Herding Refugees’ Cats In Wakefield – 2

As I discussed on Sunday, a housing provider in Wakefield has a rule that bans the display of personal items in company vans. This in itself is not sufficient to get the cheaper end of the Fourth Estate worked up into a righteous froth. But add in a practising Christian, who has attached a cross to the dashboard of his van, and the whole weight of tabloid indignation comes crashing down.

Electrician Colin Atkinson had refused to remove the cross from his dashboard. He then went to the Daily Mail, whose hacks have today ratcheted up the rhetoric by calling Atkinson’s employer WDH “anti-Christian”, although the rule in question has been confirmed in a statement by the company not to discriminate on religious, or any other, grounds.

WDH has now moved Atkinson to another depot: his taking the story to the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre’s hacks will not have helped his cause. It certainly hasn’t helped the standard of journalism on display, as witness “In January Mr Atkinson was reported for continuing to display the cross in his van” and “was yesterday thrown out of his workplace ... for displaying a cross to mark Easter”.

And neither has the standard of talking head improved: today’s piece brings Mail favourite Philip Davies, nominally Tory and MP for Shipley, who commented “You have to wonder if [he] had displayed a symbol from another religion whether he would have been disciplined”, to which the answer – see WDH statement – is yes. And the last time I looked, the Shipley constituency did not include Wakefield.

Moreover, despite the talk of “anti-Christian” behaviour, the Mail hacks seem to have ignored the part of WDH policy that supports the wearing of religious symbols, and that there is a difference between what can be done with company vans, and what employees can wear, so Colin Atkinson could wear a Christian symbol to work if he wished.

Also, in case nobody has noticed in the welter of knocking copy aimed at WDH, no formal disciplinary proceedings have been taken against Atkinson. In fact, the company has gone on record saying it wants to sort this particular problem without so doing.

[Just in case anyone wondered about our friends at the Express, they got the original story a day after the Mail. Not that Richard Desmond’s finest copy their stuff from the previous day’s copies of rival papers, of course]

The Liberal Liverpool Warren

With local elections just over a fortnight away, there are fears among some Liberal Democrats that the party could face serious losses because of its coalition deal with the Tories. One city where this fear is particularly acute is Liverpool, where Labour took control of the City Council last year, despite losing many Parliamentary seats in the General Election.

In fact, the Lib Dems have not had a happy recent record in Liverpool: back in 2003, they held 63 council seats to Labour’s 31, and were still in majority control in 2008, but the latest local elections saw Labour with 48 seats to the Lib Dems’ 37, a significant decline in only seven years.

Any less than favourable news in the run-up to this year’s local elections was never going to be welcome, so when former council leader Warren Bradley resigned his position as Lib Dem group leader yesterday, campaigners might have been forgiven for wondering if anything else could go wrong.

Bradley, who succeeded Mike Storey as council leader in 2005 following the latter’s breach of the Member’s code of conduct, has been accused of nominating his 18 year old son as a candidate without his knowledge. It’s been alleged that the nomination papers were not signed by Bradley’s son.

After the turmoil of the 80s, and being awarded a single star rating from the Audit Commission as recently as 2008, this is not good news for the city of Liverpool. And it’s potentially very bad for the Lib Dems: a third of council seats are up for grabs on May 5.

[UPDATE: the Lib Dems have suspended Warren Bradley, and there is now the prospect of a police investigation into the affair. His son has said he does not want to stand in the forthcoming local election and that his signature on the nomination form is "a fake". Curiouser and curiouser]

Yikes Readers, Nobody Wants To Buy My New Gizmo!

When a Tory politician, whose greatest achievement to date is beating Ken Livingstone in the most recent London Mayoral election, starts getting attacked by Maily Telegraph London Editor Andrew Gilligan, you know that he’s dropped the baton.

Because today, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, occasional Mayor of London and regular collector of “chicken feed” from that same Maily Telegraph, has effectively directed Transport for London (TfL) to spray over 50 million notes up the wall on another vanity project, the cable car linking somewhere near the O2 Arena with somewhere near the ExCeL centre.

And, with the scales dropping from his eyes, Gilligan has realised that, for all these years, he’s championed Bozza faithfully – even holding his tongue on the shortcomings of the BorisBus, the original exercise in mayoral vanity – and that he’s been had.

Despite all the talk of the private sector coming forward and putting up the money for the cable car, no company or consortium wanted to touch it. So the bill will be borne by the capital’s council tax payers, with the promise that the naming rights and other sponsorship deals will bring the prospect of “jam tomorrow”.

Moreover, the cost has now risen yet again. Even if the 50.5 million total has had three years’ operating costs factored in (at a total of 4.5 million), the construction cost has increased by six million since last December, when I noted that the original cost estimate of 25 million had already been exceeded by 15 million.

The capacity of the link, as I also discussed in December, is nowhere near the figures being touted (likely to be 1,200 one way per hour, not 2,500), the journey can be done within one Zone right now by Tube and DLR (so punters are likely to be put off by premium fares), and when there are no events on the go at O2 or ExCeL, there will be little demand that the existing links can’t handle.

And while Bozza has been busy with his vanity projects, Londoners could for instance have had the Cross River Tram, which would have brought benefits to the whole community, not just a few tourists. Plus, now that even Gilligan realises he’s been taken for a fool, things might start to get a little bumpy for Boris. Crikey chaps!

Whistling The Dog Invented Here

Whenever those opposed to the adoption of something new – like decimal coinage, temperatures recorded in degrees Celsius, metric weights – have expended all the arguments against change, there is always one trusty old chestnut left, and that is that whatever represents change was Not Invented Here.

So when Labour’s John Reid stands up and declares the existing First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system as a “British” system – with the emphasis that the proposed change to the Alternative Vote (AV) would not be British – those shaking their heads and suggesting that the old bruiser has lost his marbles could not be more wrong.

Reid’s stance is utterly deliberate, and is one of the oldest dog-whistle ploys in the book. AV is being painted as “foreign”, as something that is coming to get us, something that will take away our rights, and is being imposed on the UK against its will. This approach speaks to the paranoid, the ignorant, the insular.

FPTP, on the other hand, is something of which Reid says we can be proud – more dog-whistling – and which we gave the rest of the world, which for some reason didn’t mind it being invented elsewhere, or being “foreign”, or imposed unfairly.

Reid doesn’t make sense on the logic of his approach, and it’s quite possibly a sign that the No campaign has not only reached the bottom of the barrel but also has started scraping, but it is an utterly deliberate and calculated approach.

So let’s not be fooled, just because we can’t hear the dog-whistle.

Hell’s Bells Mel, That Won’t Sell Well

What to make of Melanie Phillips? It’s sad to see an intellect struggling to assert its strength against the ingrained hatred and wilfulness that spews out of every dubiously argued column she scrawls out, whether for the Spectator, or – as in today’s effort – for the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre at the Daily Mail.

The piece, which supposedly discusses the sensitive topic of assisted suicide, but is in reality another excuse for Mel to kick the BBC and assign everything about the subject that she dislikes to something she calls “The Left”, takes a small number of unrelated incidents, lumps them together as if to suggest a conspiracy, and concludes that a propaganda assault is underway.

That assault, Mel asserts, is yet another “slippery slope” (she does a lot of these), and is clearly meant to debase the value of human life. But much of the argument depends on the reader buying into the idea that “in the past few weeks, we have been assailed by a relentless stream of stories about people wanting to be helped to die”.

And this stream consists of what, exactly? A documentary featuring Terry Pratchett in which someone travels to Switzerland, having chosen to end his life there. A visit to the UK by Philip Nitschke (aka “Dr Death”). A statement by actor Patrick Stewart. Mel is in no doubt: “This would all seem to add up to an intensification of the campaign to make it legal for people to be helped to kill themselves”.

So why would there be such an “intensification”? Ah well. It “seems to be part of a drive to soften up public opinion”. Strangely, I saw it as a film, a visit and a statement, but Mel is off and running. All this can only mean that “assisted dying is seen as an extreme version of freedom of choice”. And now comes the point where Mel’s intellect is buried under the advancing avalanche of prejudice.

Because “freedom of choice”, she declares, “is the territory of the Left”. Except that “freedom of choice” is a keystone of the right: maybe Mel forgot “Free To Choose”, an unintentionally hilarious volume of economic quack doctory by Milton Friedman, favourite economist of such rotten lefties as, er, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

It is those on the right of the political spectrum who most readily justify their actions by telling that they are bringing choice. The argument against the centre left is invariably that its principles deny choice (witness Friedman on J K Galbraith).

So not only does Melanie Phillips imagine her own conspiracy, she reinvents economics to suit her argument. The result, as so often, is not credible except as an irrational spitting of bile. And she gets paid for this?

Not The Royal Wedding – Confirmed

The last few days have seen an air of grim determination in the Zelo Street house, as the Royal Wedding approaches, and my vow to avoid it at all costs remained to be implemented. But now an announcement can be made.

Thanks to the wonders of the Web, I should (subject to minor considerations, like bothering to get up in time on Wednesday next week) be out of the country when the news cycle focuses all its considerable power on Wills’n’Kate’s big day.

Not only should I be out of the UK, but in a country where they talk foreign and understand that spuds do not just come in ready formed shapes delivered in pre-frozen plastic bags. As a consequence, there may be Very Few Brits around.

But there should be Wi-Fi, and so Zelo Street will feature blogging from Not The Royal Wedding. No doubt events in the UK will intrude, but the off switch should see to those.

Oh, and I’ll be using Euros to do my shopping and eating. They will not be subject to sudden crisis or collapse. Having them about my person will not cause the world to end.

More next week!

Herding Refugees’ Cats In Wakefield

Dropping into the lap of grateful hacks at the Mail has come a story pressing so many of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre’s agenda buttons that they can scarcely find time to bother thinking through their copy before rushing to publish. For this is about Christians, freedom, soldiering, tragic illness, and bureaucracy gone mad all together. And Muslims. Well, perhaps.

Colin Atkinson drives a van for housing association WDH in Wakefield. He is also a practising Christian. This much is uncontroversial. But he has also attached a cross to the dashboard of his van, and WDH have told him to remove it. He can, however, wear a Christian symbol should he wish. It’s the difference between company property – the van – and his personal space.

But this is sufficient for the Mail to thunder “persecution”. So out comes an array of apparent facts, none of which are material to the company’s decision, rather like the now legendary asylum seeker’s cat. They tell how Atkinson’s boss has a photo of Che Guevara in his office, but Guevara is not a religious symbol, and the boss is not in a customer facing role – although the Mail tries to make him so by saying that the public can see into his office.

Then we find that Atkinson was a regular soldier, for which fair play to him, but unless WDH has an exemption in its staff code for the fact, this too is not material – but for the driver and his legal team, it’s very good for getting the public on his side, as is the muscular disease that has confined Atkinson’s unfortunate wife to a wheelchair.

Ah, but then the Mail deploys its trump card by pressing the Muslim button. We get the “Muslim woman in black burqa” photo, and a false equivalence between Atkinson’s cross and Islamic dress. What the Mail does not do is ask whether attaching a Qur’anic text or inscription to a WDH van dashboard would be acceptable (the answer should be, if WDH are being consistent, that it is not).

Otherwise, the refugees’ cats keep on coming: the CEO of WDH earns more than 150k a year (irrelevant), the WDH equality manager used to work for HBOS “which almost collapsed in 2008” (ditto), the company has previously held “diversity days” (ditto), and that 51% of WDH customers identify as “Christian” (ditto).

What it boils down to is that, instead of WDH being “deeply illiberal and remarkably intolerant”, as one of Atkinson’s backers suggests, the company has said that its vans, which are its property, are subject to its rules, and that is that. By failing to argue that point and trying to cloud the issue with a welter of immaterial whataboutery, the Mail does not advance Colin Atkinson’s case at all.

But it sells papers, so that’s all right, then.

Spring Splutterings

As many in the UK gear up for the upcoming bank holidays, they might be forgiven for missing a potential travel industry storm brewing in southern Europe, another chapter in the long running saga of Spain’s airports versus Ryanair, the Millwall of air carriers (everybody hates us and we don’t care).

Ryanair’s Spanish adventure had a bad start to 2011, when a court found adversely on the airline’s imposition of additional fees for printing out boarding passes. But stopping the carrier from hitting its long suffering passengers with a 40 Euro a time charge was only the first of several setbacks.

Then, hardly had Michael O’Leary’s finest thrown a bullying strop over the efforts of Alicante airport to provide a more pleasant experience for its customers, than another dispute kicked off, this time affecting the whole of Spain, over the trivial looking matter of carrying tax free shopping onto aircraft. And there might be yet more confrontation to follow.

Unlike the Alicante dispute, the row over airport shopping affects the whole of Spain, and Ryanair only have themselves to blame for it. They want rock bottom handling charges, but to deliver these, the airports have to find ways of getting more revenue from other sources. More sales from airside shops help plug the gap, but then, Ryanair won’t let passengers on board unless they pay a baggage fee – they class the shopping as an extra bag.

As Ryanair have recently pulled out of their last base in France, and have eight bases in Spain, their room for further bullying is limited. But the appetite for a scrap remains undiminished, as witness a “briefing note” suggesting that the Spanish are demanding “free of charge checked in baggage” (they aren’t) and telling of “unlawful interference”.

And there is a further “briefing note” on the subject of the EU compensation ruling, otherwise known as EU261. Again, the carrier is complaining about the Spanish, so it appears that a dispute is brewing there, too. Of course, had Michael O’Leary’s finest merely slipped another 2 Euro onto the cost of each flight, and not made such a show of their additional charge, they could have avoided any controversy.

But confrontation is the Ryanair way. If they are indeed facing yet more problems with the authorities in Spain, once again it is their own fault. Carriers like EasyJet, Jet2 and BMIBaby just get on with business, and one day Ryanair might learn to do likewise.

Murdoch Is Served (35)

As Phonehackgate rumbles on, the revelations and arrests keep coming: we now know that the number of victims is likely to be far greater than the previously touted figure of 91. And a senior reporter at the Screws has been arrested, then questioned and released on police bail. As with the others, his house has been searched.

Yet, despite the clear disproval of the “non story” claims, the right leaning part of the Fourth Estate keeps throwing out commentary trying to claim that the affair is unimportant, that the law is somehow being misused, that the police should not be distracted from supposedly more important duties, and time and again painting it as a left versus right contest, rather than acts of forthright criminality.

Yesterday, two opinion pieces from rather differently styled sources pushed their own critiques of the investigation. Brendan O’Neill in his Maily Telegraph blog, and Richard Littlejohn in his routinely tedious Daily Mail column, were agreed on the right versus left, and police having better things to do angles. And both were talking the most blatant and badly reasoned drivel.

O’Neill sees “widespread cheering” in “sections of the liberal press” at the use of a law he denounces as “authoritarian”, although he fails to say whether (a) he favours selective disobedience of laws he or anyone else doesn’t like, (b) if he is saying that phone hacking is therefore OK, or (c) why reporting a series of alleged crimes is “putting one over on a rival media outlet” [a more comprehensive fisk of O’Neill’s drivelfest has been undertaken HERE].

Littlejohn, as might be expected, makes even less sense. Fat Dick suggests that WikiLeaks has a body count (it doesn’t), that Yates of the Yard came “whisker close” to “nailing” Labour over “cash for honours” (he’s guessing), that the police officers on this case have been “pulled off rape, robbery and murder cases” (guessing again – nice try at a zero sum game, though), and asserts that London “is in the grip of gun crime” (guessing once more – he won’t have bothered to check any figures).

One wonders how many more victims of phone hacking have to come forward and take action against Rupe’s troops before the likes of O’Neill and Littlejohn cease trying to suggest that this is anything other than the proper investigation of alleged criminality. One thing both may bear in mind is that it will take no more than a pair of matching statements to see the arrest of yet more serving and former News International hacks.

And one of those hacks could be Andy Coulson. If that happens – or maybe that should be when – Littlejohn might consider amending his assertion that “this isn’t Watergate”. It’s not finished yet.

Picking On The Poorest – 7

The workings of the pretentiously titled “2020 Tax Commission”, otherwise a convocation of the Institute Of Directors (IOD) and the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) continue, with the stated goal being simplification of the UK tax system. However, recent statements from the TPA suggest that something else is in the sights of this august body.

Yesterday, the TPA issued a piece titled “Incentives And The National Minimum Wage” authored by non-job holder Rory Meakin. This argues, after creating a fog of verbiage on the subject of incentives for 21 and 22 year olds in the job market, that the minimum wage should not exist.

Meakin’s exact statement, supposedly put forward as an incentive to get people into work, is “you could stop banning them from selling their labour at a price employers are actually prepared to pay (rather than a price politicians and bureaucrats deem to be “fair”)”. No example of an employer willing to lead the charge against the minimum wage is given.

Meakin then argues “you could reduce the attractiveness of the incentive package you offer in exchange for them not working”, as if living on benefits were on a par with a City banker’s “Golden Hello”. This is in line with the TPA’s previous urging that the Government reduce the poverty line, which I covered last July (See HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).

And the move against the minimum wage, as I noted at the time, was urged the previous month by the TPA’s so-called “research fellow” Mike Denham, for whom the distress at seeing the least well off getting access to washing machines and refrigerators was clearly too much. That call was on Denham’s own blog, but he was the main author of the “report” calling for the lowering of the poverty line.

Moreover, Meakin’s clear and unequivocal statement shows that the TPA are moving towards a call for the minimum wage to be abolished, as it clearly offends the ideological purity of their economic vision, one in which Alfred Marshall is suspiciously radical, and the idea that mass unemployment can be cured by lowering wages and “clearing the market” is still valid, despite the idea repeatedly failing to work over time.

All that the TPA needs to do is persuade the IOD of their case. The chair of the “2020 Tax Commission”, City AM man Allister Heath, is in any case just another TPA stooge.

Mail Rail Fact Fail

Just in case its readers were in any doubt, the Daily Mail has put them straight: it has declared open season on Labour leader Ed Miliband. The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, who also dislikes both Young Dave and Corporal Clegg, has clearly sent out orders to smear Mil The Younger at every opportunity.

Unfortunately, if today’s Miliband bashing effort is anything to go by, the Dacre hackery is also having difficulty with the accuracy of its copy, in addition to somehow missing the photo that would have backed up the article’s main assertion: that Ed’s aides removed the “first class” markings from the seats.

The piece, under the by-line of “Gerri Peev” (seriously?), starts by asserting that Mil The Younger “has repeatedly tried to launch a class war with the Tories”. He has? Repeatedly? Whatever. This has been included to justify the storyline – at the Mail, if there isn’t a fact available, you extemporise, display a little creativity, or as it’s called elsewhere, make it up.

The suspicion of yet more creativity hangs over the assertion that “Ed Miliband’s aides were caught removing the First Class seat furnishings”. The seat in which the Labour leader was sitting was missing its “first class” marking, but that doesn’t mean his aides removed it. It’s strange that the Mail has photos of everything else from the trip, but once more, this smear fits the editorial line.

It enables the Mail to exclaim in triumph that “his class-war tactics backfired when [he] was filmed in the first class compartment of a Virgin train”. Except that Virgin trains don’t have compartments. Trains with compartments haven’t been built new for the UK in decades.

The sloppy journalism continues, though, as the writer tells that “The revelation about his first class travel is all the more embarrassing for Mr Miliband, however, after Mr Cameron used budget airline EasyJet to take his wife Samantha to Granada in Spain”. That would be difficult, as EasyJet do not fly to Granada. Young Dave and SamCam flew with Ryanair.

Mail journalism also doesn’t trouble itself with such things as ticket prices: we are told that “A first class ticket to Coventry can cost £107.50 one way”, which means that Dacre’s hacks didn’t even bother finding out whether Miliband paid full whack, or his party got a book ahead deal (for instance, first class deals at just 37 notes a seat are available on several trains mid morning on Monday next).

The Daily Mail is the best resourced newspaper in the UK. So it would not be difficult for the investigation to be done to stand up this story and ensure its accuracy. That this hasn’t been done merely confirms that it’s a smear done to order.

HS2 – Gilligan Facing Both Ways

He may not have convinced the Hutton enquiry, and the BBC will not be using his services any time soon, but the Maily Telegraph is more than happy to employ Andrew Gilligan as its “London Editor”. In between his attempts to demonise Ken Livingstone and Lutfur Rahman, he tries to put the boot into High Speed Rail travel, too.

So his latest post, “High-speed rail: Birmingham says no” should be no surprise, and neither should the dubious quality of its content. Gilligan’s headline comes from a survey in the Birmingham Post, where two thirds of the total responses were against HS2. However, that total includes the whole of the West Midlands: those who responded from Birmingham showed a 5 to 2 majority in favour of the project.

So Birmingham does not actually “say no”. And Gilligan’s assertion that the projected time saving for HS2 on a Birmingham to London trip is only 23 minutes – rather than 35 – is true for only one train every weekday, and in one direction only. The 35 minute figure is correct in over 98% of cases.

And one commentator is unconvinced by the Birmingham Post survey, saying that “it doesn’t appear to have been a representative opinion poll, so it really is only a straw in the wind”.

Who might that commentator be? Step forward Andrew Gilligan – writing in the same post! Wouldn’t have been another of those transcription errors, perchance?

TPA – Evading The Issue

Yesterday, the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) issued another of their dubiously argued “reports”, this time on local Government mileage allowances, and as I noted, it contained two false assumptions: firstly that private sector mileage allowances were at or around the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) 40p per mile figure, and secondly that local Government mileage allowance was being somehow subsidised by other road users.

Neither assumption was supported by any factual analysis, or even information, and so the TPA’s assertions were baseless and dishonest. But today, non-job holder Chris Daniel has posted a follow-up piece on the subject, so I was initially hopeful that he would address the false assumptions underpinning yesterday’s “report”.

My hopes were, of course, in vain. Daniel gives the impression of addressing feedback, but does not go anywhere near the points I made yesterday. That much is predictable: the TPA do not do retraction.

So, in the meantime, I am looking out for typical private sector mileage allowance rates. Ideally, these will be those paid for casual use of employees’ own vehicles. Large corporates would be a good source, if only because such figures are more likely to have been formalised.

Anonymity is guaranteed, and information can be sent by email to the contact address in “About Me”. Since the TPA cannot be bothered to do this research, someone will have to do it for them.

The Danger Of Knowledge

A recent Guardian article by Ian Jack on the subject of Europe caught my eye, for one straightforward reason: the idea that, despite our proximity to mainland Europe, many in the UK remain unaware of much that goes on there. That is to the advantage of the more opportunistic hacks and politicians.

It’s the same as with any subject: those who do not have an intelligent position on the matter effectively surrender power to those who do – or who claim to. Thus the never ending diet of scare stories on the EU coming out of the Fourth Estate, and from politicians and lobbyists of like mind.

But, some might point out, there are tens of thousands of Brits holidaying in mainland Europe every year. Well, yes there are, although their experience may not have included contact with any locals beyond the resort perimeter.

How many visitors to the Costa del Sol used the bus service to visit Ronda or Gibraltar (rather than organised tours)? How many of the punters on “the strip” in Albufeira Nascente rode the train to Lisbon? How many of the partygoers of Salou caught a Rodalies to enjoy some retail therapy in Barcelona? The numbers, sadly, will be vanishingly small. And the numbers making any kind of social contact will be smaller still.

So even if our citizens visit other parts of the EU, their wider knowledge of those countries is limited. And into this void is poured a diet of Europhobia from the likes of Dan, Dan the Oratory Man, whose love for factual discourse is so strong that he went on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) to make a number of less than accurate claims about the NHS.

Hannan’s supposed love for Europe does not stop his pumping out Europhobic propaganda via his Maily Telegraph pulpit. His latest take, on trade figures, is typical: “We ... run a large deficit with Europe, but are in surplus with most other continents” he declared yesterday. Wrong. We’re in deficit with both the EU and the rest of the world. His assertion on Portugal and bail-outs is also wrong (discussed HERE).

This is typical of the anti-EU genre, along with the frighteners published with monotonous regularity by the Express (examples HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). Of course, if we were more informed about the EU, we would be able to filter out all the guff, so that must be A Good Thing. Except that Europhobia specialist Douglas Carswell is so frightened at the thought that he has called it indoctrination.

There are an awful lot of folks, predominantly but not exclusively on the right, who desperately want to keep the public in the dark on the EU. Why might that be?

TPA – Getting More Mileage Out Of Their Allowance

As with the reappearance of the proverbial bad penny, there comes into view another piece of flawed “research” from the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA). Today’s freshly steaming pile is, as with so much TPA produce, intended to demonise local Government, and its subject is mileage allowances.

The TPA have assembled details of mileage payments made by almost every local authority in the UK – no doubt causing significant amounts of taxpayers’ money to be wasted in the process – to produce another of their characteristic and interminable lists. There is little point, however, in visiting this part of the “report”: it’s just there to impress gullible hacks and otherwise provide padding.

The central false assumption that the TPA make can be stated plainly: it is that the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) tax free mileage allowance (previously 40p per mile, but being increased to 45) is the maximum that private sector organisations pay “most of” their employees.

However – and there’s always a however with the TPA – not one example is cited in support of this assertion. The TPA deliberately suggests that the HMRC allowance is somehow equivalent to a private sector one, in order to suggest that local Government employees are being unfairly favoured. Their assertion is baseless and dishonest.

Moreover, the TPA also asserts that motorists who are not local Government employees are somehow subsidising those who are. This, too, is baseless and dishonest.

The rest of the report, without proper comparison with the private sector, is not worth the paper it has been written on. Neither is the customary and characteristically pejorative “statement” by TPA head non-job holder Matthew Sinclair.

Not for the first time, the TPA’s output would not pass muster with the least discerning research practitioner. This is not good enough.

Phil Hendren – My Part In His Downfall

And so another player in the right leaning part of the blogosphere has gone into semi-retirement: yesterday, Phil Hendren, who blogs under the alias of Dizzy Thinks, told the world that his energies would henceforth be devoted to a new work opportunity, in the sobering aftermath of an organisational downsizing.

Been there. Welcome to the machine, Phil.

In a no doubt complete coincidence, two days before his announcement, Hendren had experienced a less than favourable outcome on his one and only visit to Zelo Street. After a January post on Phonehackgate was mentioned in a Twitter discussion, he followed Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) in excusing his failure to call the affair correctly in commenting on that post.

If at first you don't succeed ...

Unfortunately, he also used the occasion to take a swipe at fellow commenter Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads fame. I reacted adversely to this, and deleted his initial comment, because (a) Zelo Street is my blog, (b) I therefore act as sole arbiter of what is acceptable, (c) Hendren’s comment did not find favour with me, and (d) because I say so.

... try, try again ...

Undeterred, Hendren returned to the fray. This prompted two other commenters to pass adverse comment on his efforts. By this time I was deriving significant enjoyment from the exercise, but sadly, Phil decided to retire from the field of battle and the fun stopped.

... but don't expect total agreement

As I said at the outset, Hendren’s decision to prioritise his time differently has most likely been made independently of his less than totally successful visit to Zelo Street, but the coincidence is interesting. Whether folks miss his contribution to the blogosphere may depend on whether they find merit in the reams of whataboutery and Hendren’s habit of repeatedly posting the equivalent of “look over there”.

What is a pity is that there are, over time, less in the right leaning part of the blogosphere who are genuinely independent and thought provoking, like Hendren and Iain Dale, and more of those who churn out low grade bile under the umbrella of papers like the Maily Telegraph. Such is progress.

Sounding The Last Trump

There is more than a year and a half to go before the 2012 Presidential Election. But that hasn’t stopped the cranking up of the Speculatron, with a giddying array of names being pitched for the Republican nomination (it’s generally conceded that Barack Obama will be nominated by the Democrats, with no serious opposition).

Some of the names thus pitched can be taken moderately seriously: Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney (who has just declared his candidacy) and possibly Chris Christie (the latter a favourite of the increasingly scary looking Ann Coulter). Some, however, such as Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Michelle Bachmann and (yes, it’s her again) Sarah Palin, cannot.

And then we come to Donald Trump. What more can one say about this strange and fortunately occasional visitor to our shores, this caricature of comb-over, this halo of hairspray, this acme of the louche, the over-archingly ostentatious, and the straightforwardly vulgar?

The man is a joke. Already, the New York Daily News has characterised Trump – shown with clown make-up – as “Sideshow Don”. Alex Pareene in a Salon article has put it directly: “Donald Trump is patently ridiculous. He is transparently silly”.

Trump, perhaps expecting a little softball, appeared recently with Bill O’Reilly, top rated host of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) only to find that Bill-O didn’t buy his Obama “birther” spiel, instead gently ridiculing The Great Man. As Pareene puts it, “Donald Trump isn’t just a clown, he’s a sad clown”.

So it was with more than a little surprise that I read a blog in today’s Maily Telegraph under the by-line of Tim Stanley, supposedly a research fellow at Royal Holloway College. Stanley tells that Trump is “playing a clever game”, which is industrial strength drivel: another fine mess, Stanley. It’s not as if he wasn’t warned – the Salon article was written yesterday.

The Telegraph piece suggests a clutching at straws. It speaks to a combination of uncertainty, of desperation, of foreboding – that Obama, no matter how much mud is slung his way by the GOP and its supporters, will swat aside the Republican nominee without so much as breaking sweat.

That feeling is also evident on the Democrat leaning part of the media, as witness a recent First Guess video from former Countdown host Keith Olbermann, who assesses the various GOP contenders with characteristic directness. Fortunately for the Republicans, he then finds them a candidate who presses all the right buttons.

Express – For Whom The Road Tolls

How the Fourth Estate gets hold of stories – or, in far too many cases, makes them up – can make for fascinating investigation. There is usually a factual nugget at the heart of even the biggest pile of bullpucky, though in the case of the Daily Express’ latest Euro-frightener, you have to get very dirty to find it.

Yesterday, there was a vote in the transport committee of the European Parliament (EP) on a directive that would enable [note that word] member states to set up charging mechanisms for the external costs of commercial traffic – such as noise and pollution. Hauliers saw this as a potential additional tax, so naturally have argued that it could increase the cost of goods to the consumer.

Thus the factual nugget. Like most proceedings from the EP, it’s not especially dramatic, and not frightening. So the Desmond press needs to get its turd polisher out before the readers get a chance to see the story. And first fact to be jettisoned is the “potential” of any extra charge, so we get the title “EU Tolls Soar For Truckers”.

And if there are soaring tolls, there has to be a suitably frightening amount by which they are soaring. But there isn’t any definite amount, as there isn’t even a directive yet, so the Express makes one up: it’s “a 30 per cent rise in EU tolls on lorries”.

But 30 per cent of what? No need to worry, the Express has that one covered. It tells how “UK hauliers have to pay up to 20 euro cents for every kilometre they travel within EU countries”, suggesting that those dastardly foreigners get away without paying, and hoping its dwindling readership doesn’t realise that “up to” may mean “zero”.

And who is doing the deed? Yes, it’s those “eurocrats” again, wanting to “increase toll charges for road repairs by 30 per cent to help combat air pollution [avoid that link – it’s another advert] and noise”. There is a little extra factual nugget behind the assertion: much of the debate in the EP was about how toll revenue should be re-invested, and at least the Express got the noise and pollution angle.

So there, from the least promising factual background, is how the Express inflates a story into a classic Euro-frightener. Excuse me while I go for a shower down.

Why It’s Going To Be Yes

Time is ticking down. My poll card has already arrived. And the information leaflet has been read through. Now all I have to do is to turn up on Thursday May 5 and vote – in the first referendum for 36 years. And my choice will be the same as the one I made back in 1975.

Which means that I will vote Yes to the Alternative Vote (AV). I’ve heard the arguments from both sides, and just as importantly, observed the rogues’ gallery of those lined up on the No side. The former has informed my decision, with the latter reinforcing it as in foundation concrete.

I’m aware that AV is not Proportional Representation (PR). But my conclusion is that it is an improvement on the present First Past The Post (FPTP) system, under which, let it be remembered, the leader of the Tory Party following the 2007 election would have been David Davis.

Equally, I’m aware that there would still be elections won with less than 50% of popular support if AV were adopted. But at least it gives me the ability to send a message that if I can’t have my first choice candidate, then I can specify my preferred choice from the rest of the field. And, if I choose, my third or fourth preference. Or I would be able to specify just one choice, as now.

Reinforcing this is the No campaign, headed by Matthew “Gromit” Elliott, stalwart of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA). Experience tells me that being on the opposite side to the TPA is by definition A Good Thing. Elliott has made, or caused to be made, a number of flagrantly dishonest statements during the campaign, which has also persuaded me that my instinct was well served.

The idea that Elliott is “anti-politics” is breathtakingly fraudulent: he, and the rest of the TPA, are firmly pro-politics – the politics of those who pay the TPA’s bills. The TPA is a political organisation, misleadingly suggesting that it is about better Government, while its true purpose is to demonise Government – any Government, along with public service and public works.

Moreover, the assertion that adopting AV would incur an additional cost of £250 million is bogus, but Elliott and his pals have covered their backsides by prefixing their scary number with “up to”, so that includes the less frightening amount of Zero.

And saying “Governments will be selected in backroom deals” applies to the current one – so a cleanly executed own goal by Team Elliott. But clinching the deal for me is the line-up from the dunghill that is Grubstreet: the Maily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Sun are all in the No camp.

Best keep one’s distance from that shower. So it’s Yes for me.

Express – Caught In The Act

Actually, this is only latterly about the Desmond Press, as the story begins at the Maily Telegraph and only reached the Express after stopping off at the Daily Mail. But it’s excellent Express material: the EU and crime coming together, better to frighten the dwindling readership and maybe prevent them realising their money might be better spent elsewhere.

And the Express has managed in addition a display of pure invention, to which I’ll return later. But first the supposed story: that 27,000 EU citizens who were not British were convicted during 2010 of an offence in the UK. The Telegraph also tells of “crime committed here by all foreigners ... almost doubled in two years”, while managing not to mention that the EU figure actually fell slightly between 2009 and 2010.

So is this such a big deal? Well, the recorded crime figures for the 12 months to September 2010 show that over 4,223,000 crimes were recorded. The detection rate for offences is less easy to get a handle on, but the Telegraph noted back in 2008 that the 2006-7 figure was around 30%. Applying that to the total crime number gives us around 1.267 million.

So the EU citizens’ contribution to total crime appears to be just over 2% of the total. Here I bring in an information source from which no Euro-hating hack will dissent: Migration Watch UK. They tell that (this is Q4 2008 figures) of a total UK labour force of 25.6 millions, just over 1 million are from other EU member states. That comes out at around 4%.

Therefore, those from other EU member states appear to be committing crimes at just over half the rate of the rest of the population of the UK. Far from wanting to deport them (as hacks from the Telegraph, Mail and Express suggest), we should be looking for more such people (I’m assuming that labour force proportions are indicative of the total population).

And that Express whopper? Macer Hall’s story tells of “Figures released by the Association of Chief Police Officers following a Freedom of Information request”, which sounds OK until you realise that ACPO will not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act until October 2011.

Inability to even copy out another paper’s story correctly? That’ll be another Benchmark of Excellence.