Taxpayers Alliance On Prentis, Simpson, Crow

UNITE: Protecting Simpson's Salary

On Sky News this morning I was pretty disgusted to learn from the Taxpayers Alliance chief, Matthew Elliott, that three of the nation's biggest and most militant, disruptive union bosses earn substantially more than about the same as the Prime Minister and that no less than 38 of the various types of general secretaries and other forms of leader earn over a hundred grand a piece (plus perks and pensions, natch). Said Elliott in a press release this fair morn:

"It is hypocritical for firebrand trade union leaders to be calling for strikes and higher taxes while they themselves live a life of well-paid luxury. It is small wonder that they aren't worried about the tax burden or the national debt when they are so well-off, but it is ordinary, over-stretched taxpayers who will suffer if they get their way. Their bluster should be ignored, and the Government should stop pouring taxpayers' money into union coffers, as they clearly have more than enough cash already."

Who could disagree with that (apart from the usual suspects)?

You can read the rest of this excellent expose, which is rightly and refreshingly a pretty big story today coming as it does on the back of the government's decision to publish a list of the highest paid quangocrats, on the TPA blog...here.

Getting Education Right

Gove will have to take-on the teaching unions -
and he will win

I was pleased to read last night on the Spectator website that 1100 schools have already taken up Michael Gove's invitation to opt for 'Academy' status (basically to opt out of LEA control in the old parlance). I remember last week some heavily unionised lefty university 'expert' on state education, or whatever she was, on Radio 4 (where else?) trying to poo poo the whole thing with the usual nonsense about it creating a two tier system. Well, it didn't before - at least not in the sense she meant - and it won't this time. Opting out leaves more central funding available for schools that need the boost, so that they too can eventually become more independent, manage their own affairs and rid themselves of stultifying state prescribed educational ideology, so long the blight of the education system of Britain - at least since the evil that was the late 60s/early 70s was perpetrated.

In any case, what's so bad about a few high standards for once? What socialists, especially ones who think they're educators of some sort, don't get is that academic aspiration is as natural as any other form of ambition. It cannot simply be magicked away with a wave of some socialist wand, or, more likely, suppressed through some sort of highly divisive forms of social engineering. There is demand for genuine quality - elitism, even - and it will never go away, whether people like Ed Balls think they can make it go away with their interfering, top down interventionist, ideologically motivated lawmaking or not. The point is they haven't - and never would have. Socialists have always thought they could mould human nature by manipulating society by using taxation and interventionist laws as some sort of blunt, clunking sculpting tools. Signs are, after another 13-year dose of them has caused another national cataclysm, that they will never change. They will never understand that,as history shows, the many glorious aspects of human nature evolve gradually over time, and the best politics is the politics that evolves with it, reflecting it while simultaneously creating a society in which the aspirational, ambitious, optimistic, adventurous parts of human nature have the opportunity to flourish.

Still, even though the socialists have once again failed to break the population's general spirit, though they tried as hard as ever, especially through our schools, not least by diluting the exams system to the point where GCSEs, for instance, are almost completely worthless now as tests of a child's intellectual and academic development in any given discipline (especially for prospective employers), you have that nagging sensation in the pit of you stomach that Michael Gove has arrived just in the nick of time.

First, we have the Academies, liberating good schools from central control. Then, we have the other two thrusts of Gove's brilliant, triple-pronged revolution, of which the most important by far is the dismantling of Labour's insane education quangocracy, itself a heavily politicised, labyrinthine, undemocratic, bureaucratic nightmare designed for one purpose: social capture. Gove's already started by abolishing the General Teaching Council (thank God) and two others. The former organisation was designed quite simply to create and monitor a generation of under-experienced, under-educated, over-trained, over-paid, indoctrinated teaching robots - and exclude all others. It worked! Well, its website (all these damn quangos have elaborate websites that seem to mimic government departments' - anyone ever noticed that?) published this note from the gallows yesterday:

The Secretary of State for Education announced on Tuesday 2 June his intention to introduce primary legislation in the late autumn which will abolish the General Teaching Council for England.

In response, the GTC said: 'The GTC was created by Parliament to work in the public interest to improve standards of professional conduct among teachers, to contribute to raising standards of teaching and learning and to raise the standing of the teaching profession.

'We are seeking legal advice on our position and will be seeking urgent clarification from Ministers and Department for Education officials on the implications of today’s announcement for the GTC’s work over the next period and for its staff and Members.'

Looks like they ain't going to go gentle into that good night. So much the better. A public spat will finally bring a bit of scrutiny to bear on these shadow/duplicate government organisations, so expensive and so suspiciously beloved by Labour, that have sprouted up like so much fungi on a fallen oak.

Oh yes, the second part of Gove's three prong revolution is the so-called free schools. Brilliant, and like all organic children of private enterprise, some will fail but most will succeed spectacularly, which will no doubt irritate that lefty, GTC-type woman on Radio 4, who tried to poo poo these too as being 'unprofessional'. Unprofessional? Ha! If the chaos and despair we currently have in Britain is what 'professionalism' (socialist style) delivers, then bring on the amateurs! In fact, and joking apart, I think that Gove has already worked this out. He's trying to break a monopoly of education supply that's grown up over the past thirty or so years, and that has betrayed our children so comprehensively and failed this country so utterly. He knows that the only people who really, genuinely care - or should care - about children's education are parents, not teachers (and especially not unthinking, doubleplusgoodthinking, inadequate young robot teachers). That parents are somehow 'amateurs' should not preclude them from having a huge say in their children's school career.

I know, I know, there's more to it even than all this. All I'm really saying is that Gove looks to me like the real deal - and he must be supported fully and without hesitation. However, having said that, judging by that GTC comment, which is public remember, he is going to be pissing off an awful lot of establishment interest groups (and remember, the left is the establishment in education). Perhaps that's his intention. Well, if it is, he needs to remember that annoying quangos before you dispatch them is one thing, annoying the NUT, with its 300,000 members is quite another. Though having said that, his abolition of the GTC has, strangely enough, gone down reasonably well with the NUT. Its General Secretary, Christine Blower, said yesterday:

"From its inception, the GTC has struggled to overcome the fact that teachers felt it had been imposed on them. Equally, the annual fee of £36.50 has remained a sore point. The NUT has consistently argued that teachers should not have to pay the GTC fee.

"Under the GTC, teachers now feel over-scrutinised. Last year's 'code of conduct' was a worrying development, encompassing activities and behaviour outside of work. It sought to turn aspirations for best practice into rules. Any replacement for the GTC needs to distance itself from the belief that a watchdog can also reserve the right to make intrusive judgments on teachers' personal lives.

I wouldn't count on this superficially supportive sentiment lasting too long if I were Michael Gove, however. She goes on:

"Rather than have outright abolition, all teachers ought to be consulted on whether they believe a professional council for teachers should be maintained. What we cannot have, however, is a council which is at the whims of any Secretary of State. If we are to achieve the holy grail of evidence based policy making, free from political interference, there would be merit in looking at the recent proposal for a Chief Education Officer along the lines of the Chief Science and Medical Officer."

Interesting, isn't it? The NUT was quite prepared to put up with Balls' eternal meddling and politicised interventions. It was even happy, in the end, to put up with the sinister GTC's politicised prescriptions and intrusions. Why? Because Balls is a comrade and the GTC is basically populated by comrades. As soon as Gove comes along, however, with his exciting (or terrifying, if you're a comrade) brand of pragmatic radicalism and a fresh educational philosophy, the time has come for another quango, quick! Or, at the very least, an expensive, 'independent' tsar civil servant who used to be a professor of something or other mildly educational at the University of Brixton, but who, above all, is a comrade.

Gove is definitely doing something right!

Where's Gordon?

It looks like becoming what The Scotsman is now calling Gordon Brown's "Spring of Discontent", and the strikes and the latest sleaze scandals look to have produced the classic reaction from Macavity. "I wasn't there" Brown has vanished again. Where is he? Safely tucked up in the bunker, I would think, furiously scribbling apparently disconnected notes in his thick, black, felt-tip pen, but which have, in fact, one, recurring theme: how can he screw up the country even more. We know this how? Because it's happened before, several times.

We've always known that he really is bloody hopeless, and clearly a bit of a depressive as well - that's what all the hiding is about - but what's becoming crystal clear also is how powerless he's become. His is an empty shell of a premiership, hollowed out by coup attempts from the sensible-ish right of his party and now held to ransom by the militant tendency of the loony left.

So what's he done? Disappeared, just like he always does when the pressure really is on.

Well, you can't hide forever, Gordon. You'll have to face us sooner or later. It's the law.

The Battle For Labour

The resurgent confidence of the militant tendency among the leadership of Labour's giant union financial backers is a clear sign that a vicious civil war has started in the Labour movement. Charles Moore's article for Saturday's Telegraph on this disturbing development, in which he provides bullet proof evidence that the far left, who long ago infiltrated and took control of the unions, are planning to seize power, is dynamite. He says, for instance:

Unite is led by Tony Woodley. From today, he is pitting his union against hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers in a strike designed to break the will of British Airways, which could go bust. And yesterday Unite's traditional allies in the rail union RMT promised an Easter strike of signal workers.

Mr Woodley is backed by the faction in his union called United Left, which declares that it wants "a socialist economic, social and political system", and wishes to "regain" the Labour Party. It has a motion down for the union's policy conference after the election that calls for the union to "give no support" to any Labour MPs who do not seek to abolish the "anti-trade union laws". This threat could be powerful: Labour campaigns in 148 constituencies are funded by Unite, and 167 Labour MPs and candidates are members of the union. Unite produces a quarter of Labour's money.

This is just a taste. The rest of the article is so powerful, I would hazard it could turn the election. That is if, as Moore says, Cameron starts to move with a bit more political athleticism in taking advantage of it. The stakes are so high, it's difficult to frame them. We are now faced with the real possibility, if Cameron gets it badly wrong (and he would have to get it very badly wrong, admittedly), not just of five more years of Gordon Brown (hideous though that thought is) but of a hard left Labour regime in Westminster.

Whatever the speculation about policy and the intricacies of poll variations, one thing is now clear: the real fight, the fight for the nation's soul, has now begun. And it's a fight we, and the Conservative Party, have to win. Or we all lose.

Vague Hague Kills Ashcroft Story Stone Dead

Peter Hoskin has covered very well Hague's interview on "Today" this morning about the Ashcroft non-story, which I listened to while driving to work (which is where I am now - so this won't be a long post!). Suffice to say that Hague, while slightly vague at times, did nail down this stupid story once and for all, and successfully lobbed the ball straight back into Brown's court. Lord Paul, anyone? Hoskin's conclusions are rather cleverer than mine, (no surprise there), but sort of amount to the same thing.

Any road, it seems this is now a non-runner for Labour, but that does not mean they won't continue to push it, no matter how stupid they will increasingly look for doing so now that Hague has, in my view, successfully killed the story off once and for all. However, if, for instance, this latest piece of Charlie Whelan delusion is anything to go on, then truly anything is possible (so thanks to Daniel Finkelstein for reporting it):

In yesterday's interview with Will Straw, Charlie Whelan appears
to have given up being a spin doctor and a political organiser and become,
instead, a pollster. He claims that it is not true that a third of Unite
members are planning to vote Conservative because his own survey showed it was
only about 8 per cent. It never occurs to him to wonder if their might be an
interviewer bias in answers to a survey conducted by his own
officials. He describes the contrary evidence as:
Some Tory paper did a bogus poll of Unite members
But the poll was actually a balanced and representative survey of 1,023 members of the union conducted by Populus last year.

This Whelan man is extremely sinister, not least because he is as big a self-deceiver and figure-fiddler as Brown himself. Moreover, in the name of a union membership the majority of whom clearly doesn't support him or his party, he is trying to shut down British Airways internationally by unleashing the forces of militant trade unionism abroad. Sort of sympathy strikes for the global era. But care not one jot do these people for democracy, or the massive job losses that would result from the collapse of a business as big as British Airways.

A Matthew Parris anecdote in his column in this morning's Times is quite disturbing on that score:

It was before he was even a Cabinet minister that, in a private
conversation, Mr Mandelson was asked who he thought would be in the running for
the leadership of the Labour Party if the present Government were turfed out of
office at the coming general election.

He paused thoughtfully, then, with no hint of a smile, and peering over his spectacles in apparent incredulity, observed: “You don’t think a little thing like losing a general election is going to stop Gordon Brown, do you?” Whether, by “stop”, Mr Mandelson meant stop
Mr Brown from carrying on as Labour leader, or stop him from carrying on as
Prime Minister, he did not say.

Getting rid of this particular crop of corrupt, anti-democratic, arrogant socialists might take a bit more than a general election victory for the Conservative Party!

Brown won't take electoral defeat - or "No!" - for an answer.

Misquotes and Trainwrecks

Having now had the chance to see Brown's worst performance yet at PMQs (and that's saying something), I absolutely agree with Iain Dale who said of it:

Cameron was on fire and pulverised Brown, who was almost reduced to a wimpering wreck. Jack Straw's face said it all. "Why didn't we get rid of him when we had the chance?" was what he was clearly thinking.

Well, if that was what Straw was thinking, a few more examples of Brown's - or Brown's team's - nightmare bungling will give him yet more food for thought, or cause for regret.

Here's one. Christopher Hope, in his Daily Telegraph blog, has just pointed out that he was the one who wrote about Cameron's attempts to open a dialogue with the unions, and that he was totally misrepresented - and pretty much misquoted - about it by Brown during those self same PMQs, while the old fraud, who had just finished admitting to lying to the House and the Chilcot enquiry over defence cuts, was trying - and spectacularly failing - to turn the tables on a rampant Cameron.

He told the Commons today: “The right hon. Gentleman [David Cameron] has come a long way from a few months ago, when The Daily Telegraph reported: ‘David Cameron has launched a secret mission to win over Britain’s trade unions…

“The trade unions have also been asked to help draw up opposition policy, The Daily Telegraph can disclose’.

“It also stated that ‘party officials have met with the unions more than sixty times since the spring.’ One day they are for the unions; the next day they are against the unions. The only consistency is in their total opportunism.”

Brown is wrong on a couple of points here. Cameron’s links with the unions did not emerge “a few months ago”. In fact my Telegraph story he was quoting from was published on the frontpage of the Telegraph in August 2008 – a full 18 months ago.

Since then, David Cameron confirmed the talks in an interview with the Telegraph and covered his plans to curb their links with the Labour Party just last month. Not much that is opportunistic here either – given Cameron had also hired his own “union envoy” Richard Balfe.

Anyone would guess there was an election around the corner.

Well, there is an election around the corner, and Brown's latest in long, long line of trainwreck performances might well prove decisive in determining its outcome. As Cameron struck home with devastating point after devastating point, and Brown's parries became more and more feeble, you could almost feel the votes hemorrhaging from Labour, and what remained of Brown's already ragged credibility draining inexorably away.

The most devastating blows Cameron struck, however, he saved until the last, of which the best was the damning charge that at least one thing is now absolutely crystal clear. Brown has been almost exclusively serving the interests of his paymasters, Unite, for years now, and not the interests of the nation. In addition, Cameron also managed to make it fairly clear that it was the interests of these giant, Labour-sponsoring union leaderships Brown had been serving, and absolutely not the interests of their members - or, indeed, the nation.

This is a key distinction that has to be rammed home from here on in. It will resonate, revealing, as it does, the trade union, anti-democratic power grab that's been going on behind the scenes relentlessly, if not furiously, since Brown usurped Blair. Cameron was right (again); this is a return to the handwringing, lame governments of the Seventies, who, as he memorably said, caved into the unions rather than talking to them.

Overall, this is a narrative that will ring true with hundreds of thousands of people who have been virtually disenfranchised and misrepresented for decades by left wing union leaders who now, it seems, have regained control of the Parliamentary Labour Party. And the reason why it will ring true is because it is true.

No one, bar the more rabid loony lefties of the Grauniad class, and Labour's new militant tendency itself, wants to go back to that sort of grim world, with a stagnant nation held to ransom by an unelected politbureau of bitter old union Trots. And people are quickly realising that Brown is so compromised, so reliant as he is on union money and largesse for his power, that he is not on their side. It's also becoming vividly clear how he survived all those coup attempts. The unions weren't willing to lose their puppet just yet - or, at least, until he's served his purpose.

Point is, there is so much new and powerful ammunition for the Tories here, it'll be hard for them to know which grenade to lob first.

And, of course, the ultimate, happy upshot of all this is that we have all taken one more agonising step closer to the downfall of the Brown regime, and towards a reforming Conservative government, attempted Unite coup d'etats and atavistic Big Union international syndicalism notwithstanding.

Where's A Semi House-Trained Polecat When You Need One

Earnestly deploring a strike is quite different from dispatching a semi
house-trained polecat against the pickets to save a business and its workers’
livelihoods.

This is a David Blackburn quote about Brown's latest bout of dishonest dithering, this time over a real doozy of a conflict of interest for Labour over the BA/Unite dispute. The dishonesty is not all on Brown/Labour's part, however. Both Unite and the BA management appear to have been trying to outflank each other for months, and, insodoing, (by behaving like Brownite Labour cabinet figures rather than professionals, in other words) have buried any trust that might have been possible between the two sides, and probably buried the company with it. Bad management and aggressive, untouchable unions. It's 1977 all over again.

Meanwhile, Brown is paralysed - as usual. He can't intervene because 'Unite', one of bankrupt-Labour's life support machines will...well, who knows what they will do. Try to take over, probably. He also can't not intervene, because, if these strikes go ahead, then there's a real chance our loss-making national carrier will be doomed, just like KLM and JAL in the past 12 months or so alone. The job losses would be horrendous, and that's before we mention the national humiliation. (I feel a bailout coming on. Pardon me).

All this merely serves to illustrate with absolute clarity why, in a time of economic crisis, you cannot have a government as weak, contaminated and compromised as this one in charge of anything - anything at all. They are powerless to make policy, and if they do make policy, they are then powerless to enforce it. Brown's government is knackered, and Brown himself has been politically neutered. You need a new government, mate. Immediately.

With a crippled Labour government limping along, lurching from one crisis to the next, it's becoming clear for all to see that the unions see this as their latest big chance to undermine democracy and seize a sizable slice of power for themselves. They've done it before.

All the more reason why Blackburn is right. The semi house-trained pole cat would no-doubt have all his crown jewels in tact, and be free to act independently. He would be ready, willing and able to tear into the old trots of the unions, more interested in the dictatorship of the workers than those workers' livelihoods as they are, and make sure they're made to remember once more that, for better or for worse, the government that we elected runs this country, not them.

Lord Tebbit: over to you, sir.

Another Day, Another Disaster For Brown

TUC-Labour: "Britain Stitched-Up"

Aside from being utterly horrifying - just how much damage has Labour done to democracy in Britain! - this story in The Times is timed to perfection (Brown's about to grunt through his much-leaked, pathetic TUC speech) and potentially is political dynamite. It will generate a great deal of indignation, not to say indigestion, in people nationwide who read it over their Monday-morning Cornflakes.

Don't take my word for it, though. Read on and make up your own mind about whether you think the people who represent us in Parliament, however useless they might be, should at the very least be elected by us to that position, or professional civil servants with no public political affiliation. Labour has utterly corrupted that, just like they have corrupted everything else in Britain during their cataclysmically corrupt and incompetent period of power.

Just who the hell is in charge here?

Labour is funding trade union activity inside Whitehall with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, The Times has learnt.

Government departments are paying the salaries of dozens of union officials, some earning more than £60,000 a year, who do no work for the taxpayer.

The Conservatives expressed horror last night at the “cadre of union officials” embedded across Whitehall.

Ten departments have revealed that they employ 46 full-time and 87 part-time officials to work exclusively for the unions at taxpayers’ expense. Their salaries cost between £150,000 and £4.5 million per department. They are also given access to office space, computers and photocopiers worth an estimated £1.2 million each year.

A Whitehall whistleblower has told The Times that union officials spent time on “far-left political campaigns and making up false claims about the Conservative Party”. Civil servants are bound by impartiality rules.

The whistleblower also claimed that union officials are given promotions worth thousands of pounds, despite working outside their departments’ remits. The source added: “This is a two-tier system where ordinary civil servants work for a living and strive for years to get promotion, while political cliques in unions get their chums into taxpayer-funded jobs where there is no job.”

One senior official with the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Karen Abram, lives in Lancashire but has her travel and hotel bills paid by the Department of Health so that she can work in London. The department said that Ms Abram was a “home worker” and that her expenses complied with internal guidelines.

The disclosure, which comes the day before Gordon Brown addresses the TUC conference, has revived accusations that Labour has done favours for its union paymasters.

Several departments, including the Treasury, did not respond to requests for information, which means that the total value of assistance could reach £10 million a year.

According to Electoral Commission records, union donations accounted for £5.4 million, or 69 per cent, of Labour’s fundraising in the first six months of the year.

The scale of the union assistance has caused surprise. One union source said that in an ideal world, there would be one full-time official for every 2,000 workers. However, the Home Office has 83 full and part-time union officials for its 70,000 employees: one for less than every 1,000.

Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: “On top of office costs, it is now clear that the Government is bankrolling a cadre of full-time union officials across Government, costing millions of pounds a year. There needs to be full openness and transparency on these costs so taxpayers can know whether this is appropriate public expenditure and represents value for money.”

A spokeswoman for the Cabinet Office said: “Since 1996, departments and agencies have been able to set their own levels of trade union facilities time, but we do not collect this information centrally. Like many employers, civil service departments follow the Acas code of practice — time off for trade union duties and activities — when agreeing facilities with their trade unions.”

Senior union officials, including Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, have regarded attempts by Mr Maude to uncover information about trade unions’ work in Whitehall, as a declaration of war [it damn well should be!]. He told The Times that unions were more heavily regulated than the banks.

The three unions that work inside Whitehall are the PCS, Prospect and the FDA (First Division Association).

Trade union representatives are in theory banned from interfering in the formulation of policy, although some officials suspect that this may take place informally. This was denied by a spokesman for the PCS. “Typically these individuals take up personnel complaints and negotiations with management. In some departments, this is negotiating and some take people on full-time,” he said.

(You can't touch me, I'm part of the union this Labour government.) Do they think people will be pleased about this? Do they seriously think that we don't know that they have debauched democracy with their insidious, endless hand-greasing and egregious, shameless use of union placemen to shore up their control of the civil service and the levers of power? Do they suspect they might have done something wrong here?

The answer to all those questions is, of course, "no". They have no idea how much fury this latest piece of evidence of the corruption that lies at the blackened heart of this Labour government will generate. Or how much further damage it will cause them.

They are that arrogant; they are that stupid.

How many more nails does Brown's coffin need hammered into it before we finally get to bury him, one wonders?

Incomprehensible Quote No. 93

Keir Hardy: As baffled as the rest of uz

Dave Prentis, capo di tutti capo of mega-union UNISON, has threatened to withdraw funding from Brown's Labour if he doesn't halt, like some kind of Cnut, the inevitable tide of job losses caused by the recession and the gathering public sector funding storm.

The Beeb also points out that Prentis is in a right socialist stink about the ongoing privatisation of "public services" by the Mandelsonian wing of Brown Labour. I guess he must be thinking of the Post Office. It's hard to say - he does rant a bit about the NHS, too.

But during his fit of Union Man umbrage, the unreconstructed comrade came up with a little nonsensical gem. He said that his union is

"...tired of feeding the hand that bites it"

Meaningless? To us ordinary mortals, most certainly. But to Brown this can only mean two things: a lot of trouble and a potless Labour Party.

So modern unions are good for something after all (maybe): helping us to rid the nation of the worst government and the most corrupt Westminster political party in modern British history.

Well I never.