Today we can elect new Councillors in many parts of the country. I do hope all the oppressed motorists of the UK will take this opportunity to tell their would be Councillors we are fed up with the way we are treated by petty officialdom at the local level, as well as by our rapacious government who see the motorist as one of the prime sources of extra revenue.

The national press this morning highlights just how many motorists now end up paying speeding fines and parking fines. Some of them deserve them, for parking in places which block the traffic or hinder others, and for driving too fast in difficult conditions. Others are caught out by bizarre changes of speed limit on good roads, by confusion over what the parking rules are on any given piece of kerb, and by the officious efficiency of the public sector when it comes to taking money off us. If only they were equally efficient and determined to provide good service in all the other departments.

In recent conversations I have been told of the kind of intolerance shown by some parking officials to usually law abiding people. One person came out of his house to take his car away from an overnight space at 8.32 in the morning. A ticket was placed on his vehicle because he was meant to have moved it at 8.30. Another found a ticket on his car because the boot protruded beyond the line marking the end of the parking bay, even though the vehicle position was not blocking anyone’s entrance or impeding traffic flow. A taxi driver explained why he could not drop someone off in a location where he was not blocking the traffic, because taxi drivers are under the steely eye of the surveillance cameras in London all the time they are at work and they would be fined.

Whilst the press is right to highlight the financial impact of this surrogate for taxation, the steady stream of fines, there is another feature which should worry us. One third of motorists apparently have fallen foul of the rules and had to pay up. The two thirds of us who escaped fines have still had to run the gauntlet of the sometimes unreasonable and perverse rules. We have had to change our driving style to accommodate endless scanning of the horizon for all the signs and instructions which now dictate how we drive. Instead of spending the maximum time on surveying the road ahead for hazards and adjusting direction and speed to the conditions, motorists now spend much of their time seeking out the frequent changes of rule and watching their speedometers to try to keep within them. It makes people worse drivers. The whole process puts people on edge too often and for too long.

The same happens to us when we have finally parked the car at the journey’s end Have you felt that nagging fear that you will overstay your time in the local car park because it takes longer to buy something in the shops than you thought? Have you ever had to abandon your purchase because of the queue for the till and dash for the car to avoid the car park vigilante getting you for a few minutes over your time? Have you ever stood in the rain by the car puzzling over whether you can or cannot park in a given spot because the rules and signs are unclear? Have you ever been done because you misread the signs? Why can’t you top up the fee you paid on entry in the car parks where you have to pay in advance, if you need to? If limiting the time of your stay is so important to the Council, there could be an allowance of extra time you could pay for before the penalty kicks in.

There is a parking area in Wokingham where a municipal car park shares a common entrance with a private car park. People often get caught out, parking in the wrong part. They have to pay a penalty, even though they have paid and put a sticker in the windscreen, because they have parked in the wrong space. I recently wanted to park in a central London side street. The residents’ parking places were clearly banned to me. Next to one of them was a single yellow line, creating a space for a single car in the line of parked vehicles, well away from the turning. There was no sign up to tell me when the single yellow line applied. Just round the corner on the main road there was a red line for an urban clearway, and a sign telling me that could be used for parking at the time of my arrival. I eventually found a space some way away on the main road, where the parking impeded traffic flows more than would have been the case in the side road. I could not afford to take the risk on the yellow line. Sometimes there can be as many as three different regimes for the timing of parking on the same stretch of road. You need to walk up and down checking for all the signs to make sure you have understood. Many of the places fail to tell you on the signs whether a bank holiday counts as a Sunday or not.

The truth is that parking controls and charges have become too complicated. Of course we need rules to prevent people blocking side roads to traffic, and to stop them restricting the width of the carriageways of main roads when they are busy. Of course it makes sense for a Council which has had to buy a piece of land and needs to spend money on maintaining the car park to charge the users for their use rather than putting the whole thing onto the Council Tax. This system has now been turned into a money spinner, seeking to make Council profit out of their near monopoly provision of public parking. It has also been over complicated by too many officials endlessly varying the rules of the parking schemes and spending our money on reconfiguring the street, the pavement, and the parking spaces.

So as you go to vote today, try to have a word with those who would represent us. Tell them it’s taking the pleasure out of shopping and increasing the pressure on going to work or visiting friends. We are under the cosh of the surveillance society. We have to dance to the tune of petty officialdom. They seem to forget that parking is a service to make our lives easier, not another way to terrorise us and make us nervous about what we are doing. Surely our Councillors could unite to get some commonsense back into the system? If they did we would need fewer officials, so we could be charged less for the whole process.

Over the last two days we have been discussing the Finance Bill in the Commons. It has given me the opportunity to remind the government just how successful Ireland has been by setting low company tax rates. The Irish economy has grown much faster than the UK economy as a result, and has generated more tax revenue from the lower rates. Today we learn that more large companies are thinking of leaving the UK for a more favourable tax jurisdiction – they don’t have far to go given the Dublin offer.

It gave the chance to speak out for the motorist, highlighting the successive tax raids this government has launched against people driving to work, taking their children to school, and bringing heavy shopping back in the boot.

It allowed me to expose why so many people think green taxes are a scam, because the government does not always undertake proper carbon accounting, or decides to increase taxes that cannot have the desired impact on people’s behaviour. The decision to lift Vehicle Excise Duties on older cars is a good example of this.

During the course of the debates it also reminded me that Labour’s most successful campaign in opposition to the last Conservative government was surprisingly for them an anti tax campaign. Labour’s attack upon the Community Charge led to the removal of a Prime Minister, and the decision to abolish the tax. It meant I as Local Government Minister had to perform the last rites for the tax, and introduce the slightly less unpopular Council Tax.

It is instructive to look back at why this greatest Opposition campaign of the last thirty years worked. Labour decided early on to rename the tax the Poll Tax. In a rare foray into England’s rich and argumentative history, Labour at one fell swoop conjured images of the Poll Tax riots of the fourteenth century, and the injustice of taxing the poor that hazy memories might manage. The attack worked because the Poll Tax brought a lot of people into paying a local tax who up to that point had avoided it. Labour thought it was time for another Peasants’ revolt, time to unfurl the banners of 1381.

The Conservative government adopted the Poll Tax (against my advice) because opinion polling told them people said they would pay more for better services, and because some households had three or four earners but still only paid one lot of rates. Why not give them all a chance to contribute to local services which they said they valued? I never thought making so many more people pay tax would go down well, and for once Labour also thought a tax would be unpopular. They were right.

It is interesting that 18 years on from the great Poll Tax rows, the Labour government is so desperate to get its hands on more of our money that they are now taking more income tax from low earners,(poll tax on working) taking more VED and petrol tax from low income motorists (poll tax on wheels) and taking more Stamp duty from people trying to buy a home (poll tax on home).

One of the things we need to do to get the message across to the government that they are taxing too much is to change the names of the taxes. I would like your contributions so the taxes can be more accurately described. I have some proposals for starters:

Income Tax - Work Tax
Stamp Duty - Homes Tax
Petrol and diesel duty - Travel Tax
Congestion Charge – Poll tax on wheels
VAT - Shopping Tax
Capital Gains Tax - Enterprise Tax
Corporation Tax - Investment Tax
Climate Change Levy – UK industry Tax
Tax on interest and dividends – Savings Tax.

Click here to read the full text of John’s contributions to the Finance bill.

Banks and oil companies are the corporations many people – and governments – love to hate.
In a way it in unfair on them. Both industries find it best to organise through very large companies. Because the companies need to employ huge sums of capital, they will tend to make profits that look large. You need to have lots of shareholders and substantial resources to build the large refineries, or to have the branches and balance sheet strength to handle the transactions of millions of customers. When you split the large profits up amongst all the shareholders it looks rather different.

The oil companies carry an additional burden – the government. Two thirds of what they charge people at the pumps goes to the UK Treasury, yet so often the oil companies get it in the neck for the high prices the high tax requires.
In the good times for the companies when the oil price is high they make good profits, but these are paid out in dividends to millions of small savers, pension fund members and the like, or go to reinvest in the business so capacity keeps up with demand.

The Banks must be wondering what has hit them with the tidal wave of criticism that has washed over them in recent months. Much of it is pointing in two different directions. On the one hand their critics say they made too many incautious loans and are having to write off too much lost capital, so they should lend less and at higher profit margins to rebuild their financial strength. On the other hand, if the banks start to do that then critics say the banks are profiteering by raising their margins, and are being unfair on the less well off who cannot get a loan any more.
Being a banker must be a hit like being a politician – you can’t win!

Banks were reporting very good profits in the 2003-6 period, and paid out good dividends. Now they are having to report substantial losses, writing down the value of assets they hold which turn out in these conditions to be worth less than they thought last year. At the same time as they announce these losses and write-offs, the regulator is demanding that they keep more money at the Bank of England and as a cash reserve, compounding the pressures on the banks to lend less and be more cautious. This is the mechanism by which the credit crunch is tightening.
Some banks have decided that to provide the extra cash the Regulators want them to have, and to pay for the losses they are announcing in their write-offs, they will raise more money from their shareholders. In effect the shareholders will be paying their own dividends for a bit, as the regulators want the cash generated from the profits to improve the solvency and liquidity.

Ws there a better way? Yes, of course. If the Regulators had demanded more capital in the good times, rather than in the bad times, we could have avoided some of the boom and bust. If there was a better way of assessing the worth of loans and other assets on the balance sheets, they could smoothed, to avoid big changes when markets change dramatically. Getting shareholders effectively to pay their own dividends by putting up more capital is not a great idea, but once a bank has paid out a good dividend it fears for its reputation if it were ever to cut it in a following year. Dividends turn out to be have been too high in the good years, because the high profits they were then making turned out to be unsustainable on some of the business they were writing. The regulators, as so often, are now making it worse by tightening conditions when the market has already tightened it substantially for them. Bolting doors after the horse has gone is so often what regulators

For much of the last twenty years pollsters and pundits alike have told me and anyone else who would listen that people do not want lower taxes. We have been told that whenever asked, people would rather have better public services.
Therein lies the problem. For years Labour, the pollsters and others in the political world have lectured people that there is a choice – you either have lower taxes or you have better services. Faced with such a choice most people would tell a pollster they want the better services. That does not mean they will vote for the higher taxes, or
will be pleased when they have to pay them.
It ignores the way the private sector allows you to have both – better quality and lower prices, as manufacturers worldwide continue to offer better, faster and cheaper as a matter of course.
Margaret Thatcher’s government cut income tax rates and was re-elected easily on two occasions. When she offered people the opportunity to pay more for schools and social services locally, by asking everyone and not just the ratepayer to pay a contribution through the Community Charge, the public turned against her – and so did her colleagues.
When John Major, as an early green , imposed VAT on fuel, that too turned out to be unpopular with those who had to pay it.
The elder Bush offered lower taxes, and then in office did the opposite. He only got one term as President. The younger Bush offered lower taxes and delivered, and got two terms, despite the war.
Last night the faces of many Labour MPs said it all. Called upon to vote for a doubling of the income tax rate of the lowest paid to collect the revenue to pay the benefits, some did it through gritted teeth, and some threatened their front bench with future rebellion if they do not come up with a good package of help for those who have to bear the burden.
Labour is already unpopular for its stealth taxes, for its soaring Council taxes and for its sneaky charges. They are pillaging us at the petrol pump, robbing us every time we need a licence or permission, and plundering our wallets and purses. They have seen a huge decline in their vote from 1997 to 2005, and face an even bigger drop if the latest polls are accurate.
The Conservatives have illustrated just how important tax now is to the electorate. Last autumn things were not looking good for the main Opposition party when the Prime Minister was considering an early election. The Shadow Chancellor announced he wanted to take all but the very rich out of Inheritance Tax. It was as if someone had turned the light on in the Opposition’s darkened room. The Conservative party surged in the polls, and the Prime Minister realised he might not win an election. From the moment of that speech British politics was transformed. The government went from the front foot to endless scrambles before the stumps hoping they will not be given out as the ball whistles past them or into their pads.
The 10p issue is more of the same. In a way it is a defining issue. Labour seems to think all it has to do is collect more and more cash off everyone, and then distribute it to groups it favours through tax credits and benefits. It seems to have forgotten that many of its supporters in the heady days of 1997 were single people and childless couples on modest incomes. The government has shown it no longer speaks for them and no longer seems to sympathise with those many people who want to be self reliant, but need to keep enough of their income at the end of the week to pay the bills.
As Bill Clinton might have said, “It’s tax, stupid”. People may go on telling pollsters, if asked which they would rather have, that they would rather have better public services. The trouble is these do not seem to be on offer, however much is spent, because the promised reform is never delivered. Meanwhile privately people are seething about just how much government is costing them.
Boris should remind people that a Conservative mayor would be a lot cheaper than Livingstone. It beggars belief that a typical London household has to pay £300 just for the Mayor and his entourage. Running a separate foreign policy for London does not come cheap.

I have just met a Japanese author writing about the UK’s difficult relaitonship with Europe to help inform his own country’s approach to China. I explained why I thought the positions were very different. It did occur to me during the course of the conversation that a country is partly defined by its history and common understanding. On that basis the Uk is 200 years old - thanks to Labour ’s attacks on it through devolution - whilst England is 1100 years young, and growing stronger by the day in its common feelings as a result of this government.

The government did not tell us that it was going to be so cold with all this global warming.

Nor did they tell us at the last budget they would be charging us more than 70p a litre in tax on unleaded with a pump price of 110p.

They did not say that within a few months into Gordon Brown’s premiership the main Forties pipeline would be closed down owing to an industrial dispute that stems from his taxation of pension funds and the consequent closure of many funds to new members.
The more the government says “Don’t panic” the more people worry that the government is not in charge and there may be shortages at the pumps. You can feel the authority draining away from the government by the hour.

The government did not tell us when first elected in 1997 that they would want to damage our liberties in the name of security. They did not stand for election as the party that would give us more surveillance cameras than a communist state, nor did they campaign strenuously for much longer detention without charge or trial, yet that is now their stock in trade.

The government did not tell us in 1997 that putting education first meant changing the exams system into a succession of short term cramming exercises to get through modules so schools could hit their targets. Never before have children been so often examined, in so many different exams, to so little purpose.

The government did not tell us in 1997 that they would spend unparalleled sums of money on public services, spending so much on spin doctors, glossy brochures, management consultants and extra administrative staff. Can the Prime Minister really need £2 million a year of spin doctors as recently reported? Wouldn’t spending more time on sorting out the underlying problems be a better way?

They did not tell us that their anti poverty programme would entail large armies of officials to take tax off many people, and more large armies of officials to give some of it back in the form of tax credits.

They did not tell us they would give away so much power to Brussels, claiming each time an unpopular law came in from the EU that Britain was winning the argument.

They did not tell us that lop sided devolution for Scotland would fuel English nationalism, creating resentment at the better financial deal many English people now think Scotland gets from the Union.

They did not tell us their idea of local government devolution was to seek to create uniformity of policy and approach through hundreds of rules, regulations and guidance notes, and a star system to grade the results as if the electors had no role in judging.

They did not tell us they would face headlines in papers complaining of fraud and error in our electoral systems.

They did not tell us that government to them meant a continuous conversation with the media, rather than seriously trying to identify and solve economic and social problems that government can tackle.

On Monday 27th April 1992 the House of Commons elected its first woman Speaker, Betty Boothroyd.
I was a rare government Minister voting for a Labour Speaker. I did so because I thought it time a good woman candidate should have the job after 700 years of men, and thought it important that Labour held a great office of state again after 13 years in the wilderness.
The mood was strange. Many of my Ministerial colleagues were buoyed up by the fourth election victory in a row, and had not detected the feelings of unease and unhappiness on the doorsteps. They did not seem to grasp that the Conservatives won the 1992 election despite the background and the ERM policy, not because of it.It seemed to me it would have been wrong to have flaunted the narrow victory by using the majority to have another Conservative Speaker, especially if that Speaker had been a Cabinet member in the recent past in the same administration that he would need to preside over.
Enough of my backbench colleagues took the same view, so Betty was elected easily.She proved to be a good Speaker, who brought a fresh approach to the job and was widely liked and respected on all sides of the House.

When I heard from a constituent complaining of persecution by the TV licensing authority, who not believe him when he told them he did not have a television, I was sympathetic and took up his case. The response I received from the Authority was typical of this government’s revenue arms – inflexible, and determined to raise the maximum cash it can from the long suffering public. As usual I did not take the matter to the press, as the issue came to me in confidence and many constituents do not want their personal details splashed across the local – or sometimes the national – newspapers.

Today I can vouch for the hectoring behaviour of this body, backed up from my personal experience. I have a studio flat in Westminster, which I use when I have to vote after 10 pm in the Commons – or attend a working dinner in London – and then need to be up and out early the next morning for a breakfast meeting or the like. It is not a place I plan to spend my evenings in. I decided not to buy a TV partly because I deeply resent having to pay a poll tax to the BBC for the TV coverage of public issues they choose to put out, and have no intention of paying them two, one for home and one for the flat.I do not like the way they use so many voices who want higher taxes, more European government and more regulation for every problem.I also tire of the very large number of self advertisements on the BBC, when no-one else can buy the advertisement time.

When I moved in they sent me a letter reminding me of the need to take out a TV licence. I wrote back telling them I did not have a TV. For my pains I received another couple of standard letters telling me I needed a TV licence, and that inspectors might call unannounced to check up on me. I wrote back again complaining of the harassment. They replied saying they were sending me another standard letter, that inspectors would be calling unannounced, and they were sorry I was cross about it. They said they would be writing to me in a similar vein at least annually.

It is typical of this government and its state broadcasting corporation that the only thing they care about is extracting more money from the public, and they cannot believe that anyone could possibly live without their TV output. They clearly regard anyone who says they do not have a TV as a liar, and spend large sums on writing them endless letters and sending out inspectors. Their inspectors will, of course, be wasting their time in my case, as I am most unlikely to be in any time they call, unless I am to experience the knock at the door at 2 am, to confirm that I am living in a version of the Soviet Union circa 1960.

We see the daily incompetence and waste of most branches of government, where letters go unanswered for months, where people have long waits to get on a waiting list for a hospital appointment, where many parents and pupils cannot get into the school of their choice, and where the roads are constantly disrupted by the authorities who are meant to look after them. It is galling to discover that the only thing they are persistent about is taking money off us. Life in a democracy requires civil exchanges between the government and the governed, and a framework of trust. Governments should assume honest conduct by citizens unless there is evidence to suppose otherwise, and should have a framework of sensible laws and requirements that most people most of the time respect and wish to follow. As soon as government becomes heavy handed and imposes too many laws – and too many laws that do not seem reasonable to the governed – there is more chance that more people will deliberately or inadvertently break them, and more likelihood that government will then intensify its snooping and heavy handed enforcement. Such a progress makes public life coarser, and creates a growing gap between government and governed. The UK now is suffering from rapacious government, seeking ever larger sums of revenue to feed the bureaucratic monster. It will in turn create an angrier electorate, resentful of how the money is spent and cross about the bullying techniques used to extract it.

The TV licensing website - with comments in 16 languages - tells us they spent over £130 million last year on collecting the revenue and enforcing the charge. They also claim that around 5% of the public with TVs do not bother to buy a licence. It is difficult to know how they work out such a figure, yet still fail to collect the money from them. In this multi media digital age the licence fee is looking increasingly out of date and expensive to collect. It is time for rethink.

The old Labour knocking copy against the Conservatives is being retailed against them, and recycled by a government in a hole against its “rebels”. It really is too absurd.
In the 1990s Labour put around the idea that the Conservatives were too divided to be able to govern. The Conservative Prime Minister echoed these sentiments, constantly briefing the press about the need for unity – around his view of what we should do and say next. Now we have a Labour government in trouble. The pollsters ask the public if they think the governing party is divided – of course it is. They ask if the governing party is unpopular – of course it is. The Prime Minister then yells at the rebels for daring to disagree, blaming them for the poor showing in the polls and the probable poor results in the forthcoming local elections. Everywhere from the super loyal Mirror to the leader page of the Daily Telegraph we see the old fib wheeled out – what is wrong with the government is the persistence by the rebels in disagreeing with their Prime Minister.
How stupid! The Conservative party of Margaret Thatcher at the height of her powers was both popular and deeply divided between wets and dries, pro Europeans and Eurosceptics. The Conservative party of Michael Howard was uniquely united in the run up to the Election of 2005, but it did not make us popular. The Labour government of Tony Blair was hugely divided between modernisers and traditionalists, between Brownies and Blairites, between old left and new left, yet it kept on winning.
Very often when a government is in a deep hole of its own digging it is the so-called “rebels” who are the true friends of the party and the government. If the “rebels” who were angry about the abolition of the 10p tax band had been taken seriously earlier, and concessions made before the row became so public, the government would be more popular than it is today. The government is not unpopular today because it has rebels. It is unpopular because it has failed to see that the rebels are usually on the popular side of an argument.
The main cause of the government’s current unpopularity is the state of the economy. People feel squeezed by higher taxes and higher prices. Some now fear for their jobs – as do some Labour MPs as they look at the opinion polls. People know that the government has taken too much money from them, and spent much of it unwisely. That is what is making them angry. They welcome the fact that some Labour MPs understand, and are trying to get the government to think again.
It is never easy trying to get an obstinate government to understand the sources of its unpopularity, as I well remember from my experiences in the 1990s. What you can be sure about is if you do not try to point out the errors of a failing government’s ways you will go down with the ship. If you succeed, you can help right the ship. I admire the Labour “rebels” who want to save the Brown government, but listening to the rhetoric coming out of Downing Street - and from Tesssa Jowell – they cannot be saved because they think the rebels are just being difficult. At their best the rebels speak for Britain.

I am told the service provider needs to install more capacity as the site is growing rapidly. This may mean some interruptions to service over the week-end, so please be patient.

Today we mourn the dead of Guernica, killed in the first air raid which rained murder from the skies on a civilian population during the Spanish civil war. Guernica became a focus for outrage and shock at the way the new power of aerial bombardment could be used to destroy the buildings of towns and kill the men,women and children who lived there. The later barbarisms of the twentieth century were first enacted on that fateful April afternoon seventy one years ago.

I can understand why people were so shocked. The mass slaughter of the First World War had revolted people enough as they saw heavily mechanised death on an industrial scale meted out to young men crouching in muddy trenches. In a throw back to the morality of medieval warfare where knights were meant to help damsels in distress, not rape or murder them, there was still a feeling that at least that barbarism was confined to combatants who had some means of fighting back. The murder from the air at Guernica was meted out to unseen people in their homes, attacking men, women and children indiscriminately. All were defenceless, as the town had no anti aircraft weaponry in place. Waves of Luftwaffe planes flew in to discharge their bomb loads unchallenged. Just in case they were supported by Italian fighter planes.

The Condor Legion’s raid killed many. There have been disputes ever since about just how many, with estimates ranging from 250 to 1500. At the time the perpetrators sought to give a very different impression, and pointed out that Guernica was also a military target as the fascist forces sought to prevent the retreat of the opposing army. The event has been remembered both because at the time world opinion was affronted by such bestiality, and because Picasso produced his famous painting lest we should forget.

I share the feelings that the bombing evoked. It was another lurch to a more brutal age, a celebration of the naked power modern technology can hand to governments, a further decline in the standards of governments handling disagreement and conflict. It did point to the murderous pounding London and other British cities received from the Luftwaffe in the Second World War, and the retaliatory death the Allies dished out to Germans in their cities. Neither long and damaging bombing campaigns against civilian populations and whole cities changed the course of the war. London was not bombed into submission. The Germans were not forced to an early surrender by the ferocity of the later Allied bombing. Wars still required men in arms to hold or seize territory on the ground, fighting village by village, street by street for control.

Bombing munitions factories, armies on the ground, weapons development establishments, bridges and railways to be used by opposing forces may all be necessary as part of traditional armed conflict between men in arms in a modern setting. There are conventions seeking to limit the use of weapons of mass destruction. Guernica and its aftermath has led many to think there should also be a convention against the mass bombing of civilian populations.

I understand why Guernica evokes such strong passion. I myself have never been able to find those passions properly captured by Picasso’s painting. Most people think it a masterpiece. I cannot see it. I would love to be told why it is in a way I can appreciate too.

How many Labour MPs thought it would come to this? Many of them wanted Gordon Brown with a passion, preferring his more socialist approach to Tony Blair’s Third way ambiguity. Many of them thought he was too decisive and powerful to be stopped. Even the minority of loyal Blairites who privately predicted disaster before he was crowned did not have the courage to put up a candidate against him and expose the obvious weaknesses in advance, to spare their party and our nation the agony we are now living through.

Yesterday’s news was a new low for a government which lives by the news and is judged by the headlines.

We had 8000 schools on strike, making a mockery of Labour’s claim to be the party of “education, education, education”.

We saw the Grangemouth refinery closing down to prepare for a strike over pensions, highlighting the immense damage the government has done to private pension schemes.

A government Minister on TV told us they were taking an active part in ensuring proper supplies of diesel and petrol to Scotland, whilst the same TV programme showed five out of six filling stations they visited had already run out of diesel, with some rationing of petrol.

Over in the City there was more news of the mortgage famine, preventing many young people from buying their first home. Ministers tell us helping such people is one of their aims.

News came of a leading housebuilder announcing it would not be starting work on any new housing sites, as demand was so poor. Ministers have spent the last couple of years lecturing us all on the need to build more homes, and trying to find greenfields they can insist we build over.

In the corridors of Westminster Labour MPs were heard asking if the PM and Chancellor’s climb down the previous day over compensation for some of the losers from Labour’s Income Tax rise was a “con”.

Ministers were still cobbling together some way of sending some money back to people they now admit they are overtaxing, but were unable to explain how much would be sent to how many on what date – and this is sorting out a problem created by a budget delivered a year ago.

The problem for Mr Brown is how to break this desultory cycle of bluster, incompetence and climb down. He wants to avoid looking like James Callaghan bedevilled by strikes, visits to the IMF and high inflation in the 1970s. Clearly the spin strategy this week has been to seek to isolate the 10p tax band problem, make the minimum concession to see them through the otherwise difficult vote next week, and then show resolution in the face of future rebellions. Unfortunately for the PM his backbenchers are suspicious, and will demand more detail before they finally settle the tax question. Meanwhile, the rebels over the ghastly 42 day detention policy have not gone away, and will have learnt from this that The PM does change his mind under pressure. Journalists are already circling the issue, looking forward to dramas ahead.

I enjoyed some of the BBC coverage of the strikes. With a hint of incredulity in his voice, one reporter said it was Labour voters (Meaning NUT members) striking against a Labour government. It was an interesting slip. NUT members were never all Labour voters, even in 1997. They are certainly not all Labour voters today! The left is watching as one arm of the Labour movement, the public sector Trade Unions, turns on another, the Labour party in office. It is not a pretty sight, and it is most disruptive for members of the public caught up in the consequences of the battle. Yesterday it was areas that voted strongly Labour in recent elections which were most affected. Diesel is in short supply in Scotland, and more teachers were on strike and more schools closed proportionately in places like Wales, where people had chosen mainly Labour MPs.

To recover from here the Prime Minister needs to change his character and approach. He needs to become more interested in the underlying problems and seek to solve them. The number one problem is people are short of cash to pay the ever rising bills – he needs to understand the damage tax poverty is doing to his reputation. To solve this he needs to lower taxes, which requires running a more efficient public sector. He needs to show more flexibility and more honesty in dealing with Parliament. Where his whips tell him there could be problems he needs to listen and adapt, rather than talking tough and then conceding. He should not conclude from all this that reform is impossible or undesirable. He should understand that public sector reform requires persuasion, strategy and tactical skill.

Teachers are on strike. Civil servants are on strike. University lecturers are on strike. The Grangemouth refinery which supplies much of Scotland with oil products is on strike and closed down. The Labour government is taking us back to the wild 1970s, when workers resorted to strike action against a Labour government in a destructive frenzy, which kept the UK firmly near the bottom of any list of richer countries for investors thinking of where to create jobs and do business.

I remember thinking how absurd strikes could be as a young University teacher. We were confronted by a student strike! Some of my colleagues saw it as extra holiday, some as a welcome opportunity to do some more research instead of teaching. One of my abler students in advance of the strike asked if he could shift his tutorial from a strike day to a non strike day, as he was kind enough to think the tutorial of value but he wished to show “solidarity”. I explained that he had to face the moral dilemma. If he wanted to show solidarity he also had to show sacrifice – so I would not change the tutorial date. He asked if he could come to the tutorial on the standard date by the back gate so no-one would see. I said that was fine by me. He became an incognito strike breaker. The students were, of course, striking against themselves. There was no need to give any ground over whatever their issue was.

I finally decided to leave University teaching when an unexpected visitor turned out to be a Union organiser wanting me to join a Trade Union. It reminded me that University teaching, for all the diversity of Higher Education institutions in Britain, was in many respects a nationalised monopoly. The state was the principal paymaster and in some ways the ultimate employer. Governments were likely to squeeze university pay in the long run, and were unlikely to welcome pay systems which rewarded individuals prepared to offer better work or more energy in performing their tasks. I left for employment where I could negotiate my own deal based on what I could contribute to the organisation, working alongside others who would never dream of going on strike.

The four different groups of workers on strike today all have the same grievance at base: they think the government is too mean. The Grangemouth workers will gain the most attention, because their conduct will visibly and quickly inconvenience a very large number of people in Scotland and will soon disrupt other businesses trying to work there. They will be an international advert to footloose industries and investors to avoid Scotland as it descends into industrial anarchy. The University teachers will have the least impact.

The Grangemouth strike is about the closure of the final salary pension scheme to new employees. It is a late example of a wave of pension fund closures brought about by the government decision to tax pension funds. The sad collapse of many final salary schemes is an all too predictable consequence of Brown’s high tax policies, and yet another route by which this government is driving people into tax poverty.

The teachers will only be striking in some schools, through the actions of just one Union. The strike ballot produced a minority vote for the strike allied to widespread abstention. The teachers are right that their pay award is below the increase in the Retail Price Index, but wrong to think that they are being treated badly in comparison to most workers. The majority are settling for pay awards below the current rapid rate of inflation, and below the rate of increase of the RPI. The whole public sector, including MPs, has to accept that the government has overspent and over borrowed, and now has to rein back. We should all expect a period of falling real salaries and wages as the government struggles to adjust after its excesses. MPs voted for a lower increase for themselves than recommended by the Pay review body.

It is sad that relations between the state as employer and its employees has reached this sorry impasse. Private business now experiences far fewer strikes, as employers have learnt to keep talking and to take the interests of their staff more seriously than they used to, and employees have learnt that if you strike in a competitive business you may damage the company to the point where there is no longer a job for you. The public sector is meant to believe in providing a public service. You enter it knowing that in times of expenditure restraint all have to make a sacrifice. It is a pity the Labour government made such a mess of the finances, and a bigger pity that a Labour Education Secretary cannot get on with the NUT.

At least Labour Ministers do not have to worry about the Opposition’s view on this. When Conservatives were in power Labour MPs were always tempted to support strikes and strikers and to side with them. The Conservative Opposition today is united in condemning strike action. It recommends to all the strikers to talk and to use democratic protest, whilst returning to work. It advises the government to listen, and to see what it can do within the difficult financial constraints its budget mismanagement has created.

This government just doesn’t get poverty. Rather, it begets it.

The government thinks there is child poverty and fuel poverty. Today – and next week in Parliament – the pressing issue is tax poverty.

Poverty is a shortage of income for people to pay the necessities and have a decent lifestyle. There are three ways of tackling it.

The political parties all agree the best way is to create a climate in which the economy generates enough well paid jobs, so people can go to work to earn what it takes to afford to keep themselves and their dependents.

They agree that for some, it is necessary to take money from the many to give to the few who cannot find or hold a job.

The third way would be for the state to let people keep more of their money, instead of taking so much from them in tax. If those on lower incomes paid less income tax they could afford the fuel bills and could manage the food and housing bills without requiring a benefit top up.

The government is hoist on its own targets to cut so-called child poverty. It is a curiously misnamed set of targets. Practically all children are poor. We have legislated to make sure they remain so, as we believe we should prevent children under the age of 16 from working for pay to take them out of poverty. (Please note, I support the banning of child labour!) We also usually prevent children from inheriting or receiving larger sums from relatives with property and money to give them an independent savings income which they control as minors. This government wishes to take this approach further, by preventing 16-18 year olds from entering full time work for pay without an educational component, something I do not support. I want 16-18 year olds to have opportunities for more education if that is what they want, but I do not favour compulsion.

What the government means is it wishes to cut parent poverty. That’s a good thing to want to do. I also want to cut it, along with cutting poverty for childless couples and for single people. The government’s determination to tackle parent poverty has led it into the dangerous political quagmire of abolition of the 10p tax band, offering compensation to some parents through benefits and tax credits, whilst taxing single people and childless couples more. Transferring money from one group of low income earners to another is not what a lot of Labour MPs came into politics to achieve. It is certainly not what I am about. I want to tackle the low net incomes of all.

Today there is a summit on fuel poverty. Yes, the fuel bills are spiralling upwards. No, there is nothing in the short term the government can do about the ever higher oil, gas and coal prices. Yes, the fuel companies have to pass on most of the increased costs of fuel to them. Yes, that will make them unpopular and the objects of political diversionary attacks.

Yet if you buy fuel for your car or van, for your working vehicle or for the delivery vehicle to your home, more than two thirds of the rip off price is tax. The energy companies are great tax collectors, taking money from poor and rich alike for their product, only to hand over lots of it to the government. People could afford even today’s high bills if they kept more of their own income. The government’s removal of the 10p tax band undermines everything and more besides that it is trying to do to alleviate fuel poverty. There would be no fuel poverty for the many if taxes were cut.

I believe the best anti poverty programme you can have is cutting taxes. Under this government, far from playing Robin Hood and taxing the rich to pay the poor, as socialists would like, the government is playing Sheriff of Nottingham. It is taxing the poor to give to the new rich, the Chief Executives of the ever expanding state, to the well paid bureaucrats, to the legal advisers, the management consultants, the spin doctors, pollsters and focus group masters, to the computer contractors and the PFI/PPP providers who cluster attentively around Labour’s great public sector money making machine. Labour even wants to add the political parties to the list of those who deserve more tax cash from the poor to sustain their expensive habits. There are just not enough multimillionaire footballers and movie stars to take the money off, especially when they can leave the country at the very whiff of higher taxes on their fabulous incomes.

If the government were serious about tackling parental poverty and fuel poverty, if it understood that it needs to tackle single person and childless couple poverty as well as pensioner and parent poverty, it would curb its own insatiable appetite for cash for the grandees of the public sector. It would cancel or seek value from all those consultancy, research, financing and management contracts that festoon in the profligate public sector. Ministers would curb the Ministerial drinks cupboard and cut back on the air travel.

So come on Labour. Put in place a real anti poverty programme. Understand poverty is a shortage of spending power for anyone who is poor, whether they are young or old, single or married, with or without children. It is bad news for anyone suffering from it. The best and quickest way to get more people out of it is to lower taxes. That means reining in the excesses of the multilayer government and the quango state.

I am pleased the Prime Minister has commented on the surge in food prices, and the impact this is having in the poorest parts of the world.

He is right to ask whether diverting food to fuel is a good idea in such circumstances. Why doesn’t he go further, and tell the EU it should stop its energy from crops programme, as it is another twist of the knife of high food prices in the empty stomachs of the starving world?

As the Asian economies flourish the world needs to put more under the plough. The Prime Minister needs to look at the damage the Common Agricultural Policy is doing to world food markets, and work with others to find a pattern of incentives to bring more land under crops, and a freer pattern of trade to give the poorest countries some hope.

The developing world needs to know the EU will open its markets to the cheaper food they can produce and sell for much needed cash. The starving world needs to know western politicians are working urgently to bring more land into use so there will be more food next year than this.

World hunger and poverty is the biggest international moral challenge that still faces us.

I want a better service when I go to an airport. London airports lack capacity and provide a poor service to the travelling public all too often. They are not assisted by government refusal to put enough border control staff onto the task, and by some of the regulations that contribute to the bad experience of trying to get to the aircraft.

It is wrong in principle that one private sector company owns all three of the main London airports. I think the Competition authorities should tell BAA that if they want to own Heathrow they should not also be able to own its two main competitor airports, or if they want to own Stanstead and Gatwick they should sell Heathrow. We need some competition. Each of these airports need substantial investment:it would be easier for more than one company to raise the money and manage the projects.

It might also produce some innovation. I do want the airlines and airports to offer a greener way of air travel. If we had more runway capacity we would not need to have so many planes flying around in stacks above London waiting for their place in the queues to land.

If we had some vision, planes on the ground could be taken around the airport by surface vehicles pushing or pulling, to spare the main engines until flight.

If we had more airport capacity, airplanes could go straight to a gate and switch off, instead of hanging around on the tarmac with engines running.

If the airport owner streamlined the process of getting to the gates instead of telling people they need to arrive two hours before they can fly anywhere, they could cut the fuel usage and the required capacity of the terminals.

I am a green. I do not want them to build over too many greenfields and green gaps between settlements in England. I like to be able to breathe clean air,swim in a clean sea, and gaze into clear water in streams and rivers. I understand the need to curb our appetite for burning too much energy, and to find cleaner and better ways of travelling, making things and heating and fuelling our homes.

My latest car is 50% more fuel efficient than the one I drove six years ago. I have put in a condenser boiler at home. If we ever get hot days – and we didn’t last summer – I open the windows rather than ordering an air conditioning unit. In the endless cold days of this spring I usually reach for another jumper rather than turn up the heating. I try to do more things on web and phone to cut down the travel. I try to turn the lights off when I am not using the room.

When I work in my public sector office, many of these sensible approaches to energy is possible. The lights stay on all day and night in the corridors, whether people are there or not, whether it is bright outside or not. I cannot open the windows if it is hot or to change the air. I cannot control the heat that flows in winter or the cooler air that circulates in summer. The system carries on burning energy whether I am using the room or not. Across Whitehall lights blaze and heating systems belt out the warmth regardless of use. Control systems are rudimentary or not personalised.

The public debate seems to be dominated by people who hate the car and ascribe a disproportionate part of the problem to people who drive, only surpassed by their hatred of air travel. They favour trains and buses, as if they in some miraculous way produced no dirty emissions and were carbon free. They ignore the role of the domestic heating boiler, the electricity to power domestic appliances and the huge amounts of energy used by government and other office based activities.

It is time we had some sanity in the debate, based on realism about the relative importance of the different ways we use energy.

When I last drove into London I kept a record of my fuel use. I travelled 31.1 miles on the M4 at a good average speed, consuming just half a gallon of diesel – or 61.1 miles per gallon. I then had to travel 8.1 miles on main road within London. These roads have been messed up with lane closures, perverse traffic light programming, artificial narrowing, road works and many other obstacles. My mpg halved to 32.4 so I used a quarter of a gallon to go just 8.1 miles. On a busier day it could have halved again.

It shows just how important having uncongested roads are for curbing wasteful use of fuel and limiting emissions. I was , however, probably using less energy in the car than if I had stayed at home with my heating full on – I turned the heating off whilst I was away.

It is the second half of April, yet many people still have their heating systems blasting out the heat because it has been so cold outside, with frosts at night, even snow and hail. We need a programme of adjusting our heating and ventilation systems to the new reality of dear and scarce energy. It is high time the public sector showed some leadership by seeking to improve its own control over and use of energy. At the moment its use is wanton. We feel it in our tax bills.

Today we will hear a statement from the Chancellor announcing a much heralded statement offering up to £50 billion of near cash to the banks in return for some of their mortgages.

How is this done?
The government itself will borrow the money, by issuing bonds – IOUs – on the taxpayer.It will lend this money to the banks. It will secure these loans with banks’ mortgages. It will require a discount on the mortgages – in other words it will accept the mortgages for say 90 pence for every pound of mortgage. This discount will give us, the taxpayers, some protection against mortgages within the packages of loans that go wrong and are not repaid, and against failure to pay the interest on some of them. After the transactions the banks have £50 billion more of government bonds which can easily be sold in the market for cash, whilst the government has security of around £55billion of mortgages. The interest received on the mortgages should exceed the interest on the loans. The government/Bank will ask for top up of security if the values of mortgages continue to fall.
The taxpayer will not be out of pocket if the government judge it correctly, but the taxpayer will be at some small risk until the transactions are unwound once the crisis has gone away. At some point the government and taxpayer have to get rid of the mortgages again and repay the borrowings with which they have paid for the loans based on them.The exact arrangement is more akin to loans to the commercial banks, which gives the taxpayer more protection than buying the mortgages.

Good news or bad news? Will it sort out the mortgage market?
This transaction will of itself help in alleviating the shortage of cash in markets, and on its own should lead to new lending by the mortgage banks. As the mortgage banks acquire more cash/short term government bonds so they can lend more money to people seeking mortgages. It was a shortage of cash to meet depositors requirements and the lack of confidence in Northern Rock that led to the run on the Rock. If money and government bonds had been available like this in September 2007 there would not have been a run on the Rock.

However, it has to be seen in context. There are at least three other considerations which will limit the impact this helpful proposal will have:

1. At the same time the authorities are tightening regulation of the banks, demanding that they keep more cash on deposit at the Bank of England for any given amount of lending. Every pound of additional cash they have to keep cuts the value of this package, as it becomes a circular process. The authorities demand more cash for security from the banks. The banks do not have such cash. The authorities then give them the cash to meet the tougher requirements. No-one can borrow an extra penny, as the new cash is frozen.
2. The larger banks are international. Whilst the money will be offered to the UK subsidiary and intended for the UK mortgage market, in practise international banks look at the balance of their global business. Not all of the extra money, after allowing for bigger reserve requirements, will necessarily find its way into the UK mortgage market.
3. The UK market still has the problem of Northern Rock, which remains a negative influence on reviving the mortgage market because the government nationalised it. If instead of nationalising Northern had been offered this kind of support, it could now be offering new loans on a significant scale. Because it is under strict controls to repay the £24 billion taxpayer debt, and under strict surveillance not to be too competitive as a subsidised bank, it cannot play an important role in reviving the mortgage market in the UK.

So will it work?
It is a helpful package. Whether it is enough depends on how much further the authorities go in tightening reserve and cash requirements, and how quickly they want the Northern Rock money back.

Between the 19th and 28th April 1770, 238 years ago, Lieutenant James Cook was sailing off the Australian coast near Botany Bay. As Master of the barque Endeavour, he was sent by the Admiralty to chart the southern seas and discover what land lay there. He made his first landfall at what he named Botany Bay on 29th April. He had already completed the circumnavigation of both islands of New Zealand, demonstrating that they were two distinct islands and not part of a southern continent.

After his first voyage Cook was promoted to Commander, and entrusted with a larger ship and support vessels to undertake two more expeditions with better equipment. He became Captain between the second and third, and met his untimely death on the beach of a Pacific island in 1776 in circumstances which still give rise to argument over who was to blame for the breakdown in relations between hosts and visitors.

The significance of Cook’s voyages was great. It gave Britain the initiative in settling and developing the trade of both Australia and New Zealand. It demonstrated the substantial advances Britain had made in charting and navigating, with the advent of the marine chronometer for longitude measurement, and it led to the huge geographical reach of the English speaking world. It confirmed that the UK has a global presence, not a European one. The presence was based on seapower, and sustained by doughty settlers in the far flung continents of the world.

When the UK joined the Common Market in 1973, one of the most difficult features of the arrangements was the future of agricultural trade between the UK and Australia and New Zealand. The bad rules and protectionist instincts of the CAP damaged both trade and relations between ourselves and kith and kin in the new world of Australasia. As it turned out, they have prospered mightily despite it, whilst the UK has backed trade with a slow growing part of the world, Europe, to some extent at the expense of the far faster growth in Asia.

Today as we remember Cook’s skill and the bravery of his crews, we should wish to ensure that in future we remember the importance of the Asian and Australasian links. They are an integral part of the English speaking world, and they are the future. We need to develop our common cause and common interests through the Commonwealth and World Trade Organisation, through the affinity of the English speaking peoples and the free flow of talent and ideas between our countries.

Euroenthusiasts in the UK have sought to highjack Sir Winston Churchill as an advocate of their cause of linking the UK so tightly to the EU that we cannot follow our natural links with the English speaking world in the same way. We should remember that whilst Churchill did indeed want a strong EU, he did not envisage the UK being part of a European political union.

Churchill wrote a History of the English Speaking Peoples, not a History of the European Peoples. He concluded that four volume work by saying:
“Here is set out the long story of the English speaking peoples….Another phase looms before us, in which the alliance will once more be tested and in which its formidable virtues may be to preserve Peace and Freedom. The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope. Nor should we seek now to define precisely the exact terms of ultimate union”. Churchill saw the English speaking peoples coming closer together, first through a defence union and subsequently something more. This is the opposite of asserting that the UK should become a wholly owned subsidiary of the EU. In a world where US supremacy will in due course be challenged by China we need to think more about strengthening those ties and relationships.

The dynamism of Asia, and the success of the freedom loving model adopted by the USA, Australia and New Zealand, should make us welcome the spirit of Cook. Britain’s future still lies with the English speaking world. At its centre today rests mighty America. Tomorrow at its heart will be successful India. India, once the jewel in the British crown, will become the English speaking locomotive of Asia and in due course the economic leader of the English speaking peoples. British trade in services and her pattern of inward and outward investment is based on the English speaking world, for that is where we find most in common.Trade in goods, where the EU is the biggest area, is a less enduring relationship than mutual investment.

Mr Miliband today has allowed himself to be used. He has argued a contradiction. He both tells Labour to start seeing things the way electors do, and told Labour MPs to knuckle down and support the abolition of the 10p band. They cannot do both successfully! Electors are fed up with paying so much tax for so little in return, and most electors think taxing those on lower incomes more is wrong.

Mr Milliband is an intelligent man, but he has allowed his own intelligence to be replaced by Labour stupidity. He retails the endless Labour lie that divided parties do not get elected. The Conservative party under Thatcher was deeply split between dries and wets, yet it won three General Elections in a row. The NULab party under Blair was deeply split between PM and Chancellor, between modernisers and Old Labour, between Blairites and Brownies, yet it too won three election victories in a row. The electorate will accept some public debate within the ruling party, some signs of democratic life within. In some ways it is a sign of health and thought. What they will not accept is poor performance or weak leadership. The Major government plunged in the polls thanks to the ERM and the impact this had on house prices and jobs.It did not plunge because some of us wanted to rule out the Euro and said so in public. This government is going down thanks to its chronic inability to deliver good public services at an affordable price. The public do not want ever higher taxes, charges, and public borrowing. They realise that the endless IOUs will have to be paid by us, as well as realising how much they are being mugged by the government every time they fill up at a petrol station or pay a Council Tax bill.

Mr Miliband’s remarks sum up all that is wrong with this cynical politics of spin which still disfigures the UK under its latest Prime Minister. The government’s own polls tell it both that it is unpopular, and that electors want it to feel the public’s pain. That is why we are now hearing from Ministers that they understand why people are upset about price rises and the financial squeeze. What they still do not grasp is the public not only wants a government to understand how it feels, but to make things better where they need fixing. In Labour’s rambling and costly public sector that is a huge task which this government shows no signs of grasping.

On Friday evening I attended a Thames Valley drinks party where I met a number of Chief Executives of parts of the public sector. They effectively implement Labour’s policies and retail the government’s opinions (guidance and advice) in our more Conservative area. It reminded me of what a dreadful system it is. CEOs from all round the country in Labour’s Britain usually display a “want more” rather than a “can do attitude”. I have written recently on the big differences between CEOs in successful private sector companies, and CEOs in the British public sector. The typical UK public sector CEO now thinks their job is to demand more resources from government to carry out any given task, and to protect their organisation from criticism by saying they do not have enough resource. Labour is reaping what it sowed. Throughout its long years in Opposition it had only one song – give us more money. It backed most lobby groups and public sector organisations who wanted more public cash, inventing the strange notion of “new money” (not money that has yet to be spent, but extra money that has not yet been announced for the future), and saying in most cases that the service was “underfunded”. They not only said that all would be well if more money was forthcoming, but actually believed it. It was just a question of turning on the money tap until enough cash had been flooded into any given area. Then everything would miraculously work well.

Gordon Brown continued this idea in government. Once he had divorced Prudence and cast off Conservative spending plans (borrowed to get them through the first election without frightening the voters) he went on an unparalleled spending binge. They had rows over whether to reform as well as spend, which Brown won in favour of little reform and maximum spend. They decided to push the spending well beyond what the country could afford, by massive off balance and on balance sheet borrowings. That is just deferred taxation which we will all have to pay. After all the spending there were still obvious problems with hospital infections, with access to care, with access to good state schools, with proper policing of our borders and much else. They had failed to concentrate on raising quality and efficiency, the two main drivers of success in business. The private sector has to do things better, faster, cheaper to survive. The public sector can do things slower, worse and dearer, and demands more money.

Now the money has run out. They are hoist by their own rhetorical petard. Their public sector will keep repeating the mantra that it can only get better and do more if they find massive extra amounts of cash. The so-called CEOs are already sharpening their biros to write the memos demanding more. They will be bombarding Opposition MPs to play the game, demanding more cash for good causes, just as Labour did in Opposition. They will dig in and claim they cannot do things better, faster, cheaper without more government cash, because Labour has created the CEO world in its own image.

Worse still for Labour, they have taught many of these quango boards and CEOs from local government how to play the media game. Some members of quangos and some Councillors have been told it is vital that CEOs themselves handle the media with their highly paid official PR staff. This gives these CEOs the opportunity to brief and lobby. The unscrupulous ones will use off the record briefings to report on the imperfections of their own services with a view to demanding more cash to put right the deficiencies. You do not hear the CEOs of major companies telling journalists off the record that their products are poor or their service needs substantial improvement.

So it’s back to the drawing board, Mr Miliband. Mr Brown has played a blinder getting Mr Mililband to do his dirty work for him by arguing for the 10p band removal. It is good internal politics, associating one of his alleged rivals with one of his most unpopular policies. What Mr Miliband and Mr Brown ought to be doing is spending some time together to discuss the crisis of tax, spend and waste that now engulfs the government. Both their futures are at stake, because the public now knows they are getting a rotten deal for all the tax they have to pay.

THE £50 BILLION PACKAGE FOR THE BANKS WOULD HAVE SAVED NORTHERN ROCK IF INTRODUCED LAST AUTUMN.

If the government and Bank of England can make £50 billion available to the banks today to get the mortgage market going again, why couldn’t they have done that last September to prevent the Northern Rock crisis?

This latest move completes their extraordinary U turn from wrongly saying there would be no bail-outs or help for the banks last September, to now adding a £50billion money market package to the £100 billion nationalisation of Northern Rock. British taxpayers uniquely in the world have double trouble – we are paying for the credit crunch twice, just as we seem to pay twice for everything else this government attempts. We are likely to lose money on the nationalisation, and have very overstretched public accounts thanks to this double borrowing whammy. The irony of the UK position is the government is seeking to sort out overlending by the mortgage banks by overborrowing itself!

If £50 billion had been made available last September there would have been no run on Northern Rock. That unhappy institution would not now be owned by taxpayers, responsible for shedding at least one third of the staff and fighting a legal argument over competition law with the EU. It would not now be running its business down and struggling to repay a massive £25billion loan from the taxpayer. Instead confidence could have been restored with this kind of package last autumn.

The latest scheme - £50 billion of government debt to swap for mortgages – is a better way of helping than clumsy and expensive nationalisation. The reported timings are clever – one year bonds to avoid proper balance sheet accounting for the government, three year duration for the mortgage banks to get the government through the next election before the reckoning. The £50 billion scheme, if properly designed, will be better value for taxpayers than the nationalisation, and will help all banks in the UK, not just one. It is not without its dangers, but at least it does not make the taxpayer responsible for all the staff, loans and liabilities of all the other banks in the way we are for Northern Rock.

The history of the Northern Rock crisis can be followed on www.johnredwod.com, under the Northern Rock tab. Items are in chronological order.

It beggars belief that an intelligent man should lash out against the media for daring to run the story that many people are against the abolition of the 10p tax band. Why on earth in a free society should the media ignore such a story? It makes Gordon Brown, like his post Thatcher predecessors, appear to be the poodle of the headlines rather than in charge of the government.

Let me explain to the PM why this 10p issue is a story. It is story because a large number of Labour MPs are saying they disagree with the policy and might vote with the Opposition parties, who also disagree with the policy. If enough of these Labour MPs keep their word, the government could be defeated on a central plank of Gordon Brown’s last budget. That would be big political news.

It is a story because prices of food, heating and travel are shooting up, in a way which hits the budgets of those on low incomes especially hard. Gordon Brown’s decision to remove the 10p band hits several million people on low incomes, taking more tax off them, at exactly the same time as they face these surges in their bills. The political world has to understand that it cannot fix such a real problem for the voters, by better spinning or media control. Real problems need real solutions, not more expenditure on better spin doctors.

It is a story because removing the 10p tax band puts up the taxes of all of us at a time when most feel under pressure in our daily budgets thanks to rising taxes and rising prices.

If Gordon Brown cannot understand why this is a story he does not have much of a future as PM. What he should do is respond. He can do things to make it better for people - the rest of us can merely complain about what he is or is not doing.

There are two ways out. My preferred way would be for him to admit it was wrong, announce the restoration of the 10p band, and make proportionate reductions in government waste and overheads to pay for the change.

The other way is to explain to his hapless backbenchers why it is right to increase taxes in this way, so he can be sure he can win his vote. Then between them, they have the other task of persuading the rest of us that a tax increase is good for us!

It is good news that our prevailing wind comes from the south west, bringing us fresh air from the Atlantic and the USA. It is bad news that we are currently stuck with a biting north easterly wind, that is bringing us smells from Europe.
It remainds me of just how much grief over the centuries we have experienced by being too entangled with the affairs of that unhappy continent. Good things for the UK have come from our maritime global presence - including the fresh air brought in on stiff winds from the warmer and cleaner south-west. We should have no wish to be part of a European pong contest.

Mugabe and his cronies are moving quickly now to undermine the legitimacy and possible authority of the recently elected Zimbabwean Parliament. If they persuade the Electoral Commission to overturn just nine of the “Opposition” - now the majority - MDC seats then Mugabe’s people are back in charge. The Parliament should meet before this happens, assert their legitimacy and provide an alternative to the President who refuses to resign. They may have to do this from outside the country - it would be a good test of South Afirca, who should be willing to lend them a place near the border to do so if they have any belief in democracy.

Today is the 28th birthday of Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe thinks that is cause for celebration, as he seeks to take people’s minds off the runaway inflation, the barbaric acts of violence, the suffering of families with little to eat or buy, and the failure to publish the results of the Presidential ballot.
The best possible present Zimbabwe could have is a change of leadership. The country is in desperate need of a government that could get to grips with the economic dislocation, and could seek help from around the world in re-establishing a system which could deliver jobs, food and prosperity.
I understand the terrible pressures on Mr Tsvangirai and the difficulty for an Opposition leader in a situation where the armed forces and police are politicised. He is trying to get South Africa to put pressure on the Mugabe regime to force publication of the election result and demand a change of President.
The regime did publish election results for Parliament which produced a Parliament where the MDC has a majority over Mugabe’s Zanu. One way forward would be for brave Parliamentarians of the majority MDC to meet and establish an alternative centre of authority, to seek to win over the public and even some of the security forces by showing them their jobs and interests would be safe with a new government if they behave sensibly. They may need to meet over the border if the security forces are instructed to stop the Parliament meeting, or to disrupt it.
Mugabe’s constant reminder of the independence struggle now looks very dated. It also gets forgotten that that struggle was not against the UK, but against an illegal state created by some Rhodesians who cut themselves loose from the UK in the 1960s when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. It is high time Zimbabwe had a government which could live in the present and plan for the future, rather than wallowing in misrepresentations of what happened 30-40 years ago.