Senior Lib Dems express doubt about the Coalition. Big Deal!

Vince Cable has been caught out expressing doubts about Coalition policy, and saying that if he disagreed too much, he could resign. A few other Lib Dem MPs have similarly been recorded saying they are unsure about some policies, notably those on tuition fees and the cuts. The BBC has been all over the story, and rushing to interview Labour figures about it. Aside from the amazing lapses which led Cable and the others to just shoot their mouths off to total strangers, I suspect no-one outside Westminster quite understands what all the fuss is about. The nation yawns, you might say.

Some students have changed the world for the better. But not these ones.

I've already deconstructed the wider issues around Higher Education in this country here. I said that you can't look at the debate over rising tuition fees in isolation from wider issues in HE. But on to the recent protests themselves.

A few weeks ago my Christmas shopping was diverted by a bit of a 'kerfuffle' around Argyll Street near Oxford Circus. The whole street was blocked off by scores of police vans and no-one was being allowed through. I assumed a celebrity of some sort was visiting the Palladium, but it seemed a bit over-the-top. It was one of the days of the student protests against fee increases, but I didn't see any protestors, or any trouble at all. Oxford Street is full of noisy, slightly mad people anyway, so noisy protests are no big deal for us Londoners.

Germans play the economics game right

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been  pushing for bondholders to take some of the hit the next time a bank sheepishly puts its hand up and admits it's got no money. Sounds fair enough to me. Why should it be the poor old taxpayer who has to cough up every time a bailout is needed?

Ireland's pain, Euro's shame

Ireland's Celtic Tiger is dead, a stake through its heart.

Even when the ugly truth has been exposed, people still can't admit to what has gone wrong. The Euro wasn't right for Ireland (or, by extension, for the UK). How much more proof does anyone need? The cause of the Irish crisis was, in essence, that Irish banks went on an orgy of irresponsible lending to fuel an unsustainable housing bubble. Sound familiar? Oh yes....

But here's the thing - the Euro. You can't get away from it. Well, Ireland can't anyway. And that's the problem now.

The Pope, AIDS and contraception

Pope Benedict XVI has changed  - or perhaps clarified - the Catholic Church's position on the use of contraception. He had previously reaffirmed the teaching set out since The Second Vatican Council, and reinforced vigorously by hsi predecessor Pope John Paul II, that contraception was 'intrinsically evil'.

Student funding

A good old-fashioned riot in London the other day. I remember the Poll Tax riots of the 1990s and this one was pretty small by comparision. The poll tax riots were the sharp end of a wider dissatisfaction throughout society; whereas yesterday's riots, frankly, were not.

BBC1 Panorama: Are you paying too much tax?

Today's Panorama was about the mess the HMRC have made of people's taxes. The BBC's investigation focussed on 'ordinary' people's stories - most of them receiving demands way above what they should. They also mentioned that the wealthiest taxpayers find it easier to get round the system, and that staff cuts and poor leadership is to blame.

Mrs Thatcher's legacy -good or bad?

The London Underground is the home of all things weird and loopy. It's every square inch of space is adorned with advertising, even to the extent that some of them are now digital so they can show several adverts at once.

The Rules of Work - no good deed ever goes unpunished

It's tempting at work to want to go the extra mile, do something beyond your remit or use your initiative to make something better. These are good traits, and will give you good marks in your appraisal. But be warned, it depends on how you go about it.

Labour have made a bad joke worse

I've been watching Ed Milliband with increasing incredulity.

He and his brother look like the saddest two boys at the 6th form disco. And they look like they're still not old enough to have left it. Certainly Ed's arguments are straight from the school debating society's handbook.

Saying that he represents a 'new generation' is beyond a joke. Doesn't he understand that being younger in years - or less mature, one might say - doesn't qualify anyone as representing a generational shift? If anything Ed Milliband is going back to the past; his links with the trade unions, who handed him the leadership, will come to embarrass him more and more as industrial conflict looms. In his acceptance speech he slapped them down; well he had to really, because he knows the public won't support 70s-style strikes.

Unlike some people, I'm not so bothered about his knifing of his brother. He's a politician, what does anyone expect? But his cynical revelation that he belives that the Iraq war was a 'mistake' is pretty grubby. If that's what he thought why hasn't he been saying that for years? Like most of Labour, he followed Blair because he trusted him; then waited to see how the war worked out and what the public mood was; then seeing that things weren't going well he came out and positioned himself loudly as an anti-Iraq champion. At least D. Milliband stuck to what he believed, right or wrong.

On the only issue of the moment, the deficit and the cuts, he's not so sure. What does he stand for? What does Labour stand for? New Labour is dead, Caesar Blair has been stabbed and his heir Brown exiled and locked away out of sight like a mad old aunt that they're all embarrassed about. Ed doesn't have any policy detail on spending cuts because he and Labour don't stand for anything any more. Kind of like John Major, or his Tory successors. Diane Abbott would have been a suicidal choice of leader, but at least everyone knows where you stand with her.

The only thing Ed seems to focussed on is going after the highly paid. The Laffer curve, which says that raising taxes reduces the tax rate, and a theory that has such wide support amongst both right and left, has been ignored. (To be fair, the Coalition has done much the same.) All the talk is about 'fairness' now, which is understandable. So rich folk are an easy target for Ed. The other thing Ed has said is try to stamp his adolescent mark on politics by rubbishing the way New Labour did....everything. From the Post Office to Iraq, from their economic policy to banking, from tax policy to education policy, from anti-terror legislation to the 'nanny state', Ed carried out a bonfire of New Labour. But defining yourself by what you don't  believe isn't enough.

Time will tell. Ed has shifted to the left without defining what it is he believes in. Blair (and Cameron) knew that to be in Government you have to capture, and hold, the middle ground. Labour is unlikely to, and has a leader that will now be reduced to sniping and carping on the sidelines. The Lib Dem involvement in government condemns Labour to a lonely existence on the left. That was Cameron's masterstroke. He 'decontaminated' the Tory brand with a dose of vitamin Clegg, and Labour are left like a soggy old pudding, so bereft of talent and ideas that they will probably spend a decade in opposition. Even if the Coalition screws it all up - and they might -  Labour will take a long time to decontaminate themselves in people's memories from the deficit they left us with.

Labour Party leadership candidates

The battle for the Labour leadership is reaching its zenith. The paucity of talent on show makes Britain's Got Talent look like a procession of Nobel Laureates. It seems that David 'bananaman' Milliband will win it. As Foreign Secretary he was an absolute joke, like Pike from Dad's Army. "The world is a scary place" was the best thing he had to say about international relations. Personally I hope that Diane Abbott triumphs. She is so nutty she made Michael Portillo look positively sane on This Week. I particularly remember when she rubbished the whole concept of private education....before she promptly packed off her own child to one.  Nice. She's not averse to playing the race card when it suits her either. Well, let's hope she wins the leadership, unlikely though that is. That should kill off Labour for good.

World Cup Final - good for Africa and Spain, bad for football

Thank God Spain triumphed over Holland on Sunday night. I was out of my sofa cheering when Iniesta rammed the ball home. Spain, although not the most exciting team, were technically the most gifted in the tournament, and were worthy winners. It would have been an absolute travesty if Holland, having kicked and basically assaulted the Spanish players in lieu of competing on technique, had clung on for penalties and then sneaked a win.

Good teachers better than new buildings

The Government has scrapped schools' BSF scheme, the Building Schools for the Future programme to upgrade school buildings. It's a shame as I'm sure a good school environment aids increasing standards. But is it that simple?

How to spot a good martial arts club - and how to avoid a bad one.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing....".


So said Alexander Pope. My dad would often say this to us when we were kids, whenever we got a bit too cocky or big for our boots just because we thought we knew a little something.


This could also be applied to martial arts, which is one of my interests.....

Review: BBC2's "How to Beat Tough Times - Money Watch"

Watched the first episode of a new BBC2 series on personal finance this evening. It had a very lightweight feel, despite an appearance from Mr Omnipresent - Martin Lewis. Perhaps that was due in part to the permanently smiling Sophie Raworth, who co-presented the programme; or maybe it was the succession of 'experts' trotting out the blindingly obvious to people who seemed to have missed the Credit Crunch completely.

World Cup karma

I've just watched Holland knock out Uruguay in the World Cup semi-finals. That's a result that will please the Dutch - but I also suspect it will please Ghana supporters too.




In the quarter finals one of the Uruguay players deliberately and purposefully used his arm to deny Ghana a goal. Ghana were thus denied what would have been not just a goal, but in all likelihood the winning goal. In the event the cheating player was sent off and Ghana were awarded a penalty - which they promptly missed. Eventually Uruguay ran out winners in a penalty shootout.



It's one thing to cheat; quite another to revel in it, without any hint of remorse, let alone shame. After the match the Uruguayan player, rather than issue a mea culpa of any sort, positively delighted in his deception. "The hand of God belongs to me now," he crowed, in reference to Diego Maradona's infamous incident of cheating to claim a goal against England in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.



It is indicative of how low sport in general, and football in particular, has sunk that cheating is now a cause for celebration when perpetrated in the name of 'your country'. As I have argued before, associating teams with nations is an error, a form of anthropomorphism. And yes, my insult to footballers was intentional.



The inversion of any type of moral code, any definition of honourable behaviour, is now complete. Cheating is lauded as virtue, cynicism as heroic; as long as they are perpetrated in the context of national sporting competition. Would the cheating Uruguayan have been so bold if he had perpetrated his act for a mere club, allegiance to which players drop rather quickly when mammon is dangled in front of them?



Cheats do sometimes win. But here's the catch: it comes back to haunt them in the end. Sometimes more quickly than they think. So Uruguay were eliminated in the very next game, and we will remember them for that dishonest incident; longer, I suspect than we will remember them for Forlan's goals. Maradona was a great player but not a great human being. His team was just recently humiliated 4-0 by the Germans.



And England? All their swagger and arrogance, from their showboating lifestyles to Steven Gerrard saying to an interviewer that Algeria fixture England was "their world cup final", has been aptly rewarded. It is ironic that ever since 1966 , when they were not a little fortuitous, that year has become a millstone around their collective necks, an albatross that has hampered them ever since.



What goes around comes around.

Oil and BP (Buck Passing)

Obama set a lot of stall by boasting how much better he would have handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than George W Bush. So now that the Gulf Coast of Mexico is drowning in black stuff he realises that he might soon be drowning in the brown stuff. But who is to blame? Really?

Landlords and Self-employed: How to keep your tax down

So it looks like George Osborne will be hammering just about everyone wiht tax rises - not just the CGT (capital gains tax) payers. If you are a landlord (like me) or self-employed (like I might be), follow my guide to minimise your taxes.

Abolish International Sport

Now that we are in the middle of the 2010 football World Cup it seems like a good time to revisit an article I wrote last year about the nonsense of having 'international' sports teams. Already we've seen evidence of politicking - Didier Drogba being allowed to play against the rules with his arm in plaster, presumably to keep fans and sponsors happy. Platini and Blatter patronising Africans with talk about 'sounds of Africa' and entire nations - even continents - pretending that these pampered pooches, cheats and cynics somehow represent them. Read on...

Final Election Debate - Cameron blows it

The media analysis seems to be that Cameron had a good innings in last night's final debate. But on my blog I have no problem going against the media grain :)

Cameron has lost most in these debates. Although he did press home some good points last night his real enemy - Clegg - came through pretty much unscathed. And it's Clegg that the Tories need to fear most, for he could destroy them.

Labour deserve to lose. But do the Tories deserve to win?

When your house is on fire you don’t call the arsonist to come and put it out. So there’s no reason to vote for Gordon Brown, who has done so much to shape Labour party policy since 1997.

News Flash: Nick Clegg is actually a politician

He's not a charity worker or a celebrity campaigner like Joanna Lumley. He's a plain old politician, ie he will say and do just about anything to get you to vote for him.

Election debate and lies about Trident

Something caught my attention during the debate last Thursday. It was a big fat lie, uttered by both Cameron and Brown. Nothing new there you might say - what else are politicians supposed to do? But this concerns nuclear weapons, so as lies go it's pretty severe in its implications

2010 Election debate 1 - Review

Just watched the first ever live TV debate between the main party leaders for a British general election. Here is the review.
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Extraordinary opening statement from Cameron, praising Labour for things they had done – without specifying them! He also decided to play the ‘honesty’ card by apologising unilaterally for the expenses scandal, thereby drawing attention to it and automatically associating the scandal with the Tories. I think his strategy backfired. It felt forced.

General Election and personal finance - which party is best?

With the British general election looming I have been researching the 3 main parties' policies on personal finance. During the course of this research I have had a reply from one Victoria Crawford, who works at the office of Mark Hoban, Conservative spokesman for financial services. I also contacted the office of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats shadow chancellor, but despite repeated promises received no reply. So for the Lib Dems I have had to rely on the research I have done myself.

I have deliberately avoided comment on areas of macro-economic policy, ie tax and spending policy. To do so would have made the article unwieldy and lacking in focus. There is already an enormous amount of material out there on the taxation policies of the 3 main parties.So I have ommitted income tax, VAT, National Insurance, capital gains tax, inheritance tax etc. I've also left out pensions.

There is not so much commentary on areas of personal finance - such as consumer rights with regards to utilities, credit cards. What policies there are tend to be swallowed up in broader announcements.

On each area of personal finance I have given the parties a score out of 10. Just to make it more fun :)

The Rules of Work - avoid officespeak

There is a plague which has been stalking the offices of Britain for several years. Possibly this infection spreads back decades. I call it office-speak. It's also known as management-speak, or, more concisely, as 'bullshit'.

When I first started off in the world of work back in 1995 as a slightly bewildered 21 year-old I remember registering at a temping agency in the City of London. I met the recruitment consultants in there and they gave me a touch typing test and a spelling test. I did ok.

But at the end I remember the lady saying to me "we'll touch base later". I thought - what? What did you just say? You'll touch my what? Not in here you won't, love. It was my first exposure to the total and utter crap that office workers (and in particular managers) like to come out with. What she meant was "we'll talk later". That's it. That's all you needed to say.

Unfortunately office-speak has become so ingrained into British office life that phrases that at first made me recoil now seem boringly routine. Tragically I even find myself talking about 'workstreams', 'proactive leadership' and the like. So this is also a note to self: stop talking bullshit and speak plain English! People will respect you for it.

So here, for your help and amusement, is my bullshit translator. A few are so baffling I've assigned them only a question mark.

Office bullshit -- English

Work package = Work
Touch base = Talk
Raincheck = Meeting
Client-facing = Meet
Synergy = ?
The big picture = That work you have to do
Put on the back burner = Do it later
Ball Park = ?
Cascade = Tell
Scope = Work to do
Interface = Talk
Think outside the box = Think
Ticks in boxes = Do things
Gap analysis = Think
Out of the loop = Tell someone
Fast track = Do
Mindset = ?
Downsize = Sack
Best practice = Work
Go the extra mile = Work
Process improvement = Do some work
Win-win situation = You need to get on with the work
Results driven = ?
Benchmark = Compare
Workstream = Work
Put to bed = Do
Skill set = Skill
Core business = Work
The big picture = Work to do
Going forward = Do
Traction = Doing some work?
Quality-driven = You need to do some work
Ramp up = Do
Blue sky thinking = Think
Time-bound = Hurry up and to do some work

If you have any more, or can help me with the ones I'm struggling with, please write in!

Dr David Starkey on Question Time

I've just watched a rerun of Question Time on the BBC's i-Player. The most entertaining member of the panel was, as I suspected it might be, Dr David Starkey. He was arrogant, prickly, temperamental - and brilliant.

James Bulger's killers and the question of evil

There has been a furore around the two boys who murdered James Bulger over 10 years ago and whether they are innately, or instrinsically evil. There has also related argument about whether they should have been tried in an adult court.

Let me address the second point first. It seems to me that it is not the severity of the crime that should determine where the accused should be tried, but their level of maturity. If you are an adult then the crime should be tried in an adult court, whether the charge is murder of speeding. Conversely, if you are a child you should go to a children’s court, or whatever passes for that these days.

The Rules of Work - set expectations

At work, and in life generally, always cultivate a reputation as a Man of His Word. In other words, when you say you’re going to do something, you do it. Always.

This may present a problem when dealing with work. If someone asks (or tells) you to do some work and you agree to a deadline what happens if you then can’t meet that delivery date?

So always set expectations. The basic principle is to over-deliver. So: if you think you can get that report to someone by Tuesday, tell them you will have it on their desk by Wednesday. If you think a project will take 6 months to deliver, tell the project board it will be done in 7. Then, in both cases, if you complete the work earlier than promised you’ve got some brownie points.

A good tactic is to give out a ‘sweetner’ if you know you can’t meet someone’s initial expectations. For example, if someone wants a summary within 2 days but you know from your priorities and workload that you can only deliver it within 3 days you could

tell them you will get to them within 4 days.
Offer to send them an outline of the summary, perhaps just the salient or crucial points, by the end of the first day. This will get them off your back and inspire confidence in them that you care about their work.


If time is tight it need only be a few lines in an email, sent to the requesting person to summarise the content of your discusson. For example:

Work package:
Objectives: a, b, c
Delivered to: x
Created by : y
Due date: dd/m/yy

Sometimes even something as simple as this shows that you are taking someone seriously and they will cut you a lot more slack. You're not over-committing to anything either.

The Rules of Work - lock your PC

At one place I worked at someone left their PC unlocked when they went for a cup of coffee. It wasn't until some time later that they realised that some 'jokers' had changed the home page of their internet site to a pornographic website.

The lesson is that you should AWLAYS lock your PC when you are away from it. Even if you are only stepping away for 15 seconds to pick up something, make a cup of tea or look at something in the next room. You press the CTRL, ALT and DELETE buttons at the same time and then choose 'lock computer' from the various options.

When you return to your desk you press the CTRL, ALT and DELETE buttons at the same time again and enter your password to unlock your PC.

It sounds paranoid but it isn't. It's good practice. It's not just that someone coud maliciouly interfere with your PC's settings for a 'joke'. It's because there are nosey people about who like to see what's in your Inbox, and even what kind of documents you have. They don't need to physically do anything with your keyboard, they can just peer at your screen. And given that all of us have private or confidential stuff on our PCs it's better to be safe than sorry.

So lock your PC. I always do.

The declining pound ain't so bad

There has been lots of naysaying, hysteria and near panic over the fall in value of the pound. But I think it's time to chill out.

Firstly, one advantage of staying out of the Euro is that our currency is free to float against other currencies - like the Euro. The Greeks and the Irish can't do that, so they're a little stuck. They can't devalue their currencies.

The Rules of Work - snack on fruit

An article in today's Metro reveals that vitamin tablets are virtually useless after a few days, as their nutritional content is degraded by exposure to humidity and, erm, air.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/815863-stored-vitamins-go-off-in-a-week

Most vitamin tablets are a swizz. They are part of the 'alternative' health industry that preys on the public's scepticism of established science and their desire to believe in a conspiracy of misinformation that can be broken if only we look at alternatives.

The reality is that it's better to eat an orange than take a vitamin C tablet, or a Berocca. It makes commercial sense for berocca manufacturers to tell you that you need vitamins, because you're not getting enough, you see. They cost about £3 a pack. If you ate an orange you would get masses of vitmain C, and save yourself a small fortune. 'Smoothies' are another rip-off, overpriced to the point of daylight robbery. Eat a banana instead.

I notice that the most committed advocates of tablets, pills and 'fruit' drinks are generally lazy people who do no exercise, eat rubbish food and complain a lot, about everything.

So at work snack on fresh fruit - real fruit, that is. It will give you more energy, keep you off the chocolate and give you all the vitamins you need.

Kraft's craftiness

It's not always pleasant to say "I told you so". Even when you have told someone so. But I did tell you so. So I'm going to say: "I told you so". Kraft's first act on taking over Cadbury's has been to close down a factory, kick out their workers and relocate somewhere cheaper.

Well I told you so here.

Sacking the gold of Goldman Sachs

Just heard that Obama is to forbid proprietary trading by American Banks in general - and Goldman Sachs in particular.

At least Obama is taking a firm line with banks, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual action the British Government has taken. The only thing Alistair Darling seems to have done is attempt to impose a 50% tax on bankers' bonuses; this doesn't actually affect the banks themselves, just some of their staff.

Cadbury's. The crumbliest, flakiest takeover in the world

My manager recently brought back some Hershey chocolates from her trip to New York. They were disgusting, really gross. Like chalk. Everyone hated them. Kraft are no better. What chocolates do they make? Does anyone like their stuff? And now Cadbury’s, a great British institution, is to be sold to Kraft.

Chris Mullin MP to stand down - a shame, we need more like him

I read in The Independent today that Chris Mullin MP is to stand down after 23 years in Parliament.

He is best known to the public as the man who secured the release of the Birmingham Six. I attended a talk he gave at Warwick University in 1992 (I think) when I was a student there. I remember him commenting on the aftermath of the Birmingham Six case. This case was, of course, one of the darker episodes in British criminal history. Obviously for the atrocity committed by IRA cowards who threw bombs into pubs. But also for the further outrage that saw followed it: the police 'fitted up' 6 Irishmen that they knew very well to be innocent. They were physically and psychologically abused before confessions were fabricated and they were given life sentences. If the death penalty had been available they would have been hanged.

Want an iPhone? Read this first!

This is a great article. I worked for this website -http://www.moneymagpie.com so I can vouch for them.

First it tells you which phones are actually better than the iPhone, feature-for-feature; then it does a true cost comparison; and best of all it shows you a clever way to save money by using a cashback credit card. I will do this myself. My Sony Eriksson Cybershot was good when I got it about 2 years ago but is now a bit of a dinosaur. The models in the article are a few months out-of-date but haven't changed that much.

Check it!

http://www.moneymagpie.com/article/672/dont-buy-an-apple-iphone-until-youve-read-this-article/

Chilcott - the non-event

The Chilcott Enquiry has been rumbling on for a while now. I have found it interesting, but not revealing. It has gone over - yet again - material that has been done to death by two earlier enquiries and endless debates. What surprises me is that anyone at all is surprised by any of the revelations that have emerged. I’m surprised by all the surprise.

So it seems that Tony Blair committed to disarming Iraq by any means necessary. If it couldn’t be done peacefully it would be done by force. Further, it seems that he supported Bush’s plan for regime change regardless of the WMD contortions at the UN. The UN was to be used to try and secure a resolution authorising war, but if it wouldn’t acquiesce the invasion was always going to go ahead anyway.

So? Tell us something we don’t know. Of course regime change was the goal. It was obvious to me from 2002.. It was plain as the nose on your face that the Bush administration wanted to remove him, by hook or by crook, and that WMD was used a convenient lever to try and bring world opinion, or at least the UN, onside. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and his removal has done the whole world a favour. Check the record. He killed enough people to warrant removal.

Yes politicians probably did lie, or at least bend the truth, to accomplish this. You mean this is a surprise to you? I hope not, because if it is you are either very naïve or have been living on the dark side of the moon all your life. Politicians are never transparent.

Iraq is a democracy, all groups and parties are represented there and the country is getting back on its feet. I support Iraqi people and every opinion poll that’s ever been taken there shows that they supported the war and supported their process of elections. Then they wanted an end to occupation, so we left. They now have a democratically elected government and will soon be selling their oil by the oil-tanker load. They will do fine by themselves. In fact in a few years I look forward to visiting their ancient culture as a tourist. I wish them well. The war has done them a favour, and they’re intelligent enough to know it. End of.