Labour has well and truly lost its Moral Compass

David Cameron said that Labour had lost its moral compass over the 10p tax band fiasco.

The recent changes they have brought in (under intense pressure) to rectify some of this damage still leave 1 million of the poorest working people worse off.

Add to this the disgusting nasty party politics they are playing in Crewe - racist, classist, hate-filled behaviour - then one can only conclude that they have lost all sense of right and wrong, all sense of fair play, all sense of what being in power is meant to be about - which should be acting on behalf of the people, and in particular protecting the vulnerable. Read this article in the Guardian, naming Labour as the true nasty party.

Labour and Racism

I've long thought that Labour policies cause racial disharmony. They emphasise what is different about people - setting up divisions. They also have a nasty habit of classifying people according to the type of school they went to as well as their race - very bigoted. Ken Livingstone was probably the worst at this, and this may have been the reason for the increase in the far left BNP's vote.

I believe in fair treatment, respecting different peoples' cultures and religions, but bringing people together in a cohesive, happy society - everyone as an equal. This policy is much more likely to reduce racial incidents and reduce the number of votes for the far left and vile BNP.

But Labour are at it again - see this post here. They seem to want to incite racism and separate people - NEVER should politics sink so low for a short term political gain.

And by the way - BNP are definately far left, not far right - they even label themselves as old old Labour. They believe in nationalisation and trade barriers as well as all kinds of bigotry. The Conservatives are the complete opposite to this - but Labour sometimes come a bit too close.

The Newt Tells it all!

Those superstitious amongst us would consider it a good omen - I just consider it a funny coincidence:

We dug a "wildlife" pond last year. I have been absolutely fanatical about only stocking it with native plants, to encourage a good bio-system. This has meant it has been slow to look pretty, but has been pretty popular with water boatmen, pond-skaters, and birds and local mammals - as is evidenced by the footprints and the splashing most days. We've even got a pair of ducks that visit most days.

However, we could not find any amphibians. We did what we discovered afterwards we shouldn't do - transferred a few tadpoles from someone else's pond (with their consent) to ours. But they all died. And so did the ones in the pond it came from - we heard afterwards on the radio that we shouldn't have done this as it might bring in diseases. And, as the other person's tadpoles all died, we were worried that we had contaminated our new pond.

Not so! On the 1st of May - the day the great Newt Fancier Ken Livingstone was voted out by London - my kids spotted hundreds of tadpoles and A NEWT in our pond!!

We have been blessed with at least one delightful common newt (pictured above). I have now spotted him in the pond about 10 times and have been able to definitely identify him. I am delighted. These increasingly rare creatures need to be protected with more large ponds being available.

It's a lovely coincidence that on the day the newt-fancier is voted out and more people are moving into the Conservative habitat (so to say), is the day we have newts moving in to our pond!

Leaving Soon - for all of our sakes

Mr Ken "Leaving soon" Livingstone (please!) is at it again with his lies and smears. It really does make me angry.

See this video describing his mud slinging.

Now see these articles about downright lies that him and his cronies are telling.

The countdown is on. This kind of politics is more like Zimbabwean than British. Please get rid of this odious character. The ONLY endearing thing about him is his newt-fancying tendencies.

Equal standing to A-level physics and a qualification in flower arranging

Eton and St Pauls are pulling out of the schools league tables. They say they have become so distorted by political nonsense that they have become meaningless.

The words targets, statistics, and fixing come to mind. They can try and hide the dumbed down new Labour education in the statistics, but people are not stupid and can see for themselves.

Read about it here.

Labour run NHS hits a world record - C difficile kills more people here than anywhere else in the world

If you don't believe me - read the article here.

Key quotes "6,500 people die of C. difficile in British hospitals every year – a rate of one an hour – and the infection kills four times more people than MRSA."The figures for C. diff show that more than 50 per cent of hospital trusts in the UK have a rate of infection that's more than 10 times that of any other country," said Professor Richard James, of Nottingham University's Institute of Infections, Immunity and Inflammation."

"Panorama claimed that changes in the way the figures are counted means true infection rates are substantially higher. Researchers asked every acute hospital trust and health board in the UK for its figures and, of those that replied, more than half had bed occupancy rates of over 85 per cent."

"Experts would say that if you go above 85 per cent bed occupancy rates, then that is not conducive to good control of infection measures," Professor James told Panorama.

How the Labour government has hurt the poor

If you follow the link here, you will see a fantastic article in the Spectator, which lays out the stark truth of how Labour have made the poor worse off.

In summary:
1) Sink schools. By granting LEAs monopoly control over education provision, bureaucrats have keep bad schools going by forcing children there. It’s the children of the poor, however. While 47 per cent of students achieved five decent GCSEs last year, this was true for just 20% of those eligible for free schools meals. The inequality is getting worse, not better (shown in the Reform report in the previous blog post).
2)Worst Hospitals. The NHS, like all bureaucracies, responds best to those who complain loudest – the middle class. So the poorest get the worst deal. Patients in deprived areas, despite being in more need of hip replacements are much less likely to get them- demonstrated here.
3) Poorest getting poorer. In 2001/02 the disposable income of the poorest 10% was £91 a week. The latest data (for 2005/06) has it as £89 a week.
4) Welfare Dependency. When Labour came to power 5.7m were on out-of-work benefits. After ten years of the economic boom it’s 5.2m – most of the new jobs have gone to or been created by immigrants on whose work ethic Brown has depended. Once, Labour referred to idleness as a “giant evil”. Now, Brown has institutionalised it.
5) Protection from crime. Those living in poor neighbourhoods are 2 times as likely to be robbed and 2.5 times as likely be a victim of violent crime than those living in rich ones, according to the Home Office.
6) Taxation. Since Labour came to power the number of income tax payers has rocketed by 20% to 31.6m as more and more of the low-paid are being outrageously caught in the tax trap. Then asked to apply for some of their money back in tax credit and be grateful for it. A quarter of those eligible for tax credits don’t claim them, and don’t enter this labyrinth of paperwork. Result? Brown’s cunning “fiscal drag” has ensnared in his complex tax system millions of families struggling to make ends meet. These are the people hit when the starting rate of tax is doubled to 20p.
"Labour’s mistake is embracing top-down government as the best means of promoting social justice. A bureaucracy will only ever serve the needs of those who complain the loudest (and, of course, serve itself). The Blairites realised this, and their battle with the Labour Party showed them to be in a minority. It is not the party of the poorest, not any more. It is now the political wing of British state bureaucracy. Brown, of course, personifies misplaced faith in this malfunctioning, parasitical machine."

LOW SOCIAL MOBILITY IMPOSES AN ECONOMIC COST

That is from the latest report from the ThinkTank, Reform. I have summarised the key points from their press release, below. The full document is available here.

The economic cost of low social mobility in the UK is £1,300 per family, according to a new report. The study, published by the independent think tank Reform, argues that successive governments have restricted opportunity and reinforced privilege through higher spending on benefits and public services. It recommends a new and co-ordinated policy approach across government to empower individuals and increase their ability to invest in themselves.

The report finds that while the UK is no longer the “sick man” of Europe, it could be called Europe’s “divided society”. Over the last thirty years, globalisation and technological advance have meant that workers need education and skills to share in growing prosperity. But the UK’s state education system has a dismal record in educating the poorest in society and the proportion of UK adults paying towards their own training is only half of the OECD average.

Successive governments have sought to solve the problems of poverty and low social mobility with higher spending on poverty relief and public services. But public services are biased towards the affluent and means-tested benefits and higher taxes have reduced individuals’ incentives to increase their incomes. The unintended consequence has been a “why bother” economy in which a significant minority do not have the capability or motivation to succeed.

The report finds that radical education reform and a new focus on individual capability can remove these blocks on mobility. It points out that the high social mobility countries in Scandinavia have reformed education systems in which the taxpayer funds both private and public schools. It argues that lower government intervention and taxation would create a “capability margin”, meaning the resources available for individuals to invest in themselves.

The report’s key findings are:

§ Social mobility in the UK fell in the 1960s and 1970s and has remained static since. Other European countries have seen significant improvements.

§ The economic damage of poor social mobility stems from lost income, investment, entrepreneurship and innovation. If the UK had the skills levels of the US, for example, the benefit to the economy would be £32 billion per year, or £1,300 per family. For comparison, the maximum loss for an individual from the abolition of the 10p tax rate is £232 per year.

§ Education and skills have become increasingly important for successful employment and will be even more important in the future. But a school leaver from a poor background does only half as well as the average 16-year-old. Past OECD research has shown that only 19 per cent of adults in the UK paid towards their own education and training, compared to an OECD average of 37 per cent.

§ Underlying child poverty (net of transfers) has risen. The total number of children who were either in low income despite tax credits, or would have been in low income but for the credits, has increased from 2.4 million to 3.0 million.

§ The withdrawal of means-tested benefits means that some gain only 11p for every additional £1 earned. 1,875,000 people face marginal effective tax rates of over 60 per cent in 2008-09 compared to 760,000 people in 1997-98.

§ The balance of taxation has shifted in such a way as to reduce incentives to work. Income taxes have risen from 23 per cent of Government receipts in 1983 to 28 per cent now, the highest for 30 years.

§ A new approach requires a tax and benefits system which incentivises work, public services that are consumer driven and an open and fluid education system. Crucially, this approach should start from the point of raising individual capability to release talent rather than the current course of paying people to be poor. It would move the UK from a “why bother” to a “can do” economy.

§ A key challenge is that of moving towards a lower tax economy where people can have an increased “capability margin” – the amount available to individuals over and above their day-to-day living costs. This margin is vital for investment in new skills.

One million pupils failed by Labour

A recent report by the Bow Group claims 1,000,000 pupils in the UK are failed by Labour - not a surprise to me.

The summary says: "This report, as part of the Bow Group’s Invisible Nation series, highlights the total number of pupils who have taken their GCSEs under Labour. It discovers that an entire generation of almost 4 million pupils have failed to gain their expected qualifications of five good GCSEs including English and maths, and approaching a million pupils who have not gained five GCSEs of any grade. Despite an increase in education spending of 75%, over £70.5 billion has been spent on educating pupils who failed to gain the qualifications now expected in the modern day workplace."

The Guardian's take on it is here. Nadine Dorries' take on it is here. My reaction was to sigh with resignation. We won't get a world class education back until we get rid of the socialists running the country. Which means our future as a country in terms of economy, poverty, deprivation, crime and practically everything else is being highjacked until the next election.

Labour's Tax on the Poor Update

Here's the latest on Labour's tax on the poor - Iain Dale is showing this graph. As you can see, the hard-working poor will be worse off, whilst the rich will get richer.

Gordon Brown and Darling seem to be a reverse Robin Hood - steal from the poor to give to the rich. And you will only get a bit back if you will sign up to being on benefits - which gets people stuck in the poverty trap by reducing overall incomes when moving up in the job market.

What is their hidden agenda? A client state? See my previous post on this.