TSO — Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve, here is that wonderful Trans-Siberian Orchestra video, with the kid from the house and the orchestra in the snow outside, that I posted last year…



Note that there will be TSO videos here for Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

War Room Briefing — December 2009

A Festive Season briefing from our good chum Eric Pickles…

Message from the Tax-Payers' Alliance

Received today, from the TPA's Matthew Elliott…

2009 has been a remarkable year for the TaxPayers’ Alliance. In the context of the financial and fiscal crisis, which will have huge implications for taxpayers for decades to come, we now enjoy unparalleled influence in Westminster over issues like transparency, accountability and better value for money for taxpayers. Achieving an average of 600 high quality media hits per month, we have campaigned hard on key issues such as MPs’ expenses, public sector pay, quango accountability and the European Union.

The big story of the year has undoubtedly been MPs’ expenses, and as a group that has been campaigning on this issue since our inception five years ago, we were able to step up to the plate when the Daily Telegraph started breaking the scandalous details of how our politicians had been living a five star lifestyle at our expense. Our spokespeople took to the airwaves to condemn the actions of greedy and fraudulent MPs, and call for urgent reform of the system that had led to taxpayers being so badly ripped off. When the inquiry came, we submitted evidence to Sir Christopher Kelly, and are delighted that many of our recommendations were adopted wholesale. We are now sitting on the board of IPSA, which is tasked with implementing these recommendations and will work to ensure that real action is taken to stop abuses of taxpayers’ money. And if the Crown Prosecution Service doesn’t act soon on the MPs who possibly committed fraud, we are still ready to embark on a prosecution on your behalf.

Another area where we have seen policy victories is on the issue of public sector pay. As you may know, we have published our Town Hall and Public Sector Rich Lists over the past four years in order to expose how many public sector fat cats were cashing in on an opaque and unaccountable system. We are delighted to say that all three main political parties have pledged to crack down on sky-high remuneration and even Gordon Brown (who was 324th on this year’s list) has now come round to our way of thinking and uses numbers from our Rich Lists in his speeches.

We have also trained our guns on the rampant waste in Brussels, publishing two books The Great European Rip-Off and Ten Years On. Our European campaign has also produced research papers on everything from MEPs’ expenses fraud to the Common Fisheries Policy. Look out for more of these to come over the festive season!

The year ahead promises to be even more exciting and action packed. We will continue to campaign on the key issues, and will be scrutinising all the parties’ pledges in the run up to Spring’s General Election. We plan to hold all MPs to their promises to clean up parliament and take some of the public sector fat cats’ cream, and we hope to be the ones lighting the match under a long awaited quango bonfire. We plan to build on our research into the financial and fiscal crisis, including keeping a close eye on taxpayers’ liabilities on the banks and how our punitive tax system affects entrepreneurship and job creation as Britain begins to emerge from the economic crisis.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your encouragement, kindness and hard work over the last year. Much has been achieved, but there is much still to do and we will need you more than ever in the coming year to help us tackle the issues that matter to taxpayers across Britain. You have shown unparalleled commitment and loyalty, and it is these great qualities that have enabled us to become Britain’s most high profile campaign group. This is your fight, about your issues, and we remain your TPA. On behalf of the entire team here, and our Board of Directors, may I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Politics Home's Awards for 2009

Remembering Sir Humphrey Appleby's lesson on how to get the results one wants from any poll or other survey, we can look at the distinctly odd Politics Home awards for 2009 with at least a modicum of understanding how these came to be.

There are just four of them, as follows:

1. Politician of the Year — Lord Peter Mandelson (eh?? Not Boris, Cameron or Cable?)
2. Political Media Award — Fraser Nelson (this one is fine: perhaps intended to make the bias less obvious)
3. Influencer of the Year — Joanna Lumley (no argument about the winner; but an odd choice as one of only four categories)
4. Gaffe of the Year — The Sun (this is the most contrived of the four)
   

They do seem as if they were carefully tailored to make them look superficially sensible, but in reality devised so as to make Labour look good and the now anti-Labour Sun newspaper look bad.

By contrast, others' similar awards this year do come across as broader and more non-partisan — though we shall have to wait to see who those being nominated by the reading public (such as at Iain Dale) turn out to be in practice.

David Camera-on

Labour have a new attempt at satire using a made-up Twitter account called David Camera-on — which is a clever enough title. The humour isn't all that great, and is mainly pseudo-"toff" stuff, but is mildly amusing on occasion.

I can't see it being of interest to many ordinary voters, but its style ought to keep the (admittedly small) Kevin Maguire readership happy at least…

Hat-tip to Tory Bear

TSO —Wizards in Winter / Light Show

I know you've all been waiting and hoping for this, so here it is at last: the brilliant light show to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's original playing of their Wizards in Winter. There are several of these, but this has to be the best — especially with the frankly "manic" final few moments…

It Woz Hutton Wot Said It!

John Hutton MP has today owned up to being the (then) Cabinet Minister who said, some three years ago, that Gordon Brown would be a "disaster" as Prime Minister. It came out in a radio interview earlier today, I am informed.

Although Hutton has apparently softened his stance since then, I suspect that there are many of his parliamentary colleagues, and many (most?) ordinary Labour Party members, who to this day think that contention was accurate and has been proven during the past 29 months…

UKIP Want In On TV Debates

I have just been invited on Facebook to join a newly-formed group there in support of a bid by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to join in at least part of the upcoming party leader televised debates.

As one might expect, they have a "reason" (actually a somewhat-contrived excuse) why their request should be acceded to; but my earlier point remains. Only those individuals who could reasonably be expected to be running the country (including in a two-party coalition in a hung parliament scenario) should be included; and I'm sure that was the original intent anyway. It really was not about parties as a whole, except indirectly, through their leaders.

Of course, all those also-rans are going to see these debates as an opportunity for self-promotion in a fairly big media event, and that is what will be driving them to try it on with the broadcasters involved and their regulatory body. The clues are there, though: rather than respecting the original purpose of the televised debates, these others are seeking to twist them for their own benefit. Some would say this is what politics is all about.

I don't. I remain of the view that all that self-serving (and largely dirty) stuff needs to be kicked out, and that includes these self-serving moves by the Pearsons and Salmonds of this world. They are not going to be our nation's next Prime Minister nor coalition partner in UK government, so they're out of it as far as these debates are concerned. ther events can be arranged if wanted and needed, but these three are for those three (Brown, Cameron and Clegg) only — and that's an end to it.