House of Comments - Episode 65 - The Spending Review Review

Episode 65 of the House of Comments podcast "The Spending Review Review" is out. This week myself and Emma Burnell are joined by Conservative liberal campaigning organisation Bright Blue's Kate Maltby to discuss the spending review and the related fortunes of the parties in its wake, the double dip that never was, royal spending, ministerial no shows and violent porn.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

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 65 - The Spending Review Review’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Why is The Queen above criticism?

There was an interesting piece on LabourList the other day. Not for what it was trying to say, but for what it inadvertently said.

The story was essentially that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt tried to make a light-hearted comment to Her Majesty at some function. It wasn't a massively funny comment (something about the Emperor of Japan not being brave enough to jump out of a helicopter) but it was an attempt to make a reference to her "jumping out of a helicopter" during the Olympics. Nothing wrong with that. The polite thing to do would be to laugh and say something like "yes I expect he wouldn't!" or similar. Instead HM apparently smiled, shrugged and walked on past Hunt.

Then her husband blundered along demanding to know who Hunt was.

LabourList describe Hunt's attempt at humour as a "tumbleweed" moment. I'm no fan of the Health Secretary (I think he should have been sacked after the News International fiasco) but this is very unfair on him. He simply tried to say something interesting and/or funny. Most recipients of said attempt in a formal situation would not have treated him like this. The Queen was impolite to walk off without comment and the Duke of Edinburgh was rude for demanding to know who he was. He should have made sure he was briefed beforehand. None of this is Hunt's fault and yet he is somehow made to seem like he is to blame for his rather shabby treatment.

This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the media in general when it comes to the Royals, especially The Queen. Her behaviour is never questioned, instead it is those peripherally involved with the story who are automatically assumed to be in the wrong.

There was the incident last month when the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner inadvertently revealed that The Queen had tried to influence the government regarding how long it was taking for Abu Hamza to be extradited back in 2004. All hell broke loose and it wasn't long before the BBC issued a grovelling apology on Gardner's behalf for having breached this confidence.

But according to our constitution Her Majesty is not supposed to lobby government on policy in this way! It is her who was in the wrong in this story. The BBC had nothing to apologise for. One of its correspondents had reported an attempt by our head of state to interfere in politics which she is not supposed to do. There is a public interest in this story and how it relates to our constitutional arrangements being breached. This was not how the story was reported.

I do wonder if we will ever see the day when the Royal Family and their actions are reported in a fair and balanced way without an inbuilt assumption that they are always in the right.

Because at the moment that is certainly not happening.


This post was first published on Dale & Co.

51p per person per year vs 1000+ nurses

Paul Waugh from Politics Home has just tweeted the following:

Osborne says Royals cost us 51p per person per year.

I have no doubt that George Osborne's figures are accurate for the direct cost of the Royals*.

But isn't it interesting how when Osborne is talking about something that he wants to spend money on (and you can't get much more Royalist than true blue Tories like our beloved Chancellor) it's presented in a way that tries to make it look miniscule? Almost as if it would be churlish to disagree that the Royals are worth every darn penny and anyway it's less than the cost of a mars bar don't you know and didn't she look radiant on the wedding day and sure the Duke occasionally says the wrong thing but he's been such a good consort for her etc. etc. etc.?

For example, I don't remember the (made up) figures for the cost of switching to AV being presented by the Chancellor in the format of cost per person per year (the real figures for this would have been less than 51p per person per year). Oh no, it was how many sick babies will suffer and how many soldiers will (implicitly) die because of lack of the millions that were supposedly going to be spent.

What what does this figure of 51p per person per year actually mean? Well the figures have just been released for the UK population last year. It was 62,262,000 (see here). I am assuming he is using the most up to date figures so this would be a total of £31,753,620. Or if you want to look at it another way, and a way that politicians like Osborne usually love to do it is approximately 6 new primary schools every year at a cost of just over £5m per school (source).

But the currency politicians simply adore using regarding public spending is nurses. How many extra nurses could we employ each year for the cost of the Royal family? Well according to salarytrack.co.uk the current average salary for a nurse in the UK is £26,123 per year. Let's add on 13.8% for employers' NI and that gives us a total salary cost of £29,728. So we could get around 1068 extra nurses each year. Imagine how many more lives each year could be saved and how much more comfort and care could be provided for that amount of money.

Suddenly that 51p per person per year seems a lot bigger doesn't it?

I know what I would rather spend the money on.

*I say "direct cost" because this does not include the cost of things like security and civic receptions etc. It's hard to know what the total cost is but I have seen estimates previously (e.g. here) of around £100m. So maybe the real cost is more like 3000 nurses.

UPDATE: Millennium Dome in the comments has correctly highlighted the following which I thought was worthy of putting the main post:

I agree with you, but actually I'd say you can get even more nurses for your Royal Family buck!

You've ADDED the employers NI cost - and fair enough that IS a cost to the Dept. of Health... but not to government spending overall because the Treasury, obviously, gets that money back. The actual cost to the exchequer of a nurse (or ANY public sector worker) is their salary NET of tax, so in the case of a nurse on £26,123 that's c£20,150 net of tax and NI.

So I reckon the government could afford 1575 extra nurses a year for £31,753,620 :)