Misleading Flooding Cash Announcements

The old EU propaganda trick of announcing something that they have no intention of actually providing to get good headlines in in full swing again:

In March, the European Parliament voted to give the United Kingdom about £110m from the European Union's Solidarity Fund - a pot of money set aside for member states to apply for if hit by a natural disaster.

But it has now been confirmed the payout will only be £31m.

£31 million is still a lot of money, but why has the amount Britain has been entitled to dropped so drastically?

The government says the answer can be found in a deal made in 1984.

It was then, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the UK agreed a so-called "abatement mechanism" with the EU - what is commonly known as the rebate.

The rebate ensures money is paid back to the UK to take account of the fact that the country gives more to Europe that it receives.

But one of the compromises of this agreement, it now appears, was that Britain would be entitled to less from pots of money such as the Solidarity Fund.

Hang on. The rebate was negotiated in 1984, and therefore when the EP voted for £100 million in March, they must have known about the rebate and its effect on the payout, as it is not exactly an unforseen circumstance. So you cannot blame Margaret Thatcher for the fact that the EP is ill-informed and incompetent, rather in a mad attempt to secure a good headline in Britain, the Commission let this through, and the slightly deluded Government of Britian then try to pin it on Thatcher, a circumstance that has nothing to do with the deliberate announcement of a figure that was, it turns out, patently incorrect. On this count, the EP, EC and British government must shoulder the blame.

On another note, I have realised that I am eligible for election in the bye-election to be caused by Boris Johnson's elevation to the mayoralty of London. It's scary that 18 year olds can now have a finger on the levers of power.

Diplomas Are Government's Preferred Qualification

Want some evidence that Labour does not care about the A-Level any more? Well, take the introduction of the new Advanced Diplomas. The Government has very generously allowed extra funding for those schools doing this, according to Jim Knight:

"On funding, we are making a major investment in the capacity of schools and colleges to deliver Diplomas, with schools getting on average an extra £1,000 per pupil per year taking Diplomas at Key Stage 4."

Now, those not in education do not know that from September 2008, a new range of A-Levels are going to be launched, and as they have different syllabuses to the current A-Levels, most subjects will need new text-books with the appropriate subject content. How much extra money is the government making available for this change?

None.

One could say that the Government appears to be strongly against A-Levels, but wants to remain attractive to middle-class parents. The Government, with this move, has made it more financially attractive for a school to change to doing these diplomas rather than stick with the tried-and-trusted A-Levels. If the Government were serious about A-Levels, all the extra shortfall would have been plugged months ago. Asking schools to implement a new scheme on no extra money is madness, as to pinch the BBC's argument for an increased licence fee, cuts, albeit minor ones, may have to be made elsewhere to balance a department's budget. Undermining the system or what?

A Trip Abroad...

Last week I went to France with my family, and for those who know me, it will not be a surprise to learn that the principle mode of transport was the humble bicycle. But not a nice bike, with drop handlebars and well geared, but a "hybrid" bike which requires you to sit straight upright, and no matter how hard you pedal, you can never exceed 10 mph. After some (relatively) high speed jaunts around my place of residence it was very unusual. Although on the bright side, it meant that I could not go quicker than my sister, or my mother, more importantly.

But the journey involved the Eurostar, and we could feel suitably smug when T5 chaos occurred. If you recall, we were caught up in the terror alert a couple of years ago. After a small slip by my sister, the new Eurostar facility goes by the name "St. Pancreas" around us. Who cares, it was funny at the time.

I didn't realise that today the EU decided to harmonise farming smells across the Channel, but that's the way it goes. I would like to quote little sister who said it was "niffy" when she went to school (he he) this morning.

I may get back to sanity soon.

Drugs And The Possible Mayor Of London

Something has struck me about the London Mayoral race, apart from the fact that a Tory is ahead in the polls. And that is the drug record of the Lib Dem candidate, Brian Paddick:

As Lambeth borough commander Mr Paddick pioneered a controversial "softly softly" approach to cannabis possession - where the drug was confiscated but people were dealt with informally, not arrested.

He told the BBC that during that trial cannabis seizures rose 110% and said that it was a response to the particular problems of Lambeth at the time.

"I would not advocate going softly on drugs now, in any shape or form," he said.

I was thinking about the statistic with relation to cannabis seizures. The obvious implication is that going softly results in more cannabis being yielded to the police, obviously a good thing. But surely if an addict knows that the police will not arrest a cannabis posessor, then they are going to take more risks and carry it on their person more, knowing that there are no real consequences other than losing a small quantity of a costly substance. So instead of removing cannabis from the streets, the police could well have been increasing the amount of cannabis on the streets in the first place.

One cannot have an amnesty for drugs as one can for knives, for example, because drugs are short-term things. Removing cannabis one day will not result in less smokers next week, because stocks get replenished. If you like, it is a consumable commodity. For each knife handed in, unless the holder is rich and can buy another one immediately, that is one knife less on the streets next week.

So the lesson to be learned is (again) that statistics have many interpretations, and too many politicians enact a policy and then see a desired result, and then automatically see a causal link between the policy and the result. In this example, a soft approach led to more cannabis seizures. Yet there is always the possibility that this statistic was inflated by a more casual approach to cannabis posession among the addicted. So this statistic on its own tells us nothing about the success of Mr. Paddick's policy, which I believe to be flawed as what amounts to an amnesty on cannabis can never work in the long term to take people off the drug for good due to the fact that supplies of it are continuous.

How Much Do Local Councils Cost?

An awful lot, according to the Taxpayers Alliance:

6 people in town halls earn more than £200,000 a year, while 88 earn more than £150,000. 14 earn more than the Prime Minister (£188,849) whilst a staggering 132 earn more than a Cabinet Minister (£137,579).

After the Cabinet, where I worked out the millions of pounds that would be saved if extortionate salaries for Cabinet ministers were not followed through, I propose to do something similar for local councils.

Note that we are not talking about councillors, who get a part-time salary of nearly £8,000 a year in my locality. These people are the business leaders of the councils, who try and run the services as cheaply as possible. Which makes these salaries completely laughable. There is no right to assume that Chief Executives on local councils should be given salaries in excess of £100,000, as they are public servants, and the "comparable jobs in industry" argument does not wash, as the element of public service in the job is something that comparable jobs in industry do not provide. Taxpayers money should not be used to fund salaries that meet inflated City prices for CEOs.

According to the report:

The average total remuneration of the 818 people on the list is £120,938 per annum. This works out at over £2,300 a week.

If we assume that a "fair" salary cap would be £100,000 then we could save £20,938 for each person on the list, 0r £17,127,284 overall. Saving £17 million should be encouraged, although if we assume that there are 15m households in this country, it amounts to a council tax cut of just over £1 per household.

So getting rid of obscene council salaries, that are even worse than the Cabinet salaries I moaned about previously, would lower the tax demands of this country again. I think this is a good move.