Two Reasons why Conservatives offer better Value for Money

The title says it all.

Reason 1: Conservative Councils charge lower council tax than Labour or Lib Dem councils.

ConHome writes:

Analysis of the Council Tax figures has shown that Conservative Councils charge an average Council Tax of £1,144. For Labour it is £1,161 and the Lib Dems £1,231. This is based on Band D Council Tax.

This is also illustrated by this graphic:

This has been achieved despite:

a) Labour fiddling the funding formula in order to subsidise the less efficient Labour councils.
b) Many new Conservative councils having to raise council tax in order to pay off debts incurred by previous administrations.

Reason 2: Conservative MPs charge less on expenses

Guido has the averages worked out:

While this is in theory still far too much money, I see politics as being inherently imperfect. And as I am always prepared to tell people on the doorstep, the Conservative Party is the least imperfect option of them all.

In my mind these figures also neatly illustrate why voting for LibDems as a protest is always a bad idea. Not only do you get worse representation than with both Labour and Tories, you get more expensive representation as well.

John Redwood vs. Derek Draper

Some of the recent right-wing commentators have had some problems dealing with Labour spindoctor Derek Draper (see here)

So step up the big guy, the ultimate right-winger of the Conservative Party, John Redwood. Listen to him go head-to-head with Derek Draper (DOWNLOAD). (from the Nolan show on Saturday)

Transcript (best bits in bold):

Nolan: Derek Draper, the former New Labour spin-doctor, now a psychologist as well as a blogger with us tonight as well. Hello to you Derek.

Draper: Hello

Nolan: Lots of these leaders getting a good kicking today, thankfully not literally, by the critics who are saying “how on earth did they allow this to happen”, with up to 35,000 people on the street protesting against them today. Derek, what signal does that send out to those leaders?

Draper: Well, were the people really protesting against the G20? I don’t think so, I think they were protesting about the fact that the economy isn’t doing well and they want it to do better. The whole point is that that is what the G20 is designed to do. It’s designed to get the global economy moving. What does that matter? Because at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to protect jobs and allow people to keep their homes here in Britain.

Nolan: What a terrible job the G20 have done so far then.

Draper: Well, of course they haven’t done a terrible job so far, because they haven’t started yet. What you’re seeing so far is a series of meetings and negotiations and visits and Gordon flying round the world working like a dog to try and set up the situation where when all these world leaders arrive in Britain this week, they will actually be able to make some progress. There’s no magic wand, there’s no miracle cure. This is about really hard work, trying to get the world economy back on track.

Redwood: Why didn’t they take action earlier to tackle these things? I was calling for interest rate cuts over a year ago, when they might have had some kind of beneficial impact by now, why were they so slow, why were they asleep at the wheel?

Draper: There’s been a series of interest rate cuts…
Redwood: Yes, but far too late.
Draper: …I know, but listen. You’re talking as if we’re still in the old world. The fact is that because of the American banking collapse, especially Lehmann brothers, we have a knock-on effect around the world. And that’s something noone was prepared for…

Redwood: Northern Rock was a British bank lending money to British people under a British regulator and they got it comprehensively wrong. And they were warned by people like me not to get it wrong.

Draper: Yeah, well, the British banks, I’m not saying the British banks were perfect. What I’m saying is that the great shock to the system came from America. Now, what Gordon Brown’s been trying to do is to deal with that. And the British banks that are acting personally, I think that people were losing their deposits, losing their money, their life savings they have in Northern Rock and indeed Lloyds TSB, that didn’t happen…

Redwood: But why did the British government allow these mega mergers, creating these massive banks with these huge bonuses that then lost so much money and came with a begging bowl to the state?

Draper: Well, because at the time people felt that bigger…might be better. People thought that there was a strong financial system around the world that would keep these banks going, now we now know that there were actually hidden problems with these banks, especially Northern Rock, but it was in America where these banks had done these subprime mortgages, that was where the real flaw in the system was…

Redwood: But we did subprime mortgages over here as well, Derek. Get real, that’s why people are so angry. Labour have been so complacent about this.

Draper: Well let’s not get party political, because it’s not as if the Conservative Party had been standing up and saying let’s have smaller banks and more regulation…
Redwood: It’s exactly what I was saying in my report a couple of years ago Derek, if you bothered to read it.
Draper: …the Conservative party has called for less regulation.

Redwood: We were calling for tighter regulation for cash and capital which were the things that went wrong. You introduced all this petty mortgage regulation which didn’t stop anything…
Draper: The notion that the Conservative Party were in favour of little details here and there…
Redwood: Try reading the report, Derek, it was crystal clear. We said that your broken Bank of England wouldn’t manage to sort things out.

Nolan: Surely if you listened to yourself tonight, Derek, you would thing that Labour weren’t in power while all of this happened? You’ve been in power for a long time and you’re blaming America.

Draper: Look, the fact is, that however much people try to make party political points about it, voters at home can see on their television screens, that this is a problem that is affecting America, Japan, Iceland, Germany, France, all countries around the world. So voters come to the conclusion that actually this is not in any way something that can be laid at Gordon Brown’s door. The fact is that this is a global problem that started in America, and that Gordon Brown has actually been doing a very good job. People accept this all around the world, from President Obama down, it’s not about apportioning blame, it’s about doing something about it and moving forward.

Nolan: So help me understand this about the G20 summit, Derek. What criteria can we use, as members of the public, to determine whether this meeting has been a success or not?

Draper: Well, the criteria will be, have these countries come together, set forward a path to increase the global regulation of banks more effectively, maybe coordinate their economies a little bit better, maybe refocus things a bit more onto those bread and butter issues about homes and jobs that people care about…but that’s a hard thing to do. It’s a bit like herding cats. But I must say that I’m really glad, and this is not just a party political point, I’m really glad that Gordon, the man who has actually got experience of the financial system and who has the contacts and knowledge to make this happen, is in charge of this rather than a bunch of lightweights like David Cameron and George Osborne.

Redwood: But look, this is the man who has presided over the collapse of four major British banks, something that’s never happened in…
Draper: Collapse?
Redwood: …before under any other government.
Draper: This is the man who has presided over the prevention of the collapse of those banks, don’t be so ridiculous.

Redwood: Well he was the chief regulator of them, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer running a tripartite regulatory system…
Draper: Of course he wasn’t the regulator, the regulation was at arm’s length.
Redwood: ….Derek you have to let me speak occasionally. He was the tripartite head, he put in a new regulatory system, and for the first time in British history five major banks got into serious trouble, because the new regulation didn’t work.

Draper: And you really think that that’s because of the regulatory system, do you?

Redwood: Yes, of course it was. Because they didn’t control the cash and capital…
Draper: Really?
Redwood: …they allowed the banks to borrow and lend…
Draper: You don’t think that perhaps…
Nolan: Hang on, hang on, let him finish!
Redwood: …huge amounts of money in a way in which we didn’t allow them to do.

Draper: We…you didn’t the Conservatives?

Redwood: We kept much tighter control over them in the 80s and 90s and…
Draper: Did you?
Redwood: …and they didn’t go bust on our watch…
Draper: I thought you were in charge of the big bang in the city of London, I thought you were in charge of this massive booming financial system? Look, the rest….
Redwood: We stopped the banks borrowing and lending on the scale they did in the last 10 years…
Draper: You’re interrupting me now. The idea, that the Conservatives were in favour, during this time, of more regulation, of more caution, of less remuneration of the city, is frankly fantastical. It just doesn’t bear a moment’s scrutiny.

Redwood: Well Derek you should read Hansard, you should read the reports we raised…
Nolan: Ok
Draper: Your report said there should be less regulation of the mortgage industry.

Redwood: It said there should be tougher regulation of cash and capital and that the process regulation of mortgages…
Draper: What did it say about mortgages…
Redwood: DEREK LISTEN for a minute, it said that the process regulation of mortgages wouldn’t work, never has there been so much regulation of mortgages, and never has there been such a mess. What we said was that you need to regulate cash and capital which is what would have controlled the banks, which is what we did in the 80s and 90s, which is why they didn’t go bust on our watch.

Draper: Did it say that there should be less or more regulation of the mortgage market?

Redwood: It said there should be less regulation, but that you should regulate the thing that matters, the thing that stops banks going bust. This is a bank going bust problem, Derek, not a mortgage process problem.

Nolan: OK, thanks very much

Verdict: John Redwood succeeded where Guido failed and made Derek Draper look like the overspun and overpromoted fool that he is. His childish attempt to make John Redwood admit that he would have “deregulated the mortgage market” was met with an instant riposte. It showed quite clearly just how shallow the Labour line on the economy is, and that when faced with a serious commentator such as John Redwood they lose any credibility they might still retain.

I also enjoyed Redwood telling Draper to shut up, that’s twice he’s been bashed live on air now.

The press have (finally) caught up

So I posted about government advertising a couple of weeks back?

Well, the Telegraph has started to notice that obscene amounts of money are being wasted.

Messages from the state were relayed to the population via television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines and billboards on more than 3.7 million occasions during 2008, according to new research by media analysts at The Nielsen Company.

Which, of course, is outrageous.

So what would we do?

The Conservatives … have set out plans to slash the government’s marketing budget by £250 million to help pay for a freeze in council tax

So next time the government accuses us of getting our priorities wrong, perhaps this is one thing to be flung in their faces….

Here’s some more Marxism

One more bonkers than the other.

The first one is fairly acceptable actually. It’s not going to change anybody’s mind, but I don’t think it’s that bad a line.

Socialists against protectionism?

I wasn’t aware that Socialists were now in favour of free trade, but fine. If they’ve now decided to change their tack and follow us into the eminently sensible position of letting the markets deal with trade I’m not about to criticise them for that.

The second one is slightly more contentious:

But Socialism never worked?

I’m not so sure.

The standard response to this is to ask the Socialists if they can point to a single Socialist regime in the world that has at any point in history achieved a higher standard of living for its people than the standard of living enjoyed by people living in capitalist countries. The answer of course is that Socialism has never provided adequately for the poorest in society while in capitalist countries even the poorest enjoy luxuries such as clean water, electricity, safe food and a home to live in.

In Socialist countries people have lived miserable lives, exploited by the leaders who told them that they would bring them prosperity and equality. Under capitalism even the poorest person has the chance to change their lives, to rise, and to do so while being assured of a basic security should anything go wrong. Ideally anyone born into the roughest council estate should be able to become rich, while anyone born to a millionaire should be able to fall and take the consequences of bad decisions.

That this does not happen and that social mobility has declined under Labour shows precisely why we can’t rely on Labour and the Left to fix our social problems.

Dan Hannan speaks his mind

If I didn’t post this here I wouldn’t be doing my job properly.

A look in the mirror might do some good to some people

by Will Stobart

I do enjoy checking the mirror online occasionally, if only for Kevin Maguire’s blog and the comments on it. All of the comments on his blog are either attacking him or the Labour party which leads me to two possible conclusions:

1. The Mirror readership is now made up of Conservatives who use the comments feature to have a go at the Gordon Brown’s only remaining supporter.

2. The Labour supporters haven’t yet figured out how to leave a comment.

What do 5.764 Million people actually do?

Continuing the recent theme on waste, I thought I’d add my tuppence worth on a recent article on ConservativeHome. But while my last post was about relatively small amounts of money, this one is concerned with one of Labour’s biggest wastes of all. You may be wondering what the 5.764 Million people in the title are. Well, it’s the amount of people currently employed in the public sector.

While you try to digest that fact, consider that only about 60% of the UK’s 60 Million people make up the working age population. 60% of 60 Million is 36 Million. Take away the various people out of work and only about 29 Million people in this country of 60 Million actually work. One in every two of us.

Now let’s get back to the 5 Million people in the public sector. What does this mean for our working population? Well, it means that one in every six of us who works is now employed in the public sector, while only around 40% of people are now employed in the ‘wealth-creating’ sector. Is that right? I’ll leave it to you to make up your mind on that.

My concern is that there have been far too many new public sector jobs (half a Million) created since Labour came to power. These jobs on the whole do not contribute to the wellbeing of the economy, and mean higher taxes, while reducing spending on other vital services now and in the future. Civil servants are automatically entitled to a pension when they retire, something that workers in the private sector often have to save up for separately. These pensions mean that we, the taxpayers will have to continue paying for these civil servants until long after they are gone.

And this mess continues to roll on until we now have a higher median pay in the public than in the private sector. Another “Community Policy Manager” for you sir? There you go, another 50,000 a year down the drain. It’s time for change.

What does James Purnell actually do?

Quote from yesterday’s BBC Politics show.

“My job is not to predict unemployment increases.”
-James Purnell

So what is your job Mr. Purnell, pulling faces?

Labour never tires of wasting our money

Walking round Manchester at the moment there’s one thing that seems to be more and more prevalent. The deeper the economic crisis has got, the more the advertisements on bus stops and billboards seem to be promoting the public rather than the private sector. These range from the DWP’s “We’re closing in one benefit fraud” to some inane suggestions over how I should lead my life.

Is this the right use of Public Money?

Now I don’t have any health issues, nor am I overweight, but I do find these governmental “suggestions” over how I should lead my life not only silly but also offensive. Offensive in their wastefulness. Now according to what I could find on the net, it costs 120 Pounds a month to advertise on a bus stop. And I can count several of these advertisements when walking down Oxford Road. Goodness knows how much the cost adds up to in Manchester, let alone in the UK.

How much does it cost the Department of BERR to have these on every street corner?

We should also consider whether these are particularly effective or useful in the message they seek to convey. The two examples above are the two “types” of ad that have been annoying me most, because it seems like a lot of money to pay for an advertisement that in the first case won’t convince anyone to change their habits and in the second case is targeted at such a minority of the population that it hardly warrants such a massive roll-out.

It’s one of the many examples of waste in government. Civil servants and ministers are always eager to make sure they are seen to be doing something, but it is hardly ever well thought through. In an age where we are seemingly spending Billions on banks every day it might seem trivial to highlight something such as this, but small costs stack up to become big costs. And it is these big costs that it will take our generation a decade or more to work off.