Scotland shows just what a bad idea PR is. Around 5% of voters were so foxed by the complicated systems being used that their votes were not counted.?? New machines and the administration of the elections creaked with the complexity. No-one has any idea in Scotland who is now going to form the government because the result was inconclusive. All the parties that want a role in the government will now ditch some of their promises to electors to try to cosy up to each other to form an administation. PR guarantees dishonesty by parties in an election, as they have to tear up their manifesto once the results are known and form a new programme with others. PR is the ultimate way to ensure a conspiracy of the political classes against the electorate, as they share out the spoils on some basis which suits them, rather than being the direct result of votes cast.

??The electoral system like so much else has been badly damaged in the last ten years. There are now serious worries about electoral fraud, the postal vote system is weak, and the PR elements make it impossible for electors to stay in charge over who gets into government.

<p>The Labour spin machine has been out and about implying that the Conservatives can never win a General Election if there remain northern cities with few or no Conservative Councillors today.</p>
<p>This is a bizarre argument if you look at an electoral map of England, or look at Labour’s inability to find candidates in 40% of the seats being fought today.</p>
<p>Labour won a decent Parliamentary majority in 2005 with no Councillors or few Councillors in vast areas in southern England. In my home patch of Wokingham there is no Labour Councillor on the Unitary or Parish Councils. I confidently predict there will be no Labour Councillors tomorrow when we know the election results. The party simply does not try in this part of the world.</p>
<p>I hope the Conservatives do win some seats in the great Northern cities today, but I don’t think it will prove anything about the likely results of the General Election when that eventually happens. Labour has already shown you can win a good majority whilst having large no go areas for your party.</p>

We are told that Gordon Brown is planning a great first 100 days once he gains the office of Prime Minister. We glean that he is attracted to the idea of making something else independent, to remind people of his great spin success with the Bank of England move ten years ago.

Let me make a helpful suggestion on how he could apply the idea of making things independent in a way which would be overwhelmingly popular with around 80% of the British people. Remember that that will be almost three times as popular as the Labour party he takes over from Tony Blair!

The idea is simple make the UK more independent of the EU. Instead of accepting meekly any tatty deal Tony Blair signs up to at the EU summit in late June, he should say now that the UK will not give any more powers away in a new mini? Treaty and will immediately be opening discussions to deregulate and get powers back once he takes over.

He knows from the inside just how much damage the EU has done to UK competitiveness by its bossy regulation. That needs tackling. He will discover today how much damage the EU has done to his vote in local elections, as the consequences of their regulation of landfill comes through in lost Labour votes from people angry about fortnightly bin collections.

Last night the BBC Reith lecture on tackling world poverty was a simple left wing rant about the need for more overseas aid from the USA. It was so dumbed down and prejudiced that it will damage the reputation of this once high brow lecture series.

All the usual saints and sinners were there. Scandinavian countries who care about their own poor? were praised. The USA who by implication does not led the sinners who had failed to give more of their money to the regimes of Africa. There was no mention that the US is the biggest donor, no analysis of why aid given so far has not done the job, and a denial that it had anything to do with bad government and civil wars in the poor continent.

The specious arguments were breathtaking in their assertive naivety. The lecturer took the Index of corruption as a proxy for civil war and bad government. On this basis he told us more successful economies like Brazil and Mexico were governed by equally corrupt regimes to many in Africa, proving its not bad government that causes African poverty. I wonder if he would rather live under a government like that of Mugabe than in Mexico, or under the chaos of Darfur rather than Brazil? Where does he think a new investor would rather go with his business?

The magic that just a bit more aid could produce was also remarkable. We were told that a mere ??35 billion a year from the west applied over a period of years could transform the position. This money could apparently solve aids and malaria by drugs and preventative measures, build a modern road network for the whole continent, provide a railway network, fertilisers for poor farmers, irrigation systems for dry areas, power grids and complete broadband coverage. I must try to get some of this elastic money! There was no discussion about how the incoming governments armed with a fistful of dollars would carry out all this without appearing to be latter day colonial governments who know best how to heal the sick, sort out local transport and empower an enterprise economy in each country.

Once we have sent some of it to Darfur and Zimbabwe, please can we have some here as well? The UK needs some new infrastructure rather badly. Come on BBC apologise for such a pathetic attempt on a huge and vital topic. If tackling African poverty were that easy we would have cracked it by now.

According to the YouGov poll people see Mr Blair’s tenure at Number 10 as disappointing at best.

The only achievement a majority see is the Minimum Wage, whilst a bigger majority think he has allowed immigration to rise "to unacceptable levels" and dislike his participation in the US led invasion of Iraq. Significant minorities are angry about the failure to tackle crime more successfully, and the big increases in taxes which has brought so little improvement in public services.

I see the balance sheet of the Blair years somewhat differently.

The biggest success was a party one - obtaining three election victories in a row for a party which had never held a majority for more than one Parliament throughout the previous century.

The second success was a personal one. The outgoing Prime Minister is still liked by more than half the electors, despite the widespread belief that he has "too often played fast and loose with the truth" and has been "too fond of the trappings of power". He will doubtless transmute his long tenure at Downing Street into a successful post No 10 career on the speaking and memoirs circuit.

I agree with the general criticism of his actions in Iraq, and would add criticism of his other wars.

But my biggest criticism is??of the impact of Blair/Brown on the economy and society. People should be much angrier about the 5.3 million people of working age without a job. They have certainly not been helped by the Minimum Wage, because they earn no wage at all. The people who used to work in the million manufacturing jobs that have been destroyed in the last ten years have no cause for celebration. We should all be very worried about the decline in social mobility that has characterised the Blair/Brown years, and the failure to give children from poorer backgrounds a real chance despite all the extra money spent.

The last ten years have seen growing inequalities, declining competitiveness, persistent unemployment in the poorer areas when including all of working age on benefit, and public sector waste on a huge scale. Mr Blair threw away a big opportunity when he was first elected in 1997 with so much goodwill at his back. He failed in his first period in office to reform welfare as promised. He destroyed the modest Conservative reforms in health and education, only to spend his last couple of years frantically trying to reintoduce them to an unhappy party and government.

Thank goodness we won the argument against the Uk entering the Euro. Had we gone in it would have been lots more boom and bust.

The simple truth is THERE IS NO ONE RATE OF INTEREST THAT WORKS FOR ALL THE EU ECONOMIES.

Leaving the Uk out of the scheme helped - it has delayed the most severe tensions, as the UK economy experiences much more transatlantic pull than the other Euroland economies.

Nonetheless, the tensions on the periphery of Euroland are now quite severe.

Spain and Ireland have enjoyed interest rates that have been far too low for them throughout their time so far in the Euro. As a result they have had big increases in borrowing, house prices, construction activity and more recently in inflation. They have had the easier part of the boom and bust policy.

Now comes the hard part - the bust. Higher interest rates are at last needed by Germany. These increased rates will hit hardest in places like Spain and Ireland where there has been the biggest increase in borrowings. We saw a few days ago a big crack in the housing and construction share markets in Spain. Expect more painful adjustments.

??The ECB has to think about Germany more than the rest because Germany is the largest economy in the zone. Unfortunately for the rest Germany is a much stronger economy now she has spent several miserable years getting to grips with her costs.

??French politicians are huffing and puffing about the work of the ECB in their Presidential eleciton. There is no good moaning - they signed up for this ridiculous and damaging scheme. They now have to live with it, or get out.

If they carry on living with it, as I assume they will, they will have to cut real wages in France, cut public spending and get a grip on borrowing. Not pleasant - but anyone with any knowlege of economics could have told them a single currency like this one was bound to mean boom and bust, just like the ERM which was its forerunner.

What a pity Gordon Brown still cannot acknowledge that the boom and bust was not so much a Tory boom and bust as a European one. The Tories learned their expensive lesson, and are pledged never to go near either the ERM or the Euro. Why can’t Gordon rule out the Euro now he can see that is the cause of modern boom and bust?