The rise and inevitable fall of the Cult of Farage

If you wanted to kow what a party or movement was about, you would go to their website. But if you went to the Ukip website, you would be none the wiser.  Nowhere is it immediately evident what the party stands for.  The website features four images of The Great Leader, and as of today, with only five new stories on the feed, only one is directly concerned with issues of national importance.

In fact, today's feed features two articles on making St. Geroge's Day a national holiday.  For a party on record this week saying it has proven it is not just the party of the South East, it has a funny way of showing it.  St. George's day being very much an English concern.

Go anywhere on the website and you will be confronted with a picture of Nigel's mug.  You have to navigate three tiers down in to get to their local manifesto, which is a rag-bag of unrelated vague ambitions that no councillor can deliver on, because councils simply don't have those powers.  Thus Ukip is playing into the myth that local elections are anything other than a voting ritual and an opinion poll on national governments.

The bullet-point manifesto items, some of which are sensible, are not derived from a consistent set of values or a philosophy.  There is no DNA that informs these suggestions box ideas, and their is no strand of consistency that runs through them.  And if there were, I doubt any Ukipite could tell you what it was. Thus we have a populist shopping list.

Ukip is not selling ideas.  Ukip is selling Farage.  Their website is not promoting an idea or an "ism".  It is promoting Nigel Farage (when it is not defending his reputation). And this is why I think Ukip cannot survive.  The question I have repeatedly asked and as yet have had no substantive answers is; what happens to Ukip after Farage?  Ukip doesn't have any intellectual assets or ideas. All it has is Farage's TV presence. That makes it a cult of personality, not a movement - and the rise of Ukip is largely illusory.

Any anti-EU party would make impressive advances at Euro-elections even if it were lead by a chimpanzee.  The anti-EU sentiment is pan-EU this coming election, and is replicated in all of the major member states.  The "rise of Ukip" is more to do with the EU than anything Ukip did.  Similarly EU elections are regarded as unimportant by the electorate and thus are distorted by highly motivated self-selecting minorities - and is aided this time by a collapse of the Lib Dem vote. But a growing fish in a shrinking pond is not necessarily good news. Looking at the poll progression, the anti-EU movement is looking less likely than ever to win an EU referendum.   

The rise of the Cult of Farage is not connected to EU referendum voting intentions, and even if the Ukip vote doubles in a general election, there is little likelihood of gaining an MP but for the odd fluke.  For the tribalists of Ukip, this does not matter.  They are not cheering on the anti-EU cause.  They are cheering on their tribe and their leader.  They equate the career progress of Farage with the progress of the cause. Thus, Ukip is becoming a dangerous delusion.

Having wrapped itself in the flag and painted itself as the BNP-lite, it has nowhere to go, and sooner or later Farage's past (or his drinking) will catch up with him.  And then we are looking at a cult without a leader, with no ideas to fall back on.  That will be the death of Ukip and the probable death of any chance we had of leaving the EU any time in the next decade. Sadly the tribalists are too enamoured with their golden boy to see that their Waco moment awaits.

A party built on the meandering of sheep will find that their flock wanders away the moment a more fashionable protest comes along. That's why those who want to see a restoration of democracy are better off with The Harrogate Agenda.

Not an extremist, but a crank

Cohen: Often almost right.

Nick Cohen today offers a piece about as thoughtful as you might expect from the Guardian. While billed as a piece about Nigel Farage it is more an offering on the state of British media - and he is not wrong:

"For in the kingdom of the bland, the intolerant man is king. British and US TV have turned newspaper pundits into minor celebrities: a curious addition to the Z-list that makes little sense until you realise that the pundit is free to posture and foam and provide the gladiatorial aggression that will keep the audience from reaching for the remote. Extremist politicians such as Nigel Farage and George Galloway serve the same purpose. They don't have to worry about breaking party lines because their parties are their own private personality cults, which believe whatever they tell them to believe."

This article is rather spoiled with indelicate an lazy language that betrays Cohen's own demented leftism but if you can extrapolate the point, he makes a good one.  But he goes after the low hanging fruit.  He complains that the media have failed to properly scrutinise Nigel Farage or Ukip, but then offers nothing original of his own.

He points to the obvious which carries little weight with the Ukip cultists.  They don't care that their man has a first class seat on the gravy train or that he is a former banker (and just as bent apparently). But even by Farage's own dogma he repeatedly fails to make the argument against the EU.

During the flooding earlier this year, Farage went down to Somerset. Rather than make the case that EU directives were behind the flooding, he instead used the platform to call for a civil defence corps, funded with the money we spend on foreign aid. (Just how many times over Ukip is going to spend this money on other things we don't yet know).  Farage wasted the opportunity and instead offered us a 1950's proposal (from when Britain was at its most socialist).  In Farage's head the Green Goddesses would be manned 24/7! Hardly the thinking of a thrusting libertarian free-marketeer.  It somewhat overlooks the fact that we already have a civil defence force for such eventualities.  It's called the Environment Agency. 

Similarly we had over the course of the Clegg debates Nigel Farage lavishing praise upon Putin, demonstrating he had not fully understood the case made by EuReferendum.com, Booker or Spiked-Online. There are plenty of credible commentators making the case that the EU has a big hand in creating that chaos, but Farage proved once more that if there is a wrong end of the stick, he will grasp it with both hands - and fluff it.

So even if, unlike Cohen, you don't think that Ukip is racist, and leaving the EU is not an extremist notion, Farage is poor leader and a weak intellect.  If pushed hard by the media on any of these issues, he would fold.  He has only a superficial understanding of the arguments that he himself makes - and doesn't really grasp the fundamental principles of why we should leave the EU.  He has instead turned the EU debate into a debate about immigration, leading the euro-sceptic movement into an electoral dead-end like lambs to the slaughter. To the grown-ups in the euro-sceptic movement, Farage is an embarrassment and a liability.

Thus far, he has had a free ride of it because the metro-girlies (of both sexes) at the BBC are even more witless than Farage, concerning themselves only with whether the billboard campaign is racist or not. Never mind the fact that the claims the posters make are naked of fact.

Cohen's headline "Nigel Farage is a phoney. Scrutinise him and he'll crumble" is more true than he could know.  Farage's career is littered with grubby shenanigans, Ukip's ideas are weak - and they have yet to offer a detailed proposal as to how we would actually leave the EU.  The party stands on no intellectual foundations, and policies made up on the fly by Farage could not withstand a serious grilling, especially were Farage to defend them.  Yet nobody in the media, Cohen included, has dared to wade in. Cohen complains that the media's failure to press home the attack is why we see this party of deadbeats on the up.  Well... physician... heal thyself.

The Tory paper bag effect

It's election time. You can tell because Facebook is insufferable. Normal, rational people have momentarily suspended their critical faculties and now speak only the language of their respective tribes. 

From this burst of bovine activity we learn that "over 100 battle-hardened Conservative activists and Grant Shapps our Party Chairman will join me (Nick de Bois) in Enfield North, to take the fight to Labour."

That's right folks. The Tory grass-roots organisation is in such a parlous state that "activists" have to be bussed in to prop up Nick de Bois's fading electoral clout.  He, the so-called conservative, who campaigned to make Enfield a "Fair Trade" town. A cause célèbre of the Left.

It is from this I am reminded of the scene in A Bridge Too Far where Major General Robert Urquhart details his method of retreat by placing the dead and wounded on machine-gun posts to give the impression that his forces were still in place, while the main force slipped away quietly in the night. He describes this as like a collapsing paper bag.

Essentially, the party and its message is now so weak that they cannot build a team of local people in their own constituencies. So what we are looking at here is not activism but corporate PR.  I am told by a Facebook tribalist that this "battle-hardened" force comprises of "noble volunteer activists attempting to rejuvenate local politics and activism". But from what I've seen, a lot of these young "activists" are young Tory-boys and girlies looking to climb the party ladder and be seen next to party grandees because it suits their vanity.  The Facebook profile pics are hilarious - well groomed men-children trying to look credible while stood next to the sinister, mouth-breathing Tory MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

But this activity is not genuine activism. It is merely shoring up the fading credibility of the establishment parties, seeking to present a false public image; that their ideas have popular traction. Less agents of change and more defenders of the status quo. Tory HQ is rubbing its hands with glee that there are people gullible (and ambitious) enough within the party to do it for free. I guess those Tory think-tank interns have to earn their keep if they expect to be MP's some day.

Though it seems my criticism is unjust (they complain) - because all the parties do it.  So that's alright then.  But actually, this is a good indicator as to how empty politics has become.  Low levels of party membership and local activism is symptomatic of the hollowing out of politics by concentrating power at the centre. Cameron can at any time parachute in buffoons like Boris Johnson, or some air-headed token female like Chloe Smith. Our voices don't matter.

Through managing campaigns entirely through the media, in their arrogance, they thought they could dispense with local activists - and the message from Cameron from the start was that the opinions of the grass-roots did not count as he "de-toxified" the "brand" with eco-fluff and quasi-socialism ("sharing the proceeds of growth").  And I recall back in 2005 a local Tory chairman told me that "We need him because he can win the election for us".  So how's that coalition working for ya Dave?

But this also says a lot about the general disengagement from politics.  Ask anyone who doesn't vote why they don't vote and the most common answer will be "what difference does it make?".  Quite. What is the point of local politics if local politicians have no power to speak of? Councils are merely regional agencies of central government, and MP's can be bought off with junior ministerial roles or over-ruled by EU law. It does not matter who you vote for because the system remains the same.  Who then could be enthused enough to be a party activist? Only a fool.

The whole relationship with government has changed. It rules rather than serves. We are no longer governed - we are managed like livestock - and in the true sense of the word democracy (people power) we have none.  We have elections but the levers of power aren't attached to anything, thus a local election is merely an opinion poll on central government, rather than an expression of the will of the people. They are democratic rituals, but they are not democracy.  

Since our voices are not listened to, it is unsurprising that the old dinosaur parties cannot mobilise any genuine activists. Thus politics is less about selling ideas, and more about tribes competing for supremacy. Just as well, since they have no real ideas. We have not had democracy in any meaningful sense for a long time and that's why you now have to bus activists around; sad little social climbers with ambitions of careers in politics rather than people with a true desire for change. And that's how we end up with the two dimensional non-entity politicians we have, who have barely spent any time in the real world.

If we want to see a genuine rejuvenation of local politics and activism, then the whole system of government and our relationship with it needs to change.  That is why we need The Harrogate Agenda.  Anything else is just corporate spin.

Trolling

This is how they spend your money. Good to know.

The slow death of Ukip

Today marks an inauspicious occasion.  Today is the day that Ukip officially consigned itself to the scrapyard of British politics. Yet again Ukip is making the headlines, not for its ideas or its policies, but in defence of its latest fact-free advertising campaign.

The mainstream political establishment calls these posters racist, which is a somewhat crass accusation, but one could be forgiven for thinking that is the direction of travel for Ukip. While not racist, they certainly pander to a xenophobic tendency, manipulating unfounded fears. In other words, populism and propaganda. Hitherto now, I have never seen such obnoxious advertising from Ukip at a national level, green-lit by the leadership.  This is entirely new.

Farage has made no secret that he is chasing the BNP vote and in so doing has cemented Ukip's position as a populist protest party. He has done this because he knows you can fool some of the people some of the time. It will give him the boost he needs to yield a bumper crop of MEP's. But the problem here is that populism has an inherent glass ceiling. One can capture the whole of the disaffected vote, but it is not enough to win seats in the Commons.

This rapid expansion may look good on paper, but it is now facing more scrutiny than ever before.  Up to press the criticism has largely been directed at their poor public image and their poor choice of candidates, but now there is an election coming up people are starting to ask if Ukip is a credible alternative. It isn't.

For a party that wants to leave the EU, you would expect them to have a detailed and credible exit strategy. It hasn't got one. You would have expected it to have accurately diagnosed what is wrong in British politics and formulated a foundation on which to build policy. It hasn't. So the question is, apart from a loosely defined ambition to quit the EU, what is Ukip for? Ask two activists, you'll get three answers.

The answer to that questions is whatever Nigel Farage says it stands for, depending which way the wind is blowing. The other week he was advocating a civil defence force for floods, last week it was intervention in zero hours contracts. There is no uniting intellectual thread to these policies. These are just knee-jerk, sound-good remarks that fold under scrutiny.

What is laughable is that back in 2005, the reason Tories were deserting Cameron in droves to find shelter in Ukip was because Cameron had abandoned Tory principles and chased floating voters.  Now Farage is doing the same, but in the eyes of the Cult of Farage... he can still do no wrong.

So what we are seeing here is the growth of a cult with similar characteristics to Scientology. Dare to criticise The Great Leader and out come the legal threats. It is a bubble based on the cult of personality built up around Farage. That can only end in failure. The simple test being, what happens after Farage?

Ukip is famous for vicious civil wars that make even Tories blush. Sooner or later, and the rumours circulating suggest sooner, Farage will go. Without his tub-thumping speeches and media persona, what of Ukip survives the civil war? Since it has no intellectual foundation, all they can do is grasp for another leader who will be a shadow of the Farage image. Whatever you may think of him, he is a tough act to follow. Without a stronger leader to marshal the sheep of Ewe-kip, the party has nothing to defend and nothing to rally around either. Not even a manifesto.

Many have now made the case that Farage is an effective leader because he has grown the party, but I dispute this notion. He has expanded his followers. That is all. He has not expanded the debate, he has not expanded the intellectual estate and has not broadened the appeal. Instead he has broadened the appeal of Ukip to a small and narrow constituency. That is not leadership.

The two most notable political failures in the last twenty years have been the Referendum Party and the BNP.  The Referendum Party proved that throwing money at the problem does not build a movement. But nor does populism. The BNP had the right strategy because it was a party built on ideology and specifics and maintained a discipline which meant sustained growth. It failed because ultimately a racist message cannot be sold to the British electorate. But they certainly attracted the attention. Ukip is now attracting that same attention, but rather than the public seeing a message they don't like, it is likely that they will see no message at all. Consequently, once Ukip fails to make a splash in the general election, Ukip will dispense with Farage and the bloodletting will begin. Only then will we see what truly remains of Ukip. Very little by the looks.

Dan Hodges in The Telegraph makes the point that, in a way, Ukip may now be worse than the BNP. The point he makes is a point missed by Ukipites. It is not that Ukip is a racist party. It is that they steal the clothes of the racist party but don't stand by even those convictions. To Farage, it matters not if Ukip is the BNP, so long as it looks like the BNP for the time being. Thus it blunders along, devoid of substance with only short term electoral goals, building a cult rather than a movement. Meanwhile, YouGov polls suggest that the chances of Eurosceptics winning an EU referendum are now sliding.

It is for these reasons I believe today marks the beginning of the end for Ukip. Ukip came to a cross-roads as to whether it was going to be a real movement for change or a dismal populist party with limited appeal and a short shelf-life. It chose the latter. I wish that were a bad thing, but with friends like Ukip, the Eurosceptic movement does not need enemies.

Welsh austerity starts to bite

Bryn Parry-Jones: Parasite

Today the Western Telegraph reports that Pembrokeshire County Council chief executive Bryn Parry-Jones will be paid £12,000 as the regional returning officer for Wales in May’s European Parliament elections. It is right that this loyal servant of the public be compensated for this heavy burden, having his regular duties interrupted while scraping by on a meagre £195,164.

This would be the same Pembrokeshire County Council that paid out more than £50,000 in unlawful payments to Parry-Jones to help him and his senior colleagues avoid pension liabilities. Little wonder he looks so pleased with himself.

Meanwhile, on his watch, the Welsh Government has confirmed that EU funding for the Pembroke Dock Commercial Property Grant Scheme has been put on hold. Dyfed-Powys Police has previously confirmed that allegations of fraud relating to part of the scheme are being investigated. 

Here we have another gilded member of our CEOcracy who we must be ever-so-grateful for.  If we didn't pay them the big bucks, how would we ever attract such lofty talent?

Cash strapped council

Stoke-on-Trent: Spy Hard

A Stoke-on-Trent Council ‘spy’ car has raked in £457,000 in parking fines in just four years.  One of its victims, David Martin of Mow Cop, was hit with a £35 fine last year after parking outside Wright’s Pies, in Tunstall, for less than a minute. He is less than impressed. “Since I had my fine I completely avoid parking in Tunstall town centre. Now I park out of town and walk in because I don’t want to take the risk.” The spy-car rakes in an average £114,000 a year.  At a rate of £35 a pop, that is over 3200 customers deterred from the town each year.

For a city reeling from massive corruption, you would think they would be keen to attract more business rather than engaging predatory behaviour, but the greed of the council must be served first. Presumably as a reward for this master-stroke of leadership, Chief Executive John van de Laarschot recently trousered a £5,400 increase in his basic salary, up from £189,600 to £195,000.  I'm sure Mr Martin of Mow Cop will find that very reassuring.

So how much power do your councillors have?

The view from Cullingworth

With the kind permission of Simon Cooke, a fellow West Yorkshireman, I am reproducing an article of his on this blog because this demands the attention of anyone who claims to be interested in politics - and democracy...

So how much power do your councillors have?

****

It's not new to say that local government isn't really master of its own destiny. Nor would I be the first to observe that local councillors - the people we elect to make decisions about that local government - have even less control over that destiny. Most thoughtful local councillors know that the big decisions about funding are outside local control and also that many of the ways in which that funding is distributed are not within the local council's gift either.

Back in 1961, when my Dad was first elected to the Municipal Borough of Beckenham, local councils undertook duties placed on them by national governments (e.g. refuse collection) but the funding for those duties, as well as the other things a council chose to do, was entirely raised locally through the rates or through charges. There was no revenue support grant, no centralised setting of business rates and no national fee levels. It was down to the councillors.

Between then and now something changed. My Dad always blamed the 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act for starting the rot but whatever the cause we moved from a situation where local government was controlled locally to a situation where, for most councils, what they do is defined by national regulation and the necessary funding provided by central government. In 2011 local government spent £147billion and £103billion of this - 70% - was central government grant funding (one caveat here - this is a net spending figure not a gross spending figure, the £147bn is the call on tax revenue from local government).

Not surprisingly governments have sought to control this level of expenditure (it is about a quarter of total government spending after all) and to try and direct the way in which the money is used. To understand how this budget works we can divide the activities funded through local government into three areas: education; social services and social care; and municipal services (bins, potholes, parks and so forth). This is an oversimplification but helps to explain how local government actually works.

For education the local council (as 'local education authority') is two things - a route for money to be paid to schools and the provider of services to those schools. The bulk of the funding is in the form of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) - the formula for distributing this grant is defined nationally but administered through a schools forum rather than, as in times past, a committee of the local council. The schools forum is not an elected body, it is not accountable to the council and its membership is institutional (schools, LEA, unions, colleges, etc.). Put simply, local councillors do not control the funding of schools. So when you blame your local council for not improving education try to remember this fact.

In the case of social services and social care local councils provide services in response to demand - or 'need' if you prefer the approved social care word. The budget is what the US Federal Government would call "relatively uncontrollable". In any given budget period the council has to estimate how many people will require social services and/or social care. That's how many children might be taken into care, how many disabled people will require support, how many of the elderly population will need home helps and so forth. Since education funding is effectively outside the local authority this is the biggest area of council spending. And while councils have some funding flexibility, at bottom they have a duty to meet the need identified.

Municipal services consists of everything else the council does - this includes statutory services such as planning, libraries, youth services and the registrar of births, marriages and deaths. As well as those things we tend to think of as what councils do - empty our bins and maintain the roads, run parks and provide swimming pools. Councillors do have more discretion over these services and over how much funding they receive. For some things - swimming pools and public lavatories, for example - the council has absolute control and can open or close them as it wishes.

The truth of all this is that 80-90% of the spending and activity undertaken by your council (or councils if you live in the shires) is simply given - determined by regulation, set out in statute or otherwise required by central government. And three-quarters of what your council spends comes in the form of central government grant - with all the strings and restrictions that come with this. Ministers and bureaucrats down in London will always want to make sure that, wherever possible, the agenda of the national government is met by the local council. As a result we have had restrictions of borrowing, limits to tax-raising powers such as rate capping, the use of regulation or ring-fencing to direct spending and, if all else fails, simply removing any power for councillors to control or change what the council does. We even got an instruction this year to hold a 'named vote' on setting the council tax!

So when, as we did in Bradford yesterday, councillors get together and "set the budget" bear in mind that what you're seeing is a finely tuned political row about a few million quid out of a budget totally over a billion. The budget debate - "we've found £200,000 to invest in saving kittens", "the Tories are casting old people into the darkness by reducing the walking stick budget by £50,000" and "Labour are failing youngsters by removing the swing seat cleaning service" - this debate isn't really about the budget at all, it's about the tiny bit of the budget that our system of local government allows us to control.

Sometimes it makes me wonder?

Ends.

This is why we need The Harrogate Agenda.

Number crunching

Just a suggestion.

One of the themes on this blog is the rise of our burgeoning CEOcracy.  Today we have yet another wonderful example of our masters at work...

Calderdale Council is asking local voluntary and community groups for their views on how to cut their funding by £220,000. They will launch an online consultation on their website next Wednesday to help determine how cuts should be made for the financial year starting April 2015. The need to make the savings was identified in the council’s annual budgets in February 2013 and February this year.

But from a piece in the Halifax Courier in May last year, we learn that eight officers at Calderdale Council are earning more than £100,000 a year according to figures obtained by The Taxpayers’ Alliance.  The group obtained the figures for 2011/2012 which show former Calderdale Council chief executive Owen Williams picked up a salary of £147,000 topped up with pension contributions of £23,000 and an additional £1,000 payment. This brought his total remuneration to £171,000 before swanning off to NHS Calderdale.

As to what should be done about this, I couldn't possibly comment.

Hostility, defensiveness and denial

NHS: Indifferent murderers.

Around Staffordshire lie the graves of those who had the misfortune to be admitted to Staffordshire NHS.  Twelve hundred people lost their lives at this death camp, which makes it one of the worst peacetime massacres in recent British history.  And it's not difficult to see how it happened.

In a report released today, the Public Administration select committee highlights a culture of "hostility, defensiveness and denial" where complaints are concerned. It is not limited to the NHS and it has consequences.

"Britain will face another scandal like Mid Staffs, in which hundreds of patients died needlessly, unless there is a cultural 'revolution' (in the public sector)" says Bernard Jenkin.  Presumably this is where we get those recommendations of "radical reform" we have all heard so many times before.

“Unless and until we have a culture of leadership in public services that listens to, values and responds to complaints there will always be the potential for tragedies like Mid-Staffs." says Jenkin. The present culture is creating a "toxic cocktail" where the public no longer see any point in complaining.  "The consumer watchdog Which? highlighted a survey showing that 35 per cent of people who have cause to complain about the NHS choose not to do so."

This mirrors my own experiences complaining to the police and the council. Their approach to complaints is that if they stonewall for long enough, the plebs will simply go away.  And it works. Whenever you make a complaint to any branch of government, the reply will be hastily penned by a press officer or junior official, using corporate-speak phrases which fill a great deal of space - but say absolutely nothing. Though the subtext is always clear: Foxtrot Oscar.

After this report we will no doubt see yet another list of bureaucratic hoops added to the complaints process, with added statutory obligations, but in the end the "watchdogs" will remain toothless, inadequate and unable to exact any meaningful penalty.  This is largely because the measures we need to reform the public sector are politically inconvenient, and require action that no government wants to take: relinquishing power to the people.

In modern Britain the state is our master and we are the servants, so it comes as little surprise that public officials would see themselves more as livestock managers than servants of the public.  They are employees of our masters, carrying out their diktats and playing by their rules. Checking boxes matters more than serving the public.

Until such a time as our services are democratically accountable in the proper sense, ie accountable to those they supposedly serve, we won't have to wait long before the corpses pile up once more - and yet again we will hear the words "lessons will be learned" while our CEOcracy makes off with further perks and pay-rises.

It is that dynamic above all that creates a "toxic cocktail", and the only thing that surprises me thus far is that some enterprising psychopath hasn't put one of these parasites in their grave.  But at this rate, I suspect we won't have long to wait long for that either. When we see news like this almost every week, one can only conclude that these people are either taking the piss, or have simply grown tired of living and are trying to get murdered.

"A number of posts were made redundant- which the council says has saved more than £600,000. But five directors have seen their job titles - and responsibilities - change, bringing pay increases of as much as £25,000 a year. John Harrison, the new Executive Director of Resources, has also been awarded £30,000 in back pay dating back to 2011, when the committee agreed his responsibilities had increased after ruling out tasks he had taken on dating back to 2006."

When we have no influence in how our money is spent, and nobody is held accountable when mistakes are made, the social contract is shattered.  The moral obligation to pay taxes no longer exists (if ever it did).  We are paying taxes for their enrichment, paying more to receive less, and must make do with whatever we are given and never complain. While the natural British tendency is a bovine obedience to officialdom, I fear there are limits to our tolerance. This is why we need the Harrogate Agenda - because the alternative is blood on the streets.

Savage cuts?

Today we learn from the Lancashire Telegraph that "A SERIOUSLY slimmed-down council for Burnley is on the horizon once cuts worth £3m come into play, town hall bosses have warned." - "£3m, must be trimmed from the council’s budget over the next two to three years".

This is a council with an annual spend of £56m a year. Does that sound like a "SERIOUSLY slimmed-down council" to you? I think perhaps Burnley Council has a dictionary malfunction.

That Brexit Prize

100k: Their money to waste

It is fair to say that very few people outside of the politics bubble have ever heard of the Institute of Economic Affairs. It is a one time influential "think-tank".  It is also fair to say that even fewer people have heard of the Brexit Prize. This was a writing competition to come up with a blueprint for leaving the EU.

Unlike most brand name think-tanks, the IEA is not short of a few bob. You would expect, therefore, such an entity would be quite skilled in promoting such a prestigious event, having its own full-time communications officers.  But apart from a cursory mention in The Guardian, Telegraph and City AM (a tory-boy bubble fanzine), as a publicity campaign - it has fallen flat.

Their hashtag ranking on Twitter is practically non-existent, their Facebook page is a ghost town, and even the UK's premier eurosceptic party has made no mention of it on their website.  They could have accomplished much the same media impact if Lord Lawson had farted and issued a press release about it.  I would be handing my communications officers their P45's by now.

But that is just as well.  The prize was awarded to a thirty-year-old, junior civil servant, who is also a fantasy fiction writer.  His submission is in keeping with that same hobby.  At half the length of more considered works, recommending leaving the single market (practically overnight), it would surely be devoured with glee by Europhiles - had they been made aware of it's existence. It is fortunate then for the IEA that their PR campaign was so lacklustre as it saves them from the embarrassment that will inevitably come with it. Thus, for now, they hang on to their fading influence.

What should have been a political event in itself was essentially a a cocktail party for think-tank wallahs and obsequious hacks, all of whom belong to a disconnected, self-congratulatory inbred circle that is barely aware of life outside the M25.  They have had so many people telling them for so long that they are wonderful, they have bought their own prestige and now consider themselves too important to sully themselves with details. They are aloof, arrogant and complacent.

They may once have had a hotline to Number Ten in the Thatcher years - but no longer it seems. As with our print media, they are a legacy institution from a bygone age. They view the internet as just something the plebs and little people use, and consequently these dinosaurs are fading into obscurity. But if they want to squander a hundred grand on a drinks party, it is their money to waste. Meanwhile, we have plans of our own.

Millergate: A failure of media

Miller: Got away lightly

The resignation this morning by Maria Miller this tells you quite a lot about the state of modern politics and media.  This was a media show-trial in which the BBC have been completely negligent.

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Lansley explains quite well the nuances and complications that precede this debacle.  There is a lot that is plausible in what he says.  If you look at the rules, or indeed any set of laws and procedures from that house, they are opaque. 

I've had a hell of a time trying to work out what these new bailiff laws mean. The amendments aren't coherent sentences. They say things like Section 76B: replace "and" with "or" and in para 2 remove comma and add "with a cheesegrater". Even full sentences have to be read upside-down and facing a mirror to make any sense of them.

MP's can be forgiven for misreading rules, and as Lansley said, even the committee had long debates as to what the rules meant. So the issue here is whether our law-making process is any longer fit for purpose now that it is of labyrinthine complexity.

The second issue is whether the committee scrutiny system works and lastly whether she abused her position in hindering that process. We don't know for a fact that she did, and much of what has been said about that is hearsay, but that was the critical issue here and it required more than whipping up a Twitter mob to get to the heart of the matter.
 
In the face of that, our inept media refocused on what it can understand - and instead of a proper investigation, did what they could to provoke a populist reaction. So now that she has resigned, it will be because of an evidence-free Twitter mob rather than a detailed analysis of what she actually did. She will now not face any reprimand or scrutiny because of it - and she is off the hook. She has resigned, but not been sacked, and all for the wrong reasons. A trial by media that convicted her for the mugging but not the murder.
 
We are now in a state where ministers can be hounded out of their jobs not because of evidence, but because of the "smell-test". That's fine for us if we want to get rid of toxic and unpleasant people like Miller, but being a toxic piece of shit like her should not be the lone grounds for their removal. If we applaud this in this instance, then we cannot complain when the left do it to, say, Owen Paterson for some obscure irregularity. We have just witnessed a kangeroo court that totally missed the main concern. But why should they care? The BBC claims another ministerial scalp, Paxman gets his hand-job, and the media caravan moves on. Depressing.

Meanwhile, all this Westminster Village expenses guff is a decoy. It is merely the media entertaining itself, for its own sake, rather than acting in the public interest. We then get a week's airtime filler from the main media circus, completely distracting everyone inside the M25, while stuff like this goes on every other week and nobody bats a fucking eyelid - and I spend a night in the cells for calling 'em cunts.

That debate

The Great British Snooze-off

I didn't watch The Great Debate.  As I understand it, it was on the BBC and I have long since refused to pay the TV tax.  My review of it would have read much like the first one. Who "won" the "debate" entirely depends on who had the largest self-selecting minority watching, and that in the main, the loser was the electorate. Since Clegg is the punchline of every political joke, and Farage being a cult leader whose every fart is worshipped by the tribe, it's fair to say that so far as the popular narrative goes, Farage claimed a scalp and stands victorious today.

But what good does that do?  Here we have two third-rate politicians bickering over a subject neither they nor we get a say in - and are unlikely to this side of 2020.

But there was an important debate on EU matters yesterday. It just wasn't on the Television. Further upstream from the entertainment industry, there was a more crucial debate.  The writing has been on the wall for the EU for a long time.  Our rulers know full well that without a seismic change in relations with the EU, they will one day lose their grip on power, so leaving the EU is a matter of when and not if.  Consequently, how we leave, and when, is the current preoccupation of the powerful think-tank fraternity, and they are talking as though the decision to leave were a foregone conclusion.  Who controls the message in that eventuality is paramount to the future of the country, and that is a fight we need to win.

That battle raged for some time in the comments of the Telegraph yesterday, with Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, seeking to distort and mislead that debate over the Norway Option. While the masses were distracted with bread and circuses, a fight was going on, with no Ukip dog in that fight. Richard North explains here. That was the debate to be watching yesterday.

But for those who watched the lightweight version, who now think Farage is a man who stands up for Brits and British jobs, we learn from Junius that "Members of the European Parliament environment committee have been voting on plans to charge US, Indian and Chinese airlines a levy for every flight to or from the EU. Up until now they've had an exemption from the Emissions Trading Scheme. But they knew retaliation was threatened. The US Congress has already passed a resolution condemning the scheme."

The Chinese are likely to respond most harshly to the levy. Already they have frozen orders for 27 Airbus A330 aircraft, and an order for 150 more was due to be confirmed at the end of the month. Four-thousand jobs rely directly on Airbus manufacture at Filton, and thousands more in sub-contractors across the south of England. These are high value engineering jobs, which rely on a healthy forward order book from around the world. When it came to a decision, many on the committee argued to end the exemption, to ensure a level playing field on environmental measures. But British Conservatives opposed the measure and had thought they had the edge. Then they realised UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall was not present, and that one vote decided it.

As one of those whose living depends on Airbus manufacturing here in Filton, I would like to thank the Cult of Farage on behalf of myself and my colleagues, who are so grateful to learn you have our best interests at heart.  But Ukip can be forgiven. Such issues are very difficult, and those meetings are often boring - and do not present the opportunity to give a tub-thumping pub speech.  And who needs that with a hangover?

Bubble dwelling idiots

Bubble dwelling idiots

They are doing it again. Radical reform! In todays Times Nick Herbert and John Healey (who they?) prattle on about reforming Whitehall (again). And yes, there is even the obligatory reference to Sir Humphrey. In their superior wisdom they opine that:

For the first time since the Second World War, all three major parties have current or recent experience of government. All are anticipating a competitive general election. There is now an opportunity to find common ground on change.

To seize this opportunity, we are today launching a new project, GovernUp, backed by senior politicians of all parties, former civil servants, Whitehall advisers and business leaders. GovernUp will offer solutions to all three party leaders before the next election and aim to build a cross-party consensus on the changes required. The recent introduction of extended ministerial offices, which allow ministers to bring in outside talent to strengthen their teams, demonstrates the potential for new thinking.

Note that they wish to consult politicians, civil servants, advisors and "business leaders".  But what about us voters? And there's your problem.  Inside the Westminster Bubble, our opinions are not even on their radar.  It does not even occur to them to ask us.

"We believe the time has therefore come to take a fresh look at how government is organised, to reassess the balance between central and local power and to consider more radical options to improve the skills and accountability of Whitehall."

Tripe! These men do not know the meaning of the word "radical" and certainly have little idea what "accountability" means. Leaving aside that all large bureaucracies are unreformable without breaking them up, the main reason for the persistent dysfunction of government is the complete absence of democracy and civic participation.  That is because the public know that their vote is worthless - and they don't get a say in how things are run. The structure of the state forbids it.

We are living in what David Aaronovich calls today in the Times (in reference to Russia), a "pseudocracy - a political system that has the formal appearance of a democracy, but in which the substance of democracy is gradually eroded until the vote itself is almost the only thing left." And elections, for all they are worth, are simply a opinion polls.  Aaronovich needs to pay attention closer to home.

We have a solution though. We have written a "new template" for government that you should see.  It's called The Harrogate Agenda. Read it.

Uncle Tom Media

The Echo: Mouthpiece of authority.

Pictured is a typical example of how local media has become the mouthpiece of authority. I wrote to the editor of the Echo, Colin Channon, and challenged him on his use of the expression "council tax dodgers".  His reply was glib... 

"Dictionary definition for ‘dodger’: one who persistently evades a responsibility, such as tax dodger, draft dodger. If someone doesn’t pay a council tax, which is a responsibility, doesn’t that make them a dodger?"

The word "dodger" implies deliberate, premeditated (and persistent) evasion, which in my case is entirely correct since I do not feel any obligation to pay our idle parasites hard-working public servants. But in the case of so many (in the face of recent reforms) it is simply untrue. Not everyone is on a PAYE contract and not everyone is capable of managing Direct Debits - and cannot necessarily pay when the schedule says they must.

Further to this, councils have been passing on council tax "debt" to bailiffs as early as July for a first offence. Hardly persistent evasion. Their boilerplate corporate response is that they employ bailiffs "only as a last resort", which, as we know, is a fat lie. Our council's rapacious greed knows no boundaries.

Channon has used the word "dodger" as shorthand for council tax payers in arrears, and in so doing insults a great many of his readers who are simply struggling to pay. Such language makes The Echo appear to be the mouthpiece of our greedy councils. It is an ugly practice and it is lazy, especially if you've done any investigation into council tax enforcement and the unlawful behaviour of bailiffs. For a long time now, councils have been upholding fees for phantom visits while the police turn a blind eye, calling it a "civil matter". That is the very reason this blog exists.

I have previously remarked on how our local media has become an "Uncle Tom" to local government.  Now it seems the relationship is becoming official.  Newsquest, the parent company of The Echo is moving to sack a number of its editorial staff. It seems they are no longer needed now that the police are posting directly to local news websites.

Amanda Brodie, chairman of the CIOJ’s Professional Practices Board, described the practice as "wholly unacceptable". In a statement she said: “It is not the job of newspapers to be a mouthpiece for the police or any other body – their job is to hold them to account, not cosy up to them in this way. Channon doesn't seem to think so.

Sealing the deal, we learn from Press Gazette that the Crewe Chronicle (Trinity Mirror) is considering sharing offices with the local council. Cheshire East council leader Michael Jones said: "I'm very happy to offer to the Crewe Chronicle team that - if they do want to be based somewhere we can find a place for them in the municipal buildings. We have got a radio station in there - I'm sure we can find space for them in there. We need our local paper to be vibrant and strong."

I'm sure they do, but for what purpose? Since one is the mouthpiece of the other, why not cut out the middle man? There has been much debate in recent years over the future of local media. The narrative is that they are dying and struggling to compete. For me, that day cannot come soon enough - when our lazy, privileged and wilfully ignorant local media withers on the vine, so that properly independent and honest players can enter the market.

This is, oddly, why I am not all that concerned by Leveson press-regulation.  It will not stop us from getting the truth from our media, since the media don't much care for the truth anyway. For that, we have fearless bloggers, and people like you who are willing to read them. If the legacy media wishes to regulate itself into oblivion, why on earth should we care?