NAD GETS MAD AT BIG BAD DAVE

Nadine Dorries has written an article for the Mail on Sunday entitled: "The PM publicly humiliated me in front of the entire nation, [sic] what did I do to deserve that? "

Hmmm... well, Nadine, the dodgy punctuation (which may be the fault of the Mail subs) apart, I doubt the entire nation tunes in to Prime Minister's Question, or indeed to the news. In fact, a fair percentage of the nation doesn't know who David Cameron is, and almost the entire nation hasn't a clue who or what you are.

So I wouldn't worry too much about the humiliation.

Secondly, you must accept that this is the kind of thing that David Cameron and his sort do. They have never really left the Bullingdon and grown up. They are, and will always remain, as drunken rich boys, with daddies to sort everything with their cheque books. George Gideon Osborne and his "wanker" speech is a perfect example of junior common room humour in the wrong place. Your put down, and that of Labour front bencher Angela "calm down dear" Eagle (with Gideon sitting at his side convulsed with laugh

ter) is typical of their boyish humour.

You must also realise this type forms a sizeable minority of your party and a disproportionate number of the Cabinet, and you need to decide for yourself if you really are in the right place.

On the other hand you need to take into consideration that, on a few occasions, you have caused Cameron a fair amount of embarrassment, so it's not all one way traffic.

Your situation vis a vis expenses was far from exemplary. You accused the Telegraph of McCarthyism! You claimed that MPs were threatening suicide and that they were all telephoning each other to check up that each was still alive! You'll remember your blog being taken down by the service providers because the Telegraph was threatening to sue them! Cameron was acutely embarrassed by all that, at a time when he was trying to show a shocked nation that he was a responsible party leader.

Then there was the time you campaigned against a motion at a TUC Conference calling on employers to stop forcing women to wear high heels at work as part of uniforms. You, presumably without reading the motion properly, thought that they were asking for a ban on high heels being allowed... What a twerp you looked.

Then there was your public criticism of the Speaker and your insinuations that he was mentally unstable... I can say Bercow's as mad as a wee March hare, but Mr Cameron's not my boss, and, unless you do it in the Chamber, officially, with the aim of removing him, Nad, you are supposed to show respect for him, no matter how hard that might be.

What else? Oh yes, there was your taking part in the tv programme where you had to see if you could live on state benefits. But you were caught with a £50 note in your bra. Not only did it run counter to the spirit and the point of the programme, it was also incredibly insulting to claimants.

And what about the fuss you made over benefit claimants who Tweet too much? Report them, to the DWP for Tweeting? "You should be out looking under tones for jobs; not tweeting." Next you'll be wanting to report them for spending too much time in the bathroom! Are you sure it's Bercow that's mad?

Of course your marriage is your business and it can't be easy to be married to someone who is suffering from a degenerative disease, but it was hardly good publicity that you left him. Nor was it good publicity that you have been having an affair with one of your married family friends.

Finally, I've seen you arrive for work in the Chamber looking like you were off for afternoon tea, or about to do a days washing. You really could try to smarten up a bit. Mr Cameron always has a smart blue suit on. You could try that.

All in all, you're not a shining example of what Dave is looking for in an MP, are you, Nad?

So, there you have it. You seem to be happy to dish it out, but you're not so good at taking it. I think you'd better toughen up dear.

Or, as I say, consider if you want to be part of the London branch of elderly Bullingdon Boys.

TORY POLICY ON PLANNING IN ENGLAND SEEMS CONFUSED

I’m glad that the Calman Commission rejected any calls from whichever quarters to repatriate Scottish Planning decisions to England.

I suspect that nuclear power stations were our biggest worry at the time. But now, of course, we would have reason to worry about the relaxation of planning regulations, and the instruction to local planning authorities that there should be a “presumption in favour of sustainable developments” when looking at building permits.

Well... of course, only if you don’t have a minister as your MP.

Because, unbeknownst to us, there are ministers who fight tooth and nail against developments in their own constituencies while advocating the laissez faire policy elsewhere.

The Telegraph, no less, that bastion of Torydom has blown the whistle on a few of them.

Eric Pickles criticised the previous government’s attempts to relax planning regulations, fearing “sprawling housing estates dumped by Whitehall on green land”. Clearly, as he is so closely involved with this project, these sprawling estates are now a good, rather than a bad thing.

Gideon signed a petition against the development of an energy plant in his constituency.

Joan Hanham, the ex Tory leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council, and now a junior minister in the Communities Dept, even objected to a memorial garden for Diana in her constituency, but is pushing this legislation from her place on the red benches.

Justine Greening (Putney) is a supporter of the Thames Super Sewer project, but she doesn't want it tunnelled from her own constituency. Michael Fabricant has objected to a development in his own constituency but, as a Whip will be pushing people through the lobby to support the government and Grant Shapps, the housing minister, has also opposed plans for thousands of new houses in his Welwyn Hatfield constituency.

But the pièce de résistance has to be the cities minister Greg Clark (above), the person responsible for the legislation, who fought a development in his own constituency warning that it would cause "yet more pressure on our precious green spaces". Clark has now, in an incredible volte face unbelievably accused those who criticise his legislation of displaying “nihilistic selfishness” for trying to stop people getting on the housing ladder.

Sheesh! You couldn’t make these people up.

With every day I am more relieved that this awful coalition have little remit in Scotland. Life must be getting day by day more impossible in England.

PS: I have a great idea for a massive housing estate of affordable houses and houses for rent. I'm going to propose it for the space right behind, at the side of and in front of this nice family mansion in Oxfordshire (top pic). I can see no reason why it should be turned down, and if it is I will go straight to the local MP.

DEAFNESS AFFLICTS RETIRING PARTY LEADERS

Anyone watching the early parts of First Minister's Questions this week would have been entitled to wonder that it wasn't some spoof cleverly recreating the weekly opportunity to question Alex Salmond, dreamed up and executed by Rory Bremner in a series of guises.

Iain Gray, the outgoing, or maybe not outgoing leader of the Labour group was at his comedy best. (I say may not be outgoing because he may have to stay on. You see, the only 2 people who appear to want the poison chalice of leading this group are (a) someone who can't really have it, on the basis that you can't be leader of the Labour group IN the Scottish parliament if you are, erm, not actually a member of, and therefore IN the Scottish parliament, and (b) Johann Lamont... who erm.. is ...erm, Johann Lamont!

Anyway, Iain, bless him, decided to go on the referendum on independence. He'd probably have done better sticking to the subject of the first question: What are the FM's engagements for the rest of the day?

But no, independence referendum it was. So Alex explained to him three or was it four times... I lost the will to live after the first couple of times... The manifesto said that it would take place sometime in the second half of a five year parliament. This is the first year, or put another way, year 1. There is year 2 to go, and half of year 3 before we will be into the second part of the parliament. From then on it might be reasonable to ask. Right now it is not. More seriously he pointed out that jobs were the priority for the moment.

Now all of that was just pathetic Iain Gray stuff, pretty much par for the course, but for his last question; the pièce de resistance if you will, Iain produced a photograph of a lady he announced was "Gypsy Amalia" in conversation with the First Minister. Maybe we should ask her about the date for the referendum... quipped the funny man. And, as her prices for a reading range from £5 - £30 wasn't she a bit like the plan for "separation" [sic]. You didn't know the cost till the deed was done. How we laughed!

Looking pleased with himself (as well he might) Iain Gray sat down, secure in the knowledge that this one must have, at long last, hit home.

Silly Iain. Alex said he remembered the occasion. The lady always had a stall at the Turrif show in Alex's constituency, and on that occasion she had read his palm and predicted that the SNP would win the election, and it hadn't cost a bean. Maybe, suggested the FM, we could ask her who would be the next Labour leader. Ouch!

Strangely my friend Annabel seemed stricken with the same inability to understand the answer at the first answering. She asked what currency Scotland would use after independence. (Why not borrow a Liberal question, Annabel; after all your mate Cameron is in hock to them according to the fragrant Nadine.) Alex referred her to the answer in a written report dated some time ago, including the page and paragraph numbers. She said he hadn't answered the question, so he read out the aforementioned paragraphs. Annabel still hadn't understood so she must have requested and been granted a further question. All in good humour, mixed with jokes about the forthcoming demise of the Tory party in Scotland, Alex told her that, in the period after the granting of independence, the pound sterling would continue to be the currency until the Scottish people had the chance to decide for themselves which currency they would use.

At long last, Bella seemed to grasp "THE POUND".

Although the second part of FMQs got under way, with sensible questions from MSPs about such matters as blood donations from gay men and the NHS, and Libya, Lockerby and Al Megrahi, it was a relief when the wretched thing was over.

Pic: Johann Lamont. What is it about Labour that they always need to bring in props. It's like "show and tell" that we had at primary school.

TESSY COMES CLEAN AT LAST

Theresa May, it seems, lets her mouth run away with her when she is on tv, or making statements to the press. It is, however, to her credit that when giving information to a select committee, I imagine under some sort of oath, she reverts to a tale nearer the truth.

It’s disconcerting though that there is, in London, a home secretary who feels that it is appropriate to lie and big herself up in front of the television cameras. It does mean that next time she makes some announcement, no one is likely to believe her.

“Oh, that’s just old Kinky Boots making herself sound more like a dominatrix than she really is...Get you wellies off, Tessy, put yer feet up, have a cuppa, and tell us like it really is,” they will say joshingly!

In front of the Home Affairs committee when questioned about the riots in London, she admitted that she had not ordered more police on to the streets and she had not cancelled all police leave, as she also claimed at the time, to the anger of the police chiefs. She also admitted that she had no powers to do that. It seems that the police were right all along.

Furthermore, and possibly more disturbingly, having blamed gangs and gang culture for the riots, she was forced to admit that there were far fewer gangs involved than had previously been imagined. Most indeed of those arrested had NOT been members of gangs. This begs the question, why did Cameron have such a go at the gangs if they weren’t responsible. Did he just make an assumption that they were to blame, or did he wilfully lie?

People who aspire to government really do have to try to understand that they can’t be allowed to make up a narrative to suit their agenda. When a crime is committed, as crimes undoubtedly were, the public has a right to know who did it; not who the government wants them to believe did it so that they may have public support when they launch an attack on whichever group. This is an important part of democracy.

So why did she lie? What was the reason behind her fibbing?

As a Scot I care not much about the doings of Mrs May. Home Secretaries' remits are largely in England. However, part of her responsibilities relate to terrorism throughout all of these countries and as such she has a relatively important role in Scotland, and one where when she tells us something, I’d prefer not to have to wonder whether it’s the truth or some little plot cooked up by her and Cameron in order to undermine something Scottish... possibly the government.

IF GIDEON IS POLITICIAN OF THE YEAR, WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE REST OF THEM?

It seems that you can take the boy out of the Bullingdon, but you can’t take the Bullingdon out of the boy.

The Second Lord of the Treasury, in short, or long, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has, for some reason best known to them, been voted Politician of the Year, by GQ men’s magazine.

So that should tell any foreign readers something about the quality of the politicians at Westminster. (I’m assuming it was Westminster, because it seems to me highly unlikely that such a metropolitan organ as GQ would have much interest in the likes of Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.)

Anyway, in his acceptance speech the Chancellor wondered aloud who read the politics pages of the magazine, much of which is given over to photos of women in various states of undress. He went on to discuss the sexual practices of adolescent boys and the fact that politicians, while not teenage boys, were all wankers anyway. (Why, oh why do the papers report this story with glee but replace that word with w*****s. We all know what the word is. And if we don’t the whole thing makes no sense!

The posh boys’ night out continued when Boris came on next to hand the “Man of the Year” award to The Right Honourable the Baron, Lord Sir Sebastian Newbold Coe of Ranmore, MBE, OBE, KGB. The Mayor, another Bullingdon Boy (who never took part in any riotous behaviour whilst in the club, we hasten to inform), said that he had just come from walking around Croydon where people had shouted “Tory Tosser” at him. (I kinda thought he got off lightly there. A missile or two bouncing off the thatch would have been a distinct possibility, you’d have thought.)

Actually, the unlovely Mr Coe, when told of the opposition of the Welsh and Scottish FAs to a GB football team was reported to have indicated that the Celtic element could go forth and multiply... so he probably felt at home with the lads.

All in all a nice little Tory get together of establishment people, who seem to have forgotten who they now are...or maybe wee Gideon was just trying to prove he was just one of us. These are the best people of the year. Sheesh! GQ has fallen even farther in my estimation.

[The other well known Bullingdon boy (whom, we are delighted to report didn’t do anything wrong, and didn’t see anything wrong, and didn’t hear anything wrong, in the three years he was a member of the restaurant wrecking club) had to apologise when he used the word “twat” on radio before the election. Although it is not considered to be swearing and doesn’t infringe radio guidelines, he was playing safe when he asked said he didn’t want to cause offence. Hmm, well, as I say that was BEFORE the election.]

Pic: George does his fine impression of Mr Bean.

THE MAIN TASK THIS YEAR WILL BE TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY AND CREATE JOBS

The main theme of the government’s programme this year, it seems to me, is jobs. It’s not the only theme, but it matters so much, because by creating employment, we can stimulate the economy of Scotland. So what does that involve?

There is an Opportunities for All scheme which will provide a learning or training place for every 16-19 year old, if they want it. That’s important because once you let a kid leave school and do nothing, it is so much more difficult to get him (or her) motivated in the future. Leisure becomes a habit for some and poverty becomes the norm. And, as Granny would say, 'the dei’l maks work fur idle hans, laddie'.

The government is going to prioritise capital investment, which means creating employment. Remember there was an 11% rise in the construction industry last year in Scotland compared to a 0.2% decrease for the UK and of the 25,000 jobs created in the UK over the last 3 months, 24,000 were in Scotland. Not bad given the size of our population. Businesses are even locating to Scotland from England.

There are infrastructure projects including hospital projects in Glasgow, and the Forth Crossing, a project which in itself will create over 3,000 jobs!! There’s a housing investment programme worth £400 million, supporting more than 15,000 jobs, and building houses which are so desperately needed.

There is a £70 million fund for renewables. OK, many don’t like or want renewables, preferring to rely on gas, oil and coal, but we need to accept that it’s the future and there is interest in it from all around the world. WE need to be in the forefront of attracting the business. Shaking heads and sticking to the 1970s’ technology will only mean that Ireland or Denmark, or England, will pick up the contracts, and engineering and industrial jobs instead of us. You don't have to like it, but like the jobs it creates.

The days when companies were happy to wait for dial up broadband, or indeed work with no internet access at all, were over years ago, but some of our connections are still lamentably slow. So, to encourage companies to Scotland the government will be setting out to get broadband to all. That’s no easy task in a country as big as ours with many isolated communities, but it must, and will, be done, creating jobs by doing it and in the doing of it.

The small business bonus scheme will continue, meaning no rates for small companies. With savings of up to £4,000 a year this is a welcome boost to the private sector.

There is also a policy of no compulsory redundancies and a living wage for all the government’s staff. Lucky them, you might think. But they do matter and them having no confidence in their future is bad for all of us in so many ways. Yes, there will be cuts. There will have to be. We’ve lost billions from the budget, but at least those who don’t want to go, won’t have to. So they can do their jobs without worry, and they can spend their money...

There is, of course, much more, but I was genuinely pleased to see that, when the UK government is doing its best to create unemployment, Edinburgh is working to put people into jobs.

Even if George Osborne doesn’t have a plan B, thank heavens, the Scottish government does. It almost makes you feel as if we ARE all in this together.

(The illustration is, I'm told, British Crown copyrighted and as such acknowledgement must be made to the British Crown for its use. So: Thank you your majesty xx.)

I WONDER IF THEY ALLOW HATS LIKE THIS IN WORMWOOD SCRUBS

At long last the awful Margaret Moran woman has been charged, and it was worth waiting for... 15 counts of false accounting and 6 of fraud.

How well I remember the morning, two years ago, when she was asked about the matter in a tv studio and denied it strenuously and furiously. This great podgy ball of indignation was, she said, going to sue the Daily Telegraph for defamation.

Aye, well that died a death pretty sharpish, didn’t it?

Instead she went on the sick (on full pay) just like so many of her colleagues, and kept a low profile, presumably hoping it would all blow over. But it didn’t. Bummer eh, Mags?

She improved and furnished (it is alleged) her main home, under a scheme designed to maintain a second home. She managed to claim for homes in London, Luton and Southampton (100 miles away from her constituency, and which turned out to be a man friend’s house). Additionally she passed false invoices on 7 occasions, allegedly, of course . Greedy cow (equally allegedly).

She is a bit of card though, is our Moran. She owns a home in Spain, and on one occasion, when she felt that her privacy was being violated, she put up a “No Trespassers” kind of notice, based on English law (which, horror of horrors, does not apply in Spain) typed, if you please, on House of Commons headed paper... presumably to give it some gravitas!

The only thing gravitas about her from what I can see, is her ample chest, and we all know what gravity does to that!

While she was away from work, on the sick, neglecting her constituents even more so than normal, she was caught bonny by a “Despatches” investigation. They set up a scam in which they had someone pose as an agent for a PR company looking for influential people who might like to lobby for them... and they caught out a good few grasping greedy troughers, who seemed to feel that they were worth around £4,000 a day, including one who, he confided, had been tipped the wink that he would go to the Lords, and that would be most useful to them. Erm...wooops.

Moran (remember she was on the sick, being paid from state funds), was ready to start as soon as the election was over, she told them, and offered access to all her girly mates in parliament including Harriet Harman.

I wish they had shown their stupid faces when they found out what asses they had made of themselves.

Anyway, I expect that the upside of prison life will be that the ample Ms Moran, like the Devine Jim, will come out a bit trimmer. Maybe her orange hat won’t look so hilariously stupid then.

Post Script: I see a young lad of previous good behaviour, in fact a hopeful for the Olympics, has been jailed for 8 months for stealing a pocket full of cigarettes. I wonder how long she'll get for all this defrauding and lying! What's the betting it ends up less?

EVERY DAY, STEP BY STEP, WE GET A LITTLE CLOSER

Good news.

Support for independence has moved ahead of opposition to it by 39%- 38%, leaving some 23% undecided. (There is always a fairly large percentage of people who are undecided; much larger than difference between to two camps, which means that no poll has ever been decisive.)

Added to the historic win of an outright majority in a parliament, the voting system for which was designed never to have a majority without coalition, and to keep the SNP from even minority government, these figures are to be welcomed.

So why? After all the SNP has hardly had an auspicious start to their majority government, with sectarian legislation problems and ministerial comments about justice which were, albeit right, contentious.

Well, I know what I think. See if you agree.

Scotland voted for a Labour government at Westminster. It did not vote SNP, nor Liberal and definitively it did not vote Tory. And yet it got a Tory/Liberal government, thanks to England.

Although for 30 years Scotland has been infertile ground for Tories, I doubt there has ever been so much resentment to them as at present. Cameron’s government is disliked insistently, and the Liberals, as one can see from the by-election lost deposit and the results at the Scottish General Election.

The much trumpeted respect agenda was dropped within hours of being consecrated. When Cameron left Scotland for America after his victory visit he had promised to treat Scotland and the Scots with respect. What did he actually do? He got off the plane and decried Scotland and its legal system for releasing Al Megrahi.

There was no reason why he couldn't have explained that he had no jurisdiction over the case, but as PM of the whole UK it would be wrong of him to comment on the Scottish government's decision. But he saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself with President Obama, and crept for all he was worth.

Many of the decisions that he has taken to save money have hit Scotland, a country heavily reliant on public sector jobs (thanks to his mentor, Mrs Thatcher), much more heavily than England.

And when, shortly after appointing his cabinet, he had to replace the Chief Secretary, what did he do? He took the person whom he had thought the best man for the Scotland Office, and promoted him, leaving Scotland with a no-hoper considered hithertofore unsuitable for any ministerial post all. Respect?

So all of this has come back to bite him on the bum. His inept Scotland man does nothing but patronize, most recently with his six questions about the future of independence. Meanwhile Danny Alexander, the erstwhile Scottish Secretary, proves he wasn’t much better for the job by making idiotic jokes about the Edinburgh trams, clearly forgetting, or not knowing, that it was his party that created the mess.

Just like the Labour Party which carped and criticised (and continues to do so) and never produced one serious bit of opposition, asking stupid questions about the FM’s Christmas presents, and which, for their troubles lost more than 20 seats in May, this inept government, unelected by the Scots, has found fault with everything that the government which WAS elected by Scots with an overwhelming vote, has done.

And this is the result!

It’s simple psychology people. If you turn to page 17 of your “Psychology for Beginners” book, you can read up on how NOT to get up people’s noses.

It matters to us, you see.

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MIGHT WE SOON BE LOOKING AT THE NEW McTORIES? OCH AYE, WE MIGHT

So where is Dean when you need him for the inside info?

I read in the Daily Telegraph that Murdo Fraser has indicated that, should he become the new Scottish Conservative leader when Ms Goldie stands down next month, his stay in that position will be brief, for he will disband the party and launch a new Scottish centre-right party.

Murdo, quite rightly in my opinion, has the idea that the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is a toxic name. His will launch his campaign on Monday in Edinburgh with the slogan “A new party for Scotland”.

He says that he has spoken to senior English Tories including Munguin’s Republic’s dear friend Francis Maude. Maudie is apparently wildly enthusiastic about it. (Perhaps he will volunteer to do something for it as part of his VAST big society commitments?)

Reading through Murdo’s claims, the word “NEW” appears as many times as it did in Tony Blair’s early rantings about NEW Labour. A NEW party; a NEW belief in devolution (how can you have a new belief in it when you grasped it firmly before?); a NEW approach to policy making; a NEW name; NEW supporters from all walks of life; a NEW positive message about staying in the union; a NEW party; a NEW unionism; a NEW dawn... Oh Poleeeeze! (And no, I didn’t make that last one up!)

But, one of the OLD party’s problems was that it required funding from England to continue to survive. Indeed reform was a must if it was to continue to receive the bounty of the English membership. Will it still need Tory funding?

But would a new name and a new party and a new...well, you know the list... would it be enough to change the party’s lack of support in Scotland? Murdo says that it would. But he also says that its members would take the Conservative whip in London and would be eligible for posts in a Conservative government, and so, for possibly the first time in my life, I find myself in agreement with the old windbag, Michael Forsyth. Mr Forsyth thinks that it is naive and simplistic in the extreme to imagine that a change of name can bring about electoral success. I do think that distancing themselves from the toxic name and record...and the association with an English cabinet of multi-millionaires from English public schools and Oxbridge might make a slight difference to their Scottish image. But is the Scottish public going to believe that it is all that NEW when one of its members (David Mundell) is a junior minister in the Conservative party?

It would be difficult for David (I want to be prime minister of all the UK) Cameron. Dave would be the first prime minister to have no members in two of the four constituent lands of the UK, leaving England and Wales the only countries in which the Tories still existed.

Northern Ireland, already more Irish than British, and Scotland with its own legal system, seem to be slipping farther away with every step.

Of course Murdo may not win the leadership. Jackson Carlaw and Ruth Davidson are also standing.

But if he does, what effect will this have on the fortunes of the centre right in Scotland? And what effects will that have on the SNP, and on independence?

Any thoughts?

Pic: Dave, on the left, looking a tad jowly. You just can't get the botox these days. And Murdo, on the right (or not as the case may be) erm... with a very very nice tie.

WILLIE HOLDS THE SNP TO ACCOUNT FROM A VANTAGE POINT OF -14% SATISFACTION RATING

I’m indebted to Cynical Highlander for bringing an IPSOS-Mori Poll to my intention.

As you can see from the link the figures are, to say the least, encouraging.

On a poll of 1002 Scottish adults in the last few days of August, the voting intentions for the constituency members show a substantial lead for the SNP over Labour. Of those certain to vote, the difference is 49% to 28% in the SNP’s favour. The Tories are on 12% and the Liberals on 7%.

The figures for the total expressing a favoured party are not substantially different with the SNP on 47% and Labour on 30%. The Tories remain of 12% and the Liberals lose one to show 6%.

The graph of the constituency trend since 2005 shows a general upward trend for the SNP with a small dip in late 2009 – 2010 and then a surge towards the election, and even more of a surge since, to end at 49%.

Labour started off in the mid 30s, dipped and surged in time to take a nose dive from 40 in late 2010, to 30 at the election and 28 now. The Tories are fairly flat lined with a few small dips and rises, but ending up a little lower on 13%. The Liberals lost some ground in the early part of the graph but needless to say, as a result of getting in to bed with Cameron in England, they slipped from middle teens at the English elections to 7% now...down by around a point from the election.

The Westminster voting intentions look encouraging too, with the SNP having a lead over Labour of 7-9%. Of course that would still be likely to leave Labour with far and away the largest number of seats, but it is encouraging that support for the SNP is holding up. It is particularly cheering that since the election for Westminster, Labour’s votes have reduced substantially and ours have risen even more dramatically.

A limited leaders’ satisfaction poll was taken, leaving out Annabel and Gray, both of whom are to stand down (and apparently no one thought to include Patrick).

So we have the battle of the giants... or rather the giant, and Willie.

Alex has an approval rating of 62%, not bad after 4 years of being First Minister; Willie on the other hand has, after 4 months of being leader, a satisfaction rating of 17%!

Hold away Willie, maybe someday someone will notice you’re there.

The sick way Britain treats her sick and disabled

This is an article by Liberal blogger George Potter. It concerns the way in which sick and disabled people are treated in the UK. He asked for the article to be cross posted and I am pleased to oblige.

One of the ways that you judge a country is how it treats its poor, its old, its young and its sick. The UK fails dismally on all of these measures, with the poor getting poorer, the old dumped in underfunded private homes to rot away until they die, the young being deprived of a useful education and of suitable jobs, and the sick treated as if they are lying, cheating fraudsters stealing public funds, ironically by a group of lying cheating fraudsters who have been stealing public funds.

I'm reminded of a speech made by His Royal Highness the Duke of Rothsay, in which he said that he had always considered it to be a great privilege to be born British. Clearly he had never had to go through an Atos interview.

Tris

The main form of support which sick and disabled people receive, is called the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) which is the successor to the old Incapacity Benefit (IB). This is to help with their living costs, which tend to be much higher than those of able bodied people - the cost of petrol for regular hospital trips can quickly add up, for example.

The current system of determining eligibility for support originates with Labour who created a system based on the (incorrect) assumption that the many of those receiving IB were perfectly healthy due to Thatcher moving people onto it during the 80s in order to massage the unemployment figures.

But, while it is true that the number of people receiving IB had remained mostly static at around 3 million for twenty years, the people on it have changed. It is years since able bodied people were deliberately moved onto IB and most of them had died by the time the system was overhauled. The reason the number of claimants had remained static was because both medicine and diagnoses had improved so that people who would have died or gone undiagnosed in the past were now on the system when they hadn’t been before.

Yet this one, utterly flawed assumption, was used as the basis of the last government’s treatment of those on IB. Under the auspices of Labour’s James Purnell, a system was created whereby those seeking to claim IB had to go through an assessment process run by the private French IT company Atos.

The assessment process developed works on the basis of an interview. In this interview, claimants are asked a series of questions by interviewers reading off a points-based, tick-box system on their screen. The system offers a selection of possible answers and the interviewer has to choose the one which best fits the claimants answer. The problem is that the people who designed the assessment did not have medical knowledge of all the conditions possible, nor does the test even begin to take into account the time variant nature of many conditions.

People with time variant conditions, such as disability campaigner Sue Marsh, can’t, on her worst days, get out of bed, can't walk at all, can't eat, vomits every twenty minutes and has to shove needles into herself every 2-4 hours to control the pain and nausea. Yet, on a good day, she might actually be well enough to do most of the things an able bodied person can. But the test only concerns itself with the ability of claimants to complete basic physical tasks on the day - if Sue were assessed on one of her rare good days then she’d be deemed as needing no support whatsoever despite the fact that most days she’s in near constant pain and lacks the strength to even go on a short walk by herself. The system utterly fails people like Sue, who has recently received an assessment decision letter telling her she is perfectly healthy. And it’s not just Sue, I know of a man in a wheelchair who was classed as being as capable of moving about as an able bodied person and of a man with terminal cancer who was told he was fit to work then died three months later.

This horrendous flaw is compounded by the fact the assessment does not at any point consider the medical history of claimants. A claimant can have been diagnosed by the best medical minds on the planet and none of that would matter as no medical evidence is taken into account during the assessment process.

The new coalition government has recently replaced IB with ESA and all those on IB are now being migrated to ESA with the assumption that some of them will fail to qualify and that the welfare bill will be reduced. The DWP is already encouraging that expectation by the recent, and utterly false claim, that 75% of all those being assessed for ESA are fit to work - a figure which the Office for National Statistics has described as “misleading”.

The assessment system for ESA is identical, in all major aspects, to the assessment system for IB. Because of the flaws in the old system, appeal tribunals were set up for those dissatisfied with the decisions made by Atos. On average, 40% of decisions appealed are overturned at tribunal and this rises to 70% when those appealing are given aid and advice from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau - an organisation which is stringently critical of the flawed way in which the system operates. The cost of the appeal system has been increasing rapidly as more and more people successfully appeal incorrect decisions.

This increased cost is on top of the £100 million cost of the Atos contract - a contract which does not include any fines for the extra cost to the taxpayer when Atos get a decision wrong. But the estimated cost of fraud with regards to ESA is £25 million. So, in addition to human cost on the sick and disabled of these flaws, the system doesn’t even save money. In fact, the only cases of fraud identified so far have been discovered by special investigation teams. This is because deliberate fraudsters know how to play the system while the genuine sick and disabled do not.

On top of that, those found eligible for ESA only receive it for a maximum of 12 months if they have made a national insurance payment in the past three years - so if someone has held a job before becoming sick or disabled then they can only have support for a year. After that, the assumption is that they will have recovered and should be able to work and support themselves.

The only way they can become eligible for support again is if they end up in a situation with total assets worth less than £7,500. Only once they have entered destitution does the system consider helping them again.

And as for those put in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG), who are put in a half way house between being fit as a fiddle and eligible for ESA, they receive partial ESA - but only subject to strict conditions that they meet exactly the same kind of requirements as able bodied unemployed people. They are expected to attend several interviews a week and meet other, similar conditions, or face stiff financial sanctions. But these are not healthy unemployed people, these are people with severe medical conditions and disabilities who need support to help them find and apply for the kind of work they are capable of doing. They need a helping hand but are made to jump through hoops or face strict punishments instead.

I wish I were making all of this up, but I’m not. The system which is supposed to support our sick and disabled really is like this. The most vulnerable people in our society really are dependent on a system as flawed and uncaring as this. A Liberal Youth sponsored motion which deals with this very issue will be debated at Lib Dem Autumn Conference on Saturday the 17th of September and I urge any Lib Dems reading this to lobby their reps to attend the debate and to back both the motion and the amendment.

George Potter