No wonder this has been dragging on when the key evidence has been in the hands of two such uncooperative men.
I'm afraid Tim that you don't know what you are talking about. I'm a professional investigator and have worked with the police. The police are well able to get hold of CCTV footage within hours if they wanted to. They wouldn't even need to ask Cameron or Heywood for it but to the relevant authority in control of the CCTV at the Downing Street gates, which is more likely to the be the security officials themselves in charge of government security. Why the police did not get that information at an early stage of the investigation - it should have been one of the first things they did IMO - is a question that certainly needs answering.
Good to see the PB Romney's are breaking cover again attacking those filthy pretend poor people. They certainly aren't making the tories look out of touch at all. ;^ )
While we find it entertaining, there is no reason to read the Runes and Entrails of the US political scene for any comparison to the UK. We don't do this with Canada or Oz never mind mainland Europe.
We have class issues through our politics, while religion/culture issues seems to dominate the US.
Cameron can be characterised as a shiny faced posho, but Romney was the ultimate greed is good plutocrat burning 100 dollar bills.
Cameron has not changed much over his political life, he's well off upper middle class Tory who has a bit of Metropolitan Sheen added. Seen as nice enough but not truly understanding us ordinary wage slaves.
.........................................
It's a problem that the Republicans have dug themselves into.They have pandered to their base so long that they have vacated the centre. No future candidate can be seen as true moderate under the current party composition.
The culture war now poisons everything. The democrats have a rich seam to mine with the 'war against women' meme. When republicans find it difficult to criticise their craziest members who argue a womens body will not get pregnant from genuine rape. Or laws in some states that require forced vaginal ultrasound before Termination, where a doctor has to describe every part of the fetus before termination and has often been described as feeling like a medical rape.
Maybe the US does have a lesson after all, mobilizing your base vote may work for a while but drift to far from the centre and you can become trapped, unable to get back. Though to be honest why anyone needs to look across the Atlantic to find that lesson, when they just need to look over the past 30 years of British political history.
And yet it looks like the GOP will probably go for Christie in 2016, RP.
He's comfortably ahead in their polling and the only candidate likely to give Clinton a decent run for her money. If she doesn't or cannot run, he would probably start favorite against any other Democrat.
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
By the way - I like the cartoon, Marf. I'm hoping it was just a happy co-incidence and that you weren't up half the night drawing it once you'd found what I'd written about!
from what I learned on here the US election was as much about race as anything else. Blacks and Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Obama, and whites, especially older middle class tax paying whites, for Romney.
And that's what this latest spat in congress is about, isn't it? (though nobody will admit it). Its about which of the above runs America. And the numbers are flowing remorselessly against the republicans and their white backers.
For me comparisons between the US and UK are erroneous.
@TomHarrisMP: Speculation is mounting that Alex Salmond, in his keynote speech today, will endorse the Yes campaign. More news as we get it.
@TomHarrisMP: Advance briefings of Alex Salmond's keynote conference speech suggest he will describe an independent Scotland's future as "just peachy".
@TomHarrisMP: Nicola Sturgeon's speech to conference yesterday was "amazeballs", First Minister Alex Salmond expected to tell delegates. #snp13
And yet it looks like the GOP will probably go for Christie in 2016, RP.
He's comfortably ahead in their polling and the only candidate likely to give Clinton a decent run for her money. If she doesn't or cannot run, he would probably start favorite against any other Democrat.
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
And there's an interesting article to be written there. Though of course we should remember that Romney-the-governor was also well to the left of where Romney-the-candidate.
The biggest growth in the UK is food banks, people cannot even feed themselves,
Is that why we have an obesity epidemic, especially amongst the worst off?
Food that makes you fat tends to be the cheapest kind of processed stuff you can buy. But is there any evidence that people who regularly need to use foodbanks are obese? Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
Tea party preps for fight with #GOP 'Surrender Caucus' after declaring moral victory http://wtim.es/1eugbff #teaparty
I don't think you quite grasp the scale or sheer intensity of their lunacy. The GOP circus last time may well end up looking rather dull in retrospect.
Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
if that is true then why are key moderate republicans facing bitter fights in primaries for 2014 against tea party candidates - fights they may well lose.
The tea party strategy is to target moderates in states they know they will win in general elections. They are looking to carve out a geographical power base in the southern and south western states, as a prelude to I don't know what.
They know they can't win the country, surely. Such is the antipathy between them and dems, however, I genuinely believe a break away might one day be an issue.
The biggest growth in the UK is food banks, people cannot even feed themselves,
Is that why we have an obesity epidemic, especially amongst the worst off?
87% of Uk adults have a mobile phone yet they are all starving and freezing to death.
Mobile phones are often cheaper than landlines. Should it really be a choice between, say, being available to take a work-related call (especially in the era of zero hours contracts) and having enough to eat?
Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
What I mutter to myself is that the poverty industry is telling us poor people are both fat and starving at the same time, probably to screw more money out of the tax payer for themselves .
I'm afraid Tim that you don't know what you are talking about. I'm a professional investigator and have worked with the police. The police are well able to get hold of CCTV footage within hours if they wanted to. They wouldn't even need to ask Cameron or Heywood for it but to the relevant authority in control of the CCTV at the Downing Street gates, which is more likely to the be the security officials themselves in charge of government security. Why the police did not get that information at an early stage of the investigation - it should have been one of the first things they did IMO - is a question that certainly needs answering.
There was no investigation until Mitchell forced Cameron and Heywood to hand over the tapes No one besides them knew that the police log claiming eye witnesses were present didnt stack up.
Mitchell would not have been able to "force" anyone to hand over tapes. There are laws governing the use of and access to such material.
The police and those in charge of CCTV at Downing Street would have known about the CCTV material and, indeed, should have looked at it when writing up the incident and certainly immediately after it blew up into a story. That responsibility would have primarily rested with the relevant security authorities who should have looked at the material as soon as it was evident that there was an issue. In any organisation it is the relevant investigative / security authorities who do the investigation not the Chief Executive (or PM).
I would guess that there was - for whatever reason - no great appetite to do such an investigation, possibly because people wrongly believed that the police would not lie about such a matter, because the Tories hoped the story would die down and because to be seen to be attacking the integrity of police officers at the same time as 2 Manchester policewomen were shot dead would have made the story even more toxic.
Certainly the matter was badly handled from the start but the fact that the police have only now - apparently - found more CCTV footage is down to their own investigative incompetence or reluctance to do a proper job and not to others withholding evidence, as you suggest. They have all the powers they need to get all possible relevant material.
Speculation is mounting that the scottish tory surgers are so desperate and short of ideas that they are forced to rely on their scottish labour chum and blunderer TomHarris who was first sacked then mysteriously* resigned to "spend more time with his family".
*(Not mysterious at all for those of us who know what happened)
The rise in food banks is a function of supply, not demand. It's really quite cheap and nasty to pretend otherwise, unless today's line is that there are cuts and people out there are starving.
Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
What I mutter to myself is that the poverty industry is telling us poor people are both fat and starving at the same time, probably to screw more money out of the tax payer for themselves .
Is it beyond the realms of possibility that there are different levels of poverty? I know it may be a touched nuanced, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
if that is true then why are key moderate republicans facing bitter fights in primaries for 2014 against tea party candidates - fights they may well lose.
The tea party strategy is to target moderates in states they know they will win in general elections. They are looking to carve out a geographical power base in the southern and south western states, as a prelude to I don't know what.
They know they can't win the country, surely. Such is the antipathy between them and dems, however, I genuinely believe a break away might one day be an issue.
It's because of the geography and the way the State election system works, Taffy, as you imply yourself.
The GOP's conduct over the debt crisis made absolutely no sense considered as a whole, but it made perfect sense from the point of view of individual Congressmen who personally had nothing to gain by compromising. Localism trumped the broader good of the Party.
The extent to which they can confront and deal with this issue will determine the extent to which they can remain a viable alternative to the Democrats. It doesn't look good for them at the moment, but maybe the Crisis debacle will clear a few heads.
Icidentally, the situation is not wholly dissimilar n the Tory Party where individual MPs find it popular locally to adopt a line very close to UKIP in some respects, which restricts the Party's room to manoeuvre - but I wouldn't carry the comparison too far.
They should understand they deserve to go hungry and cold
It was ed miliband who called it when he said in the noughties that fuel bills have to rise because of his commitments to green energy.
His beliefs are the reason poor people are shivering. Without them we could go back to cheap coal. But he has decreed that that is the wrong sort of energy to use.
When the poor are cold they should take comfort from the fact they are helping to save the planets nice bits for people like ed to vacation in.
The rise in food banks is a function of supply, not demand. It's really quite cheap and nasty to pretend otherwise, unless today's line is that there are cuts and people out there are starving.
Well there have been significant cuts to front line services and welfare payments, while food and energy prices have increased. I don't see what the Tory problem with food banks is - aren't they the Big Society in action?
If the Lib Dems can hold Eastleigh after their MP resigns in scandal, and are part of (as you never tire of reminding us) a deeply unpopular government, surely the SNP, (as you never tire of reminding us) a very popular government can hold Dunfermline?
If the SNP were working with a 7% GE lead as opposed to a 2% one in Dunfermline, they might be in with a shout. In fact I may be willing to take a bet on Labour winning by less than 7 points (their candidate is a bit crap). Perhaps one of the resident psephologists can tell us the last time an incumbent government party held a by-election seat on the back of 2 point GE lead.
Listening to their candidate the people must be die hards to vote for her , not a clue and typical Labour donkey who will just join the sheep in voting as ordered. She will obviously do nothing for people of Dunfermline, shocking the caliber of labour people nowadays.
They should understand they deserve to go hungry and cold
It was ed miliband who called it when he said in the noughties that fuel bills have to rise because of his commitments to green energy.
His beliefs are the reason poor people are shivering. Without them we could go back to cheap coal. But he has decreed that that is the wrong sort of energy to use.
When the poor are cold they should take comfort from the fact they are helping to save the planets nice bits for people like ed to vacation in.
Ed is not in government and has not been for over three years. When in power he resisted Tory calls for a stronger emissions reduction policy.
The rise in food banks is a function of supply, not demand. It's really quite cheap and nasty to pretend otherwise, unless today's line is that there are cuts and people out there are starving.
Well there have been significant cuts to front line services and welfare payments, while food and energy prices have increased. I don't see what the Tory problem with food banks is - aren't they the Big Society in action?
I have no problem with them as long as opposition politicians don't repeatedly try to imply that without them people would be going hungry, which is patently not the case for 99% of their users.
I'm quite sure if you doubled the supply right now, you'd find enough people willing to go and collect the free food from them, and the same would be true if supply had expanded 10 years ago. Attempts to imply that a sudden surge in supply implies a catastrophic rise in demand to prevent people dying of starvation and malnutrition is, as mentioned before, cheap and nasty.
On the cost of living the irony is that having prioritised keeping council tax bills as flat as possible since coming to power the electorate takes that for granted, banks it and says what more.
Same in some way with fuel duty rises which haven't happened - both policies are invisible to joe public as they haven't had the emotional 'hit' first of all.
With energy costs, that is an open goal as prices invariably go up as we head in to winter.... this issue probably won't be so powerful for Lab in the spring/summer months I'd suggest either - it is as we start putting the central heating on now.
To me the next populist intervention needs to be an expense which the vast majority need in daily living....
I give you...
The Toilet Roll expenses relief subsidy The Great British Baked bread cashback scheme The free TV licence for a year for everyone pre-election bribe.
At our feeding centre in Leicester there are an interesting bunch of clients. I do not see many who are obese, but there are many homeless often with drug and alcohol addictions, who spend much of any cash that they acquire on these things. Homeless men also have some of the highest smoking rates of any social group. I do not think that they spend their meagre monies wisely, but one of the objectives of our charity is to get them back into a more sustainable lifestyle.
It is a charity based on the Christian belief of reaching out to those who have fallen out of society for whatever reason, though being Leicester other faiths are supportive, particularly good curries provided by a number of hindu supporters.
The biggest growth in the UK is food banks, people cannot even feed themselves,
Is that why we have an obesity epidemic, especially amongst the worst off?
Food that makes you fat tends to be the cheapest kind of processed stuff you can buy. But is there any evidence that people who regularly need to use foodbanks are obese? Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
The biggest growth in the UK is food banks, people cannot even feed themselves,
Is that why we have an obesity epidemic, especially amongst the worst off?
87% of Uk adults have a mobile phone yet they are all starving and freezing to death.
I don't think anyone's saying 87% are starving. But now you mention it if you're homeless, for example, a mobile phone is apparently often priority expenditure, if you need to be able to take offers of temporary work, find a shelter with a place available etc.
Icidentally, the situation is not wholly dissimilar n the Tory Party where individual MPs find it popular locally to adopt a line very close to UKIP in some respects, which restricts the Party's room to manoeuvre - but I wouldn't carry the comparison too far.
If Cameron loses and the next tory leadership contest becomes focused on staying IN or OUT of Europe then the comparison will seem more than apt.
Misconstrue and misrepresent it however you wish. Reserved matters will clearly no longer be reserved in an independent scotland. You should have paid more attention to Mr Herdson because if any other party picks up this idea and tries to run with it now it's going to be very amusing indeed.
Saying social security will end if people vote no is a tad alarmist, IMO.
They are making a good go of it without independence and given their past they will exact a heavy price for our temerity of having a referendum.
You've got a short memory , Malcolm. If it had been for the lavish generosity of the English taxpayer in bailing out RBS and BoS , Scotland would be broker than Greece.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
Oh, I have no difficulty grasping the extent of the lunacy, Mick. I've experienced it first hand often enough.
It's easy however to overestimate how representative Tea Party and other factions within the GOP are of Republican supporters as a whole. In my experience, they are not very representative at all, just very voluble.
Note that the last two GOP Presidential candidates - Romney and McCain - have been from the Party's sensible wing. The next one - probably Christie - will be too.
I agree however that the parade of Whackjobs during the last set of primaries - Bachman, Cain, Gingrich, Trump, Santorum - did the Party no favours at all.
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
Tea party preps for fight with #GOP 'Surrender Caucus' after declaring moral victory http://wtim.es/1eugbff #teaparty
I don't think you quite grasp the scale or sheer intensity of their lunacy. The GOP circus last time may well end up looking rather dull in retrospect.
+1. Since the ability appeared for Super PAC to raise unlimited funds from 3rd parties and spend that on campaigns The tea party supporters especially the Koch brothers have been able to attack any moderate republican they want.
I haven't got a clue what they hope to achieve but the Republican party has spent 20 years moving further and further to the right and its continuing to do so.
"Scotland’s social security system will be dismantled. Scotland’s public services and universal benefits will be under threat. Scotland’s budget will be cut."
The bitterness and spite of westminster will wreak havoc on Scotland if the people are stupid enough to vote no and it will be well deserved.
So "Project Fear" is indeed SNP, not Unionist!
Do you genuinely believe a "no" vote will lead to the end of or reduction in devolution?
You're not even using all the powers you've got!
I assume you are talking about the stupid 3p Tax , which HMRC cannot collect even if implemented and that Westminster will at least the same amount off the Scottish budget if used. WoW , wonder why they are not using that one. It is hard to believe how stupid you southern Tories really are , I would not be surprised if you had a fleece, you believe any old crap whilst knowing diddily squat about the Scottish Government or Scotland despite claiming to be Scottish.
"Scotland’s social security system will be dismantled. Scotland’s public services and universal benefits will be under threat. Scotland’s budget will be cut."
The bitterness and spite of westminster will wreak havoc on Scotland if the people are stupid enough to vote no and it will be well deserved.
So "Project Fear" is indeed SNP, not Unionist!
Do you genuinely believe a "no" vote will lead to the end of or reduction in devolution?
You're not even using all the powers you've got!
I do believe they will try to reduce the paltry powers in place and will most definitely cut the budgets and make them even more unfair than they currently are. We will pay a heavy price if the vote is no both in cash and reduction of democracy , if that is possible.
On the cost of living the irony is that having prioritised keeping council tax bills as flat as possible since coming to power the electorate takes that for granted, banks it and says what more.
Same in some way with fuel duty rises which haven't happened - both policies are invisible to joe public as they haven't had the emotional 'hit' first of all.
That's for the government to come out and push during the campaign.
Mr. Maaaarsh, indeed. There was a graph here a few weeks ago showing that food bank use (they were only introduced in the early 2000s) has increased massively every single year, including during the years of boom.
I am not against food banks, especially now that people have to pay huge amounts for their energy to satisfy the consciences of people such as ed miliband ( and, for that matter, David Cameron).
And yet it looks like the GOP will probably go for Christie in 2016, RP.
He's comfortably ahead in their polling and the only candidate likely to give Clinton a decent run for her money. If she doesn't or cannot run, he would probably start favorite against any other Democrat.
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
Paddy is 7-1 on Christie. Any good ? Am on Rand Paul at 33s..
No wonder this has been dragging on when the key evidence has been in the hands of two such uncooperative men.
Well, I think we always knew they were sitting on something. Mitchell even tells Crick that the start of the incident, including Mitchell's admitted swearing at the police, is over before his cctv clip starts. It would also show monumental incompetence in camera placcement if cctv left so much of Downing Street and the gates uncovered. What is the price about there also being microphones that captured what was said?
Has it really come down to this on here? Poor people are fat, lazy, and use food banks so that they can fund mobile phones?
To be fair, those expounding such views are a minority. And it's no surprise who they are. There has always been a strand of thinking that goes along the lines of the poor deserving everything they get.
Mr. Maaaarsh, indeed. There was a graph here a few weeks ago showing that food bank use (they were only introduced in the early 2000s) has increased massively every single year, including during the years of boom.
I really can't get over the desire to pretend that in a country like the UK - we are in need of food parcels supplied by the Red Cross or many of the other things given away by the well-meaning.
Sure there are as Mr FoxInSox notes those with chaotic lives who spend their money on their fixes, or new arrivals who are having problems - but the notion that there's been an explosion in need is just very improbable.
And if you give things away for free - you'll encourage more and more to take advantage of it because - well its free. There was an article the other day about *white collar* food bank users and how that supposedly meant we're all dying of starvation because of evil cuts or something. Frankly it just smacked of opportunism by those who aren't desperate at all but using their smarts to get something literally for nothing.
I am not saying the poor are either fat, lazy or hungry. I have no evidence of that.
I'm simply going on what left wing anti-poverty charities are saying.
And what they are saying is that the poor are both obese and starving. I'm not claiming anything, just repeating what they tell us.
The two normally go hand in hand , poor people usually are limited to crap stodgy food due to various factors such as knowledge , lack of money , lack of means to cook ( ie energy poor ), access to decent shops, etc.
Misconstrue and misrepresent it however you wish. Reserved matters will clearly no longer be reserved in an independent scotland. You should have paid more attention to Mr Herdson because if any other party picks up this idea and tries to run with it now it's going to be very amusing indeed.
Saying social security will end if people vote no is a tad alarmist, IMO.
They are making a good go of it without independence and given their past they will exact a heavy price for our temerity of having a referendum.
You've got a short memory , Malcolm. If it had been for the lavish generosity of the English taxpayer in bailing out RBS and BoS , Scotland would be broker than Greece.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
Dear Fred,
I wanted you to know that I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide.
It's easy however to overestimate how representative Tea Party and other factions within the GOP are of Republican supporters as a whole. In my experience, they are not very representative at all, just very voluble.
They didn't just magically appear out of a vacuum though. The original group was fairly small but seemed to have at least most of their marbles. They were then quickly co-opted and used as a tool by a GOP who saw potential for a grass roots movement against Obama that embodied a sort of quick and easy populist anti-Obama grouping. They imagined that would be most effective at making plenty of noise and causing maximum distress to the Dems and Obama. So they fed the beast on raw red meat, rattled it's cage with Fox News and talk radio and happily watched it grow and get angrier by the day.
And all was well, till it turned on them.
The more moderate GOP wing now has big business at least looking after them but on the ground the tea party has more than enough activists with zealotry on their side to make life very uncomfortable for that moderate wing.
Mr. Maaaarsh, indeed. There was a graph here a few weeks ago showing that food bank use (they were only introduced in the early 2000s) has increased massively every single year, including during the years of boom.
It would be interesting to see that graph. The Tories used to talk about growing levels of poverty when they were in opposition.
"If the country is increasingly coming to the view that they’re succeeding in doing so, how much of that will rub off on the Lib Dems, and how many of those switchers will come back to the fold in 2015?"
I won't. I'm an ex LibDem activist and I'll be voting Labour at the next election. I suspect many ex LibDems like me , perhaps 5-10% of the electorate, will do the same.
I am unmoved by the anaemic economic "recovery". Too little, too late. Three wasted years. The share of GDP going to wages is reducing - hence the increase in the cost of living. On the other hand large companies are bursting with cash. This doesn't help the economy but does feed through into the asset boom.
But my switch to Labour is not primarily to do with the economy. I do not believe in the role of competition and internal markets in public services, nor their privatisation. The current leadership of the LibDems do. Hence the student fees and NHS "reform" fiascos. Until the current LibDem leadership is replaced, I won't be voting LibDem. In any case, I'm actually beginning to admire Ed Miliband.
So David, your piece is well argued and evidence based as usual, but I think your conclusion is over optimistic.
Misconstrue and misrepresent it however you wish. Reserved matters will clearly no longer be reserved in an independent scotland. You should have paid more attention to Mr Herdson because if any other party picks up this idea and tries to run with it now it's going to be very amusing indeed.
Saying social security will end if people vote no is a tad alarmist, IMO.
They are making a good go of it without independence and given their past they will exact a heavy price for our temerity of having a referendum.
You've got a short memory , Malcolm. If it had been for the lavish generosity of the English taxpayer in bailing out RBS and BoS , Scotland would be broker than Greece.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
Dear Fred,
I wanted you to know that I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide.
Good luck with the bid.
Alex Salmond
Do you expect him to send a note saying , Fred I don't give a shit about Scotland , hope you make a mess of things. He had no say in how the UK banks were run or regulated , it was all done from London as was the rescue of the rich bankers using the poor public's money. You can surely do better than that. Try defending banking regulation , bankers bonuses , bankers tax cuts , etc. I will not hold my breath waiting on anything sensible.
There has always been a strand of thinking that goes along the lines of the poor deserving everything they get.
I think you are in the mood to put words into the mouths of others this morning SO.
Personally I am as outraged as you that people, especially the elderly, are having to choose between heat and eat this winter.
You are (presumably) blaming the energy companies for this. I am blaming people like ed miliband and David Cameron, whose devotion to the green agenda has forced gas and electricity prices through the roof.
And what is making me even more angry is, even now, they see that agenda as their first priority.
For me any human being with half an ounce of decency would say, re-open those coal stations now, I'm not having people freezing to death, even if it does mean we f8ck the planet for a bit longer
Certainly the matter was badly handled from the start but the fact that the police have only now - apparently - found more CCTV footage is down to their own investigative incompetence or reluctance to do a proper job and not to others withholding evidence, as you suggest. They have all the powers they need to get all possible relevant material.
If you read the article...
Channel 4 News said yesterday that it had screened only a fraction of the CCTV footage in its possession.
The broadcaster has shown two to three minutes of footage from different angles, which a spokesman said were the “crucial bits”. But it estimates that it has more than 30 minutes of video recorded on three different cameras — two in Downing Street and one just outside the gate on the wall of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Much of the footage had not been shown, it said, because it covered periods before and after the incident which were not considered relevant.
Mr. Maaaarsh, indeed. There was a graph here a few weeks ago showing that food bank use (they were only introduced in the early 2000s) has increased massively every single year, including during the years of boom.
It would be interesting to see that graph. The Tories used to talk about growing levels of poverty when they were in opposition.
Mr. G, food can be expensive but needn't necessarily be. Jelly's cheap and a single, er... cuboid globule can last three servings. An omelette doesn't cost much at all.
It is legitimate to suggest there's something not quite right about people managing to be both obese and starving. I was never fond of food and was rather underweight in my teenage years. Lack of eating (or less of it than was perhaps usual) led to thinness, not obesity.
As I said below, the use of food banks has increased enormously every year, including during the early 2000s. I agree with your implied suggestion that some more education regarding good, cheap food would be good, but it's not true to state that poverty is the whole cause of increasing use, nor that feckless layabouts comprise the entire population of food bank users.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
You should read Iain Martin's book.
RBS was, and is, Scottish to its core. That was a key part of the downfall.
Quite. As one of the PBers who has chosen between eating and heating - that I happen to think greenie taxes are largely futile nonsense, I wish the wheel-heeled would think for minute about what their policies are doing.
There has always been a strand of thinking that goes along the lines of the poor deserving everything they get.
I think you are in the mood to put words into the mouths of others this morning SO.
Personally I am as outraged as you that people, especially the elderly, are having to choose between heat and eat this winter.
You are (presumably) blaming the energy companies for this. I am blaming people like ed miliband and David Cameron, whose devotion to the green agenda has forced gas and electricity prices through the roof.
And what is making me even more angry is, even now, they see that agenda as their first priority.
For me any human being with half an ounce of decency would say, re-open those coal stations now, I'm not having people freezing to death, even if it does mean we f8ck the planet for a bit longer
It's easy however to overestimate how representative Tea Party and other factions within the GOP are of Republican supporters as a whole. In my experience, they are not very representative at all, just very voluble.
They didn't just magically appear out of a vacuum though. The original group was fairly small but seemed to have at least most of their marbles. They were then quickly co-opted and used as a tool by a GOP who saw potential for a grass roots movement against Obama that embodied a sort of quick and easy populist anti-Obama grouping. They imagined that would be most effective at making plenty of noise and causing maximum distress to the Dems and Obama. So they fed the beast on raw red meat, rattled it's cage with Fox News and talk radio and happily watched it grow and get angrier by the day.
And all was well, till it turned on them.
The more moderate GOP wing now has big business at least looking after them but on the ground the tea party has more than enough activists with zealotry on their side to make life very uncomfortable for that moderate wing.
Yes, I'd go along with most of that, Mick.
Certainly the Tea Party and other wacky factions got a lot more media and financial support than their numbers or platform merited, and they are hard to silence now.
All Parties have their whackjob wings though (except the MRLP, which is wholly wacky!) and the GOPs problems are neither unique, nor insoluble.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
I wanted you to know that I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide.
Do you expect him to send a note saying , Fred I don't give a shit about Scotland , hope you make a mess of things. He had no say in how the UK banks were run or regulated , it was all done from London as was the rescue of the rich bankers using the poor public's money. You can surely do better than that. Try defending banking regulation , bankers bonuses , bankers tax cuts , etc. I will not hold my breath waiting on anything sensible.
The bank bailouts were in my view the worst parts of capitalism and socialism combined into one unholy clusterfuck. If you care to dig through the archives you can see my views. But to argue that the SNP/Salmond were not in thrall to the bankers is suspect at best.
Mr. Maaaarsh, indeed. There was a graph here a few weeks ago showing that food bank use (they were only introduced in the early 2000s) has increased massively every single year, including during the years of boom.
It would be interesting to see that graph. The Tories used to talk about growing levels of poverty when they were in opposition.
Yeah well, the PB Romneys specialise in looking comically out of touch and doing about as much good for the tory 'brand' as Edwina Currie did for John Major's 'back to basics' image.
Overall Britons now consume about the same number of calories as in the sixties, but there has been a trend against complex carbohydrate (bread and potatoes) to processed foods with calories in the form of sugars and fats. The reason we have become fatter as a nation is that we exercise less, particularly the forms of exercise found in daily life. To put it simply: coal miners were rarely fat, but call centre workers often are.
But I think the obese poor are different to the foodbank/feeding centre poor in the nature of the choices made in their lives, and in the approaches needed to remedy their situation.
Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
Exactly the point I was making. It's what people think the Tory Party are like.Hilton spent a lot of time trying to house train Cameron but it never really worked on his party (witness Hunt yesterday). Food banks are another thing that will resonate. No one wants to think the UK has become Third World. When I did the 'Thatcher's broken Britain' ppb for Paddy it apparently hit a nerve but this theme has the potential to be much more effective
Mr. G, food can be expensive but needn't necessarily be. Jelly's cheap and a single, er... cuboid globule can last three servings. An omelette doesn't cost much at all.
It is legitimate to suggest there's something not quite right about people managing to be both obese and starving. I was never fond of food and was rather underweight in my teenage years. Lack of eating (or less of it than was perhaps usual) led to thinness, not obesity.
As I said below, the use of food banks has increased enormously every year, including during the early 2000s. I agree with your implied suggestion that some more education regarding good, cheap food would be good, but it's not true to state that poverty is the whole cause of increasing use, nor that feckless layabouts comprise the entire population of food bank users.
Morris, totally agree , it is however a sympton of the malaise of this country. We are led by rich donkeys , we have millions of poorly educated people , poverty , lack of respect , morals , etc etc. The whole system in this country is broken and we are down to dog eat dog due to the bad management and direction of successive governments of both Tory and labour. We are now in the position where both are cheeks of the same arse and are in it only for self aggrandisement and neither will really take the actions needed to fix the country. Both parties and the poodle LD's are run by a rich elite who have no real interest in the public other than to hold on to their votes at any cost and vie with each other over the next focus group policy. Depressing. A pox on all their houses.
We also have the problem of the rising price of wholesale electricity and gas, which the energy companies are passing on the customer.
We can't do much about gas, but we could do a hell of a lot about electricity if we re-opened our coal fired stations or even, heaven forbid, built some new ones like the Chinese are doing. Are you seriously claiming the price wouldn't fall?
But we can't. We are only allowed to generate electricity by the methods Ed declares are 'green'.
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
You should read Iain Martin's book.
RBS was, and is, Scottish to its core. That was a key part of the downfall.
Scott, It had its fair share of greedy Scots , no denying that. However it was run as a UK bank under UK casino regulation and failed through the greed , criminal activity and huge ego's of the stupid people running the organisations and regulatory authorities , including the government. many people hand their hand in the debacle but for sure it was not caused by the letter Alex sent to Goodwin or by any laws or regulations passed by Alex Salmond's, the SNP , or the Scottish Government. It was a London/Westminster crash caused by greed, and their were Scots in those places involved on an individual basis , as were many nationalities. However to try and say that Salmond had any hand in it whatsoever is a bare faced lie.
There is certainly a growing need - a) for whatever reason people who are waiting for benefits can fall through the cracks. There used to be crisis grants and loans these have significantly reduced b) Society now is more fragmented meaning people have fewer family and friends to fall back on c) People now do not save as they used to for a rainy day meaning they have no resilience to sudden financial problems. There is more debt and less money spare for food. d) There is a lack of financial education and we have a consumer driven society: I see many well off people who have no idea what they spend their money on and claim poverty while their whole family have individual tablet computers
I'm aware of a local Trussell Trust foodbank. They tend to be all individually run staffed by dedicated volunteers (many church based people who would be described as "PBTories" by our sneering lefties) but with common practices and branding. The people served there are referred by doctors, social workers and job centres, there is no 'walk-in' service to discourage the indigent. And the support is only for a few days not a long time. Our local one has a rule that people can only be helped 3 times, so in addition many foodbanks run counselling and support to help people.
Once a service has been established the referring agencies tend to use them more and more; hence the growth that we are seeing.
The growth in foodbanks is not just a UK phenomenon. SNAP - the american federal programme had doubled in size from 26 to 46 million during the recession. Many of the people have EBT cards (debit cards which get recharged with money - less stigmatic than the old 'food stamps').
LOL, you unionists like to lie. UK bailed out UK banks and used Scottish money in the process. Any sensible Scottish government would have left the shysters to their fate , assisted the people and let the criminals pay for their greed and incompetence. Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies. An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
I wanted you to know that I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide.
Do you expect him to send a note saying , Fred I don't give a shit about Scotland , hope you make a mess of things. He had no say in how the UK banks were run or regulated , it was all done from London as was the rescue of the rich bankers using the poor public's money. You can surely do better than that. Try defending banking regulation , bankers bonuses , bankers tax cuts , etc. I will not hold my breath waiting on anything sensible.
The bank bailouts were in my view the worst parts of capitalism and socialism combined into one unholy clusterfuck. If you care to dig through the archives you can see my views. But to argue that the SNP/Salmond were not in thrall to the bankers is suspect at best.
No shit Sherlock, they had all the money any dolt knows that, point is the SNP could do nothing about the regulations or the actions as all the power was in westminster. They only became Scottish banks after they were wrecked.
Well certainly I'm sure there are plenty in what's left of the party hierarchy that want Christie to win the nomination.
But Christie is a Governor of a high tax state. Plus there is the small matter of Hurricane Sandy. His embrace of Obama and the Federal government played well with democrats and independents but it left plenty of Republican pundits spitting blood about his treachery in the run up to the last election. His praise of Obama will hurt him badly in the primaries.
I'm not sure the Republicans have lost enough for them to tear themselves away from the rightwards drift. September 2001 is till reverberating through the body politic. from clinging to the President in time of crises to the resultant economic collapse, may all feed a narrative that these are not normal times.
Obama only won because of Bush and the great collapse etc. If Bush had been a true conservative etc etc. I don't think the party is ready to move back to the centre yet. The last defeat did prompt some rapid shifting over immigration reform, but only a few lone voices were heard about the problem of the culture wars over abortion and gay rights.
Also someone needs to find a way for the middle to get a bigger share of the pie rather than just the top 10%. (a problem for all parties).
If they lost Congress and the Senate and the Presidency and did not recover Congress in the mid terms then they may rethink/ But the American system is not designed for one side to be crushed so easily.
We also have the problem of the rising price of wholesale electricity and gas, which the energy companies are passing on the customer.
We can't do much about gas, but we could do a hell of a lot about electricity if we re-opened our coal fired stations or even, heaven forbid, built some new ones like the Chinese are doing. Are you seriously claiming the price wouldn't fall?
But we can't. We are only allowed to generate electricity by the methods Ed declares are 'green'.
What happened to the "clean coal" technology that was talked about a few years ago?
Many of the people have EBT cards (debit cards which get recharged with money - less stigmatic than the old 'food stamps').
Unfortunately also less reliable. Last week somebody at Xerox screwed up a system test and left people in 15 states unable to buy food. This seems like a case where the government should stop getting clever and just give people money.
There is certainly a growing need - a) for whatever reason people who are waiting for benefits can fall through the cracks. There used to be crisis grants and loans these have significantly reduced b) Society now is more fragmented meaning people have fewer family and friends to fall back on c) People now do not save as they used to for a rainy day meaning they have no resilience to sudden financial problems. There is more debt and less money spare for food. d) There is a lack of financial education and we have a consumer driven society: I see many well off people who have no idea what they spend their money on and claim poverty while their whole family have individual tablet computers
I'm aware of a local Trussell Trust foodbank. They tend to be all individually run staffed by dedicated volunteers (many church based people who would be described as "PBTories" by our sneering lefties) but with common practices and branding. The people served there are referred by doctors, social workers and job centres, there is no 'walk-in' service to discourage the indigent. And the support is only for a few days not a long time. Our local one has a rule that people can only be helped 3 times, so in addition many foodbanks run counselling and support to help people.
Once a service has been established the referring agencies tend to use them more and more; hence the growth that we are seeing.
The growth in foodbanks is not just a UK phenomenon. SNAP - the american federal programme had doubled in size from 26 to 46 million during the recession. Many of the people have EBT cards (debit cards which get recharged with money - less stigmatic than the old 'food stamps').
Great post apart from your snide remark about the left, I am pretty sure that some of those volunteers will be as you put it "sneering lefties". The fact that we are like the USA is perhaps down to us copying their model of trying to get as much of the money and assests of the country into the hands of as few people as possible and then trying to demonise those left at the bottom to keep those slightly higher up the chain blaming the poor and not focusing on the elite group of troughers at the top.
how much would the price fall if we went back to coal?
I don't know. But then I don't know how much the price of gold would rise if we closed down half the world's gold mines. But I know it would rise.
There's no getting away from the fact that a low carbon energy policy is extremely expensive. And if you have it, someone is gonna have to pay. And right now that someone is the poor.
So you either live with it, raise taxes prohibitively to subsidise it, or go back to getting energy any which way but loose.
We also have the problem of the rising price of wholesale electricity and gas, which the energy companies are passing on the customer.
We can't do much about gas, but we could do a hell of a lot about electricity if we re-opened our coal fired stations or even, heaven forbid, built some new ones like the Chinese are doing. Are you seriously claiming the price wouldn't fall?
But we can't. We are only allowed to generate electricity by the methods Ed declares are 'green'.
What happened to the "clean coal" technology that was talked about a few years ago?
Not enough profit for the Tories chums in that so it is conveniently forgotten so they can concentrate on the low hanging fruit before the public outcry ends their scam.
It certainly is more complicated than "tory cuts".
I think your point on social fragmentation particularly on the button. The rise of broken families and disruption of traditional social networks by societal changes over the decades has led to people not having family or community to fall back on in hard times.
Another influence is the green campaign to have less food waste, so supermarkets etc donate to foodbanks what once went to landfill. Green campaigns are not all bad!
There is certainly a growing need - a) for whatever reason people who are waiting for benefits can fall through the cracks. There used to be crisis grants and loans these have significantly reduced b) Society now is more fragmented meaning people have fewer family and friends to fall back on c) People now do not save as they used to for a rainy day meaning they have no resilience to sudden financial problems. There is more debt and less money spare for food. d) There is a lack of financial education and we have a consumer driven society: I see many well off people who have no idea what they spend their money on and claim poverty while their whole family have individual tablet computers
I'm aware of a local Trussell Trust foodbank. They tend to be all individually run staffed by dedicated volunteers (many church based people who would be described as "PBTories" by our sneering lefties) but with common practices and branding. The people served there are referred by doctors, social workers and job centres, there is no 'walk-in' service to discourage the indigent. And the support is only for a few days not a long time. Our local one has a rule that people can only be helped 3 times, so in addition many foodbanks run counselling and support to help people.
Once a service has been established the referring agencies tend to use them more and more; hence the growth that we are seeing.
The growth in foodbanks is not just a UK phenomenon. SNAP - the american federal programme had doubled in size from 26 to 46 million during the recession. Many of the people have EBT cards (debit cards which get recharged with money - less stigmatic than the old 'food stamps').
"If the country is increasingly coming to the view that they’re succeeding in doing so, how much of that will rub off on the Lib Dems, and how many of those switchers will come back to the fold in 2015?"
I won't. I'm an ex LibDem activist and I'll be voting Labour at the next election. I suspect many ex LibDems like me , perhaps 5-10% of the electorate, will do the same.
I am unmoved by the anaemic economic "recovery". Too little, too late. Three wasted years. The share of GDP going to wages is reducing - hence the increase in the cost of living. On the other hand large companies are bursting with cash. This doesn't help the economy but does feed through into the asset boom.
But my switch to Labour is not primarily to do with the economy. I do not believe in the role of competition and internal markets in public services, nor their privatisation. The current leadership of the LibDems do. Hence the student fees and NHS "reform" fiascos. Until the current LibDem leadership is replaced, I won't be voting LibDem. In any case, I'm actually beginning to admire Ed Miliband.
So David, your piece is well argued and evidence based as usual, but I think your conclusion is over optimistic.
Admirable. 1'm 100% with you. Voting Labour in Barnes is the only moral course.
I see our £4.2B share of HS2 is going to bring us more union benefits. Line does not ever reach Scotland so good way to spend our £4.2B and then it costs Aberdeen and Dundee an estimated £330M a year loss of business. Can we have some more union benefits please Mr Cameron.
Wonder how much that London crossrail donation is benefitting us, don't hear much on it.
how much would the price fall if we went back to coal?
I don't know. But then I don't know how much the price of gold would rise if we closed down half the world's gold mines. But I know it would rise.
There's no getting away from the fact that a low carbon energy policy is extremely expensive. And if you have it, someone is gonna have to pay. And right now that someone is the poor.
So you either live with it, raise taxes prohibitively to subsidise it, or go back to getting energy any which way but loose.
Those are the options. What do you think?
Does Britain contain half the world's coal supplies?
RBS was, and is, Scottish to its core. That was a key part of the downfall.
Ah, too stupid. Surely too wee and too poor can't be far behind.
There was me foolishly thinking the "Bank" part was the most pertinent for RBS during the entire banking disaster. You live and learn. Or indeed not if you're a scottish tory surger.
DH It is quite probable that both your scenarios will come to pass.
It is highly likely that the UK's economy will continue to grow and that the number of those employed will increase.
However as the economy continues to re-balance itself (and that exercise may not be finished by 2020) the free-spending pounds in people's pockets will not increase and could even decrease:
1. The UK is not self-sufficient in either food or energy and so is subject to both world prices and law of supply and demand. As demand is still rapidly increasing as more countries are developing their economies and populations are increasing, then the price trend is up. It is unlikely that renewable energy will be able to compete on the same economic basis with hydrocarbon based energy (excepting hydro) before 2050.
2. The UK is still gripped by the triple-whammy of the effects of globalisation, a rapidly changing and job-destroying IT and the effects of a mainly self-crippling recession. Only an economic incompetent who declared that he had eliminated boom and bust would have been happy with any economy that relied on importing most of our requirements without the required balancing exports.
3. The UK has a shortage of people with the required global skills whilst it is growing generations of under- and uneducated and unemployable people who will remain a burden on the state. The rectification of our education systems will take until 2025.
4. The UK has exported a lot of its technical manufacturing ability and allowed skill-sets to decay. For example the latest and largest P&O cruise liner, designed for British passengers was built in Italy. Many of these manufacturing capabilities (and their employment) are not likely to return, e.g. we have lost ability to make nuclear power stations, tunnel boring machines, machine tools etc etc.
5. We still have to learn to use less energy and to make a more efficient and cost-effective public sector. The UK has too much management (salary and pension costs) in the military and public sector - both regional and national. This cost has to be reduced to balance the UK books and start to pay off the international debt. The costs of servicing that debt in 2012 was £43bn - money that should have been used on infrastructure.
There are other reasons as to why personal economies will not match UK economic growth and there is little that can be done without more efficient pruning of unnecessary expenditure and self-reward.
Great post apart from your snide remark about the left, I am pretty sure that some of those volunteers will be as you put it "sneering lefties".
You would think so, unless PB Tories believe that Big Society (there's a slogan covered in cobwebs) bollox particularly turned up the charitable instincts of religious Tories over the last 3 years.
'In 2005 religious people voted for the main parties in the same way as the wider population The ComRes poll of the whole population conducted on 10th and 11th Feb 2010 asked: "Thinking back to the last general election in 2005, which party if any did you vote for?" The percentages were: Conservative 19 per cent, Labour 22 per cent, Lib Dem 12 per cent. These are identical to the new results from the religious sample.'
At our feeding centre in Leicester there are an interesting bunch of clients. I do not see many who are obese, but there are many homeless often with drug and alcohol addictions, who spend much of any cash that they acquire on these things. Homeless men also have some of the highest smoking rates of any social group. I do not think that they spend their meagre monies wisely, but one of the objectives of our charity is to get them back into a more sustainable lifestyle.
It is a charity based on the Christian belief of reaching out to those who have fallen out of society for whatever reason, though being Leicester other faiths are supportive, particularly good curries provided by a number of hindu supporters.
The biggest growth in the UK is food banks, people cannot even feed themselves,
Is that why we have an obesity epidemic, especially amongst the worst off?
Food that makes you fat tends to be the cheapest kind of processed stuff you can buy. But is there any evidence that people who regularly need to use foodbanks are obese? Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
A post that makes most of the nonsense from both sides this morning look even more ridiculous Mr Sox. Your efforts to help those our society chooses not to care about are admirable.
Bear in mind this was the deliberate policy of the political class' economic suicide (aka climate change) bill - put the price up to get people to reduce consumption. It's easy to forget it was deliberate policy because since the global warming scam unraveled (except on the BBC and therefore the majority of the public) the people responsible for the economic suicide bill don't say it out loud any more.
The biggest jump in the cost though is likely to come indirectly through the banks of diesel generators that are being put in place to stop blackouts - seriously that's the plan, 1000s of diesel generators. It'll probably work at stopping the blackouts that the political class had made inevitable but at a huge cost - and ironically burning megatons of carbon diesel fuel.
What a joke.
Most people probably won't ever know that 1000s of diesel generators is now this country's energy policy because Pravda isn't a news organisation it's just PC propaganda.
how much would the price fall if we went back to coal?
I don't know. But then I don't know how much the price of gold would rise if we closed down half the world's gold mines. But I know it would rise.
There's no getting away from the fact that a low carbon energy policy is extremely expensive. And if you have it, someone is gonna have to pay. And right now that someone is the poor.
So you either live with it, raise taxes prohibitively to subsidise it, or go back to getting energy any which way but loose.
Those are the options. What do you think?
How much, compared to say the VAT rise or the bedroom tax, how much on green taxes. You've posted for ever on this you must know,ballpark figure please.
Doing a quick google. This is the government report from March 2013.
(If you go through the appendix there's a more detailed breakdown) but the headlines conclusions are that overall green policies have reduced the average household bill by 5%.
With that 5% reduction expected to increase to an 11% reduction by 2020.
It lists the current average household dual fuel bill as £1,267 (that's before the Warm Home discount which is fairly minor I believe). With costs of energy and climate change policies £112 pounds (9%, 2 percentage points of that being made up by carbon tax).
As I said, there's a lot more detailed breakdown in there if you wish to peruse (I've got to run off to rugby so haven't time) but that's the kind of ballpark we're in (provided you take the report as reliable of course).
Stephen R Jones @Meliden Story from 2008 under Labour Govt_______OAP deaths warning as British Gas hikes prices up by 35% bit.ly/17A3x9E via @Daily_Record
how much would the price fall if we went back to coal?
I don't know. But then I don't know how much the price of gold would rise if we closed down half the world's gold mines. But I know it would rise.
There's no getting away from the fact that a low carbon energy policy is extremely expensive. And if you have it, someone is gonna have to pay. And right now that someone is the poor.
So you either live with it, raise taxes prohibitively to subsidise it, or go back to getting energy any which way but loose.
Those are the options. What do you think?
How much, compared to say the VAT rise or the bedroom tax, how much on green taxes. You've posted for ever on this you must know,ballpark figure please.
Doing a quick google. This is the government report from March 2013.
(If you go through the appendix there's a more detailed breakdown) but the headlines conclusions are that overall green policies have reduced the average household bill by 5%.
With that 5% reduction expected to increase to an 11% reduction by 2020.
It lists the current average household dual fuel bill as £1,267 (that's before the Warm Home discount which is fairly minor I believe). With costs of energy and climate change policies £112 pounds (9%).
As I said, there's a lot more detailed breakdown in there if you wish to peruse (I've got to run off to rugby so haven't time) but that's the kind of ballpark we're in.
I've got a figure of £115. But none of the PB Tories ranting on a daily basis seem to know, or more likely refuse to post it once they've found out because the facts would interfere with their ranting.
Compare to the VAT rise - £450 per household, Bedroom tax, £550 per household (av) and you'll see why they need the actual figure to stay out of their posts.
The casual brutality of Ed Miliband's comments in government about the necessity of higher energy bills to reduce demand, reduce carbon emissions and to save the planet were fairly typical of our political class and I have little doubt similar quotes could be found from the leadership of other parties.
What is perhaps peculiarly Labour is the level of hypocrisy that can combine such a viewpoint with a policy like a price freeze to win votes. On the basis of his own quotes this is contrary to his longer term objectives.
The cost of green energy is complicated. Presumably the insane money we have invested in onshore wind does produce some energy, albeit at a ridiculous cost. This must reduce our demand for other carbon based fuels. Although these are usually traded internationally we are not the only ones engaged in this insanity and so overall demand for oil, for example, must be reduced. So if we were not blowing our money on wind we might be paying even more for oil.
Comments
He wants them to tell the public that prices are going through the roof because ed has closed down a bunch of coal fired power stations?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrLFGNg3_Jg
He's comfortably ahead in their polling and the only candidate likely to give Clinton a decent run for her money. If she doesn't or cannot run, he would probably start favorite against any other Democrat.
Christie of course would be way to the left of Romney and maybe even McCain, so the loonies to whom the GOP has been in thrall for some time now will have to like it or lump it. I reckon they''ll lump it. Their credibility has been massively undermined by the Debt Crisis nonsense.
And that's what this latest spat in congress is about, isn't it? (though nobody will admit it). Its about which of the above runs America. And the numbers are flowing remorselessly against the republicans and their white backers.
For me comparisons between the US and UK are erroneous.
@TomHarrisMP: Advance briefings of Alex Salmond's keynote conference speech suggest he will describe an independent Scotland's future as "just peachy".
@TomHarrisMP: Nicola Sturgeon's speech to conference yesterday was "amazeballs", First Minister Alex Salmond expected to tell delegates. #snp13
The GOP circus last time may well end up looking rather dull in retrospect.
if that is true then why are key moderate republicans facing bitter fights in primaries for 2014 against tea party candidates - fights they may well lose.
The tea party strategy is to target moderates in states they know they will win in general elections. They are looking to carve out a geographical power base in the southern and south western states, as a prelude to I don't know what.
They know they can't win the country, surely. Such is the antipathy between them and dems, however, I genuinely believe a break away might one day be an issue.
What I mutter to myself is that the poverty industry is telling us poor people are both fat and starving at the same time, probably to screw more money out of the tax payer for themselves
.
The police and those in charge of CCTV at Downing Street would have known about the CCTV material and, indeed, should have looked at it when writing up the incident and certainly immediately after it blew up into a story. That responsibility would have primarily rested with the relevant security authorities who should have looked at the material as soon as it was evident that there was an issue. In any organisation it is the relevant investigative / security authorities who do the investigation not the Chief Executive (or PM).
I would guess that there was - for whatever reason - no great appetite to do such an investigation, possibly because people wrongly believed that the police would not lie about such a matter, because the Tories hoped the story would die down and because to be seen to be attacking the integrity of police officers at the same time as 2 Manchester policewomen were shot dead would have made the story even more toxic.
Certainly the matter was badly handled from the start but the fact that the police have only now - apparently - found more CCTV footage is down to their own investigative incompetence or reluctance to do a proper job and not to others withholding evidence, as you suggest. They have all the powers they need to get all possible relevant material.
Speculation is mounting that the scottish tory surgers are so desperate and short of ideas that they are forced to rely on their scottish labour chum and blunderer TomHarris who was first sacked then mysteriously* resigned to "spend more time with his family".
*(Not mysterious at all for those of us who know what happened)
The GOP's conduct over the debt crisis made absolutely no sense considered as a whole, but it made perfect sense from the point of view of individual Congressmen who personally had nothing to gain by compromising. Localism trumped the broader good of the Party.
The extent to which they can confront and deal with this issue will determine the extent to which they can remain a viable alternative to the Democrats. It doesn't look good for them at the moment, but maybe the Crisis debacle will clear a few heads.
Icidentally, the situation is not wholly dissimilar n the Tory Party where individual MPs find it popular locally to adopt a line very close to UKIP in some respects, which restricts the Party's room to manoeuvre - but I wouldn't carry the comparison too far.
It was ed miliband who called it when he said in the noughties that fuel bills have to rise because of his commitments to green energy.
His beliefs are the reason poor people are shivering. Without them we could go back to cheap coal. But he has decreed that that is the wrong sort of energy to use.
When the poor are cold they should take comfort from the fact they are helping to save the planets nice bits for people like ed to vacation in.
I'm quite sure if you doubled the supply right now, you'd find enough people willing to go and collect the free food from them, and the same would be true if supply had expanded 10 years ago. Attempts to imply that a sudden surge in supply implies a catastrophic rise in demand to prevent people dying of starvation and malnutrition is, as mentioned before, cheap and nasty.
Same in some way with fuel duty rises which haven't happened - both policies are invisible to joe public as they haven't had the emotional 'hit' first of all.
With energy costs, that is an open goal as prices invariably go up as we head in to winter.... this issue probably won't be so powerful for Lab in the spring/summer months I'd suggest either - it is as we start putting the central heating on now.
To me the next populist intervention needs to be an expense which the vast majority need in daily living....
I give you...
The Toilet Roll expenses relief subsidy
The Great British Baked bread cashback scheme
The free TV licence for a year for everyone pre-election bribe.
I thank you.
The other major group is asylum seekers, who have very limited access to support as a result of Labours 1999 act, and no entitlement if refused: http://www.ein.org.uk/news/asylum-financial-support-asylum-seekers
It is a charity based on the Christian belief of reaching out to those who have fallen out of society for whatever reason, though being Leicester other faiths are supportive, particularly good curries provided by a number of hindu supporters.
How unlike you to dismiss people with cheap labels!
Westminster as ever rewarded their chums with extra cash, impoverished ordinary people and left future generations the bill. You need to get out more or do some reading of Financials for Dummies.
An independent Scotland would have had a properly functioning regulated banking system rather than the Westminster Las Vegas casino version.
Oh, I have no difficulty grasping the extent of the lunacy, Mick. I've experienced it first hand often enough.
It's easy however to overestimate how representative Tea Party and other factions within the GOP are of Republican supporters as a whole. In my experience, they are not very representative at all, just very voluble.
Note that the last two GOP Presidential candidates - Romney and McCain - have been from the Party's sensible wing. The next one - probably Christie - will be too.
I agree however that the parade of Whackjobs during the last set of primaries - Bachman, Cain, Gingrich, Trump, Santorum - did the Party no favours at all.
The GOP circus last time may well end up looking rather dull in retrospect.
+1. Since the ability appeared for Super PAC to raise unlimited funds from 3rd parties and spend that on campaigns The tea party supporters especially the Koch brothers have been able to attack any moderate republican they want.
I haven't got a clue what they hope to achieve but the Republican party has spent 20 years moving further and further to the right and its continuing to do so.
WoW , wonder why they are not using that one. It is hard to believe how stupid you southern Tories really are , I would not be surprised if you had a fleece, you believe any old crap whilst knowing diddily squat about the Scottish Government or Scotland despite claiming to be Scottish.
But there it is. Those are their priorities.
The question remains, what was Number Ten up to?
I'm simply going on what left wing anti-poverty charities are saying.
And what they are saying is that the poor are both obese and starving. I'm not claiming anything, just repeating what they tell us.
Sure there are as Mr FoxInSox notes those with chaotic lives who spend their money on their fixes, or new arrivals who are having problems - but the notion that there's been an explosion in need is just very improbable.
And if you give things away for free - you'll encourage more and more to take advantage of it because - well its free. There was an article the other day about *white collar* food bank users and how that supposedly meant we're all dying of starvation because of evil cuts or something. Frankly it just smacked of opportunism by those who aren't desperate at all but using their smarts to get something literally for nothing.
I wanted you to know that I am watching events closely on the ABN front. It is in Scottish interests for RBS to be successful, and I would like to offer any assistance my office can provide.
Good luck with the bid.
Alex Salmond
And all was well, till it turned on them.
The more moderate GOP wing now has big business at least looking after them but on the ground the tea party has more than enough activists with zealotry on their side to make life very uncomfortable for that moderate wing.
I won't. I'm an ex LibDem activist and I'll be voting Labour at the next election. I suspect many ex LibDems like me , perhaps 5-10% of the electorate, will do the same.
I am unmoved by the anaemic economic "recovery". Too little, too late. Three wasted years. The share of GDP going to wages is reducing - hence the increase in the cost of living. On the other hand large companies are bursting with cash. This doesn't help the economy but does feed through into the asset boom.
But my switch to Labour is not primarily to do with the economy. I do not believe in the role of competition and internal markets in public services, nor their privatisation. The current leadership of the LibDems do. Hence the student fees and NHS "reform" fiascos. Until the current LibDem leadership is replaced, I won't be voting LibDem. In any case, I'm actually beginning to admire Ed Miliband.
So David, your piece is well argued and evidence based as usual, but I think your conclusion is over optimistic.
He had no say in how the UK banks were run or regulated , it was all done from London as was the rescue of the rich bankers using the poor public's money. You can surely do better than that. Try defending banking regulation , bankers bonuses , bankers tax cuts , etc. I will not hold my breath waiting on anything sensible.
I think you are in the mood to put words into the mouths of others this morning SO.
Personally I am as outraged as you that people, especially the elderly, are having to choose between heat and eat this winter.
You are (presumably) blaming the energy companies for this. I am blaming people like ed miliband and David Cameron, whose devotion to the green agenda has forced gas and electricity prices through the roof.
And what is making me even more angry is, even now, they see that agenda as their first priority.
For me any human being with half an ounce of decency would say, re-open those coal stations now, I'm not having people freezing to death, even if it does mean we f8ck the planet for a bit longer
But they don't
It is legitimate to suggest there's something not quite right about people managing to be both obese and starving. I was never fond of food and was rather underweight in my teenage years. Lack of eating (or less of it than was perhaps usual) led to thinness, not obesity.
As I said below, the use of food banks has increased enormously every year, including during the early 2000s. I agree with your implied suggestion that some more education regarding good, cheap food would be good, but it's not true to state that poverty is the whole cause of increasing use, nor that feckless layabouts comprise the entire population of food bank users.
RBS was, and is, Scottish to its core. That was a key part of the downfall.
'starvation and obesity go hand in hand....'
That's a gem - I'll have to store that one away..
Talk about four legs good, two legs better....
Certainly the Tea Party and other wacky factions got a lot more media and financial support than their numbers or platform merited, and they are hard to silence now.
All Parties have their whackjob wings though (except the MRLP, which is wholly wacky!) and the GOPs problems are neither unique, nor insoluble.
Changing patterns of diet are found here: http://m.rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/2793.full
Overall Britons now consume about the same number of calories as in the sixties, but there has been a trend against complex carbohydrate (bread and potatoes) to processed foods with calories in the form of sugars and fats. The reason we have become fatter as a nation is that we exercise less, particularly the forms of exercise found in daily life. To put it simply: coal miners were rarely fat, but call centre workers often are.
But I think the obese poor are different to the foodbank/feeding centre poor in the nature of the choices made in their lives, and in the approaches needed to remedy their situation.
Or is that just the kind of thing Tories mutter among themselves?
Exactly the point I was making. It's what people think the Tory Party are like.Hilton spent a lot of time trying to house train Cameron but it never really worked on his party (witness Hunt yesterday). Food banks are another thing that will resonate. No one wants to think the UK has become Third World. When I did the 'Thatcher's broken Britain' ppb for Paddy it apparently hit a nerve but this theme has the potential to be much more effective
Both parties and the poodle LD's are run by a rich elite who have no real interest in the public other than to hold on to their votes at any cost and vie with each other over the next focus group policy.
Depressing. A pox on all their houses.
Green taxes are only one part of the problem.
We also have the problem of the rising price of wholesale electricity and gas, which the energy companies are passing on the customer.
We can't do much about gas, but we could do a hell of a lot about electricity if we re-opened our coal fired stations or even, heaven forbid, built some new ones like the Chinese are doing. Are you seriously claiming the price wouldn't fall?
But we can't. We are only allowed to generate electricity by the methods Ed declares are 'green'.
However to try and say that Salmond had any hand in it whatsoever is a bare faced lie.
There is certainly a growing need -
a) for whatever reason people who are waiting for benefits can fall through the cracks. There used to be crisis grants and loans these have significantly reduced
b) Society now is more fragmented meaning people have fewer family and friends to fall back on
c) People now do not save as they used to for a rainy day meaning they have no resilience to sudden financial problems. There is more debt and less money spare for food.
d) There is a lack of financial education and we have a consumer driven society: I see many well off people who have no idea what they spend their money on and claim poverty while their whole family have individual tablet computers
I'm aware of a local Trussell Trust foodbank. They tend to be all individually run staffed by dedicated volunteers (many church based people who would be described as "PBTories" by our sneering lefties) but with common practices and branding. The people served there are referred by doctors, social workers and job centres, there is no 'walk-in' service to discourage the indigent. And the support is only for a few days not a long time. Our local one has a rule that people can only be helped 3 times, so in addition many foodbanks run counselling and support to help people.
Once a service has been established the referring agencies tend to use them more and more; hence the growth that we are seeing.
The growth in foodbanks is not just a UK phenomenon. SNAP - the american federal programme had doubled in size from 26 to 46 million during the recession. Many of the people have EBT cards (debit cards which get recharged with money - less stigmatic than the old 'food stamps').
Well certainly I'm sure there are plenty in what's left of the party hierarchy that want Christie to win the nomination.
But Christie is a Governor of a high tax state. Plus there is the small matter of Hurricane Sandy. His embrace of Obama and the Federal government played well with democrats and independents but it left plenty of Republican pundits spitting blood about his treachery in the run up to the last election. His praise of Obama will hurt him badly in the primaries.
I'm not sure the Republicans have lost enough for them to tear themselves away from the rightwards drift. September 2001 is till reverberating through the body politic. from clinging to the President in time of crises to the resultant economic collapse, may all feed a narrative that these are not normal times.
Obama only won because of Bush and the great collapse etc. If Bush had been a true conservative etc etc. I don't think the party is ready to move back to the centre yet. The last defeat did prompt some rapid shifting over immigration reform, but only a few lone voices were heard about the problem of the culture wars over abortion and gay rights.
Also someone needs to find a way for the middle to get a bigger share of the pie rather than just the top 10%. (a problem for all parties).
If they lost Congress and the Senate and the Presidency and did not recover Congress in the mid terms then they may rethink/ But the American system is not designed for one side to be crushed so easily.
The fact that we are like the USA is perhaps down to us copying their model of trying to get as much of the money and assests of the country into the hands of as few people as possible and then trying to demonise those left at the bottom to keep those slightly higher up the chain blaming the poor and not focusing on the elite group of troughers at the top.
how much would the price fall if we went back to coal?
I don't know. But then I don't know how much the price of gold would rise if we closed down half the world's gold mines. But I know it would rise.
There's no getting away from the fact that a low carbon energy policy is extremely expensive. And if you have it, someone is gonna have to pay. And right now that someone is the poor.
So you either live with it, raise taxes prohibitively to subsidise it, or go back to getting energy any which way but loose.
Those are the options. What do you think?
It certainly is more complicated than "tory cuts".
I think your point on social fragmentation particularly on the button. The rise of broken families and disruption of traditional social networks by societal changes over the decades has led to people not having family or community to fall back on in hard times.
Another influence is the green campaign to have less food waste, so supermarkets etc donate to foodbanks what once went to landfill. Green campaigns are not all bad!
Wonder how much that London crossrail donation is benefitting us, don't hear much on it.
It is highly likely that the UK's economy will continue to grow and that the number of those employed will increase.
However as the economy continues to re-balance itself (and that exercise may not be finished by 2020) the free-spending pounds in people's pockets will not increase and could even decrease:
1. The UK is not self-sufficient in either food or energy and so is subject to both world prices and law of supply and demand. As demand is still rapidly increasing as more countries are developing their economies and populations are increasing, then the price trend is up. It is unlikely that renewable energy will be able to compete on the same economic basis with hydrocarbon based energy (excepting hydro) before 2050.
2. The UK is still gripped by the triple-whammy of the effects of globalisation, a rapidly changing and job-destroying IT and the effects of a mainly self-crippling recession. Only an economic incompetent who declared that he had eliminated boom and bust would have been happy with any economy that relied on importing most of our requirements without the required balancing exports.
3. The UK has a shortage of people with the required global skills whilst it is growing generations of under- and uneducated and unemployable people who will remain a burden on the state. The rectification of our education systems will take until 2025.
4. The UK has exported a lot of its technical manufacturing ability and allowed skill-sets to decay. For example the latest and largest P&O cruise liner, designed for British passengers was built in Italy. Many of these manufacturing capabilities (and their employment) are not likely to return, e.g. we have lost ability to make nuclear power stations, tunnel boring machines, machine tools etc etc.
5. We still have to learn to use less energy and to make a more efficient and cost-effective public sector. The UK has too much management (salary and pension costs) in the military and public sector - both regional and national. This cost has to be reduced to balance the UK books and start to pay off the international debt. The costs of servicing that debt in 2012 was £43bn - money that should have been used on infrastructure.
There are other reasons as to why personal economies will not match UK economic growth and there is little that can be done without more efficient pruning of unnecessary expenditure and self-reward.
'In 2005 religious people voted for the main parties in the same way as the wider population The ComRes poll of the whole population conducted on 10th and 11th Feb 2010 asked: "Thinking back to the last general election in 2005, which party if any did you vote for?" The percentages were: Conservative 19 per cent, Labour 22 per cent, Lib Dem 12 per cent. These are identical to the new results from the religious sample.'
http://tinyurl.com/yjhael3
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2456760/Red-Eds-great-green-obsession--real-reason-YOUR-gone-roof-The-hidden-subsidies-household-pays-year-thanks-Milibands-laws.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10375121/Wind-farm-subsidies-generate-900m-for-Britains-big-six-energy-suppliers.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10374005/Its-showdown-time-for-our-insane-green-energy-policy.html
Bear in mind this was the deliberate policy of the political class' economic suicide (aka climate change) bill - put the price up to get people to reduce consumption. It's easy to forget it was deliberate policy because since the global warming scam unraveled (except on the BBC and therefore the majority of the public) the people responsible for the economic suicide bill don't say it out loud any more.
The biggest jump in the cost though is likely to come indirectly through the banks of diesel generators that are being put in place to stop blackouts - seriously that's the plan, 1000s of diesel generators. It'll probably work at stopping the blackouts that the political class had made inevitable but at a huge cost - and ironically burning megatons of carbon diesel fuel.
What a joke.
Most people probably won't ever know that 1000s of diesel generators is now this country's energy policy because Pravda isn't a news organisation it's just PC propaganda.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/172923/130326_-_Price_and_Bill_Impacts_Report_Final.pdf
(If you go through the appendix there's a more detailed breakdown) but the headlines conclusions are that overall green policies have reduced the average household bill by 5%.
With that 5% reduction expected to increase to an 11% reduction by 2020.
It lists the current average household dual fuel bill as £1,267 (that's before the Warm Home discount which is fairly minor I believe). With costs of energy and climate change policies £112 pounds (9%, 2 percentage points of that being made up by carbon tax).
As I said, there's a lot more detailed breakdown in there if you wish to peruse (I've got to run off to rugby so haven't time) but that's the kind of ballpark we're in (provided you take the report as reliable of course).
Story from 2008 under Labour Govt_______OAP deaths warning as British Gas hikes prices up by 35% bit.ly/17A3x9E via @Daily_Record
What is perhaps peculiarly Labour is the level of hypocrisy that can combine such a viewpoint with a policy like a price freeze to win votes. On the basis of his own quotes this is contrary to his longer term objectives.
The cost of green energy is complicated. Presumably the insane money we have invested in onshore wind does produce some energy, albeit at a ridiculous cost. This must reduce our demand for other carbon based fuels. Although these are usually traded internationally we are not the only ones engaged in this insanity and so overall demand for oil, for example, must be reduced. So if we were not blowing our money on wind we might be paying even more for oil.