Bolitics The New Condem Government

[peterms]

I don't think we're seeing enough of John Redwood in all this.

 

Surely the nation needs to know where John Redwood stands on gayers and foreignors and all that. Whilst we're at it, we need more quotes from Mellor, Jacob Rees Mogg and Nadine Dorries. I don't think we can have too much of these people on the box.

 

Wasn't the dreadful Redwood the first winner of the "swivel-eyed" descriptor, from his own colleagues?

 

And didn't Private Eye have a cartoon series depicting him as a Mekon, bound up in his own self-contemplating smugness while the effects of his mad policies were visited on the innocents?

 

I used to get e-mails from some investment firm who'd taken him under their wing, telling me about how if I listened to his words of wisdom, I would prosper.  I think it was a job placement scheme, a combination of scammers and community care. 

[snowychap]

...this is one of the more obvious and would be folly on all sides.

The EU - an organization with a wardrobe full o' folly.

 

Seriously, I'm not sure the 'but it wouldn't make sense' argument should be too heavily relied upon. Protectionism doesn't really make much sense but countries and trading areas still do it. Indeed what is restricting labour market movement other than protectionism?

[Risso]

 

I assume all those EU countries that supply the UK with £261bn worth of things would be keen to carry on doing so though?

The history of our balance of trade with Europe is sufficient to tell anyone that it would be foolhardy for Europeans to accept any form of trade obstacles between the UK and member states - Europeans export more goods to us than we export to them. There are many ways in which noses can be cut off to spite UK and European faces, but this is one of the more obvious and would be folly on all sides. Hence the raft of free trade agreements that have been and, most likely, will be drawn up to protect each party's interests.

 

 

 

That's what I was getting at.  The common market is a great idea, political union and the rest of it, much less so.

[snowychap]

 

I assume all those EU countries that supply the UK with £261bn worth of things would be keen to carry on doing so though?

The history of our balance of trade with Europe is sufficient to tell anyone that it would be foolhardy for Europeans to accept any form of trade obstacles between the UK and member states - Europeans export more goods to us than we export to them. There are many ways in which noses can be cut off to spite UK and European faces, but this is one of the more obvious and would be folly on all sides. Hence the raft of free trade agreements that have been and, most likely, will be drawn up to protect each party's interests.

 

I agree with the first part of the post (i.e. the bit that you omitted ):

The trade argument is a little more complicated that [sic] generally presented and hardly a, "EU would stop trading with the UK if it left the EU" idea (or words to that effect).

[villaajax]

Why is it that we don't have Prime Minister's Questions anymore? Is he too embarrassed to show his smug face?

[snowychap]

Recess.

[bickster]

Abscess.

Fixed

[coda]

Duncan Smith to face grilling from MPs over misuse of statistics 

[peterms]

Duncan Smith to face grilling from MPs over misuse of statistics 

 

But the premise of such a committee hearing is that the person they're questioning won't lie to them.  Slight technical hitch coming up, I think.

[snowychap]

Duncan Smith to face grilling from MPs over misuse of statistics 

 

But the premise of such a committee hearing is that the person they're questioning won't lie to them.  Slight technical hitch coming up, I think.

Indeed.

Perhaps one of them will rile him and we'll get one of those vitriolic finger-pointing scenes to which he appears rather prone.

[snowychap]

I'm glad someone called Ian Paisley jr (and by implication those who use the same line) out on this 'I have every right to hold this view' defence - just a bit of a shame that it was that Quilliam foundation bloke.

[villaajax]

When I see these Tories they bring onto Have I Got News For You I can't help thinking "are they just playing a character?".

 

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Fabricant and the cartoon buffoon himself Boris Johnson.

 

Yes, I do support Labour but I just can't see how these particular people got elected?

[drat01]

When I see these Tories they bring onto Have I Got News For You I can't help thinking "are they just playing a character?".

 

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Fabricant and the cartoon buffoon himself Boris Johnson.

 

Yes, I do support Labour but I just can't see how these particular people got elected?

 

TBF you have to look past the personality and image that they portray. Unfortunately many don't do that and that is a lot of why you see people like Boris playing the buffoon because people will see that think "he's a laugh" while ignoring his quite obnoxious views. Look at the various comments re Milliband and what he looks like, look at how the right wing media especially love to play on that. It's personality - pop-idol - politics. No doubt certain VT Tory supporters will post a picture of Brown talking about Pop-Idol there missing the point completely if past history is anything to go by.

 

As for Rees-Mogg he is an interesting character from an equally interesting family. He certainly fits the Old-Etonian perception and his views on aligning Tory party with UKIP etc should make interesting reading, as this is a direct challenge to Cameron. Fabricant, is just an idiot  

[snowychap]

Obviously a general political post rather than about the government:

link

MPs declared earnings of more than £7m from outside jobs and directorships over the last session of parliament.

An analysis by the Guardian shows 20 MPs made more money from their outside jobs than they did from their parliamentary salary of £65,738, with some spending more than 1,000 hours on outside employment.

Seventeen declared more than £100,000 in income during the 2012-13 parliamentary session, according to data filed on 7 May.

Gordon Brown earned more than £1.37m from giving speeches around the world. Brown said the income supported an office that he uses to "support my ongoing involvement in public life", with £600,000 going to charity and none of the money to him personally.

Under parliamentary rules, MPs are allowed to engage in outside work, including taking on company directorships, working as consultants, acting as barristers or simply giving speeches or writing books – provided that all income is declared in official registers, and no work relates to lobbying parliament.

Other top earners included Stephen Phillips, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, who declared more than £740,000 in outside income, generated by working more than 1,700 hours as a barrister, some of it on cases which began before the 2012-13 parliamentary session. Phillips said his outside work benefited his constituents by keeping a connection with the "real world".

"What matters is whether or not I do my job as an MP and how well I do it," he said. "People can check that from my attendance and other figures, which I believe demonstrate that I am one of the hardest workers at Westminster …

"The fact that I don't have a job as a minister and continue to work as a lawyer, mostly when parliament is not sitting and I am not engaged on constituency duties, enables me to keep a foot in the real world – though, I accept, a well paid one."

The high earners also included Geoffrey Cox, Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon, who declared £417,000 from acting as a barrister for clients including the government of Mauritius and Aegis Tax LLP. The former Conservative defence minister Nicholas Soames declared £305,000, from sources including work as a director of private security firm Aegis Defence Services and consultancy work for financial services companies.

Former Labour ministers Alistair Darling and Jack Straw declared earnings of £263,000 and £183,000 respectively. Straw said that his work as an MP allowed ample time for outside work, which was mainly a mixture of speaking engagements and writing.

"I devote around 60-70 hours to my duties as an MP, both national and constituency-related," he said. "After allowing for sleep, and family/social activities, there are another 30-40 hours available for my other work."

Conservative MPs declared more than £4.3m in earnings from outside directorships or jobs, against £2.4m for Labour – more than half of which was Brown's £1.37m. More than 50 MPs had directorships of at least one company, while 295 declared at least some kind of minimal earnings from outside parliament.

Transparency campaigners Unlock Democracy said the MPs with the largest outside earnings needed to reflect whether they were representing their constituents to the best of their abilities.

Alexandra Runswick, the lobby group's deputy director, said: "I doubt the majority of MPs can even imagine doing their jobs representing their constituents while raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"The purpose of the allowances system is to allow MPs to work in parliament without having to be either independently wealthy, in employment or beholden to special interests; if MPs earn significant amounts outside parliament, at the very least the taxpayer should not be expected to subsidise them as well."

Runswick said she was in favour of MPs remaining able to do outside work but the findings highlighted the need for wider reform in Westminster.

Jonathan Isaby of the TaxPayers' Alliance said that while outside work was positive overall, voters should monitor their MPs to see it was not affecting their parliamentary work.

"Any other jobs [MPs] do should not distract them from their primary focus of serving their communities as MPs," he said.

The watchdog that has overseen MPs' pay and expenses since the 2009 expenses scandal, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), is currently reviewing aspects of MPs' pay and other compensation, and its recent consultation included questions on the issue of outside work.

However, the Guardian understands that Ipsa will not recommend guidelines on second jobs when it publishes its proposals later this year. "Ipsa is currently reviewing MPs' pay and pensions and we will continue to consult the public as we do so," said Ipsa's head of communications, Mark Anderson. "This is the first time that MP remuneration will be set independently and not by MPs themselves."

Edited May 27, 2013 by snowychap

[tonyh29]

 

When I see these Tories they bring onto Have I Got News For You I can't help thinking "are they just playing a character?".

 

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Fabricant and the cartoon buffoon himself Boris Johnson.

 

Yes, I do support Labour but I just can't see how these particular people got elected?

 

No doubt certain VT Tory supporters will post a picture of Brown talking about Pop-Idol

 

 

as if we would

[peterms]

Osborne was on the Today programme this morning, talking about cuts (or "savings", as the BBC has been instructed to call them).

 

He was asked about the intellectual case for his actions, since it was based so heavily on the Rogoff-Reinhart paper which purported to show that when public debt exceeds 90% of gdp, disaster results.  The paper has been comprehensively debunked because of spreadsheet errors, because of excluding data which didn't fit the hypothesis, and because of getting causality the wrong way round.

 

Osborne made it clear that he still accepts the conclusion as an article of faith, despite it being shown to be utter nonsense.  At 2 hours 20 here if anyone's interested. 

 

[tonyh29]

Osborne was on the Today programme this morning, talking about cuts (or "savings", as the BBC has been instructed to call them).

 

He was asked about the intellectual case for his actions, since it was based so heavily on the Rogoff-Reinhart paper which purported to show that when public debt exceeds 90% of gdp, disaster results.  The paper has been comprehensively debunked because of spreadsheet errors, because of excluding data which didn't fit the hypothesis, and because of getting causality the wrong way round.

 

Osborne made it clear that he still accepts the conclusion as an article of faith, despite it being shown to be utter nonsense.  At 2 hours 20 here if anyone's interested. 

there are also papers that debunk 9/11 and the moon landings  ..there is a strong case that Krugman's evidence isn't nearly as compelling as he would have people believe

[mjmooney]

Admit it. Nobody understands economics. It's voodoo.

[snowychap]

there is a strong case that Krugman's evidence isn't nearly as compelling as he would have people believe

Would you care to set out that case, please, Tony? Or are you just misquoting the open letter to Krugman from Reinhart and Rogoff?

I thought their paper was shown to have errors by a UMass student?

Edited May 28, 2013 by snowychap

[peterms]

there are also papers that debunk 9/11 and the moon landings  ..there is a strong case that Krugman's evidence isn't nearly as compelling as he would have people believe

 

Moon landings?  Odd comparison. 

 

I'm not talking about Krugman.  He's just one of many who have commented on it, and they have taken issue with him because they find his tone hurtful.

 

The important point is that some policymakers (including Osborne) accepted as fact their idea that 90% public debt to gdp is some sort of threshold figure which causes lower growth, and based their policy approach on it.  R&R now accept that their work was wrong, and have tried to recover some ground by claiming that they never said that exceeding the 90% figure causes lower growth (they just failed at any point to correct this misunderstanding when policymakers said that's what they drew from R&R's work). 

 

Yet despite this, Osborne still clings to his belief in what he understands to be their conclusion, when even they themselves agree their analysis was mistaken and say they never claimed that the 90% figure was a causative factor in low growth.  It's like someone who thought he heard a doctor say that falling down stairs leads to loss of balance, and when the doctor says that's a misunderstanding, continuing to believe it anyway.