MPs’ expenses row still prominent in all newspapers

Paper review MP expense claims continue to dominate coverage

Oliver Cromwell’s Speech on the Dissolution of the Long
Parliament given to the House of Commons 20 April
1653

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this
place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled
by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all
good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau
sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for
a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst
you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my
horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for
bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of
the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred
place, and turn’d  the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral
principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the
whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances
redress’d, are yourselves gone!

So! Take away that shining bauble
there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

FURTHER REVELATIONS OF ‘WITHIN THE RULES’ GRAVY TRAIN

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8041232.stm

How can you possibly claim this amount of money for protection when we have a police service

Martin Bell, former independent MP

There, undoubtedly, is a lot more to be revealed to the public shock and already suffered detriment.

Anant

Cabinet expenses under scrutiny

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8039108.stm

This is as murky as it gets before the annihilation of the New Labour experiment that was based on pretence and powerful persuasive presentation. It has been politics without backbone, honesty and down right British sense of justice and decency. It has to go for the sake of Britain and its people. Below is a protest that I with all other Jury Team Candidates will be sending to the Chairman of the HM Revenue & Customs
 

Mike Clasper CBE

Chairman

HM Revenue and Customs

100 Parliament Street

London SW1A 2BQ

 

Dear Mr Clasper

 

In light of today’s press, does HM Revenue and Customs have any plans to look at MPs expenses? There
is obviously some doubt about whether many of the expenses incurred are wholly
necessary for the execution of MP’s duties. Additionally, it is not clear
whether the expenses allowances granted to MPs was used exclusively for
the purposes intended.

 

As an independent candidate standing on the Jury
Team platform in the forthcoming European Elections,  I note that adoption of
the Jury Team principles would prevent this from happening in the
future. 

 

I look forward to your response.

 

Yours sincerely

 Anant M Vyas

Ministers defend expenses claims

Ministers say their

Q&A: Expenses revelations

GORDON BROWN’S PROMISE “NO BOOM & BUST” “NO TAX RISES UNDER NEW LABOUR”

He and Blair certainly had chutzpah. All presentation – no representation – no truth – no authenticity – no dependability – no credibility. All sound and fury but cannot beat the Jury. Every citizen in this Country now has, un-expected and unacceptable Government foisted ‘debenchers’ [promissory notes or IOUs] of about £12,500.00 thanks their incompetence in managing our economy as if we did not know this in May 1997?

But we were seduced by sound bites and presentations that now sound only too hollow, false and a façade.

Caveat emptor – buyers beware or electors beware must be the the current buzz word. This is an unimaginable
hole not black but white and that too in White Hall. Get it clear. You have seen the cow boys….study and
decide where your valuable vote must go, this time, of political, social and undoubtedly economic change?

Chancellor Alistair Darling says borrowing will reach £175bn, as he
forecasts the UK economy will contract 3.5% in 2009/10

 

For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

The world economy will shrink in 2009 – the first global recession since
World War II, the IMF says.

 

For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

I leave you to decide by insight, intuition, information or intellect given that the New Labour Flash Gordon
Mantra was not to borrow more than 40% of GDP but now the very New Laboured Labour are borrowing 79%
of the GDP. You decide what impact that has on your economic well-being let alone social and environmental well-being.

Anant

The Rising Tide of pervasive & pernicious Incompetence?

The Rising Tide of pervasive
& pernicious Incompetence?

http://www.worldbusinesslive.com/newsalerts/article/597575/Leadership/the-rising-tide-incompetence/    

 

Anant

 

 

From: Lucy Parsons

Date: 05/03/2009
12:01:02

To: Lucy Parsons

Subject: Reform Bulletin –
‘Fit for purpose’ report launched today

  

Reform Bulletin

Thursday
5 March 2009

Fit for purpose

 

Reform today publishes
its new
report Fit
for purpose. The report suggests that Britain’s Civil Service is failing to operate
effectively and calls for greater democratic accountability in Whitehall at the senior
level.  Liam Byrne MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office, spoke at
the launch event yesterday, hosted by KPMG.  The report is available at www.reform.co.uk.

The
report argues that performance failure in government is bad enough in good times
but in a recession it is disastrous. Ministers pull the levers but nothing
happens.  This week the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has admitted
that the £10 billion business lending support scheme, due to launch on Monday,
is weeks behind schedule and does not even have a start date. 

The
Civil Service’s own Capability Reviews have found “significant weaknesses” in
each of the departments reviewed.  HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs, the
critical departments for dealing with the economic crisis, are particularly poor
performers.  90 per cent of HMRC’s review and 60 per cent of the Treasury’s
found “significant weaknesses” or worse.

The much-mythologised “independence” of British civil
servants has become an excuse for zero accountability.  The
governments of other countries such as Australia, France and Canada have
abandoned such notions long ago and ensure their executives are held to
account.  In Australia, permanent secretaries are
appointed by the Prime Minister on consultation with the relevant departmental
Minister.  In New
Zealand, permanent secretaries are employed by
the state under a contractual system to deliver according to manifesto
commitments.

In Britain, a lack of accountability
permeates every rank of the service. Officials who keep their head down are able
to “coast” the senior ranks while fresh thinking is often rewarded with being
sidelined or lost in cost-cutting voluntary redundancy strategies.
Only 19 per cent of senior civil servants believe that poor
performance is dealt with effectively in their
departments.

Successful Civil
Service reform means:

·        
Ending the doctrine
of Ministerial responsibility.  The idea that Ministers are responsible for
every action of their department shields officials from taking personal
responsibility for their actions.  Ministers should be responsible solely for
the strategic direction of policy and its
communications.

·        
Implementing
democratic accountability for civil servants.  The
UK has one of the most unaccountable
Civil Service systems in the world.  Democratically elected
politicians should have the power to appoint senior civil servants, with greater
scrutiny of appointments, on the Australian model.

·        
Abolishing grades and
recruiting openly.  Because the current recruitment system is centralised and
based on fixed “grades” for different jobs, it is a barrier to the best people
being recruited to do the jobs that are needed.  Discrimination of “internal”
over “external” candidates should be abolished and line managers should lead
recruitment of their teams.

·        
Embracing localism. 
Local government can be more clearly accountable for performance in many areas
of policy.

Debate

·        
Reform held a launch event
for the paper yesterday at KPMG with speakers including Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP,
Minister for the Cabinet, Alan Downey, KPMG’s UK Head of Public Sector, and
Rupert Darwall, Consultant Director of Reform and former Special Adviser to the
Treasury.

·        
Liam Byrne welcomed
the report as a contribution to the debate on Civil Service reform.  He called
for “sharper” accountability and looked forward to a time when internal
appointments in the Civil Service were the exception rather than the rule.  He
referred to his announcement on 4 February, in which he asked Sir David Omand,
Lord Victor Adebowale and Professor Ken Starkey to report on closing the gap
between Whitehall and front line delivery, and asked Sir Michael Bichard and Sir
Gus O’Donnell to report on “how rethinking the performance management and
accountability of civil servants can better promote value for
money”.

·        
Welcoming the report,
David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, said:

“The issue of Civil
Service reform is a critical one and I very much welcome the report.  I am
pleased that Reform is engaging all three main parties and addressing this issue
head-on.  Tony Blair once said that what is important is ‘Delivery’, ‘delivery,
‘delivery’.  I hope that, working across party lines, we can now take this
particular bull by the horns and challenge the status
quo.”

Both the
First Division Association (the trade union for senior civil servants) and
The Daily Telegraph have
responded arguing against democratic accountability for senior civil
servants:

“The idea that the UK should move
towards a system of democratic accountability for senior civil servants would
not lead to better government. The political impartiality of the civil service
lies at the heart of objective policy advice, which is necessary for effective
decision-making” (FDA news release, 5 March 2009). [Political middle-of-the-road impartiality of the Whitehall
Mandarins is unique and essential in my view in UK Civil Service keeping Govt of
any Political persuasion in check.
Anant]

“There
are many problems with the Civil Service, but we are by no means convinced that
further politicisation is the answer. If anything, it is the problem. Surely the
preferred solution is to reduce the size of the State, and thereby limit the
potential for mistakes and enhance opportunities for considered policy
development? Big government seeks to justify its existence by interfering where
it is neither needed nor wanted. The Civil Service would be more efficient and
less prone to waste, incompetence and errors if politicians stopped trying to
micro-manage the whole of society” (editorial, The Daily Telegraph, 5 March
2009).

At the
launch event, the following points were made in reaction to these
arguments:

·        
The
overriding issue is competence.  The current structure does not provide
“effective decision-making”.  Poor quality officials are
protected.

·        
Civil Service reform
is a precondition to “reducing the size of the State” because the current
structure does not embed value for money.

The
reaction of the First Division Association also revealed its antipathy to
external appointments, contrary to the view of Liam
Byrne:

"The
Reform report also suggests that there should be a greater move toward ‘open and
flexible recruitment’.  There is evidence that salaries for external recruits to
the Senior Civil Service are 30 per cent higher than for those appointed from
within the Civil Service.  And there is little evidence that the taxpayer is
getting value for this investment.  Indeed, many of the quarter of Senior Civil
Servants who are currently recruited externally do not succeed in their roles"
(FDA news release, 5 March 2009).

Media
coverage

·        
The report was
covered by BBC News
Online, The Daily Telegraph (report
and editorial),
the Daily
Mail, Financial
Times and Scotsman.

·        
Andrew Haldenby,
Reform’s Director, has written an article for Conservativehome: “None
of this implies that all officials are incompetent or obstructive.  During this
research we have spoken to excellent officials who are the model of what civil
servants should be: acutely conscious of costs to the taxpayer and keen to be
personally accountable for performance.  But they do this despite the structure
of the civil service, not because of it.”

·        
Tom Watson, a BBC
political correspondent, described the report on the Today programme: “The Reform think tank
doesn’t believe we have a ‘Rolls Royce’ Civil Service anymore, in fact, it is
more akin to an old banger, slow and difficult to steer.  So today’s report,
drawing on un-attributable interviews with civil servants themselves, calls for
radical reforms.  These would include advertising of Civil Service posts to the
outside world, allowing Ministers to appoint senior civil servants themselves.
 The long established doctrine of Ministerial responsibility would be ditched,
with civil servants held directly accountable for their actions.  The think tank
says that unless Civil Service performance improves plans to get
Britain out of recession may be
implemented too slowly.”

For more
information contact Lucy Parsons on lucy.parsons@reform.co.uk or 020
7799 6699.

 

LUCY PARSONS
Senior
Economics Researcher
45 Great
Peter Street
London
SW1P 3LT

Tel 020 7799
6699
Fax 020 7233 4446
Mobile 07932 656847
www.reform.co.uk

Reform is an
independent, non-party think tank whose mission is to set out a better way to
deliver public services and economic prosperity.

 

Mosques ‘fail to tackle radicals’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7907037.stm

The UK’s mosques are out of touch with British Muslims and failing to root out extremism, a think tank has claimed. Quilliam Foundation director, Maajid Nawaz, said the findings showed
mosques lacked the "resilience to challenge Islamist extremists".

JUST INJUSTICE M’LUD

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7883750.stm

The chief justice in Delhi says the Indian capital’s High Court
could take up to 466 years to clear its massive backlog of cases.

Some justice, I say.

Davos finds no answers to crisis

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/davos/7863684.stm

But then did any one expect a solution from the people who were there simply to protect self interest?

See

PURVEYORS + PERPETRATORS OF PERPETUAL PERNICIOUS POVERTY 12:52

http://www.brasschecktv.com:80/page/493.html



Some days ago I pondered whether there was such a thing as unconditional altruism.



Looking at this, one would wonder whether there even or ever can be
such a thing as ‘conditional altruism’ as compared to outright
insidious evil?



Anant

HYPOCRISY & DOUBLE STANDARDS

The UK government is failing to get its position over Gaza across to British Muslims, a cabinet minister has said.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears told the BBC the UK faced a
"worrying time" amid fears that the war was radicalising some young
people.

She said the UK had supported the UN call for a ceasefire and had urged Israel to let more aid into Gaza.

"But I think that [position] isn’t necessarily getting across in the way that I’d like to see," she continued.

Ms Blears said ministers needed to make sure that people "don’t feel that there’s hypocrisy and double standards".

Note: When Tony Blair was the PM, the same scenario happened when he kept a blind eye on indiscriminate carpet bombing of innocent Lebanese children, many of whom were later maimed and killed by coming across unexploded carpet bombs in their play areas.

Tony is now acting as a Middle East Peace Envoy. What a chutzpah. If that does not wreak of hypocrisy and double standards – what does?

See my previous entry ‘Poacher turned Gamekeeper’ in June 2007*

‘Super-nannies’ to patronise parents – What ever next??

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6167472.stm

 

Comment: First the New Labour creates dysfunctional families by increasing inequalities through incompetent family credit tax system (where fraudsters prospered and those needy were further penalised), welfare benefit system changes, housing benefit changes, heath care changes, school administration changes , further education excess fees, excluding poor pupils from mainstream higher education, meddling with sciences and maths until it is too late to recover from Global market incompetency bestowed upon the main population of the nation and incessantly interfering in their lives and furthermore by removing parental choice, initiative and responsibilities.

 

Now having created a generation of dysfunctional families unable to get out of foisted poverty trap and social immobility and having realised the true the cost of supporting such families with majority anti-social children thriving on ASBOs as street credibility as opposed to academic qualifications – this not so New labour further labours to teach the dysfunctional "good-for-nothing" parents (who have never worked and now are unemployable along with their children) how to instill the love of learning and sense of responsibility and good citizenship into the ‘apples of their eyes’.

 

This Govt has introduced a plethora of services vying for customers all duplicating each other’s tasks to such an extent that none seem to take ownership of the problem when the s**t hits the fan – so to speak – and deal with it or have the ability to see things through for the disadvantaged who, unfortunately, have remained so under the ten years tenure of the New Labour.

 

In order to address and eradicate thus New-Labour-inflicted settled disadvantage in the indigenous families – The Govt may even consider sterilising those dysfunctional parents and their children preventing further dysfunctional citizens. That might be one of the ways they could claim dealing with the causes of crime once in their decade of disadvantage. I am not going to talk about how much it is going to cost each citizen for the incompetent project management of staging the Olympics? There is further disadvantage looming to be inflicted upon the least suspecting public.