Bermant's blog

Lies, damned lies and opinion polls

2009-06-10T13:21:00.005+01:00

The one thing that's certain in British politics right now is that nothing's certain. Ever since the expenses scandal, everything is up in the air. No one knows what's going to happen next.

We keep hearing that Labour faces meltdown in the event of a general election, but we also hear that David Cameron is far from popular. We hear from several political commentators that Alan Johnson can stop the Tories, yet no-one in Labour wants to risk testing the theory. Labour have been wiped out in the local and European elections, but the Tories relatively low share of the European vote by no means guarantees them a parliamentary majority in a general election.

Of course none of these statistics mean anything. Labour did spectacularly badly in the 2004 European elections, yet they won the general election the following year. And remember the Tories who scored the highest vote in the 1999 European elections and who then went on to fail miserably in the 2001 general election?

We should by now have learnt our lesson from the 1992 election, that you can never rely on the opinion polls. The other lesson we should learn is that history doesn't necessarily repeat itself. When the Tories changed their leader from Margaret Thatcher to John Major, it helped them win the 1992 election. But no one knows whether Labour changing their leader would bring the same result (remember how highly everyone thought of Gordon Brown?). Besides, most of the electorate are unfamiliar with Alan Johnson.

It is probably safe to assume that Labour are unlikely to win the next general election, but will the Tories have a working majority? We may have to wait another 11 months to find out. One thing's for sure - with the current 'anti-politician' mood around the country, the era of landslide majorities is over. That may not be a bad thing. Despite two massive election victories, Tony Blair's achievements were relatively modest. But with a narrow majority, the Tories will be under a lot more pressure to turn things around. They might just deliver.

Fewer traffic lights make safer roads, the same is true with speed cameras

2009-05-05T07:48:00.004+01:00

It has been reported in the Times:

For six months, lights at up to seven junctions in Ealing will be concealed by bags and drivers will be left to negotiate their way across by establishing eye contact with pedestrians and other motorists.
Ealing Council believes that, far from improving the flow of traffic, lights cause delays and may even increase road danger. Drivers race towards green lights to make it across before they turn red. Confidence that they have right of way lulls them into a false sense of security, meaning that they fail to anticipate hazards coming from the side. The council hopes that drivers will learn to co-operate, crossing junctions on a first-come first-served basis rather than obeying robotic signals that have no sense of where people are waiting.

The move follows other successful experiments with removing traffic lights in continental Europe. In the Dutch town of Drachten, for example, the removal of traffic lights at one big junction resulted in crashes falling from 36 in the four years before the scheme was introduced to two in the next two years. The average time for each vehicle to cross the junction fell from 50 seconds to 30 seconds despite a rise in the volume of traffic.

Maybe it's time we also took a similar approach with speed cameras. Despite their trebling in number during Labour's tenure in Government, their contribution to road safety has been negligible. During the same period other European countries have seen large drops in deaths and serious injuries on the roads, but without the presence of speed cameras. Maybe it's time Labour stopped treating us like five year olds?

Compulsory sex education won't reduce teenage pregnancy

2009-04-28T07:48:00.006+01:00

Sex education campaigners remind me of Marxists around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall. As one communist regime after another collapsed towards the end of 1989, they told us that communism hadn't failed, it simply hadn't been implemented properly. But sometimes you have to ask yourself, if something has failed so miserably, maybe there is something inherently wrong with it.

Over the last 20 years, sex education has become ever more explicit, and is taught to an ever larger number of schoolchildren, yet the rates of teenage pregnancy have skyrocketed. And what's the response of sexual health campaigners? Even more explicit sex education, and make it compulsory (currently only one in 2,500 parents withdraws children from sex education classes).

The Times reports that sexual health charities have warned that allowing parents to opt out, even if it involved only a small number, was an infringement of young people’s rights - in other words, your children do not belong to you, but belong to the State.

Sex education isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as there is some emphasis on abstinence, but heaven forbid we "prevent young people from making informed choices". To quote Simon Blake, national director of the sexual health charity Brook: “Young people need to understand the law – that you can get contraception, that you can have an abortion – and understand the health benefits of practising safer sex. It would not be right for anyone to tell them that this is wrong, but it is OK for them to be told that some people believe it is wrong.”- So let's follow the logic of his argument - Maybe I shouldn't tell my children that child abuse and child exploitation is wrong. After all, it's just that I believe it's wrong and they need to make their own mind up on the subject.

We have no problem telling people that it's wrong to drive fast, that they should abstain from smoking, and that they should drink less, so why are we so squemish about telling people to abstain from sex?

It hasn't yet dawned on Labour that the era of big government is over

2009-04-26T07:49:00.005+01:00

When you see how rapidly the New Labour project is disintegrating, you start to realise what a house of cards the whole thing was. In their heart of hearts, how many Labour MPs truly believed in Blairism? Sure, there were enough of them who were happy to go along with Blair because they were hungry for power, but after 12 years in office, they seem to have forgotten why they were returned to power in the first place.

Labour MPs were never great fans of the free market, but as long as the city was booming and the tax receipts were flowing in, they were prepared to tolerate it. Then came the financial crisis and money dried up. Now Labour are biting the hand that has fed it for the last 12 years.

Whilst there is widespread revulsion about the greed of bankers, there is no evidence that the electorate has lurched to the left. The financial crisis of the last eighteen months has not closed the chapter of Reaganism/Thatcherism, but on the contrary is likely to reopen it - Millions of voters have seen their tax bills rise and corresponding rises in public spending without any tangible results. Now to cap it all, they are saddled with decades of debt that their children and grandchildren will inherit. We may not see a return to the Thatcherite policies of deregulating the financial markets, but sooner or later, we will have to address, as Thatcher did, the public sector spending that has spiralled out of control.

The 2009 budget was a golden opportunity for Gordon Brown to seize the agenda and salvage his (and New Labour's) reputation for prudence. He could accept (to quote Tony Blair) "that the rules of the game have changed" - that the money has run out and the State needs to live within its means like the rest of us. But instead of asking himself why the Tories are leading in the polls, he and his fellow MPs he have drawn all the wrong conclusions: Namely, that capitalism has failed and that the rich are responsible for our debt. That the state can keep on growing and the rich can pay for it.

Reputations take years to build but only months to unravel. After Thatcher became Prime Minister, it took nearly two decades for Labour to become electable. Gordon Brown seems determined to undo all that progress in a mere matter of weeks and drag Labour back to where it was in the early 80s. Labour is beginning to look and sound more and more like it was in the days of Michael Foot - Controlling, statist, anti-business and anti-aspiration. Tony Blair once said of John Major's government: "I lead my party, he follows his" - the same could be said about Gordon Brown.

Labour, like the Tories before them, have forgotten that power corrupts

2009-04-19T08:07:00.003+01:00

I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tonged, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least.

This was Bernard Levin's analysis of the Tory Government following Tony Blair's election as Labour leader back in 1994. 15 years later, the same could be said about the current Labour government.

Labour have enjoyed an unprecedented three terms in office, but the downside of being re-elected again and again is that you tend to forget that it was the voters who put you there. Complacency sets in and you start to believe that you are entitled to remain perpetually in power.

After 12 years in office, Labour have become sleazy, dishonest and like the Tories before them, downright nasty. Some have commented that Labour's sin is worse as it aspires to the high minded ideals of social justice and equality. How naive!

There is an old saying, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Labour are suffering from the same old malaise that affects all parties that have been in power too long. I think we have now reached the point where an economic recovery will make little difference to Labour's re-election prospects. Once you have the lost the trust of electorate, there is no gratitude from them.

Is the Damian McBride affair Gordon Brown's "Black Wednesday"

2009-04-19T00:04:00.005+01:00

In April 1992, in the midst of a deep recession, the British electorate gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt and narrowly re-elected them to a fourth term in office. But just five months later, their reputation for competent handling of the economy was shattered by Black Wednesday. It has taken 15 years for their reputation to recover.

As Gordon Brown emerged triumphantly from "saving the world" towards the end of 2008, there were many who may have likewise concluded "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". But after the latest revelations emerging from the Damian McBride affair, it's clear that the current administration is more interested in smearing political opponents (including those in its own party) than saving the economy. After all this, can anyone honestly say they trust these guys to run the country?

The private - public sector divide replaces the north south divide -

2009-03-19T06:06:00.002Z

Interesting article about the north - south divide in today's Times. During the 80s and 90s, you heard constant reports in the press about how there was a growing wealth gap between the north and south of England. Now this has been replaced by the public - private sector divide.

So whilst the recession has forced the private sector to cut pay and make redundancies, the public sector carries on as though nothing has changed. How is this possible? Very simple. Labour have created over a million new public sector jobs (and a million loyal voters) in the past 12 years. With a general election just 14 months away, Gordon Brown will want to keep his voters happy and if he has to bankrupt the rest of us in the process, so be it.

Should the Tories win the next election, public sector reform will prove to be as divisive an issue as curbing the Unions was in the 80s. Make no mistake, David Cameron has an unenviable task ahead of him.

Europeans talk the talk about Gitmo but they can't walk the walk

2009-03-11T23:59:00.000Z

The Times has revealed that a Taleban commander responsible for increasingly sophisticated bomb attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan is a former detainee of Guantánamo Bay.

You can understand why EU countries are in no hurry to offer hospitality to former Guantánamo inmates (but hold on a minute, weren't they all calling for Gitmo to be closed down?).

Maybe it's time Britain stopped preaching to the world about what a wonderful success Northern Ireland is

2009-03-11T23:22:00.002Z

The recent murders that have taken place in Northern Ireland should serve as a wake up call to the British and Irish government about what has happened in Northern Ireland.

There have been demonstrations and candle lit vigils (as if the dissident republicans care), the Pope has added his voice to the chorus of condemnation, and politicians have promised that the perpetrators will be brought to justice (yeah right, remember Robert McCartney?). And even if the perpetrators are caught, you can be sure they will be freed within a year or two as a gesture towards peace and reconciliation.

I have said it all before. As a result of the "peace at all costs" mentality of the British and Irish governments, Northern Ireland has become a basket case economy (70% of expenditure is by the State), a Mafia state governed by thugs (Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley) and policed by armed loyalist and republican thugs, who carry on with their racketeering, protection rackets, drug dealing and beatings unchallenged.

The first stage of a peace process is to stop the bombings and shootings, but it doesn't stop there. Unless all parties agree to the rule of law, we are back where we started.

What future does a country have that tolerates this kind of thuggery?

2009-03-11T23:00:00.003Z

Welcome to Britain, 2009

My Father came to the safety of these shores in 1937. Had he remained in his country of birth just a few months later, he would have perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Now, seventy years later, we allow those who hate this country to openly vent their hatred towards us and our armed forces. For how long will our deluded establishment that continue to tolerate this thuggery? How long will they continue to preach that you can counter extremism by turning the other cheek?

It makes me worried for the future of my children.

We all helped fuel the recession, but not out of greed

2009-03-08T22:08:00.004Z

There is some truth in the Shadow Chancellor's claim that we all helped fuel the current recession, but he needs to be very careful who he points the finger of blame at. The boom times may have been years of greed and overindulgence for some, but for many, they were simply a daily struggle to make ends meet.

Not everyone was bingeing on plasma TVs and buying houses as an investment. Many were simply looking for a roof over their heads, but with house prices rising faster than wages, were forced to take on mortgages they could barely afford.

We may have all helped fuel the current recession, but we weren't all responsible.

Cutting the speed limit to 50mph? Why stop there? Why not cut the limit to 40 or 30?

2009-03-08T20:38:00.006Z

The government's latest road safety initiative bears all the hallmarks of an administration living on borrowed time. Knowing that it's unlikely to win the next election, it has little to lose from introducing unpopular policies. Its latest plan is to cut speed limits on country roads from 60mph down to 50mph early next year. The roads minister was quoted as saying:

There will be some in the driving lobby who think this is a further attack and a restriction on people’s freedom,” he said. “But when you compare that to the fact we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads, it would be irresponsible not to do something about it. I’m sure that the vast majority of motorists would support the proposals.”

I have a suggestion for the government minister. As the Sunday Times Leader argues, If he thinks that "speed kills", why stop at 50? Why not cut the limit to limit to 40 or even 30? And while he's at it, why not cut the motorway limit to 50? Better still, why not take driving licences away from everyone except professional drivers? Surely that way we really could save 3,000 lives a year.

The "speed kills" slogan is as old as red flag act, and is based on a simplistic assumption that the slower you drive, the safer you are. But anyone with an ounce of common sense knows this is utter nonsense. Why for example are our motorways the safest roads despite being the fastest roads? And has anyone figured out how Germany, with its limit free Autobahnen has fewer deaths than other European countries with lower speed limits? True, the majority of road deaths in the UK occur on country roads, but that's because the standard of driving is appalling and many motorists simply don't know how to drive on them. Some of our country roads are bendy, narrow and dangerous and really should have their speed limits reduced, but others are straight and wide and perfectly safe within the current speed limit. Clearly the design of our roads and the poor standard of driving is a factor, not just speed.

Many of us in the "motoring lobby" are not against this policy because of the restriction to our freedom, but because it's a clumsy ill conceived law that will criminalise millions of motorists whilst doing little to improve the standard of driving.

Plane Stupid are Plain Stupid

2009-03-08T20:14:00.002Z

Plane Stupid's latest act: throwing green custard in the face of Peter Mandelson may have attracted a lot of publicity, but they may have actually done the government a favour...by highlighting the lack of security around cabinet ministers.

Unfortunately for Plane Stupid, their publicity stunt will be remembered more for the green custard than for any protest behind it. But then their whole campaign is a joke, and has more to do with making campaigners like Emma Thompson and James Blunt feel less guilty about flying. It's ok for them: if the price of flying went up tenfold, they could still afford to fly, unlike the rest of us.

Must read article in "Comment is Free"

2009-03-05T07:04:00.002Z

Elizabeth Jay writes about the double standards of the western media when criticising Israel:

"When the media report a 'fascist' party in Israel, yet call Hamas 'pragmatic', we must ask what double standards are in operation".

You can read the article here

Gordon Brown's trip to Washington is the act of a desperate leader

2009-03-05T06:46:00.003Z

Gordon Brown must be beaming after this address to Congress, but for the rest of us back in dear old blighty, he is likely to end up looking even more irrelevant. It's a long time since November, and few people here care about the Obama Presidency now. They are more worried about their mortgages, jobs and pensions.

And as far as the Obama administration is concerned, Brown is a lame duck Prime Minister. Why should they bother giving time and attention to a leader who has only 14 months left in office?

Gordon's Brown's situation is best summed up by Tom Baldwin:

Not only was Mr Brown unable to light the rhetorical fires that blazed here when his predecessor spoke six years ago, it is that he also matters less than Mr Blair, who was needed by George Bush to validate the Iraq war. The Prime Minister now, by contrast, is not so much needed as plain needy.

There is no need to humanise the inhumane

2009-02-23T07:40:00.006Z

After the murder of James Bulger, John Major famously said that "We must condemn a little more, and understand a little less". The same could be said about the Islamists.

Calderdale Council (which borders the area where two of the 7/7 bombers lived) has come out with a new teaching pack for schools. The resource, called "Things Do Change", looks at life in multicultural Britain and the issues of extremism and terrorism. One module suggests students could prepare a presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the bombers' perspective.

The teaching pack had been recommended by government ministers as a way of addressing controversial issues, but the government have now withdrawn their support following the backlash. The government has now admitted the pack was "misguided and inappropriate".

It doesn't take a genius to realise that the moment you try and "understand" the motivations of suicide bombers, it doesn't take very long till you end up condoning and then justifying their actions. Suicide bombers are able to do what they do because they dehumanise their victims. They are inhumane people, and we shouldn't seek to humanise them.

One rule for the public sector, another one for the public sector

2009-02-23T07:24:00.005Z

Whilst the rest of us tighten our belts during the recession, the government continues to spend like there is no tomorrow. Two articles worth reading on the subject:

Ross Clark writing in this week's Spectator, says that the really appetising salaries, perks, expense packages and pensions are to be found in the public sector.
Dominic Lawson writing in the Sunday Times, compares the government's national insurance system to Bernard Madoff's "Ponzi" scheme.

The government hasn't yet woken up to the reality that reckless spending ultimately leads to bankruptcy. It seem's there is one rule for the private sector, another for the public sector.

Britain doesn't need sex education but a change in attitudes

2009-02-16T06:29:00.003Z

The news about Britain's youngest father is a reminder if any were needed that there are large parts of Britain where the rules of civilised society don't apply. For years, the "experts" have been telling us that it was a lack of sex education that was responsible for us having the highest teenage pregnancy in Europe. But years after the introduction sex education, we still have the highest teenage pregnancy in Europe.

Clearly something hasn't worked, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that sex education is mostly about how to have sex i.e. putting condoms and bananas and very little about "education" i.e. the dangers of underage sex and the importance of abstinence. But heaven forbid that we should "preach" to teenagers and prevent them from being able to make "informed decisions".

Unfortunately, the political establishment continues to believe that you "can't put the genie back in the bottle" and that any attempt to teach teenagers about the consequences of their actions is being judgemental. As long as their attitude persists, there is unlikely to be any fall in teenage pregnancy.

Mob Rule 1, Free Speech 0

2009-02-13T10:32:00.002Z

Not much to say about the whole sorry Geert Wilders episode except to quote The Times:

It is a common notion that the right to free speech must be held in balance with the requirement to avoid needless offence. That is a mistake. The right to oppose, mock, deride and even insult people's beliefs is essential to a society where bad ideas are superseded by better ones. There is no right to have one's emotional sensibilities protected, for it is no business of government to legislate for people's feelings. Mr Wilders' views are obnoxious, and (not but) his freedom to express them must be defended.

Blaming antisemitic attacks on the Gazan invasion

2009-02-09T09:24:00.004Z

There has been a shocking rise in the number of antisemitic attacks on Britain's Jewish community in recent weeks. Many of the attacks have been carried out by Arabs and Asians. What's most shocking of all is that Israel's attack on Gaza is blamed by many for the attacks.

17 years ago, I remember anti-fascists condemning racist attacks against Blacks and Asians in East London. This was all during the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence's murder. There were some apologists who argued at the time that is was all due to local resentment at Blacks and Asians getting all the jobs and housing. Of course it wasn't. It was due to racist thugs attacking innocent people. And it's no different here.

The liberal left have yet to wake up to reality, continuing to believe that you can only be racist if you're white.

Britain's "can't do" culture

2009-02-05T08:06:00.004Z

I have always admired America's "can do" culture. Britain it seems suffers from the opposite.

The last few days have revealed what a nation of wimps we've become. All because of a few inches of snow....

London's entire bus fleet is grounded (this didn't even happen during the Blitz).
Heathrow airport is closed
One in five people are off work
Thousands of schools remain closed for days, and this after the road and weather conditions improved:

The Romsey School in Romsey, Hants, was closed because of "hazardous" conditions even though roads and paths nearby had thawed in bright sunshine. The head teacher explained his decision: "I feared a car coming into the car park too quickly could skid and plough into a crowd of pupils, for example."

Younger pupils were asked to stay away from Quintin Kynaston secondary school in north London for "health and safety reasons".

Head teacher Jo Shuter said: "It is so easy for a kid to lose their eye if a bit of ice gets thrown at them."

In addition, we get the usual excuses of: "this is the worst weather we've had since erm... last year". We've had enough snowy winters in last few years, we should be perfectly able to cope.

It's hardly surprising that traders are rushing to sell sterling. This country is simply unable to function anymore.

Worry a little less about sustainable development and a little more about sustainable population growth

2009-02-02T06:50:00.007Z

The government's green adviser has warned that couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment. Not much really to say, except that this guy has taken leave of his senses. No society can prosper (or even survive for that matter) on negative population growth. How are we supposed to pay for the rising costs pensions or healthcare when you have a declining workforce paying for an ever growing army of pensioners?

Right now, Britain (and most of Europe) is suffering not from population growth but from population decline. Britain is currently below the population replacement level of 2.1 children per couple, and we are having to rely on immigration in order to create population growth. As Mark Steyn has put it in his book America Alone, "we are having to import the children that were not prepared to have".

Perhaps it's time that environmentalists worried a little less about sustainable development, and instead worried a little more about sustainable population growth.

Europeans and their hypocritical attitude towards Hamas

2009-01-29T18:53:00.004Z

Nothing irritates me more than self-righteous Westerners urging Israel to negotiate with Hamas. The argument commonly made is that Hamas have popular support and therefore can't be pushed aside. (Although it's not even clear they do have popular support).

I wonder..... if a Christian far right fascist party came to power in Europe, one that was theocratic, viciously anti-semitic, homophobic, misogynist and wanted to wage war on its neighbours, would Europeans argue that fighting the fascists will only give them more support? Yet, that is exactly the argument they are making here.

When political dogma is put before children's welfare

2009-01-29T08:56:00.002Z

Two young children are to be adopted by a gay couple, because the grandparents (46 and 59) are considered too old. The mother of the children is a heroin addict.

The grandparents were told the children were going to a gay household, even though several heterosexual couples wanted them.When the grandfather protested, he was told: 'You can either accept it, and there's a chance you'll see the children twice a year, or you can take that stance and never see them again.'

The grandfather said: 'It breaks my heart to think that our grandchildren are being forced to grow up in an environment without a mother figure. We are not prejudiced, but I defy anyone to explain to us how this can be in their best interests.'

Social workers themselves have admitted that the little girl is 'more wary' of men than women.

It tells you everything you need to know about social services, and how rotten to the core they are. It's far more important to advance their own political agenda than to worry about anything so trivial as the children's welfare.

Lessons NOT to be learnt from Northern Ireland

2009-01-28T22:39:00.004Z

Every other week, a journalist or a government official pens a column about how Israel can learn lessons from Northern Ireland. Well the recently unveiled compensation plan isn't one of them.

The plan is to help reconciliation by giving £12,000 compensation to every family who have lost someone to the troubles, whether they were terrorists or innocent bystanders. It tells you a lot about Britain's amoral attitude to terrorism.

There is a world of difference between reconciliation and reward. Finding the courage to forgive murderers is one thing, but that doesn't mean you have to reward them. Today's Times editorial sums up the argument well....

"..The perpetrators of violence and their innocent targets do not inhabit the same place on the moral spectrum. In the pursuit of peace, the British Government, rightly, made morally uncomfortable compromises once it felt the IRA was ready to make the switch from bombs to the ballot box. But that has not left us blind to the moral gulf between villains and victims. Mercy should not be constrained. Compensation should..."

Money can't buy reconciliation.