House of Comments - Episode 119 - You Say Avoidance I Say Evasion

The latest House of Comments podcast is now out.

This week I am joined by former Lib Dem activist Sara Scarlett to discuss tax avoidance/evasion, Peter Oborne's resignation from The Telegraph and how enlightenment values or the lack of them can play a part in extremism.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

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You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 119 - You Say Avoidance I Say Evasion’ on audioBoom

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

The Tories made their FPTP bed - now they must lie in it

Disappointing piece from Daniel Hannan today in The Telegraph which essentially boils down to:

"Don't vote for UKIP, you'll let Labour in".

Please forgive me if I am somewhat unsympathetic to the current Tory plight. If UKIP do surge and get as many votes as polls are suggesting then yes, it is very likely that eventually it will cost the Conservatives a number of seats that they would otherwise have won and yes the vote on the right could be split in a number of places allowing a more centrist or left-wing candidate to come through the middle.

This section of Hannan's piece leapt out at me:

..consider the recent Eastleigh by-election. Two Right-of-Centre candidates stood on virtually identical platforms. Both wanted an In/Out referendum, and both would have voted to leave. Between them, they secured 53 per cent of the vote, and lost, handing the seat to a Euro-integrationist Lib Dem with 32 per cent.

That is indeed exactly what happened in Eastleigh. It is also exactly what those of us who campaigned for a Yes vote on AV repeatedly tried to explain is one of the major weaknesses of First Past the Post which is eliminated with a preferential system.

But of course the Conservative Party were dead against changing from our current system. So they have to take the consequences under FPTP. If this means they end up losing lots of seats because of a surge to UKIP then so be it.

They've made their bed. They can now lie in it.

Peter Oborne's "Tory moment" argument is full of holes

I greatly admire Peter Oborne as I have said on here before. He has done some sterling work over the years, especially in exposing political hypocrisy but a piece he wrote for the Telegraph yesterday in which he claims that the right is winning the argument in every major area of policy is wrong-headed in my view.

Mehdi has already had a crack at fisking the article here so I won't go through all of it but I wanted to highlight a couple of things from the last 10 or 15 years that prove Oborne is wrong.

His central thesis is that it is "widely accepted" that the Labour government was an utter failure and therefore the political momentum is now with the right, that their ideas are in the ascendency and even many on the left are coming to accept this.

I don't buy it. Here are just two examples of things that the "liberal left" brought in that the Tories have accepted through gritted teeth:

1. Equal rights for homosexuals. Labour did some good work in this area when they were in power. The equalised rights for age of consent were introduced on a free vote in Labour's early years despite bitter opposition led by Conservative Peer Baroness Young. And a few years back they introduced civil partnerships.
2. The minimum wage. One of the first acts of Labour in 1997 was to introduce this. The Tories were deeply opposed to any such move and I vividly remember how convinced Conservative spokespeople were that it would damage the economy and raise unemployment. Of course in the event the economy was fine and a decent floor was put in to stop people, especially the young being exploited for derisory wages.

Some may argue that on point 1, some Conservatives voted for the measure and whilst that may well be true many of them were deeply opposed. Does anyone seriously think that if the Conservatives had been in power from 1997 - 2010 that a vote would have been passed in the Commons to allow this?

Point 2 is unequivocal. The Tories would never have brought this in.

And yet in both cases, a few years later they accepted they had been wrong and now support all of these measures. Indeed David Cameron made a big thing in his early years as leader of saying that marriage can be between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. But it took three big election defeats to force them to accept they were wrong on this. I strongly suspect that they would not have done that on their own.

So there are two big examples of where the left (and the Lib Dems who also played an important part in seeing these measures adopted) made the running in recent years and the Conservatives have been playing catch-up.

One other point I wanted to make is that Oborne really goes off beam when he claims that:

"[throughout the] post-war period...the liberal Left, as general election results show, has tended to be unpopular with voters. But its progressive ideas have enjoyed a disproportionate amount of traction among British governing elites."

Balderdash. At no general election in this period have the Conservative party ever achieved 50% of the vote. In fact with the exception of 1959, the Labour and Liberal (or Lib Dem) plus SDP vote when they were around always totalled more than the Conservative vote. Oborne's point can only be made to work if you ignore that fact. Just because first-past-the-post delivered majority Tory governments does not mean the "liberal left" as he puts it has been unpopular with voters. More that the votes for that bloc have been split allowing the Conservatives to form governments on far less than 50% and in some cases less than 40% of the vote.

The idea that the Conservatives are having some sort of "Tory moment" where they are now in the ascendancy on all major issues is ahistorical and not supported by the facts.

The hypocrisy of Simon Heffer

Simon Heffer had a thought provoking column in The Telegraph yesterday entitled "Beer should be the lifeblood of any village". In it he argues that the drink driving limits should not be reduced any further and that the smoking ban has damaged local pubs especially in rural communities.

He clearly feels strongly that people should be free to imbibe one and half pints of beer and then drive as they generally can currently. He also clearly thinks that the state stepping in to ban people from smoking anywhere on private commercial premises is over the top and a bit more reason, perhaps allowing well ventilated specific rooms for smokers to go to if the proprietor so wished would have been a more sensible compromise. I agree with both of his main points and it is a well written piece in my view. I wish more people shared this sort of liberal view on these two points.

It is interesting therefore to note that on 13th December 2006 in the midst of the Ipswich prostitute murders case he wrote about a chat he had had with a professor of ethics about drugs previously:

We fell, in one of the recesses, to discussing the drugs problem. "You know," he said, "a few years ago they had a serious drugs problem in China. So they rounded up 6,000 drugs dealers and shot them in the back of the head. Result: they don't have a drugs problem." He said this without a trace of humour, and without a trace of disapproval. It is a remark on which, in the intervening years, I have often pondered.

That same article concludes:

Drugs use is against the law because of its appalling social consequences. The law should be enforced in an exemplary way. If that means nice middle-class people – possibly like some of those in the shadow cabinet – going to jail, so much the better. It was scandalous, but typical, that Kate Moss was not punished for her recent promiscuous cocaine use, because it indicated that the trade is acceptable too, with heaven knows what results for those who idolise her. If drugs use is made more difficult, there will be fewer pushers. If there are fewer pushers then life will become harder for those further up the food chain.

Punishing drugs users would also be likely to give the police more information about their suppliers. The prisons cannot be too full for such people, who are the most destructive in society. Can we not see this blindingly obvious truth? Of course, even if drugs use were eliminated, there would still be tarts, and there would still be people who kill tarts. There would probably, though, be gratifyingly fewer of both.

Quite aside from the fact that his logic is severely flawed (we have had crack-down after crack-down on drugs for the last 40 years and use has risen hugely), where is the liberal Simon Heffer who wants the government to back off from people's freedoms to drink beer and smoke tobacco? Both of these drugs harm and kill far more people each year than all illegal drugs combined. Why is there such a clear difference in his mind between the two groups of drugs, those that are legal and those that the government (sometimes seemingly arbitrarily) deem illegal?

If drugs use really is against the law because of its appalling social consequences then why is alcohol still legal? And why is Heffer defending everyone's right to use alcohol freely? That drug leads to utterly dreadful social consequences. The hospitals are brimming over every Friday and Saturday night with victims of the abuse of alcohol, both directly and indirectly.

In another article from just a couple of years ago entitled: "Make junkies pay for hospital treatment" he wrote:

I make no apology for being so uncharitable towards the drugs culture, or for hectoring a government that refuses to deal seriously with it. It causes, on a conservative estimate, 70 per cent of the crime in our country. Mugging, burglary, prostitution and most other forms of vice are linked to it. It provokes violence and murder. Poverty, misery and broken families are its result. So, too, as this report shows, are numerous health problems, notably mental illness. The drain this puts on our public resources, whether in the NHS or the social security bill, runs into billions of pounds that could be spent on useful causes - education, care of the elderly, or more police and better hospitals. That toll of money and human misery is what our rulers choose to pay for the drugs menace in this country: or, rather, they choose to have us pay it.

No recognition in the slightest that the fact that these drugs are illegal massively exacerbates their negative effects. Much of the mugging, burglary and prostitution occur as a result of the illegality of the drugs and their corresponding hugely inflated price. Also, there are many more broken homes in this country as a result of alcohol abuse than that of any illegal drug.

In this third article our old friend drug executions rears its head again, although this time Heffer is more definitive having had a couple of years to ponder:

The evil that drug dealers do cannot be adequately punished under our present law; I would take a leaf out of China's book, and have them taken out and shot in the back of the head.

Charming.

Bizarrely, Heffer waxes lyrical in the first article I linked to about how wonderful a pub landlord he worked for when he was young was with a "charismatic personality". At the same time he is advocating the idea of shooting those who supply other forms of recreational drugs in the back of the head.

He is happy to defend the right to use nice middle-class drugs that he and his friends probably indulge in perhaps even occasionally to excess whilst wishing the death penalty and denial of health-care to those involved with other drugs with mind-altering (and in some cases less harmful) effects.

Simon Heffer is a hypocrite of the highest order

Press tries to smear Clegg

It is quite astonishing to look at the front pages of some of the press this morning. They are really going for Nick Clegg, especially the Telegraph and the Mail, both of which has very flimsy "stories" that really do not stand up to scrutiny and are blatant smear jobs not warranting even page 17 status let alone splashed across the front page. I'm not linking to them, you can find them if you wish. Tom Bradby, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Paxman all suggested last night that the Telegraph story is a smear or something and nothing.

It can only be because the press are running scared that the Lib Dems might actually do well at this election now. Every time the press runs smears like this, the stakes get a bit higher because the more it is clear that they are desperate to try and force the Lib Dem polling numbers down. If they are not successful in this endeavour then it will demonstrate that the power of the press has severely declined.

Obviously I hope that they are not successful, but I would be saying this even if they were going for Brown or Cameron. I want this election to be decided on issues. When there was talk of the Lib Dems coming under more scrutiny I welcomed this. I want to see our policies being debated properly and I think they stand up well against our opponents. This is not what the Mail or the Telegraph have done today. They are just hurling a tonne of crap at Clegg and hoping that some will stick.

Conservative blogger Iain Dale did a very good post earlier this morning which made clear what his view is on this sort of thing. Here's a snippet:

I don't want Nick Clegg to win. I don't want him to be Prime Minister. But he is not the devil incarnate. He's a nice guy, doing a fair job of leading his party. I do not agree with many of his policies. I think many of them are misguided. But I am happy to accept that he believes they will be best for the country. I am happy to debate them with him or any other LibDem and that's what politics and this election should be about. It should be about debating ideas, arguing about policy. It shouldn't be about this sudden urge to denigrate Nick Clegg as a person. It will backfire on those who promulgate these attacks because most people can see with their own eyes that he is a transparently decent individual.

Of course politicians should be scrutinised and questioned. But not like this

I hope Iain is right about this strategy backfiring for the press and fair play to him for posting this. I also hope that other bloggers from across the spectrum are willing to speak out against this sort of thing.

UPDATE: Caron has an excellent suggestion for how to deal with these press smears by trying to make sure they are hit in the pocket here.

Is Bevanite Ellie really worth two front pages?

Large pictures of Labour Twitterer Ellie Gellard adorn the front pages of both The Times and The Telegraph this morning. I aint linking, you can find them yourself if you must.

Ellie is know on-line for being a ridiculously on-message Labour Twitter user under the guise of @BevaniteEllie (warning, link may contain propaganda). In fact she is so blinkered and partisan that I had to stop following her, and I am pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. I remember one exchange I had with her when I didn't agree with her about something that she told me she felt physically sick.

Anyway, the "story" is that apparently a couple of years ago she thought the time had come for Gordon Brown to stand down. You know, her and probably at least 80% of all Labour members. And she has recently been used to introduce Brown at events. She was there at the manifesto launch yesterday. Oh and she said something beastly about Margaret Thatcher on Twitter at some point.

That's it. Someone hardly anyone has heard of a couple of years ago was a bit pissed off with the Labour leader and said so (along with loads of other Labour members). And she made a slightly off-colour joke about a former PM with whom she clearly has strong ideological differences.

How on Earth will The Times and the Telegraph find the space for all the other Labour members who have done things like this too on their front pages?

Oh, did I mention that Ellie is 21 years old and very pretty too? But of course this can't have had anything to do with the editorial decision to run with a large photo of her on their respective front covers.

Can it?

Barbara Follett's Folly

Lordy, lordy. It's difficult to know where to begin with the revelations about MPs that are now coming thick and fast from The Telegraph.

There is lots of comment elsewhere but I wanted to focus firstly on this particular vignette:

Barbara Follett, the multi-millionaire Tourism Minister, claimed for private security patrols outside her London home costing more than £25,000. The parliamentary fees office, which is supposed to monitor claims, warned Mrs Follett that her claims may appear "excessive" if made public, but she was not deterred, saying she felt unsafe in Soho after being mugged.

WTF!? She got mugged so the tax payer was forced to shell out more than the average UK salary to make her feel a bit safer!? I got mugged when I was a student. It was a horrible experience and I felt very unsafe walking around at night for years afterwards. I would have loved private security patrols around my house but of course I live on Planet Earth.

The claims for toilet seats and refurbishment of second homes are disgusting but at least they have some vague relevance to an MPs ability to live in 2 different homes (as an aside it is clear that they have massively taken the mickey on these and they will certainly deservedly lose this perk) but to get a taxpayer funded private police force because you were mugged? That is so far removed from the reality of everyday people that I would be amazed if Follett (who has a majority of 3,139) is not turfed out in 12 months. Her Stevenage constituency party would do well to deselect her before that.

Oh, and one final thing, her husband is a multi-millionaire author for whom £25,000 would have been nothing and yet she still sent us the bill.

UPDATE: ConstantlyFurious in the comments has suggested that there should actually be a by-election and has a blog post to this effect too. Her behaviour is so egregious here that it might become inevitable. Is that the Chiltern Hundreds I can hear a callin'...