Leopards Changing Spots?
It is a fairly common maxim that a leopard never changes its spots, meaning that the very nature of a leopard is such that it will always look the same. A little closer to home, in the finance business we tend to cite that someone is statistically more likely to get divorced than change their bank account. In the interest of assessing the likelihood of certain things happening, I was wondering to myself “how often do constituencies change party hands?” Snow leopard – also not known for changing their spots. The answer to this was not easy to find. There are records of elections on the Office for National Statistics website spanning back to 1918, but oddly enough there didn’t seem to be a dataset focusing on changes in party affiliation. The data is definitely out there, but it doesn’t seem to be easily accessible. I decided therefore to do some legwork myself to answer that question. Methodology I started with a raw document outlining the votes received in each constituency between 1918 and today. From this, I applied a lookup function which matched the largest proportion to the column header for that party, which allowed me to easy work out the winning party for each constituency. I then used ChatGPT to produce a list of constituency creation dates. I have checked some of these, but not all, so this is a definite area of uncertainty. The final step was to create another lookup function to check the winner in an election year and identify whether the winner was different in a previous year. Due to the difficulty of including by-elections, this table only looks at the results during a General Election, so if party A was replaced by party B in a by-election, but then by party A again at the next General Election, this data would assume continuous loyalty to party A. The Data – “How Often do Constituencies Change Party Hands?” After analysing the data, I came up with the following table of results, so here’s the answer to the question “how often do constituencies change party hands?”: Importantly, this data shows that of the 650 current constituencies, 295 (45.38%) have either never changed party hands or have not changed hands since 1918. How might we fix this? With my favourite proposal – Proportional Representation.
Guido Fawkes, you ok?
Those of you who follow my blog – all three of you – may already have seen that Guido Fawkes did an article about me in which the anonymous author attacked me for, among other things, respecting the anonymity of people providing testimonials. This felt like it should already be the lowest point in their “investigation” of me, but they found a way to descend even lower. In short, they posted another article which stated that I had launched my campaign from the wrong constituency. The glee that they demonstrated by “finding out” that the video was shot in South Ruislip rather than Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner was palpable. Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t a discovery. The video of my campaign launch included a mention in the description that I was filming in South Ruislip since it was first uploaded in June. In fact, it even gives a partial explanation of why I was filming there, though clearly there are more details than that for anyone genuinely interested. I promise, it’s not an interesting story. Importantly, this description has remained unchanged since the day that I uploaded the video, which can probably be tested using things like the Way Back Machine if anyone is actually interested. So once again, Guido Fawkes latched on to what they thought was an easy “gotcha” and didn’t even bother to do a cursory bit of research to make sure that they were actually discovering something rather than repeating something I had announced months before. If this is the quality of their research, then they have absolutely no credibility as a news source. On the other hand, I have been 100% open and honest about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I can definitely see why that would be terrifying to someone with a poor record for honesty.
Lessons Learned
Well, that was a very unexpected result from Uxbridge & South Ruislip. If you had asked me even a week before the vote, I would have assumed that Labour would win and Conservatives would be a very distant second place, with us in third, but really pressuring the Tories. Sadly this was entirely incorrect on every count, but there are definitely some lessons to learn from this by-election. This email is also about the upcoming events in Hillingdon and Harrow, so if you’d like to join us for drinks or a barbecue, read on! Lessons Learned It’s fair to say that when we face challenges in life, we can either seek things to blame or we can look instead at how we can improve our own strategy so that next time is better. Obviously with an election like this, there will be a combination of things that we had no control over and things that we could have done better. Out of Our Control Starting with the things that were out of our control, it is worth mentioning that the Conservatives turned this into a referendum on ULEZ and Labour let them. In reality it wasn’t – ULEZ is a delegated Greater London Authority power, therefore the local MP has precisely as much power as any local citizen to stop ULEZ. The fact that Labour did not call the Conservatives out on this – as we did, repeatedly – was a major failure on their part that we have no control over. In the absence of that very specific local issue, Steve Tuckwell’s campaign was largely non-existent. He wanted to keep Uxbridge police station open (all candidates agreed) and to fund Hillingdon hospital renovations (all candidates agreed). Otherwise his entire strategy was that he was the most local candidate, which is frankly a terrible reason to elect someone as an MP. I suspect that Tuckwell would have performed worse had he actually showed up to the hustings event that he skipped, as he came across as a pretty deflated candidate and was roundly attacked by other candidates and the audience, but Danny Beales really dropped the ball by not showing up to two such events. His performance in the one he actually attended was good, and the numbers show that actually a decent performance at just one additional hustings might have been enough to make him the next MP for Uxbridge instead of Tuckwell. Regardless, we can’t control how other candidates campaign, but you can be absolutely sure that we will refer to decisions made and promised broken at the next round of campaigning. Under Our Control This category is more difficult to approach rationally. I genuinely thought Blaise did really well in both the hustings and canvassing stages of the campaign. There’s really not much about his performance that I think we need to change, so it falls to the rest of the campaign team. So what might we do better next time? Funding – we were lucky to go into this campaign with a couple of large donations, but in reality it would be better for us to build our war chest for campaigning in this non-campaigning period so that we can focus on the action itself when the next election rolls around. This will be extremely important, as we will be managing more elections across the borough, so there will be less opportunity for me to help Blaise out, for example. Our donation page is here, or you can get in touch if you would prefer to make a direct payment. Volunteers – we are lucky to have a few people that are happy to help out at any time, but we really need to increase our volunteer numbers, especially if the plan is to run successful campaigns in the coming General Election. If you’d like to help out, our volunteer page is here or you can get in touch. Materiel – it makes sense to spend some time during this period of low campaigning intensity making flyers and posters, even if they are never used. The goal here is to build a repository of useful documents that can be repurposed for specific campaign issues. Should We Have Stood Aside? I have seen plenty of comments lately that we should have stood aside, as the seat was not winnable. While I can appreciate that it might seem at first glance that our standing was enough to shift the winner from Labour to Conservative, I don’t believe this is the case. Some of the reasons for this include: We didn’t force anyone to vote for us. That was their democratic choice, and if Danny Beales had offered sufficient reasons to vote for him instead of us, that’s what would have happened. The simple fact is that voters clearly didn’t think that he offered enough of a change from the Conservatives, hence the very low turnout rate of only 46%. There are very significant deviations in core beliefs between us and Labour, most notably with respect to electoral reform. In short, we believe that it is absolutely impossible for the UK to shake itself loose of the Tories without Proportional Representation, and under Starmer Labour is currently opposed to this despite the wishes of its members. This would be a major stumbling block between our parties allying. In terms of the electorate, it is worth mentioning that there were three hustings events, and Danny Beales failed to turn up to two of them. Had he done so, maybe the outcome would have been different. Not doing so likely made the electorate feel taken for granted, which was definitely not the right approach. Ultimately we are political candidates, Blaise and I, and that means that it is our job – albeit an unpaid one – to stand and campaign on the issues that make our party special. If we thought that the country would be best served by us not standing as Liberal Democrats, then we would already have
Uxbridge & South Ruislip: Your New MP
Well, the people have spoken. 46% anyway (where were you, 54% – let me know on Twitter). And you have selected as your next MP Steve Tuckwell of the Conservatives. I thought it would be useful to document some of the things he promised and did as part of this campaign. Hustings Remember the hustings on 13 July 2023? Steve Tuckwell doesn’t, because he didn’t go. Didn’t send a proxy, didn’t turn up late, just didn’t go. The next day his team started showing recordings of the council meeting that he attended instead, and frankly it seems like a very poor excuse for missing a fundamental part of the democratic process. Frankly Steve Tuckwell is either afraid of the electorate or holds them in contempt. ULEZ The core of Steve Tuckwell’s campaign was opposition to London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone expansion into Hillingdon. Clearly it makes sense to listen to local issues when campaigning, but Tuckwell deliberately ignored several key points: The MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip has absolutely no power over ULEZ. This is a devolved Greater London Authority power, therefore it sits with the Mayor’s office, not parliament. ULEZ was first rolled out by Boris Johnson while Mayor. For those that don’t recall, Johnson was a Conservative. Hillingdon was included in a letter that Grant Shapps sent to Sadiq Khan requiring the expansion of ULEZ. Grant Shapps was at the time a Conservative Transport Minister. In short, this entire promise was a lie built on a foundation of lies. Steve Tuckwell has done the political equivalent of promising voters a unicorn each, and he will have as much success delivering the herd of unicorns he now owes. Importantly, the Conservatives might apply pressure on Sadiq Khan to slow or mitigate the expansion of ULEZ. It is vital to remember that anything they do at this point is something they could have done with or without Steve Tuckwell as an MP. This was a truly disgraceful campaign, and I hope that voters remember these promises and omissions when Tuckwell campaigns to keep his seat at the general election, whenever that is. Uxbridge Police Station Throughout this election, Tuckwell claimed that Sadiq Khan was closing Uxbridge Police Station. This of course glosses over the fact that the partial closure of the station was down to – you guessed it – Boris Johnson, the serial liar and regular absentee from Uxbridge. Not as an MP, but as Mayor. Which, like the ULEZ issue above, is where the powers for policing lie, not with the local MP. As such, this is another example of Tuckwell making promises that he does not have the power to deliver. Hillingdon Hospital A recurring theme through the campaign was the state of Hillingdon Hospital, famously referred to as a monstrosity by Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary. The issue here is not the staff – though the Conservatives are responsible for the repeated strike action – but the building itself. In short, it is dilapidated and needs a very significant investment to modernise the building and upgrade the services that the wonderful staff have to help us with our health needs. Sadly, no mention was made of the fact that the former MP – one Boris Johnson – supposedly secured funding several years ago for much-needed upgrades. Ground has not been broken, contracts have not been agreed, funding has not been released. In short, the Conservatives have absolutely no progress to show after 13 years in government. Given this, it was depressing to see Tuckwell running on the promise to help the hospital, as Conservatives have had ample opportunity to help the NHS in the last 13 years, and have failed to do so at every turn. Conclusion It feels very early to be making a prediction for what pledges a politician will keep and which they will break. In this case, though, I am confident that I can predict which promises will be kept – none of them – and which will be broken – all of them. This is down to the fact that Tuckwell’s main priorities of ULEZ and Uxbridge Police Station are entirely outside his control. His other priority of getting an investment for Hillingdon Hospital is, I suspect, doomed to failure based on how the Conservatives have treated the NHS to date.
More Hustings
Still not me actually participating as a candidate in the hustings process, but I had the pleasure of watching Blaise Baquiche twice more on Thursday evening and Friday morning. This follows on from my first hustings, and this article covers the second Hustings event hosted at Brunel University. If you couldn’t make it and want to view the whole thing, the livestream of the event was made available here. The Candidates The first hustings this week was a fairly chaotic event, with 11 of the 17 candidates present. Nevertheless, the moderator did a great job of ensuring that all candidates got to speak, though I am sure that the audience wished that some of them would pipe down! Notably, neither Labour (Danny Beales) nor Conservatives (Steve Tuckwell) turned up. Personally I see this as contempt for the democratic process, as this was otherwise the most complete hustings event for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, and it felt like a return to Boris Johnson hiding in fridges or himself not bothering to attend hustings events. Notwithstanding these absences, the stage was pretty crowded. The following candidates were present (from left to right, from the audience perspective): Blaise Baquiche, Liberal Democrats Piers Corbyn, Let London Live Lawrence Fox, Reclaim UK Steve Gardner, SDP Ed Gemmel, Climate Sarah Green, Green Kingsley Anti-ULEZ, Independent Richard Hewison, Rejoin EU Rebecca Jane, UKIP Leo Phaure, No ULEZ Leo 77 Joseph, Independent Several of these candidates can, I think fairly, be lumped together for review. So that’s what I will do. 77 Joseph I’m going to get this out of the way early. I liked Joseph, thought he brought a sense of honestly and genuine desire to help. Unfortunately for him, he is a single-issue candidate and freely admitted that he didn’t really have any stances on major issues. Additionally, Joseph’s single issue is highly divisive, a large scale monument to the monarchy. As a committed abolitionist, this definitely didn’t win me over. Joseph, if you read this, please know that you have my respect for what you chose to do, but I think we both know that being an MP isn’t the right place for you. Anti-ULEZ candidates As you can see from the candidate list, two candidates explicitly stated that they were standing primarily to stop ULEZ. As I pointed out in the preamble to my question towards the end of the hustings, ULEZ is a devolved Greater London Authority power, and an MP has no say over whether the ULEZ applies to their constituency. As such, this completely undermines the entire purpose of these candidates running. Incidentally, one of the candidates tacitly admitted to vandalising existing cameras and said that if unable to stop ULEZ through legal means, he would take matters into his own hands. This is absolutely not how society functions. We all have laws that we don’t feel are fair, but that does not give us carte blanche to go out and destroy public property. As an MP, we need someone who understands that the rule of law is all that keeps our country civilised, and fully accepts that they will be limited on the things they can directly change because of how democracy works. In short, these candidates seemed nice enough, but didn’t strike me as MP material. The Conspiracists Given both Piers Corbyn and Lawrence Fox were on stage, I expected more of a trainwreck. Importantly, both of these candidates represent what happens when we let personal prejudices blind us to actual expertise. For Corbyn, he denies anthropogenic (man-caused) climate change and seems to be opposed to vaccines, for Fox, he is rabidly transphobic. As if that wasn’t enough, Fox was also the only candidate who didn’t say that billionaires should be taxed, instead shifting the topic to companies. As before, these candidates turned up with some of their acolytes, so they got applause every time they said something frankly ludicrous, but no-one that went along looking for a serious candidate would have been attracted to either, no matter how charming and charismatic they were. The Pessimist Rebecca Jane of UKIP said something like “I’m not going to win, so I’m here to send a message”. As such, I don’t really see much point in reviewing the other things she said, as it’s very clear that not even she thinks she has an actual chance. The Climatists We had representatives from two climate-focused parties, the Greens and Climate. You might wonder what the difference here is, and I think that’s most easily described with the standard “left/right” economic scale. Greens are left wing, Climate are self-described as centre-right. I have said before that I like listening to Sarah Green, as I think she brings a very well researched and supported statement whenever she talks about issues. We don’t see eye to eye on all issues (e.g. ULEZ), but I hope that she would agree that we both want to achieve positive climate outcomes, we just have a slightly different approach on how to implement the necessary strategies. Ed Gemmel spoke well on a number of issues, and held his own well against heckling from climate deniers. The Democrats The last two candidates are Steve Gardner (SDP) and Blaise Baquiche (Liberal Democrats). Of all the candidates, these were the hardest for me to tell apart, and it is very clear how similar the two parties are (unsurprising given the origins!). In fact, the only major issue that I could look at which would be a point of disagreement is Brexit – the SDP is prominently pro-Brexit, while the Liberal Democrats are anti. Incidentally, borrowing an event from the next morning’s hustings, Steve indicated that his first policy as an MP would be to ask the people what they want and then implement that. This to me is a complete abnegation of the responsibility of an MP to sometimes do things for people’s well-being, not necessarily what they say they want. A classic example here would be taxation. If you asked
Guido Fawkes did a Hit Piece About Me (I didn’t notice for six months)
Over lunch today, my friend and colleague Blaise Baquiche mentioned that Guido Fawkes had done a hit piece on me. This was news to me, so I had to check, and indeed they did. Very exciting – fame at last, or at the very least infamy. Even though this is clearly an utterly inconsequential source, given I didn’t even know it had happened for six months, I thought it was worth responding to some of their specific complaints. Unfortunately, these are fairly rare, if not entirely absent. In fact, considering my political website has, at current count, 15 static pages and 54 blog posts, there is no evidence that the author of the article even ventured off the homepage for the site. A little hint for them – there’s plenty more information “hidden” if you click on the menu and navigate to a subpage. In particular, the “About Ian” page which should give you plenty to comment on regarding my career and hobbies, as well as my disability, which I am certain you will mock given your search for low-hanging fruit. So, onto the points they actually raised. Actual picture of Guido Fawkes (NB – not actually a picture, this is clearly just a joke) Testimonial Sources When I decided to write this website, I decided to ask some people that know me well to provide some testimonies. This includes family, friends, former coworkers, former students and people who I have worked with in my capacity as a candidate. In short, a good blend of people from my entire lifetime. Guido Fawkes makes the complaint that: His website publicises praise from his brother, aunt, jū jūtsu instructor as well as two former co-workers. And perhaps the biggest name of the lot… “Anonymous”. Some Guy My own name is all over this site, and all the testimonials are about me. However, the article criticising me for correctly withholding the name of someone who wished to remain anonymous comes from someone who didn’t even sign their own name to the article they wrote about me. Not sure if the anonymous author has ever heard of GDPR, but there are rules in the UK about what types of data you are allowed to share about someone, and on top of that there are good practices. I suppose I could have simply said that the quote was by J R Hartley or similar, but that would have been dishonest, which would breach one of the three principles that I felt important enough to include in the very header of my site. In short, I liked the quote, so I put it on the site. If you don’t like that, the Back button is right there, you are most welcome to use it. My family know me better than anyone, and I have had major disagreements about politics with many of my family over the years. Despite this, they are happy to endorse me as a political candidate, as are co-workers, friends and people I have worked with on an advocacy basis. At this point, I ought to critique some of the reading comprehension of whoever wrote that article. In the testimonials section, there are two people mentioned as former fellow jū jūtsu instructors, not a single person who taught me jū jūtsu. In fact, both of these were my students, and happened to teach at the same club as me before my disability, hence they were fellow instructors. One of them served on the committee of the Aiuchi Jiu Jitsu Association with me, while the other is someone I have known for over a decade, supported when he applied for UK citizenship and attended his wedding in another country. Again, indicative of how well I know them and they know me. Finally, it is genuinely impossible to work out what sources would be acceptable. After racking my brain, I think the only conclusion would be to approach people I don’t know and ask them for a comment about my personality and suitability for political office. I have simulated what this would look like below: Who the hell are you? Some random passer-by Obsequious Behaviour A comment in passing was that posting these testimonials was sycophantic posting. I think the author is confused, as sycophancy is basically sucking up to someone to try to gain an advantage, e.g. a promotion at work. In this case, comments that I post about myself cannot possibly be sycophantic. It could be argued that it’s self-promotion or some form of arrogance perhaps, but definitely not sycophancy. Now, you can certainly argue that these were an effort by me to help people get to know me and what principles I stand for, and if that was the accusation I would say “guilty as charged”. That is, after all, the entire point of a personal website, and as an aspiring politician I need to get information about me out there. No-one is forcing you or anyone else to read my site. Read if you want to find out more about me, or go somewhere else if you’d prefer to be doing something else. Tax Affairs The author makes the comment that I stated that Nadhim Zahawi should no longer be an MP. I stand by that. The claim was then made that I should look into Ed Davey’s tax affairs. Okie dokie. From what that article says, Ed Davey paid reduced tax on winding up of a company largely owned by his wife. Now, you might argue that this is immoral, you might argue that you want politicians and everyone else to stay clear of those options so that the Exchequer gets more money. That’s fine, but that needs to influence your voting choice, i.e. you need to vote for parties which state that they plan to close those options down. Right now, it’s perfectly legal, therefore criticising someone for paying lower tax rates on winding up a company is akin to claiming that politicians shouldn’t use ISAs to get
Piers’ Propaganda
I thought it would be fun to pull apart the nonsense that is Piers Corbyn’s election flyer. I will of course refer back to my friend and colleague Blaise Baquiche to show how much better his manifesto is than this errant nonsense. Frankly, no it isn’t. It’s a by-election, not a general election for a start, which precludes this from being a referendum on anything. On top of that, this flyer has absolutely no other mention of how the political system should be changed for the better. I for one agree that the system is broken, but my proposed change is to move to a party-list proportional representation system, which would vastly improve the representation of societal viewpoints in parliament. What is Corbyn’s proposal? No idea, just vote for him, apparently. Again, no. Picking one party at random, Sinn Fein – they were elected and therefore have seats in Parliament, but have never once taken those seats. As such, it is fair to say that they had no involvement in the mess we are now in, as all decisions were made without them. Closer to home, the Greens had one MP in this parliament, so without question they had no real influence on “this mess”. In fact, the Conservatives have a majority, and before that Labour had a majority (with a Conservative majority unfortunately made possible by the Lib Dems in 2010), so aside from those parties, it’s fair to say that no other parties in parliament caused any mess. I for one have learned a very valuable lesson from the 2010 coalition, namely never to trust the Tories not to shift the blame onto others, and never trust either Tories or Labour to allow a fair referendum, in this case on the Alternative Vote system, which certainly wasn’t perfect but would have been considerably better than the current trainwreck that is First-Past-The-Post. Can’t see how this could possibly be true when Piers Corbyn is going up against 16 other candidates, including Blaise Baquiche. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Corbyn’s views and behaviour so far make him the least worthy of anyone’s vote. If interested, take a look at my report on the hustings last week for an example of his sort of behaviour. “Best known” is not the best way to determine who is worthy of a vote. If the technology existing to reincarnate Benito Mussolini and he chose to run in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, he would without question be the best known candidate, but for all the wrong reasons. Incidentally, he IS a conspiracy theorist. His views are utter nonsense. I look forward to seeing his submissions in a reputable scientific journal. If I was a betting man and if I could find anyone to take my wager, I would definitely bet on this never happening because it’s far easier to spew nonsense than it is to actually provide rigorous experimental proof of a claim. “Brilliant” isn’t the word I would use. Nor is “Truth” a concept I would equate to this sort of conspiratorial nonsense. The chances of him winning anything are slim to none at best. Incidentally, he uses the phrase “Johnny-come-lately” as a negative, but it is interesting that until the by-election was announced I never saw him campaigning in Uxbridge & South Ruislip. One might be tempted to conclude that he is in fact just another Johnny-come-lately. Conclusion I said in a recent Tweet that I thought Corbyn was a joke candidate, and this flyer definitely doesn’t change my view. The conclusion that I made at the time was that a vote for him would be a waste of a vote, broadly equivalent to not even bothering to go to the polling booth. If that’s what you want, then fine, but don’t forget Count Binface and Howling Laud Hope. If you want real change, then Blaise Baquiche is your candidate. Blaise wants to bring trust and honesty into parliament. He believes firmly in proper representative democracy, and wants to make sure that we have a functioning NHS (including care and dentistry), a fair tax system and education available to anyone that wants to better themselves.
What I Want to Achieve
Some conversations on Twitter recently have me thinking about what I want to achieve as an MP. Realistically, I am unlikely to form part of government in the near future, but that doesn’t mean I can’t achieve things as a backbencher. As such, I thought it would be useful to make a list of the things I want to achieve as a backbencher. Push for a review of student financing, i.e. whether tuition fees are offering value for money and if loans are sufficiently generous in terms of both amount and interest rates. Push for an amended Housing Bill that sets a minimum standard of habitation for rented properties. Insist on an enquiry into the wasted money during the Covid pandemic, and a push to get back money that was transferred to fraudulent or sub-standard providers, either from the companies themselves or from the person who made the introduction. Push for more representation in Parliament of diverse interests. Attempt to influence people to move away from custom and convention as the most important aspect of parliamentary conduct. Vote for laws designed to protect the NHS as a free-at-access service for all people. Ditto education. Clearly there are a lot more things that I would like to achieve, but in reality many of those would rely on being more than just a lone voice in Parliament. As such, I don’t think that I can target those as goals for my time as a backbencher.
ULEZ (ILEZ, WELEZ)
A few responses to Blaise’s recent hustings event have questioned our party’s commitment to clean air by highlighting that we are opposed to the current expansion plans for ULEZ, the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone. I thought it would therefore be really good to review this particular policy and our own stance on the proposed expansion. What is the ULEZ? The Ultra-Low Emissions Zone is a London-wide restriction on polluting vehicles operating within certain areas of the city. Importantly, this isn’t an outright ban, but instead a daily charge for using such a vehicle within the zone of operation. As such, it is often seen as a tax on those who need to use polluting vehicles as part of their job, e.g. most self-employed handymen drive a “white van” which is unlikely to qualify as ULEZ exempt. The goal of ULEZ is to improve air quality within the affected boroughs. I’m going to go out on a limb here and state emphatically that this is a laudable goal and one that we as Liberal Democrats all wholeheartedly support. What Doesn’t Help I’m going to be really blunt here, but comments about how we want kids to die really aren’t helpful at all. For example: Original Tweet Clearly this is utter nonsense, as anyone who even peripherally knows Blaise would immediately conclude. In fact, Blaise supports cleaner air for the whole planet. His chosen day job involves trying to get climate activists in front of wider audiences, and he is one of the most committed environmentalists I know. His and my objections to the ULEZ expansion are not about votes, they are about fairness. In this example, we can employ my usual approach, namely the veil of ignorance. The ULEZ of Ignorance Using this thought process, we can imagine a situation where we have two people, one who relies on their van to make a living and one that doesn’t. We don’t have any information in this problem about probabilities or numbers, we just know that we will be stepping into the shoes of one of these people and we need to design a system that is fair for everyone no matter where we end up. Under the current ULEZ expansion, it is clear that the first person benefits to at least some degree. Less traffic on the road and lower levels of air pollution. Without question, we would be happy to find ourselves in that person’s shoes. The second person is where the proposal falls apart. In this case, our lives are negatively affected in a very significant way. Such an individual doesn’t have a choice as to whether they keep up their job, so this ends up being an additional charge on the business. They will still be driving just as much and polluting just as much, but they will be paying £12 a day for the privilege of working in their existing profession. This may not sound like much, but the figure being bandied around at hustings was an average of £4,500 a year per person working. It is worth taking a step back at this point and thinking about what this would mean. It means that all our plumbers, electricians, builders, handymen, gardeners, carers, delivery drivers, etc, would be hit with a charge for doing their jobs that would not apply to the first person. You could argue that this is fair because the heaviest polluters should pay the most to help clean up everyone’s air, and at first that seems like a decent argument. The problem is that we all benefit from what those people do. In the last year alone, I have had electricians, gardeners, builders and delivery drivers come to my door. Many, possibly even most, of those drove vehicles that would not qualify for a ULEZ exemption because the larger cargo vehicles rarely do. So the question really is this: given person 1 benefits from non-ULEZ compliant vehicles, is it fair that only person 2 pays the price? If you genuinely have no idea which side of this particular argument you will fall on, I genuinely do not see how you could be happy with the idea of putting all the financial burden onto person 2. The thought experiment shows that there would be little impact to that cohort’s usage, but they would be hit with a large bill every year simply for doing the jobs that keep us all going. Wacky Alternatives It’s very easy to criticise someone for a simplistic view that has to be contained in a short sound bite. Hence the nonsense Tweet above that Blaise wants kids to die. Clearly that’s not true, and clearly it is a deliberate ignoring of all the nuance surrounding this particular issue. There has been some sound about how Blaise is opposed to clean air, which is ridiculous. The counter example I gave was that air would be noticeably improved in Hillingdon by banning all cars and vans. Clearly this is utterly unworkable and would lead to misery, so is opposing this wacky suggestion an opposition to clean air? No, obviously. Instead this is an admission that this laudable goal of clean air is not an absolute “we must do this at all costs” goal, but rather a goal that we should always have in mind, but we need to make gradual progress towards it without hamstringing our day to day lives. Real Alternatives Clearly banning all cars and vans is not a workable idea, so what might we do as an alternative? Some ideas: Improved scrappage scheme in terms of value paid for trading in. Improved scrappage scheme in terms of eligibility for the scheme in the first place. More incentives for buying clean vehicles, including EVs and hybrids. More low-cost charging points across London.
My Political Earnings
I thought it would be quite useful to publicly keep track of the earnings that I have made as a political candidate, including a source of any of those earnings. Right now, it’s easy, in that I have not taken any money from anyone for doing what I’m doing. I intend to keep it that way. If elected, I will take a salary and make use of the expenses system for things like hiring staff, but I absolutely will not take donations from outside interests, as that could impact my impartiality when it comes to being an effective representative. This doesn’t include donations to the Hillingdon Liberal Democrats who fund my campaign. Donations to them are ultimately their business, not mine. They have a separately constituted committee responsible for reporting donations and deciding on spending, and although I sit on the executive committee as a candidate, I make sure to abstain from votes on spending on my own campaign. Part of the reason for this stems from the fact that certain high profile MPs have called for a doubling of MP salaries, which would mean that all MPs would be paid some £170,000 a year. To my mind, this isn’t entirely unjustified compared with politicians from other countries, but it ignores a major problem with the political process. In terms of supporting this idea, the aim is to make it entirely unnecessary for MPs to take second jobs during their period in office. I can sympathise with this, as everything is extremely expensive these days (though the fact that the Conservatives are at least partly responsible for the crisis is not lost on me, nor is the absurdity of asking for a 100% pay rise while claiming that a 6% pay rise for the public sector would be too much). This does not address a major problem though. It is fair to say that MPs are quite well looked after in terms of remuneration. The salary is well over the national average, the pension scheme is good, there are relocation and winding up allowances, plus a very generous expenses policy. On the flip side, candidates earn absolutely nothing. My campaign has so far been conducted entirely at my own expense, and that is possible because of a fortunate combination of background and timing for making property purchases and investments. Many people who would make excellent candidates do not have that luxury, they are entirely dependent on their earnings as an employee. As a result, the time as a candidate is one that only people with a certain level of privilege can commit to. How many potential candidates are out there who would do amazing jobs as representatives of the people, but can’t commit to a years-long application and interview process with no guarantee of an income at the end of that period? We are definitely worse off than we would otherwise be as a direct result of this policy. It would make more sense to me to take the proposed increase and put it into a candidate fund which could then provide income of, say, half of the MP salary for 6 months of campaigning for up to 10 candidates (I picked these numbers because 6 lots of 10 comes to 60 months, or 5 years, the usual term for an MP). It’s likely that this wouldn’t fix all the issues of under-representation that we currently see, but it would be a far better use of public funds than giving MPs a pay rise when the ones already in post really don’t need any additional help.