’s Take on the News

****    NHS Staff Refuse Flu Jabs  -  Do they know something we don’t?   Do they think it doesn’t work, so why bother?   Do they think it’s dangerous?

****    After watching Brown address the US Congress, Liberal Vince Cable said: “I cringed at the sight of another British leader behaving like an obedient puppy, wagging his tail as he received a pat on the head and a dog biscuit”  -  the trouble is we now all think of the wonderful Hugh Grant standing up to an arrogant US President in “Love, Actually”.

****    Wonderful picture of The Queen at Cheltenham races in The Times, (sadly not on line), looking pretty glumly straight ahead as her horse hadn’t won the Gold Cup  -  She’s standing, presumably in the royal box, with a behatted lady either side of her, one studying the race card, the other looking through binoculars, and each turning away from her.   I thought it was against protocol to turn your back on HM.

Euro English

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as ‘Euro-English’.

In the first year, ’s’ will replace the soft ‘c’.   Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.   The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favour of ‘k’.   This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.   There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with ‘f’.   This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent ‘e’ in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘v’.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’ and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza.   Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

Welcome and well done to Wellworths

Great news that the former Woolworths in Dorchester has re-opened as Wellworths.

Claire Robertson was the Woolworths’ store manager, and, having got the backing of the owner of the premises, has gone on to employ twenty of her former staff.   What’s more the shop is being nicknamed Wellies.

Good luck to Claire, her staff and Wellies.   May they go from strength to strength.

The unemployment therapists

Did you notice the announcement that the government is going to appoint “recession counsellors” for people who become unemployed because of the economic situation?

Word has it that because huge numbers of us will be suffering depression, isolation and anxiety brought on by the recession  -  an anxiety epidemic, no less  -  countless new services offering “therapy” will be offered, with government backing.   And GPs, Jobcentres and NHS Direct will refer people to them.

No doubt the scheme will cost us all a fortune, as the government pours their, oh no, it’s ours isn’t it, money into it.   The figure of 3,6oo extra staff has been mentioned.

There will probably be praise for a caring government worrying about its people  -  let’s not forget why they are there.   Could it have something to do with the fact that the spendthrift government’s managing of the economy has made Britain less able to cope than other countries?

Wouldn’t it be better for the government to spend the money on some real job creating schemes?  Real that is as opposed to the 3,600 extra therapists’ jobs.

Savings accounts worth nothing now

Great fun to be a headline writer!    The Times today manages “Savers out of pocket as rate passes the point of no returns”.

But that headline covers something which has happened, and which would have been unbelievable back in the 1980s when some of us were enjoying interest payments of 15%.   Of course, that didn’t last long, and rates have been going downhill steadily ever since.   Yesterday’s announcement cut the base rate to 0.5%.   It took only minutes for the media to say that, if this reduction is passed on to savers, there will be 147 savings accounts, 43% of the accounts on the market, that will be paying zero interest.

So why would any of us leave our money in these savings accounts?  It might just as well be in our ordinary current accounts, or, better still, take it away from the damned banks altogether.   How will banks and building societies be able to market so-called “savings accounts” that don’t make any interest?

Many of us rely on the interest from savings to top up meagre pensions.   Not all of us get pension increases like public servants do, where their payments increase by the same percentage as the staff still working get.   Some of us have not had a pension increase for more than ten years;  others have money-purchase pensions which will never increase.   There are others, mainly older people or those who have been in casual employment for long periods, who simply don’t have occupational pensions, and have to exist on the basic state pension.   All of these people rely on their savings’ interest, and will be badly affected by this move.   Their money will have been built up gradually over a long period, often by denying themselves luxuries, and will have been tucked away to help to provide them with a more comfortable retirement after a long working life.

The severe reductions, and now it would seem practical removal, of interest payments affect the better off, too.   When I was young it was explained to me that banking worked on the principle that I lent the bank my money, they paid me interest on it, and then they lent it on to someone else, a borrower, who paid a higher rate of interest.   The difference between the two interest rates was where the bank made its profit.   Fair enough.   But in recent years all that seems to have gone by the board.   Borrowers have still had to pay high interest, but lenders, (ie savers), have been exploited by the banks and building societies with interest rates on savings accounts diminishing all the time, and the banks wanting to charge us a monthly amount to put our money in their bank accounts.

This week I have had a distressed call from a lady just short of her 90th birthday.   She has never had a bank account, but kept what money she had with a building society.   When that became a bank, she stayed with them, but continued only to have a savings account.   So she has never had a cheque book or debit or credit cards.   Some few years ago her wealthy sister died and left her the entire estate, several properties, jewellery, shares and cash.   The whole lot was liquidated, and after the tax was paid, the residue went into that building society savings account.   It is now a very big account.   She has recently become nervous about the building society going bust, and, having been told about the government guarantee for accounts up to £50,000, she decided to move some of the money.   So far she has only moved £15,000, but she drew that sum out and identified another building society where she wished to put it.   She trotted off to the new society’s nearby office, and asked to open an account.    Of course, she came up against all the money laundering regulations, and simply could not understand what was happening.   She said to the girl in the building society, “but I’m not trying to take money from you, I’m trying to give you my money”.    You see it’s more than fifty years since she opened the first savings account, and she simply didn’t know what we all have to go through now if we want to lend our money to a bank or building society.

Sorry, that was a bit of a digression from my main theme, although I do think it needed saying.

All of this seems a bit of an electoral gamble, as there are many more savers than there are borrowers.   It is estimated that there are 8.5 million pensioners receiving savings interest alone, without younger people with savings accounts.   There are said to be 3.6 million home owners with tracker mortgages, and many of them will pay no interest at all if banks and building societies pass on the rate reduction because several banks offered deals in 2007 pegged at 0.5% below base rate.

The trouble is savers are seen as less important because most of them have far less money being affected than borrowers who have mortgages of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Database to check potential troublemakers?

What an interesting story that Ian Kerr, clearly an enterprising man, built up a database of construction workers, and charged building companies to access it to vet prospective employees.   The entries included the people’s work habits, such as absence and lateness, and any history of troublemaking.

Now he is threatened with action under the Data Protection Act for keeping details of people on a database without their knowledge, as are the companies which purchased the information.

Now here’s a difficult one, and I have to say I’m ambivalent about it.

Of course, none of us would like to think that our name was included on a database, perhaps with less than accurate details, without our knowledge.

But I just know that if I were running a building firm, (or indeed any other type of company), and could avoid the chance of employing known troublemakers  I would be very pleased!