Tories out!

Really,  that's the only conclusion that sane people can reach after reading Christopher Booker's latest in the Sunday Telegraph.

In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present.

Update on Aug 21, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Richard North reckons Booker has got his numbers wrong and the actual figure should be 40 times rather than 22.

Monckton to overthrow government..

...or something like that. Lord Monckton is apparently to be the new deputy leader of the UK Independence Party and politicalbetting.com is wondering if global warming sceptics will now all leave the Conservative Party.

Who's on the select committee?

Here's an introduction to the members of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, gleaned from Wiki pages, TheyWorkForYou and so on. For each member, I've given details of constituency, party, educational/professional background and details of their voting records on climate change issues.

The good news is that there are a reasonable number of people there with genuine scientific backgrounds, including a few PhDs and one full professor.  In terms of credentials I think this is probably a reasonable group of people to assess the questions that have been asked.

Overall they seem to be much more sceptical of global warming than one might have expected. Intriguingly the distribution of sceptics over the different parties is almost the opposite of what might have been expected, with the Conservatives all appearing to be vigorously green, while their Labour counterparts appear to be the ones who vote against climate change legislation. This could be a case of the Tories trying to establish their environmental credentials as mandated by their party leader, David Cameron.

Here's the list.

Phil Willis (Chairman) Harrogate and Knaresborough (LD). Degree in history and music. Former teacher. Has voted moderately for laws to stop climate change.

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods City of Durham (Lab). Sociologist. Has voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Mr Tim Boswell Daventry (C). Former farmer. Has voted very strongly for laws to stop climate change.

Mr Ian Cawsey Brigg and Goole (Lab). Background in IT. Has voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Mrs Nadine Dorries Mid Bedfordshire (C). Former nurse and businesswoman. Has voted strongly for laws to stop climate change.

Dr Evan Harris Oxford West & Abingdon (LD). Medicine. Voted very strongly for laws to stop climate change

Dr Brian Iddon Bolton South East (Lab). Professor of Chemistry. Voted for and against laws to stop climate change.

Mr Gordon Marsden Blackpool South (Lab). Former editor of History Today magazine. Voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Dr Doug Naysmith Bristol North West (Lab). PhD in Immunology. Voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Dr Bob Spink Castle Point (Ind). Electronic engineer. Voted strongly for laws to stop climate change.

Ian Stewart Eccles (Lab). Chemical plant operator. Has voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Graham Stringer Manchester, Blackley (Lab). Analytical chemist. Has voted strongly against laws to stop climate change. Has voted strongly against laws to stop climate change.

Dr Desmond Turner Brighton, Kemptown (Lab). PhD in biochemistry. Has voted moderately against laws to stop climate change.

Mr Rob Wilson Reading East (C). Small businessman. Has a commitment to "scientific evidence-based research into climate change". Has voted strongly for laws to stop climate change.

Is a vote for the Tories a wasted vote?

Eamonn Butler says the Tories look as though they are going to try to make government more efficient.

If Osborn hasn't even worked out that teaching a bureaucrat to be efficient is about as plausible as teaching a pig to sing, then we are in bigger trouble than even I had imagined.

Here's Hannan again

This time interviewed on Fox News in the US.

This seems like the first time anyone has put forward the free market solution to the banking crisis. That's a damning indictment of the Conservatives, and it's interesting to hear Hannan speak about the "two main parties" as if he were not a member of one of them.  This looks to me as if he is a Tory member in name only - his thinking is far more Whiggish or Libertarian and he confesses to being a Ron Paul fan too. How did someone like that ever get elected on a Conservative ticket?

Hannan's the man for all that

Everyone is posting this speech by Daniel Hannan - even the American blogs think it's great. Just in case one or two of you haven't seen it, it's well worth a look...

Update on Mar 26, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Hannan's speech has had half a million views on YouTube and still not a word of it in the British media. Funny that.

DK on Carswell

An important speech by Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP for Somewhereorother, is covered by DK (without swearing once!).

Once upon a time there was genuine scrutiny. Indeed, as some people may know, a war was once fought over the extent to which the House was able to vote to approve supply and Government moneys. However, this House has slowly but definitely lost its power to oversee how the Executive spend our money. The quango state, on which the PAC produces so many of its reports, is in effect beyond budgetary scrutiny. Retrospective audit on the PAC is pretty much all that is left.

Read the whole thing.

Transparent tax and spend

The Spectator blog wonders about George Osborn's idea to publish all government spending over £25,000 online and points to a site in the US state of Missouri which does just that.

It's a good idea, but you know what happen. The civil service will design a vastly over-complicated system that will be delivered years late and billions over-budget, will not do what anyone wants and will be impossible to use.

There's a better way. Most modern IT systems can publish reports direct to the web. All that needs to be done is to add a report-writing package (and maybe a data warehouse) accessible to the public onto the existing financial systems in each department.

Let's not overcomplicate things.

Tories vote for managerialism

The Conservatives have come up with their latest bright idea - a new, disciplined approach to public spending is revealed today,  with rapid response teams being planned, in order to put a stop to inappropriate spending and waste. In other words it is a managerialist's wet dream and is the kind of thing you would expect to be dreamt up by a wet-behind-the-ears Tory boy with no experience of the real world beyond his gilded cage. Since the author of the ideas is George Osborn and this is precisely what he is, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.

Thatcherism worked because it bypassed the civil service entirely by simply closing things down or selling them off. Osborn appears to be betting that he can avoid these kinds of unpleasantries but can still get the civil service to behave like rational people rather than like bureaucrats.

The odds that he can actually acheive that in practice must be very, very long.

The white powder plot

When I posted yesterday about the police visiting the office of Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, I hadn't picked up on what it was they were investigating. It seems that someone, maybe one of Mr K's constituents, had posted some white powder to a minister. The powder later turned out to be flour. At this point you might have expected the investigation to be dropped, there being no crime of "posting baking ingredients" to my knowledge, but our doughty protectors had the bit between their collective teeth and continued regardless. That's by the by.

However, perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. Today, Instapundit reports

THE WHITE POWDER MAILED TO THE WSJ WAS FLOUR. Apparently there have been other such mailings targeting “conservative commentators.”

So there appears to be an ongoing campaign of posting bakery ingredients to the great and the good, a veritable conspiracy in fact. Whatever can it mean?

Hello, what's all this...

According to El-Beeb, a Tory MP has complained that he was visited in his office by police demanding to see his correspondence.

Crooked Tories

The government backed down this afternoon on the idea of making MPs' expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

It looks like Gordon Brown had done a deal with some of the less salubrious Tory backbenchers to force the changes through, but was undone when Cameron made it a whipped vote against. Who was involved? I guess we'll find out when the expenses start to be published.

Update on Jan 21, 2009 by Bishop Hill

Update: The deal may have been done with Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the 1922 committee. That would mean that it was potentially the majority of the Tory troops.

Is Boris thick?

Sunny reckons that Boris Johnson doesn't "know his head from his arse". This is because he was apparently unaware of the whereabouts, or even sure of the existence of, a memorandum of understanding between London and central government. The memo turned out to be available on the Culture Department's website.

This strikes me as a bit odd.  I mean, the mayor's office presumably has civil servants working there. Why couldn't they tell Boris where to find a copy of the memo? Or didn't he ask? 

More to this than meets the eye, I would say.

David Davis resigns

The news that "Basher" Davis has resigned was a bit of a bolt from the blue wasn't it? Amazing to find someone acting on principle over something like this, although those of us who cheered on Davis in the Tory leadership contest are perhaps less surprised than others

What is now needed is for other MPs of principle to do the same thing - this will keep the pressure on the government as high as possible. John Redwood has applauded Davis's actions, and I've left a comment on his blog in which I ask whether he will follow suit. I wonder what the reaction will be? And what about the Labour rebels and the LibDems?

Update:

I've just written to Diane Abbott along the same lines.

Update:

Redwood says no. 

Tory dynasty

Apropos of my earlier comments on the Labour party's new found love for inherited privilege, it's also worth pointing out that the Tories are wondering whether to start a new political dynasty too although, perhaps unsurprisingly, they're going to do it in reverse.

Speaking to Cambridge University Conservatives tonight, Boris Johnson's father Stanley confirmed that he would put his name forward to succeed his son in Henley.

In the interests of party political balance, I should probably stick the boot in for this one too, but dynasties are rather the point of the Tories, aren't they?