Tory MP In Reality Show Furore

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 062012
 

Today came the news that Nadine Dorries (a Tory MP) is being suspended as a Tory (not an MP) for appearing on the reality TV show called “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here”.

Now I’m hardly the most ardent Tory supporter in the country – in fact I can’t stand them, and a quick look indicates that I’m even less likely to like Nadine’s favourite hobby horses. But I believe all this fuss is a little over the top, and perhaps there is a certain amount of snobbishness getting involved here. To a certain extent this is understandable, as the reality show in question is hardly in the calibre of “Question Time” or some other serious current affairs programme.

And there is the concern of who will do her job, when she’s off in Australia getting filmed doing ridiculous stuff on camera.

But we do not know that Nadine hasn’t already or plans to make suitable arrangements to ensure that any urgent demands by her constituents are met in some way or another. And what about all the other part-time MPs? Is Nadine the only MP who has ever taken time off from her duties to do something else? Let’s not have double standards here.

And similarly, there have been plenty of MPs on TV shows of one kind or another. Is it just the type of show that is of concern here? Are other politicians concerned that an MP appearing on this show will bring politicians into disrepute?

If so, I have news for those other politicians – politicians have such a poor reputation that this appearance on a reality show is likely to improve their reputation. And I’m not a fan of the show in question.

Limiting Family Size For Those On Benefits

 Politics  No Responses »
Nov 042012
 

Those sneaky Tories have announced plans to limit child related benefits so that families with large numbers of children would only get benefits for the first two. With this, they have implied that “out there” is a large population of benefit scroungers who make tons of cash by simply breeding like rabbits.

And of course when you put it that way, it sounds like a great idea. Why should those in work pay for the comfort of those too lazy to do anything other than breed like rabbits?

Except those benefits are for the children involved. It is always worth remembering that any benefit cuts in this area will have a negative effect on the children involved. Or do the Tories plan to take into care any “surplus” children by force?

And even if there were a large number of benefit scroungers benefiting from the “generous” child related benefits, they are almost certainly far outnumbered by those who are not scroungers, but need benefits for genuine reasons.

What about the carpenter who whilst he earns a reasonable wage to support himself, his wife, and a single child, suddenly finds himself the father of sextuplets ?

What about the house husband whose wife previously earned big money as a hot-shot barrister, had 6 children over a number of years and who suddenly finds himself along with those six children after his wife is killed in a road accident ?

Or the single mother who works hard at a cleaning job, but finds it hard looking after her three children that her feckless husband left her with ?

The Tories have come up with a scheme to punish the poor, and yet have sold it in such a way as to get those poor to support it. What you could call a masterpiece of Machiavellian politics.

 

Taxing The Granny Annex?

 Politics  No Responses »
Jun 022012
 

Apparently the government has announced plans to stop charging council tax for those who live in so-called “granny annexes”. The opposition has quite rightly pointed out that this is an interesting position to take as there has long been a council tax exemption for those living in granny annexes who are over 65, or who are impaired in various other ways.

For those not familiar with granny annexes – and this may come as a surprise to many Tories, but not everyone is familiar with the concept – if you have a large enough house, it is possible to set aside part of it as a separate dwelling. Usually to give some member of the family some level of independent living – traditionally used for a live-in grandparent. Thus the term “granny annex”.

It may come as a bit of a surprise to many Tories, but most ordinary hard-working families live in homes where space is at a premium. Indeed having the spare space to create an annex could be a definition of “wealthy”. Or in other words, Tories have come up with a nifty way of giving a tax cut to the wealthy whilst trying (and failing) to sound like they are helping ordinary people.

Or to put it another way, why are we giving council tax exceptions to grannies and disabled people? If someone over the age of 65 lives in their own flat they have to pay council tax, but if they live in an annex in their family’s home, they don’t. I’m not against the idea that those who are somewhat constrained in their income should get some sort of discount on their council tax, but getting a discount because you have rich relatives?

Is The Aidan Burley Sacking Going Too Far ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Dec 182011
 

Now as you may have guessed by now, I’m hardly the Tories biggest fan; on hearing the news this morning of a Tory getting caught doing something embarrassing, I couldn’t help but give a nasty smirk. It is always a bright start to the day when the Tory party is caught out demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are the party of the über-rich which only gives lip-service to the middle-classes and has nothing but contempt for the working-class.

And running around dressed up as a member of the Nazi party is no joke – which is why certain foolish young people do it of course. Running around offending the sensibilities of their parent’s and grandparent’s generations is one of the all but irresistible pleasures of youth. These things go too far sometimes – it’s all very well running through the centre of a town naked, but dressing up as a member of the Nazi party is a step too far.

But Aidan was merely at a party where the offensive actions took place – he didn’t himself dress up as a Nazi, and it is not claimed that he did anything offensive himself. If you lined up all of the people who have ever been at a party where someone has done something incredibly foolish and offensive, then not many of us would not be lined up – and one suspects that most MPs would be in the queue trying to look inconspicuous.

 

Greedy Pigs In The Boardroom

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 292011
 

Yesterday we learned that UK company directors managed to screw the public, the shareholders, and the people working in the companies they direct by getting awarded pay rises amounting to 50%. Chief executives (who do a little bit more work) managed to grow their pay by 43%.

Of course the unions were up in arms, but this is bad enough that even the Tories are a little uncomfortable with the repugnant greed, and David Cameron has called for “transparency” in the boardroom. Whatever that means – after all we know that these guys are greedy pigs, what do they need to be more transparent about?

The likelihood of any company board paying the least bit of attention to a polite request to act with restraint is about the same as the chance of a snowball in hell lasting more than a minute. After all these people are quite happy to be known as greedy pigs … they have spent years and sometimes decades working themselves into a position where they can make themselves repeatedly sick eating from the trough of the economy.

The CBI on the other hand has trotted out the tired old excuse of having to pay salaries sufficient to attract the best in the world.

Which is true to a certain extent (although I doubt that every company director – many of whom do not work full time – deserves quite as much as they get), but is not quite the whole story.

Every year it seems that the top-level executives see at least double-digit income growth, whilst people who actually do real work see far less than that. Over time it leads to an increasing gap between the income of the richest and the rest of us. This is normally phrased as a gap between rich and poor, but that is just as wrong as ridiculously high salaries. It isn’t a gap between rich and poor, but a gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us.

Conventionally we accept these sort of things because superior company directors are supposed to ensure that companies become healthier and more profitable, causing the economy as a whole to become healthier with more resources to spread around. In other words the rich get richer, and so do the rest of us. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Sometimes we forget what an economy is for. It isn’t to make the rich richer, but to ensure that all the population get a share of the wealth so they have enough to eat, a place to live in, etc. If there are people who do not have enough to eat, have trouble affording energy bills to heat their homes, have inadequate homes, or lots of other “issues”, then the economy isn’t working properly.

I do not know of an easy fix for this, but we do need to start looking into fixing things so that we all benefit from the wealth created by the economy. And in such a way that the wealth isn’t frittered away. It doesn’t mean total equality – those who contribute more should get more out of the system, but we have a broken system at the moment that doesn’t actually reward those who contribute more properly – it only rewards the wealth creators.

Now genuine wealth creators do deserve to be rewarded more than those who do not contribute so much. But they should not be rewarded excessively when everyone else is suffering (to a greater or lesser extent).

One thing that might help is a way of taxing bonuses and golden parachutes in a way that takes away money from those who just manage to get good contracts, but leaves more money with those who really increase wealth. If for example, we start with a base rate of 50% tax on all bonuses and golden parachutes greater than the average yearly salary. That percentage goes up to penalise those who have not increased profits and have lost jobs, over the last 10 years, and the percentage goes down to those who have created jobs and increased profits over the last 10 years.

Oh! And one last thing. Not all rich people are greedy pigs. On a day when Jimmy Saville has died, it is well to remember that he gave away 9/10ths of his pretty large income.

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