Prodi betting continues as the confusion goes on
April 13th, 2006
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More than £150k in matched bets since Tuesday morning
The thousands of punters who flocked to put money on the Italian General Election on Monday night might have to wait some time for their winnings. The refusal of Silvio Berlusconi to accept the result and demand further scrutiny of contested ballot papers could leave the result in limbo for weeks.
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Just like in the aftermath of the Bush-Gore race for the White House in 2000 punters will have to be patient and the bookie will hold onto their money.
The terms of the Betfair exchange market - which as at 0100 BST today had seen £1,255,118 in matched bets - are “Who will be Prime Minister of Italy as a result of the next Parliamentary Elections?” As long as that remains unclear the market remains open.
You can still bet on the election “winner” Romano Prodi at 1.16/1 while the Berlusconi price stands at 26/1. Interestingly there has been a fair bit of activity on “any other” with 6.4/1 being available.
If Prodi backers want to get their stakes out they can “lay” him (bet against) at the current price of 0.19/1. This price has drifted out from 0.1/1 yesterday afternoon and might ease further as gamblers try to release some of the cash they have tied up. The effect of laying up to the amount you have bet is to reduce your winnings by about a fifth - should Prodi actually make it.
Given the very small number of votes that separated the two leaders there might be a case for taking the 27/1 on Silvio. He has the power of incumbency and the current head-of-state, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, has made it clear he wants his successor, who’ll be chosen in May, to preside over changes.
Back in 2000 I had a spread bet on the number of states Bush would win in the Presidential election. At the time I did not have a credit account and had an enormous amount of money tied up while the Florida result was resolved in the courts. Maybe the same will happen here.
This is just one of the risks of political betting.
Mike Smithson
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On the subject of european politics - i see the lovely Segolene Royal is ahead in a Paris Match poll asking who would make best President of France.
Interesting article about the perils of tying money up even when the market should be quickly resolved.
P.S. Is there a mistake-you say ‘take the 27/1 on Prodi.’ Silvio surely?
If you’re offering 27/1 on Prodi, even as a non-better, count me in
This may already have been mentioned, but apparently after the last Italian election when the official votes were confirmed, SB gained 36,000 extra votes afetr everything had been confirmmed - given the big turnout, and the alleged left-wing bias of some counting agents, there is room for the Prodi 25,000 majority to slip…
Knife edge elections with the final result down to pinpoint margins first in America, then in Germany, now Italy and probably next time in Britain.
Politically speaking, - what is happening?
re 2. Thanks. Changed.
4 - very interesting question marcus and one i was pondering yesterday. i’d be interested to hear a few theories - can’t think of one myself!
They’re already checking disputed ballots. They could finish today (maybe tomorrow).
Checking spoilt ballots (or all ballots) could be made by “Giunta per le elezioni”, a special parliamentary committee. But in this case we need to wait for the new parliament to be formed. And while the committee is checking everything, the new government could begin his works.
Last time the committee checked the disputed results in 2 constituency. They took 5 years to decide that the 2001 losers actually won! In both case the centre-rigth got the seat in 2001, even if the centre-left was the true winner.
3. the alleged left-wing bias of some counting agents is rubbish.
Parties representatives are present at the count and they could dispute all the ballots.
Interesting article by Hamish Macrae in the Independent yesterday on this very theme. His conclusion was that it’s all about the challenge of globalisation. Voters aren’t ready in many countries to face up to these challenges; hence the disappointment of Merkel and the humiliation of De Villepin ( there wasn’t an election about it but his poll numbers fell off a cliff and Sarkozy and the UMP demanded a retreat). On the other hand the Left have no convincing alternative to painful economic reform so the voters aren’t sure which way to turn. Actually in Italy SB didn’t dare propose radical economic reform and ironically Prodi was slightly braver.
So voters are uncomfortably aware of the threat from China, India and Eastern Europe but they’re torn about which way to turn. Also a sizeable chunk of the electorates feel that they’re better off protecting what they’ve got than facing up to bracing challenges. One theory at least.
There is an element of ‘hanging chads’ about this. Trouble is some of Silvio’s mates might think this involves a gallows and rope.
I thought that the Indy’s front page juxtaposition of his demise with the arrest of a long-lost mafia boss was ace.
9 - How about that left/right politics based on rival economic theories has been coming to an end since the fall of the Russian Communists?
Since the turn of the century the Left have had a utopian vision for the industrialised world - which at the theoretical level was exciting and appealing, everyone contributiong equally to improve life for everyone, no-one profiting from the labour of his fellow, an easy non-competitive way of life that took care of everyone, etc, etc.
Sure, it doesn’t work because it forgot about human nature - but it took 100 years to prove that it fails.
So now everyone agrees that the Anglo-saxon model of free market, property owning, hard working, competitive, democracy is the only way forward.
If all politicians seem to be saying roughly the same thing (and let’s face it, on economics they are) then is it surprising that the voting split falls roughly 50:50 and politics comes down to rival personalities?
Is this an open goal for European extremist parties - thats what bothers me the most.
9. Certainly something in that theory, although this resistance to reform in Europe is not really new; arguably it has been going on since the early 1990s. One manifestation of it -ironically - was the project to create the euro, which in some official quarters was seen as a way to boost the European economy without engaging in structural reforms. It has failed to do so, of course, because the European economy was already highly integrated.
The stream of EU directives aimed at creating ’social Europe’ can be seen in the same light - a clumsy attempt to prevent the more ossified Eurozone economies from being outflanked by those more inclined to reform. Such an approach can only work if the Eurozone is insulated from the rest of the world though - and here lies the real danger for the future, the embrace of protectionism.
(Now excuse me while I go and shoot myself in despair).
[9] My only point of disagreement with that analysis is that it doesn’t go far enough. Just because representative democracy has survived (and been strengthened by) two hot World Wars and one Cold one, it doesn’t follow that it will survive the triple whammy of globalisation, global terrorism and global warming.
13. Well, that’s given me a lift!
8 – Yes, of course allegations of bias by counting staff are rubbish. Sadly, this appears to be the usual Berlusconi line whenever he is challenged – ignore the facts and make unfounded allegations against anyone opposing him.
Perhaps the most worrying thing about him is that he appears to have no real understanding of the idea that, in a democracy, it’s quite legitimate to oppose the government. He seems to regard the government (at least when it’s led by him) and the state as being the same thing, and opposition as something bordering on treason.
15. There’re procedures to do all checking that could be done, but he’s exasperating the situation with all his accusations.
He should wait and see. Disputed ballots and polling stations registers are being checked whilst we’re speaking. Probably we’ll have info soon.
Then it’s usual the government who rigs elections, not the opposition!
16 “it’s usual the government who rigs elections, not the opposition”
Maybe thats the point
Silvio: “You’ve miscounted!”
Observer: “What makes you so sure?”
Silvio: “Because I rigged it and I know I won”
13. Innocent FYI - there is a significant school of thought among European ‘elites’ (e.g. people in the international banking circles I used to move in) that some form of dictatorship is the only way to achieve economic reforms. Such views are not expressed openly of course - the preferred strategy is to emasculate democracy via a steady transfer of economic decision making power to the European bureaucracy.
The problem here is that the bureaucracy is a slave to the political elites who are a major obstacle to reform, and thus tends to produce ‘anti-reform’ measures rather than reformist ones…so for this dastardly capitalist conspiracy to work, the bureaucracy has to be subverted too……
Its great to think of political betting as the ‘new sex’, and we are all the cutting edge boys.
Unfortunately, its not true. It looks as though there are large sums of money being bet, and betfair makes volumes transparent. And thats the point. If you check on each race on betfair this afternoon, the sums bet on small races on sand (pretentiously known as ‘the all weather’) almost always exceed £0.5M/race. And the 4000(?) on street shops depend on these races.
Political betting remains absolutely tiny. We are in a very small minority who think it is more fun than the horses. But less crooked?
19 - indeed, and any vaguely interesting football match will have betting volumes an order of magnitude bigger than the most fascinating elections.
[14] Yes indeed - the site went very quiet for half an hour…
[18] I’m sure you’re right, Fred - and AFAIK this is nothing new (apart from the touching faith in the Eurocracy to achieve their ends).
Economics really is the dismal science. Morally, a gas chamber is a gas chamber is a gas chamber; economically it is also nonsense to us a gas chamber to kill Jews; however, it is not necessarily economic nonsense to use it to kill mentally handicapped people (whether “learning disabled” or psycho-geriatric). It also predicts that people who are willing to live at the housing densities that the Chinese and Japanese are used to will have a competitive advantage over those who insist on consuming far more housing per head - if the Tories were any good at economics, they wouldn’t have introduced a “single person” discount with the Council Tax, but a “high density occupation” one!
19 indeed to put it into context £1.6m has already been matched on the next manager of Newcastle United. And that’s a market with no fixed end date.
21. Hmmm you do enjoy bashing economics, don’t you? but most sciences can be portrayed in this kind of ‘inhuman’ light if you really want to. Physicists get the blame for inventing nuclear weapons, biologists for animal experiments or cloning etc etc.
BTW HG Wells and other lefties were big fans of the kind of eugenic ideas you mention a century or so ago.
As far as knife edge election results are concerned surely what we have here are co-incidences. Co-incidences brought about by similar forces but co-incidences none the less.
In each case, as always with democratic elections, there are two main tides:
1. I’m alright Jack. Don’t rock the boat.
2. Throw the b**s out, they’re a load of crooks.
In each case there are reasons why the incumbent government is unpopular but also in each case there are a lot of people doing very well thank you, people who have ‘never had it so good’.
Had the economics gone a little (further?) downhill or had the incumbents been thought of as a little less sleazy there would have been much more clear cut results.
Good morning to Andrea - I have recently returned from a holiday in Italy and stayed for some of the time with a family of Anglo- Italian friends in Rome. They have strong political opinions inclining to the left of centre and would despair if Berlusconi managed somehow to get re-elected - they even said they would consider emigrating if he got in again! I hope your assessment of the recount situation is correct for their sake.
As an aside - our friends took us to a very good cantina (named after you - see site below) where we purchased 2005 dry white for about £1 a litre which was extremely good value and very quaffable!
http://www.amordivino.co.uk/explore_italy/ Lazio/Cantina_Sant’Andrea.html
21. I don’t really agree - a strictly economic study is just as likely to determine that gas chambers for the mentally-disabled are detrimental (for a variety of potential reasons) - there’s a lot of “new economics” texts selling in the States that take radical economic approaches to many policy issues and throw up the results. For example, liberalisation of abortion laws in the medium-long term is thought to cause a reduction in crime.
Regarding the discrepanices between much traditional Tory policy and economic readings of the situations in question - I agree, there are many. On Conservative Home I was recently embroiled in an argument in which certain people were claiming that immigration means “importing poverty”. An understanding of economics does not, sadly, go hand-in-hand with Conservatism.
25. Goupillon, I’m sure they weren’t the only one who said they would emigrate.
IIRC writer Umberto Eco said he would leave for France if Silvio managed to win again.
Christian Democrats leader just said he thinks the result won’t be changed.
27 - do you think there is a possibility of the more moderate elements of Casa della Liberta (like the Christian Democrats) switching to support Prodi and get back into government?
28. BV, I think the answer is “no”. I don’t really see parties changing coalitions at the moment.
I think the only way to see changes in collocations across the plitical spectrum is to get rid of both Prodi and Berlusconi.
[23] It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it
A lot of people might like to know
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4906046.stm
[30] I was interrupted… yes, Wells’s and others’ views on eugenics are a dark chapter in the history of the Left…
[26] We agree
Catch you all later… I’m running late…
[31] Yippee
It’s a dead duck, isn’t it?
And now I really must go…
A highly regarded Oxford left leaning academic recently told me in passing that he was beginning to shift in his thinking (influenced mainly by his son) that the right had the answers to promote social justice. Unfortunatley didn’t have time to elaborate.
I couldn’t think after what he meant- other than capitalism rather than state owned and distributed industrialisation is better at meeting human needs (which we already all know).
I cannot think of examples now where the right is the party of social justice and presents effective policies at promoting social justice (other than the spin of the idealess and hapless Tories). Any ideas
22 - Not sure how the Betfair market phrases it, but the Newcastle managers job technically has an end date of 2 games before the end of the season. (As Roeder doesn’t have all the required certificates, he can only be in temporary charge for 3months). Obviously this doesn’t alter your point at all…
34. How long have you got? - ‘Social justice’ is another term for fairness in society.
An unfair society is one where people who have worked hard all their lives find themselves penalised in old age, for instance, to pay taxes to support others in society who don’t want to work at all.
An unfair society is one where people who make sacrifices, perhaps by saving money, are then be penalised when they die by paying tax on that money for a second time.
An unfair society is one where the vast majority of kids who work hard at their schoolwork are ignored, while a tiny minority of ill disciplined and disruptive pupils recieve the bulk of all the resources; and where the kids who have done well aren’t allowed to be given the credit for it in case that upsets others who haven’t.
An unfair society is one where everybody is forced to pay for a National Health Service that then fails to provide a decent service and where the quality of your healthcare treatment depends increasingly on where you live and whether you can afoord to sue the health authorities to get the treatment your doctor says you need.
Do I need to go on?
36. An unfair society is a society where kids get better education just because their parents have more money
An unfair society is a society where people get a better health service just because they’ve more money
An unfair society is a society where people working hard have not decent living conditions.
Marcus- OK from your text to promote social justice we should;
-reduce taxes for OAP’s (no matter how wealthy)
-stop paying benefits for those not in work
-ban inheritance tax
-exclude more badly behaved children
-reduce expenditure on badly behaved children
-privatise the health service
This proves just what rightwingers really want to do on the few points you cite. As I thought
BBC news, 60 year old arrested in connection with Honours Act in Redbridge.
Who? Levy?
Update - BBC says he’s not an MP or a peer.
Hmm…..
Andrea- the right see it as completely fair to build a system on who can afford what. The fundamentals of market capitalism. Purchasing power is king, and the disenfranchised or as Marcus would refer to them the “undeserving” deserve their lot- they should bloody well work harder
Andrea. Shock, horror. The OSCE agree with SB that there appear to have been irregularities with large number of votes. See BBC website.
42. They say there were a large number of spoilt ballots. Well, given the choice between SB and RP, I think lots of people would have despaired at making a decision.
37. You could go further, and say an ‘unfair’ society is one where people working equally hard receive different wages too….then we are in the realms of communism. ‘Unfair’ is not a helpful term.
43. The spoilt ballots are 60% down compared to 2001.
42. do you have a link?
36, 37. These two posts are very revealing. To exaggerate both opinions, left-wingers see money as things that people have almost by accident, and the distribution of money as being essentially arbitrary, and any differences of such therefore ‘unfair’ while right-wingers see people having money because they’ve chosen to work for it; the more work you put into life, the richer you are. Of course, neither Marcus nor Andrea believes the extreme position and both views have some truth, but we all seem to fall instinctively to one side or other. I wonder if this perhaps the difference between pale blue Tories and orange liberals?
We clearly understand different things by social justice. Fairness is such a weasly, subjective word that we should really avoid using the word in arguments.
However, if you want an example of how right-wing economics would reduce inequality:
People clearly respond to economic rewards and punishments. People who earn close to the 40% tax limit are less keen to do overtime than those on half their salary because they’ll keep less of it. Sin taxes apparently dissuade people from smoking, or parking (though not, apparently, from drinking). If I could get the same salary I get now for not working, of course I wouldn’t work.
I had a lengthy discourse prepared here, but I’ll cut it short and say - if you reduce the marginal tax rate for the poor, they will be more likely to earn more and not be poor. There will be more have-some and fewer have-nots.
(Although I concede that if you extend this argument to it’s logical conclusion the samller number of have-nots will have even less).
This isn’t a ‘nice’ answer. And don’t throw ’see, the Tories are all evil’ at me - neither I nor the Conservative party are advocating out-and-out anarcho-capitalism. I’m just answering the ‘how can inequality be reduced by a right-wing approach’ question. Less means testing!
46 - I hope that last post made sense. I was trying to summarise an argument Jamie Whye put across much more eloquently, but brevity isn’t really my strong point.
46 - “perhaps the difference between pale blue Tories and orange liberals?”
I can only speak for myself but it’s much more to do with social issues and civil liberties issues, not economics.
Cookie- I think that you are proposing some of the voodoo supply side economics- the Laffer curve, reaganomics- now reappearing as the flat tax.
If they cut down administrative charges, and get some of the transition rates right (i.e so those at the fringes are not unduly penalised), means testing is a very sensible way to address the lot of the poorest.
46. My own preferred formulation in this area is, to paraphrase Churchill that there should be no limit to how far a person may rise, but a clear limit on how far they may fall. Trying to go beyond this and further even out (ex post) inequalities of outcome in a capitalist society is a fruitless exercise. It leads to inefficiency and economic distortion, and if pursued too far to a brain drain.
Andrea- have you a link for the votes story yet which you can post?
51. PJ, I’m trying to find the OCSE thing mentioned
Andrea. Click on BBC News and then on ‘Italian rivals argue over votes’. Peter Eicher who led the observation mission is the person quoted at the end of the piece.
Andrea,
What’s the point of having money if you can’t buy better education for your kids or better health care for your family. In the UK you can’t even buy peerages any more.
53. BlueMoon, I can’t understand the OCSE point. They said:
“The leader of the observation team from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Peter Eicher, said there appeared to be irregularities including “a very large number of blank, invalid or contested ballots”. ”
but “blank, invalid or contested ballots” are irregularities.
Their number is 60% down compared to 2001 (according to the Interior Ministry).
53 etc… OCSE story is at bootom of
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4906038.stm
55. ops, I meant “aren’t”
54. Mike, they could buy it, but that doesn’t mean that people who can’t afford it shouldn’t been provided (by the State) of a (at least) decent education.
“An unfair society is a society where kids get better education just because their parents have more money
An unfair society is a society where people get a better health service just because they’ve more money”
Why is either unfair? And why does it matter?
48 - I too am guilty of having to generalise largely from myself here, because I know so few Tories any more. But as far as I can see, on issues such as civil liberties - on how little government should be doing in general, there’s almost nothing to separate me from the orangest of Lib Dems, and I remain a bit puzzled about what draws economic liberals like of David Laws to the Lib Dems. (I guess it’s that their economic liberalism isn’t as strong as their abhorrence of the social Conservatism that remains in some parts of the Conservative party - I suppose I just consider this less important than economic matters.)
I was wondering whether it’s the case that the orange-bookers recognise that capitalism works, but still consider it ‘unfair’ that people have different amounts of money, while pale blues like me are quite comfortable with people having money who’ve worked for it. But then I’m from the suburban north - definitely not Toff belt - and everyone I know who’s comfortably off has got there through their own hard work and good judgement. I’ve never met anyone ‘undeservingly’ rich.
Or maybe it’s just tribal - we instinctively wave one flag or another almost regardless of our views. Certainly Tabman’s diagram he posted a few days ago would bear this out.
58. because education plays a major part in deciding your future.
If having a bad education gives me less chances, well, it’s unfair IMO
And health care…well, do I really have to explain it? it plays a major part into your life.
Sky says arrested man is former government advisor.
I was wondering whether it’s the case that the orange-bookers recognise that capitalism works, but still consider it ‘unfair’ that people have different amounts of money,
I only consider it ‘unfair’ insofar as there is a lack of social mobility - which is the effect that financial inequality can have in the specific context of broken social institutions such as a dumbed-down education system. The answer to that is to work on the latter rather than the former, though.
Not that I think a Tory couldn’t hold that view too.
49 - PJ - yes, means testing is a good way of improving the lot of the poorest. But the opposite approach is a good way of reducing the numbers of the poorest.
I’m not saying this is necessarily the *best* approach, and will leave the details of the argument to better economists than myself.
59 On the issue of the “undeservedly rich,” I take it that you mean those who are fortunate enough to inherit wealth. Surely they were “derserving” of the money in the eyes of their benefactor?
58. Or rephrased - An unfair society is one that does not allow a person to purchase a good or service simply because someone else cannot afford it?
62 - BV - agreed.
59 - I think you hit on it with the differing emphases.
The one major reason that I vote the way I do is over civil liberties; ID cards and the reaction to terrorism/Iraq meant that there was no other alternative than voting lib dem last year. With Cameron seeming to shift on both that at least appears to give me a choice in the future.
Andrea. I’m not in a position to stand up or rebut Mr Eicher. I must say that the number of spoiled votes are pretty low in the UK although I recall that the relative complexity of the London mayoral/Assembly elections pushed up the number. Is it possible to see if you can get any more info on Eicher’s comments from the Italian media where I imagine he was quoted in the first place?
64 -Anna - possibly. I’m personally quite comfortable with people having wealth aquired through any (legal) means. I was merely trying to articulate the mindset of those who are less comfortable than me of that situation - which is always a dangerous thing to do, and I was doing so only very tentatively. I had better stop doing so and let Andrea pick up the baton for himself. Sorry if I’ve misrepresented you at all Andrea (and other left-wingers)!
58. Bloon Moon, I can’t find any quote by Eicher in Italian media (apart one where he said there hasn’t been many complaints).
Spoilts ballots….I could tell my experience….in the polling station where I was there were around 13 spoilt ballots. I recall:
- A couple of people voted for all parties!
- a couple of people voting for both Forza Italia and National Alliance
-someone who voted for both DS and Margherita.
- someone who voted for the 2 commie parties
- someone who voted Greens, Italian Communists and Communist Refoundation Party and then wrote on the paper: “great”
- someone who voted both the commies and fascists!
so who did they arrest?
according to sky the man arrested is Des Smith
71 - Des Smith
Wow. Government helper arrested…. Labour party funder…. a hint of Watergate… mm…
This could be v serious.
70. Surely the ‘large’ number of spoilt ballots will increase as a) turnout increases - generally more people going to the polls who are likely to spoil their ballot, and b) with an electoral system which I could imagine gets pretty confusing at times. I don’t think we can read much into this. I just hope SB isn’t able to pull a Bush 2000.
this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/17/nsmith17.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/17/ixhome.html
73 - Here’s the ’smoking gun’ article.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/newschools/story/0,,1687374,00.html
71. Des Smith is the man now fingered; he used to be involved in the City academy programme.
60 No I don’t agree. Provided that the person purchasing health or education of a quality that others can’t afford has come by their wealth legitimately, I see nothing at all unfair in their doing so - or in the society which permits them to do so.
Good fortune is not unfairness. Otherwise one could argue that it’s unfair that I enjoy good health, while someone else is a quadriplegic; or that I had parents who made me do my homework and encouraged me to read books - while plenty of people have parents who don’t care how they behave.
This will run and run. I bet they have him on tape. This is going to be so bad for Labour. Real fin-de-siecle now about Tony & Gordon.
From the Independent, in January:
“The Sunday Times re ported that Des Smith, a London head teacher and an adviser to the chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Sir Cyril Taylor, told an undercover journalist that “the Prime Minister’s office would recommend someone like [the donor] for an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood”.
For a donation of pounds 10m, “you could go to the House of Lords”, he said.
However, when confronted by the paper, Mr Smith insisted that it was “not possible” to acquire an honor in return for donations.
Sir Cyril said: “In no way is giving money to the academy linked to the award of an honour,” he said.
A spokeswoman for 10 Downing Street added: “It’s nonsense to suggest that honours are awarded for giving money to an academy.” A spokesman for the Department of Education said: “This is not the view of the department nor has this view been expressed by the department.”‘
Bang to bleeding rights! Very nasty for Labour. Ouch!
This must be why Dromey went public. He knew this was happening and wanted to show a clean pair of heels before it blew up.
76. Elena, considering they’ll probably take years to recount everything, I think the reasonable thing to do is to check registers and disputed votes (they’re already doing it) and then let see the result.
The new parliament could meet and the government be appointed. Then the special parliamentary committee could start to look at all ballots if it’s asked. and then when they finish it, they will say what they found.
We couldn’t stay too much time without a government IMO.
60. Andrea, health care indeed plays a key role in your life. But so does food, and housing. There is surely just as much of a case in ‘fairness’ terms to ‘equalise’ access to these things as well. The only way you could do this would be by rationing, and the total supression of market activity in their production and supply. In fact this is the case with health care and education, too. So once again, we have arrived at communism.
If this is looked into further and the papers run with the story, it’s very bad for Labour.
Smith could be the weak link that blows this apart, how much will he sing and will they grant him partial immunity from prosecution if he will?
80. Sean Fear, he could purchase it, but that doesn’t mean that the State should offer decent standard education and health services to the rest who can’t afford it.
I’ve no objection to that Andrea, but I think it’s a long way removed from your original point.
People’s experience of life is entirely dictated by where they are born (which family, culture, country).
No human life is more important than another’s- every human should have the birth right to have the same experience to life. How can we possibly square the experiences in life enjoyed by someone like Berlusconi to children who haven’t got access to clean water (and will die as a result).
At least mature capitalism is making us look at these questions far more rigerously than the early implementation of Marxism ever allowed for.
The tsunami of sleaze must surely now engulf Levy as well. Collars being fingered everywhere. But will it take Blair as well? Or is he firewalled?
A fair old pong though, emanating from Labour. Tsk.
89. my original post was “exterme” (I found it unfair anyway, but I don’t think the state should act about it), because the comment by Marcus who I was replying to was “extreme” too.
btw, back to Italian “irregularities”….in 2001 2 constituency results were wrong…they took 5 years to realize it………..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=5VNDPXEEBZ2QJQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/04/13/uhonours.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/04/13/ixportaltop.html
The Press are running with the story- still talking about “parties” plural though- so may just lead togeneral apathy and anger rather than anti Labour backlash (hmm hmm…)
Pj at 38. How did you conclude from my post at 36 anything about privatising the health service?
I just make the point that today’s NHS is -withour doubt- socially unfair.
Todays education system is socially unjust; and fails to promote social mobility by supressing those who are able from achieving their full potential.
And our tax system is totally unjust - the idea that someone earning just over £12,000 pays income tax so that someone else earnign £100,000 gets child allowance is about as ‘unjust’ as you can possible imagine.
No wonder the left leaning academic is having a rethink if this is what 9 years of Labours ’social justice’ agenda looks like.
93. Well, I’d be frankly astonished if this doesn’t damage New Labour quite seriously - this is a blast amidships - a man arrested for very nasty corruption involving a flagship Blairite project, City Academies. This from the government that promised to be ‘whiter than white, and purer than pure’ - and coming out a day after we learn that Blair used the Queens Flight more than… the Queen. As does Margaret ‘I’m just a humble caravan owner’ Beckett. While Blunkett STILL sits in his Belgravia grace & favour apartment. Etc etc etc.
This government has got away with sleaze and graft that would have had John Major’s cabinet crucified in public. Can they go on leading this charmed life? I guess it’s possible, given Blair’s true genius for spin, evasion and self-serving mendacity. But eventually it must blow up…. surely….? It just takes one snagged thread to unravel your mum’s knitted cardigan. Smith’s arrest could be the thread.
Just for Rik W - another defection this time a Labour councillor in Plymouth to the Lib Dems see http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk
All gone oddly quiet from out NuLabour supporting chums. Jack W? Roger?
Surely they can’t ALL be helping police with their inquiries?
I jest…!
NuLabour will continue to sit safe as long as the Murdoch media, BBC and Leftie rags continue to ignore it.
Conservative folk are too polite. Labour knows it.
98. Hmmm…. The arrest is now the lead item on Google News (UK), and is a lead item on the Beeb’s website. I think journalistic desire for a damn good story might outweigh any lefty bias/sympathy for Blair etc.
This is probably wishful thinking, but speaking as a journo this arrest just has the ‘feel’ of something quite big. A turning or tipping point.
99. And speaking as another journo I agree. It all depends on how much this trail of sleeze leads to Blair, however. This is the tipping point and it could go either way, depending on how well NuLab spin it.
99. yes, please, let it become a story. I need a distraction from Italian ballot papers*
* at least yesterday I got my pay for my duties as a scrutineer!
99. not top on Beeb, only second, which doesn’t (yet) give the impression of a groundbreaking development. It will be interesting to see if leads the six o’clock news.
It does seem to be one of those stories that can go either way. If it went closer to the heart of government and it gets dragged through the courts etc then it becomes a big deal. Of course Mr Smith may simply be released without charge and I doubt anyone will care at all.
101 - Andrea that picture last night was horrible!
102. it’s the top news on Guardian and Torygraph’s websites, but not on The Times’ and Indy’s website.
02. It will be. They don’t often lead on scientific developments.
SeanT - Does it have the feel of a big story because an arrest has come so early on in an enquiry that many people thought (myself included) would go nowhere?
This is not going to be a story. I wish it was, but it is going to die a death. This guy is small beer, a nobody who spoke out of turn, and I suspect without any or all of the relevant facts. I doubt if he was authorised to speak on behalf of NuLab; he was probably just stating the obvious (”If you pony up for Tony’s Pet Project, your name will go forward for an honour!”) but that is a fact based on observation, not criminal intent.
This ‘is’ the spin - arrest some relative non-entity; release him without charge and announce the end of the enquiry. NuLab must have the definitive handbook on how to manage these things - Kelly; WMD etc etc.
I think it feels like a big story partly because of the echo of Watergate, actually! The original arrest of the guys who managed the break-in at the complex, low level underlings, distantly connected to Nixon. But slowly it led up to the top man.
Not saying this is Watergate, of course. Nor that it will topple Blair. I doubt that very much. But an arrest for this kind of corruption isn’t something you can ’spin’ or ‘bury’. It’s a big juicy story, full stop. NuLabour must be praying for some other big stories to come along and obscure it..
And yes I think a lot of people thought this police investigation was just for show, a piffling bit of pen pushing that would lead nowhere. Seems not. Intriguing.
107 - Sadly, I suspect that’s is true. I imagine this is simply someone trying to come across as, “Aren’t I important, I’ve got lots of powerful friends”.
The real problem is the whole system of having members of the House of Lords nominated by “the great and the good”. Giving money to a political party won’t buy you a peerage, but it will get you noticed by the leadership, get to meet them on a regular basis at social events, perhaps even become friendly with some of them and their families, and eventually (provided you seem reasonably competent) become one of the obvious people who get thought of when nominations for peerages come around.
The story is only a story if it is specific to Labour. Cameron let Labour off the hook when he would not come up with the goods on who got a peerage and also loaned money to the Tories…
On the other hand maybe Both parties end up in the merde… now that WOULD be interesting, if voters feel inclined to do something about it…
Presumably the papers-and the police-will be investigating whether donors to City Technology Colleges have received honours of any kind and be chasing up any related paper trail that might exist from Des Wilson and those he worked for to No 10 or the Labour Party. It will be interesting to see whether some embarrassingly worded letters exist. If any CTC donor got an honour in line with the ‘grid’ Wilson referred to in the Sunday Times article it will be incredibly embarrassing even if ultimately the police ultimatel find it difficult to press charges.
110. Looking through the new list, I see that new Tory peers donated money to the party too.
The LDs picked all former MPs (or MEPs).
Another criteria for Labour seems to be getting big swings at GE (Keith Bradley and Maggie Jones)
112 - hey, leave Des Wilson out of it. What’s he done since managing the 1992 Lib Dem election campaign? Des W is innocent.
Meanwhile Grauniad article entitled:
“Man arrested in cash-for-honours inquiry”
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1753195,00.html
6th paragraph down reads:
“Mr Brown is currently in custody at a police station”
Is this the *seriously* big breaking news we’ve been waiting for?
114 - Even for the Gruniad that’s special - that line is a complete non-squiter with the rest of the article…
114. I love the part about Alistair Campbell attacking Angus McNeil labelling him as a “political opportunist”…….well, we all know Campbell is just a man of principles…..
115.”Even for the Gruniad that’s special ”
has the Guardian a reputation of making more mistakes than other papers?
117. Andrea, it’s nicknamed the Gruniad due to the large number of typing errors it generally runs with.
117 - “has the Guardian a reputation of making more mistakes than other papers?”
Is the bear a Catholic?
Does the Pope sh1t in the woods?
114 - Well aprt from anything else Des Wilson got a job running the campaign in favour of an extra runway at Manchester Airport. Something which went down like lead balloon amongst his former supporters on the “green” wing of the Lib Dems.
118/19. oh, I always wonder why it had that nickname!
Anyway, I don’t think The Times is better. They recently wrote that Osborne defeated Martin Bell in 2001 and that Brent East by-election was caused by Red Ken’s resignation.
It’s worse than typing mistakes, it’s just bad journalism (they would take 2 minutes to check it)
118 - it always used to have that reputation in the days before computerisation. I’m not sure it’s worse than any other paper these days.
I think the pertinant part of the article was this fact:
‘Labour received around £13m and the Tories £21m in loans’. I think that illustrates the uttter hypocrisy of the Conservatives. I think that this is a storm in a teacup and I think that, like the electorate, the press will (finally) realise that this whole ’scandal’ is just a desperate attempt by David Cameron to disguise that fact that the electorate just don’t believe the conservative promises.
Although shoddy journalism seems to be creeping into a lot of papers. I particularly notice the sports sections where they frequently get the goal-scorers wrong, or the number of matches since they last played etc. It’s as if they are writing off the cuff, and dont have a computer to check simple facts.
23 - You just can’t write comedy like that,
Lazy journos, eh? Who’d credit it
But hang on, don’t knock em too much. There’s so lazy that they have to come to places like this to get their stories - which means we get a chance to set the news agenda. How cool is that?!
126 - Indeed… although I don’t really expect to see a story tommorow about the laziness of journalists… I mean “political geeks complain about laziness of journos” doesn’t have a great ring to it.
125 - Just what I was thinking… Keep it up Matthew, you’re almost as funny as Rik
It does irritate me when even well-respected commentators litter their writing with errors that could easily be checked. Tony Travers report on the London Borough Elections, for example.
“An unfair society is one where people who have worked hard all their lives find themselves penalised in old age, for instance, to pay taxes to support others in society who don’t want to work at all.”
Do you mean the Council Tax?
How long before Mr. Smith has to be charged or released?.
23. Hence why it’s a cross party probe largely demanded by those well-known Conservative supporters, the SNP.
128: on a serious note, yes, Sean, you’re absolutely right.
Someone elsewhere (was it Dan?) commented that it looked like Travers had spend 5 mins jotting down all he knew about each borough (or some hunches & half-remembered facts), and then left it to some v junior colleague to write the rest. It’s a really shoddy piece of work.
I’m also looking forward to someone going through it on May 5th to see quite how much they got wrong. I guess at least from their perspective they won’t have to pay so much to their chosen charity if they get very few of their ‘predictions’ right …
123. Priceless! A Labour man is arrested for selling political power to financial donors - selling seats in the British legislature, for crissakes - and a NuLabour drone-o-clone claims it is all about ‘Conservative promises’.
As Homer Simpson would say: ‘Doh!’
More please, Mister Partridge. Highly entertaining!
[133] I don’t think there’s any evidence - yet - of that; from the libel viewpoint I think your post should say “suspected of attempting to sell”
(or :(, I suppose)…
123. PS, is there an award for the most lamentably poor piece of spinning in any political year? I think comment 123 would be a shoo-in.
‘I think the pertinent point here is that the Democrat party has fewer letters in its name than the Republican party. Surely this illustrates the utter hypocrisy of Democrats in relation to this so-called Watergate scandal. I think the electorate will soon realise that the mere fact that the president lied, cheated, burgled, maligned, menaced and robbed, in a desperate attempt to retain power is actually a storm in a tea cup. The real scandal here is the Democrats failure to save the Alaskan woodpecker from logging companies, as they promised.’
134. Yes, you’re right. ‘Des Smith’s alleged complicity in the hawking of political power and honours…’ is better. Sounds better, too.
has he been charged?
123. 136. I think I can hear the sound of the bottom of a bucket being scraped.
137. Oops! I meant barrel….
137 - oh right, sorry. if he’s been arrested, that makes him automatically guilty. my mistake.
The Des Smith Story has now been relegated on Google News, but has been promoted to number 1 story by the BBC website.
This could break either way. I suspect it may turn out quite bad for HMG. I mean, does anyone here think that Labour didn’t sell honours for money?? We all know they did. The Tories did the same. They’ve all been doing it for yonks.
The difference is that Labour promised to be ‘purer than pure, whiter than white’.
Jeez Louise.
Real free-marketers are against the propagation of inherited wealth, because it is a huge distortion of the “reward for success” framework that is the basis and motivation of free markets. They are especially against dynastic company inheritance, because this results in people running companies because of blood-lines rather than ability and intellect. In the long run such inheritance is dangerous, because having idiot children of past businessmen running companies leads to inefficient business, and ultimately creates an oligarchic corporate class of company leaders who increasinly rely on patronage to support their trade and contracts. This automatically leads to atrophy of innovation and progress, as poorly led companies turn to political means to outwit other more talented and able companies that they cannot beat in the marketplace. This was a serious problem back in the 19th century, and may be increasingly so again.
The purest of free-marketers would say that every child should start with the same equipment on the same start line, and from there let the best man win. This creates the purest and most efficient market, undistorted by rich parents buying success for their stupid children, and undistorted by rich companies using financial and political muscle to crush more skilful competitors with less resources.
That the Tories dont accept this kind of argument isnt surprising - because the Tories are only relatively (last 80 years) recent converts to free-marketism, and their underlying philosophy is tradition and family values - which instinctively means seeking favours for your own. Today, Orange Liberals are the closest to this pure free-marketism, which isnt surprising because the Liberal party of the 19th century championed it.
Personally, I’m not Orange, because I dont think such free-marketism takes society in the direction I want it to go.
141. thanks for that …very interesting
141. Another kind of ‘real’ free marketeer might argue 1) that disposing of your property as you see fit is a fundamental property right, and preventing people from doing so will reduce the incentive to acquire such property in the first place. 2) that the discipline of capital markets will weed out inefficiently run companies of all kinds and 3) that giving everyone an ‘equal starting point’ would require a stalinist organisation of society that would be wholly unworkable apart from being highly undesirable.
Quite right Fred. I’m not aware of any 19th century Liberal who advocated all children starting from exactly the same point.
There are plenty of self-made men and women who would be very reluctant to pass on control of their businesses to someone who was obviously incompetent, or at any rate to someone who had not proved their capability (Bill Gates is the best-known example, but there are plenty of others). And if they did, (as does sometimes happen) the business would fail and its assets pass to someone who could use them more competently.
You simply cannot be a pure free-marketer if you act to dispose of your property in a manner to deliberately oppose the market. If you dont like the implications of that, hard luck. But like I said, Tories have never been comfortable squaring the circle of pure free-markets and family preference…
As for the “discipline” of current markets, lol… Yeh, that’ll sort it all out OK then.
And no, an equal starting point just requires a good education and health system for all.
In which case, no one is a “pure free marketeer” since everyone will at some point act for reasons other than economic advantage in disposing of their property.
I don’t see this as being a particular problem for Conservatives as it would require a very odd view of human nature to assume that people are, or ought to be, driven at all times by the desire to maximise economic advantage.
As to the “discipline” of markets, it’s no secret that badly-run companies will go under. Hundreds do, every year.
An odd view that people ought to be driven by the desire to maximise economic advantage? Yes, it is, isnt it - I agree! Oh, have you read any Conservative economic philosophy recently? No?
People could dispose of their assets in philanthropic ways. Better for society and the markets. Everybody wins! (Except their own children, of course…)
An odd view that people should be driven *exclusively* by a desire to maximise economic advantage. I’m not aware of any mainstream Conservative philosopher who would argue that they should be.
143. Why not start with removing charitable status from public schools? They may have been charities as we think of them now in 1601, when they were first granted charitable status, but why should tax payers subsidise the wealthiest members of society in this way?
Make them pay the real price for the advantage a private education gives their kids.
48. Our friend Mark seems to think people should behave according to what might, in the abstract, be to the best economic advantage of society, not the best economic advantage of themselves and their families. This I think rather misses the point Adam Smith made about society’s welfare being maximised as a result of lots of individuals maximising their own welfare….
…and just to push this a little further, why wait until people have died to dispose of their assets in a way that will maximise global economic welfare? surely if a talented person makes a fortune but then chooses to retire early rather than continue working, he/she is behaving in a way that is suboptimal for society as a whole? shouldn’t his/her assets then be confiscated and given to someone else who might use them more productively? and so we return to communism once again…..
149, they are of course saving the State a fortune by paying for State schools through their taxes and then not using them. The cost to the State of charitable status for private schools is much smaller.
149 - “Make them pay the real price for the advantage a private education gives their kids. ”
Aren’t the parents already paying taxes for a state education that their children do not use ?
151 - the VAT due at all but the most elite establishments is certainly less than the cost per pupil of state education. Having said that I wonder what the distribution of fixed vs variable costs is in the state sector, and hence how truly you can just treat the saving as being the £5,000ish per pupil overall cost of state education.
153 - I mean of course “the VAT would be due were charitable status to be revoked”.
or even “the VAT that would be due were charitable status to be revoked”!
[152] Paul M. wrote Aren’t the parents already paying taxes for a state education that their children do not use ?
So, by definition, are childless people.
[146] Sean Fear raises an interesting question: when should my motives be based on economics, and when not?
2 Tory councillors deselected in Hammersmith and Fulham will stand against their (former) party
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-1148.html
151. That’s their choice. I don’t have a choice & have to subsidise them through my taxes.
149 - I thought Labour had removed charitable status? But a reason to keep it is that they’re saving the state money. We should be very careful how vindictive we want to be towards private schools, because if all independent school pupils suddenly had to come into the state sector then the state sector would quickly run out of money.
Private education isn’t all Harrow and Eton, and you probably wouldn’t see much difference in the pupils’ background at many of them to that of the pupils of some of the more suburban state schools. [Quick declaration of interest - I was at a private school.]
158 - You aren’t subsidising them through your taxes. You’d be subsidising them through your taxes if they were in the state sector.
157 - from your link:
One of the Conservative Party’s few openly gay councillors, Mr al-Uzaizi, turned some heads by attending a remembrance day parade in an Arab head dress. He claims that one senior Tory figure took him to task over it, even though he explained that he was wearing part of the Army uniform that his late father had worn during the war, serving under British command in Jordan.
The trouble these days is that there are not enough retired colonels in the Tory party - hence this kind of historical illiteracy.
I use private health insurance. I have long term health problems. I am on a low income so it is hard too pay. I have to cut back in other areas of my budget. At the end of the day it is my choice.
More people will opt for private health insurance as the NHS gets worse.
149. you’re kidding - NuLabCon would never do that….their kids’ school fees would go up!
I’m not motivated by vindictiveness, just fairness. Parents who want to send their kids to public school to give them an advantage must bear the cost of their decision themselves.
158 etc… Colin: I went to a private school that was linked to 15 other private schools throughout the country. Part of the Trust’s profits go towards running a scholarship scheme for bright girls whose parents can’t afford the fees. If you remove charitable status from the schools, then how could they (as businesses) ever justify contiuning this scheme?
158. Of course I’m subsidising them through taxes….where else do you think the money to pay for their tax breaks comes from?
164. Such scholarship schemes are just window dressing to make charitable status seem less of an anomaly. Scholarship pupils make up a TINY fraction of enrolled pupils in the independent sector.
59 -I posted previously on this, having taught in both state and private sectors I can fully vouch for the great similarities. The real difference is that of locality, a state school in a well off area will always compete with a private school.
The thing that does annoy me are the parents who, knowing they can save money by using a state school to get similar results, then claim some sort of moral high ground. All this whilst using their savings to lord it over those who chose to go private and now have to scrimp and save.
Did I hear today that some GPs can earn £250,000 a year from the NHS?
That’s a cool quarter of a million. On a flipping sawbones. Shurely shome mishtake.
166 I don’t know the figures for the private school sector as a whole, but out of the 60 girls in my year 6 were on full or part scholarships… I’m sure the parents of those girls don’t call that window dressing…
I’m surprised the BBC aren’t leading on the arrest
168. And how much do the truly useless members of society like City bankers & dealers make then?
170 - No, they are leading on one of their stupid “investigations” which put them in the same league as ITV News instead of concentrating on the news of the day.
171 Charmed, as ever, Colin…
172 - At least Sky are leading on something useful (civil rights in China), interesting stuff that they’ve been running throughout the day.
I would expect the press to give it due prominence to the arrest tomorrow.
“give due prominence to the arrest tomorrow” rather.
170: Sky news at five didn’t lead on it either.
171. There is a true market in City bankers and dealers - they are worth what society pays them, in profit to their companies, who in turn pay taxes to the Exchequer (and employ people, etc). and of course the City dealers pay hefty taxes themselves. Complaining about capitalist fat cats is like complaining that Madonna earned too much for her last album. A category error.
Doctors, by contrast, are paid what the NHS sees fit to pay them, with little recourse, as far as I can see, to market forces. A quarter of a blinking million pounds is about £200,000 too much, when most GPs I know spend their five years of training drinking themselves stupid, and spend the rest of their lives handing out aspirin and condescending advice.
Come on. A quarter of a million???
177. And what happens when said City fat cat gets cancer - as a third of them will, & desperately needs the drug developed by the biochemistry researcher on 28,000 a year?
Who’s the most valuable member of society now?
177 - how many are on £250,000 though?
Agreed there are some mediocre ones, but we are still short of them which suggest it’s not all that cushy - or even if it were, we would run into further shortages making it less attractive.
178 Probably the City financier who organised a merger or financing in the pharmacutical industry that generated capital for the drugs’ R + D….
What do you do for a living Colin?
179. Vanishingly few.
178 - Aren’t you into proteins in your day job (when not terrorising members of Canterbury’s Planning Committee)…am I correct in thinking that nuts are full of them?
180. Pharmaceuticals companies come in at a very late stage. Almost all fundamental research is done at University Post- Doc level. That’s the difficult part.
Drug screening & development by contrast is much simpler.
I am a protein biochemist. We are the elite, insofar as biochem goes!
178, 179. I think the problem here is that we as a society are still in late Tory mode, psychologically, via-a-vis the public sector. i.e. we are all meant to think - oh my god, those poor public sector workers, horribly underpaid doctors, overworked nurses, stressed out teachers, they do such a noble selfless task, etc etc.
The public sector, after eight years of Labour, is now seriously feather-bedded - lovely pensions, retirement at 60, nice hours for most of them (way nicer than the private sector), and big fat salaries to boot. Yet still we are asked to see them as ‘morally superior’, somehow, to the private sector (all those overpaid cleaners and waiters and pub workers and trainee architects and van drivers and violnists) - as ColinW’s sneering little remarks indicate.
To hell with that. We in the private sector have had enough. Just because someone is some pointless wonk in the public sector does not make them somehow ‘better’ than all us horrible wageslaves trying to make it in the real world.
The deal used to be this: become a doctor and get lots of status, but have cruddy hours and not great wages. Or go into the City and be resented and have terrible hours, but have fab wages.
A fair trade. Now the doctors (and the rest of em) get the lot: moral status, high wages, easy hours, blah blah blah.
The worm will turn, eventually. Either that or we’ll end up like France, where the ambition of most people is to ‘become a civil servant’. Surely the death of any society.
182. Yes, yes & yes!
83 - Somehow reminded me of Stanley Green, ‘less passion from less protein’!
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/changing_faces/lives/lives2.htm
184 - doesn’t really answer the point about shortages, though, which suggests that the ambition of all too few people is ‘to become a doctor’. Or do you think we really have enough and there are productivity increases to be got?
186 - ah yes. Have you been reading the back page of Time Out too (he was somebody’s “favourite Londoner” this week) or did it come to mind spontaneously?
88 - Really? That’s synchronicity for you! Well we still have the ‘don’t be a sinner, be a winner’ bloke usually seen at Oxford Circus.
189 - indeed we do, though apparently he recently took a busman’s holiday to ply his trade in Sydney for a while.
183. ColinW - were you the model for Dave Spart in Private Eye?
187. Fair enough. But I think we should just import doctors from, say, Scandinavia or Europe, at £60k per annum, rather than pay ones here £250k.
But I am quite drunk now, having guzzled some champers (celebrating), and may be making no sense at all.
Also I don’t want to pick fights at this tender time of year. Happy Easter everyone! Even ColinW!
191. Huh, that right-winger Spart. bastard!
192. Let’s not spoil a beautiful thing seanT…
187
What shortages? the main problem has been for recently qualified Doctors in the UK to find a job in the NHS or elsewhere.
What’s alarming is the waste of resources and cash in the NHS as was well illustrated in the Panorama program a couple of weeks ago.Surgoeons getting 28% increases for doing the same hours as before,GP’s averaging £ 100,000 for so called additional activities at their surgeries, most of which they were already doing etc.etc.
On a recent visit for a medical check,the Doctor advised me that although he has officialy retired and only worked 3 days per week,he was obliged to have an annual appraisal.
For turning up to his appraisal he was paid £ 500 by the NHS,the appraiser receives £ 400 and then you need to add say £ 2/300 for the various Bureacrats that shuffle his appraisal forms around.
Then multiply this by 25,000 which is the current number of Doctors in the UK.
I wish in my career I would have been paid £ 500 for each appraisal I attended!
Police have arrested a government advisor in the cash for peerages investigation.
95. Ex government advisor. Accidental spin, i’m sure.
Lets hope they nail them
Is anyone watching Snow having a self justifying Iraq orgasm on ch4 news? Messy viewing!
Smith out on bail.
80. City traders must be good otherwise God wouldn’t have created them, right Anna?
200. Or biochemists.
198
‘Messy viewing!’
Sure is,they had their daily car bomb to-day,will we ever know the true level of deaths caused this absurd war?
Must be the greatest foreign policy blunder of all time.
201 - or New Labour…
Enjoyed this tremendously… Fred’s line about Dave Spart and Colin’s reply could have been straight out of the Eye.
Well done Inspector Knacker…. hopefully more to follow.
Sean you really are jealous of doctors is it because they do better witht he ladies than you. The reason doctors receive a high wage is if you check the entry requirements for medical courses they are pretty much the highest. So you are fishing from exactly the same pool as lawyers city traders etc. Two more points no I am not a medic and I have never heard of a GP earning 250k except in the private sector and surely you approve of those good old market forces. Except for farmers of course if your a real Tory!
203 - actually I think that New Labour is a genetically modified Frankenstein creation of a political philosophy.
(Oh dear! I sound like the Mail. Why do we not hear the phrase Frankenstein food any more?)
re 05 “you are fishing from exactly the same pool as lawyers city traders etc”
True, but lawyers and city traders can get made redundant or their firms can go bankrupt. Much higher risk associated with those jobs. The NHS can’t go bankrupt can it. Or maybe it can the way things are going……
Agree though that 250k sounds very high. Think your average GP is on around 100k. Still not bad though.
By-elections tonight, anybody?
There are few first world countries that haven’t gone through a civil war at some point in their history, the outcome of which has played a great part in their pre-eminent future position in the world. History suggests it’s just a step most countries have to go through at some point. Sad but true. It would have happened in Iraq one day - the war has just accelerated the process.
109 - the English Civil War did not really affect England’s course of history. The largely peaceful Glorious Revolution did.
Jack must be busy. I mentioned the Glorious Revolution and he hasn’t gone into one of his Jacobite tantrums. Perhaps he has a scoop that he is onto. Yet more councillors defecting to the Liberal Democrats? What, in Sutton?
208 No Byelections today as it is Easter tomorrow
208. SBS, I don’t think there will be any byelections today.
Btw, Italian control of ballots won’t be finished before next week.
210 SBS to say that the Civil War didn’t affect the course of our history is a bit sweeping. The ideas that came from the civil war period arguably influenced later events. Some of the ideas were truly revolutionary - one man one vote (Levellers), communism (Diggers), hedonism (Ranters), female preachers (various religious radicals)… They mostly didn’t get picked up on which (in some cases at least) was a real shame!
209
Is that the latest excuse / justification from New Labour HQ?
200 JR: I’m off to the city come summer, so I’m just practicising defending the trade… I’ve never really considered a city job in the light of a vocation before. It’ll be interesting to see how many city boys and girls think they have a divine mandate…
216 - I think you will find those who don’t think they are God’s gift are the exceptions…
217 In fairness, only one of my interviewers spent longer talking about himself than he did asking me questions… He had a bachelor pad in Mayfair etc…
Civil war? No matter which side you fight on the government always gets in.
218 - no more of the “etc” please
210. And then there was the little matter of the birth of the United States of course …..
16. Actually, Anna, I was referring to your “intellegent design” argument. Presumably your I.D. (aka God) is happy with his city traders, malaria, AIDS viruses, etc?
222 JR I think we agreed yesterday that this is a forum for politics and betting, not biology… FYI see Gen 3:1ff for when we cock-up creation…
221 The English Civil War results in birth of United States? That’s a new one to me!
210 - Once a country has had a bloody civil war it generally won’t have to have another one
That’s progress. The English Civil War is only meaningless if you believe the Roundheads won it.
221. Actually, Anna, there’s a theory that the English Civil War, the American War of Independence and the War Between the States were, basically, fought between the same people (and their descendants, of course). See “The Cousins’ Wars” by Kevin Phillps (when you have a spare moment).
SBS @ 210: The Civil War had a profound effect on the country’s attitude to the Army. Even today there is residual distrust of it, whereas the Navy was OK. (It’s difficult to mount a coup d’etat using the Navy, though I seem to recall the Bolivian Navy doing so (in Bolivia) — yes, I know it’s landlocked, but Hungary has (or had) a Navy, too.) This has made quite a difference to the Army’s size, use and behaviour, and therefore the country’s history. One reason for the relative size and success of the Scottish regiments, apart from the fact that a lot of Highlanders *liked* fighting, was that, being Scots, they didn’t distrust the Army, only the English.
Islingtonian @ 219:
“Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?
That if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
227. I’m not so sure there is a residual distrust of the army in England (apart from anarchists like me who distrust any form of human organisation). Most English families, especially the gentry and the working class, have been connected with the army one way or the other (comparatively few with the Navy or the RAF). I’m old enough to remember national servicemen on weekend leave strutting proudly through the town in uniform as if they owned the place. And, of course, they did, in a manner of speaking.
227, I wouldn’t quite put it like that. But there’s no doubt that the English Civil War did spark off a whole round of political/religious wars that ran for over 200 years on both sides of the Atlantic.
229 - The Middle East problem in a nutshell. No sane person would wish upon the Middle East a fraction of the bloodshed experienced to arrive at modern Europe. But there is no obvious alternative if one argues that the people of the Middle East should aspire to the living conditions that we enjoy.
Islingtonian @ 228: Well, I did say ‘residual’. Enthusiasm for the Army in recent times (i.e. the last century) has depended on the perceived imminence of invasion and a certain feeling afterwards of camaraderie. It would be reasonable to expect the same around 1800 or (mistakenly) 1860; but it didn’t happen, as people preferred ‘militias’ (cf. Jane Austen passim), much as if in 1940 there had been a clamour for the Home Guard as opposed to the Armed Forces. Perhaps there was?
231. I wish you were right, but I’m not convinced. I’m writing this in a Cotswold town where the Army parades every November in a militaristic celebration involving the whole community (except me, it seems …) Boy Scouts, Church, British Legion, Women’s Institute, Mayor and Burgesses - the whole Establishment, with the fife and drum prominently to the fore. Anyway, thanks for the interesting chat but I have to go now.
Any bye-elections tonight?
Re: 233 - Short answer, no. I believe it is a convention that there are never any by-elections on Maundy Thursday. Am I correct ?
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