Dear Shareholder,

I am delighted to report our most successful year ever. We made more progress to achieving our twin goals of increasing our losses and building up our levels of debt than ever before. Indeed, I am especially proud to be able to announce that in just two years we will be able to borrow more than all the previous managements of UK PLC and its predecessor companies over 1000 years. I think you will agree with me that this is a magnificent result.

As I can reveal in the formal papers attached to my announcement, the gross borrowing for the year just ended worked out at an impressive £181,600,000,000 – well above the £78,000,000,000 some mistakenly had been using as a forecast. Next year we can promise at least £237,000,000,000, an all time record which warms true hearts behind our strategy. We reveal this on page 246 of our famous Red book ( called this year Budget 2009), on the principle that we leave the best to the end.

That is £419,000,000,000 of gross borrowings in just two years. I trust people making their living out of selling government debt will be overjoyed at this big increase in what they have to do. If they will not buy it, then we will instruct the Bank of England and the nationalised banks to buy more. We have already asked them to buy substantial quantities to make the project feasible.

We could not have done it without the huge energy and commitment of our outstanding CEO. The whole Board have also played their part in finding so many ways to expand the workforce, dream up non jobs to advertise in the Guardian, hire consultants, send out glossy brochures, add red tape and complexity, put through over the top legislation, increase top public sector pay, pensions and expenses, and write uneconomic contracts. It has been a herculean labour to waste so much and spend so much in such a relatively short time. I would like to thank them all on your behalf.

I know some of you are concerned about the proposal to put prices up for the rich using our services. Might this not damage the build up of lossees and debt you ask? I can reassure you. This will only bring in 0.5% of the running deficit next year, and remains tiny thereafter. We have more than offset this increase in revenue by big increases in announced spending, so the deficit will go up, not down, compared to the previous forecast. It was however, a necessary decision to deal with our competitiors in the political marketplace. It will be warmly welcomed by our hard core of shareholder supporters who are worried that the company might face unwelcome management change despite all the success in implementing our agreed strategy.

What can I do for an encore, you might ask? Well you will be reassured to know that the apparent reductions in the deficit in future years is based upon optimstic forecasting of growth rates. Many think that these will not be achieved, so we can continue with the high borrowing path that has been our hallmark in recent years.

We do have to report the loss of one of our Shareholder relations specialists, Mr Mc Bride. I would like to confirm that his importance was exaggerated by some when he departed. It will be business as usual, as we have many more Shareholder Communications specialists who can help me with these letters and with our 7 x 24 briefing of the media. The house style of using company announcements to attack competitors will continue, as my Statement made clear yesterday.

Yours in debt

Finance Director

Click here to read John’s budget speech in the House of Commons yesterday.

Yesterday in the House I renewed my proposal to scrap all unelected reigonal government in England. I did so as one of several proposals to start cutting the deficit by cutting out unliked and wasteful spending.
I also did so because I want our country back. England is still the country that is not allowed to speak its name or to be represented on a European map. I am an Englishman, not a Rest of the South Easterner as they want me to be.
Stop balkanising our country at our expense. If the governemnt would announce the end of artifical regions and their government apparatus it would indeed be a happy St George’s Day. It would also mean we would face a little less debt in the future.

Last week the BBC asked me to give a pre budget interview on the Daily Politics on Tuesday of this week. I accepted and reorganised my Tuesday morning to fit it in. They rang to cancel mid morning on the Tuesday.
Yesterday the BBC asked me to step in as they had need of me to comment immediately after the budget on the World At One. I said I would and started to make the necessary adjustments to my plans. They cancelled the appointment later that morning.
Clearly they do not want hard htitting analysis from someone who has been a long term forecaster of recession and a debt crisis. Is it because the government doesn’t approve?

Just as I feared, they have learnt nothing.

It was budget of posturing . A tax on the “rich “to test the Tories – which won’t raise much revenue and may even reduce the revenue. More public spending for Labour areas under a cloak of “doing what it takes”. And enough red ink to launch an aircraft carrier, if they ever get round to building one.

In my post budget speech in the Commons I concentrated on the three forces that have wrecked the public accounts – Bank nationalisation, a violent cycle, and grotesque excess in public spending.

The trick was to conceal some of the borrowing, and then to claim the economy will be off to the races in 2011, apparently bringing the deficit down.

Dream on. We will paying these bills for years. They plan to borrow more in two years than all previous governments combined have borrowed in 1000 years. That is going to be painful to repay.

The Chancellor should begin by saying sorry.
He should say sorry for the deepest and longest recession since the Thirties of the last century.
He should say sorry for their regulatory system which did not see banks and building societies were going bust.
He should say sorry to all the people out of work or about to lose their job.
He should say sorry for the huge damage caused to many pension funds, leaving people with little or nothing for their retirement.
He should say sorry for heaping so much debt on the British people.
He should say sorry for the wild conduct of monetary policy in recent years, which stoked the boom and then plunged us into the crash.

Instead, he will probably play silly and dangerous political games, seeking to use the budget to vilify the Tories and set them policy traps. He will wrongly say Tories wish to do nothing, and wish to damage crucial services.

The Chancellor should then give us an honest account of the dire state of the public accounts.
He should tell us they may lose us £200 billion through the banks they have bought and guaranteed, as the IMF have warned. That’s more than £3000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Even his own rumoured figure of losses of £60 billion means he admits he has lost every one of us £1000 on his bank nationalisation madness.
He should tell us the build up of debt has been too fast and too great, and poses us a big threat to our future growth rates and living standards.
He should tell us that his forecasts a year ago were wildly optimsitic, and his forecasts last autumn were so wrong as to verge on the mendacious. He should give us a sober assessment of the extent and duration of the downturn

Instead, he will go for too low a figure for banking losses, continue to be relatively optimistic about the extent of the downturn, and continue to understate the debts by a huge margin. He will grow a forest of recovery out of his tiny green shoots, all based on surveys showing the rate of decline may be slowing.

Finally, the Chancellor should say that he intends to start getting the UK public sector to live within its means. He will not delay this until after the next election, and not treat reducing public spending as some kind of imaginary game or political challenge to the Tories. He will instead this year make large reductions in undesirable, wasteful and not strictly essential expenditure. Schools and hospitals, nurses and teachers will be safe. ID cards, centralised computer systems, unelected regional government, more subsidies to banks and other large companies, increases in regulation and public adminsitration will all go. He will require all MPs to cut their costs and the costs of Parliament by 10% to show a lead.

Instead, the cuts will be delayed, political, and often not for real. This will be a fantasy budget and a very political budget. It could turn out to be the McBride memorial budget.This government not only divorced Prudence, but continues to hold a drink and drugs party on her grave. That is bad news for all of us.

The following letter was sent to the Western Mail yesterday in resposne to an article by journalist Tryst Williams, who asserted that John Redwood once launched “swivel eyed… hate filled invective” against single mothers in Cardiff. This is a myth Labour have been keen to propagate, with Polly Toynbee accusing him of launching a “campaign of blame” against single mothers, and Peter Hain accusing him of “savagely attacking” them. As John explains below, this is far from reality:

Letters to the Editor
The Western Mail – Media Wales
6 Park Street
Cardiff CF10 1XR

20th April 2009

Sir,

I was surprised to read that Tryst Williams thinks I once delivered a “swivel eyed… hate filled invective” against single mothers in Cardiff (“Mind Matters”, The Western Mail, 18th April).

During my two years as Welsh Secretary I only raised the subject of single parents once, when I made the case that absent fathers should be asked to make a financial contribution towards their children in situations where they are not living with their families. This stance has now been accepted as common sense by all three major political parties, and I am surprised that the myths about such an uncontroversial speech are still so widely believed.

It might be helpful if Mr. Williams was to actually read what I said about single mothers. I said: “Everyone would wish to help the young family that has suddenly lost their father through death, or if the mother has been badly abused or badly treated by the father and the relationship has broken down”. I went on to say that if no relationship between the mother and father were possible, the state should pursue the father – not the mother. I said: “It would be better for the child, better for the family, and better for the state if more fathers assumed their natural responsibilities”.

I appreciate Mr. Williams may be a sensitive soul but I think even my biggest detractors would be hard pressed to accept his description of the above as “swivel eyed… hate filled invective”.

Yours, etc,

You can read more (factual) information about this here, and anyone who wants to see a copy of John’s speech from the 2nd July 1993 should contact his office at the usual address.

Wokingham MP John Redwood has welcomed a Government decision that allows blind people to receive a benefit called the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance. This is a small sum of money to help disabled people with extra mobility costs, such as taxis or private hire vehicles. Currently, blind people are excluded from receiving this benefit, despite facing some of the biggest obstacles when trying to travel independently.

After meeting with a group of his constituents last year, John Redwood threw his weight behind the campaign to give blind people an extra helping hand. He supported a parliamentary motion calling on the Government to stop excluding blind people from eligibility for the benefit, and wrote to the Minister for Disabled People at the Department for Work and Pensions arguing the case.

During Report Stage of the Welfare Report Bill in the House of Commons, the Minister for Disabled People said that from April 2011, people with no useful sight for mobility purposes will be able to claim the Higher Rate Mobility Component. This will give them an extra £29 a week. Although this is not a huge sum of money, the RNIB has estimated that it will assist some 26,000 people, helping them to travel to job interviews, visit friends or family and engage in their local communities.

Speaking about the Government’s decision, John Redwood said: “I was pleased to have been able to lend my voice to this important campaign. My constituents put forward a powerful case, and I was glad to have been able to represent them to the Minister”.

“The public finances are tight and the Government does need to find ways to cut its expenditure. However, the way to do this is not to neglect disabled or other vulnerable people but to reduce wasteful spending like regional assemblies, Identity Cards, bank bailouts and the lavish pension benefits of Whitehall bureaucrats”.

“I am pleased the Government has shown a degree of sense and compassion in this case, and that my constituents who lobbied so hard for such a change will benefit”.

The UK budget has been well advertised in advance. Gone are the days of budget secrecy followed by the drama of the Chancellor’s presentation in the Commons. I do not expect Mr Darling to resign over all the leaks, even though I have heard media commentators say particular leaks came from the Treasury. We receive some of the Budget in the Autumn Pre Budget Report. Now in the week before the budget the jobs package, the housing package, the green cars initiative, the extra £10 billion of spending cuts and the other main runners for inclusion are briefed to the press.

There may be the odd surprise tomorrow, but it is unlikely to be anything of a magnitude that will have much impact on the economic outcome. A £1 billion housing market package is hardly going to be decisive after all the billions already tipped into housing finance through the public sector programme and through the bail outs of the mortgage banks. A few billion here and there to help jobs, green growth and the like are not going to have much impact. This is a £1,500 billion economy so the odd billion is small.

The economy’s progress will be determined by three things. The first, the large cuts in interest rates announced in recent months, points to economic recovery by 2010. This will be reinforced by printing money, or underfunding the government’s spending. The second, the poor state of the banks, will hold back the recovery as it did in 1990s Japan. The more the government subsides them to delay sorting out the problems, the longer it will take to have a strong recovery. The third, the state of the public finances might not give the boost the government imagines. The budget needs to persuade the markets that there is a way out of the very large deficits the Chancellor will have at last to recognise. He needs to convince us that they can be financed in the short term at sensible interest rates, and will be controlled in the medium term by some combination of lower spending and more tax revenue. If he cannot, then we face higher longer term rates of interest early in the cycle. Quantitative easing is not having much impact on longer term rates, and cannot continue indefinitely.

The Chancellor will probably adopt his predecessor’s tactic of giving some of the following years’ budgets at the same time as 2009-10’s. We will probably hear plans to rein in wasteful spending more in later years, and plans to increase taxes more after April 2010. Given the likelihood of an election in May 2010 none of this will cut much ice.

The Treasury will need to produce some more credible forecasts of economic output for both 2009 and 2010. We should expect them to say there will be slow growth in 2010 after a bigger drop in 2009 than they have so far admitted. The size of this drop will have a marked impact on the level of the public deficit, as the numbers are very sensitive to levels of output. If they admit to say a near 4% GNP decline in 2009, that will boost benefit spending and cut tax revenues substantially, driving the borrowing requirement higher. They are likely to go for a more modest forecast of GNP decline, hoping that the action taken to date will cushion the fall, and wanting to keep the public spending and borrowing figures down a bit.

The reality is slower growth for some years to come, once recovery does belatedly get underway. Four of the turbo chargers on the UK economy in the decade up to 2007 may no longer apply. The rapid growth of credit and the fast growth of property prices is unlikely to be repeated soon. The high level of inward migration is likely to reduce as a result of fewer jobs on offer and tougher immigration policies restricting numbers. The lead sector, banking and financial services, will not be able to sustain its own heady performance of recent years. Public spending will need to be restricted, after years of rapid growth.

On the positive side there can be more growth in exports and import substitution on the back of a weaker pound and better control of wages and salaries. The UK needs to save, invest and export more, and spend, borrow and import less.

The truth is domestic policy has done huge damage to this economy, first making it lop sided then bringing it crashing down. The government has been way behind the curve in responding, and its forecasts have been lamentable. Mr Darling may claim to have thrown the rose tinted spectacles away, but he will still be on the spend and hope strategy to try to get him through to the election. This, after all, is a government which thought house prices were rising because they were not building enough houses, which clearly had no idea just how much credit they were pumping in to the system. Or maybe it was just a government who thought they could borrow more than all previous governments combined and get away with it.

The Today programme this morning told us that scientists report a “dim” (as opposed to a “cool” ) sun. Apparently sunspots and flares are not what they used to be.

Is this the beginning of a U turn? Is the BBC about to tell us it is our patriotic duty to generate more carbon dioxide to offset the collapse of the sunspot? Are we about to have warring scientists on the airwaves, with the astronomers in the cooling corner and the climate specialists in the warming corner?

I doubt it. That’s why they said “dim” not “cool”. The warmers still control the BBC and have the bulk of the public research money.

Some of us still want a big drive to cut the use of fossil fuels. We want a greener and cleaner environment with much less dependence on imported oil. There are still good reasons for that.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, writes:

Good Government is about achieving a sensible balance. We need to protect our society against those who would destroy it. But if we throw away the founding principles of a democratic state to do so, then we are doing the terrorists work for them. So I think that whenever we look at security issues, and potential new weapons for the fight against terror, we should ask one simple question – will this improve the protection of our citizens without undermining our core freedoms? Too often this Government has failed to find the right balance. Indeed, they seem to have lost any sense of proportion about the things that they are doing. The terrorist threat has become an excuse for introducing draconian new powers, and those powers have developed mission creep which means that the intrusion of the state seems to be spreading across our society.

We will seek to restore that balance.

So we will continue with the introduction of biometric passports – but we will scrap the compulsory ID cards that this Government seems to determined to pursue.

We will retain the electronic systems that will record who enters and leaves our country – but we will end the situation where the Government plans to store full details of the holidays, companions and payment details of every citizen for a decade.

We will end the mission creep for anti-terror laws, and limit the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes. There is no place for the use of intercept evidence in council tax enforcement.

And there will be no giant big brother databases established under a Conservative Government.

It really is time for a change.

There are two themes from many of the contributions. Will I put my views about more widely in the media? And will the Conservatives take the advice if elected to government?

Yes, I willingly put my views in the wider media when opportunity presents. I have written two Sunday Express articles and a Telegraph article, and carried out half a dozen radio and TV interviews in the last month, including Newsnight and the Daily Politics booked in for today(now cancelled by BBC at last minute – obviously my views on the budget were too sensible for them!). This website, however, is a good way to publish views. It does get read by opinion formers and by government and Opposition advisers. I don’t have one set of views for this site and another watered down set for mainstream media! Views here do count.

I will set out from time to time what the Conservative response will be to problems I and my readers have raised, just as I regularly set out the government’s response. Today I have a reply from the Shadow Home Secretary to the issues surrounding the “Surveillance Society”.

In support of my argument that Parliament meets too little and is forced to pass things without proper debate I have been sent the following figures for the Commons:

1947-97 136 timetable motions curtailing debate on a Bill ( under 3 a year)
1997-2007 438 timetable motions ( 44 a year)

Politicians and the media will try to build up the drama of Budget day. In truth you’ve had the budget already, in two senses.

You’ve had it over the last year, as the government has heaped spending on spending, commitment on commitment.

And you’ve had it in the last week, as the government has seen fit to leak its own “ideas” on necessary changes to the ever expectant media.

The government cooked its goose – and ours – when it took over £3,000,000,000,000 of bank liabilities. It is delaying making those banks own up to their lossses and sort out their mess.

The government cooked its goose – and ours – when it kept money too tight for too long and intensified the downturn. We will experience a big revenue loss from the economic fall, and a big increase in spending on benefits.

The government cooked its goose – and ours – when it decided to undermine its own VAT revenue on top of all the other “spending pressures” and “reflationary measures” it took to get the PM over each media event in recent months.

So now we have the “cupboard is bare” budget.

Subsidies for electric cars that are not in production, tax increases for a future government, and employment subsidies on a small scale.

What we need is an honest budget, setting out just how much financial damage has been done, and setting out a course to correct it. In this government of the spinners by the spinners for the spinners I expect we will once again have the opposite. They can’t even own up to the extent of last year’s borrowing, so don’t expect them to get this year’s right.

I am heartily sick of all these hand wringing interviews about how difficult it is to cut public spending. They usually ask people if they want to cut schools or hospitals, the nonsensical Labour spin. The “better” ones do go on to offer the interviewee chance to cut defence or some other public service.

Businesses regularly have to cut their spending. They do not agonise over whether to cut production or the service they give to customers, as they know they need to sustain both if they are to stay in business. They debate whether they can buy their raw materials cheaper, how many people they really need to produce what they are producing, whether there is a smarter way to make it. They look at cutting what they spend the money on – staff, raw materials,semi manufactures, adverts, transport etc, not at cutting the final output or service.

If we are to have a sensible debate on the public sector that’s what we need to look at. The only small hope in the whole debate is the way some are now asking questions about MPs’ expenses. Did the MP need the patio heater to do the job? Does an MP who lives 9 miles from Westminster need a second home?

These are sensible questions, opening up a needed review of the rules on spending. We need to do the same type of questioning for all public spending. Does the highly paid CEO need the assistant? Does the CEO need to be paid so much more than a Cabinet Minister? Does a government department need 100 spin doctors? Does the quango need to exist? Do we need the extra 300,000 civil servants Labour has added? Did they need to send out all those glossy brochures?

We are not going to get anywhere all the time lazy people in the media conduct interviews about how difficult it is to cut spending because it means cutting schools or hospitals. We need to cut through Labour’s lie that their opponents came into politics to sack teachers and make nurses weep. I know of no MP who has ever wanted to do that. You can have all the nurses, doctors, teachers, military personnel, fire staff, police and other front line public servants we already have for under one quarter of public spending. So let’s start asking soem questions about the other three quarters. Let’s apply some of the efficiency driving logic from the private sector to the public sector.

And let’s start with some popular cuts, like scrapping ID cards, centralised computer schemes and unelected regional government. Cutting public spending can be both easy and popular, because the public sector is so bloated and does so many things we do not need it to do.

When I wrote my piece for today’s Sunday Express on how to cut public spending in a popular way, I should have made more of the need to cut the number of Spin Doctors and allied trades employed at the public expense.

One of the ironies of the present government’s difficulties, is that the Spin doctors are now briefing against each other. Gordon Brown will not know who to trust.

Is Mandelson right, or should he still listen to Ed Balls? Is Charlie Whelan on side now he is in a new role? Would Campbell do for Gordon what he did for Tony? How did McBride go so wrong? Who can the PM trust?

Those who live by spin will die politically by spin. The public is being pillaged to pay for the most complex advisory and spin structure ever. Now it is turning on itself.

The stories today about how No 10 works and who steers the spin machine are gripping reading. Those of us who have known all was not well and sometimes been on the wrong end of these black arts are delighted to see it start to come out. The problem is, so much of it is public money that is being abused to produce all these unpleasant nonsenses and needless power struggles.

The following transcript has come to me by telepathy from the thought police, Ministerial Mind Reading Section. Unfortunately the Minister concerned was referred to only by a secret Code Number which I cannot crack:

” It is now clear Gordon cannot win the election. We’re at 26% and the skids are under us. The game is up, as our Spin doctors are all at war with each other, and even Ed Balls is now being briefed against. If things get worse I could even lose my seat. Either way I am bound to lose my Ministerial job next year when we do have to face the music. It might be best to resign now, whilst staying as friendly with the powers as be as possible. I will have a quiet word with the PM and say at his next reshuffle I would like to stand down for personal reasons. It could help him to have another job to offer someone. Then I should be able to find some sort of extra post, or talk to Headhunters about what I could do next before the balloon goes up and they are all looking for something. I remember I used to laugh at all those washed up Tories who couldn’t get a job after their defeat in 1997. It doesn’t seem quite so funny now it’s happening to us”

If you are a Minister in a government that has lost its way, is trampling on the beliefs and ideals of its own party, and busily briefing against its own people, in the end you have to resign. You carry on, trying to avoid having to defend the indefensible, picking your way carefully through the mistakes, gross injustices and bad spin.

You live on in the hope that you will win the next battle in Cabinet, that you can persauade the Prime Minister to do the decent thing for a change, or in the hope that you will be allowed to make a difference in your own area. One day, if you wish to restore your own self respect and start the real battle for the soul of your party, you have to resign. It is a liberating experience. You feel so much better for it.

There are now so many reasons why any decent Labour Minister who can remember the principles and ideals that brought him or her into politics should resign.

If you came in to uphold and extend our civil liberties, you must be ashamed of how they are being damaged and abused by this government.
If you came in to see a better Health Service, you must be appalled at the numbers of deaths of patients from hospital acquired infections and even from malnutrition.
If you came in to defend workers rights you will be furious at the botched semi privatisation proposals already pushed through for the London Underground and now about to hit the Post office.
If you wanted to see better equality of incomes you will be scandalised by the public sector rich list and by the pensions for retiring bankers in state owned banks.
If you came in to see an ethical foreign policy you must be struggling to defend the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and extraordinary rendition.
If you came in to see a rise in standards in public life, you will be bitterly disappointed by the vicious spin used against Labour figures, even if you are not so worried about lies against the Tories.
If you came in to see public spending champion better lives for the poor, you must be feeling uncomfortable about the extent of public spending on the privileged and powerful.
If you believed it when you told us the government had abolished boom and bust, do you now feel let down and lied to by the Prime Minister who presided over the credit binge and the crash?

When you look at yourself in the shaving or make-up mirror in the morning, are you any longer proud to be a Minister in this government?

Last night I attended a meeting of around 100 angry and worried local residents. Their story could be the story of so many in modern Britain. Most of them work hard, pay their national taxes, pay their Council tax and pay their water bills. All they want is that the authorities maintain the flood defences properly, and strengthen them if needed. The authorities seem incapable of doing either of these things.

I and my constituents are given the run round every time we complain. The Environment Agency, the Water Company and the local authority argue over who is responsible in any given case. They claim they do not have any money to do what is needed. They have plenty of money to pay highly paid executives to tell us nothing can be done, plenty of money to get legal and other professional advice to avoid responsibility, plenty of money to plaster websites with maps and stories about how many of my constituents homes are at risk of flooding, to put up their insurance bills.

I have tried to make it easy for them. If it is water from the local river causing the flooding problems, as in many cases it is, that is the responsibility of the Environment Agency. If it is foul water from the wastewater system that is the Water Company’s responsibility. If it is surface highways water that is the Council’s responsibility. What people expect is for public bodies and near monopoly companies to know and discharge their responsbilities. Somewhere in their massive budgets they ought to have reserved some cash to keep the drains, culverts and grilles clear. Somewhere there ought to be some cash to clear the river so it flows sensibly. And somewhere in the capital budgets there should be some improvement money to add the extra culverts, bunds and sluices we need to handle the extra water run off the new developments are creating.

The government fails to take proper account of the impact of extra development when it overrides the local Council and gives planning permission for more tarmac and concrete. The government fails to issue the right priorities for the Enviroonment Agency. The Agency fails to make strong enough respresentations against development in some cases where it will make the flooding worse.

No-one seems to want to spend any money from the huge sums they receive from the taxpayers on some hours with a digger to clean existing culverts and cut whatever new ones are needed. No-one wants to spend modest sums on throwing up some bunds around suitable fields to take the surplus water when the run off is too fast.

Next week the three responsible authorities are all going to meet together to ask what can be done. I guess that’s progress. I have been telling them what needs doing for years. It is not difficult, and much of it is not that expensive. The Dutch learned to keep the more challenging waters of the North Sea out of their country hundreds of years ago without the advantage of modern JCBs and strimmers. Why can’t we manage something a bit easier in 2009? Why do we get so little that we want from all our taxes?

Labour’s polling has at last picked up that many people hate their surveillance society. They tell us today they will look at their much hated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to try to stop Councils using snooping powers against us for “minor” offences. Why not repeal it, and the rest of the surveillance society they have introduced, including ID cards and email snooping? Because they are not serious about this.

They just don’t get it. We hate this government’s abuse of state power. We loathe its bullying and harassment of our daily lives. We dislike its thought police. It wants to poke and pry into every facet not just of our lives but of our minds. It forces people to use politically correct language, deals aggressively with anyone who disagrees with it, intercepts emails and conversations, arrests an Opposition Spokesman for doing his job and misrepresents or lies about its opponents. It has placed so many cameras on the streets. It constantly tries to frighten us by talking up the terrorist threat. It wastes our money on intimidating adverts to tell us what latest tax we have to pay or what latest law we have to obey.

Now they think they can spin their way on to the good side of the Surveillance society debate by blaming Councils for over eagerness to do on a local scale what this government does so often on a national scale. It has the advantage for their spin machine of letting them tell people they do understand that we are angry about the absue of power. It brings the added advantage that as Labour is so unpopular many Councils now have a Conservative majority. I have no time for any Conservative Council that uses the powers disproportionately. This government has so over centralised that if local government is now too prying and unpleasant it may be because this government gave the powers and often makes them use them. It has put Councils under its control with their endless regulations,circulars, star system and threats of central intervention if Councils do not comply.

I never recall problems with the rubbish collection service before this government and the EU was let loose on it. Now we have the battle of the bins with Council after Council under the impression they have to go over to fortnightly collection, a policy hated by most of the angry Council taxpayers.

This government decided to wage a war against the motorist. This government went on the attack against employers and small businesses. In their passion to spend more of our money and dictate to us what we should think, they forgot that the public might see through the spin. That is why they have been trying to find a way of “turning” the websites and blogsphere. Infuriatingly to them the world of the web wont agree with the Labour way of looking at and talking about a problem as the BBC so often obligingly does.

The decision to allow a police raid on Damian Green showed yet another bad lack of judgement by the Home Secretary.

We all know now that she showed a lack of judgement in what items to buy on expenses, and on how to explain the nature of her second home arrangements to taxpayers. She was tried and found wanting in the Court of Public Opinion favoured by her colleague, Miss Harman.

Today we can at last comment on a far more serious lack of judgement. Any Minister who loves Parliamentary democracy and understands the delicate checks and balances of our constitution would have said “No” to any idea of a raid on an MP’s office for doing his job as an Opposition Spokesman.

Let us assume that this government’s Ministers do not apply the normal rules of decency and commonsense, but just apply the rules of party advantage and realpolitic. Even on this lower standard, Miss Smith made a big mistake.

She should have said to herself that a police invetsigation of Mr Green was a lose/lose for her. She will now find out what criticism she gets in the circumstance where after a lengthy and expensive investigation the authorities decide no offence was committed that they can prosecute.

Just think though what would have happened if she had been successful and Mr Green had faced some charge. The government may have thought it was a trial about whether an Opposition Spokesman had overstepped the mark in what he had made public. Many of the rest of us, and the defence, might have seen it as a show trial of this whole government’s approach to spin, to the leaking and witholding of public information, and to the culture of fear they try to generate in forces which criticise them.

The Defence in the trial could have asked for all sorts of potentially embarrassing papers to be made available. The proceedings could have dragged on close to an election. The Home Secretary is as lucky as she is clumsy today. The trial would have been worse than the wise decision of the CPS that Mr Green has no case to answer.