Vox Polis

The Civil Service is planning strike action over poor pay, redundancies and plans to ship them all out of London to the regions. Most voters have little sympathy for civil servants, who are perceived as benefiting from rock solid job security and generous pensions; certainly these strikes will do little to change that attitude. But the Government is clearly scared. Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, took the unprecedented move of sending a letter to all staff urging them not to strike. An interesting move considering that it is unlikely to change people’s minds and it actually helps feed the story. In fact I’d be more likely to strike if my boss told me not to.

I always have a chuckle when I’m reminded of all those obscure laws that never get repealed. A law firm in Swansea has come up with a list of 10:

1. In Hereford you can shoot a Welsh person on a Sunday, with a longbow, in the Cathedral Close.
2. It is legal for a male to urinate in public, as long it is on the rear wheel of his motor vehicle and his right hand is on the vehicle.
3. A bed may not be hung out of a window.
4. It is illegal for a lady to eat chocolates on a public conveyance.
5. It is illegal to be drunk on licensed premises.
6. Taxi drivers are required to ask all passengers if they have smallpox or the plague.
7. Any person found breaking a boiled egg at the sharp end will be sentenced to 24 hours in the village stocks (enacted by Edward VI).
8. Any boy under the age of 10 may not see a naked mannequin.
9. Throughout the whole of England it is illegal to eat mince pies on December 25.
10. You can shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow in Chester, inside the city walls and after midnight.

A few years ago Richard Smith and Bateman decided to travel America to break as many obscure laws as they could. For example, it is illegal to go whaling in the landlocked state of Utah or fall asleep in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

I wish someone would do the same in the UK. But trouble is you might get arrested. Look how seriously Scotland Yard are taking the obscure law that forbids the sale of honours.

El Mundo has reported that 94% of Euro notes in Spain contain traces of cocaine. Well what a surprise!
Because these notes could have been “contaminated” at any point, such as when put in counting machines, it doesn’t tell us anything about the number of people using it, the frequency or anything else that might be interesting. But it does grab tabloid headlines.

Similar surveys in London have found traces on 99% of all £5 notes. Even tests in the European Parliament’s toilets found traces of cocaine. Does this tell us that MEPs are using? Hardly, they have their own private bathrooms, and the EP toilets can be used by the public.

The only thing that I can think that these types of surveys tell us is that people are using notes to snort cocaine. In this case Euro notes - perhaps we should get rid of notes! Or ban the Euro!

People had to take more active steps to get back into the labour market. And for those who won’t do so, then there should be consequences, including less benefit or no benefit at all.

No it’s not an old quote from Norman Tebbit but part of what John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will say in a speech to the IPPR this week.

This is a new direction for New Labour. In the past the Government has adopted an enabling policy (the New Deal) towards the unemployed, giving them benefits, training and skills to help them into the job market. But there has always been a “hardcore” of people who have gone through this system and still not got a job. The Government’s even tried more expensive and elaborate schemes, but to no avail (see the StepUp scheme pilot which cost £40m).

So the Government’s gone for what many taxpayers would argue they should have done in the first place - cut their benefits. That’ll stop them sponging off the state.

In his speech, John Hutton’s also going to compare the attitude of the lazy British to that of the dynamic and hardworking Central and Eastern Europeans who have come to the UK. I suppose that this fits nicely with the Government’s policy on Romania and Bulgaria, which has placed limits when they join in January. The Government message is that there’s lots of jobs, we’re not allowed to fill those with Romanian and Bulgarians, (because the Daily Mail said it’s bad) so you lazy British will have to scrub the floors and serve burgers instead.

Forget biometric passports. Forget spy satellites or secret CIA operatives. The weapon the US State Department has been using to find Iranians linked to nuclear weapon production is Google. According to the Washington Post, they’ve just been typing in “iran + nuclear”, finding out which names come up and then seeking a ban on their travel and business dealings. Not bad for a $10 billion dollar budget.
I’d better be careful. If you Google me - I’m linked to a possible nuclear testing site.

According to the Indie, ExxonMobil has been funding EU orientated think tanks who agree (or will agree for lots of money) with their environmentally sceptical “I don’t care about destruction of the world” view. This raises an important point about think tanks that many people do not realise. They all have a specific political agenda and are usually funded by rich and powerful business individuals and companies who want some “bang for their bucks”. Take for example the IPPR - employees have commented that they feel like they spend more time helping to keep Labour in power than rehashing other people’s work doing research. Over the summer there were also several “cash for access” stories.

Worryingly the MSM and public policy makers often rely on think tanks for information and stories; quoting them as if they are representative of civil society. The only thing they represent are specific politically partisan views and big business. Think tanks are just another form of political lobbying that dilutes proper political debate and allows unelected elites to wield political power.

A YouGov poll commissioned by The Telegraph has revealed that a significant proportion of the population would refuse to accept an ID card even when faced with a fine or prison term. The government have claimed in the past that there was widespread support for the scheme (although it’s not hard to imagine a survey that would generate a favourable result: Q - “Would you accept an ID card if it would stop terrorism and prevent identity fraud”; A - “Yes”. That both those claims are widely discredited won’t cause an unscrupulous and well funded statistician to lose much sleep).

39% of respondents to the YouGov poll said that they were opposed to ID cards, of those opposed 21% would be prepared to face a fine. Given the UKs current population of approximately 60 million that means that the government could be forced to take action against 4.8 million people. Of course it’s very easy to be bullish when filling out a questionnaire so the reality will no doubt be a rather smaller revolt but even a million people refusing to take a card could be enough to turn this into Labour’s Poll Tax. No politician wants to be associated with a policy that leads to rioting but so far Mr Brown seems to be as keen on ID cards as his soon to be predecessor.

Blair has given into criticism and decided to reduce the Trident warheads by 20%. Now we can only destroy the world 5 times over.

According to the new white paper, the replacement for Trident is only going to cost £25bn - the Government’s going to save us £2bn by only having 3 subs instead of 4.

Great. We can all sleep sound at night knowing that we have a deterrent against all those Communist states. Urmm I mean terrorists France rogue states.

Only 212 days to go until our pubs become empty and our streets are littered with fag butts.

In Scotland the bars may now be smoke free, but they’re also usually free of people as everyone loiters outside. In fact you almost need to smoke to talk to your friends.

The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property has brought the issue of copyright length into prominence in the past couple of months (and brought out swarms of music industry lobbyists). The BBC reported last night that the review is to recommend that copyright on sound recordings not be extended from the current period of 50 years. Whilst I am personally in favour of a significantly shorter terms the music industry, figure-headed by the likes of Sir Cliff Richard, had been lobbying for an extension to 95 years so a recommendation of no change does feel like a victory of sorts. The Review will be published next week as part of the Chancellors pre-budget report.

Via The Register.