Stones and conservatories

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John Redwood’s Diary - Bring on a Lib Dem leadership battle

A Tory gloats over the thought of a Lib Dem leadership contest.

"As a Conservative I look forward to another Lib Dem leadership battle. It is wonderful entertainment to watch so many trying for such a “job”, and to see and hear the skeletons falling out of the cupboards as each contestant is put through the mud wrestling challenge that is the Lib Dem leadership contest.

UPDATE: 6.20pm According to the BBC:

"Sir Menzies Campbell is to resign as leader of the Liberal Democrats"



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Reasons (not) To Be Cheerful

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A Blockhead’s Essays: Here’s to new ideas
This is a rare vacuum in politics. It is not often that a movement has the chance to exhaust its own programme, to push its beliefs as far as it can, and for everyone to see the result. The neo-conservative movement in the States had an unusually free hand to try its great experiment, and as it failed, it destroyed the power of its own ideas. What amounts to an ideology for new Labour – throw money and confiscate power – has been running for a decade. We know the results. Would you pay three times as much for the health service of 2007 than for the service of 1997? Tough. You are. Have schools been transformed? Nope. Do people have more disposable income? Do we feel freer? More fulfilled? Happier? More secure? More content? There is no possibility that the government can blame anyone else for its failures. It has had whopping majorities, gushing streams of our cash, a benign global economy, and lots of goodwill. For most of its time it barely had an opposition. Its failure is entirely due to the bankruptcy of its own ideas.
Don’t think much of his blogroll :) and I don’t agree with all his analysis but it’s a compelling read, a good essay and if more of the right-leaning blogworld produced this sort of stuff the left would have reason to worry…or be grateful perhaps?…mmmmm.

Via Tim Worstall


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Leave money to the Tories? You must be mad.

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Tories lose £8.3m bequest battle
The Conservatives have lost a battle to keep an £8.3m bequest by a man whose son described him as delusional.

Drugs mogul Branislav Kostic, who died in 2005, wrote his will in the 1980s after saying Margaret Thatcher would save the world from "satanic monsters". But his only son Zoran, 50, contested the bequest at the High Court, saying his father was "deluded and insane" and he was entitled to the entire estate. The judge upheld a 1974 will made at a time when nobody disputed Branislav Kostic had full capacity, and under which Zoran was the sole beneficiary.

The Conservatives say they have not touched the money. The party's barrister Andrew Simmonds QC referred to Mr Kostic's "great and long-standing affection for the Conservative Party and his admiration for Mrs Thatcher". Clare Montgomery QC, representing Mr Kostic's son, said the Conservatives "only benefited because the testator became mentally ill". Mr Simmonds said that while it was accepted that Mr Kostic had a delusional disorder it was not accepted that this made him incapable of making a proper will. (emphasis mine)
Jeez. What a bunch of money-grabbing arseholes!

See my tuppence worth of comments at Ellee Seymour



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Chop chop, good cop!

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Legalise all drugs: chief constable demands end to 'immoral laws'
One of Britain's most senior police officers is to call for all drugs – including heroin and cocaine – to be legalised and urges the Government to declare an end to the "failed" war on illegal narcotics. Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales, advocates an end to UK drug policy based on "prohibition". His comments come as the Home Office this week ends the process of gathering expert advice looking at the next 10 years of strategy...

Mr Brunstrom says: "If policy on drugs is in the future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral. Such a strategy leads inevitably to the legalisation and regulation of all drugs."  The chief constable asserts that current British drugs policy is based upon an unwinnable "war on drugs" enshrined in a flawed understanding of the underlying United Nations conventions, and arising from a wholly outdated and thoroughly repugnant moralistic stance. He concludes: "The law is the law. In the meantime, I will continue to enforce it to the best of my ability despite my misgivings about its moral and practical worth."
At last some common sense from a senior police officer. It's the police that have to deal with the consequences of this drugs policy (over 90% of all shoplifting offences, for instance, are carried out to pay for drugs) and this guy should be congratulated for sticking his neck out.

Will the law change? No way. We live in a world where you now can't even buy a cigarette at age 17 and if you could you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere to smoke it legally. It is ironic that the government uses the excuse of 'human rights' (the right to a smoke-free environment at work) to support anti-smoking legislation and yet ignores the basis of all modern drug controls in the West which can be traced directly back to racist hysteria in the United States during the early part of the last century. Firstly aimed against Chinese immigrants and then, later, against ' drug crazed Negroes'. Still today the drug laws are used in the US as a form of racist social control. Passive smoking is verboten. Passive racism, it seems , is fine.


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Blogs next?

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California court tilts towards mandating web accessibility
LargeBreastsCalifornia law may require websites to be accessible to disabled internet users, according to a ruling in a case against retail giant Target. Despite recent improvements to the accessibility of Target.com, the case has now been certified as a class action. Target was sued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and one of its blind members, Bruce Sexton, under a federal law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and also under two state laws, the California Disabled Persons Act and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act. The NFB and Sexton argue that Target.com is not accessible to blind internet users, in breach of these federal and state laws. They complained that images on the site were missing alternative text upon which blind users rely; keyboard controls do not work, meaning users must be able to work a mouse; and headings are missing that are needed for navigation.
I'm off to get a ramp fitted to my RSS feeds.  Via Scoble


Private equity in social services

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Children's homes hit by buyout fears
Experts say private equity firms now control 30 per cent of the independent foster agency market. Last December, Sovereign Capital bought the country's second largest foster agency, NFA, and at least six big agencies have fallen to private equity players. Sources say foster businesses are keen to turn to private equity as a ready source of capital to fund rapid expansion.

The trend has sparked deep unease among children's charities, who say private equity-backed foster agencies are piling extra work on social workers and will raise charges to local authorities. Kevin Williams, chief executive of The Adolescent and Children's Trust (Tact), the UK's largest fostering and adoption charity, said: 'This is not an issue for us about the private sector operating in foster-care. Our issue is with private equity firms, their stated aim of maximising profits for shareholders and operating for short-term gain. This is not compatible with providing long-term care for some of the most vulnerable children in society.'


Plees sur, how do yew spel inkompitens?

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Teachers given 28 attempts to pass test - Times Online
A student was allowed to become a teacher even though it took 28 attempts to pass a basic numeracy test that included questions such as “what is 6.03 multiplied by 100?”.

Figures released in parliament show that many students retake the basic maths and literacy tests required to join the profession several times. In both 2005 and 2006, there was at least one teacher who needed 28 attempts at the numeracy test; for literacy it was 20 and 19 respectively. In each of the last six years, there was at least one student who had to re-take the basic numeracy test more than 20 times, and the literacy test as many as up to 25 times.

Questions from the tests, which are set by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, included: “A pupil scores 18 marks out of 25. What was the score as a percentage?” In the literacy test, candidates are asked to choose the right answer from four alternative spellings for words such as preference, acknowledge and relieved. Options given included releived, releaved and realived.

The tests were introduced in 2000 and, initially, candidates who failed after four attempts were not allowed to qualify as teachers. This rule was relaxed in 2001 after complaints from the profession and students are now allowed unlimited re-takes.


Licking the arse of the arsenal shareholder

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An unbelievable piece of puffery from Mark Franchetti in today's Sunday Times.

Arsenal billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, recalls six years in penal colony
“I was a victim and when I came out I realised I had one last chance to make a success of my life. I won’t fall so low as to fight those who want to blacken my name. Let their slurs weigh on their conscience. Mine is clean.”
Perhaps we could get that in writing Mr Usmanov?

UPDATE:  Fisking here by Tim Ireland and Craig Murray's response is HERE and HERE



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I'm Just a Gigolo...

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John Newsinger - Campbell's blood money
Soon after he had accompanied Tony Blair on his famous journey across the world to Hayman Island to pledge allegiance to Rupert Murdoch’s business interests, Alastair Campbell had a meeting with his former mentor, Neil Kinnock...It is worth quoting Kinnock’s diatribe (as reported by Campbell, of course) at length: ’Oh Margaret Thatcher, not too bad you know, not such a bad person, quite radical, and of course you had to admire her determination and her leadership—that’s what the fucking leader says.’ ‘Now, now’, I said, trying to calm things… 'Don’t 'now, now' me. I’ll fucking tell him—too radical my arse. That woman fucking killed people… He’s sold out before he’s even got there...he’s totally sold out. And for what? What are we FOR? It won’t matter if we win, the bankers and the stockbrokers have got us already by the fucking balls, laughing their heads off’.

... What is interesting is that Kinnock’s critique was absolutely spot on—with one important exception. He could not possibly have imagined that Blair, ably assisted by Campbell, and with Kinnock’s own acquiescence, would go on to kill considerably more people than Thatcher.