Plus ça change, etc.

Good Lord, it's not the first time I've used that as a blog post title, is it?

Well, here's some good stuff from the Tories:

Diabetes remains one of the largest challenges to our healthcare system, with around 3.7 million sufferers in the UK and almost a million more estimated to have the condition but who do not know it. This is likely to get worse. Unhealthy lifestyles in the UK put a further 7 million people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and in ten years’ time we may see the number of patients pass the 5 million mark.

All this places a significant burden on the NHS, with an estimated spend of £10 billion per year on diabetes related treatments. A great deal of this spend is unnecessary. Diabetics far too often suffer from late diagnosis, preventable complications and variations in care. They are often overlooked for specialist care when being treated for other conditions, particularly in hospitals, and they can be prevented from accessing treatment by the short term financial ethos embedded in far too many Care Trusts across the country.

Some studies have found that around 80 per cent of the spend on diabetes is avoidable so the main focus the Government needs to take is how to deploy resources effectively to help people manage their diabetes and even more importantly, prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes-the type related to lifestyle-in the first place.

This is being made more challenging by the NHS reforms, which, even if they were perfect, would cause disruption, and the fear that the new commissioners will take something of a short term approach to managing budgets in light of the priority for deficit reduction.

Wow, this is all good stuff, isn't it? Stuff we've been saying all along: you can get the same or better results without spending as much money, too much is wasted. And why is it wasted? Because of insane bureaucratic procedures which explain all too well why visiting a GP in this cuntry feels like you're interacting with a call centre operator in a foreign land who'd like nothing more than to tell you to switch it off, wait five minutes and then switch it on again.

But given that the problem is a massive surfeit of bad guidance that causes people to waste money in a bureaucratic, checkbox manner, guess what the solution proposed to this is?

Go on, guess.

The problem is too much bureaucratic guidance, what solution could you propose that would guaranteed to make me want to strangle myself with my own testicles?

Yes:

The Government can rectify some of these problems through national leadership. The National Service Framework, which has guided diabetes care since 2001 is due for renewal and it is a very appropriate time for Ministers to look at how to spend wisely now, and disseminate best practice across the NHS to reduce long term costs. Achieving this would have the happy coincidence of better patient outcomes; arguably what the priority should always be for Ministers and officials.

Kill me now.

The five-knuckle reshuffle

So, with dreary inevitability, we have a mid-term Cabinet reshuffle.

I can (vaguely) remember a time when such a thing might genuinely have meant something. A handful of departments, a handful of ministers and a change could possibly have a fairly dramatic change in policy.

However, this is no longer the case for two reasons: firstly, there are so many ministers and secretaries and departments and sub-departments that shuffling the whole lot around is going to change nothing because no role carries any actual power; secondly, every single member of parliament, Tory, Labour or Lib Dem is nothing more than a troughing makeweight, none of them have a useful idea in their head or the stones to make them happen.

Quietly, possibly not even with malice aforethought, the power in the country has slipped from the elected politicians' grasp into the quiet, sleek hands of unelected civil servant mandarins. This is not a new thing, the more venerable among you will remember "Yes, Minister" which, even then, was more factual than fictional.

The personal prejudices of entirely unaccountable, anonymous apparatchiks define how we live our lives, while tribal warriors on all sides froth vacuously over people who are carefully placed as lightning rods to take the heat over decisions that are made by people far from the limelight.

Not one of the minister's ideas or plans will ever see the light of day unless the civil service think it's a good idea and even if they do, they will not happen while that person is "in charge" of that area.

But crucially, it doesn't matter who you vote for or how angry you are - you're shouting at the shop-window display. The clerks inside are the ones who decide what you're getting.

Tory MPs go to war

Oh dear God:

Conservative MPs are trying to sabotage David Cameron's plan to legalise gay marriage, threatening a rebellion bigger than the one in which 81 voted against the Government on Europe.

Really? This is important enough that you're going to rebel against it, but you wouldn't rebel to the same level over Europe?

What the fuck is wrong with these people? What is the fucking problem with two people who want to seriously commit to a permanent relationship? Why the fuck is it the government's business to stop this?

I wish these fuckers were actually at war. I wish they either got shot dead or captured and bummed to death.

Utter fucking cunts.

Minor blogroll addendum

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed a new blog on my roll.

He's not a total tossbag for a Tory.

Three line whip

A three-line whip is a strict instruction to attend and vote, breach of which would normally have serious consequences. Permission not to attend may be given by the whip, but a serious reason is needed. Breach of a three-line whip can lead to expulsion from the parliamentary political group in extreme circumstances and may lead to expulsion from the party. Consequently, three-line whips are generally only issued on key issues, such as votes of confidence and supply. The nature of three-line whips and the potential punishments for revolt vary dramatically among parties and legislatures.

It seems quite curious to me that people still regard representative democracy with such fondness. Any representative has to balance the aggregated wishes of his community with his own beliefs, at the very best of times.

And here, in a matter where there is a broad belief in the "community" that the EU is not something we have universal love for, we encounter the true balance of power in the sham of our "representative" democracy. David Cameron has ordered a three-line whip to deny the British people a referendum on something that affects our lives every day, often in ways that British people do not want or agree with. I understand that Ed Miliband has done the same. The largely Europhile LibDems will be pretty much in the bag anyway.

This means that a handful of politicians effectively do get to decide things on our behalf, expressly rejecting the "democratic wishes" of the majority of the population. Cameron was democratically elected, and now has the ability to be a dictator on things that matter to him.

Even though a number of MPs will ignore the three-line whip, Cameron can be quite sure of his team of lobby-fodder sheep backing his wishes, and with the Labour Party whipped to deny us the referendum as well, he can be quite relaxed about those who disobey the whip. It all makes it look like there is actually democracy in action and the will of the majority has prevailed.

Cameron clearly has no desire to do anything to rock any boat, even though getting us out of the EU would probably get him re-elected by a landslide. He is clearly hoping to follow Blair into some other, grand, post-PM role and as an urbane member of the social democratic group, he probably quite likes the idea of having some grand political folly. Hence his three-line whip, hence his denial of a perfectly reasonable referendum. Behind that bland face and enormous forehead is the mind of a typical authoritarian cunt who knows better than all of us and is prepared to blatantly fuck us over to keep us in line.

Three-line whips are a test of the mettle of our politicians. I am quite certain that they will be found wanting. Again.

Update: I've just heard that the LibDems will be imposing a three-line whip. Why are our politicians so terrified of the will of the British people regarding the EU?

@LouiseMensch is a fucking idiot

I had an argument with a fellow twatterer about his MP. He said she was one of the good guys and wouldn't hear a bad word about her.

I, on the other hand, explicitly distrust anyone who goes into politics as being someone who thinks they know better than anyone else how we should live our lives. And if you climb the greasy pole far enough to actually become an MP, then you must be a mendacious, bullying cunt of the highest order.

And so it came to pass. First we had:

Northamptonshire Police advise me that much of their time and resources were wasted answering false alarms due to soc media rumours.

Then:

Twitter regularly down for maintenance, and if in a major national emergency police think Twitter and FB should take an hour off? So be it

(Firstly, Twitter doesn't fucking regularly go down for maintenance, you daft bint, it's a 24x7 operation that isn't supposed to go down AT ALL. Likewise Facebook.

Secondly, the only way you can stop access to Facebook and Twitter is to completely disable access to all websites. I'm not even sure this is technically possible. It would certainly destroy every online business in the UK.

Still think it's a good idea?)

Then:

I don't have a problem with a brief temporary shutdown of social media just as I don't have a problem with a brief road or rail closure.

See above.

Then:

If short, necessary and only used in an emergency, so what. We'd all survive if Twitter shut down for a short while during major riots.

How often are you expecting major riots, Louise? Are you privy to some information that us plebs aren't entitled to?

Anyway, there more stupid tweets about maintenance and stuff, and then we get this gem:

And really, stop w/ all the dramatics. Nobody is talking about "shutting down Twitter". It's about listening to police & a couple hours off.

So here we have it: one of the "good guys" in politics thinks it's absolutely fine that the police (the fucking POLICE!) should have the power to shut down everybody in the UK's access to social networking because of a few miscreants that they can't handle. Never mind that in doing so they'd have to cut everybody in the UK off from the web completely. Never mind that it would lay waste to every online business in the UK at the same time.

If that's what a "good" politician thinks, can you imagine what the rest of them think?

It's so true, scratch a politician, any politician and you'll find a closet fascist.

Ban Twitter!

Tory MPs, earlier

Call Me Dave has responded to the riots and violence in a way that any Fabian would approve of: he has called for the ability to shut down BBM and Twitter to prevent violence from happening.

This is despite the fact that in other countries, twitter and so on are considered (by fucking Call Me Dave!) to be good for democracy.

Typical fucking politician, cheering something that looks good when it happens to someone else, but quick to shut it down when he thinks it's bad for his proles.

This despite the fact that a zillion people used BBM and Twitter without fucking needing to riot.

Is there anything in iDave's fucking bullshit posturing and hypocrisy that would not be familiar to a student of New Labour? Of course not, they are all the fucking same, apart from the tie colour.

Thieves, cunts, bullies and fucking fascists. Hang the lot of them.

Post script: more appropriate response from the wonderful, infalling, completely trustworthy state.

Fucking cunts.

Monbiot: wrong as usual

*sigh* Here we go again:

The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone – and are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d'etat is taking place.

Like the dismantling of the NHS and the sale of public forests, no one voted for this measure, as it wasn't in the manifestos. While Cameron insists that he occupies the centre ground of British politics, that he shares our burdens and feels our pain, he has quietly been plotting with banks and businesses to engineer the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the ultra-rich that this country has seen in a century.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the horror! Oh, the disgust! What could the eeeeevil Tory toff be doing now?

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here. The other is Switzerland. The exemption applies solely to "large and medium companies": it is not available for smaller firms. The government says it expects "large financial services companies to make the greatest use of the exemption regime". The main beneficiaries, in other words, will be the banks.

But that's not the end of it. While big business will be exempt from tax on its foreign branch earnings, it will, amazingly, still be able to claim the expense of funding its foreign branches against tax it pays in the UK. No other country does this. The new measures will, as we already know, accompany a rapid reduction in the official rate of corporation tax: from 28% to 24% by 2014. This, a Treasury minister has boasted, will be the lowest rate "of any major western economy". By the time this government is done, we'll be lucky if the banks and corporations pay anything at all.

Hurrah! There are a number of reasons to applaud this:

1. Companies don't actually ever "pay" tax. They simply claw it back out of money they could pay to their staff (you know, the working stiffs) or they pay their shareholders less (you know, the pensions of the working stiffs) or they gouge it out of their customers (which means that the working stiffs pay more). Companies are legal entities, not living, breathing things. Don't fucking pay attention to the legal fiction, pay attention to the employees, the shareholders and the customers. You know, actual human beings. Think about the consequences to them.

2. Lower taxes will almost certainly increase the tax take as larger corporates will look to move back onshore, or move here anew precisely because the tax regime is so competitive. And this is all apart from the Laffer Curve, which shows that when tax rates are too high (and they definitely are in the UK!) then decreasing the tax rate actually increases the tax take.

So, Cameron and Osborne should actually be applauded for taking small steps in the right direction, rather than being pilloried by economic illiterates.

And just to show how fucking stupid this twat is:

These measures will drain not only wealth but also jobs from the UK. The new legislation will create a powerful incentive to shift business out of this country and into nations with lower corporate tax rates. Any UK business that doesn't outsource its staff or funnel its earnings through a tax haven will find itself with an extra competitive disadvantage. The new rules also threaten to degrade the tax base everywhere, as companies with headquarters in other countries will demand similar measures from their own governments.

OK: so we're drastically lowering our tax rate AND offering tax-reducing measures not available anywhere else in the western world, and this is going to chase businesses away? Yes, Mr Banker, you don't want to base your business in Britain, where you will pay less tax. You don't want the prestige and convenience and facilities of the Square Mile AND lower taxes, do you?

What a fucking idiot.

I'm ambivalent about the issue of driving jobs abroad -- it may drive a handful of jobs abroad, but I suspect that most headquarter jobs will need to be in the headquarters, so more companies headquartered here will mean more, better paid jobs here.

So, overall, Monbiot is, as usual, completely fucking wrong in his economic analysis, although this won't stop lefty tossers short-stroking themselves into the Guardian's comment pages today.

The only thing that I see as wrong is that some of the perks only apply to "medium to large business", although off-shoring probably doesn't make economic sense for smaller businesses anyway. So, more corporatism from Blue Labour (there's a surprise!) but at least it's better corporatism than New Labour's.

No, no, no!

Meet the new cunts, indistinguishable from the old cunts (emphasis mine):

The Identity Card Scheme and other biometrics work has already cost the taxpayer £292 million. The Act has saved £835 million in planned future investment.

No, you fucking cunts. An investment is spending you make in the hope of future benefits. Here is the definition, for any cunting civil servant who may want to learn that English words already have meanings, so stop fucking destroying our language with bureaucratic bollocks-speak!

There are no fucking benefits to pissing our money away on ID cards. This is more fucking civil servant distortion of the English language to provide cover of useless, inept, wasteful government profligacy.

And it wasn't this government that "invested" the money. So it's perfectly ok to describe it as "spending" or even "pissing away taxpayers' hard-earned on corporatist crap".

Unless, of course, the people who rule us, who's reputation needs salving, are not the useless motherfuckers we elect.

Sack the fucker!

Back in the heady days of the expenses scandal, I made an abortive attempt at examining the expenses of random MPs. I managed exactly, er, one. (OK, I also had a minor probe of Tom Harris, but I just don't have the staying power that I had when I was a teenager.)

However, I'm thrilled to see that the one fucking thieving trougher I did manage to scrape around has clearly been a very naughty boy:

Private detectives paid more than £5,000 by the justice minister tricked his aides into talking to them by claiming that they were journalists. His election agent and the honorary treasurer of Huntingdon Conservatives were among those questioned.

Quite apart from the questions he will face in Parliament over his behaviour, Mr Djanogly has some serious explaining to do to the constituency workers who were, until now, unaware that they had been the subjects of a covert investigation.

What a really nice bloke, eh? It's far too much to hope that the useless sack of shit will resign from his spot at the trough, but it's a fucking delight to watch the cunt squirm. I can't wait to see what his constituency make of this.

But of course, since it's one of the safest Tory seats, it's too much to hope that they'll kick the fucker out next time. Isn't democracy wonderful?

#mehgate (for @jackofkent )

Well known campaigner Jerk Off Cunt has once again got his panties in a wedge. This time it's about possible collusion between the Met Police and the News of the Screws.

I'm baffled as to how someone who is actually in the legal profession can be surprised to hear of potential collusion by the police and the media, especially the fucking Screws, for fuck's sake. I'm sure there's been mutual back scratching going on there since forever.

And I also have no doubt at all that the Screws has had dirt on senior people in all walks of life (including rozzers) since forever as well.

As much as I have called for the police to be disbanded and started up again on Peelian principles (if we must have a state-controlled police force at all, obviously), I find it hard to get excited by new evidence or potential evidence of police corruption. The police have strayed so far from the idea of consensual policing that they are almost entirely unfit for purpose.

Why was Jerk Off Cunt not incensed and calling for heads to roll when the police was blatantly colluding with the government in the (Ian) Blair years? Why was he not hosting smug attack posts from blatantly biased Tory attack dogs then? Could it possibly be because he believes that government is good and it's not a problem that a politicised police force colludes with the government of the day?

Why is he not moaning about the fact that a private company called ACPO has increasing influence in our political process, a private company that is completely opaque and unaccountable?

Really, when faced with accusations that there would be collusion between powerful individuals in the media and other powerful individuals in the police, or collusions between power individuals in the government or powerful individuals in the police, my only surprise is that you're surprised. Large, powerful, largely unaccountable organisations performing shady deals in dark, non-smoking rooms is hardly a bloody surprise, now is it?

And let's face it, you are doing Labour a huge favour in hosting sanctimonious blog posts from political attack dogs who have a huge interest in attacking the people alleged to be involved. The Graun is obviously delighted to have a means to self-righteously attack their competition and they don't really care if it's true. In reality, they were probably just as happy to "share a narrative" with a lefty tosser like Ian Blair, even assuming they weren't actively colluding.

I'm not defending Coulson, when the allegations surfaced last time around, I thought that if Cameron didn't sack him there and then, he would turn into a major liability. But then iDave is clearly blessed with the same amount of nous as his predecessor, which is why I'll be shedding exactly no tears at all if this takes down the coalition.

So yeah, I'd be astonished if the allegations weren't true and if this hadn't been going on since before I was born. What I can't understand is why you're getting all uppity about this now and why you can't see the obvious self-interest of the people you have arrayed on your side in this case.

I have a Peroni here with your name on it if this doesn't wind up with, at best, a couple of low-ranking heads rolling, maybe a whitewash inquiry. And Tom Watson and the piemuncher forgetting your name as soon as the next attack vehicle comes along. Unless they can use you as a platform for that, of course.

A more honest liberal would be calling for major reform of the police because of their increasing influence in the political process, which is far more worrying than the fact that the papers know where some of the bodies are buried.

In essence, all I can say to this hullabaloo is: "Meh."

Unlike some (for @jackofkent )

I am, unlike Iain Dale, not ashamed to be a fucking political blogger today.

Guido is a muckraker, that's what he does. He has poked the lefty community in the eye today by muckraking a Tory, something that they all said he wouldn't do when the Tories were in power.

Frankly, I don't care what a fucking politician does, as long as I'm not fucking paying for it. And what has been burning my arse about this is that the actual employment of whatever his name is does sound a bit suspect, because a poisonous muckraker claims:

The appointment of Hague’s former driver to his private office is controversial because 25-year old Myers has no expertise for the job, no relevant experience and his only qualification for the position is his closeness to the Foreign Secretary.

And that, my dear reader, is what fucks me off. In a manner that is completely indistinguishable from those fucking Labour cunts, this minister has basically given a mate a fucking job. Whether it's a mate as in beer-drinking-buddy or mate as in anal fisting when you're away from the missus, the thing that makes me steam is that I'M FUCKING FUNDING SOME CUNT'S WHIM!

Frankly, I think Hague should fucking resign and go kill himself in a fucking field somewhere. Not for any potential sexual misdemeanour, but for pissing away my money.

And if you can't understand the difference between someone's private life and misuse of public money, then you're as much of a cunt as he is.

Very funny!

I can't possibly do it justice. Just go read it.

Carswell is miffed

Poor lamb:

Leon Brittan has been appointed as a trade adviser to the government. Not that the UK government has any real say over UK trade policy. As an ex-Eurocrat, I’m sure Lord Brittan knows that already.

But still, why not appoint as a trade adviser a man whose career saw him help lock UK trade ever more tightly into the sclerotic, high tax / high regulation Eurozone? It could be just the thing to stimulate trade with India and China.

The fact Lord L happens to have been explicitly hostile to the Tory cause in the run up to the last set of Euro elections even gives his elevation an uber moderniser, welcome-to-the-Big-Tent twist.

Moan, moan, moan.

Enough about technocratic appointments. How are those Coalition proposals to make government more accountable to Parliament coming along?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an elected MP. One with connections, a decent, coherent plan to sort things out, one that has been thought through well in advance and not "on the hoof", someone whose plans and opinions get a reasonable amount of airtime and yet, HE can't change the social democrat juggernaut's direction.

Our elected representatives are completely powerless to make things better or even different. All the visible power is concentrated in the hands of those ministers who have El Presidenté's ear and all the real power is in the hands of unelected quangocrats and bureaucrats. It just goes to show what a pathetic charade the so-called democracy we are run by, is.

Still, it's nice to know that people can still delude themselves by telling us all how a few words in the right ear will make it all better.

Change from the inside!

Yeah, right.

It comes as quite a shock, I tell you!

Dizzy examines the proposed graduate tax scheme:

The fact is, when you actually look at the graduate tax proposal it's clear who will really gain from it. The Political Class.

It will be the bag carrier greasy pole types, the policy wonks, the NUS presidents and the assortment of other "never done a proper job" politicos on crap money with great quality degrees who'll be subsidised by the graduates from crappy ex-polys with a Desmond, who then work their balls off to earn as much as they can in an area with no relevance to their education.

Well, bugger me! Who would have thought it, eh?

But no, it's all fine, because the increasingly libertarian Tories and hugely "liberal" Democrats are in charge, so they will definitely not be doing anything to buttfuck the ordinary man.

So, not only frightened to death of repealing shit Labour legislation, but also quite happy to introduce new cuntishness for the benefit of the political class. Oh yes, I can definitely see how the new lot are completely different from the old lot.

That campaign to modify the Tory party from the inside is clearly paying benefits.

Oh, how I laughed

Something for Kingbingo.

Oh, and while I'm at it.

More proof ...

... if it were needed:

The government's first attempt at crowdsourcing its coalition programme has ended without a single government department expressing a willingness to alter any policy.

Meet the new boss. Completely different from the last boss.

Oh yes.

Kingbingo.

Impressive

They haven't even tried this shit out with smokers:

A tough new approach to tackling drunken yobs involving twice-a-day alcohol breathalyser testing could be rolled out across London.

Deputy mayor for policing, Kit Malthouse, said subjecting repeat offenders to testing, and locking them up for 24 hours if they failed, would also save money.

Look, really, I don't like struggling through vomit-drenched streets any more than the next guy, but isn't this taking things just a little bit too far? I mean, really, for fuck's sake, this is just trying it on, surely?

Notice that this is the deputy mayor of Tory London trying this shit on. Exactly the kind of daft idea that we'd associated with Labour at the very peak of their cuntishness, once again proving that there is no fucking difference between Labour and Conservative when it comes to making our lives miserable, nor is there any fucking difference between the two when it comes to telling us how to live our fucking lives (Kingbingo!)

BoJo has already banned drinking in the tube, now they're cracking down on drinking overall. And of course, if, somehow, BoJo can claim success for this horrendous policy, you just know it will be followed up.

It's just another example of fucking politicians knowing better than the miserable proles and going way past their election manifesto to fuck up our lives.

Kit Malthouse: Le Hoon de Jour.

And cunt.

You just KNOW this is going to end well

Home secretary Theresa May has announced plans to review the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders as she pledged a “coherent and comprehensive” strategy to deal with anti-social behaviour. Ms May criticised the last government’s approach as “top down, bureaucratic and gimmick laden.”

Oh yeah? And as we've already seen over and fucking over, this government is completely different to the last one, eh?

Cunts.

*Sigh*

So there's this, very funny, ha! ha! Gurnadia lives up to its name, etc., etc.

But what is the actual story? The Regional Development Agencies got shitcanned for being a total fucking waste of taxpayer dosh. Instead of an unelected, unaccountable bunch of timeserving tossers sitting there pissing our money away on the ideals of the Labour government, we're going to get ... an unelected, unaccountable bunch of timeserving tossers sitting there pissing our money away on the ideals of the LibDem/Tory coalition.

What the fuck is wrong with British politicians? Why is the answer to every problem yet another quango?

And I can't wait for Kingbingo to wander along and tell me how different and how much better this is all going to be from Labour's idea of a quango.