Tasers on Stun
Camilla Cavendish wrote an excellent article in The Sunday Times on the significance of Theresa May's visit to the Police Federation conference last week describing it as a 'shock and awe performance'.
In the process she made some very telling points about the Met Police disciplinary process which has moved at the speed of a glacier, taking 18 months to investigate an incident that lasted a minute and has resulted in four police officers being sacked for gross misconduct - yet the evidence from those hearings has not been made public even though there appears to be prima facie case that the individuals concerned were part of an organised conspiracy.
Sharpen up, constable, or prepare for another shock from Taser May
Camilla Cavendish - The Sunday Times
In the process she made some very telling points about the Met Police disciplinary process which has moved at the speed of a glacier, taking 18 months to investigate an incident that lasted a minute and has resulted in four police officers being sacked for gross misconduct - yet the evidence from those hearings has not been made public even though there appears to be prima facie case that the individuals concerned were part of an organised conspiracy.
Sharpen up, constable, or prepare for another shock from Taser May
Camilla Cavendish - The Sunday Times
Theresa May’s speech to the Police Federation last week was an electrifying moment in British politics. She has done what none of her predecessors dared to do: call time on the union’s closed shop. Only a year before a general election she has risked out-and-out confrontation with a force that was once Margaret Thatcher’s thin blue line.
Listening to federation representatives the morning after who were complaining about how upset they were to be lectured by this lady in a suit, I wondered how they imagined other home secretaries have felt being booed or heckled by the police union. Labour’s John Reid and Jack Straw were booed. May was heard in stunned silence, for her message was clear: change, or else. After she departed, union leaders convened an emergency meeting. Members then voted to adopt all 36 recommendations of the independent Normington review, which she had threatened otherwise to impose on them.
The charge sheet is devastating. In a headmistressy tone of grim disappointment, she read out the failings that have rocked public confidence. The list went on and on. From Stephen Lawrence, to taking backhanders from journalists, to allegations about fiddled crime statistics, to stop and search, to the first sacking of a chief constable for gross misconduct in modern times: it was unanswerable.
“It would be the easiest thing in the world,” said May, “for me to turn a blind eye to these matters. To deny the need for change. But it would also be the wrong thing to do ... because... I want the police to be the best you can be.”
Many officers have laughed hollowly at that. With May dissing their leaders they feel she has attacked the thousands of brave officers who act with integrity to protect us. But this is why the police are Britain’s least reformed public service: politicians have been loath to challenge them. Labour made grumpy noises but feared being labelled soft on crime.
The morning after May’s shock and awe performance, Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester, said in measured tones that he agreed with “a lot of what the home secretary said”. He thought reform and a “professional ethic” were needed. He was speaking in the long-term interest of the rank and file. The officers who risk their lives every day have been let down by their leadership and by a union that has brought them into disrepute, while charging them £22 a month for the privilege.
May has ended almost 100 years of truce by stopping public funding for the federation and making it an opt-in organisation. It was created after the police had to be bribed out of striking at the end of the First World War. It won the right to represent all officers in pay discussions in return for a no-strike deal. Tearing up that deal is a risk (and a recent European ruling suggests that no-strike deals for police forces may in fact be illegal). It also marks a profound change in the relationship between the police and the Conservative party, which under Thatcher rewarded the force for its work in the miners’ strike and against the IRA.
The trigger was Plebgate. Andrew Mitchell looks increasingly like a modern-day Dreyfus, with May his Colonel Picquart. The former Tory chief whip is being sued for libel by Toby Rowland, the Downing Street officer who accused Mitchell of calling him a “f****** pleb” — and Mitchell says he may have to sell his house to fund the case. Rowland’s costs are being paid by the Police Federation, presumably out of the vast opaque reserves that May will now force it to declare openly, following a scathing report by MPs. Meanwhile, the Met’s internal hearings have just crawled to an end, 18 months after an incident that lasted a minute — and none of the evidence from those hearings has been published.
The hounding of Mitchell and his bicycle was the last straw for Tories who had not felt the police were “one of us” for a long time. By 2010 reforming Tories arriving in government retained a Thatcherite commitment to law and order, but didn’t feel that the police were sacrosanct. As a slew of failures came to light and public confidence dropped, it felt as though the responsible course was to challenge the culture on the public’s behalf, not to worry that reforms might dent public trust.
May has consistently sided with the victims of crime over the vested interests of the bureaucracy. She has expressed repeated concern that too many young black men are stopped and searched and that this is damaging community relations. She has opened an inquiry into corruption in the Lawrence case. She has argued that domestic violence must be taken more seriously, after HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that most forces treat it as “a poor relation” to other activity.
Yet the police have resisted. The Met commissioner has echoed concern about stop and search, but done too little. The police resented elected crime commissioners and saw the moves to tie pay more closely to performance as a hostile act. Some may have assumed they would be saved, because budget cuts of 23% would set off a crime wave. But the predicted crime wave has not materialised, partly because of the professionalism of officers on the ground and partly because of an unexplained trend of falling crime in many countries.
May has now put the writing on the wall: if you will not change, we will change you. She has threatened to take control of stop and search, as well as federation matters. While it is deeply uncomfortable for a government to interfere in policing to this extent, it was one of Robert Peel’s principles that the power of the police should derive from public approval. It would be infinitely preferable if the decent majority, people such as Fahy, would drive reform from within. By making it clear that doing nothing is not an option, the home secretary may have made this possible.
May has won round one — taking on the Police Federation. It is not yet clear what her vision is for round two — changing the culture more broadly. Even her supporters do not credit her with the “vision thing” which is why, despite some eager predictions, she is very unlikely to be leader.
Happy to lapse into silence rather than give anything away about herself, she does not inspire warmth. For a politician of such heft, she is surprisingly colourless: watching her speech felt like a return to the days before Technicolor.
I admire her indifference to journalists, however, and her preference for getting the job done rather than gladhanding people at parties. She was the only one of six home secretaries to fly to Jordan and secure a deal to deport Abu Qatada. She is now one of the longest serving home secretaries of modern times — and one of the bravest.
Listening to federation representatives the morning after who were complaining about how upset they were to be lectured by this lady in a suit, I wondered how they imagined other home secretaries have felt being booed or heckled by the police union. Labour’s John Reid and Jack Straw were booed. May was heard in stunned silence, for her message was clear: change, or else. After she departed, union leaders convened an emergency meeting. Members then voted to adopt all 36 recommendations of the independent Normington review, which she had threatened otherwise to impose on them.
The charge sheet is devastating. In a headmistressy tone of grim disappointment, she read out the failings that have rocked public confidence. The list went on and on. From Stephen Lawrence, to taking backhanders from journalists, to allegations about fiddled crime statistics, to stop and search, to the first sacking of a chief constable for gross misconduct in modern times: it was unanswerable.
“It would be the easiest thing in the world,” said May, “for me to turn a blind eye to these matters. To deny the need for change. But it would also be the wrong thing to do ... because... I want the police to be the best you can be.”
Many officers have laughed hollowly at that. With May dissing their leaders they feel she has attacked the thousands of brave officers who act with integrity to protect us. But this is why the police are Britain’s least reformed public service: politicians have been loath to challenge them. Labour made grumpy noises but feared being labelled soft on crime.
The morning after May’s shock and awe performance, Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester, said in measured tones that he agreed with “a lot of what the home secretary said”. He thought reform and a “professional ethic” were needed. He was speaking in the long-term interest of the rank and file. The officers who risk their lives every day have been let down by their leadership and by a union that has brought them into disrepute, while charging them £22 a month for the privilege.
May has ended almost 100 years of truce by stopping public funding for the federation and making it an opt-in organisation. It was created after the police had to be bribed out of striking at the end of the First World War. It won the right to represent all officers in pay discussions in return for a no-strike deal. Tearing up that deal is a risk (and a recent European ruling suggests that no-strike deals for police forces may in fact be illegal). It also marks a profound change in the relationship between the police and the Conservative party, which under Thatcher rewarded the force for its work in the miners’ strike and against the IRA.
The trigger was Plebgate. Andrew Mitchell looks increasingly like a modern-day Dreyfus, with May his Colonel Picquart. The former Tory chief whip is being sued for libel by Toby Rowland, the Downing Street officer who accused Mitchell of calling him a “f****** pleb” — and Mitchell says he may have to sell his house to fund the case. Rowland’s costs are being paid by the Police Federation, presumably out of the vast opaque reserves that May will now force it to declare openly, following a scathing report by MPs. Meanwhile, the Met’s internal hearings have just crawled to an end, 18 months after an incident that lasted a minute — and none of the evidence from those hearings has been published.
The hounding of Mitchell and his bicycle was the last straw for Tories who had not felt the police were “one of us” for a long time. By 2010 reforming Tories arriving in government retained a Thatcherite commitment to law and order, but didn’t feel that the police were sacrosanct. As a slew of failures came to light and public confidence dropped, it felt as though the responsible course was to challenge the culture on the public’s behalf, not to worry that reforms might dent public trust.
May has consistently sided with the victims of crime over the vested interests of the bureaucracy. She has expressed repeated concern that too many young black men are stopped and searched and that this is damaging community relations. She has opened an inquiry into corruption in the Lawrence case. She has argued that domestic violence must be taken more seriously, after HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found that most forces treat it as “a poor relation” to other activity.
Yet the police have resisted. The Met commissioner has echoed concern about stop and search, but done too little. The police resented elected crime commissioners and saw the moves to tie pay more closely to performance as a hostile act. Some may have assumed they would be saved, because budget cuts of 23% would set off a crime wave. But the predicted crime wave has not materialised, partly because of the professionalism of officers on the ground and partly because of an unexplained trend of falling crime in many countries.
May has now put the writing on the wall: if you will not change, we will change you. She has threatened to take control of stop and search, as well as federation matters. While it is deeply uncomfortable for a government to interfere in policing to this extent, it was one of Robert Peel’s principles that the power of the police should derive from public approval. It would be infinitely preferable if the decent majority, people such as Fahy, would drive reform from within. By making it clear that doing nothing is not an option, the home secretary may have made this possible.
May has won round one — taking on the Police Federation. It is not yet clear what her vision is for round two — changing the culture more broadly. Even her supporters do not credit her with the “vision thing” which is why, despite some eager predictions, she is very unlikely to be leader.
Happy to lapse into silence rather than give anything away about herself, she does not inspire warmth. For a politician of such heft, she is surprisingly colourless: watching her speech felt like a return to the days before Technicolor.
I admire her indifference to journalists, however, and her preference for getting the job done rather than gladhanding people at parties. She was the only one of six home secretaries to fly to Jordan and secure a deal to deport Abu Qatada. She is now one of the longest serving home secretaries of modern times — and one of the bravest.
The Goldilocks Effect - 27 May 2014
Here's an excellent article from Matt Ridley in The Times along with the cartoon he refers to at the end of the piece depicting the British soldier raging defiantly against the Nazi war machine which had just conquered France.
The Goldilocks effect tells us we are all alone
By Matt Ridley - The Times
How can intelligent life exist only on Earth? Because a series of lucky breaks has made us the planet that is just right
We may be unique and alone in the Universe, not because we are special but because we are lucky. By “we”, I mean not just the human race, but intelligent life itself. A fascinating book published last week has changed my mind about this mighty question, and I would like to change yours. The key argument concerns the Moon, which makes it an appropriate topic for a bank holiday Moonday.
David Waltham, of Royal Holloway, University of London, is the author of the very readable Lucky Planet, which argues that the Earth is probably rare, perhaps even unique, as planets go. He is also a self-confessed “moon bore” who has made important discoveries about how the Moon formed.
Ever since Copernicus, the “mediocrity principle” has been scientific orthodoxy: that our planet is not the centre of the Universe; it’s just one of (as we now estimate) a thousand billion billion spherical objects of similar size orbiting fiery suns just like ours.
But in that case, as the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, where is everybody? Why no faint radio messages from our distant neighbours in space? There should be enormous numbers of planets that have been around for longer than us, long enough surely to get to the point of transmitting some interstellar Muzak. Yet not a peep.
Dr Waltham points out that planets where life fails to survive cannot give rise to sentient life forms, so we are bound to find ourselves on one that has managed to be just right. Precisely because we are afflicted with this severe case of observational bias, the mediocrity principle need not follow. We can be misled by what we can see around us into thinking our case is typical, when actually it might be almost impossibly rare. We might be neither special nor commonplace, just lucky.
And indeed, there does seem to be a long string of coincidences behind our existence. The pressure of anti-gravity in our universe happens to be very, very small — not quite big enough to blow the Universe apart before stars could form. Phew. The relative strength of nuclear and electrical forces is just right to allow carbon to be one of the commonest elements, and carbon’s capacity to form lots of bonds is crucial to life. Cheers. The strength of molecular bonds is just right to allow chemistry to happen at our distance from the Sun. Hooray.
Then there’s the climate. Although there were probably at least four times when the Earth came close to freezing altogether or overheating irreversibly, it somehow recovered each time, unlike on Venus or Mars, and for the last half billion years the weather has been astonishingly benign. Periodic catastrophes, caused by volcanoes or meteorites, have set the evolution of life back, but not often enough to prevent intelligence emerging eventually: another stroke of luck.
Spookily, the slow waxing of our Sun’s strength over four billion years should have produced a ten-degree rise in average temperature, but it has not because it has been almost precisely matched by a slow decline in our greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide became progressively scarcer. This has kept the temperature in a small range for a very long time — long enough once again to allow the emergence of intelligent life. (The recent uptick in carbon dioxide levels as a result of fossil fuel burning is still small in comparison.)
Waltham posits three possible explanations for these great strokes of good fortune: God, Gaia and Goldilocks. God does not show His workings; Gaia says living things themselves somehow unwittingly control the thermostat; and Goldilocks says it’s just an almighty fluke that we’ve managed to keep things neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.
This is where the Moon comes in and delivers the verdict decisively to Goldilocks. It is most unusual for a small planet to have such a huge moon — almost a double planet. It probably came about after a collision between two planets, a chunk of the larger one being ejected into space, where it first formed rings like Saturn’s, but these then coalesced into a big satellite.
At that point the Moon was only about 20,000 miles away, or one tenth the distance it is now. Our day was five hours long. The ocean’s tides, caused by attraction of the Moon, themselves slowed down the Earth’s rotation and caused the Moon to move steadily outwards.
All this was a stroke of luck because the Moon stabilised the rate and angle of our spinning such that we got a fairly long day and regular seasons to keep warming the poles and preventing the irreversible growth of ice. What Waltham has discovered, however, is that this was an even bigger lucky strike than we used to think.
Had the Earth’s day been a few minutes longer just after the collision, or the Moon’s diameter a few miles greater, then the Earth would have had an unstable spin and life would have been repeatedly wiped out by chaotic climate change. If the day had been shorter or the Moon smaller, then we would have had more and longer ice ages, because too little heat would have reached the poles through air currents.
Very few planets indeed could have collided with an object the right size to produce such a moon and even fewer of them would have ended up with a Goldilocks moon that was just the right size. Since life cannot control the Moon’s orbit, Gaia cannot explain this piece of luck. The Moon therefore shows decisively just how hard it will be to find another planet of sufficiently stable climate to spawn life that could last long enough to develop intelligence.
Waltham has persuaded me that we are “perhaps the luckiest planet in the visible universe”, the only one among billions of billions to have thrown six after six whenever the dice were rolled. Whichever planet achieved this would have thinking beings on it who would think they were special, whereas really they were just lucky. And they would be alone, or very nearly so.
The moral? Remember the famous David Low cartoon from after the fall of France in 1940, showing a defiant Tommy on a sea-lashed rock, with the message: “Very well, alone.”
How can intelligent life exist only on Earth? Because a series of lucky breaks has made us the planet that is just right
We may be unique and alone in the Universe, not because we are special but because we are lucky. By “we”, I mean not just the human race, but intelligent life itself. A fascinating book published last week has changed my mind about this mighty question, and I would like to change yours. The key argument concerns the Moon, which makes it an appropriate topic for a bank holiday Moonday.
David Waltham, of Royal Holloway, University of London, is the author of the very readable Lucky Planet, which argues that the Earth is probably rare, perhaps even unique, as planets go. He is also a self-confessed “moon bore” who has made important discoveries about how the Moon formed.
Ever since Copernicus, the “mediocrity principle” has been scientific orthodoxy: that our planet is not the centre of the Universe; it’s just one of (as we now estimate) a thousand billion billion spherical objects of similar size orbiting fiery suns just like ours.
But in that case, as the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, where is everybody? Why no faint radio messages from our distant neighbours in space? There should be enormous numbers of planets that have been around for longer than us, long enough surely to get to the point of transmitting some interstellar Muzak. Yet not a peep.
Dr Waltham points out that planets where life fails to survive cannot give rise to sentient life forms, so we are bound to find ourselves on one that has managed to be just right. Precisely because we are afflicted with this severe case of observational bias, the mediocrity principle need not follow. We can be misled by what we can see around us into thinking our case is typical, when actually it might be almost impossibly rare. We might be neither special nor commonplace, just lucky.
And indeed, there does seem to be a long string of coincidences behind our existence. The pressure of anti-gravity in our universe happens to be very, very small — not quite big enough to blow the Universe apart before stars could form. Phew. The relative strength of nuclear and electrical forces is just right to allow carbon to be one of the commonest elements, and carbon’s capacity to form lots of bonds is crucial to life. Cheers. The strength of molecular bonds is just right to allow chemistry to happen at our distance from the Sun. Hooray.
Then there’s the climate. Although there were probably at least four times when the Earth came close to freezing altogether or overheating irreversibly, it somehow recovered each time, unlike on Venus or Mars, and for the last half billion years the weather has been astonishingly benign. Periodic catastrophes, caused by volcanoes or meteorites, have set the evolution of life back, but not often enough to prevent intelligence emerging eventually: another stroke of luck.
Spookily, the slow waxing of our Sun’s strength over four billion years should have produced a ten-degree rise in average temperature, but it has not because it has been almost precisely matched by a slow decline in our greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide became progressively scarcer. This has kept the temperature in a small range for a very long time — long enough once again to allow the emergence of intelligent life. (The recent uptick in carbon dioxide levels as a result of fossil fuel burning is still small in comparison.)
Waltham posits three possible explanations for these great strokes of good fortune: God, Gaia and Goldilocks. God does not show His workings; Gaia says living things themselves somehow unwittingly control the thermostat; and Goldilocks says it’s just an almighty fluke that we’ve managed to keep things neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.
This is where the Moon comes in and delivers the verdict decisively to Goldilocks. It is most unusual for a small planet to have such a huge moon — almost a double planet. It probably came about after a collision between two planets, a chunk of the larger one being ejected into space, where it first formed rings like Saturn’s, but these then coalesced into a big satellite.
At that point the Moon was only about 20,000 miles away, or one tenth the distance it is now. Our day was five hours long. The ocean’s tides, caused by attraction of the Moon, themselves slowed down the Earth’s rotation and caused the Moon to move steadily outwards.
All this was a stroke of luck because the Moon stabilised the rate and angle of our spinning such that we got a fairly long day and regular seasons to keep warming the poles and preventing the irreversible growth of ice. What Waltham has discovered, however, is that this was an even bigger lucky strike than we used to think.
Had the Earth’s day been a few minutes longer just after the collision, or the Moon’s diameter a few miles greater, then the Earth would have had an unstable spin and life would have been repeatedly wiped out by chaotic climate change. If the day had been shorter or the Moon smaller, then we would have had more and longer ice ages, because too little heat would have reached the poles through air currents.
Very few planets indeed could have collided with an object the right size to produce such a moon and even fewer of them would have ended up with a Goldilocks moon that was just the right size. Since life cannot control the Moon’s orbit, Gaia cannot explain this piece of luck. The Moon therefore shows decisively just how hard it will be to find another planet of sufficiently stable climate to spawn life that could last long enough to develop intelligence.
Waltham has persuaded me that we are “perhaps the luckiest planet in the visible universe”, the only one among billions of billions to have thrown six after six whenever the dice were rolled. Whichever planet achieved this would have thinking beings on it who would think they were special, whereas really they were just lucky. And they would be alone, or very nearly so.
The moral? Remember the famous David Low cartoon from after the fall of France in 1940, showing a defiant Tommy on a sea-lashed rock, with the message: “Very well, alone.”
Ducking the Issue - 27 May 2014
The outcome of the investigation into Maria Miller's expenses resulted in the former culture secretary resigning her position as a Government Minister, but was otherwise depressingly predictable with the usual 'bunfight' in the House of Commons and the main political parties blame each other for not doing more - while failing to realise the extent to which the Westminster Parliament is now held in contempt.
The same cannot be said of the Scottish Parliament, however, because since its creation in 1999 MSPs of all parties have behaved with a degree of integrity that is missing at Westminster although Holyrood did have the advantage of starting with a relatively clean slate.
So Holyrood never had its own version of the MPs' expenses scandal at Westminster and as the Scottish Parliament does not have a second revising chamber, Scotland has no need for the insult to democracy that is the House of Lords.
But the Scottish Parliament has achieved things that seem beyond the reach of Westminster - first and foremost the Scottish Parliament is based on a form of proportional representation (PR) and does, therefore, reflect the broad views of the Scottish people.
Secondly, the Scottish Parliament can face up to the need for change in the sense that the second Scottish Coalition Government (2003-2007), a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition, agreed to introduce PR for Scottish council elections - which has changed the face of Scottish local government.
Yet at Westminster we still have First Past The Post (FPTP) for general elections and nosing of PR for local elections which means that political institutions south of the border are very unrepresentative of the public mood, and so UKIP cashes in on Westminster's tin ear.
Going back to MPs' expenses and the Maria Miller affair, Labour just wants to blame the Tories and the Tories want to do the same to Labour - yet they both have skeletons in their closet which neither party wants to come tumbling out into the open.
But for the life of me I can't see how either Sir Paul Beresford (Tory) or Gordon Brown (Labour) can be regarded as acting properly when they do not operate as full-time Westminster MPs - yet their respective parties pretend it's not going on and never say a word.
More Moonlighting MPs (20 January 2011)
The Daily Telegraph continues to perform a great public service - by exposing the strange behaviour of some Westminster MPs.
The latest example is Sir Paul Beresford - a high profile Tory MP this time - who works three days a week as a dentist would you believe - whilst being paid a public salary of £64,766 a year to represent the good citizens of Mole Valley in Surrey.
Here's an extract of what The Telegraph had to say about the antics of this particular MP:
"Sir Paul Beresford, a Conservative MP who works up to three days a week as a dentist, designated his west London property, which includes his surgery, as his second home on his parliamentary allowances.
Sir Paul, who was named last year as the 34th most “influential” dentist in the country, worked out a deal with the House of Commons fees office whereby he put three quarters of the running costs of the property on the taxpayer.
The MP for Mole Valley in Surrey, who served as an environment minister under John Major for three years while retaining his successful dental practice, insisted that the arrangement was cheaper for the taxpayer.
But the understanding with the fees office is certain to raise further questions about the lax policing of MPs’ expenses, after it emerged that officials did not visit the surgery to assess Sir Paul’s designation of his property, or ask to see floor plans.
Before his election to Parliament in 1992, the property — two floors of a Georgian town house above a hairdressing salon in Putney, south-west London — was registered with the local council as 50 per cent residential and 50 per cent business.
He had set up two surgeries within the flat, which were served by three dentists.
On becoming an MP, Sir Paul said the fees office suggested that he purchase a second home but he decided instead to reduce his practice and go part-time.
As the council and some utility companies charged him separate business rates, he said he decided that “roughly” three-quarters of the costs of the flat were related to his parliamentary duties and so should be borne by the taxpayer.
This included mortgage interest payments of £350 a month, ground rent and other bills.
Sir Paul said that, at this stage, he had only one surgery and no associates, and that the patient waiting room doubled as his private lounge in the evenings. However, it appeared that his assessment was not independently scrutinised by officials.
The MP decided to increase his practice in 2007 and took on a larger share of the running costs, putting 50 per cent on the taxpayer.
Last year, he began to convert the surgery back to its original state, and stopped claiming second home allowances altogether. He said he would not claim again in future. The Putney practice bears a gold plaque reading: “Sir Paul Beresford, Derrick Donald and associates dental surgery.”Now Sir Paul Beresford is not the only backbench MP to have other paid interests outside of his day job - there are many others whose activities don't bear much scrutiny - both now and in the past.
The important point to be made is that being an MP is supposed to be a full-time job - otherwise it would not receive a full-time salary.
So it seems perfecly reasonable that MPs should be prevented from taking on additional paid work - what do you think MPs would say if a senior civil servant said he was taking up a part-time and demanding job as dentist?
The latest example is Sir Paul Beresford - a high profile Tory MP this time - who works three days a week as a dentist would you believe - whilst being paid a public salary of £64,766 a year to represent the good citizens of Mole Valley in Surrey.
Here's an extract of what The Telegraph had to say about the antics of this particular MP:
"Sir Paul Beresford, a Conservative MP who works up to three days a week as a dentist, designated his west London property, which includes his surgery, as his second home on his parliamentary allowances.
Sir Paul, who was named last year as the 34th most “influential” dentist in the country, worked out a deal with the House of Commons fees office whereby he put three quarters of the running costs of the property on the taxpayer.
The MP for Mole Valley in Surrey, who served as an environment minister under John Major for three years while retaining his successful dental practice, insisted that the arrangement was cheaper for the taxpayer.
But the understanding with the fees office is certain to raise further questions about the lax policing of MPs’ expenses, after it emerged that officials did not visit the surgery to assess Sir Paul’s designation of his property, or ask to see floor plans.
Before his election to Parliament in 1992, the property — two floors of a Georgian town house above a hairdressing salon in Putney, south-west London — was registered with the local council as 50 per cent residential and 50 per cent business.
He had set up two surgeries within the flat, which were served by three dentists.
On becoming an MP, Sir Paul said the fees office suggested that he purchase a second home but he decided instead to reduce his practice and go part-time.
As the council and some utility companies charged him separate business rates, he said he decided that “roughly” three-quarters of the costs of the flat were related to his parliamentary duties and so should be borne by the taxpayer.
This included mortgage interest payments of £350 a month, ground rent and other bills.
Sir Paul said that, at this stage, he had only one surgery and no associates, and that the patient waiting room doubled as his private lounge in the evenings. However, it appeared that his assessment was not independently scrutinised by officials.
The MP decided to increase his practice in 2007 and took on a larger share of the running costs, putting 50 per cent on the taxpayer.
Last year, he began to convert the surgery back to its original state, and stopped claiming second home allowances altogether. He said he would not claim again in future. The Putney practice bears a gold plaque reading: “Sir Paul Beresford, Derrick Donald and associates dental surgery.”Now Sir Paul Beresford is not the only backbench MP to have other paid interests outside of his day job - there are many others whose activities don't bear much scrutiny - both now and in the past.
The important point to be made is that being an MP is supposed to be a full-time job - otherwise it would not receive a full-time salary.
So it seems perfecly reasonable that MPs should be prevented from taking on additional paid work - what do you think MPs would say if a senior civil servant said he was taking up a part-time and demanding job as dentist?
Moonlighting MPs (10 December 2012)
I'm pleased to announce that my campaign to hold the country's moonlighting MPs to account - for pretending that they can do two jobs at the same time - is starting to take off .
Gordon Brown - the sometime Labour MP and former Prime Minister - was put under the spotlight in yesterday's Sunday Times and rightly so.
Because Gordon is one of the worst offenders - in terms of the amount of time he spends abroad away from his day job - as an MP in the House of Commons.
I also heard Nadine Dorries being interviewed on the Sunday Politics programme yesterday - in which she suggested, quite brazenly, that local constituents in Mid-Bedfordshire are fully behind recent appearance on 'I'm a Celebrity' - in the Australian jungle.
Now there's no way of testing that theory at the moment - short of a general election - because there is no power of recall over Westminster MPs.
Even if people believe they are behaving badly, MPs can just hang on in there and stay in post - until they have to face the electorate again - which may be years away, of course.
The only sensible point that Nadine Dorries made in her interview was that double standards appear to be at work in Westminster - that women MPs seems to be given harsher treatment for stepping out of line compared to their male colleagues.
Now I agree with that because the political establishment at Westminster has taken no action against Gordon Brown for being away so regularly from his post - yet 'Mad Nad' has the Whip withdrawn for what is her first offence.
I hope the Sunday Times article encourages others to raise the issue - because this is not about party politics - it's about the use of public money and the accountability of our elected representatives at Westminster.
The reality is that this kind of behaviour would not be tolerated at any other level of government - because there would be a huge public outcry.
"Globe-trotting Gordon Brown loses his voice"
by Dipesh Gadher
"From dispatch box bruiser to Westminster’s silent man. Gordon Brown has not spoken in parliament for more than a year while crisscrossing the globe to maintain an international profile.
The former Labour prime minister has declared 28 overseas trips on the MPs’ register of interests since he last spoke in the Commons on November 30, 2011. They include six visits to New York, where he holds an academic post, six trips to the Middle East and stop-offs in Seoul, Lagos and Mexico City.
Much of the jet-setting is linked to Brown’s humanitarian work, but his hosts have included Arab rulers, Russian banks and the Chinese government.
Now the Conservatives have accused Brown of having a “casual disregard” for his constituents in Scotland and have written to Ed Miliband, calling on the Labour leader to remove the party whip from the former prime minister.
There is even disquiet among Labour ranks that Brown continues to draw an MP’s salary of £65,738 while making only rare appearances in parliament. “He’s very much the forgotten man; it’s as if he wasn’t here,” said one senior Labour figure. “There must be concern among his constituents that he’s drawing a salary and allowances while not being at Westminster.”
The criticism may put pressure on Brown to relinquish his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat ahead of the 2015 general election.
An audit by The Sunday Times has discovered that only three MPs have been less vocal in parliament than Brown. However, two of them are government whips and, by convention, do not take part in debates.
The third, Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP in Birmingham, has not spoken since May 2011 but has been suffering from kidney failure and is awaiting a transplant.
Brown has taken part in only three Commons debates since losing the election in May 2010. The last time he spoke, he raised concerns about radioactive waste dumped in his constituency in the 1950s by the Ministry of Defence.
By contrast, John Major, the former Conservative prime minister, spoke in seven debates in the year before he stood down as an MP in 2001.
Hansard records show that Brown last tabled a written parliamentary question on February 9 this year. He has taken part in 14% of votes since losing office, according to the Public Whip website.
Brown declared 28 foreign trips between November 30, 2011, and July 3 this year. He has yet to register at least four further visits, including trips to South Sudan and Pakistan.
Since leaving No 10, Brown has received more than £2m in fees and expenses — although this has all been ploughed back into his public and charitable activities. He has held roles as “distinguished global leader in residence” at New York University and chairman of the World Economic Forum policy co-ordination group.
Brown has also been a visiting fellow at Harvard and was appointed special envoy for global education by the United Nations in July.
Since he last spoke in the Commons, Brown’s declared fees from international speech-making alone have topped £800,000. In May he received £60,679.90 for one hour’s work at an event organised by the Abu Dhabi education council. This equates to more than £1,000 a minute — although it was not for personal gain.
The MPs’ register shows that each payment goes to the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown “for the employment of staff to support my ongoing involvement in public life”.
John Glen, Tory MP for Salisbury, recently wrote to Miliband, claiming that Brown’s prolonged silence showed “a casual disregard” for his constituents. Glen also said many would see Brown’s ability to receive an MP’s salary and thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses as an “abuse of taxpayers’ money”.
However, a Labour source accused the Tories of hypocrisy, pointing to Nadine Dorries’s recent outing on I’m a Celebrity . . . Get me out of Here!. “David Cameron is such a weak leader that he couldn’t stop his MP abandoning her constituents and appearing in a reality TV show on the other side of the world,” he said.
Yesterday, Brown’s record provoked a mixed response among constituents in Kirkcaldy.
Carol Martin, 59, a charity shop worker, said: “He needs to be regularly voicing the concerns of the town to parliament. Are the amount of foreign trips [he takes] really necessary?”
Neil Campbell, 31, a bricklayer, said: “I really think he is doing all he can for the area and he has my support.”
Rampant Sexism (12 November 2012)
The Conservative MP for Mid-Befordshire - Nadine Dorries - swans off from the House of Commons for up to 30 days to take part in a celebrity TV programme - which is made in some remote part of Australia.
Result - she gets 'pelters' from all quarters and deservedly so - including from the Deputy Labour Leader - Harriet Harman - while standing in at Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs).
Ms Harman famous for her support of equalities issues even made a lame joke at Nadine's expense - something about the Tory MP having to deal with all kinds of snakes and toads - before she even arrived in the jungle.
So why is the row in the House of Commons so sexist?
Because lots of other MPs swan off when it suits them - including Harriet's Labour colleague and former Prime Minister - Gordon Brown.
Except Gordon is away from his day job for much more time than Nadine Dorries - 70 days a year (every year) in one job alone - at the New York University in Abu Dhabi, for example.
Yet no one says a word - or makes jokes at Prime Minister's Questions.
Maybe they'll start doing so now.
I certainly hope so because it would be a breath of fresh air - and thoroughly deserved.
Gissa Job (16 July 2012)
I read the other day that Gordon Brown - the sometime Labour MP for Cowdenbeath and Kircaldy - has added yet another string to his bow.
Apparently the former Prime Minister is to become a global envoy for the United Nations.
A position which will, of course, compete for Gordon's time along with his paid role as a 'Distinguished Global Leader in Residence' - at the Abu Dhabi campus of New York University - where he is required to spend 70 days a year.
And his time spent on other charitable works on behalf of 'The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown' - which I have commented upon previously.
Now I have no problem with Gordon Brown spending lots of time out of the country.
But what I don't understand is why he doesn't just resign his seat as an MP - and give someone else the chance of doing a proper full-time day job? Particularly at a time of such high unemployment.
According to press reports Gordon's heart is just not into being a Westminster MP - and since losing the 2010 general election he has apparently taken part in just two parliamentary debates - and only 15 per cent of the votes.
So surely it's time for Gordon to do the right thing - and step aside.
Didier Dogba - 27 May 2014
The UK's favourite 'petrol head', Jeremy Clarkson, was in the news again recently for calling his new dog, Didier Dogba, prompting and deluge of comments on Twitter accessing the Top Gear presenter of racism.
Now Clarkson responded in typically robust fashion with the following Tweet:
Why is it racist to name our amazingly brilliant dog after a footballer?
And I find it hard to disagree with Clarkson's logic because as a Chelsea fan I can see why his schoolboy sense of humour would find such a play on words funny - the link being the former Chelsea favourite, Didier Drogba.
Silly yes, but racist - no.
Achilles Heel - 27 May 2014
Instead of throwing eggs at Nigel Farage, metaphorical or otherwise, I wish more people tried to follow the example of Matthew Parris by tackling the politics of UKIP head on - rather than shouting their arguments down.
Not everything that Farage says is barking mad, but much of it is and the key issue to get across is that UKIP is not a serious party of government which is the party's real Achilles Heel.
A rather silly 'blame game' seems to have broken out in Scotland over who is responsible for UKIP winning their first Euro seat, but the voters are responsible of course having found UKIP more convincing and credible than any of the other parties, strange as it seems.
Yet UKIP's share of the vote in Scotland stands at 10% which is an awful long way short of its support which topped 30% in parts of England while leaving both Labour and the Tories trailing in their wake.
Fight Ukip. Fight their lies. Fight them now
By Matthew Parris - The Times
The Tory leadership must stand up to Nigel Farage and persuade voters not to fall for his dangerous populism
By the knowing, this column will be laughed at for playing straight into the hands of my enemies. I realise that. I realise it pays them the ultimate compliment: it takes them seriously. I don’t care. There are moments in life and in politics that are too important for tactics. Such a moment arrived for me this week when on to the doormat in the flats where I live in London’s East End, dropped the UK Independence Party’s election leaflet.
And, no, of course it isn’t the first piece of idiotic political literature I’ve ever encountered: I’ve seen plenty in my time, including from my own party. And delivered it too.
And, no, it isn’t the first time I’ve written about the wrongheadedness of Ukip’s approach, or the danger it poses to Britain’s centre-right. The reasoned case needs to be made again and again, and I’ll keep trying.
And, no, this won’t be my first or last column to berate the sly nastiness skulking beneath the covers of the party’s pitch. The Ukip phenomenon provides in itself a case study for psychiatrists as well as politicians.
But it’s the first time I have felt just a little bit frightened. This thing has a bad smell. I picked up that leaflet, read the lies and saw the menace.
As it happens, a young woman of Eastern European origin — always so pleasant and conscientious — who sweeps and cleans the entrance and staircase in the block, had arrived before I left. I wondered how the purple and yellow leaflets on the doormat would strike her, were she to look down.
Put yourself in her shoes.
She’s here legally, working legally, working hard, working for wages above the minimum that Parliament has laid down, in a job that any young British person is also free to take, and some do. On the doormat she reads purple-highlighted phrases from Nigel Farage’s declaration: phrases such as: “4,000 people a week come to live in Britain from the EU . . . the damage done to our national sovereignty, our pride and — dare I say it — our patriotism is immense . . .” Finally: “Enough’s enough”.
How wouldyou feel? I think she might feel insulted: insulted and threatened — almost physically threatened — by the response this appeal had been carefully phrased to trigger. When a few hours later at an almost empty Derby railway station I passed a little posse of youths with purple badges and pound-sign stickers and (probably because of what I’d been thinking about their party) felt just momentarily menaced. My reaction was irrational. They were no more a “posse” than groups of Tory canvassers of which I’ve often enough been part. But I was starting to look at the Ukip phenomenon with new eyes. I’ve always known it was nasty, hypocritical nonsense but now, for the first time, I’m wondering whether it might catch on.
A word, first, about the nonsense. There’s nothing like reading an untruth about yourself for bringing its brazenness home with copper-bottomed certainty. When I read (in a Ukip attack on this newspaper) that I was “privately educated” there was no need to fact-check the five government schools I remember attending before, at 15, being sent to a “private” non-apartheid school. And Mr Farage presumably does know that he himself went to a top public school, and does remember that he set up the Farage Family Educational Trust in an offshore tax haven — to confer (one supposes) similar privileges on future Farages.
Or take those “4,000 people a week” who “come to live in Britain” (says my leaflet). Or the “£55 million a day” that the EU “costs the UK”. If I told Mr Farage that Britain gets £8 billion a year from Brussels, or that people are emigrating from the UK at the rate of 131,000 a year, would he call that honest? No, he’d expose furiously my removal from my sums of the amount we were paying in to the EU, and my omission to mention the number of immigrants coming in to this country. My claims would deserve to be called lies. So do his.
You may think my purpose here is to take the attack to Ukip. Only in passing. Anyone with a mind of his own can see what kind of people they are without any help from me. I expect nothing of Ukip’s leadership and am not disappointed by them.
It’s the leaders of my own party who disappoint me. Ukip are not a political party; not really. They’re an unpleasant mutiny within the Conservative party. Having placed themselves outside the party they pose as an external foe; but they have many friends within it, willing them on.
My side in the Conservative party needs to take a stand too: vigorously, unapologetically, and soon. I’m ashamed that the cleaning woman on our East London staircase finds nobody among the Conservative leadership to speak up for her in public. I’m ashamed that Ukip’s provocations litter doormats across Britain, without my own party countering the falsehoods or protesting at the hatefulness. I hear the Tory voices murmuring that the “strategy” is not to give these rascals the oxygen of publicity. I hear the nervy assurance that “this will blow over” if we keep our heads down and walk by on the other side.
I hear the warning that voters attracted by Ukip need our love, not our insults, and must not be branded as racists. I hear the knowing chuckle that columns such as this are music to Ukip’s ears.
Stop these calculations, I say to self-respecting Tories, and fight. Let’s have an end to “understanding” dangerous populists. Many racists are attracted to Ukip; many foreigner-hating feelings are inflamed by Ukip. Many with feelings of personal disappointment or inadequacy are sucked into the comfort of blaming someone Other, something from over the water.
It is not wrong to stigmatise the party that is doing this. It’s not wrong to warn those voters that they would be idiots to fall for these hate-mongers. Whatever is to come, nobody who today takes arms against this pernicious new force will be less admired one day for doing so.
I finish as I started: there comes a time when you recognise something as bad: simply, unambiguously bad. This is the moment to put aside your calculations, tear up the strategists’ advice, decide which side you’re on, and shout it loud.
The Tory leadership must stand up to Nigel Farage and persuade voters not to fall for his dangerous populism
By the knowing, this column will be laughed at for playing straight into the hands of my enemies. I realise that. I realise it pays them the ultimate compliment: it takes them seriously. I don’t care. There are moments in life and in politics that are too important for tactics. Such a moment arrived for me this week when on to the doormat in the flats where I live in London’s East End, dropped the UK Independence Party’s election leaflet.
And, no, of course it isn’t the first piece of idiotic political literature I’ve ever encountered: I’ve seen plenty in my time, including from my own party. And delivered it too.
And, no, it isn’t the first time I’ve written about the wrongheadedness of Ukip’s approach, or the danger it poses to Britain’s centre-right. The reasoned case needs to be made again and again, and I’ll keep trying.
And, no, this won’t be my first or last column to berate the sly nastiness skulking beneath the covers of the party’s pitch. The Ukip phenomenon provides in itself a case study for psychiatrists as well as politicians.
But it’s the first time I have felt just a little bit frightened. This thing has a bad smell. I picked up that leaflet, read the lies and saw the menace.
As it happens, a young woman of Eastern European origin — always so pleasant and conscientious — who sweeps and cleans the entrance and staircase in the block, had arrived before I left. I wondered how the purple and yellow leaflets on the doormat would strike her, were she to look down.
Put yourself in her shoes.
She’s here legally, working legally, working hard, working for wages above the minimum that Parliament has laid down, in a job that any young British person is also free to take, and some do. On the doormat she reads purple-highlighted phrases from Nigel Farage’s declaration: phrases such as: “4,000 people a week come to live in Britain from the EU . . . the damage done to our national sovereignty, our pride and — dare I say it — our patriotism is immense . . .” Finally: “Enough’s enough”.
How wouldyou feel? I think she might feel insulted: insulted and threatened — almost physically threatened — by the response this appeal had been carefully phrased to trigger. When a few hours later at an almost empty Derby railway station I passed a little posse of youths with purple badges and pound-sign stickers and (probably because of what I’d been thinking about their party) felt just momentarily menaced. My reaction was irrational. They were no more a “posse” than groups of Tory canvassers of which I’ve often enough been part. But I was starting to look at the Ukip phenomenon with new eyes. I’ve always known it was nasty, hypocritical nonsense but now, for the first time, I’m wondering whether it might catch on.
A word, first, about the nonsense. There’s nothing like reading an untruth about yourself for bringing its brazenness home with copper-bottomed certainty. When I read (in a Ukip attack on this newspaper) that I was “privately educated” there was no need to fact-check the five government schools I remember attending before, at 15, being sent to a “private” non-apartheid school. And Mr Farage presumably does know that he himself went to a top public school, and does remember that he set up the Farage Family Educational Trust in an offshore tax haven — to confer (one supposes) similar privileges on future Farages.
Or take those “4,000 people a week” who “come to live in Britain” (says my leaflet). Or the “£55 million a day” that the EU “costs the UK”. If I told Mr Farage that Britain gets £8 billion a year from Brussels, or that people are emigrating from the UK at the rate of 131,000 a year, would he call that honest? No, he’d expose furiously my removal from my sums of the amount we were paying in to the EU, and my omission to mention the number of immigrants coming in to this country. My claims would deserve to be called lies. So do his.
You may think my purpose here is to take the attack to Ukip. Only in passing. Anyone with a mind of his own can see what kind of people they are without any help from me. I expect nothing of Ukip’s leadership and am not disappointed by them.
It’s the leaders of my own party who disappoint me. Ukip are not a political party; not really. They’re an unpleasant mutiny within the Conservative party. Having placed themselves outside the party they pose as an external foe; but they have many friends within it, willing them on.
My side in the Conservative party needs to take a stand too: vigorously, unapologetically, and soon. I’m ashamed that the cleaning woman on our East London staircase finds nobody among the Conservative leadership to speak up for her in public. I’m ashamed that Ukip’s provocations litter doormats across Britain, without my own party countering the falsehoods or protesting at the hatefulness. I hear the Tory voices murmuring that the “strategy” is not to give these rascals the oxygen of publicity. I hear the nervy assurance that “this will blow over” if we keep our heads down and walk by on the other side.
I hear the warning that voters attracted by Ukip need our love, not our insults, and must not be branded as racists. I hear the knowing chuckle that columns such as this are music to Ukip’s ears.
Stop these calculations, I say to self-respecting Tories, and fight. Let’s have an end to “understanding” dangerous populists. Many racists are attracted to Ukip; many foreigner-hating feelings are inflamed by Ukip. Many with feelings of personal disappointment or inadequacy are sucked into the comfort of blaming someone Other, something from over the water.
It is not wrong to stigmatise the party that is doing this. It’s not wrong to warn those voters that they would be idiots to fall for these hate-mongers. Whatever is to come, nobody who today takes arms against this pernicious new force will be less admired one day for doing so.
I finish as I started: there comes a time when you recognise something as bad: simply, unambiguously bad. This is the moment to put aside your calculations, tear up the strategists’ advice, decide which side you’re on, and shout it loud.
