You Deserve Better

Express Route to the Lowest Common Denominator

I spent four hours in a car yesterday, so was already in a pretty foul mood. When I reached my destination, I saw that my messages contained a really ugly article by the Express. This concerns a fellow Liberal Democrat candidate, Katy Sykes, and I have had the pleasure of being on a panel show with Katy in the last few months. At no point did I think the accusations sounded like her usual persona at all, so I thought I would go back to her to get the real story. The Offending Article To call this an article would, in my view, be overly generous. It isn’t. It’s a very biased hit piece. Noteably, the Express did not bother to ask Katy for her side of the story before going to print with this garbage, so naturally it was entirely one-sided. Don’t believe me, though, judge for yourself: In 2013 Ms Sykes said: “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I really really want to kill something.” Two months later she posted: “You better fn have nine lives coz I fn have eight knives.” She also threatened: “One more person calls me a weirdo or filthy c*** then I think I’m going to rip their vocal cords out and use them to slice their knackers off.” Ms Sykes posted in May 2013: “I hate the fg northeast, why is it I seem to attract the fg b*d scum everywhere I go, feel like either hurting them or killing myself.” Frankly, it is brutal that the Express trawled through Katy’s old posts like this to find anything that could possibly be held against her. We have all said things we didn’t mean online, and the fact that Katy has not been in the news for “ripping out someone’s vocal cords and using them to slice their knackers off” would certainly imply to me that this was an example of someone venting, not making actual legitimate death threats. Transparent Faux Outrage In response to finding these comments, naturally the responsible thing to do as a serious journalist would be to message Katy asking for an interview to discuss the comments. Naturally that’s what the Express failed to do. In fact, they went straight to a Conservative MP, Simon Clarke, for his view. His statements were: Approached by the Express for a reaction, local Conservative MP Simon Clarke said the posts from Nikita Sykes are “horrifying”. He said: “These quotes are horrifying, most especially in their repeated references to, and threats of, extreme violence. “It is very obvious Ms Sykes is totally unsuitable for public office and I hope the Liberal Democrats will act immediately to withdraw her candidacy – she ought never to have been allowed to stand in the first place. “I hope she can now find the help she clearly needs.” Simon Clarke Clearly Mr Clarke is new to the internet if he thinks that comments like that are horrifying (if he needs an education, then a quick visit to Reddit introducing himself as a Conservative MP will likely show him what horrifying really is!). I personally wonder what sort of environment he has found himself cushioned in where freedom to vent on social media has been so badly curtailed, especially as he is in the party that boasts about freedom to cause offence with their bigoted views. More to the point, the idea that this is a threat at all is entirely unfounded. A threat is directed against a person or group of people, and arguably it must be perceived as potentially real. Venting online and talking about wanting to harm or even kill “someone” is not a threat, it is merely venting. Now, you could argue that the language was inappropriate, especially if the meaning was actually literal. But in order to do that, you would have to actually approach the person who uttered those words and expressed those views, and you would need to be satisfied that a) they were actually meant to be a credible threat (they weren’t) and b) that they represent current views (they don’t). In short, this isn’t journalism, it’s a thinly-veiled hit piece against a candidate who made a number of statements a decade ago that she now doesn’t identify with. For fairness, I must mention that the article states that Katy was contacted for comment, but she tells a different story and says that the paper never actually made any effort to get in touch with her. To my mind, I am more inclined to believe Katy here, as most of us candidates have numerous ways for people to get in touch with us, and it is very unlikely that we would miss an opportunity to speak to the press. Conclusion This article really irritated me for a number of reasons: It’s easy to find out what views a candidate has these days. As an example, if anyone wants to find out what I advocate, they can look at my manifesto. They certainly don’t need to go back through my social media history looking for moments which don’t necessarily still represent my views today. By our nature we are a changing species, and as James O’Brien states “there’s no point in having a mind if you never change it.” The Express should be ashamed of themselves. This article isn’t journalism, it’s a pathetic hit piece that tries to take advantage of someone’s poor mental state from a decade ago as an attack on them now. Simon Clarke should be ashamed of himself. He took this opportunity to pass judgement on someone now based on a series of venting posts made during a period of mental fragility a decade ago. Rather than doing the right thing and reprimanding the “journalist”, he took the opportunity to attack someone for daring to have been vulnerable in the past. Anyone who reads the Express should consider buying another paper. If this is the quality of their journalism, then their paper is fit only to be used if you run

Face Masks and Personal Responsibility

I had to go into a hospital today (nothing major for me, in case anyone wonders!) and I was genuinely surprised by something. Only around one person in every five was wearing a face mask, despite these being given out for free at every entrance. This really made me think about personal responsibility and how that would be applied to face masks. Personal responsibility is central to a number of political stances, not least libertarianism, which seems to have been wholly embraced by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng (disastrously so). So how might or should this principle apply to wearing a face mask? What is Personal Responsibility? (NB, this gets a bit deeper into the philosophy of ethics than I originally thought, so feel free to skip to the next section for the meat of the argument). It might be an obvious question with an even more obvious answer to some, but it is an interesting philosophical point. In my view, it is about taking ownership of decisions or actions you make and agreeing to help if your actions cause negative consequences. In other words, if you harm someone whether directly or through inaction (thank you Isaac Asimov) then you indemnify the victim for that harm and adjust your behaviour to minimise future harm. This becomes a little more difficult when you have a cost to mitigating your current behaviour and you need to compare that cost to the harm that you do. At that point you would need to assign relative costs to both the actions you take and the harm that would be done as a result. This ends up being hugely subjective and has been the subject of endless debates between ethicists for millennia. Personal responsibility is a balancing act In my view, though, the moral position can be reduced to: Within most moral systems there is the idea that causing harm to others is generally worse than minimising a loss for oneself. In other words, one could be better off by stealing from someone else, but unless that theft is necessary to preserve life or reduce harm to others, it is genuinely hard to see how this could be considered moral. What are Face Masks? Face Masks – what do they do? This might fall into the category of blindingly obvious, but it might be worth revisiting what these are for. Masks aren’t just for virtue signalling or decoration, after all. They provide a tangible benefit in the control of infections. Importantly the main benefit isn’t to the mask wearer. Instead the mask helps to stop the wearer from passing on their germs to others. It’s a little like sneezing into a tissue – that action isn’t for the sneezer, but for all the people around them that might otherwise be sneezed on. When it comes to certain pathogens (viruses, bacteria and fungi), airborne transmission is the primary means of infection. Sometimes you can be a carrier of an infectious pathogen without displaying any symptoms, so simply “feeling fine” is not a guarantee that you aren’t carrying an infection that could be lethal to someone else. I mentioned cost above as a reason not to do something, so it’s worth revisiting the costs of wearing a face mask: This is obviously different for people that cannot wear a mask for medical reasons – clearly the cost for them is insurmountable. For most of us, though, wearing a mask is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Personal Responsibility and Face Masks Here we come to the discussion of how personal responsibility and face masks intersect. When it comes to personal responsibility, I summarised that it would be immoral to do something that caused harm to others if the cost was negligible to not do that. Under the topic of face masks, I concluded that, for most of us, the cost of wearing a face mask is negligible. I therefore think that the conclusion is inescapable. Wearing a mask has minimal or no cost and potentially saves lives. As such, it certainly seems to me to be entirely moral to wear them where there is likely to be a positive effect. Hospitals are likely the place most likely to result in deaths if infections are allowed to spread uncontrolled, and they are the place where masks are still provided free of charge for everyone. Possibly more importantly, in most hospitals there is a good chance that there will be some patients there who did not make a choice to go there – instead they are there because of an illness or injury that they certainly would not have chosen to acquire. As such, there can be no use of the “they chose to go there and accept the risks” type of argument that could be used to oppose mask mandates. My conclusion is not to suggest that a mask mandate should be reintroduced nationally. However, I genuinely feel that those who turn down free masks in hospitals run the risk of killing someone else by accident, and personal responsibility should make them pick up face masks and wear them with pride.

Buy Some Merchandise, Support My Campaign

First batch of products in my store that you can buy to aid my campaign.

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.