To quote The Guardian,

“Dr Williams is right when he argues that other religions - and not just the established Anglican faith - are allowed to police their own laws. Orthodox Jews have a beth din (a rabbinical court); there is evidence of informal arrangements in other faith communities. But what the archbishop really wants is a tolerance for the role of religion in public affairs that succeeds only in highlighting why it would be better entirely excluded.”

I'll give a religious court (of whichever persuasion) a miss, if you don't mind

“In a corporation that is obsessed with promoting diversity, inclusivity and accessibility - code words for non-white, non-shires and non-conservative views - Radio 4 is the last redoubt for millions of listeners who select their broadcaster on quality of output, rather than its role in social engineering.”

Jeff Randall  The Daily Telegraph

“For years we have been cautioned against stigmatising people for a whole array of unfortunate situations - teenage single mothers, divorcees, fat people. But, of course, stigma is the means by which society expresses its disapproval of people who choose lifestyles which, one way or another, cost the rest of society money. Remove the stigma and people think such behaviour is perfectly fine. As a result we have become a nation of obese, sexually incontinent lunatics.”

Rod Liddle - The Sunday Times

Says James Swede, of solicitors' firm Darlingtons in a letter to the Law Society's Gazette,

“The Labour Party can accept funds without identifying the true source.  We, the legal profession, find ourselves bound by anti-money laundering regulation, which means that if we were guilty of the same offence we could face a lengthy prison sentence....”

It is right that our professions are bound by the very highest standards of integrity and that the penalties for failing to do so are harsh, but Labour should ponder why it believes that similarly rigorous standards (and penalties for breach of those standards) should not apply to those who purport to govern us.

“For almost two decades we’ve allowed the message of political Islam to breed unchallenged within the British Muslim community, preaching separation and confrontation. The blame for that must rest solely with Muslims…”

Shiraz Maher - The Sunday Times

“The rest of the country may find it hard to believe that the present Prime Minister has nothing to do with the decade commanded by his predecessor, but I think Mr Brown really has convinced himself that he is not implicated. In this he is, I think, weirdly, sincere.  Somewhere in this strange mind has arisen an idea so palpably absurd when articulated that he has never articulated it, maybe even to himself: but it drives the way he feels about the past. It is the idea that he was somehow not there, or not completely there, from 1997 to 2007: just a sort of hostage, mute witness to a decade he neither willed nor bears responsibility for. To such an imagination, the stink of rotten fish left by his predecessor beneath the sofa cushions at Downing Street can be greeted almost triumphantly, vindicating rather than indicting him.”

Matthew Parris – The Times

“But what is true is that this [donor] scandal serves Labour right. It is mired in the consequence of the false morality from which it profited so much in the 1990s.”

Charles Moore - The Daily Telegraph

Since earlier this year, the Government's quango, the Legal Services Commission, has been locked in a duel with The Law Society concerning the new contract it was seeking to impose upon solicitors who were still prepared to provide legal aid services to the public.  In essence, this new contract (the "unified contract") was a very flexible affair, in that the Legal Services Commission retained to itself a right to vary material terms of the contract during its currency.  Most reasonable minded people would query the fairness of such a one-sided bargain, but not the Government.  The dispute was heard by the Court of Appeal in mid October of this year.  The judgment of the Court was published this morning.

“The Court of Appeal has given judgment today in the appeals by both the Law Society and the Legal Services Commission against the earlier judgment on the LSC's Unified Contract and its terms relating to how the contract can be amended. We are, of course, giving the judgment careful consideration, but we welcome the clarification it provides. This now enables us to move forward with greater certainty”

says this morning’s Press Release from the Legal Services Commission.  The Law Society’s take on the judgement is slightly different (with my emphasis.)

“The Court of Appeal has this morning wholly upheld the Society's challenge to the LSC's unified contract, also rejecting the LSC's appeal. The commission has now lost the power unilaterally to amend the unified contract in the extreme way it proposed. The judgment, handed down by Lord Justice Lawrence Collins on behalf of the court, is a decision 100 per cent in favour of the Society, and the solicitors it represents. The LSC was refused permission to appeal to the House of Lords and ordered to pay Law Society’s costs.

 

Delivering their judgment, the court repeatedly emphasised that this case was extreme: 'The power to amend is better characterised as a power to rewrite the contract' [para 86 of the judgment]. The court comprised Lord Justice Wall, Lord Justice Lawrence Collins, and the Lord Chief Justice, (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers.)”

There can be no doubt that the Government will plough on with its ill conceived “reform” of Legal Aid, regardless.  It knows that it is right and it just doesn’t care.  It would be wiser for the Government to take stock and listen to positive, informed criticism of its proposals rather than dismissing outright any opposition as being merely “vested interests”.  Of course, it will do no such thing.

It is a guiding principle in English Law that “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”

R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256 at 259

Since 1997, the Government has honoured this general principle frequently only in the breach when arranging or overseeing an inquiry or review following some ministerial or departmental debacle, or alleged misconduct or lack of competence on the part of someone holding an appointed Office.  The investigation into the HM Revenue & Customs lost data fiasco is to be conducted by the Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a company that undertakes sizeable projects on behalf of the Government.  Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair survived a no confidence vote by the Metropolitan Police Authority, a body that “exists to make sure that London's police are accountable for the services they provide to people in the capital”.  As it happens, it is a body where Government appointees outnumber the elected members.

Such inquiries might well be conducted with the utmost integrity and vigour, nevertheless the public's perception is just as likely to be that there has been a “fix”.  Any positive outcome for the Government or its placeman convinces few but more significantly does nothing to clear the air or settle the issue.  It is a simple matter for the Government to avoid such misperceptions by appointing patently independent inquiries or regulatory bodies, but it can do this only if it is fearless of the truth being outed.

The Government lost no time in responding to criticism by no less than five former Chiefs of Defence Staff concerning its under-resourcing of our Armed Forces.

Defence Minister Derek Twigg is reported to have said that there had been “the longest period of growth in defence spending since the 1980s.” However, the charge as I understood it was that, to quote Admiral Lord Boyce,

“The money that defence was given for its budget is not sufficient to meet the level of activities that the armed forces are currently engaged in.”

The crucial problem for this discredited Labour Government is that when not funding one of its pet projects (when bucket loads of taxpayers’ money is made available) it always expects to receive first class services at cut-down prices.  That the Labour Government should adopt this attitude concerning our Armed Forces who are fighting two wars to which they were committed by the very same Government, as well as peace-keeping elsewhere, is an utter disgrace.

Words fail me completely.

Reports James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph today,

“Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, yesterday published plans to change the way people qualify for benefits on the grounds of being medically unable to work.  The Work Capability Assessment will be introduced in October 2008. It will assess what work new claimants are fit to do, replacing current tests that focus on what a claimant cannot do.  The Department of Work and Pensions said the new test would make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit in the future.  Around 40,000 people apply each year for IB, which can be worth as much as £78 per week, and around half are expected the fail the new test when it is introduced…but the [Department of Work and Pensions] also admitted that the new test will only apply to new claimants, and will not affect the 2.7 million people currently claiming incapacity benefit.”

Oh dear, yet another example of Government mispresentation and misinformation.  When challenged by Chris Grayling, the Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Mr Hain retorted that,

“the scale of the IB roll was a legacy of the last Conservative government [which] preferred to put people on incapacity benefit where they were off the unemployment total instead of trying to find them a job because there weren't any jobs then.”

Lest anyone overlooks the fact, the last Conservative Government expired almost eleven years ago. Thus if the “last Conservative Government preferred to put people on incapacity benefit…” then successive Labour administrations did nothing to reverse the situation but in fact added hundreds of thousands more people to that particular benefits bill.  Those of a cynical disposition might conclude that Labour was more than very happy to retain the status quo for the same reason imputed to the Conservatives.  The more awkward point for Labour to explain is why the number of such claimants increased significantly during their watch.

This Government has been caught out being less than frank or not saying what it really meant on too many occasions now.  Even past instances when its word was accepted, are being revisited and different conclusions drawn.  The public no longer accepts uncritically what it is told by Labour.  The public’s irritation at being fed with endless misinformation is turning gradually to anger.  Fortuitously for the Opposition, most senior Labour politicians don’t seem to be able to change habits of a political lifetime.

Bejesus.  Forget Identity Cards. These are the guys who want our DNA data to be stored on a national data base.

UK's families put on fraud alert

Data on 25m benefits claimants lost in post

Personal details of every child in UK lost by Revenue & Customs

“The job of the security services is to propose to government what they think will make Britain as safe as the grave. The job of politicians is to put such proposals to the test of proportionality, value for money and civil liberty. It is now moot whether Britain’s politicians are up to that job.”

Simon Jenkins

“Meanwhile, terrorists continue to rely not on the bang but on the fear of the bang. Terrorists desperately want politics and the media to notice them. By showing we are so rattled that we will give up our cherished liberties, we are giving those with murderous jihadi dreams a gift. By pandering to the toxic fantasies of suburban wannabe warriors, by dignifying their delusions of global struggle with horrified headlines and constitutional change, we are debasing what we stand for.”

Rachel North

Says Jeff Randall in today’s The Daily Telegraph,

“The Rock’s “rescue”, presented initially as a cocktail of commercially priced loans from the Bank and some warm words from the Treasury, is morphing seamlessly into open-ended state aid with diminishing prospects for recompense. The sum involved has surpassed five per cent of the Chancellor's annual budget - and the drain continues. In effect, [Alistair] Darling failed to distinguish between protecting depositors' funds (the right thing to do) and bailing out shareholders and staff (a big mistake).  [Gordon] Brown is trying desperately to steer clear of the crime scene, while maintaining the fiction that taxpayers' interests are protected. He told the Commons on Wednesday that official loans are secured against the Rock's assets.”

However, it would appear that by 2010 the Northern Rock might still owe the Bank of England £6 billion.

The Northern Rock was a Labour sympathetic Bank based in a Labour heartland.  The Labour Government has broadcast a powerful message to all those who enjoy its largess.  A potential loss to the taxpayer of £6 billion? – for Labour, cheap at twice the cost.

The answer to the West Lothian Question is, you’ve guessed it, regional assemblies for England.

According to Professor Robert Hazell, Professor of Government and the Constitution at University College, London, “English votes for English laws” at Westminster seemed logical and fair, but there could be "huge technical difficulties in identifying what counted as an English law".  According to the Professor, another solution would involve handing powers to elected regional assemblies, which though overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the North-East, “should not be written-off forever.”

The BBC reports that whilst Professor Hazell agrees that the “closest to a complete answer” would be a separate English Parliament, he notes that there are not any mainstream politicians in favour of such an idea and considers there is no significant public support for it.

I shall leave aside any argument about whether there are any really insurmountable difficulties in practice about the implementation of the Conservatives’ preferred option of “English votes for English laws”¹.  I am able to predict with absolute certainty that if there is any fudge of this issue, for instance by way of a continuance of the denial that there is any real democratic deficit as between England and those parts of the United Kingdom that enjoy devolved government (the view of the Labour Government) or the imposition of regional assemblies (the current preference of the Labour Government) there will arise an irresistible, overwhelming support for an English Parliament.

Scotland 'still has too many MPs'

_______________________________

1 I cannot see any great difficulties and would be pleased to hear of examples as to what they might be.

“[Sir Ian] Blair clings to office because he has the support of both Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and that walkin’, talkin’ “systemic failure” Ken Livingstone, the London mayor. And this is because he is the most politicised copper this country has ever seen; he owes his survival to his willingness to follow every politically correct obsession dreamt up by the Labour party: show him a “hate crime” and he’ll be there with his truncheon. Show him a burglary, however, and he’ll explain to you why it didn’t happen, or wasn't important, or is a vanishingly rare occurrence. He has also adopted new Labour’s technique of spewing out disinformation to the media.”

Rod Liddle

Sir Ian Blair receives the support of the Prime Minister

Sir Ian Blair is cleared

“We are a talkative and opinionated society and not always good at listening.  The discourse of politics, media and academe is essentially adversarial.  While this is undoubtedly important in a democracy, it can mean that people are not really receptive to an opposing viewpoint.  It is often apparent during a parliamentary debate or a panel discussion on television that while their opponents are speaking, participants are simply thinking up the next clever thing that they are going to say.”

Karen Armstrong, The Bible - The Biography 

“It appears that those who troop through the division lobbies, heaping law upon law or rubber-stamping Brussels initiatives further to control our national life and regulate individual behaviour, have little sense of how those same laws are enforced.”

Iain Martin

“Projecting himself as Father of the Nation, espousing a 'new' style of politics has been central to [Gordon] Brown's plan. He was not content to outpoll the Tories; he wanted to make them obsolete. That was extraordinary hubris.”

Leader, The Observer

Reports Martin Ivens in The Sunday Times,

“Brown’s men know they are on the back foot. “Gordon was always cautious about holding it [an election]. But if we went now we would win on authority,” said a cabinet minister. “But we want a positive, a bigger mandate.” As for Cameron’s triumph, he sneered: “Iain Duncan Smith was seven points ahead after his conference speech in 2003. That was a few weeks before the Tories got rid of him.”

It is always important to put matters into context, so when assessing how good or bad things might be, it is only right to look for recent historical precedents.  Thus the sneering Labour cabinet minister infers that David Cameron’s current popularity will prove as ephemeral as Iain Duncan Smith’s fast evaporating post Conservative Conference “seven-point bounce” in 2003.

You might recall that this was the Conservative Conference when Andrew Rawnsley of The Guardian described Mr Duncan Smith as the “dead man talking” and contemporary opinion polls included such questions as,

 “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote Conservative at the next election if Iain Duncan Smith were to be replaced as leader by...?”

According to the opinion polls of the time, up to 52% of the people questioned were dissatisfied with Mr Duncan Smith's performance as Leader of the Official Opposition.  The ICM opinion poll published in The Guardian pre-conference in September 2003 indicated that Labour led the Conservatives by 35% to 30% and the ICM poll for following month, post conference, showed Labour’s lead to have remained steady - support for the two main parties being 38% to 33% respectively.

Mr Duncan Smith was ousted as the leader of the Conservative party because he did not seem to be making any significant, positive impact upon the electorate.  At no time did he ever enjoy a seven point poll lead over Labour, save perhaps amongst the members of Chingford and Woodford Green Conservative Association.

Big bang – the Tory tax bomb blowing Brown apart

According to The Times today

“…Labour ministers…say that delaying the election would give Mr Brown longer to attack Tory economic plans, which they say have been hugely undermined by the pledge to eliminate inheritance tax for all but millionaires and pay for it with a £25,000 annual charge on “nondomicile” residents.”

However yesterday, reported Gabriel Rozenberg, Economics Reporter for The Times,

“The attempts of Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to discredit the Conservatives’ tax plans were sharply undermined yesterday by his own top civil servant. Nicholas Macpherson, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, admitted that his department’s costing of the Conservatives’ plans for a levy on nondomiciled taxpayers were based on incomplete data. Mr Darling had cited analysis by the Treasury which allegedly proved that the Conservatives could not raise £3.5 billion with their plans. He said the tax would only raise £650 million. But the detailed analysis, released yesterday by the the Treasury, revealed that this was based purely on a mathematical assumption, as the Government had no information on how much Britain’s nondomiciled taxpayers earn overseas, a figure crucial to the calculations. In a letter to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, Mr Macpherson said that the assumptions used had been “clearly flagged” to his boss. Mr Osborne has called on Mr Darling to apologise.”

In the meantime, Jeff Randall of The Daily Telegraph explains why Labour’s carping on such points doesn’t add up to a convincing argument in any case.

Labour cannot tell the whoppers of old any more and get away with it.   Any spinful pronouncements and funny figures are likely to rebound with a vengeance, as in justice they should.

George Osborne and a sleight of hand by the BBC

...although The Sun would say that, wouldn't it?  I couldn't possibly say, one way or another.

It is understandable that the metropolitan elite which now dominates the upper echelons of Government and the BBC would see little purpose being served by engaging in any form of real, meaningful dialogue with the likes of us, the hoi polloi, given our well documented aversion to the use of deodorant and limited, Neanderthal grasp of the important issues.

Says The Sun,

“The BBC has virtually ignored the debate raging about the new [European] Treaty — despite uproar in all parties and on both sides of the argument.  The same self-censorship is applied to immigration — another enormous issue not to be discussed in front of the licence-payers. It is not just because many of its editors and producers are lefties — though many are. It is an arrogant, lazy assumption that they know best — and ignorant audiences should not be disturbed by matters beyond their ken.”

Indeed.  It is the sheer condescension, which is so offensive.

George Osborne and a sleight of hand by the BBC

The BBC: Soft Left, anti-American (and very pro-European Union)

The BBC and its “culture of bias”

Nobody mention the "Labour" word

Biased Beeb

In today’s Daily Telegraph Andrew Porter, the newspaper’s Political Editor, commenting upon the Conservative post-conference opinion poll surge and in particular the ICM poll in The Guardian which shows support for Labour and the Conservatives as even, says,

 “In addition, a Guardian poll by ICM - which tends to favour the Tories - is thought to have the Conservatives almost neck and neck with Labour.”

As my post here shows, manifestly this is not the case. Where ICM opinion polls can be compared with election results since 2005, Conservative support is almost always underestimated in by a small amount and Labour overestimated by a larger margin. It might be the case that ICM consistently underestimates Conservative support less than the other opinion polls but this still does not add up to its polls “favouring” the Conservatives, merely that ICM is the most accurate amongst an inaccurate bunch.

Long gone are the days in the 1980’s when Gallup used to favour the Conservatives, in the sense that its opinion polls compared very well with actual election results, time after time.

Tories renew election call after poll

BBC bias is often so subtle (or is that subliminal?) that if you blink, you miss it.

That section of the printed media which is not inherently hostile to the Conservatives was to a man upbeat about Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne’s policy announcements yesterday.  It is interesting to note however, that in reporting on the BBC’s Politics webpage (the version updated at 08.40 BST on 2^nd October 2007) the links from “Other news sites” referred to less positive, “sub” reports and not the main press articles.  To take one example (and The Daily Telegraph is yet another) today's The Daily Mail contains pages of positive comment, but what did the BBC link to? Yes, you have guessed it, a small article by Benedict Brogan and James Chapman in a corner of page six of the newspaper, that largely regurgitates the hastily and as it will turn out, foolishly released HM Treasury spin  seeking to undermine the Conservative proposals.

The BBC fails to appreciate that there comes a time when listeners and viewers tire of having to constantly rebalance slanted reporting and stop listening or viewing altogether.

Osbourne relights the Tory Flame

Tories unleash attack dogs

From other news sites - The Daily Mail

Do the shadow chancellor's figures add up?

Julie Bindel reports in The Sunday Times today of the disinterest shown by the local Police and political authorities concerning the pimping of underage white girls by black and Asian gangs.  Apparently, cracking down upon such blatant criminality is seen as “contentious”, involving as it does, minority groups.  Says Aravinda Kosaraju, a researcher for the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop),

“What we are dealing with is gross criminality that should be confronted whatever the race of the perpetrator.”

According to Julie Bindel,

“A number of families affected by Pakistani pimping gangs have said that Police inaction and the refusal of white liberals to acknowledge the problem has resulted in more girls being at risk than ever before” (My emphasis.)

Says Ms Kosaraju,

“We are battling to get recognition that what we are dealing with is organised crime against children.”

There is a word for treating one group (in this instance white girls) differently from another purely on racial grounds.  Racism.

Most seasoned commentators believe that Gordon Brown had intended to review whether to call a General Election no earlier than the spring of 2008.  It is most probable that he had always planned to tease the Conservatives with the faintest hint of an even earlier poll just to wrong foot them and probe their weaknesses.

In recent weeks, the teasing has gone too far with everyone outside the political world anticipating an early, autumn election.  Mr Brown has overplayed his hand.  If he now resorts to his original, carefully considered and planned timetable, he will look indecisive, but if he “goes for it”, he will find that his lead in the opinion polls is soft and he might well receive a bloody nose, securing a small majority vulnerable to a just a handful of by-election losses.

Far too much emphasis and reliance has been placed upon mere opinion polls  and too little upon real election results. Professor Colin Rallings, the Director of Plymouth University’s Elections Centre, has already drawn attention to the fact that in thirty-five council by-elections since Gordon Brown’s succession to the premiership, the Conservatives have recorded a nine percentage point lead over Labour.

One way or another, Gordon Brown is going to rue the day he allowed the “will-he-won’t-he-game” slip out of his control.

Quit stalling and call election, says David Cameron

It suits this Government to boast that our citizenry has easy access to free or low cost legal advice.  Unfortunately, it does not want to pay for it.  However, rather than adopting the honest course of explaining that because of budget constraints it is either legal aid or the NHS (or defence, or education) the Government always seeks to blame greedy lawyers for the expense of the legal aid scheme.  Legal aid practitioners undertaking routine family work are paid a little more than a third of the private, high street rate.  Criminal legal aid lawyers are paid a little over a quarter of the going private rate.  The new costs regime being introduced by the Government’s quango, the Legal Services Commission, will result in legal aid practitioners receiving a pay cut.  The propaganda peddled by the Government, to the effect that legal aid lawyers are well paid and will be even more handsomely remunerated by way of the new costs regime, is worthy of Dr Joseph Goebbels.

The comprehensive legal aid system that we have in this country is the envy of the world, but if the Government doesn’t want to pay for it then it should say so and desist from attacking underpaid legal aid practitioners who have been the backbone of the system these past thirty years or more.

Legal aid bill 'highest in world'

“The polls have been volatile this year. Pollsters and political professionals who swore in the spring that Brown's numbers were so ghastly that the best he could hope for was to cling to office and pray David Cameron was run over by Zac Goldsmith driving an eco-friendly hybrid car, now see no possibility other than a walk-over for Brown.”

 

Iain Martin

A surprisingly large number of political analysts, commentators and pundits appear to have forgotten that “a week is a long time in politics”.  They suffer the affliction of a “group-think” mentality, slavishly following the accepted consensus, until very belatedly something snaps them out of it.  I doubt that they know or understand any more than the electorate they seek to convince.

All the more reason not to pay much attention to anything they might say.

Don't panic! How the Tories can survive

Commenting upon developments in the Madeleine McCann case in Saturday’s edition of The Times, Professor David Cantor opines,

“It appears that the Portuguese police may have fallen into the trap of having first formed a view of who the guilty party is, then seeking out the evidence to support it. It is rare for people untrained in science deliberately to attempt to refute their own hypotheses: instead we tend to reinterpret anything that happens to fit in with the notion to which we have become increasingly committed.”

Lest the Portuguese Police take the rap all on their own, in all fairness it should be pointed out that this is a common failing of many Police investigations the world over, including those conducted by our own law enforcement agencies.

Why patterns of the past point to abduction by a stranger as most likely explanation

"The political atmosphere is that of a gathering storm: the current level of tension cannot be sustained for much longer. The combined weight of opinion polls and public expectation could force Mr Brown to go to the country earlier than he had intended. Like the Kaiser in 1914, he may not find it easy to demobilise a force that has been brought to a peak of readiness."

The Daily Telegraph

And we all know what happened to the Kaiser.

Should a General Election be called now, David Cameron and his Conservatives are destined for another crushing defeat, opine many Media soothsayers.  This prediction relies upon an ICM Poll published in The Guardian on 19^th September 2007, one of a number of polls showing an indifferent Conservative performance in the face of the “Brown Bounce”.  Inter alia, the poll indicates that amongst voters support for the Conservatives has fallen to 32%, whilst support for Labour has risen to 40%.

That such opinion poll results should cause such excitement amongst Labour supporters and fellow travellers in the media, whilst causing those of a Conservative persuasion much angst, is curious.  It is not as if we haven’t been here before.  In fact since 2005, we have been here no less than three times.

In the weekend before the General Election that took place on 5^th May 2005, an ICM poll published in The Sunday Telegraph put support for the Conservatives at 31% and for Labour at 38%.  A few days earlier, another ICM poll commissioned by The Guardian had indicated that support for Labour had reached as high as 40%.  On the day of the real McCoy, whilst the Conservatives achieved a relatively indifferent 32.3% of the national vote, Labour achieved only 35.3%, in other words between 2.7 to 4.7 percentage points less than predicted.  The ICM poll commissioned for and published by The Guardian immediately prior to the local elections in May 2006 showed support for the Conservatives at 34% and Labour at 32%.  Lest we forget, the result of the elections was 39%¹ of the vote for the Conservatives and a paltry 26% for Labour.  Similarly, for May 2007 the ICM poll published in the week immediately preceding the elections predicted support form the Conservatives at 38% and for Labour at 29%.  The actual result was 40% and 26%², respectively.  All of the pollsters have been off the mark, not just ICM.  In recent years, opinion polls have consistently and to a significant degree understated support for the Conservatives whereas Labour’s predicted share of the vote has been overgenerous, sometimes by a wide margin.

Each of the main parties needs to take a reality check.  In all likelihood, as matters stand at this very moment, the Labour Government is nowhere near as popular as it would like to believe and the Conservatives not so far adrift as their detractors would like us to think.

¹ Or 40% depending upon which psephologist’s analysis you prefer.

²  Or 27%, ditto.

"It is one of the wonders of the Brown "bounce" that no one any longer sees fit to point out the infamy of the West Lothian problem. We have a Scottish MP Prime Minister, promulgating measures on health and education and other matters that have no effect on his own constituents, and while Scottish MPs are able to vote on English schools and hospitals, English MPs have no corresponding say in Scotland."

 

Boris Johnson

It is not only the matter of the West Lothian Question.  Since Gordon Brown's accession to the Premiership, a large section of our supine, craven, fawning Media no longer sees fit to point out that he is missing various other pieces of attire or worse still, tries to draw our gaze from the spectacle.  Reality however, like Truth, will always out and this time around the electorate is not going to be so patient or forgiving.

End of Belgium should be a warning to Gordon

So, the Home Information Pack regime is now to be introduced for all homes and much earlier than had been expected.  As far as can be discerned all of the current, main players in the industry including Estate Agents, Surveyors and even Solicitors (whose governing body, The Law Society, has done so much to make the Government's HIPs scheme work) continue to have grave reservations as to the efficacy of the scheme.

According to The Times this morning,

"Earlier this week Ruth Kelly met representatives of the Home Information Pack industry, which warned the Communities Secretary that she faces a multi-billion claim if she scraps the scheme."

Doesn't that say it all.

Home pack extension sparks fears of slump

Let me be the first to admit that I was wrong.  After the Law Society won the greater part of the legal argument last week in its judicial review case against the Government's quango, the Legal Services Commission (LSC), I had expected there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the media against the "reactionary, anti-progressive and over-paid" legal profession. But no, this has not happened. It seems the Legal Services Commission claims it won the case.  Says Carolyn Regan, Chief Executive of the Commission:

"I am obviously pleased that the Court has confirmed that it is lawful for the Legal Services Commission to amend the unified contract to introduce the new civil legal aid fee schemes from October 2007."

In fact the matter of fee schemes was an inconsequential legal side issue in the case.  As I understood matters, having been obliged to waste a part of my life reading legal aid materials, including the old legal aid contract and new Unified Contract, the Legal Services Commission (and its previous incarnation, the Legal Aid Board) had always possessed the means, one way or another, to introduce fee schemes, including fixed fees.  It had done so before - firstly by way of fixed fees for criminal work in the Magistrates' Court and later in 2001 for Counsel instructed in family cases, the so-called graduated fees scheme.  The main thrust of the Law Society's case, which was accepted by the Judge, was that some of the powers claimed by the Legal Services Commission to unilaterally amend the new Unified Contract were incompatible with current Law.

And yet Government seeks to convince us that the Age of Spin is over.  Perhaps it should tell its agencies.

The Law Society successfully challenges the Legal Services Commission

“Rather like that harbinger cat recently discovered in an American nursing home for the elderly (the creature’s habit being to curl up on the beds of those residents who are not far from their final hour) a group of right-wingers, reactionaries and xenophobes styling themselves as Tory columnists has been acting as a false friend to the party, drawn towards everything that is morbid within its body politic, sucking it towards its grave. Who knows (and I doubt) whether the voters take much notice, but the parliamentary Conservative Party does.”

Matthew Parris - The Times

Once again, Mr Parris tells it as it is.

So, today in the High Court Mr Justice Beatson has upheld The Law Society's challenge against the Legal Services Commission (LSC) for having imposed unilaterally upon legal aid practitioners the new (and grossly one-sided) "Unified Contract".  Says the Law Society,

"The judge said that the LSC has breached Public Contracts Regulations 2006 and European Law in its reform of legal aid. Most significantly, the judge said that changes to the contract should not be made if they would, 'alter the economic balance of the contract to the disadvantage of those who have entered into the Unified Contract or to the disadvantage of some of them.'  The judge also noted that any proposed changes should be restricted to those envisaged by the initial White Paper. It is not clear at this stage how this will affect the LSC's proposals on fees and the Judge has granted the Law Society permission to appeal on the basis of public interest on this point…"

Well, this is what happens when you try to introduce ill conceived, half-baked reforms at breakneck speed.  It will be interesting to see the Government and the majority of the mainstream media spin this into a victory by lawyers (including the Judge) against the common interest.

A Home Information Pack, anyone?

"If services are cut as a result of the legal aid reforms I don't think I'm being unduly cynical in expecting the vast majority of media comment to accuse overpaid lawyers of letting down the public because the Government has stopped the gravy train."

Kit O' Brien

It is worth fighting to save the least loved branch of the welfare state - Jonathan Freedland

“People throw the charge of “racist” around far too freely today and fail to separate inconsequential prejudice from all-consuming intolerance,”

writes Nick Cohen in his book, What’s Left? How Liberals lost their way.

Likewise for instance, charges such as “sexist” and “homophobe” are too freely made, most usually as a first resort by the feeble-minded in support of a lame argument.

"A paedophile who raped a ten-year-old girl will be free in just four months after a judge said his young victim had dressed provocatively. Window cleaner Keith Fenn, 24, could have been jailed for life after twice attacking the girl in a riverside park,"

screams The Daily Mail this morning.  Mr Fenn it transpires, had pleaded guilty to two counts of rape involving a ten year old girl.   His co defendant Darren Wright, who had encouraged the commission of the offences, received a prison sentence of nine months after pleaded guilty to inciting the girl to engage in sex acts.  Paedophile, rape and attack are very emotive words.  One can imagine that even at this moment some dark shadow in government will be moved to draw plans to impose obligatory life-sentences for anyone convicted of rape involving a child under the age of sixteen years.  No doubt a stiffening of the law in such a manner would please Dr Michele Elliott of Kidscape who is reported by The Daily Mail as saying,

 "This sentencing is beyond pathetic, it is utterly derisory. For the judge to say that the way she was dressed in any way excuses a 24-year-old man having sex with her is disgraceful and ridiculous."

The NSPCC is reported to have added its two-pennies' worth,

"There's no excuse for having sex with a ten-year-old, no matter how she dresses."

Even the most cursory examination of the facts related by The Daily Mail  (and better still the original Oxford Mail report) show why the Judge was entitled, indeed obliged by justice to impose a short, rather than long, term of imprisonment. The defendants thought that the girl was sixteen years old.  It appears that the Crown accepted that presumption as being not unreasonable.  Mr Fenn was guilty of rape because as a ten year old, the Law deems the young girl involved as not being able to consent to sexual activity, thus notwithstanding that her involvement was consensual and not forced (in the true sense of the word) upon her, it was illegal.  The defendants did not realise that they were committing criminal offences. Nevertheless, that illegality has resulted in the defendants being sentenced to terms of imprisonment.  Harsher sentences would have been unfair.  His Honour Judge Julian Hall did justice to the case.

Oxford Mail - Judge claims paedophile victim 'dressed provocatively' - George Gaynor

Judge's mercy for the man who raped 'provocatively dressed' girl of ten

It is self evident that in matters appertaining to law and order, the Government has tended to dance (or rather, knee jerk) to the tune of the media.  It is frequently overlooked however, that a more insidious influence upon Government has been exerted by favoured focus and pressure groups.  Using their privileged access to Government, these groups have been able to set agendas and outmanoeuvre opponents. Presented with cogent argument and evidence refuting the efficacy of following a particular course of action, the Government chooses its moment and then ploughs on regardless. The Government’s desire to amend the law so as to ensure rape convictions are more easily secured is a classic example. Today, Clare Dyer, legal editor of The Guardian reports,

“The government is to press ahead with plans to reform the rape laws in an attempt to increase the low conviction rate, despite strong opposition from the judges who will have to put them into effect.”

The new devices that are thought will be effective include,

“a power for expert witnesses to give general evidence, not about the specific case, but about how rape victims generally behave, to dispel “myths” that might affect the jury's reactions and an automatic right to use the alleged victim's videotaped interview with the police in place of her main evidence at the trial.”

It is all going to end in tears.  Judges and advocates will all be painfully aware of their duty to ensure that the defendant has a fair trial.  Accordingly the worst excesses of the reforms will be mitigated.  Juries will suspect (rightly) that the legal system is bending over backwards to ensure a conviction and will react accordingly.  Thus the conviction rate will continue to hover at the current rate (between 5% and 6%) and the whipping boys, the judges and barristers, will again be described as “ignorant” and “devious”, respectively.

What the “reformers” fail to understand, is that action and reaction are equal and opposite.  The more they weight the system against the defendant, the more likely it is that the jury will smell a fit up and throw the case out.  Pressure groups have a skewed view of the world and can be forgiven their myopia, but Government must be more rational and must legislate on principle and compelling evidence alone.

Ministers defy judges on rape law reforms

Lovesick lesbian cried rape to frame an innocent

She cried rape, he must be guilty, right?

Barristers oppose 'dangerous' plans to reform rape law

Professor Jennifer Temkin rides again: devious barristers and ignorant judges

Government to load dice even further against fair trial

More nonsense from this partial New Labour Government

Richard Brooks and Dipesh Gadher report today in The Sunday Times that an official report commissioned by the BBC will confirm that amongst other things the Corporation is partial in its treatment of single-issue politics such as climate change, poverty, race and religion.  The bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes.

We have been here before, of course.  In January 2005 another report commissioned by the BBC came to the conclusion that the Corporation was unintentionally, but nevertheless too well disposed towards the European Union.  Another report commissioned for internal consumption alone (the “Balen Report”) is widely thought to have been critical of the BBC’s Middle East reporting, which is perceived in most quarters to be pro-Arab and unsympathetic towards Israel.

In the latest report it is acknowledged that,

“[there is] the danger of BBC programmes being undermined by the liberal culture of its staff, who need to challenge their own assumptions more,”

and,

“there is a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

So far, so good.  The real issue is that the BBC will not address the problem because it cannot.  Those people within the Corporation who should challenge the current “liberal” mindset do not have the critical mass to ensure that there is any real, significant change.  There are too few of them.  Their minority view is considered quaint, wrongheaded, dangerous or just downright bad and in consequence is ignored. The Sunday Times leader identifies the only course open to the BBC if it truly wishes to avoid being unnecessarily partial in its outlook.

“That the BBC should investigate itself is perhaps admirable, but only if it acts on the conclusions. The likelihood is that it will lament its shortcomings, pledge to do something and carry on much as before. Changing its cosy culture will take more than a report; some who have worked there say it would require a small neutron bomb. The BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club. Recruitment is the key. It needs to employ more nonconformist journalists whose paper of choice is not The Guardian.”

So will the BBC now seek to spread its net wider when recruiting staff?  Don’t hold your breath.

BBC report damns its ‘culture of bias’

Bias at the Beeb - official

The BBC: Soft Left, anti-American (and very pro-European Union)

Nobody mention the "Labour" word

How many Divisions has the BBC?

BBC wins Balen report battle

The Editors – Both Sides

BBC news coverage of the European Union - Independent Panel Report