Buy Some Merchandise, Support My Campaign
First batch of products in my store that you can buy to aid my campaign.
Lessons Learned from my Launch
If you’ve been paying even cursory attention over the last few weeks, you will likely have seen that my campaign launch was coming up. In fact, it was yesterday. I think it’s important to reflect on events and the lessons learned from what occurred during my launch. Tickets Without question, it’s going to be a good idea in future to offer a discount for early ticket purchases, or at least free tickets to the raffle. The issue I had this time was that I set the ticket price as a flat fee, which meant that someone giving 12 weeks of notice would be paying the same as someone who gave 12 minutes! Economically, this makes little sense, so a staggered pricing that increases towards the deadline makes sense, especially if I retain the flexibility to let someone come along at the standard price. I definitely made a rod for my own back with this one in terms of catering numbers, and as such I definitely overbought (what a shame!). Lessons Learned from my Launch #1: consider pricing the tickets so that early birds get a discount. Location, location, location What’s a party without a venue? Well, we found out yesterday, when the owners of the venue that we had paid for and turned up to did not themselves turn up to let us in. It seems that they had accidentally put our booking down as a March rather than a February booking. This had been mentioned and corrected by me in January, but apparently it did not manage to get corrected on the community hall’s calendar. After some drinking in the car park while we waited, we eventually decided that it was just too cold, so we decided that the best bet was to find an alternative venue. I don’t know if you know this (I didn’t) but there was a fairly major football match on yesterday, so most venues just weren’t available. As such, we needed a “volunteer” with a private residence not too far away who would be happy for a large group of political activists to turn up en masse. Long story short, it was me. I was the “volunteer”. So we had an impromptu party at my house. Which I loved, by the way, so I might volunteer to do again! Lessons Learned from my Launch #2: don’t deal with any venue unless you have a mobile number for the person who is in charge of letting you in. Raffles The raffle went quite well, notwithstanding the fact that my photography was the least popular prize of all! That said, it makes sense to ensure that the person selling the tickets (thanks again, Sue!) knows the rules of the raffle first rather than asking how it works after selling 30 tickets or so. Luckily this was all sorted long before the problem became permanent. Of course, it also makes sense to draw the winners before anyone departs, in case they have the winning tickets. In this instance, I thought that two of our departed guests had one of the winning tickets, so I held it back for them, only to find out the next day that they did not in fact have the winning ticket. Who did? Sue. Sue had the winning ticket. She’d sold it to herself, then forgotten to actually check whether she had won! Lessons Learned from my Launch #3: Sue is great at persuading people to part with their money for raffle tickets. Sue is not so great at actually claiming the prizes she wins! Conclusion In spite of my fairly sarcastic tone in the lessons learned from my launch above, I genuinely had a great time. Having so many friends and family descend unexpectedly on my house was lovely, and it was great to have the Morassi Quartet playing in my lounge! Thanks to them, and also to Dom, who did amazing work in the kitchen to produce food for everyone. Bring on the next one – maybe next time it will actually be planned as a house party!
Campaign Launch – 2 Weeks to Go
When I first booked a date for my campaign launch, it felt like a very long time in the future. Now we have only 2 weeks to go, it feels like it has crept up on me very fast indeed! If you’re in the area and looking for something to do on Sunday 26 February between 17:00 and 20:00, I’d love for you to come along, chat with me about the things that matter most to you, and enjoy our refreshments. We’ll also be holding a raffle with some amazing prizes. If you’re looking for inspiration for things to chat to me about, my personal manifesto is here. You can find tickets and full details here, or in the flyer below.
Labour vs Conservative – Economy
I was told recently that the economy always underperforms with a Labour government. I decided to check whether this was true.
My Political Journey
A story about how I got to the point of standing as a candidate. Includes a request for help!
Scandals
A brief look at some of the recent scandals of the Conservative government.
A Musing on Proportional Representation
How might proportional representation be implemented if we make a change? Does it need to be complicated?
Campaign Launch
I am officially launching my campaign! Support me if you also like democracy, equality and integrity in your elected officials.
Tax Evasion by MPs
I’m going to say something that might be deemed controversial by some (though hopefully not many) – MPs shouldn’t commit tax evasion! I know, I know, a radical suggestion that those elected to represent the country should be happy to pay the country what they owe in taxes. The news this week that Nadhim Zahawi, current Chair of the Conservative Party and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has agreed to pay up an amount that he (may have) evaded summing to around £3 million is frankly outrageous. So how should we respond to alleged tax evasion by MPs? In my view, this is yet another area that needs significant reform. It’s lower down my priority list than some other matters, but this seems like an easy thing to fix, so perhaps it will end up being higher on the agenda. What Happened? This story has really blown up in the last month, but it has been brewing for a long time. In essence, Nadhim Zahawi set up YouGov, and information-gathering firm. So far so good. Where it goes wrong is that he deliberately created this in an offshore vehicle, owned in large part by his parents. While the exact technicalities of this are beyond me and well into the realm of tax professional, the exact structuring has been analysed by Dan Neidle at Tax Policy Associates for several months. Worth a read here. Dan and I definitely don’t see eye to eye on all matters of tax, but on this we are without question united in our rage. Dan Niedle of Tax Policy Associates, probably Nadhim Zahawi’s worst nightmare at the moment. Importantly, that’s not where this ends. Zahawi clearly didn’t like this analysis, so he challenged it. Not just by disagreeing with the analysis, but by instructing solicitors Osborne Clarke to essentially threaten legal action against Dan Niedle. Dan being a former partner at a very successful London law firm was not the ideal target for such a threat, and he responded wonderfully. Again, the whole saga is worth a read, but the long and short of it is that Osborne Clarke ended up not pursuing a claim against Dan, and were in turn reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for abuse of the legal system. End Result So how does this saga end? We have someone allegedly evading taxes of £3 million and only coughing up after months of analysis and questions from a very well-qualified outsider. His agreement to repay the taxes shows clearly that this amount should have been paid in the first place, and as such this looks like evasion rather than avoidance – the latter being legal use of things like ISAs and pensions, which HMRC would have no claim over. Given this is – apparently – tax evasion by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the current Chairman of the Conservative Party, what should we expect to happen? My prediction is “nothing at all”. The Conservative Party has displayed very little interest in punishing tax evaders of a certain level of wealth. It seems that once you get above a certain level of wealth, you get carte blanche to behave however you like, with barely even a slap on the wrist if you get caught. In this case, paying back the tax that should have been paid in the first place is nowhere near enough. This is a man who served as the Chancellor and before that called for the tightening of tax loopholes under the former Labour government. He clearly knew exactly what he was doing and chose to deny millions of owed tax to the UK regardless. Whether you support conservative principles or not, this sort of behaviour should not go unpunished. Zahawi should have to pay back considerably more than the tax he underpaid, and should right now be facing criminal charges to analyse whether his behaviour was egregious enough to warrant jail time. At the very least, he should no longer be allowed to serve as an MP.
Charges & Fees Galore
As a New Year present (actually passed before Christmas, but this hardly feels like something fitting for the season of goodwill) it seems that Hillingdon Borough Council has decided to increase the fees and costs for a number of items outside of the proposed increase to council tax. Remember that this is a Conservative council with a Conservative-run government, so any claims they might once have had of being a party of low taxes are utterly ruined, as their own council now claims that they are unable to pay for basic services through the combination of council tax and grants from central government. If you are interested, here’s a list of fees and charges they are proposing to increase: Blue Badge Increase from £2.10 to £10, an increase of 376%. Cemetaries and Crematoria Increases of up to 25% on all charges. Local Land Charges Cost of a search to increase from £15 to £45, an increase of 200%. Development Control – Pre-Application Fees Average increase of 20% across all such fees. Food Health and Safety Cost increase of 30% for provision of export certificates, attributed solely to Brexit, a Conservative policy. Parking Uplifts in cost of between 10p and 50p an hour. Total effect not listed. Resident Permits New charge of £75 for a permit application, increased cost of 9% for additional permits. Visitor Vouchers Increase in cost from £10.50 to £13.00 for 10 vouchers. Increase of 24%. Refuse Collection Increase in the cost of collecting bulky waste items from £30 to £48, an increase of 60%. Golf Obviously an important one for the council, which has decided to introduce a discounted rate for 3-ball and 4-ball groups. Clearly a very important matter to offer discounts on at a time when so many other costs are increasing. Advertising in Hillingdon People Increase of about 30% across the board. Marriages Increase of about 30% for all non-statutory marriage-related fees. Baby-naming Ceremonies Increase of 30.22% to £237 Citizenship Ceremonies Increase of around 30% for either midweek (to £136.50) or Saturday (to £170.75). Civil Funerals Increase in cost to £300, representing an increase of 30% Civic Centre Room Hire Increase of about 30% for any room. Various Other Charges There are a lot of 30% increases for things like permits, library borrowing, mostly up 30% or so. Full details available in this document: In short, this is a result of a national government that does not do enough to fund local councils coupled with a local government that clearly didn’t set aside finances in years where the country was doing well. In both cases, the party responsible is the Conservatives, who currently represent 100% of Hillingdon’s councillors and also a significant majority of MPs at national level. Current parliament of the UK, courtesy of Wikipedia This cost of living crisis is already bad enough without a council that belongs to the party responsible for the national crisis (not to mention the other crises going on) increasing costs by more than the already staggeringly high rate of inflation. You deserve better.