The Conservative's Election Fundraiser

The Conservatives are just like you.

Look at their new chief fundraiser, Stanley Fink. He's personally donating £1 million to their party. You've got £1 million to give away to charity ... right?

Fink has homes in France and Spain. He owns hotels, including the Hotel Kilimanjaro in the French ski resort of Courchevel. We all have our own hotels.

Fink is the backer of Key-2 Luxury. Look at their website. You can afford their services.

"I am not obsessed with luxury ... I just have a view that the world is not serving the needs of affluent people properly." - Stanley Fink

The Conservatives are just like you.

£9 Million In City Council Cuts

Coventry City Council is considering £9 million in cuts in services.

They blame the rising energy/fuel prices for council buildings, the downturn in the housing market (a six-figure drop in revenue from planning application fees), and the need for 3% government efficiency savings.

- If we had shifted council buildings to having their own solar panels, and their own micro-CHP units, they would be "insulated" from energy price rises.

- I've sent an email to the council's head of "Finance and Legal" to see if their "corporate risk register," as of 1st Jan 2007, and as of 1st Jan 2008, had assessed the risk of a housing collapse. 5 times earnings, and 120% mortgages, were not going to go on forever.

- If central government can bail out corporate banks, why can't they give a "holiday" for a year to efficiency savings made by local government? Do you cut the fat when you're starving?

Ed Miliband's Shadow Minister

David Cameron has named Greg Clark as the shadow minister for "Energy and Climate Change" ... Clark was the MP behind the Private Members Bill to stop gardens being defined as brownfield land. He is also a former director of policy (2001-2005) for the Conservatives. I don't remember any ideas about feed-in tariffs and microgeneration emerging at that time. His assistants are Greg Barker (shadow minister for climate change) and Charles Hendry (shadow minister for energy).

Other items:

- If you're a roofer, you may want to check out Solarcentury's booth at Interbuild (the NEC, 26th to 30th October).

- UK consumers use food at a rate that represents six times more land and sea than is available to us.

- Sure, ID cars are going to be totally secure.

- Give coal the boot!

Finally, Help the Aged and FoE are taking the government to court over their fuel poverty policies.

Tory Conference - Cameron's Speech

David Cameron spoke for 65 minutes at conference, but he didn’t mention his 2005 idea of a "carbon audit office" -- a watchdog for a new statutory framework with specific year-by-year requirements for carbon cuts. In his leadership contest with David Davis, he said such an office would perform a role in checking emissions similar to the Monetary Policy Committee in monitoring and forecasting inflation. Cameron is green only when it suits him.

I thought one part of Cameron’s speech did hit home (and it wasn’t quoted as part of Nick Robinson’s package on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News). He read out a letter from a constituent whose wife had died from MRSA complications. The man claimed that her treatment "was like something out of a 17th century asylum not a 21st century £90 billion health service." Cameron sent the letter to Alan Johnson, as Health Secretary, and received the following reply:

"A complaints procedure has been established for the NHS to resolve concerns … Each hospital and Primary Care Trust has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service to support people who wish to make a complaint … There is also an Independent Complaints Advocacy Service … If, when Mr Woods has received a response, he remains dissatisfied, it is open to him to approach the Healthcare Commission and seek an independent review of his complaint and local organisation's response … Once the Health Care Commission has investigated the case he can approach the Health Service Ombudsman if he remains dissatisfied.”

Cameron followed up reading out the letter with the zinger: "four ways to make a complaint but not one way for my constituent's wife to die with dignity."

Tory Conference - Short-Sellers and Perks

New charges of cash-for-access-to-politicians, but it's the Conservatives this time.

The Tories have also taken hundreds of thousands of donations from people involved in the short-selling that has destablised the banking system. Paul Ruddock (Lansdowne Partners) donated over £210,000 since the start of 2006. His firm short-sold to drive down Barclays and Anglo Irish Bank share and is said to have made £100 million betting that Northern Rock would collapse. Michael Hintze (CQS Management) took out short positions on Bradford and Bingley. He has donated to the costs of running George Osborne's office. He's paid for two drinks receptions held by Cameron's office. His company has made loans of £2.5 million to the Tories. He has also supported David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, and donated money to support the "childhood review" being carried out by David Willetts.

With all this fundraising talk, it's time to remind ourselves about the Midlands Industrial Council.

Andrew Lansley also presents the Tory plans for health at their conference today, but he's been criticised for backing down on the traffic light labelling guide which helps consumers easily avoid unhealthy foods.

David Cameron and "Nudging"

Rachel Sylvester has an interesting take on David Cameron and personal responsibility/moral choice.

The latest must-read book at Conservative HQ is Nudge, which argues that peer pressure is a more effective way to change behaviour than state directives. Last week, Steve Hilton, the Tories' chief strategist, met one of its authors, Richard Thaler, to discuss how his approach could be applied to social problems such as drugs and knife crime. At the moment, the argument goes, people are being “nudged” in the wrong direction, with rap music that glorifies violence, soap operas that popularise antisocial behaviour and gang culture that creates a sense of family for people who have none.

The question is how to turn the nudges around. A rap song that highlighted the danger of carrying a weapon could be more deterrent than endless knife summits at No10. A health visitor who persuaded working-class mothers to read to their children might have as great an impact on education as a change in the qualifications system. In short, Mr Cameron does not just want to hug a hoody, he wants the hoodies to be persuaded to hug each other. He wants to create a smaller state by reducing demand rather than supply.

Jim, over at The Daily Maybe, has also written on this recently:

We have a society that ritually idolises violence, wealth, image and personal satisfaction over a sense of community. We have a society where many people, both young and old, feel they are outsiders to their own communities, where no-one has a responsibility to them and they have no responsibility to anyone else. Under these circumstances it's a surprise that so many people feel a sense of social responsibility.

Cameron is on to something. His objective is to keep government small and non-interventionist by encouraging civil society to be more interventionist with itself. He is wrong when he talks about "social responsibility" and withdrawing the UK from the EU Social Chapter. I think he's wrong when he characterises things like obesity and drug abuse as moral failures, rather than health issues to be treated.

But, there are aspects where his kind of approach will be right.

We need to look at why people join gangs (why gangs provide better security than the state) and why people are more willing to shoot/stab folks than 5 years ago. You can't legislate so that people stab each other less.

I think Cameron's is right about peer-pressure being, sometimes, as effective as top-down regulation. Neighbours talking with neighbours about composting, about how to travel to Italy by train, about how they installed their water butt, is the way things will happen.

It's going to be interesting how Cameron pitches this idea of "social responsibility" and differentiates it from the idea of the "nanny state" ... and Ed Miliband is already starting to respond to Cameron's rhetoric with talk of individual control of state budgets.

The Conservatives And Hypocrisy

The Independent On Sunday has a few interesting stories on the Tories today.

- The new Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, owns shares in Anglo American, Standard Chartered, Rio Tinto and Shell. All of these firms are trading in Zimbabwe. Each investment is worth more than £60 000, so Grieve's total shareholdings are more than £240 000. This is in contrast to David Cameron calling on all companies and individuals with "any dealings" in Zimbabwe to examine their consciences and ensure that they are not keeping Mr Mugabe in power.

- The fellow who set up the website for the "David Davis For Freedom" campaign is vice-president of Fleishman-Hillard, a global public relations firm representing security companies that have introduced ID cards in the United States and Spain.

Andre Gide said that: "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."

- Cameron needs to drop Grieve from the Shadow Cabinet for his policy on Zimbabwe to have any credibility.

- People need to ask some hard questions about David Davis. How can Davis be in favour of an expansion of the prison system, be in favour of capital punishment, and be an MP who voted in favour of 28 day detention, and also be a white knight for civil liberties?

Update: Guido Fawkes points out that the Independent's parent company - Independent News & Media PLC - operates in Zimbabwe. Baroness Jay and Ken Clarke are non-execs on the board of INM plc.

David Davis And 42 Day By-Election

The short-term effect of David Davis running in a by-election, on the issue of 42-day detention, is a stunt. Labour only received 13% of the vote in his constituency in the last election, and the Lib Dems aren't running a candidate against him.

The long-term effect could be a solidification of Lib Dem-Tory relations. Nick Clegg was happy, in a constituency which was in the top 10 of Lib Dem targets, to stand aside nearly immediately.

Do we need a national re-examination of how we are sliding into a society with CCTV cameras, detention without trial, Belmarsh, and complicity in rendition? Do we need to look again at more than 2,000 Asbos being issued to children between 1999 and 2006, with some young children given Asbos lasting up to 10 years? Do we need to halt our expansion of prisons, and re-examine the per capita prison population that leads the industrialised world?

Sure.

But the Tories have been in favour of prison expansion and Asbos.

So, in terms of David Davis leading a debate on the direction of law and order/civil liberties policies in British society, he's not a perfect white knight.

WebCameron And Boris Johnson

Out of the 122 videos on webcameron, 10 of the top 15 "most watched" are to do with Boris Johnson. If Boris doesn't do well in London, it'll damage a lot of the effort that Cameron has put into webcameron.

I'm surprised at the low viewing figures on webcameron: only 2 of the 122 videos have been viewed more than 10 000 times.

This could be compared to Oxfam UK (3 videos with more than 10 000 views, out of 44) or Friends of the Earth UK (15 videos with more than 10 000 views, out of 56).

The New Cuddly Conservatives

Dave Osler on the old class instincts of the Tories:

Workers, Osborne insultingly claimed, go on strike "at the drop of a hat." This is nonsense, of course. For a start, thanks to the anti-union laws that formed a key plank of Thatcherism’s offensive against the working class, it takes weeks to go through all the legal hurdles necessary to take lawful industrial action.

You can see the impact in the statistics. The total number of strike days taken last year, at just over 1m, is minimal compared to the average of 12.9m in the 1970s and 7.4m in the 1980s.

The truth is, Britons have substantially fewer rights at work than workers in any other industrialised country.

Even after Labour’s introduction of a national minimum wage, the European social charter, union rights at GCHQ and the Employment Relations Act, they remain arguably the worst in the EU.

However much the Tories try to present themselves as the human incarnation of the Care Bear Bunch, their project remains that of providing a political voice for the minority of wealthy people that control society.

That’s why they have opposed everything in history that has helped the poor at the slight expense of the rich, from the abolition of slavery and the Factory Acts right through to the minimum wage. However slick the marketing, they remain at bottom the nasty party.

The "Family-Friendly" Conservatives

I always get a bit confused when David Cameron starts talking about being family-friendly.

Cameron wants to take the UK out of the EU's Social Chapter ... which would remove legal protection for part-time workers and end the rights of women to extend maternity leave.

With the EU Social Chapter, 7 million part-time workers have gained protection against discrimination. 4 million parents have gained the right to take unpaid parental leave. Everyone with a caring responsibility has the right to take unpaid emergency leave.

So, er, not families that have caring responsibilities for older parents, or families that depend on part-time work, or, basically, families with women in them?

David Cameron doesn't want you to pay attention to what he was saying in March 2007, that withdrawal from the EU Social Chapter would be a "top priority."

He wants to keep up the marketing job, the spin exercise, and expose his young family to TV camera attention, and build an image of being family-friendly, when he's preparing anti-family policies as soon as he's elected.

Everything Old Is New Again

Every Person in Health shall be kept to such Labour as they can well do, according to their several Ages and Abilities; that is to say, from Six of the Clock in the Morning to Six at Night; and if any grown Person refuse to work, to be kept on Bread and Water, or expell'd the House: The Children to be corrected by the Mistress. All Persons, who through Idleness may pretend themselves Sick, Lame, or Infirm, so as to be excused their Working ; such Impostors so discovered either by their Stomachs or the Apothecary, shall be carried before a Magistrate, in order to be punished as the Law directs.

- Laws of the Work-House of the Parish of St. John, Hackney, Middlesex, 1834

Soft Authoritarianism And Going Green

ICM has done two recent polls, one for the Telegraph (field research done 30th/31st January), and one for the Guardian (15th/16th February). My advice is to always look at ICM's extended PDF files (on their website) to see how every question breaks down by age, gender, region and class.

The Guardian poll looked at taxation and the gap in incomes:

The good news: 75% feel the gap between high and low incomes is too wide in Britain, the highest ever level found by ICM.
The bad news: Only 36% agreed that taxes make society fairer - 51% amongst Lib Dems and 48% for Labour voters.

The Telegraph poll in late January asked about various Tory policies, and if they would make respondents more likely, less likely, or no difference, to vote Tory at the next election.

The good news: 60% of 18-34 year olds said that "forcing people to change their behaviour to reduce greenhouse gases" made them "more likely" to vote Tory.

The bad news: 69% of people or more, across every social group, said that "allowing police to hold terrorist suspects for longer than 28 days without charge" would make no difference, or make them more likely to vote Tory. Large majorities (for make no difference, more likely to vote Tory) were found for "reducing people coming from overseas to live in Britain" and "more police on the streets."

The Green Party's vision looks at redistribution, equality, libertarian views on holding terror suspects and prison, and open immigration/asylum. We may have 60% of younger voters buying into the idea of rough justice to achieve a sustainable society, but two-thirds of society also agree with rough justice, in the form of soft authoritarian policies. As well, it's unclear how people think the massive rich-poor gap is going to be resolved, if it's not through redistributive tax policy.

A "Fair Employment Commission"

Citizens Advice is calling for a "Fair Employment Commission" to be created:

Last year, Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK dealt with more than half a million employment related queries.

60% of these involved the denial of statutory workplace rights such as the minimum wage, paid holiday and sick leave and pay. Some workers were also required to work excessively long hours or were denied proper rest breaks, the report said. Others were summarily dismissed for being pregnant. Other high risk groups include migrant workers and those who because of age, disability of lack of skills, would struggle to find another job.

In contrast, David Cameron's in favour of taking what worker protection we have away. Cameron wants to take Britain out of the EU's Social Chapter -- that would mean less protection against discrimination, the removal of legal protection for part-time workers, and the ending of the rights of women to extend maternity leave.

David Cameron And Nuclear Power

First Gordon Brown, then David Cameron.

Same questions as yesterday about nuclear power, David.

David Cameron And Solutions

Fix my boiler!

"I will," says David the plumber, "but not yet. First, I am going to set up a series of Boiler Review Groups. Some of these will be headed by really quite surprising people who have been harping on about boilers for years. They will look into the problem in depth, and then they will propose a series of solutions."

Vote Blue, Go Green: Air Ashcroft

Following on the heels of out-of-town supermarket parking and rejecting pay-as-you-throw, it's yet another example of why you can't trust the Tories on the environment.

Shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles. [David Cameron] has flown just over 3,700 miles on the Ashcroft jet ... [but] Cameron's carbon footprint is much higher if another 68 internal flights, including a short helicopter ride from Birmingham to Warwick, are taken into account.

Analysis conducted for the Guardian reveals that Tory globetrotting has racked up 1,289 tonnes of carbon emissions ... [Michael Ashcroft's] Falcon burns about 3,000 US gallons of fuel to cover its maximum range of 4-5,000 miles. A Boeing 777 uses about 30,000 US gallons to cover the same distance. But the Boeing can carry 300 people, which significantly reduces its carbon footprint per passenger kilometre, the usual yardstick for emissions. If the Falcon flew with three passengers, then each would be responsible for 10 times as much pollution as those in the Boeing.

Pay-As-You-Throw And The Conservatives

Vote blue, go green ... except when it's a policy that reduces our overall waste.

Pay-as-you-throw policies would go like this (at least this is how it works in Flanders, where they recycle 70-80% of household waste):

- The cost of rubbish collection and disposal is separated out from council tax, and people pay a seperate annual waste fee, say, £56. On top of that, you pay a variable charge based on the weight and volume of waste you leave for collection.

- So, keen recyclers would find that they pay £56 and then £14 for producing very little waste.

- Other households would pay their £56, and then £120 for producing a great deal of waste.

- People were given the chance to buy locks for their bins to stop neighbours dumping their rubbish in them, only 300 out of 40,000 households asked for one.

- As for flytipping, councils in Flanders quickly dealt with illegal dumps and put up warning signs.

Instead, Tory shadow communities secretary Eric Pickles said: "What we should be doing is increasing recycling. We can do that without doing it through a bin tax."

No. We need incentives to encourage less and less consumption, not more and more consumption that gets recycled. That will be driven by incineration and landfill taxes, reuse credits as well as recycling credits, and by increasing our amounts of composted waste.

David Cameron, Los Angeles And Gangs

David Cameron has just returned from a trip to California, hoping that Ah-nuld's political stardust rubs off on him. He talked with "senior officers from the LAPD, the mayor of LA, and former gang members" about "learning from their strategies."

Los Angeles has pursued decades of zero-tolerance suppression policies, and it's led to 11 gangs commiting 17000 violent crimes last year.

Now, the police are finally trying pilot programmes of "gang intervention workers" -- these workers try again and again – often at considerable personal risk – to stop one incident from blowing up into a full-scale street battle. Los Angeles is now on track to see its lowest annual murder rate since 1970.

What people did Cameron speak to -- only the police chiefs, or gang intervention workers as well? If he's serious about avoiding the decades of mistakes in Los Angeles, David Cameron will need to rein in David Davis and his talk of zero-tolerance, police expansion, and prison expansion.

David Cameron's Speech To Conference

Straight from the horse's mouth ....

What Cameron said: "I have always believed in Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. And when Labour came forward with plans to replace Trident, I am proud of the fact that we marched our members of parliament through those division lobbies to make sure that vote was won."

Translation: I’ll criticise Russia and Iran for retaining/pursuing nuclear weapons, but we’re going to keep ours, thank you very much, even if it costs £70 billion. I want to keep the power to kill millions of people on my orders.

What Cameron said: "We need to scrap that early release scheme in prisons; 24,000 released on our streets that David Davis spoke about yesterday."

Translation: We imprison more people per capita in England and Wales than anywhere in Western Europe, and we’re going to imprison even more people.

What Cameron said: "This Party never wants to punish of hold back the aspirations of people who want to get on in life and have a good life. And what we must be in the Party of sensible, Green leadership, and that is exactly what we are going to stay."

Translation: I’m going to talk about climate change for 360 words out of 9000 in my speech. Sensible leadership means avoiding taxing out of town parking at supermarkets. Sensible leadership doesn’t involve telling Britons they have to start consuming less energy, less resources, and less oil.

What Cameron said: "We need business to be responsible in the way they market to children, treat their employees, in the way they encourage family life - all of those things will help us to get tax and regulation down for the long term good of our economy."

Translation: We won’t regulate business on marketing to children, or on employee rights, or family-friendly practices, we’re just going to ask them very nicely. Asking nicely didn’t work in the US South over segregation, nor when the suffragettes said pretty please, can we have the vote.

What Cameron said: "There's a man in my constituency called John Brooks and he's got cancer. He spent 40 years working for the same company, paying into his pension fund, it was a blanket factory in Witney. He was told his pension fund was copper bottomed and guaranteed - the business went bust, the pension scheme went bust and he was left with nothing."

Translation: see above on asking companies nicely nicely and no need for pension regulation.

What Cameron said: "Nothing matters more in terms of opportunity and our economy and our future than education. Falling down the European leagues in terms of educational performance. 23,000 young people leaving school without any qualifications whatsoever, we are not doing enough to prepare young people for this world of freedom."

Translation: We won’t follow the example of Finland, ranked #1 in the OECD in literacy among 15-year olds, as the Finnish system is fully comprehensive, and I’m hostage to my party on the issue of grammar schools. Besides, those wacky Finns also have free school meals to all pupils, and there are no university fees.

What Cameron said: "The government has got its academy programme. It's a good programme. But I feel that Gordon Brown is putting his foot on the brake when he should be putting his foot on the accelerator and we should be making it easier for these new schools."

Translation: I want more and more of our education system dependent upon £1m and £2m donations from people who gain a say over curriculum and hiring of staff.

What Cameron said: "The way we'll get a really personalised NHS is make the changes that are necessary. Giving people a real choice of GP's, giving GP's control over their budgets and allowing GP's to choose between whatever hospital they like. Public or private or voluntary not just some limited list."

Translation: I will expand private healthcare in Britain.

What Cameron said: "All of the Shadow Cabinet here they can tell the same story of young people who come to our surgeries, they show you their salary, they talk about local house prices and they just say I don't see how I can achieve that dream. And George showed how we going to cut stamp duty to show that we're on their side and we will help mend the housing ladder and get on their side."

Translation: Stamp duty is only levied on homes above £125 000. Stamp duty is currently charged at 1% of the sale price of properties worth between £125,000 and £250,000. If you’re earning £22 000, even on 4 times your income, and a £20 000 deposit saved up, you can afford a house or flat valued at £108 000, so you won’t have to pay stamp duty. I'm not talking to first time buyers in most of the country, I'm talking to first time buyers in the East of England, London and the South-East (where 73% of the stamp duty is collected).