Add a comment November 5th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
Absolutely unbe-
leaf-able!
There is a man being employed to remove (by hand) all the leaves from the trees on the green in front of Members’ Entrance (i.e. the one by Carriage Gates above the Parliamentary car park)…
It is simply weird.
If you pop down there now, you will see that half the trees have leaves and half the trees don’t. (Kerron Cross)
Just… why?!
Add a comment October 31st, 2007 by ThunderDragon
This is fantastic news:
Talks on funding political parties have effectively broken down after 18 months of negotiations.
The Conservatives and Labour have been unable to agree on setting limits on campaign spending and on donations. (BBC)
Good! Political parties should certainly not get any more money from the taxpayer. Short and Cranbourne Money has a reason - no other state financing does or can. If a political party cannot survive on what it gets given, it does not deserve the survive at all. They should live within their means, and within what they can persuade their members to donate. Not live life large on taxpayer’s subsidy.
Source: BBC
1 Comment October 26th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
£135,000 each in just one year?! The MP who claimed the most was Labour minister Shahid Malik [who must be the big pig on the far right in the picture above], claiming £185,421, which can be contrasted with the lowest - Tory MP Philip Hollobone, who claimed just £44,551, less than a quarter than Shahid Malik!
By average claim per party, the Liberal Democrat MPs claim £140,756 each; Labour MPs claim £138,366; and Conservative MPs £129,948 on average. The top claimers are the SNPs six members, with an average of £154,231.
It’s all way too much, as it adds up to £87.6m! A 5% like-for-like rise on last year. MPs either need a pay cut or closer inspection of their expense claims. I think the latter is the best choice.
Source: BBC
1 Comment September 30th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
We all know that Labour have continually failed the military over the past decade. But now Gordon wants them to go even further, despite number of wars in which they are currently engaged.
Ministers have drawn up confidential proposals to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy…
The expected reductions follow a fierce row between Service chiefs and the Treasury over defence spending.
The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy’s capability to the level where it could carry out only “one small-scale operation”.
Separate documentation from inside the department suggests that the total number of ships in the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary could fall from the present level of 103 to 76 in 2017 and only 50 in 2027 — a reduction of more than half. (Sunday Telegraph)
He really isn’t Flash Gordon [except with our cash on bureaucracy and encouraging state dependence, of course] but Slash Gordon - slashing our armed forces which are already under severe financial constraints brought around by the past decade of Labour (mis)government. This slash “would reduce the RN’s capabilities to just one small scale operation and that is it.” We already have several on the go, though, don’t we? Liam Fox is right when he says that:
Any reduction in our forces’ size at present would be insane, given our unsafe world and the level of our current deployments. No wonder there are suggestions Gordon Brown is considering a complete withdrawal from Iraq. His own cuts to our Armed Forces may leave him with no option.
So even despite taxing us 50% more than a decade ago, Brown has wasted so much of our money that he deems a slash in the military budget as necessary to keep up his pouring of money into various black holes parts of the state apparatus.
Add a comment September 29th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
A 50% increase in just a decade? Only Gordon could do it.
The average family hands over 50 per cent more of their annual earnings in tax than they did before Labour came to power a decade ago…
The soaring tax burden has been driven largely by the number of people falling into the higher stamp duty tax band on property, along with rising council tax and increases in the National Insurance contributions.
[Accountancy firm] Smith & Williamson estimates that the total taxes paid by a typical family with two children, buying an ordinary terrace house, have soared from 36p in the pound to 54p since 1997. (The Telegraph)
So in 2007 we pay 50% more tax than in 1997. Have we got 50% more/better services for it? Bollocks have we. You’d be hard put to prove that we have almost any improvement in public services in the last decade, let alone some worth a 50% increase in our tax burden.
Source: The Telegraph
1 Comment September 27th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
The gay icon Foreign Secretary, David Miliband has, as I reported he intended to, restarted his blog. The aim of his blog is, he says to
help to open up the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and explain the arguments, values and ideas behind Britain’s foreign policy
But will they be worth my time reading?
But he’s not alone - he has friends blogging with him! There are six of them from the Foreign Office blogging - Milibland himself, Jim Murphy (Minister for Europe), the “Strategy Adviser to the UK Ambassador to the EU”, and other officials. They want to have a “global conversation” - whatever one of them is.
But the burning question is - how much does this cost us, the taxpayer? Miliband’s original blog at Defra was costing us £40,000 a year, but how much more is this one going to cost, considering that there are six of them? I think we have a right to know.
Add a comment September 4th, 2007 by ThunderDragon
Despite reports that FCO mandarins wouldn’t allow it, David Miliband is to resume blogging at the Foreign Office, have previously done so at Defra:
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has promised to re-start his personal weblog after a gap of two months.
Mr Miliband stopped writing his blog after leaving his previous job of environment secretary in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet reshuffle in June.
But, during a 10 Downing Street webchat on Monday [which can be read here], he said it was important for the Foreign Office to “engage” people…
“I am completely committed to the idea that diplomacy needs to engage the public as well as diplomatic elite and also to the notion that I need to lead that in the Foreign Office. So the blog will be back, supplemented by other tools for discussion and debate.” (BBC)
It better not cost the absurd amounts that it was before. That is truly a waste of money, especially considering the inanity of Miliband’s pronouncements. Make it interesting and actually engage in the real blogging experience and don’t let it cost us so much money - or don’t bother doing it at all.
Image: Beau Bo D’Or
Source: BBC
Add a comment September 3rd, 2007 by ThunderDragon
How much?!
A confidential internal report on health tourism estimates that the bill for treating foreign patients amounts to at least £62 million a year, The Times has learnt.
The figure is “bound to be an underestimate” since new rules intended to prevent the abuse of the NHS by foreign patients are being ignored, according to the report.
A survey has found that NHS managers are failing to ensure patients are asked to prove their eligibility and are chasing only around half of the debts owed. The findings suggest that taxpayers are picking up hospital bills for foreign patients that come to more than £30 million a year. Some of the £62 million is paid back by the patients. (The Times)
A minimum of £62million on health tourism?! Why are we funding people who don’t even live here to have healthcare? We may have a free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system, but that is no excuse for allowing it to be abused. Free emergency care is fine, but £62 million goes way beyond that.
When the NHS is as skint as it is at the moment, despite the amount of money that has been pumped into it, we shouldn’t be making it so easy for it to be basically ripped off. Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP who uncovered the report, said:
This Government is conniving at a ‘Don’t ask, don’t charge and don’t chase’ policy that is leaving the NHS wide open to abuse.
They are, and it is. And it is costing us millions that could - and should - be put to better use.
Source: The Times
Add a comment September 2nd, 2007 by ThunderDragon
He is finally no longer mooching off of the taxpayer!
It’s the end of the road for Two Jags. John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, this weekend lost his official Jaguar, driver and four-strong security team.
He was dropped off at his home in Hull yesterday for the last time by his government driver and praised him as the best he had known during his 10 years in the cabinet….
Prescott, who also owns his own Jaguar, lost his official car after a review by the policy and security services.
The royalty and ministerial visits committee, which made the decision, is reviewing the protection granted to Margaret Beckett, the former foreign secretary, and Sir John Major, the former Tory prime minister. (The Times)
Prescott is now no longer living in his grace-and-favour apartment, no longer has his ministerial Jaguar, or his security team. And about time. He should have lost them the minute his resignation as Deputy Prime Minister came into effect.
Ex-Cabinet members certainly don’t need - or deserve - taxpayer-funded government cars or accommodation. They lose any right to them as soon as they resign or are sacked from the government. They exist only to facilitate a minister to do their job, and once they are no longer doing that job, they do not deserve or need them at all. A security team, on the other hand, may be needed by ex-ministers. But I doubt that many do.
Source: The Times
Add a comment August 21st, 2007 by ThunderDragon
A cut in the Prisons budget puts us in danger:
Hundreds of dangerous prisoners could be freed from jail because of “disastrous” failings by the Government when it introduced a new prison sentence, a High Court judge said yesterday.
Mr Justice Collins gave warning that many inmates could be released whether or not they are a risk to the public because ministers had failed to provide resources to the Prison Service.
The Government is also likely to face claims for compensation running into tens of thousands of pounds from prisoners held beyond the minimum term laid down by the courts. (The Times)
When they said that criminals were going to be released early because of prison overcrowding [and under-funding], they specifically denied that any “dangerous” criminals would be amongst them. Either they were lying or just stupid.
They released the first thousand on the day that Gordo was crowned became PM, and plan to release 25,000 criminals early every year. Despite this, at the same time they are detaining other criminals beyond the end of their sentence.
And yet, at the same time, the Ministry of Justice is demanding that the Prison Service spend £60 million less next year:
Yesterday’s ruling adds to the raft of serious problems facing the Ministry of Justice over prisons, including rising numbers being sent to overcrowded jails, a demand that the Prison Service cut its budget by £60 million next year and the threatened collapse of a multi- million pound computer programme supposed to help to curb reoffending. The judgment [sic] is the second in three weeks focusing on the new indeterminate sentence for dangerous and violent offenders but it broke new ground by ordering the release of an offender. (The Times)
Let me get this straight… The prisons are overcrowded and you are already planning the early release 25,000 criminals a year, so you slash their budget by £60m? Yes, that’s very clever. Thus, despite taking more and more from us in taxes, this government is utterly failing to put it to any good use. Instead, they prefer to spend it on bureaucracy.
What the hell are they on? There is no doubt about it that this government has failed miserably on law and order, policing, and prisons. Instead of being “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime,” they have been weak, useless, and completely unprepared to deal with it.
Source: The Times
