Four stories in one day to remind us why we need judges

We are going to need a strong judiciary in these dying years of New Labour. Four events reported today remind us how contemptuous Government has become of those who elect it.

The Government announced plans to exempt MPs from a requirement to detail their expenses. The Treasury announced that it would not be hurrying to compensate those who lost their pensions in Equitable Life. The Government said that Heathrow Airport is to be extended without Parliamentary debate. And John Mortimer, fierce fighter for individual liberty, died. I do not suppose there was in fact a connection between this last event and the other three, but it is easy to see one.

Speed cameras and statistical ignorance

A new study shows that government claims about lives saved by speed cameras are overstated. This is ammunition against the free-spending little people who run our local authority highways departments. As recession closes in, councillors and others who have been rubber-stamping big budgets are going to have to start questioning what the money is for and why it is necessary to spend it.

Researchers at Liverpool University have knocked Government claims that 100 lives a year are saved by speed cameras. Whilst speed cameras do reduce accidents, the numbers are exaggerated. The research shows a fall in accidents of 19% compared with the claimed 50%.

Does this matter very much, you might ask. After all, this Government belches out false statistics daily and has, indeed, devoted more energy to rigging the apparent outcomes of initiatives than it has on the initiatives themselves. It does matter, and for reasons which go beyond the actual facts behind this research and beyond motoring. Money is wasted in vast quantities on things which make little difference; things which really do matter are neglected in favour of those which yield apparently good outcomes; the police, who need all the friends they can get at the moment, are tarred with the fall-out of policies to which they do not necessarily subscribe; and any little surviving regard for government (as opposed merely to this Government) takes another pasting.

Lifeboats, lost cats and Wellington boots

The tail end of Summer has seen a spate of stories about minor officials with an acute grasp of the regulations and no brain. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency would rather see a girl drown in compliance with the rules than save her by breaching them. Chichester Council declined to pick up rubbish in a four inch deep stream because they had no-one qualified to wear Wellington boots. And a Canterbury council official threatened a 13 year old boy with an ASBO and an £80 fine for putting up notices about his lost cat.

When Gordon Brown looks back over New Labour’s failures he will find that much of the hatred which he and Labour have inspired will derive from the uncontrolled zeal of stupid officials like this. Labour has created the context – an avalanche of petty regulation and armies of petty pen-pushers to enforce them. There is an economic cost to add to all the other economic costs – compliance amounts to an additional tax and all these dim little people have to be paid for – but the cost in popular support is greater.

Gordon Brown is Peter Grimes

We have a dislikeable man with no interpersonal skills in a coastal town in Suffolk. Although thought by some to be skilled at his business, his biggest achievement was thrown away when the climate turned against him. He is particularly unpleasant to junior staff. Everything he touches turns bad and his attempts to describe his vision for the future turn into repetitious rants which no-one listens to or believes. He is hated by almost everyone as much for his character and demeanour as for his inability to handle events. After his latest disaster, even his few friends advise him to push off and sink out of sight. His departure is barely noticed save that the sun comes out as soon as he is gone.

So much for Gordon Brown. This is also, of course, the plot of Peter Grimes, and it is a happy chance which took me to see Peter Grimes whilst Gordon Brown was sulking in Southwold, a few miles along the coast from the Borough (Aldborough) where Grimes is set.

Welsh van man fag trap

A self-employed van driver in Wales has been fined for smoking in his own van. What is it about the local authority mindset, why is it even worse in Wales, and do the local police have nothing better to do?

In my post Smoking Snoopers of 25 February 2007, I commented on the fact that the government had handed £29.5 million to local authorities to help them enforce the smoking ban. It coincided with the news that the police no longer bothered – as a matter of policy – to attend at the scene of a burglary. I did not know it at the time, but the sum so allocated was exactly twice the amount which the Treasury (Gordon Brown Prop.) had shaved off the budget for flood relief.

My focus was on the sort of people who would become smoking snoopers, getting their thrills from lurking to catch people enjoying themselves. They would include, I said:

The sludge which collects at the bottom of every local authority pond who get moved from department to department because they are really unemployable even in that undemanding environment, but who cannot be dismissed through political correctness or union strength.

Imagine being all that and Welsh with it!

Brown the waster tells us not to waste

Hypocrisy is New Labour’s prime characteristic, and Gordon “Heathcliff” Brown’s injunction to us all not to waste anything is a fine example of Labour – and specifically Brownite – hypocrisy

We are, apparently, throwing away £1bn of food each year. That is indeed something to be corrected, with implications well beyond the £420 per family which a Whitehall study has alleged. It deprives others, it generates waste and it inflates the profits of the supermarkets. It is nothing, however, to what Gordon Brown has wasted.

Caring too much to care about children

Two stories in Monday’s Times show how some of those who affect to care about children are much more interested in the appearance of caring and in the alleged purity of their views than in the actual effect of their actions on the children. Both are cases of do-gooders doing obvious harm.

The first article was headed Price of healthier school meals may be just too high for many. It is about new nutrition regulations which will come into force later this year and which require schools to provide details of calories, fat and nutrients in each meal. As with everything else from this government, there are targets for these things, and with them an extra expense which must be borne by the schools, the parents or the caterers.

BSI urges new trough for tree inspectors

One of the most despised features of the Blair-Brown years is the number of busybodies who get their noses into the trough by inciting new inspection regimes in areas which pose no significant risk. The latest is trees which, the British Standards Institution urge, should be subject to checking by a “trained person” every three years and to a full “expert inspection” by an arboriculturalist every five years. There will, of course, be hefty fees payable for this.

Labour lies about rats in rubbish

One of the least appealing aspects of the Blair-Brown administrations – in a very long list of unappealing things – is the institutional dishonesty which these two men and their advisers have brought to government. The dishonesty comes with added hypocrisy since both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in their different ways, have expressly laid claim to a religious and moral basis to their lives.

This dishonesty is not just morally wrong. One is left gaping sometimes at the political stupidity of lying about subjects on which you are bound to be found out sooner or later, particularly things which, however important, are not matters on which governments fall. Governments are entitled to make some mistakes, to experiment, to assess the consequences, and to accept they got it wrong. What loses the votes is the persistent feeling that we are being lied to daily on every subject.

Blears smears Oxford estate

A few days ago, Hazel Blears’ spokesman said that she supported “whatever the Prime Minister said”. Who would say that now?

Not everything which pours from Hazel Blears’ mouth is nonsense, and her observation in a recent speech that “brutal, ugly buildings and estates contribute to crime, antisocial behaviour and social exclusion” is quite correct. She made two mistakes.

One is that New Labour has been responsible for plenty of brutal, ugly building, much of it on grass, including former school playing fields. The opposition which it faces to its house-building programme derives largely from the certainty that most of the result will be hideous, as well as badly planned and divorced from the infrastructure which would make the houses work.