Category Archives: Conservatives

Is there some sort of award on offer?

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I’m trying to fathom the thinking (assuming there is some) behind the amazing commentary coming out of the Tories at the moment.

Let’s just take a quick review of the last few days, shall we?

  • Cameron tells us, repeatedly, that he wants a referendum. But only if we elect his lot outright.
  • Cameron does not put anything about a referendum in the Queen’s speech.
  • Cameron gets sniffy when the backbenchers lodge an amendment regretting the lack of any referendum.
  • Cameron writes, on the back of an organic tofu packet, a draft bill for a referendum.
  • Cameron hands draft bill to a backbencher to adopt as a private members’ bill.
  • Cameron then makes noises about this PMB being subject to a three line whip.
  • Cameron studiously ignores the fact that he cannot bind any future governments into holding a referendum, but it doesn’t matter, because this is doing something, making a statement.
  • Cameron says nothing, when making a statement would be a very good thing, after one of his inner circle dismisses the Tory grassroots as swivel eyed lunatics (where have we heard that before?).

Now, if I were leader of a political party and one of my colleagues spoke about the core support in such hostile and unforgivable terms, not only would I release a statement PDQ decrying the decrier as a nincompoop and all round farty-pants, but I would also, in the full view of the party and national media, eviscerate the decrier and march his head on a pole up Whitehall, round Trafalgar Square and down The Strand as a warning to others.

Instead we’ve heard nothing. Not a peep. Is it any wonder that the Tory grassroots are so furious? Is it any wonder that they are jumping over to UKIP?

Dave, c’mon! Hey, I’m quite happy about it, but you? What in the wide wide world of sports is going on in that little Eton head of yours? You really do treat your rank and file as oiky first year scholarship boys, don’t you?

The truth is, dear reader, that as far as Cameron and his pals are concerned, if you didn’t attend the right schools (I think it is limited to Eton, Harrow and Winchester), if you didn’t go to the right universities, if you didn’t join the right societies, then you really are nothing more than an educationally sub-normal, cretinous, drooling simpleton; the owner of a opinion that is to be ignored or shouted down. Know your place, you scruffy little oik.

I’m not one to play the toff game, but the longer this goes on, the longer I think there’s something in it. I always thought it was an easy sop from the Labour mob, and don’t worry, I’m coming to you lot in a moment, so you can stop looking so bloody smug, but if this is how he treats ‘his own kind’, well, of course the grassroots aren’t ‘his own kind’, they are beneath him. Just look at this photo again:

Is there not one of them you couldn’t cheerfully hit in the face with a brick?

He despises anyone who isn’t in his club.

Well, keep it up Dave, keep it up. Your uppity loons will find a home elsewhere. Let’s see how many seats you win when only Bullingdon Club members vote Tory.

Now, Labour members, you’re looking very pleased with yourselves, aren’t you? Well, why? Your leadership are just as elitist as the Tories, some of the schools are different – although not all that different, the universities are the same. You sit there in your Islington town houses pontificating on how people should live their lives, oh, you’re so superior, aren’t you? Hmmm? Intellectually, morally, spiritually, golly gosh if you aren’t just wonderful people. Except you’re not, you’re driven by hate, spite, jealousy and an unmanageable desire to control every aspect of every person’s life. You really are the most patronising and condescending lot, I loathe the Tories, you I just pity.

As far as you’re concerned, the only thing worse than a Tory (who you are convinced are all toffs – give it six weeks and you may be right) is one of those working class types. You’ve not met any working class, well, perhaps one or two, but they’ve been bathed and shaved, had some rudimentary education and, most importantly, would never disagree with you, mainly because you’d decry them as racist homophobe paedos and have their kids taken from them.

Anyhow, these working class types, you read about them in the sociology elective of your politics degree, some of them have improved themselves, some of them don’t want to be most ‘umbly grateful for the benefits you give them, or the dead end McJobs you’ll allow them to have, as long as they pay their union dues and do what they’re told like good little drones. Man, you HATE them. They improve their lot, and they don’t ask your permission. All of a sudden, you don’t look quite so attractive to them. They don’t need you any more, they don’t seek out your protective little pat on the head. Then there’s the other lot, who do outrageous things like question your immigration policies when their kids waste days in school waiting for everything to be translated, when even a seasonal farm job is out of reach because they don’t speak the right lingo. Class traitors! Racists! Throw in a ‘homophobe!’ as well, hell, let’s give ‘em a ‘paedo!’ for good measure.

No, your leader doesn’t want anyone to have a say on anything. It would appear that he doesn’t have a great deal to say himself, as when he stands up to talk it is utter, meaningless bollocks. At least when Cameron speaks you can pick apart what it is he’s saying and call him a large foreheaded arse-clown, your bloke speaks through his adenoids it’s like he’s suffering from dysphasia, he may just as well be saying ‘duvet renewable fan, chilli sauce, social justice ironing board cornflakes, privet hedge fund managers, chocolate seagulls feet.’ I just. . . he’s hopeless. You want us to back him? I mean, why? Why would we do that? Yes, Cameron is a shambling disaster too, but that’s no reason to back your shambling disaster. There’s more than two horses in this race, you know.

And LibDems, I was going to say I hadn’t forgotten about you. But that would have been a lie, because just like everyone else I HAD forgotten about you, due to your complete irrelevance.

Is there some sort of award on offer for most dysfunctional party and least effective leader? Bugger me, it would be a close run thing.

Keep it up.

I am not a Tory.

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The Tories are wrong. On a number of levels they are wrong. They are wrong on so many things it would be quicker to write a list of what it is they are right about. That list would be short.

One of the things they are wrong about is that people who vote UKIP are Tory disaffectees.

I will be voting UKIP, I am not a Tory. I never have been a Tory.

One of the things they are wrong about is that UKIP are stealing or splitting Tory votes.

I will be voting UKIP. I am not a Tory. My vote does not belong to you. It belongs to me. In an article over at the Torygraph, Vicki Woods launches an attack against UKIP and Farage that is so personal it made me cringe. Vicki, love, when you use the phrase ‘the sort who you know would or should be voting Tory because they always have’ you represent the exact problem your party has. Who the hell do you think you are to demand, suppose, believe, expect that because someone voted Tory at some point in the past that they are now duty bound to do so for the rest of their lives?

This is the attitude from all the big 3 parties; ‘you belong to us’. Uh-huh, this is why UKIP are spiking at present, you treat people like chattels, like vassals, you insult them, you dictate to them, and then you expect them to support you. It is like an abusive relationship, perhaps now the abused are starting to hit back.

I suspect that Vicki Woods has been got at, because it appears that the Tories have been spending a good deal of money on trying to dig up dirt on UKIP candidates in next week’s council elections. It’s pretty strong stuff, one candidate owns a bar where adults can go and see another adult take their clothes off. The leader once went into a place that was similar.

I don’t much care. I suspect most other people won’t. Those that do care will say something along the lines of ‘I knew that bloke Farage was no good.’ It is intelligence that will reinforce, not change, opinion.

Over in the comments on the Telegraph someone has listed the convictions and arrests regarding Tories. Lots of them. Lots of kiddie fiddling stuff. I have no comment to make on that.

The thing is this, the Conservatives must be running scared to do this. By doing it, and by being so slapdash as to be caught out doing it, they’ve just reinforced the line that they are a bunch of unscrupulous arses who would do anything to anyone to hold onto power. Nice.

The other thing is that they still believe that UKIP voters belong to them. I don’t. We don’t. We belong to ourselves. Why is this concept so difficult for you to grasp? Why do you think I owe your party any loyalty? I owe them nothing. I’m loyal to UKIP, I’m a member. If the party’s views change and I end up disagreeing with more than I agree, then I’ll leave. My loyalty is to my views. There is talk of no pact whilst Cameron is leader of the Tories. This is good. There is talk of a pact if Gove became Tory leader. This is bad. If such a merger or pact came about, I’d be off. Why? Because I’m not a Tory. I’m not using UKIP as some kind of regent until the Tories come to their senses. I don’t view UKIP as a safe harbour as a storm blows on the Tory seas. I’m not a Tory.

The Tories seem to think all UKIP could, would, should and did vote Tory. I don’t. This is not some Tory second XI.

I had an interesting discussion with the Tory candidate for my county council ward the other day as he called round doing the doorstep thing. I actually quite like him, he’s a good bloke, and he’s done a lot of good work. He was the driving force in the county council to get the city council’s support of the aforementioned and disastrous Westgate Towers traffic scheme overturned. He is hoping to get the aforementioned Kingsmead field designated as a village green to scupper the city council’s plans to develop it for housing; a plan that is widely hated in the community, and widely supported in the city council.

The city council has 49 councillors, only 15 of them are not Tories. They are detested, in Canterbury. You couldn’t hope to find a place more blue. The county councillor for this ward is hated by the city Tories as he keeps frustrating them at county hall.

My appreciation for his work aside, a couple of the things he said to me in trying to get me to vote for him really pissed me off. When I pointed out the lunacy of a Tory councillor constantly trying to undo the work of the other Tory councillors, when I pointed out that they hate him, when I pointed out to him that he was in the wrong party, he laughed. ‘But if I joined UKIP, I wouldn’t get elected.’

BAM! There we have it. He’d rather be in office than address the obvious issues within his party. Big black mark from Wolfers there.

Second, he trotted out the line than really gets my goat; if you vote UKIP you’ll get Labour.

Even now that makes me bristle. I will always, always vote FOR what I want, and never against that which I do not. If there is nothing I want, I will spoil my paper. If what I want doesn’t get in, it doesn’t matter to me what does. Don’t threaten me with the Labour bogeyman, they are the minority on the city council, perhaps if they’d been the majority, the traffic trial and field sale wouldn’t have been on the agenda. Maybe if they returned a county councillor he would also oppose what the Tories had done on the city council, I mean, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that a Labour person would try to generate capital for their party by opposing the other side, is it? And, just in case I haven’t expressed this enough, because I am not a Tory, the thought of Labour does not give me an attack of the vapours.

Then today we receive a letter where he states, quite incorrectly, that he is the only candidate who lives in the ward. I know this is not true as I know the UKIP candidate and he most definitely lives in the ward.

So, I will not be voting Tory. I will not be voting Tory because:

  1. I do not trust or believe their leader.
  2. I do not trust or support their policies.
  3. I do not like their negative campaigning techniques.
  4. I do not support, in the slightest, their local policies.
  5. I do not like their obvious in-fighting locally.
  6. I do not like their candidate’s attempt to scare me into voting for him.
  7. I do not like their inaccurate and misleading communications.

Most importantly, I will not be voting Conservative mainly because I am not a Tory.

Call me an old cynic, but. . .

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The thing is, I have no respect for politicians. I am convinced that there is no depth to which they will not stoop to further their agenda or their career.

Politics is now little more than a fusion of the entertainment and marketing industries. Every shirt, jacket and tie is agonised over before a TV appearance. ‘What does this pair of socks say?’ is a question that must surely be asked before the wearer reveals them by crossing their legs on the sofa of the breakfast or mid-morning chat show.

No part of a politician’s appearance, image or general facade is left to chance. So, I ask the question, what do you see here?

Do you see a man, profoundly moved by the death of a woman he looked up to as a role model, a woman whose ideology and politics he feels so connected to that her passing has brought about such a reaction?

Or, do you see a man, sat behind a dead man walking, a man who would love to hold the post his old chum occupies, a man who would love to persuade the membership of his party that he is the man who best reflects her legacy, the man who can bring about a resurrection of her policies and drive? A man that wants himself in the forefront of the minds and hearts of his party’s membership?

I wonder. . .

Ripe, yet unpicked.

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And so my gaze returns to the city of Canterbury. In a very quiet understated way, people in the city are not happy. And as far as I can see, most of the blame lies with the Tories.

There are a number of irksome items on the agenda.

Firstly, there is the question of the Westgate traffic trial, a subject which I have touched upon before. The problem is that we have a rather lovely 13th Century ragstone gate house, part of the remaining city defences, that still stands guard over the western entrance to the city. It is beautiful, look:

Now, traditionally traffic has flowed under it to get to the city from the north west, and also to get round the city to get to the channel coast and/or Ashford in the south west. Unfortunately because the ‘new’ A2 when it was built years and years ago was so ill thought out, anyone wanting to get to Ashford from the direction of Whitstabubble and Hernia Bay have little option but to drive through Canterbury because there is no way to get onto the A28 otherwise. Now, a car or a van can fit very easily under the archway in the tower, but a bus/coach or an HGV finds it a bit of a challenge. The end result was that bits kept getting gouged out of the masonry, drivers of foreign tourist coaches turning left into the tower have always found it a huge problem, to be frank it caused chaos and damaged the building.

The traffic heading in the opposite direction, out of the city, passed round the outside of the tower. The solution that Canterbury City Council came up with was to close the inbound direction of traffic to everything but buses and taxis, allowing them to go round the outside of the tower with the aid of traffic lights, and re-routing the rest of the traffic down another route. The whole scheme has been controversial, it has caused significant congestion down residential streets, and in my opinion, has increased the levels of pollution in the western area of the city.

The real controversy comes from the fact that the whole thing was imposed without any public consultation at all, and when consultation came, well into the trial period, it was granted with very bad grace indeed. Finally, Kent County Council stepped in, as the ultimate arbiters of all things highway, and declared that the road configuration would return to its original layout from the end of this month. Several people on the council did not accept this decision very well and there were fairly strong words thrown from city to county hall. There were also some shockingly arrogant displays of petulance from some of the councillors both in the local rag and at public meetings when people raised an objection.

It should be noted that most of the councillors, as far as I can make out, who sit on the committee responsible for this farce live in, or represent, either the rural wards or wards in Whitstabubble and Hernia Bay.

Then we come to the question of the Kingsmead playing field, on the north east of the city. This open space has effectively been common land for, well, centuries. However, the city council has declared that the land is to be sold for housing. This in an area which is only a spit from the zone where the traffic trial has caused such carnage, for Canterbury is a very small city. Whereas opinion has been divided (more in favour of dropping) regarding the traffic trial, opposition to the sale of this patch of open land, used for a whole host of purposes, is almost unanimous. But, the council have made their minds up, and that as they say, is that. Well, perhaps not, there is now an application with the county council to have the land designated as village green, thus protecting it.

Finally, there is the new bin system due in April. Oh, God, the bins. We’re one of those fortnightly collection jobbies. I’ll be fair and point out that the system we have at the moment is actually very good indeed. Once a fortnight, general household waste is collected, and once a fortnight on a week stagger from the general waste, recycling is collected. Every now and then a roll of large transparent sacks drops through the letterbox, into these transparent sacks goes pretty much everything recyclable, with the exception of glass which still needs to be taken to the bottle banks. These sacks are collected, and here comes the bit which I think the council finds objectionable, and the contents sorted. The results make Canterbury one of the best recyclers in the country.

The council has now decided that this won’t do, and we are now due to get six (six!) new bins for each dwelling in the city so that we can sort our own recycling. The problem is space. Canterbury is very densely populated, with narrow streets that really haven’t changed since the middle ages. The houses are small, big gardens uncommon and access difficult. I myself live in a little group of twelve little houses. My house is one of four on the development that has anything that can be considered as a garden. It is inaccessible except through the front door. We have a bin store that is just big enough to store our general bins. There simply isn’t room for twelve general bins and 12×6 recycling containers. This is a situation that is repeated again and again over the city. The response from the council is that collection will be weekly. This spectacularly fails to address the fact that it isn’t volume of rubbish that is the problem, it is surface area of bins. This has been imposed with no apparent consultation.

All this has been done with a very high handed and arrogant attitude by the vast majority Conservative council. And here we come to the nub of the matter. Labour down here are a joke. I’ve received their local propaganda sheet today, and piss poor quality aside, it focuses entirely on national issues, barring one paragraph on the Westgate. The Lib Dems, are the Lib Dems, ineffective and self-important, kinda like a collective Chris Huhne. At the last local elections I had a choice of Blue, Red or Yellow. I spoiled my paper.

The reason the Tories in Canterbury are like they are is because they are, so they think, untouchable. People here will vote Labour as soon as Sheffield returns a Tory run council. Never. The Lib Dems will pick up a ward or two, but as far as it goes it is blue, blue, blue.

I received a UKIP Kent letter the other day, inviting me a) to a UKIP Canterbury meeting on March 16th, which I won’t be able to attend as I’m a terrible romantic and am taking Mrs. Wolfers to Paris on the Eurostar for a weekend of snorting absinthe and cheering on dancing girls with their thrupennies out, and b) to stand as a paper candidate in this year’s locals. Which I’d love to do, unfortunately my employment as a public servant precludes me from doing so.

Now, a paper candidate don’t sound too hot, but I understand the thinking behind it. The more candidates UKIP put up, the more visible they become, the bigger share of the party political broadcast pie they get, the more votes they pick up simply by dint of being an option, the rosier things look. However I think fielding paper candidates in Canterbury would be going off at half-cock, because we have a population here who are far from happy with the Tories, but just won’t vote Lab and will vote Lib in small number only.

I believe that by getting a strong localist UKIP message out, providing a real alternative, never mind the EU and all that guff, an alternative which is palatable to the dis-affected Tories, stay at homers and paper spoilers, they could set a real foundation. It is that foundation that is absolutely vital, it is that which meant that UKIP came second in Eastleigh, so strong was the Lib Dem foundation there. By building this foundation, the dreaming spires of Westminster can follow. But more than that, the people of Canterbury deserve a choice and deserve the chance to put some of these arrogant comfortable Tory councillors to the electoral sword.

Where’s their alternative?

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I’ve had a little chuckle this morning. I was expecting UKIP to do well in Eastleigh, but I wasn’t expecting them to do that well. I’ve enjoyed the Tory candidate looking more than a little like Nicola Murray being led from the hall in a scrum of press and handlers, grinning like an idiot and refusing to answer a single question. She’ll be back, she’s been a good little drone, the party machinery will drop her into a safe(ish) seat the next time round.

I’ve had a good giggle at how the Limp Dem candidate appears to have had his charisma and personality surgically removed. Blimey, if that’s him delivering a victory speech in what must have been a ‘thank God for that’ moment for his party, well, I’d love to see him on a quiet night in.

I had a good giggle when I saw Farage talk of how we’d have won it had the Tories not split the UKIP vote.

I thought it was wonderful that the revolting Labour candidate, one of the BBC’s tame lefty ‘comedians’, who wanted us to lose the Falklands war and was devastated when a woman wasn’t killed in the bombing of a hotel in the 1980′s, barely broke four thousand.

Rumours flying around on twitter this morning suggest that the UKIP took the seat based on the votes cast on the day, and it was the postal votes, cast up to ten days ago, wot won it for the Lib Dems. It would be interesting to see what proportion of the turnout was represented by postal votes.

What is certain is that UKIP are enjoying one hell of a surge at the moment, and it is probably true to say that the more likely a party look like having a chance of winning, the more people will vote for them.

But, there is still this idea that UKIP are ‘stealing’ votes from the Tories. Over at the Telegraph it is almost sack cloth and ashes. But I just don’t believe it is the case. Farage was saying that it appears a good number of UKIP votes came from people that simply hadn’t bothered to turn out for the last few times. More than that, what makes me really angry is this idea that peoples’ votes somehow ‘belong’ to a party.

They don’t, a vote belongs to the person with the right to cast it. This is symptomatic of the problem with the big three, they have this enormous sense of entitlement, it is their right to expect people to turn out and back them just because they are who they are.

UKIP are stealing nothing from anybody. I still don’t think the people snubbing the Tories and going to UKIP constitute as many people as outlets like the Telegraph would have us believe. Without doubt they provide a decent chunk of the support, but I don’t think it is as big as all of that.

Those who have abandoned the blue for the purple and yellow haven’t been stolen, they’ve been pushed away. I’ve said it before, there is a massive disconnect between the Tories’ top table and the grassroots. The kicker being, of course, that the grassroots owe no loyalty to the party, they are not dependent upon it for their income or their prestige. They can walk away. Those at the top are hopelessly wedded to it, and it is clear to me that the top level and the grassroots have very different ideas over what they want.

Well, fine. If the leadership wish to impose their will on the party then that is their prerogative, but you can’t very well start complaining when your infantry just melt away and leave you to it. They’ve been banking on this idea that peoples’ votes ‘belong’ to them, they’ve been able to make people think that voting other than for LibLabCon is a ‘waste’, even a bit naughty. It looks like that idea is collapsing now. UKIP have been tap, tap, tapping away at the foundations of the walls since 1997 effectively, and now 16 years later there’s a dirty great breach in the defences.

Again over at the Telegraph, Hannan is promoting some sort of reconciliation committee to absorb the Kippers back into the familial home. I’m not sure if it because he really believes it, or if he considers it the best way to hamstring UKIP. The more he promotes it, the more I think it is the latter. It won’t work, Dan. Your party leadership have made it perfectly clear that they will do what they want, and very few people believe what it is Cameron and pals have to say. And as one of those who have come to UKIP having been nowhere near the Tories I’ll tell you this, any sort of pact twixt Tory and Kipper will not see my vote going to that pact, it will see it going to the English Democrats, an independent, or will see me spoiling my paper. At this rate, give it four years and it will be UKIP absorbing the Tories.

UKIP would lose huge amounts of support if there was a pact. As a UKIP member I don’t sit there pining for the day the Tory party wakes up and comes to its senses, I don’t care about the Tories. I don’t turn out and sigh saying to myself, if only the Tories represented my views, whilst marking the paper with a heavy heart. Even if the Tories changed overnight (and they won’t change, not one bit), I’d still vote UKIP. I have no tradition of voting Conservative, I’m not on loan, I’m not in exile, I am not politically homesick. I don’t care if you trot out the line that voting UKIP will result in Labour or Lib Dem, I’m voting for what I believe in, not against that which you oppose. If it isn’t UKIP in power it makes no difference to me if it is the Tories, Labour or the bloody Socialist Workers’ Party in power. It is my vote, don’t you dare to presume that because you represent some thin facsimile of my beliefs and have some sort of history that I am duty bound to vote for you.

People aren’t abandoning the Tories, the Tories have abandoned their voters. Don’t start whining about it when the votes go elsewhere. Oh, there’ll be talk of change, Cameron will say that his party is ‘listening’, but they aren’t listening and they won’t change. They will shift their position a micron, and if people are silly enough to believe them, they will find that that position shifts back if they can dump the co-driver and take the controls completely.

People have had enough, I know, I’m one of them. And those on the ‘right’ of the spectrum are attracted to UKIP because they represent their views better than anyone else. We are now seeing this, and despite what I said earlier, as UKIP attracts those stay away voters, they will bring old fashioned Tories with them.

The real losers in all of this are the supporters of the ‘left’, they find themselves in a horrible position. At least we on the ‘right’ have UKIP to rally behind, who do the ‘left’ have? Labour have divorced themselves from their core support as much as the Tories have. I would disagree with a properly ‘leftist’ party on pretty much everything, but it is a gaping hole in our spectrum that needs filling. The Lib Dems have always been a sideshow, neither fish nor fowl, I’ve never been sure what they stand for, but it is clear that the Tories and Labour have betrayed their grassroots and their history, and it seems only right to me that those on the ‘left’ have some sort of alternative.

(Apologies, once again, for the radio silence. The last couple of weeks have been an unmitigated disaster – if it could go wrong, it has gone wrong, and I’ve had neither the time nor the inclination to blog as a result.)

What will you hide behind now?

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I read with great interest that the OFT has decided that there are no shenanigans going on in the world of petrol retail in the UK.

It is of no surprise to me that the above linked article states that MP’s ‘reacted furiously’ to the report. I don’t think that the OFT reached a factually erroneous conclusion, but I’m convinced that MP’s, and the ‘honourable’ member for Tatton especially, were keen for the OFT to find that our petrol retail industry was a hotbed of cartel price fixing where fat men in suits sit around a table in a darkened room as they cackled like Disney movie villains at how they’ve shafted the public.

The report from the OFT is a clear confirmation of what we already knew, that being that pre-tax, the UK has some of the cheapest road fuel prices in Europe.

Without doubt the cost of crude oil has rocketed, and coupled with the value of the Pound which has been on a continual slide against the Dollar (the currency in which oil is traded) means that real cost of petrol and diesel has been pushed up.

However, when Ministers allege that the public is being ‘ripped off at the petrol pump’, I get the distinct impression that they had not developed a much needed sense of self awareness, and were rather hoping that the OFT were going to paint the retailers as the villains of the piece. The fact is, they just aren’t. Indeed the business of petrol and diesel retail is a game of minute fractions.

Many of those filling stations you pass on the road may be badged up with the logos and devices of the big petro companies, but they are in the main individually owned franchises, and they are operating on the thinnest of margins. The below illustrations from PetrolPrices.com shows how a litre of fuel is broken down:

As you can see, the retailer is earning 5p per litre, for the guy running the franchise this is not the road to untold riches. The obvious figure is the fact that the duty we pay on a litre is actually more than the cost of that litre itself, then there’s the matter of the VAT, in effect the tax on the tax is getting close to 50% of the base cost of the litre.

I get a real bee in my bonnet about this issue. Of course on a personal basis it is expensive and makes me cross, but unless it has escaped Osborne’s attention, we’re not exactly experiencing runaway economic growth at the moment. I’ll set ‘big business’ aside for now and concentrate on the ‘SMEs’ who do not have such an easy time incorporating this tax into their model. SMEs are lifeblood of our economy and no business model escapes having to factor in the cost of fuel at some point, even if they don’t have to move a product or a raw material at some point, the cost of fuel will have a direct effect on the wages that people need to able to afford to go to work.

I have no idealogical opposition to taxes, but the rapaciousness of government is killing this country’s economy. Fuel duty, and more gallingly, the tax tax, is the most hateful and immoral tax we have with the possible exception of inheritance tax.

Going off on a tangent for a second, I can think of no more disgusting form of tax than inheritance tax. It isn’t about multi-millionairres versus minimum wage slaves, it is about the individual working all their life, being taxed to the eyeballs, and then when they drop dead, the taxman rifles through their wallet before they go into the wooden box. It is an evil, horrible, indefensible tax and is akin to grave robbing.

Anyhow, back to fuel duty. This amounts to a tax on jobs, productivity, industry, retail, care,  food, clothing, absolutely everything we consume, use and need. I just don’t get why this tax routinely gets hiked up, especially when this tax is running at 167% of the cost of the commodity being taxed. I for one do not feel like giving the Chancellor a thank-you when he makes a big song and dance about ‘deferring’ a 3p rise in duty.

A deferral suggests that fuel duty HAS to go up, in the same way that day has to follow night. So addicted is this government to taking our cash that the idea of cutting, really cutting, duty doesn’t even occur to them.

It really makes my blood boil that a government can act so clearly against the interests of small and big business, not to mention the actual individual on the street.

No government that perpetuates this level of taxation can possibly claim to be business friendly.

I remember the harrumphing from MPs when this OFT investigation was mentioned, they cynically tried to kid on that they were on our side. They made sympathetic noises about how expensive fuel was, and insinuated that these horrible petrol producers were holding us up by the ankles and shaking us until all our change fell out of our pockets.

We all knew it was a smokescreen, but the MPs hoped that OFT would find a smoking gun. They haven’t, because there isn’t one. There is a smoking artillery battery, and each of those howitzers is stamped ‘property of HM Treasury’.

So George, the question is this; having made such a fuss and a song and dance at the time, now the OFT report has made it painfully crystal clear who the snake in the grass is here, what will you hide behind now?

Conservatives are the party of business? Don’t make me laugh.

Local trouble.

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And from the EU to issues right on my doorstep.

I’ve been amazed by recent turns of event in the fair city of Canterbury and surrounding area, the city council, which is overwhelmingly Tory, has not covered itself glory. Indeed, in my opinion it has been boneheaded, arrogant and has spectacularly failed to listen to or consider the interests of the residents of the city.

As I’ve stated before, Canterbury is a wonderful place. Really. I find it impossible to think of myself living anywhere else in the UK. Despite the best efforts of the Luftwaffe, which were bad enough, and the crass insensitivity of the 50′s and 60′s town planners it is still a very pretty place, especially when you compare it to other towns in Kent. It is not Chester or Stratford-upon-Avon, but it is still aesthetically pleasing.

The shopping is excellent, it has some fantastic bars and restaurants, some gorgeous gardens, it has two cracking theatres. The town has a buzz about it, due in no small part to the two universities in the city. Yes, students may present their own particular problems, but their presence and the way they make the city feel alive far outweighs any problems they bring. Serious trouble in the city of a night is rare, even when you account for groups of squaddies on the beer from the local barracks meeting up with squiffy students. We really are very lucky.

But politicians are politicians, and just like their national brethren, they cannot help interfering with things, with the usual result that any perceived problem is made much worse.

A case in point is probably the most divisive, the question of the Westgate Towers:

Stolen from grouchy-traveller.blogspot.co.uk

Built in the 14th Century, it is one of the best surviving examples of fortified gatehouse left in England. The problem, it formed one of the main arterial routes into the city centre from Whitstable and the villages between. Whilst cars and vans could pass under the towers with no problems, HGV’s and buses/coaches (especially foreign tourist coaches) would often gouge chunks out of the ragstone building and/or get stuck, causing chaotic gridlock. Canterbury, built in Roman times and occasionally updated, most recently in the 60′s, was just not designed for cars.

As you’ll see from the picture above, traffic entering the city would travel through the gatehouse, vehicles leaving the city would come around the outside. The solution, temporarily at least, was for all traffic to pass around the outside with the aid of traffic lights, but traffic going city bound was re-routed, with only buses and taxis allowed to pass round the exterior of the towers. This has resulted in huge congestion, as about 150m over the shoulder of the photographer is a level crossing for the mainline service to London, including the high speed ‘Javelin’ trains. The barriers come down a lot and this leads to huge tailbacks which then have a knock on effect in other pinch-points in the city.

It has made the lives of the local residents (me included) a misery as stationary vehicles pump out their exhaust fumes and journey times have increased markedly for commuters and visitors. Not exactly a great outcome for a city which is so reliant on tourists and shoppers who come to visit a place that has one of the best in town shopping centres in the country.

It has been suggested, by most people, that all that had to be done to safeguard the fabric of the towers was to limit the traffic passing through the towers to nothing bigger than a transit van, and to re-route anything bigger. The glib response is that that particular suggestion does not match the council’s traffic strategy. It has been settled.

There was consultation, of course. This took place months after the plan was put into place, and after a long and passionate debate in the council chambers (ironically, the ancient building to the immediate right of the towers in the picture) which called for the plan to be abandoned forthwith. The consultation results will be ready ‘sometime before March 2013′ and apparently, surprise, surprise, the company responsible for collating the data have proven to be ‘unsatisfactory’.

Even though the ‘trial’ pleases nobody, it is suspected that the results of the consultation will be ignored and the current configuration put in place permanently. I must admit I’m in that school of thought, because this council will just not listen to what the electorate wants.

An example of this is the Kingsmead playing field.

visit http://kingsmeadfield.blogspot.co.uk

This is an open space, directly opposite the leisure centre, which has been used by dog walkers and kids playing football since, well forever. I don’t profess to be a historical expert, but its position just outside the (now disappeared in that area) city walls suggests to me that it has been common land for some considerable time, it is mentioned in the Domesday Book where Edward the Confessor’s messengers would water their horses, and in the time of Henry VII was described as ‘pertayning to the men of Canterbury’.

The executive, in the face of extreme opposition from city residents, have decided that this land should be sold for development of houses. Not one of the executive who took the decision lives in Canterbury. Just behind the scene above is a new development of houses, only a year or so old. I think there is good reason why houses have not been built there; it sits on the banks of the Stour and there are many buildings, ancient and modern along the banks. Just across the road, next to the aforementioned leisure centre, is a branch of Sainsburys, the car park and coach park next door flood regularly. Given the weather forecast for tonight and the weekend, I would expect them to be flooded in the next few hours.

But like old Henry Ford said, history is bunk. It has been settled. This will have houses on it, after a thousand years of being a civic open space. William I, Edward III, Cromwell, Victoria, they all pale into insignificance against the wisdom and magnificence of the executive of Canterbury City Council.

Now we learn, after a consultation that appears to have been carried out via telepathy, that from April 1st (yes, I know) we are to go to a six bin system. At the moment we have a successful fortnightly staggered system; general rubbish one week, and these rather good recycling bags the next. The only recycling that can’t go in these bags is glass. It makes us one of the best boroughs for recycling in the country. But it isn’t good enough, apparently.

Even the LibDems are complaining about the six bin system. I don’t have a clue how we’re going to do it, we have a small enclosed yard of a garden, with a communal bin store. There are thirteen houses on our site. Quite where we are supposed to put 78 bins is beyond me. And we’ve got gardens. Student houses and flats? It’s nuts. It simply won’t work. But, it’s been decided.

Canterbury is as blue as it gets (37 of the 50 councillors are Tory), but this Tory council is attracting a lot of heat at the moment, heat that could well have a bearing on the genial old duffer of a time server that represents us in Westminster.

At the last local election I spoiled my paper, because I had a choice of LibLabCon. If I were a UKIP strategist, I’d be looking very closely at Canterbury, this council is rotten to the core.

What are you up to?

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A big day today, and it’s all about the EU.

Obviously the big story is about the budget. There’s a two day talking shop where the PM, if we are to believe him (and it’s a big if), is to draw a financial line in the sand. Here and no further. Cameron is spot on when he says any increase in budget for the EU is quite wrong, and he has threatened to veto any budget that threatens our rebate.

On the face of it, that seems quite hard-line, but already I think he’s fudged the issue. The rebate is all very well, but there’s a wider issue here and we should bear in mind that the rebate is linked to the subs, if the payments go up, so does the rebate. It is unthinkable at a time when the Greeks are on skid row and the Spanish and Portuguese are building up a good head of steam to join them, when food aid is being delivered to the southern countries, when taxes are being hiked up at an alarming rate (the collection thereof being a different story), when unemployment, especially amongst the young, is rampant, and people simply don’t have any money in their pockets, that the EU wants even more money. When you set that alongside the fact that yet again, for the eighteenth year running, the EU’s accounts haven’t been signed off in the face of overwhelming evidence that our money is being scammed, misappropriated and just plain stolen, to hand over more cash is tantamount to incitement to commit fraud.

If we are to be good Europeans, then we must resist any attempt to extort more cash from us. Being a good European does not necessarily equate to doing what the EU and EC tells you to. Be under no illusions, the wellbeing of the member states and citizens resident therein is way down the list of priorities of the EU, if they make an appearance at all. Enabling the continued waste of money and promotion of corruption is not good for us, not good for our government and is not good for the populations and governments of the other countries. The EU is an organisation, if it ceased to exist then life would go on, we must escape this ideology that the EU is Europe, it just isn’t. It is no more representative of Europe than the Portman Group is representative of people who like a drink.

This is now turning into an abusive relationship, and it is time to gather up our most vital and precious belongings and move out.

Cameron has painted himself into a corner. If he comes back having been seen to have failed, he’ll be pilloried by his party and he’ll be dead in the water. If he comes back with a freeze on the budget either via negotiation or veto, he’ll be pilloried by the EU and we may find our relationship worsens. But, that being said, I think it will suit many other political heads of European state for him to be the lightning conductor. If he thinks it will be his Thatcher moment, he’s kidding himself. I’m not at all confident that he’ll come back with a widely, domestically, acceptable negotiated settlement, and I’m only moderately confident that he will use the veto.

A negotiated settlement is, on the face of it, the best outcome. He can use the veto, but the EC can also use their machinery to circumnavigate it and get their way anyway. But if we use the veto we become a pain in the arse again. Yes, the EC will probably get their own way in the end, but yet again we’ve been the noisy house guest and it takes us one step further to being shown the door.

Alongside this is today’s poll in carried out by the Observer. Even they have begun to accept the fact that the majority of us in the UK want out, their results make interesting reading:

Cameron would do well to take heed of the opinion held by his party’s membership, and Miliband will no doubt look at the figures from his membership with interest as well. I am flat out amazed that over a third of LibDems want out. The tide, it would seem, has well and truly turned.

Succinctly put, the party leader who addresses this issue best will stand a good chance of taking the next election. So why are they being so coy about it?

I think it is fear. Not of the European powers that be coming and doing a number on them, like they did with the Greeks, I don’t see how they could do that without us going to them cap in hand. I think it is fear of what would come after. I am confident that we could survive and indeed thrive outside the EU, but I understand the importance of the phrase ‘better the devil you know’, and I wonder how many of those polled who said we should stay in said that not out of a firmly held belief in the virtue of the project, but out of fear of the unknown. Let us suppose we walk, and let us suppose that it goes wrong and we find ourselves cut adrift and destitute. As a politician, obsessed with the concept of legacy, would you want to be the person remembered for taking us out and ruining us? I think it is an unfounded, but entirely understandable fear. Politicians are by nature small c conservative.

From my point of view, and for once I seem to be in the majority, I want out. I don’t care how. For the politician, the how is as important as the in/out question itself.

So, what of a referendum? Surely if a referendum is called through sheer weight of public opinion and an out vote is returned, a politician if they’ve maintained a neutral position or campaigned for an in vote, cannot be held responsible? Maybe. But the referendum is not without its problems. Firstly, politicians hate referenda. As far as they are concerned, they are elected to tell us what to do. If we get used to the idea that we can gather en-masse and make a decision, then that undermines their position.

Secondly, if you as a politician campaign vociferously for the losing side, you’re damaged goods. Out of touch, out of step and out of luck.

Finally, if a referendum is called you can bet that the EU will pump millions of pounds/euros into the ‘in’ campaign, they will have an effective bottomless pit of cash, and they will lie. They will tell us that business will not be able to export, that you’ll not be able to go to France on holiday, or to buy fags and booze, that we would be pariahs, that Jimmy Savile will come back from the dead and take up position as your babysitter, they will say anything to ensure that our cash tap remains stuck open. And it would be a one shot deal if the result was ‘in’. We’d never get another opportunity. If the result was ‘out’ then you can bet the EU would try every trick to have the result dismissed or to drag us back to the ballot box until the desirable result was forthcoming.

So, we find ourselves in a position where the politicians won’t take us out because of fear of failure, and won’t give us our say, not because they are scared of the result, but because they are afraid of giving us our say conceptually. Yet the poll results are clear, we want out, and it would be foolish of any party leader to ignore such a strength of opinion.

So the only viable option is for us to get ourselves kicked out.

Today sees the deadline for the giving of votes to prisoners as directed by the European Court of Human Rights. There is a debate on this in the House today and it seems unlikely that the MPs are in the mood to be told that prisoners must be allowed to vote by a super-national court, a court, which I understand, that we must agree to abide by as part of our terms of membership with the EU.

What will happen if we turn around and say ‘no’? What will happen if prisoners sue, win, get awarded damages and we refuse to pay up? Would the EU put up with our ignoring and flagrant breaches of the rules just to keep hold of our money? Instead of waiting to see how far they can push us before we snap and walk, how far can we push them before they’ve had enough and sling us out?

We’ve got, what? 18 months until the next general election? How far can we push and provoke the EU in that 18 months? Will it be a case of that we’ll see if we can get ourselves thrown out of the party by pissing in the pot plants and vomiting on the sofa between now and then whilst the politicians play a game of chicken, trying to time the call of ‘referendum!’ to get the maximum support in the run up to the GE? Crucially would we believe any promise given what has happened before?

I’m wondering if we’ll be thrown out before any referendum has to be called.

Pity poor Armando.

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I feel sorry for poor old Armando Ianucci. Without doubt the current series of the Thick of It has been a triumph, it really has been one of the best things I’ve seen on TV in a long time. However I think he’s about to be surpassed as a scriptwriter. How can he compete with our very own Prime Minister?

It’s the only explanation for the total boneheaded stupidity we’ve seen coming from him and his immediate circle these past few days, with the exception of the explanation that our PM is totally boneheaded and stupid – a variable I am not about to dismiss.

Not only has there been the re-statement of his marriage to the EU in the most recent summit in Brussels (and there are so many summits nowadays that I’m starting to suspect that the whole continent is shaped like a giant bar of Toblerone) whilst he pretends to us that he might have had enough. . .

Actually. . .

Given their history, does it seem fair to draw a comparison with him telling the EU he loves them, and him telling us that he’s getting a bit sick of it, and a Tory MP telling his wife he loves her whilst he tells his bit on the side that he’s thinking of leaving the missus? That would make the British public the bit on the side, seems quite accurate to me.

Anyhow, not only that, but there’s been the whole Gideon on a choo-choo episode, swiftly followed by the ‘resignation’ of Mitchell for being a disrespectful potty mouth to the police, although he didn’t swear (as he claimed in PMQ’s), but he did (as he claimed to the Police Fed). Is this a Tory MP coming out with the equivalent of no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah? Had it been some lad clad in a kappa tracksuit called Jayden, or something, being a disrespectful potty mouth to the police, then a custodial sentence would have been called for by Dave and his party.

There was also the episode whereby the PM, it would seem, made up energy policy on the hoof and in the heat of battle. Energy suppliers must offer customers the lowest tariff? Really? And how long has the Conservative party been in the business of telling private business what they may offer? If you really want to have a pop at the utilities, ask them how their repeated price hikes are consistent with their record profits, ask them how it is possible for the rise in wholesale gas prices to be reflected immediately yet when the wholesale price drops it is not reflected at all. Ask them how it is they get away with acting in a fashion which is little better than a cartel. But first you’d better ask your MPs how many of them have, or have designs on, a non-exec post. Don’t want to do anything to upset your old mates, do you?

No, not content with overseeing the absolute disaster of a week, I see in the Telegraph today that he’s had an even more stupid idea.

Owners of private prisons who fail to stop prisoners re-offending will be fined, under new plans to be announced by David Cameron.

*golf clap*

Really?

So, let me get this right, some scrote gets nicked, prosecuted and convicted. He is then sent to prison. Now, unless I missed a memo, the prisons themselves don’t get a choice over which villain they get, do they? There isn’t an 11+ for crims, is there? I can only imagine the uproar if private prisons came with a selective policy.

So, let us assume that is John McScrote’s fifth spell at Her Maj’s. How the hell are they supposed to stop re-offending? The public sector prisons haven’t managed it, so how are the private sector ones supposed to?

You really want to fine a prison because one of the people you sent there has been a bit naughty for the umpteenth time? It’s your government that’s only making people serve half their sentence. It’s your government that has made an open prison down here more like a bloody pop-in centre, where spending the night seems to be somehow optional (Just Google Blantyre House, I’ve stayed in Pontin’s camps with a more hardline chalet policy). And you want to fine prisons because someone they were told to put up for a few weeks has been naughty again?

Why stop there? Why not fine the Acme jemmy and swag bag company for burglary facilitation?

Under the slogan ‘Tough But Intelligent’, the Prime Minister will signal a tougher approach to law and order by declaring “retribution is not a dirty word”.

Tough. But. Intelligent.

Just reflect on that.

Tough. But. Intelligent.

No, me neither.

It is real ‘quiet bat people’ stuff.

Poor old Armando, at this rate the Bafta for best satirical comedy will be picked up by Dave&Gideon Productions (Westminster) Ltd. He doesn’t stand a chance.

Fool me once. . .

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Hmmmmm, the more I see of this government, the less I like it. Just as it was a damning statistic that Cameron’s campaign was unable to defeat one of the worst Prime Ministers this country had ever seen, it is equally as damning that Miliband’s Labour aren’t streets ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls at the moment.

The Liberal Democrats are so screwed that now most opinion polls now put them in fourth behind UKIP who are looking at present as if they’d take between 8-12% of the vote if the call came tomorrow.

Quite rightly the Liberal Democrats should be very concerned about this, but of course that concern is tempered slightly by the fact that not many Lib Dem supporters (as opposed to those who vote Lib Dem because they aren’t the Conservatives and Labour) are likely to find a natural home in UKIP.

This is not speaking ill of UKIP, far from it. UKIP’s smaller government, pro-sovereignty stance is clearly at odds with the centralist, big state, Euro federalist Lib Dems.

Indeed, going off on a tangent for a moment, this I believe is the port of major blame for the current malaise and disconnect between the political class and the electorate at the moment. Look at the opprobrium that Thatcher attracts even to this day, why is that? Because she stood for something. Whether you agreed with her or not, that was undeniable. When she was sat in the big chair, you had a clear choice, you had her way or you had the programmes sponsored by Foot and Kinnock. There was clear daylight between the two camps. Today we have two camps fighting for the same ground. They try to, well, I hesitate to say appeal, so I’ll go for not entirely piss off, everybody. Of course in the pursuit of that impossible aim they end up achieving the exact opposite.

Yes, Thatcher is pilloried in some sections, but ask yourself the question, if she was so unpopular, how did she manage to win so many elections? Simple, she pleased more people as thoroughly as the minority she pissed off thoroughly. What we have today is a massive car park, totally empty, with two posh college boys scrapping over the one parking space that is slap bang in the centre of the lot.

Have no doubt, the Tories are not at all happy to see UKIP get all this support. They may chuckle and shake their heads, give some throwaway comment about the loons, but as they feel it necessary to comment on UKIP, they obviously feel concerned.

We then come to the line about UKIP ‘splitting’ the Tory vote. This is bollocks, and is indicative of the arrogance of the big three parties; this feeling of entitlement that people’s votes belong to them. Uh-huh, sorry chum, those votes belong to the people that cast them. If people stop putting their vote behind you, that’s your fault, not the fault of the party that garners that support instead.

All those politics degrees washing around the party, and the Tories don’t seem to realise the way it works – you set out what you stand for, people look at it and decide to vote for it or not. If they don’t support it, then you picked the wrong policies, didn’t you?

Cameron continues in this impossible dance of being all things to all people, and ends up with all people thinking he is a twat. He’ll go too far for one lot and not far enough for the other, the result will be that everyone ups sticks and goes elsewhere.

Given his recent history, I hope you’ll forgive my cynicism when he says ‘What it is increasingly becoming the time for is a new settlement between Britain and Europe, and I think that new settlement will require fresh consent.‘

I don’t believe you, David. You’ve pulled this stunt before, haven’t you? The cast iron guarantee, the ‘veto’ that never was. Yeah, you really stuck it to the man by standing up and doing. . . bugger all.

You really expect me to believe this now? You really think I’m going to sit back and say ‘well done Dave, he’s going to do the decent thing’? No. Not this time mate. Even given your tin plated guarantee I didn’t vote for your mob last time, and it ain’t going to work now. Oh, sure I stood in the polling booth and hesitated for a moment, but I reckoned you didn’t mean it and put my little x next to UKIP. I was right.

For a moment I bought the veto thing and you went up in my estimation. That didn’t last long, let me tell you. So, you fooled me once, well shame on you. You’re not going to fool me a second time.

When I was a teenager we had a name for girls who acted like you; prick-tease. That’s just what you are, you’re flirting away, throwing all this shit out in the hope that we think you’re going to finally put out. Naaaaaaah, come on Dave. How many times do you think you can get me hard and then swan off before I stop coming over every time you flutter your eyelids? Come the end of the party you’ll be the one sat in the corner of the kitchen crying because nobody wants to be around you.

Even if a referendum of some sort does materialise, your personal feelings on the matter are clear, and I have zero confidence that you’ll produce. Rather than campaigning on your opinion, mainly because it is at odds with the majority opinion of your membership, you’ll try to nobble the course before the horses start running. You’ll never give us what we want, you might give us the choice between the status quo and more integration, but you’ll never give us the big one, and you’ll try to sell us your preferred option as some huge statesmanlike act. Like I said, prick-tease.

UKIP splitting your vote? Bollocks, you’re driving people into their arms. You see I have this feeling, I think the current UKIP bounce in the polls is down to many many people who voted Lib Dem stating an intent to not bother voting for anyone, coupled with a small number of disaffected Tory voters, but that number is growing, and it’s all down to you mate.

I don’t want you stop, by the way, I want you to carry on. In fact, go further, tell the world that there will never be an EU referendum as long as you’re Prime Minister, that should do it.

‘But, ooooooh, Wolfers,’ I hear some of you say, ‘that would mean Labour would win.’ Yes? And? Look, there’s no bloody difference between the two, I oppose the Conservatives as much as I do Labour. It doesn’t matter to me which glorious collection of incompetent arsewipes is in power, because I don’t want them there. I’m not about to settle for the least worst option, I want what I want, if I can’t have it then we might as well have Timmy the amputee badger in Number 10. In fact, he’d probably be the least worst option.