BETTER AND BETTER FOR SOME PEOPLE

One of Cameron's early boasts when he arrived in Downing Street was that he would deal with the "crazy" (his word, not mine) bonus culture in the Civil Service.

Needless to say, given a pledge from Cameron, last year the number of top Civil Servants receiving bonuses in the five-figure range... doubled. Clearly it wasn't crazy enough for Crazy Cameron.

Seriously, you can always predict that no matter what this man promises, it will be the opposite of what happens.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, there were 10 recipients of bonuses over £30,000 and one, apparently in the MoD, who managed to get himself paid almost £100,000 on top of his salary. Further investigations showed:

* Six staff at the Cabinet Office took home bonuses of between £10,000 and £20,000 during 2011/12 — three times as many as in the previous year. They included Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, and Sue Gray, the Cabinet’s Office’s head of propriety and ethics.

* Phil Wynn Owen, the Department of Energy and Climate Change official in charge of “greening” Britain’s economy, received a discretionary award of nearly £15,000.

* Three officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government received bonuses of up to £14,000.

* Two civil servants at the Department for International Development, the Whitehall agency charged with helping the world’s poorest people, received bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 last year.

* The chief executive of the Met Office, John Hirst, received a supplementary payment of more than £40,000. A fellow director accepted a bonus of £20,000.

* Three directors at the Training and Development Agency, responsible for improving teachers’ skills, were given performance-related pay of between £30,000 and £40,000.

* And five officials at the Ordnance Survey received bonuses of between £15,000 and £30,000.

OK, the numbers aren't huge, and the total amount spent isn't world changing, but with people from most walks of life being told that they are 'all in this together' and that they must all put their shoulders to the wheel, and particularly in view of Cameron's pledge to end this nonsense, it seems wrong that it not only goes on, but increases apace.

Better together for 'top' people! How's that for a slogan, Alistair?

COALITION CANDIDATE CONTEMPT!

Do you remember last year there was a suggestion that at the next election the coalition might formalize its relationship (which is working so well after all); that the Lib Dems might not put up candidates against the Tories where the Tories were in second place and the Tories would do likewise.

The idea was of course that the Lib Dem candidate would hoover up the Tory votes and thus overtake their SNP or Labour rivals (or in England possibly UKIP) and that the Tories would do the same. Like a lot of the coalition it sounds great on paper, but as Nick Clegg and his party are finding it does not transfer so easily into practice .

Well the whole thing was roundly poo-pooed by the great and good in both parties. Cleggums and “Call me” were apparently horrified at the idea. After all we assumed that the Lib Dems would simply be subsumed by the larger party and wouldn’t that be bad for democracy as in it would reduce even further the limited choicer offered to British voters?

But it now seems that Tory and Lib Dem MPs will be able to stand as joint Coalition candidates at the next election under plans sneakily put in motion this week.

Ministers are to change the law to allow candidates standing for two parties at the same time to put a joint emblem on the ballot paper. This opens the way for an electoral pact between the Coalition partners at the next election.
It opens the door to Tory and Lib Dems agreeing local peace pacts with one candidate representing them both, perhaps under a logo combining the lesser-spotted yellow-bellied Liberal Democrat bird squatting in the English Oak of the Tories.

At the moment, a candidate standing for more than one party cannot put either party’s logo on the ballot paper, an anomaly that discriminates against coalition pacts.

Earlier this week the Government quietly pushed through a change in the law which allows those who stand for mayor or in local council elections to use a Coalition logo. Constitutional Affairs Minister Mark Harper wants the same rules for the general election.

So now Mr Harper has revealed that he will introduce primary legislation in the Commons to push through the same rules for the general elections. You guessed it, in in time for the next UK-wide poll in 2015.

Of course allowing them to field one candidate on a coalition ticket is one thing but actually getting people to vote for them is another. Do they really think the grass roots of each party are going to be happy to vote for a candidate hitherto opposed to them? So is this that hackneyed phrase trotted out so much of late, "a U-turn", it sure seems like it to me!

Get ready for coalition candidates coming to a polling station near you.

I have no objection at all to them having a formal coalition candidate on the polling slip and indeed think it will be to the benefit of the SNP, as they will get disgruntled voters from both sides. What I object to is the way they seem to think we are all so stupid that we wont remember that six months ago they were saying this was a totally outrageous notion, but now they are sneakily laying the groundwork for actually making it happen.

Do they thing we all, man, woman and child, zip up the back to treat us with such cavalier contempt? They have supposedly five years, so why don’t they wait for a decent amount of time before completely reversing course?

NEW POLITICS® in action!

Yesterday Mr Clegg endorsed David Cameron's flagship "big society" theme.

In a U-turn, the Liberal Democrat leader told a Downing Street seminar for voluntary groups he hosted with the Prime Minister: "What I'm discovering is we've been using different words for a long time – it actually means the same thing. Liberalism, big society. Empowerment, responsibility. It means the same thing." So there you are it’s all the same thing really. So what is the point of voting for the Lib Dems then? Everybody might as well have voted for the Conservatives and saved us all this bother.

Mr Clegg took a rather different approach to Mr Cameron's big idea during the election. On 2 May, he said: "What is this 'big society'? It is a big society with a price tag attached. It's a bit like inviting someone to a party in a pub and finding that it's your card behind the bar paying for everyone's drinks." What’s so “New Politics”® about a U Turn then? That is certainly not a new political manoeuvre.

Mr Clegg is also expected to announce today what he will label a "big bang” of political reform. It looks much more like a damp squib with a load of Tory looking aspirations to roll back surveillance society and buried in it the vaunted referendum on changing from FPTP to AV (not even the AV+ advocated by the Jenkins Commission). That is a change from one majority system to another, no mention of PR at all. How is that going to maximise choice and make things fairer? Also in there is this gem of obfuscation: moves to “a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords”. What does that mean then? Not a fudge is it for some tinkering round the edges by any chance? Isn’t “New Politics”® wonderful?

Here is a list (from the Independent) of the other key aspects of the Big Bang expected to be announced by Deputy Dawg:

* scrapping the identity card scheme and second generation biometric passports;

* removing limits on the rights to peaceful protest;

* a bonfire of unnecessary laws;

* a block on pointless new criminal offences;

* internet and email records not to be held without reason;

* closed-circuit television to be properly regulated;

* new controls over the DNA database, such as on the storage of innocent people's DNA;

* axeing the ContactPoint children's database;

* schools will not take children's fingerprints without asking for parental consent;

* reviewing the libel laws to protect freedom of speech.