There is no sense of shame amongst these squablling Cabinet Minsiters. Peter Hain, ten years into a Labour government, finds inequalities offensive and urges a campaign to tackle them.

Could it be that the government’s Tax Credit and benefit system has misfired? Has he at last noticed that 5.3 million are still on benefits without a job, yet are of working age? Has he at last realised that Labour’s educational reforms have left many children stranded in Inner City comprehensives with no hope of good A levels or a University place. Has he understood that huge sums of money have been poured into public services to deal with just these issues, but it has failed to make a positive difference?

Labour’s mantra throughout has been extra money and reform, but the reform has either not taken place or has been of the wrong kind. Shuffling the quangos and boosting the advice, guidance and controls from the centre was never going to transform poor performing schools or deliver good healthcare to all, however much money went in. Most hospitals and comprehensives retain their local monopolies and are punch drunk from the administrative changes and directions from above.We need reform which delivers power to people running schools and hospitals on the ground, and delivers choice to students, parents and patients so they will go to the institutions which are doing well.

We are made to spend more on public services through tax than we do on our home or any major item in our budgets. Isn’t it time we had some choice for all this money, as we do for the income they leave us after all the tax is paid?

What concrete proposals is Mr Hain going to come up with at this late stage for this government, to lift the performance of inner city schools? What can he do about mass unemployment for the 5.3 million? Has he yet grasped that directing and cotnrolling more from the centre impedes progress rather than stimulates it?

The Unicef Report is a damning indictment of

Listening to the BBC and fashionable commentary you get the impression that the EU is doing a wonderful job tackling CO2 emissions whilst the US is deliberately wrecking progress.

Recent figures produced by the US government and EU governments shows that is far from the truth. Between 2000 and 2004 US emissions of CO2 grew by 1.3%, whilst the EU 15’s emissions grew by

Over the last three years Pension regualtors and actuaries have been pushing pension

One cheer for the government this morning. They say they want to make it easier for tenants in Council or Housing Association properties the chance to buy a share of their home.

The big divide in the UK today is between the majority of us, who own part or all of our home, and the minority who have to pay rent and have no assets. House ownership has been the main route for the many to own some assets and to see their wealth grow.

I want to live in a Britain where more people own assets and have the extra choices that can bring. I just hope the govrnment means this, and really does make it easier for people to buy a stake in their rented property.

Shelter are wrong to say this will not help our society. They are wrong to say this will reduce the supply of rented accommodation for those on lower incomes. If someone buys a stake in the property they rent, they carry on living there. It makes no difference to the supply or demand for accommodation, but it does make a huge difference to the family concerned, who get their feet on the housing ladder.

It could increase the supply of accommodation, if the government/Housing Associations used the receipts they get for

I am not surprised

The Today programme fell to a new low today, when it gave airtime to people who want to stop businesses offsetting interest charges against profits tax!

In the name of attacking private equity and venture capital, we heard a

I thought the Transport Secretary was one of the brighter Cabinet members, but he kept it well hidden this morning in his interview on road pricing.

Faced with the not very suprising strong opposition by motorists to having to pay more, he was left telling us that people also want congestion to be tackled so road pricing remains the only game in town.

He is underestimating the opposition to his plan, and misunderstanding its basis.

A large number of people object to the government knowing more and more about how they lead their lives. In spy city, London, Mayor Livingstone continues his progress to make us the most spied on citizenry since the communist USSR. He not only watches us on the streets through an ever bigger army of cameras, but he tracks our every movement on the tube through his discount Travelcard scheme. Now the national government wants to do the same elsewhere, in parallel with wanting a new ID card system which can be plugged into European systems of control. Livingstone got away with the Oyster card because it gives us cheaper travel. The government’s spy comes with extra cost!

Even more of us object to having to pay yet more money for using the totally inadequate road system in the UK. We have massive congestion now because this government has invited in hundreds of thousands of new people without making any additional road space available for all the additonal vehicles, or adding space for the extra vehicles families are buying in despair over the inadequacies of the public transport system.

Road pricing does not tackle the underlying problem of too few roads for all the traffic. All it can do is to drive the poor off the roads - a strange approach for Labour to adopt.

Peter Hain is recognising the realities of modern Labour politics. The arrival of Gordon Brown will signal a shift leftwards by Labour. Their

The left are clearly worried by David Cameron. Their attempt to smear him for alleged wrongdoings 25 years ago shows their desperation.

The media who are trying to turn this into an important political issue are showing no balance. I wonder how many Ministers in the present government smoked cannabis when they were young? Why isn’t that an issue? Where are the media sleuths ringing round student friends of the present Cabinet to see what they got up to?

Labour is busily forcing us to build communities that disrupt the patterns of English settlement.

Planning guidelines require us to build to a much higher density than has been traditional outside the main city centres. They force us to build more housing for rent than people would like. They limit the number of parking and garage spaces that can be provided.

All this does not succeed in changing the way people live. The government thinks if you skimp the parking and garages, people will go by bus. Instead, we see housing estate after housing estate with cars parked on the roads and straddling the verges. We find families having to play musical cars on short narrow drives as they juggle two or three cars in front of a garage for one.

Limiting affordable housing for sale does not put peopple off buying their own home - it just means they have to bid the prices of the existing stock up to ever higher levels, forcing partition of houses into ever smaller flats.

Higher densities increases tensions in communities, bringing the noisy neighbour closer and the anti social youth in quick contact with more homes.

We need to tackle the demand for housing by having a sensible migration policy, and the supply of housing by having a more sensitive planning policy. There are places which will welcome new development, and would welcome development to a decent standard. Current national norms put people off, because the new settlements are out of character with most English villages and market towns.

My car does 45 mpg if I can travel at a steady 60mph. This drops to 30mpg if my travel patterns include too many congestion delays.

Congestion occurs primarily where

The government has just come up with some interesting answers to my questions on CO2 emissions from different types of vehicle.

All their numbers are in metric units of course. They tell me that the average passenger on the average bus puts out 95 grams of CO2 for every kilometre travelled. This compares with 112 grams of CO2 for every kilometre travelled by a passenger on a long haul flight.

Listening to the debate in recent months you get the feeling that air travel is the main cause of our ruin, and that more bus travel would

Today people will die from the cold, and from accidents caused by ice and snow. It is a reminder that there is one thing worse than global warming - global cooling.

The more I listen to the long debates about global warming - and the BBC frenzy about it - the more I feel frustrated. All the debate is about trying to cut carbon emissions and none of the debate is about managing the consequences of warming.

I am very happy to join in sensible measures to curb fuel use, to improve the efficiencies of our cars, buses, trains, heating and lighting systems. That makes sense for a variety of reasons. But when the UK human outpourings of CO2 represent only 0.06% of total world output of CO2 I think we need to plan for the possibility that others will not be as determined and successful at curbing their emissions as we are.

If the world population continues to rise that will be a remorseless pressure to burn more hydrocarbons. There are no signs of the developing world overall reducing the birthrate.

If China and India continue to raise their living standards - as I hope they do - they are bound to push out more and more CO2. Both countries have an enthusiasm for coal fired power stations, and both have hundreds of millions of people wanting to own a car and domestic heating and cooling systems.

If EU governments continue to posture, saying they are going to cut emissions, but fail to hit their targets and international targets - as we have seen over the last decade - they too will contribute to the high levels of CO2.

At a meeting with the “NHS Confederation” to discuss “Primary Care Trusts” I kept a note of some of the jargon which replaces clear thoughts expressed in straightforward English. Many in the NHS bureaucracy now speak in a complex language which cuts them off more from the patients and taxpayers who sustain the institution.

The meeting was about how good a service our constituents receive from their family doctors. We were told beforehand that “This briefing is an opportunity to air your concerns and hear about the often undervalued role that PCTs play. PCTs work on the public health agenda, tackle access to services, deliver out of hours services, and hold contracts with GPs and other health professionals to ensure effective primary care”. Who could refuse such an invitation, to a love in with these paragons?

We were told of the advantages of “clustering practises”, the importance of “Quality and Outcomes frameworks”, we travelled through a “matrix” of possible health

Well done Open Europe.

They have established that the EU’s law codes amount to 170,000 pages of live commands, double the usually cited figure. That’s a pile of paper that would stretch for 31 miles.

Industry Commissioner Verheugen told the FT last year that EU legislation now costs business

The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have just brought out their 2007 editon of the Index of Economic Freedom.

Free and largely free countries have high incomes per head. Planned and repressed societies have low incomes per head.

The seven most free countries in the world are based on the US/Uk free enterprise model, led by Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia,

After reading today’s papers it is stunning that the Prime

Gordon Brown has delayed his three year plans for public spending until the autumn. It is so good of him to let the new Chancellor announce them.

I suspect it is because the next three year plan will have to control spending tightly, unlike the most recent six years.

It would be good if the government could see this as a welcome opportunity to cut out parts of government we do not need, and to obtain greater efficiency from the parts we do. Gordon Brown made a good start when he proposed reducing civil service posts by 84,000- we need progress in implementing that without recreating the posts elsewhere in the public sector.

What a sensible Chancellor would discover is that cuts can be popular. Imagine the joy if the government came to its senses over regional government, and agreed to close down the unelected regional offices and Assemblies.

I read that Gordon Brown would like to close down the DTI. That may be a little extreme, as we do need a voice for business in government, and a competition and commerce desk. But it is surely right that there are too many penny packet schemes administered by too many officials that would repay a good cull.

If the government was serious about deregulation there could be a good reduction in the numbers involved in drafting new regulations and supervising old ones.

More of the work of the housing department could be carried out

A little bit of inflation may be fine, but the problem is accelerating inflation. Once you start to allow a price/wage spiral you enter dangerous territory, which will end with high interest rates, more unemployment, and businesses deciding to go elsewhere.

Yes, rising house prices are good for those who own houses, but a nightmare for those wanting to buy. Recent levels of house price increase have high, especially in central London over the last year. To deal with this problem we need action to tackle both demand and supply.

We are not building enough homes to cater for the 200,000 plus new migrants

When Tony Blair implied the decline in respect for democratic politics is partly the fault of the media he was being very partial in his view of the problem.

It is true that endless stories about “sleaze” and “spin” are the background to the drop in support for political parties and the collapse in the number of people bothering to vote. It is true that if the media had not run all those stories people might have a higher view of modern politics, and might be more involved.

What is also true is that it was Tony Blair’s passion for spinning - aided by Mr Campbell - that gave the media their fascination for “sleaze” and forced their interest in “spin”.

Tony Blair has always been mesmerised by what he calls the 7 by 24 media. He implies that the perpetual nature of the modern media, and the growth in many media outlets, makes it an altogether different challenge for modern politicians which in some way excuses his passion for spin. Naively he tells us it means you do need to have a press office.

Yes, of course senior politicans need a press office. But it should be the task of the press office to arrange interviews, schedule times for the politican to make his views known, and organise the statements and speeches. It is not the job of the press office to try to run the newspapers.

Politicians have always had to handle the media, and to use the media intelligently to put out their messages, to win opinion over, to explain what they are doing. There is nothing new about that in the Blair era. In some ways

The UK has had to pay much higher interest rates partly because this century the Chancellor has followed an imprudent course on spending and borrowing. The other main reason is the Chancellor’s decision to interfere with Bank independence, especially by switching to an easier target for inflation before the last election which threw the Bank’s counter inflation strategy.

The Treasury would not tell me how interest rates in the UK have compared in recent years with our major competitors.

I now have the figures:

When Labour began their nasty sleaze campaign in the 1990s I always thought it would be prove to be a boomerang. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be such a forceful one. We have seen Minister after Minister forced out of office, and now see the senior advisers of the Prime Minister having to answer police enquiries.

It is more surpising, as Labour had some understanding of just what a boomerang it could be. Many of the so-called sleaze allegations against Conservative backbench MPs related to their private lives, where they were attacked for marital infidelity. When Labour arrived in power they asserted that such things were now private matters, had no bearing on a person’s public duties, and were off limits. It proved to be a wise change, as many Labour figures

The civil service are on strike. The Prison Officers are in revolt. The police are pursuing enquiries into the top eschelons of the government. Everyone is waiting for Mr Blair to go, to find out who will inherit the spoils of office.

David Cameron was right yesterday to point out that John Reid claims he needs 2 .5 years to sort out the mess at the Home Office