Labour and "me me me"

Various people "of the left" routinely criticise Libertarians as being selfish and "me me me", yet I have again heard a Labour MP on Radio 4 today talk about their future and the impact of the coalition in terms of frightening people about what would happen to "their" job - in one example being perplexed why Policemen and women were not voting Labour - and in terms of welfare/pension/services and such. It is all about direct benefits to that person, making that person think in terms of "me me me".

Libertarians are concerned about what property the State might TAKE from individuals, whereas we can see that Labour are preoccupied with scaring people or tempting them with what might no longer be handed over.

"those of the left" again engaging in psychological projection and logical inversion.

They relate to the electorate in terms of "me me me", corrupting them, encouraging dependence and a sense of entitlement that only a Welfarist setup would dare promise, knowing or not knowing the bankruptcy that is almost certain to follow.

They are still thinking in this way, even as defeat is handed to them.

Still, in pure tactical terms it is not a crazy approach, just outrageously cynical and manipulative. Many people will find the consequences of the last 60 years of Welfarism, and the last 13 in particular, come crashing into them like an Atlantic storm. Labour will be there, mark my words, whispering lies into their ears, blaming others, offering false hope, fake rewards and other mischiefs. It will be a second bite at the "Thatcher's fault" nonsense that had supposedly had Mrs T personally responsible for shutting down factories incapable of making things people wanted or were prepared to pay the price for, which, had it not been for Her, would have continued to perform their SOLE function, naturally, of providing employment for the Union masses.

If Labour is concerned about certain provisions and believes "everyone" wants to see it provided, what is stopping them organising it? I would welcome this, for Labour in opposition must operate by consent, not coercion. People will soon let Labour know what they feel is important enough to deserve funding it via the Labour Party or other organisations.

This is precisely what could happen under a Libertarian administration - if people feel something needs to be provided, then go out and organise it. Collect voluntary contributions. I see no reason why Labour could not create an umbrella charity to be a point for people to donate to and Labour in their wisdom then decides where the money goes. This means putting down the "gun" of State compulsion, of the threat of imprisonment that comes with funding via taxation. It could mean setting up Friendly Societies and other mutual organisations.

Anyone with sincere intent, anyone who truly believes that their stance and causes are just and proper should not be afraid of this arrangement. If you think people do not know or understand, TALK TO THEM. Are you so lazy as to rather take by force instead of having the common courtesy to explain yourself and ask, understanding and accepting the fact you may be refused? Or is it you think people so dumb, stupid or selfish that they will never agree with your "higher moral stance" and so should not be given a choice?

I am unsure if those in Labour are ready or able for such introspection, truth and accountability.

Ed Balls, school admissions and the prostrate BBC

I may be mistaken, but I thought I just heard Ed Balls saying, so as to brush off concerns about school admissions and grandstand the "achievements under Labour", that where he lives all parents get their first choice of school.

Hold on, doesn't Ed Balls live in that special enclave where there is that "state" school - as in Grant Maintained and thus a de facto public school paid by the taxpayer* - surrounded by million quid homes. Come to think of it, we the taxpayer even have to pay for the upkeep of that Cooperballs residence!

Why does the BBC let this smug twerp get away with such outrageous statements? I suspect it is because the BBC is chock full of Fabian hypocrites who do precisely the same thing. 

Fact is you can resolve most of the admissions issues if you:

a) Introduce vouchers

b) Remove the need for schools to be beholden or administered via the LEA

c) Enable anyone to set up a school wherever they like

d) Keep the State away from the pedagogy, curriculum and exam boards used and let Heads, teachers and parents sort things out between themselves.

As far as I can tell the Tories are lacking in some areas of their Voucher scheme. Too much central control which will along with other aspects of their plan render vouchers ineffective and result in a drawing back of power to the centre, which is, frankly, what I suspect they really want.

Only one party has the right solution - The Libertarian Party.

* something we all should have via vouchers, but of course, Socialists and all such ladder kickers tell us we have to put up with something else. Hypocrites.

Another Rumour of Socialist Hypocricy.

As if we needed any more points on the graph, the rumour is that The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, wishes his son to take over from him when he steps down.

All those years protesting against heredity and "the elite", yet the first chance they get, Socialists slide their bum across to perch. We see them trying to get above the law, in controlling government contracts and pulling power and influence to themselves to gain patronage and control. Basically, they are desperate to have everything the elites they despised had and used.

Fact is, Socialists do not hate elites, they just hate an elite that they are not part of.

Hypocritical Ladder kickers, the lot of 'em.

Keynes

Keynes famously said "When the facts change, I change my mind".

Alas, he was wrong from the outset, so as that fact did not change, neither did he change is mind.

He also said "In the long run we are all dead", which might give us a hint at why he was happy to mortgage the future.

Keynes is so utterly wrong, yet now at the very point when we should reject his dysfunctional, bankrupt ideology the more, Gordon Brown and Darling are embracing him.

Today's borrowing is taxation...with interest. Borrowing today reduces the spending power of every pound in every pocket, so it is an insidious, indirect and unavoidable taxation upon us all. It is taxation for the future, too, as that debt plus interest needs to be repaid. As WSC said, taxing your way to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.

The only possible reason I can see for all this is that the Government wishes to conduct a scorched earth policy so that the next Tory government will be a short one. Ladder-kickers, the lot of 'em.

If you want to stimulate the economy, make it run faster, reduce the friction. Reduce government spending. 

It is an absurd notion to think that by taking money away from individuals, handing it to a bunch of the Government's pet friends, mainly in the construction industry, to then spend and employ people, that somehow those people employed and suppliers supplied will magically create demand across all the economy. How about just not doing anything so that everyone keeps their money and can spend it directly in the first place? How about REDUCING taxation so people feel more confident, can pay off their loans and then resume spending? Oh no, that alternative does not require the State to be involved. Its mates cannot get largesse. It is then not the arbiter, the director of resources. It will not be able to delude itself that it knows best.

Amazing nuggets from C4's Lost for Words initiative.

I was watching with admiration at the changes to pupils in the Channel 4 Dispatches programme the other day, two years on from when they began an experiment to introduce synthetic phonics to an East London school, Monteagle Primary (H. Lynne Thompson).

Two points leapt out at me. One was the bone-headed mentality of the Dept of Schools, Education, Children, Families, Non-judgemental nuclear relationship units not necessarily based upon shared genetic backround, My Little Pony etc. 

Instead of synthetic phonics, costing, for the school in question £27,000 per year for the entire school of 4-11 year olds, they recommend schools to use their chosen one-on-one remedial technique (name escapes me, anyone?) that would have cost £100,000 for each age group, i.e. £100,000 for the 7-year-olds, another £100,000 for the 8 year olds etc etc. The teachers/coaches would need to be specialists, only usable after extensive training and only able to handle 9 kids a year, hence the high cost. 

Note to self: I wonder if  those in DETRiTUS (Dept of Education Teachers, and Regulations in Training, Universities and Schools) who decided this approach have any direct, indirect or other link to the companies who provide such expensive training to those coaches? By contrast, existing teachers can learn synthetic phonics rapidly and teach large groups...

The second, more shocking point was that all the teachers at the school had not been taught how to teach children how to read. I'll say that again another way - Teacher Training College had NOT taught all these Primary School teachers how to teach kids to read. That is like going on a driving course and not being taught about the steering wheel, brakes and accelerator! What is double scary is that few of these Primary Schoolteachers even QUESTIONED the fact that this monumentally important aspect, the very foundation of primary education was absent. The term "Duh!" does not quite cover it. It is, I suspect, a testament to the utterly poor education those teachers got before going to Teacher Training College that is responsible - a lack of critical reasoning and free thinking.

Still, things are being done by a TV Channel that the State does not seem to have a grip on*. Figures. They now look to improve Maths - good luck to them, I am sure they will do a better job than the State.

* It does seem that the State has an initiative on synthetic phonics, but as is so often the case the real message gets lost in all the bureaucracy, turf and ideology and a religious minset adopted, so the resulting plan seems to involve taking delivery of a truck load of FAIL. The State cannot lead. When it follows it tries to barge in front or trip up the leader. Best it just GETS OUT OF THE WAY, eh?

Keep up my mortgage payments, says Phillips (Track Changes)

Pay my mortgage Fight class divide, says Phillips

Mr Phillips said he was people were "very keen" for change

The Equality and Human Rights Commission must be given something to do the power to fight the class divide in Britain, its rent-seeking chairman has said.

Trevor Phillips told BBC Radio 4's World at One he would launch a "new assault" on common sense inequality and wanted an excuse for extension to the organisation's existence remit.

The economic slowdown meant his people were "very keen" for something to do change.

Everyone was "happy to take some of the payment pain as long as that payment pain is shared amongst me and my mates fairly", Mr Phillips added.

'Extremely self important'

A report by the commission now says there is too much "vertical" division in Britain between social classes.

It states: "We are not just limiting our job description [of inequality] by gender or race but we are also looking at this extremely important issue of our mortgage payments class."

Mr Phillips said: "We have decided to invent tackle the causes that supposedly drive inequality in our society to suit our warped, self-serving agenda and I think, to be honest, the public is very, very easily misled keen on this at the present time.

"People can see the economic slowdown coming. Everyone but us is happy to take some of the pain as long as that pain is shared fairly and what we want to do is to make sure that the burden doesn't fall on us unfairly on some groups rather than others."

BBC home affairs editor Mark Easton said this was "a radical departure which is likely to be criticised by some as an implicitly political policy from a statutory body that must remain independent of party ideology". No sh*t, Sherlock!

It would "mean taking on the wealthy and educated middle class who are already struggling to keep their heads above water despite the best efforts of rent-seeking parasitical self-loathers adept at playing the system to the advantage of their families", he added.

The commission was invented established in 2007, replacing the Equal Opportunities Commission as the QANGO keeping Phillips in free sandwiches and to give him a reason to put on silly glasses and shave his peanut-shaped head of a morning..

My apologies to the BBC.

Housing: It's The State, Stupid.

We see some extraordinary nonsense from the hatchet-faced angler fish Caroline skin Flint, suggesting the unemployed be denied access to council housing.

The unemployed will gravitate towards subsidised housing, and council housing is the vast bulk of that. Who does she think will be in council housing?

Well, for me the interest is an issue behind the inanity, imbecility and general puffery of her "policy" which is being and has been well shredded in the press and on blogs. I need not go into the point that she is systematically an awful, nasty piece of work. An arrogant, robotic Blears-in-waiting sound-bite generating question swerving, ladder-kicking lickspittle of the political class. Anyone who saw her in "reset mode" during the Politics Show when she projected a reality distortion field around the question of denying some bearded hate-mongering scrote entry into the UK that the Town Clerk of Britain refused to confront should be used in evidence and played as a backdrop to her eventual air tap dance.

But I digress...

For me the real issue is the involvement of the State in housing. If the State were not landlord of last resort or a builder and operator of vast housing stocks, interfering Authoritarian rent-seekers like Flint would not be able to get her polished fingernails into people's lives in this way - it would just not be her business. The remit of the State would be about if people are entitled* to various benefits such as unemployment or housing, not to give it out with moralistic strings, or, as Samizdata's Guy Herbert coins, Moralitarianism **

This "policy" is just the tip of the evil iceberg that is Statism and the Authoritarianism that it fosters. Once you get the State "in charge" it cannot help but grab control. Once you make the State responsible you prevent people being responsible for themselves and the consequences of their actions. You infantilise people via the poisoned chalice of Welfarism. You make them dependent and thus a client. The dependency implies strings and strings ask to be tugged and teased, like some grotesque Mafia Godfather. This is no surprise. The State is Enforcer in Chief, after all.

The answer is to remove the temptation. The State should not provide vast amounts of housing directly. Look at what they become - economic deserts. If anyone uses the term 'deprived', let them know what entity, if any, does the depriving - the State. Who stops people moving from one location to the other, treating people like cattle? The State.

I believe the key to State/subsidised housing lies in a simple rule: that nobody in receipt of State benefits including housing benefit in cash or in the form of subsidised State housing should be able to increase said allocation of housing. This specifically applies to those who enlarge their families via births, marriages, taking on more "dependents"***, importing family members, bigamous foreign-wed wives or whathaveyou. If you are living in State housing with your mum and you pop a sprog, tough - there you stay. No more rooms. No separate flat. No bump up the list. You want more kids, then do what all the poor working taxpayers have to do - earn more to pay for it, squeeze up or move under your own steam.

* sorry, I hate this word.

** another term came up in that thread - "benetax" a form of tax and benefit mix loved of the FibDumbs. Sounds like a haemorrhoid cream, and quite right as that hits to me at where I think it deserves to be shoved.

*** technically they cannot be "dependents" as someone who is dependent on another - in this case the State - is not really in a position to have their own dependents in truth.

Blatant Greed Never So Clear

An interesting snippet about the wrangle over MP's salaries.

Last night, Labour sources disclosed that one of the problems in getting MPs to show restraint is the high number who plan to retire at the end of this Parliament.

This is a problem because pensions are linked to their last salary.

Yes, and as you may well know, it only needs 3 terms to get the full whack and Labour is into its third term. See how the disingenuous dribbling of "a lifetime of service" falls by the wayside, the Labour MPs get their full pension and hopefully a sinecure or two in some QANGO.

Enjoy it while you may, folks, for when the Libertarian Party wins all those cushy numbers will be up.

A brief flicker of honour...er, hold on...

Via The Daily Brute, we hear in the Daily Mail that Paul Grey, the Chairman of HM Revenue & Customs did not actually resign as a matter of honour over the scandalous loss of the personal details of all 25m families in the UK, but is , instead, retained on full salary pending his haggling to retire on a full pension.

Basically, translated, it means, instead of "I resign", with loss of post, salary, pension etc due to the terrible screw up, as a way off accepting the responsibility and out of honour, we have "I pretend to resign until a deal is done abdicating me from all hassle and guaranteeing my cosy life", i.e. with no loss of pay, retention of pension - i.e. he ducks out of ANY responsibility and floats away at our expense into a life of comfort. I expect to see this parasite on the board of a few QANGOs in the near future.

Utterly bare-faced shameless. Such actions are indicative at the corruption and behaviour at the top in Government. The Blair and Brown establishment have created an environment where such actions are seen as worthwhile chancing, asking for and have the likelihood of success, or at least little chance of any consequences if the audacity is not successful.

In any heirarchy, the source of corruption and modus operandi comes from the top down. The culture of an organisation is set from the top. The source, cause and blame for this outrageous behaviour lies with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Polly: Inaction on Pay Profligacy - Track Changes (ON)

Boy, Polly kicks off here with an article chock full of absolutes: "only", "failure", "fatally", "any". For sure, she is a stranger to reason...

Inaction on pay profligacy of inane scribblers only embeds child poverty

Labour's failure to face down the forces driving market-driven, skills based absurd mega-earning fatally undermines any effort to embed tackle inequality

Polly Toynbee
Tuesday October 30, 2007
The Guardian

When the history of New Labour comes to be written, a great mystery to idiots like me will be why they did nothing about the unprecedented explosion of top pay that happened on their watch. The findings of yesterday's Income Data Services' annual report on chief executive pay are simply bewildering to idiots like me . Labour's silence on the subject mystifies idiots like me its supporters, most of its venal, self serving and equally idiotic backbenchers and not a few of its similarly "special" ministers.

In the nervous early days, shedding "tax them till the pips squeak" memories, Peter Mandelson was deliberately counter-intuitive for idiots like me with his louche remark about being "intensely relaxed about my people getting filthy rich". But why has the breathtaking acceleration of top pay been met with the same studied indifference ever since? It took the Tories saying it first for Labour to dare to take utterly token action on non-domiciles, taxing them a nominal £30,000 flat rate.

Here are the latest figures: chief executives in the FTSE 100 have doubled their earnings in the last five years, to average £3.17m - up 16.1% in the last year. In the next rank of companies, FTSE 350 directors' salaries rose by an average of 9.3% last year. Add in bonuses and average pay rose by 20%. Chief executives' pay in the mid-250 FTSE companies rose by 27.2% to average £1.43m. The TUC's communist leveller Brendan Barber says of these figures: "Top directors have no shame. It beggars belief that they are somehow working twice as hard as five years ago."

Guardian readers, familiar with our financial pages' excrement excellent annual survey of boardroom pay, are not the only ones to be regularly envious shocked. A Financial Times Harris poll found 60% of the public think the government should cap the earnings of senior executives. A poll of parasitical scumbags human resources managers conducted by Incomes Data Services last month found more than half of them thought executive directors were paid more than they were overpaid and that differentials are too wide between execs and HR Managers . These are the parasitical interfering do-nothings professionals who always fail to see the knock-on effects at first hand.

When pressed, ministers pretend what happens up there in the tiny rarefied group of mega-earners doesn't impact on anyone else and they are right, but I don't want to admit that cos otherwise I cannot re-visit this tired, self-serving bankrupt stance YET again . It's the politics of envy to even think about it: I it may be distasteful but I'm it's not important. Yet as parasiticl interfereing do-nothings human resources managers know very well, envy pay is about much more than money. The psychology of envy pay is about a sense of covetousness fairness, about accepting a self-determined and aggrandized fair place in the cockroach midden pecking order above all in relation to others. It becomes a problem if we are not at the top raking in the cash year after year top echelons reward themselves many multiples of the essential and unappreciated Guardian collumnists rest.

The IDS report which I am now conveniently going to use shows FTSE 350 directors' salaries increased by three times their own shop-floor wages. How many years can that continue before my knicker the elastic snaps? Once, all joined the same disasterous, collectivized pension schemes: now it's gold-plated pensions for managers with "unaffordable" closed schemes for staff who have been brainwashed into thinking a pension was "free" .

When boardroom pay leaves planet Earth, the next rank of Guardian scribblers senior managers feel they deserve to overtake catch up. It's not surprising that with CEO bonuses now worth 100% of salary, Guardian scribblers senior managers reckon they did most of the heavy lifting to achieve national prosperity, social justice and equality it, so IDS finds they are demanding "incentive" schemes. And then politicians middle managers ask if they didn't contribute too. The truth is that none of us them may contribute to a company's "success", which I am going to ignorantly assert with my typical lack of financial awareness is measured in share prices that float myseriously to imbeciles like me up and down. Bonuses that hit an epic £14m last year may drop this year, but not because managers or CEOs are doing their job less well. Sub-prime mortgage lending in the US is hardly their fault. This will show that the "performance-related" bonus culture is nonsense. So why doesn't the government interfere where we closet GOSPLAN communists and levellers say so?

The reality we are trying to ignore myth is that executives would flee, but you can count the number of foreigners running UK companies on my IQ your fingers - and the number of Brits running large companies abroad (assert another nonsense ehre) is even fewer: the low productivity of UK Stater sector organs business makes them not in great demand but via taxation we can force pepole to pay for them regardless. But a few mobile high-fliers act as convenient cover for my twisted hatred and envy all. Alas These salaries rise by mutual agreement: every company wants the best people it can afford boardroom pay in the top quartile. This is a pay inflator that will accelerate faster and faster because I, in my naivety think it has no brakes. It accelerates all percieved inequality according to idiots like me , as (insert post hoc fallacy here) the IDS study finds that in 2000 chief executives earned 62 times the pay of their average employees, but now they pay themselves 104 times more.

In that climate, how does the government imagine it's going to nail public pay down to 2% every year until 2010 when I will do all I can to make people agitate for more? That is expected to be half the average pay delete increase as it is less emotive in the private sector while conveniently forgetting the pay inflation and 900,000 extra public sector parasites since 1997 . There will be trouble - and the government should be seen to deserves it if they continue to take such a non-interventionist cavalier attitude towards overall pay structures comrades .

Out of control Guardian scribblers top pay in the private sector should matter to the Treasury because it infects the public sector and we can't have that. Why is the cabinet secretary now paid considerably more (£220,000) than the Town Clerk of Britain prime minister (£187,000) why why o please? It's a plum prestige job that needs no bribery, and leads to rich jobs for the boys afterwards. Does the Town Clerk chief executive of Bradford need more than the PM? Bringing failed private sector people in now infects failed public pay scales, as lower ranking arrivals on an outrageous £300,000 report to permanent secretaries on a no less outrageous £170,000. (However there is plainly a rare genuine market for head of the nuclear decommissioning authority:oh damn, my caps lock is broken... no one applied for this toxic chalice at £80,000 so it's now been advertised at £200,000). But being director general of the BBC is not toxic: just that the BBC IS toxic everyone wants the power and control over minds it, so why pay a total package of more than me £788,000 - let alone cabinet minister rates for scores of middling BBC managers? (And couldn't they take a pay cut in sympathy with those about to lose their jobs? hahah even I don't believe this twaddle, as I would not ) Sir John Bourn's downfall is a classic example of us socialist hypocrites how private excess makes lefty public people lose their financial bearings.

For Labour to refuse to give any leadership on this is an incomprehensible lacuna to envy-driven harridans like me : the national psychology of pay affects me everyone. Yesterday the government set up a new child poverty unit: Ed Balls and ...oh dear god... Peter Hain, the two bumbling ministers involved, know their 2010 half-way mark to abolishing child poverty will be missed by miles on its present trajectory so no change there then, otherwise I would not have reams to write and armies of interfering social workers would be out of casework . Barnardo's are joining in - but their director, Martin Narey, wonders what they can do with no extra money like a good socialist. Only 48p a week extra was taken from taxpayers was pissed down the drain that is went to child tax credits this year, distorting the market for subsidising low-paid jobs. The bigger question is this: how can I delude everyone into thinking that Labour could ever abolish child poverty if they dare not (insert my disingenuous, fraudulent, irrational and self serving meme here) face down the underlying forces fracturing pay scales all the way through and accelerating the country into ever greater inequality?

Shahid Malik, MP, enters the "marigold room"

Detained at the airport in America when homeward bound Malik said:

"The abusive attitude I endured last November I forgot about and I forgave, but I really do believe that British ministers and parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity at USA airports that we would bestow upon our colleagues in the Senate and Congress.

"Obviously, there was no malice involved but it has to be said that the USA system does not inspire confidence."

No, Shahid, the British Ministers and Parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity that ALL British citizens get. Improve our lot and your lot will improve. That is how it works. As long as you and your kind get special privs and are cushioned, the longer and harsher our lot will be. Your attitude speaks volumes for the ladder-kickers and disingenuous upstarts like you that infest our government at this time.

A-Levels: Balls Up to typical tricks.

Coupons Diplomas Set to Cover up the dumbing down of Replace A-Levels and GCSEs

By Andrew Porter, Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:55am BST 24/10/2007

The future of A-levels and GCSEs was threatened called into serious doubt as ministers petarded heralded a desperate new era of secondary education coupons diplomas.

The Schools Secretary, "Dick" Ed Balls, announced a significant extension of the forthcoming vocational coupon diploma scheme and pretended predicted they would become "the qualification of default choice" for ignorant clay young people within a decade.

A major review of all exam courses for 14 to 19-year-olds will now be held in 2013, once the new coupons diplomas are fully up and running and A-levels thoroughly undermined.

Mr Balls refused as always to give "any guarantee" that A-levels and GCSEs would still exist following the fit up/whitewash review — a major shift from the repeated worthless assurances given by Tony "Yates had my number" Blair and successive education ministers that both qualifications were "here to stay".

He announced three new coupons diplomas yesterday, extending the scheme into traditional academic areas — science, languages and humanities - thereby eroding and undermining them in the process.

In all, 17 coupons diplomas will now be offered at three levels pointless, useless and worthless. A "Usless" Coupon, or 'UC' An intermediate diploma in engineering, for example, is expected to take about three days in total a week and be the equivalent of six thousand A*-C grades at GCSE, while a "worthless" Coupon or 'WC' an advanced diploma, to be taken in the afternoon sixth form, will be equivalent to three text messages to "Deal or no Deal" A-levels. The new qualifications will be rammed home phased in from next September.

Asked whether GCSEs and A-levels would survive, Mr Balls replied: "I'm not going to give you any guarantee about anything whatsoever the outcome of that 2013 review even though our minds are made up." He said A-levels would not be abolished "now but later", but that parents, pupils, employers and universities could ultimately turn coupons diplomas into the most popular McDonalds' Happy Meal courses.

"While I have rejected the call for A-levels to be abolished now, I believe that coupons diplomas could emerge as the turd jewel in the swimming pool crown of our education system, the qualification of choice for the next decade considering there will be no other choice at a particular school.

In 2004, the former chief inspector of schools Sir Mike "Gulag" Tomlinson recommended the phased replacement of GCSEs, A-levels and vocational qualifications with a single diploma over 10 years.

The aim was to end the long-held view of current education vocational courses as inferior to that of the past academic A-levels. But Tony "Yates rumbled me" Blair vetoed the plan and lied to us insisted that GCSEs and A-levels must stay. Teachers, academics, MPs and the Government's own advisers were furious, warning that the divide between ever falling standards vocational and those of the past academic courses would widen.

Mr Balls' remarks yesterday amounted to a dramatic exposure reversal of the Government's position. They were in stark contrast to those of his dim predecessor, Alan Johnson, who warned quite rightly the diplomas could go "horribly wrong" and risked becoming a second-class qualification.

A-levels have been the "gold standard" of education in England and Wales for years. However, a succession of record results in recent years – particularly in the number of A grades — has led to accusations that the exams have been "dumbed down". Next: Watson remarks on the lack of manure.

The new coupons qualifications were attacked last night by another former chief inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead, who described them as a "complete farce" which were too broad in their scope.

The shadow schools secretary, Michael Gove, said the move was clearly designed to spell the end for A-levels. He said: "Instead of accepting Mike Tomlinson's agenda of weakening the academic gold standard, Ed Balls should be concentrating on dealing with under-achievement in particular between his own EARS.

"While he draws up fantasy qualifications for 2011, one in one, two, three, four... five school leavers still can't read, write or count properly."

Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, added: "The Government has been very clever politically by pretending to allow allowing them to run side by side so that they can see how it works and basically letting the market decide which is best. Shame it may be school by school so tough luck trying to compare sensibly."

The coupons diplomas allegedly combine theoretical and practical study of specific subject areas, with a "strong focus" on English, maths and computing skills.

Part of the aim to is bluff reassure employers that exam results are a useful reflection of a student's ability - fat chance.

However, some critics of the diploma scheme argue that children will have to focus too early, at age 14, on their career choices. It also risks undermining traditional academic subjects, such as philosophy, or languages such as Latin and Greek that have no obvious career attached.

If X bureaucrats take money from a bottomless pit for N months...

The Devil's Kitchen is the appropriate place to give the latest tripe boiled up by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills the roasting it deserves. The BBC were serving up the State Propaganda this morning, too.

So they think that some cookbooks require GCSE English do they? The Reptile immediately and quite rightly nails the fact that the Department of Irritation, Uselessness and Skiving have plenty of other things to do, like FIX THE EDUCATION SYSTEM YOU MUPPETS!§ Instead, they conveniently find a reason to fill their bookshelves with all the latest and trendiest titles research cookbooks. I want to see all those books donated to a library. I want evidence.

To be honest I do find Deliah's recipes irritating and presumptive. I do not think that is about GCSE levels at all, but just about good writing and clarity. Asides do not matter to me, as long as they are not the kind that says "and using the [undocumented preparation stage] which you made [long time] earlier". Long sentences do not phase me, for, it must me said, I am guilty as any other for creating long and multi-clause sentences which, I suspect, has something, if not everything, to do with my taking Latin. Big words and complex adjectives are not the issue either, for I like such things and relish the opportunity to expand my vocabulary (I suspect that someone could pass GCSE English these days and not even have the word "vocabulary" in their vocabulary...).

Somehow I suspect this is a subliminal attempt to make people think GCSE is "difficult" and so shore up the reputation of the exam.

Deliah's guff is harder to read not because it requires GCSEs, but because, if you ask me, Deliah is a crap writer who faffs about, who introduces her undocumented preps halfway through and presumes you know how to do it. Lets be honest about this: Ramsay is a chef, Deliah is a cook, or should we really say a writer about cooking. Deliah washed up, waitressed and "helped" in a kitchen before, I suspect, some mate at The Mirror threw her a lifeline. I can help in a kitchen. I am pretty good at prep, in fact (YES CHEF!). I do think I could write a better cookbook that our Deal. A cookbook for blokes. But why bother, cos Ramsay has done it already.

I wonder if there is any pattern here - some say womens' cookbooks are more confusing than mens'. Do you think this may be down to the fact that if a man writes a cookbook, he is almost always a professional chef, whereas it is not the same case for the women? Professional chefs require speed, simplicity, efficiency, order and consistency. As does any bloke in a kitchen. Deliah is either Labour or Lib Dem, I am certain. She is a Ladder-Kicker, but we cannot have the Government report on Ladder-Kicking, can we? Oh no.

§ you should be working towards ensuring our Universities are not incorrectly incentivised to produce narrow, specific, time-limited and, frankly, training-course substitute "Degrees" like "Golf Management" to pigeon-hole people and make them easy to manipulate.

More NHS Lunacy, pt.94

£80m to pay off 700 staff at SHAs.

That is over £100,000 per numptie person. SHAs have only been in existence for 5 years. How can someone be paid off such sums after such a short time?

SHAs are being reduced from 26 to 10, so instead of large, inefficient geographical monopolies pestering our healthcare providers, we have a smaller number of ENORMOUS, inefficient geographical monopolies to pester even more abstract, anonymous and remote healthcare providers.

Instead of cutting SHAs from 26 to 10, they should break their geographical monopoly and have people choose which SHA they will use (PCTs and GPs can be with multiple SHAs). This way you can devolve NICE to each SHA and when a particular SHA makes a dimwit decision on medicines people can abandon it to shrivel friendless in the gutter. THAT is true democracy, "choice" and "consultation"!

Labour would never do such a thing, preferring to sit as arbiter in handing out contracts to their new mates private companies. I wonder why...

The Tories are no better, with their half-arsed idea of yet another layer of abstraction in the NHS Board.

Hattersley views Liberty through a glass darkly.

It is amazing that Socialists still think they have a bead on things, that their worldview has any credibility left. Roy Hattersley has spoken about liberty.

Others have commented about what Roy has said, but I wish to see what he says in the Guardian.

The Liberal Democrats - understandably preferring to recall established achievements rather than speculate about dubious future prospects - are holding a contest to decide who, in popular estimation, is the most important Liberal in British history. Asquith (rightly) and Campbell Bannerman (wrongly) have not been included on the shortlist. The final choice is among Gladstone, Mill, Lloyd George and Keynes. And I am told that John Stuart Mill is the favourite to win. That should surprise nobody. He is, like the party itself, comfortingly worthy but out-of-date.

As are you and your Labour Party, don't forget.

Mill's libertarian philosophy is based on two precepts that - despite having written an admirable essay on women's rights - he always expressed with the use of male pronouns.

Why is that an issue? "Man" and "he" is legitimate shorthand for "he/she". You are just trying to sow the unjustified seeds of antipathy. Stop it.

The first principle asserts that "all errors which (a man) is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good". Only cranks believe that now. If it were a generally held view, we would not prohibit the use of recreational drugs or require passengers in the back seats of motor cars to wear safety belts.

Well, I am a crank by your reckoning, then. Your examples are pretty bad if you are trying to talk to a truly Liberal audience. Or maybe you are just talking to the faux Liberals and wish to bury Mill?

I was a member of the cabinet that first discussed the desirability of making back-seat safety belts compulsory. Millite ministers initially objected. They were reconciled to the "infraction of liberty" by the argument that a passenger flying through the windscreen might injure the pedestrian whose life had initially been saved by the emergency stop.

Now can we see those stats on pedestrians who have been injured by a flying back seat passenger? I am sure front seat passengers have been hit aplenty, but then again the front seat passenger and especially the driver are in a pretty good position to either correct that situation or absent themselves from the vehicle.

And Mill's second precept makes a distinction between "the part of a person's life which concerns only himself and that which concerns others". In short, we are free to damage ourselves but are not at liberty to behave in a way that harms other people.

The distinction was easier to make in Victorian Britain than it is today - though even in 1859, when On Liberty was written, subscribers to the cult of the individual grossly underestimated how much one human is dependent on another. Put aside for a moment all consideration of complicated questions about what pressures - economic, social and psychological - induce men and women to encompass their own destruction. They were rarely asked in Mill's time. Just accept the incontrovertible fact that today, almost everything we do for good or ill has an effect on the rest of society. Progress has made us members one of another.

Welfarism most certainly has. People are allocated housing and healthcare and as such are not permitted to absent themselves and chose another provider. It is not progress but creeping Communism that has done this.

Our interdependence has increased with every economic and scientific advance and it now embraces matters both general and specific, from conduct that is likely to destroy the whole planet, to the sickness caused to publicans by tobacco smoke drifting across the bar. Some of those detriments would be dismissed by Mill as "contingent injuries...which society can afford to bear". That is because he did not know that greenhouse gases existed or that tobacco smoke was carcinogenic. The philosophy for our time ought to concern a consensus about civilised conduct, not extol irresponsible individualism.

The 'conduct likely to destroy the planet' is presently coming from places like Iran. NO PROOF of AGW exists. The real threat of Global Warming comes from the imbeciles who are busy faffing about with taxes, restrictions and inadequate alternatives when the first thing should be to mitigate the potential effects and create a robust economy to afford it all (hint: we do not have one). If Mr Hattersley were TRULY in favour of his point about tobacco smoke, he should ban it outdoors first. I object to the desperate puffer at the bus stop far more than at a bar. It is my choice to go into a bar, but I have no option but to be in proximity of the bus stop. But then again to try and ban it outdoors would expose the entire notion for what it is - authoritarian codswallop.

Oh, and that word 'consensus' pops up. It is not about consensus, but reason and logic. Since when has philosophy been about 'consensus', Roy? You are confusing it with disingenuous politicking.

And it ought to be based on a definition of liberty that is far more meaningful to the majority of mankind than Mill's notion that freedom is no more than the absence of restraint. The right to do something that circumstances prevent us from doing is not a right worth having.

But we are not talking rights, but freedoms, and not circumstances but legislation borne from irrational thinking. It is not circumstance that prevents people to ride without a seatbelt, but legislation alone unless the other passengers exert their superior rights within reason to force them to buckle up, or their other right to absent themselves. The pedestrian on the street is in truth not at risk from the flying passenger. With smoking the option is always there to leave the bar or not work there. You cannot arrange things to say "because of X we have introduced your freedom Y is of no use, so why are you bothered by Y?". That is like saying "we have decided you no longer have freedom of speech, so why are you bothered about being prevented from exercising it?".

Liberty, we have learned since Mill's day, is the practical ability to enjoy the choices of a free society, not the theoretical chance to take advantage of opportunities which we cannot afford. Mill's philosophy was great for the 19th-century middle classes. He would have rejected outright a more positive view of liberty since it required the freedoms of the few to be constrained in order to protect the freedoms of the many.

Well, Roy, you should know about the "theoretical chance to take advantage of opportunities which we cannot afford" - it is called the Welfare State and Socialism.

On the other hand, William Ewart Gladstone came to accept that necessity. His first administration merely promoted the idea of merit - important enough in its time. The purchase of military commissions was prohibited.

What on earth makes you think this is against what Mill has said?

The civil service was recruited by examination rather than interview.

As above.

The universities were opened to dissenters.

And again. What is with you Roy? This is just disingenuous hogwash to paint the picture that Liberals and Libertarians are somehow conservative and so 'against' the pretence that Socialists want to delude themselves with that they are somehow the guardians of true liberal thought.

The Education Act pressed forward with the idea that the state has responsibilities towards the welfare, as well as the physical protection, of its citizens.

IIRC The Education Act was more about stopping child labour. In terms of education, it was about demanding that the individual attend school. Hardly a 'responsibility towards the welfare of citizens', more an authoritarian diktat.

But, most important of all, his two Irish Land Acts accepted that sometimes the privileged (in this case the landlords) must have their rights restricted so that the poor (in this case the tenant farmers) can live in comfort. If Liberal Democrats are as radical as (in some parts of the country) they claim to be, there is no doubt he will come top of their poll.

How about restricting the rights of the local councils so that freeborn Englishmen and Women can live in their own homes in comfort, Roy? Oh no, the State is not about limiting power over people per se, but drawing it in towards itself. The State has not wanted to abolish the power of the Elite and Establishment - it only covets it.

Respect

In the effort to ensure that no respect was demanded, the Sociofascists have managed to create a place where no respect is given.

Cash For Honours: Innocent or Unproven?

Having insufficient evidence is not the same as innocent.

We will now witness a concerted campaign to enable the State to relieve us of our hard-earned so a bunch of self-interested sorts can be paid to pester us.

With this will come the ability to classify which parties get funding and which do not. It will be biased in favour of the incumbents and any remaining Euro-poodles.

It will be preparing the way for a one party state with badge engineering to make people think they are buying into something "different".

PollyT: Taxation, propaganda and spiteful irrationality.

Polly has been spreading unreason so close to a lie that you could not fit a cigarette paper between them.

Here goes:

Polly, you appear to have a perverse misinterpretation of what goes on.

“All that capital gains tax would otherwise go into the exchequer to be spent according to the democratic decision of taxpayers.”

No, Polly, you are wrong. The only way you can have the money spent democratically by taxpayers is to reduce the tax they pay. This way they each decide for themselves where that money goes. State largesse is NOT democratic.

“Instead the taxpayer sees their own money purloined and spent at the whim of the giver.”

No, Polly, you are wrong. The money does NOT belong to the taxpayer. It never did and never will. It either belongs to the owner or it is purloined, to use your word, by the Treasury and spent at the whim of the Treasury. The Treasury never “gives” unless it has already taken.

“Every time anyone donates to a cat sanctuary or cruelty to dogs in Japan, the taxpayer is obliged to contribute another 28% on top, willy-nilly (and often nilly).”

No, Polly, you are wrong. The taxpayer does not contribute a penny. They never do in such cases. What happens is that the Treasury does not TAKE that 28% for itself, but allows the giver to give all the money they give without the Treasury grabbing its piece. Maybe this “28%” malarkey is confusing people. It used to be either 20% or 40% depending on if you paid top rate tax. This dodge to 28% could be seen as a sly trick to disconnect the relationship between the giver’s tax and the tax refund. It certainly gives your argument a momentary fig leaf, but I am having nothing of it.

“So long as they fulfil the very basic requirements of probity, registered charities may cover a multitude of crankiness and inefficiency:”

The State is incredibly inefficient with our tax money. A tax £ ends up in the Treasury with the spending power of 30p it is so inefficient and bad at its job.

“cut-throat wasteful competition between near-identical tin-rattlers, advertising campaigns that distort important social issues; or empire building charity managers with little genuine assessment of their outcomes. “

Just like government lobby groups, quangos and other parasitical tumours on the Nation’s body.

“Of course many are excellent, but, good or bad, the taxpayer has to pony up that 28% extra for every pound put in a tin.”

As above, this is just wrong.

“Donors with their hefty cheques can cause serious trouble for good charities doing difficult, skilled work. Masters of the Universe are used to running the show themselves in their own companies, and they think they know best how to run any organisation. Sometimes they do, but sometimes the cash comes at a high price. Once they've got all the "toys", the danger is that using their money to run poor folk, their schools, their estates or their children is just the most fun toy of all.”

Just as the State sticks its dirty fingernails into the “third sector”. New Labour is as we speak undergoing a concerted plan to totally ruin this area with precisely the results you accuse private people of. In the case of the State, it is not even their money they are using to destroy things!

“I suggested to this particular Master of the Universe (who happens to give to an excellent programme) that as well as giving by whim, wouldn't paying more tax be a better way for the wealthy to pay their dues? He used the usual high-earner's get-out: governments won't spend his money as well as he can. If he gives it, he can direct it exactly where he wants. No doubt we'd all like to do that with our taxes, but the better way is to elect a government to spend it as rationally and accountably as it can.”

That is not possible, Polly. Do you actually believe that nonsense? Governments are the WORST spenders going.

“There is no evidence that charities spend money better: indeed researchers are too polite to conduct the sort of thorough, value-for-money scrutiny of charities that the state is subjected to.”

Ah, but this is not the point. People can choose which inefficient charity they put their money into. Being charities, they might be inefficient, but with no profits, some redistribution may occur. This is unlike the State, which the payee, the taxpayer has limited or no control over what moonbat causes the State decides to spend money on and when it does it often spends money hiring fat, inefficient private parasitical organisations which siphon of vast sums in consultancies and profits for the non-deserving few.

“The truth is, if the top good philanthropists got together and admitted that they now have more money than is decent, they could make a huge difference. Quite a small group of powerful clan chiefs of the City could change the tax-averse culture of the rich. They could shame the non-domiciled, the private-equity tax evaders, the trust fund inheritance tax cheats and their whole wicked tribe of tax advisers bent on denying the state as much money as possible.”

How about backing flat tax which would pretty much solve the issue and make life easier for everyone, not just the rich? No, you like “progressive” taxation, don’t you, Polly. Nasty, discriminatory and unfair “progressive” taxation that is used as a vindictive form of social engineering.

“They could advocate a top tax rate of 50% on earnings over £100,000. That would only affect the top 1.5% of taxpayers and it would bring in £4.5bn every year. “

No, it would mean more people try to evade tax and that UK PLC becomes more expensive and so less competitive.

“Consider this week's Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on the growing chasm between rich and poor. Earmarked for the neediest, that same £4.5bn would be enough to lift half our poor children over the poverty threshold.”

The best way to lift the poor is to provide a vibrant, low tax, efficient economy so the poor can find work and live their lives. Making the rich poorer is not the way to make the poor less so. As Winston Churchill once said – "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.".

“ (while ordinary taxpayers will be obliged to contribute another 28% to whatever causes take his fancy).”

Repeating a lie is the classic trick of propaganda. Polly, you are repeating a lie yet again.

“ It is good to give - but it's even better to pay your taxes.”

And better still to have those taxes flat and fair!

Sikh Regiment

I have long commented about my support for the formation of Sikh Regiment in the British Army. I think it would be an a excellent thing and I am very glad to see that my thoughts echo that of the Army itself and of the Sikh community. Alas, the Commission for Racial Exploitation Equality have nagged, bamboozled and guilt-tripped the powers that be into dropping the idea. For crying out loud this is not about saying "you, Mr Singh, can ONLY join this regiment", but that it is about honouring and recognising a group who have served so well in the past.

A throat says: "The creation of a separate regiment according to ethnicity would be segregation, which amounts to discrimination under the Race Relations Act. Anything that creates separation between regiments can only have a detrimental effect upon our Armed Forces' operational effectiveness."

If this is indeed how the Act would rule, then the act is irrational - it is an ass. It needs review, repeal or just pragmatic and rational use. However, seeing as we are talking lawyers, repeal and start again might be a better way.

Alas, the CRE do not wish to render themselves redundant, so their actions - often displaying an intent to patronise and kept racial groups in a subordinate position to further an egotistical and parasitical agendae - should always be viewed with suspicion....hold on a mo'! We have to PAY for these clowns!

I hope the publicity around this nonsensical decision will prompt a swift reversal.

Yet Moron Education

The Devil and noble James Bartholomew make some focused posts on the appalling news that 25% of school-leavers leave with nothing valuable to show for it.

I need not repeat their views here, but only to say that if they leave with nothing, or even something that is worthless as GCSEs are rapidly becoming, then why keep them there 2 years longer?

I agree with James that the core problem is the State Monopoly. I am not a fan of monopolies.

It is criminal that this is allowed to happen. What is also criminal is the Educational Establishment - so blinkered by Statist and Sociofascist dogma that they are blind to it all. Such a group are not worthy and certainly not to be trusted to form policy or educate our children.

The Statists truly do wish to create a "Lumpen Illitariat" of juveniles. Not adults, juvenules.