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.
On Rishi Sunak and Green Screens
If I had one piece of advice for Rishi Sunak about delivering speeches, it would be this: “watch out what you stand in front of”. In this case, he stood in front of a uniformly blue background, which made for a wonderful green screen (even though it was actually blue in this case). Stripping out the background was trivial After stripping out the existing background and leaving a transparency, adding an alternative was the natural next step. I therefore present to you my masterpiece: Rishi Sunak giving his speech from Scrooge McDuck’s vault.
(Yet) More Conservative Lies
Apparently the Conservatives have released yet another poster filled with lies. As before, I have marked the claims with red crosses to show where there are either factual errors or misleading statements. This doesn’t leave a lot of content on the poster which is both factually accurate and a fair representation of those facts. These Conservative lies make us all worse off, and as a result I wanted to dissect their claims. I will address each of their claims below under their own headings. Once again, it is disappointing that the Conservatives reach for such outright lies after 12 years of government. Their record is frankly atrocious, and one they should be ashamed of. The only thing they could do as a consequence right now is to call for a general election in the hope of letting someone more competent and less ideologically-driven run the country, as their policies have made life worse for everyone but the ultra-wealthy. The Conservative Party’s latest work of fiction. Saving £900 off energy bills What the Energy price cap actually means This is a genuinely bizarre claim to make. Yes, the government introduced a cap on energy costs, but that same government also presided over unprecedented increases in costs for energy. In fact, the £900 saving mentioned here only partially offsets the increase that we have seen to our household energy bills. As you can see from the chart here, the expected energy price is due to skyrocket from £1,138 to an estimated £3,615 from next month. Compared to this, an annual saving of £900 is meaningless. On top of that, this annual saving isn’t a gift, it’s merely a deferment of cost to future years, meaning the Conservative “gift” is actually just a debt to be repaid in future years. This is one of the Conservative lies that negatively impacts us all. Increasing NHS funding This is an outrageous misrepresentation of the truth. Yes, the Conservatives have technically increased the funding this year, but the reality is that this increase in funding is well behind the increasing costs due to inflation. On top of that, we already know that nurses and paramedics are currently striking for fairer pay, with junior doctors likely to join them in 2023. As such, we know already that the NHS is not being properly funded. Nurses striking, courtesy of the BBC What does £6.5bn look like to the NHS? Well, the annual NHS and social care budget is around £180bn, including care costs. Of that, some £153bn is passed to the NHS. Simplistically, that £6.5bn therefore represents 4.2% of the annual budget. Worse yet, this is spread over 3 years, so the actual annual increase is under 1.5%. Considering the current rate if inflation is likely over 10%, this represents a real loss of value of over 8.5% each year. Calling this an increase to NHS funding is frankly an insult to our intelligence as voters and to the staff of the NHS currently struggling to make ends meet because of Conservative incompetence. Recruiting 20,000 police officers This was a pledge, not an actual delivered target. That said, with three months to go before the deadline, the government has made steps in the right direction, recruiting some 15,000 new officers. Unfortunately for them: As such, this claim can be restated as “we have nearly undone the damage that we caused earlier during our tenure”. Not exactly something to brag about, in my opinion. Boosting school budgets Similar to the NHS claim above, it is useful to look at what this means in real terms. In terms of education funding, the budget is around £116bn, the increase in budget announced by Jeremy Hunt was £2.3bn next year and a further £2.3bn the year after that. For next year, that means the increase in budget is anticipated to be 2.0%, which again represents a huge real-value loss compared to an inflation rate of over 10%. Summary Once again, this poster is filled with Conservative lies and misrepresentations despite being pretty short. The fact that this is all they have to show for over a decade in power is genuinely pathetic, and any Conservative supports reading this blog should ask themselves why on Earth they support such blatant incompetence and dishonestly. For an alternative in the Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner constituency, try me. For all other constituencies, look at your local Liberal Democrat party.