Empty handed promises

Labour’s plans to fund the NHS are just as speculative and based upon guesswork, or ‘projections’, as the Tories and yet the BBC only targets the Tory plans and relentlessly insists that they are unfunded promises whilst Labour’s are models of financial probity….apparently ‘Labour is sticking to its £2.5bn plan which it says is fully and robustly funded.’

But is that true?  Miliband has said that he will fund the NHS with ‘whatever is necessary’, his Shadow Health Minister has said that Labour will ‘Do whatever it takes’.…..remind me…which part of the economic’s syllabus did those two equations come under?

Let’s have a look at the BBC’s reporting of this issue in detail……

There will be a funding gap in the NHS, a figure accepted by all Parties, of £30 bn by 2020….How to close that gap?….£22 bn will be found by making efficiency savings in the NHS, but who will fund the remaining £8 bn and how?

From the NHS review that sets out the future shape of the NHS and how much it will cost….

In order to provide the comprehensive and high quality care the people of England clearly want, Monitor, NHS England and independent analysts have previously calculated that a combination of growing demand if met by no further annual efficiencies and flat real terms funding would produce a mismatch between resources and patient needs of nearly £30 billion a year by 2020/21. So to sustain a comprehensive high-quality NHS, action will be needed on all three fronts – demand, efficiency and funding. Less impact on any one of them will require compensating action on the other two.

 

Battle has been joined and the dividing lines drawn up…the Tories say they will increase NHS funding by over £8 bn a year by 2020 funded by growth in the economy and Labour says it will raise £2.5 billion from a Mansion tax, a levy on Tobacco companies and a crackdown on tax avoidance….but refuses to commit to funding the remaining £5.5 bn necessary to fill that gap in NHS spending.

The BBC has been investigating the issues…well, sort of.  They conclude that Labour have made credible and clear spending commitments but that the Tories in contrast have made unfunded promises on the NHS which aren’t based on any realistic plans.

The BBC isn’t bothering to fact check Labour’s claims…apparently just saying you will raise ‘x’ amount from ‘y’ is sufficient evidence that Labour has it all worked out and that such plans are totally credible….and never mind the missing £5.5 bn to deliver ‘a comprehensive high-quality NHS‘.

Tory Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was interviewed on the Today programme by Mishal Husain and stated that economic growth would fund the NHS’ needs.  Husain was utterly determined to ignore that and dismiss it as worthless promises refusing to accept that economic growth was an acceptable measure to base any promise upon…..Dover Sentry in the comments spotted an almost exact replay of the interview later on in which the BBC interviewer later claimed that Hunt must be making it up as he went along…so no bias there…..Has the BBC got a script for ‘tackling’ Hunt?  It would seem so….the two interviews seem very much the same, almost word for word in many respects.

Whilst the BBC dismisses the basis for the Tory funding the NHS’ ‘Forward View’ report that argues the case for the extra £30 bn states…

Delivering on the transformational changes set out in this
Forward View and the resulting annual efficiencies could – if matched
by staged funding increases as the economy allows – close the £30
billion gap by 2020/21. Decisions on these options will be for the next
Parliament and government, and will need to be updated and adjusted
over the course of the five year period. However nothing in the
analysis above suggests that continuing with a comprehensive taxfunded
NHS is intrinsically un-doable.

So ‘as the economy allows’...sounds a lot like ‘if we have economic growth’ doesn’t it?

What does Sky News say?

Sky’s Health Correspondent Thomas Moore said the Conservative commitment to fund the NHS is no more or less unfunded than Labour’s.

What?  Never heard that on the BBC…can’t be true surely.  We’ll have to look at what Labour says to find out won’t we…and save the BBC the trouble of doing so.

First though let’s have a look at some of the BBC’s reporting on this…here’s Hugh Pym telling us about ‘The £8bn NHS political row’.

The LibDems seem to get a bye on their promise to fund the NHS mostly with the proceeds of that elusive ‘economic growth’…

The Liberal Democrats said a little while ago they would find the £8bn if they were in office.

Some of this would be funded by identified tax measures, but the bulk of it would, in the words of Nick Clegg, come from the “proceeds of growth”.

In other words the Lib Dems assume they will find the money if the economy is growing normally in the years leading up to 2020.

No arm waving denouncements and exclamations of incredulity from the BBC there.  But what of the Tories?…He says…

Now, after skirting around the subject and dropping various hints, the Conservatives say they will as a manifesto pledge commit to finding the £8bn in real terms in 2020.

Actually it will be “at least” £8bn and could be more, according to party sources.

There are no revenue-raising plans linked to this plan.

Er..hang on….the Tories have stated quite clearly that economic growth will fund the extra money for the NHS….here’s Osborne making the point about a strong economy paying for the NHS…

I can confirm that in the Conservative manifesto next week we will commit to a minimum real-terms increase in NHS funding of £8bn in the next five years.

We can make this commitment because we’ve got the track record and a plan to grow our economy.  In the next parliament we will continue with the same balanced approach.

Those who urged us to cut the NHS also fail to understand the most important thing of all – all of this is only possible because of a strong economy. Harm the economy with higher taxes and higher debts, and not only do you put millions of jobs at risk: you undermine the NHS and all the vital public services that a strong economy pays for.

Pym then gives us Labour’s promise…but does not expand on Labour’s  missing £5.5 bn needed to reach the required £8 bn to fund a quality NHS….

So where does that leave Labour? Unlike the other main parties it has not signed up to the Stevens financial numbers.

Labour points out it has specific tax-raising plans, including the mansion tax, which cover this spending commitment.

So whilst the Tories’ plans are ‘unfunded’ the BBC tells us that Labour’s are credible despite the fact that they don’t actually say how they will plug that spending gap.

In another BBC article there is the claim that..

Ed Miliband has resisted the temptation to say he would do whatever it takes to find the cash to match the Conservative’s £8bn NHS pledge, arguing that it is unfunded.

But that’s not true…as Sky reports Miliband said….

When pressed on whether he could commit Labour to matching the Tories’ £8bn figure, he appeared to decline to do so. “We will always do what is necessary for the NHS. We will never let the NHS down,” he said.

And that is backed up by a statement made by Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, Liz kendall, who stated on the Today programme that…

“We will do whatever it takes to get the NHS the money its needs”

…before adding…

 “We do not think it is right to make fantasy funding promises… from a Tory party that is quite frankly panicking at the moment because it’s not got any clear vision for the country or the NHS”.

‘Whatever it takes’ doesn’t sound too rigorously worked out does it?  Sounds sort of like a fantasy funding promise doesn’t it?  Still, the BBC didn’t notice and keep on reporting that Labour has solved the NHS funding problem.

Maybe they have solved it by actually deciding to cut funding….what did Burnham say in 2010 (along with promises to privatise the NHS when commercial services were more efficient than public ones)?….

Curb NHS spending pledge to save other services, says Andy Burnham

Burnham said: “I am putting the ball right back in [Osborne’s] court. It is irresponsible to increase NHS spending in real terms within the overall financial envelope that he, as chancellor, is setting.

Have a listen to the interview with Kendall, Justin Webb is feeding her cues to lay into the Coalition which she misses  repeatedly….it’s hilarious as he gets more and more exasperated at her stupidity.

Webb starts by making the claim that mid-wifery is in trouble because of the ‘growth in the birthrate’…no inkling as to the cause of that?

Webb doesn’t disagree with much, if anything, that Kendall says…she talks of the costs of medical negligence and Webb says that is a reasonable point to make, when she says the Tories haven’t said where they will get funding from Webb agrees.

He then tries to get her to say that it is irresponsible to promise more funding without saying where it will come from. …a cue to have another go at the Tories.  Kendall misses the point altogether and strangely claims she has never said that…having just lambasted the Tories for doing so allegedly.

Webb asks her if Labour will match the Tory pledge…she says no….the Tories are engaged in ‘fantasy funding’….and after much toing and froing Webb says ‘I’m not asking where the money would come from…’

er…isn’t that the whole point of the interview?  Isn’t that the whole basis of the attack on the Tories?  And yet Webb isn’t interested in where Labour will get its funding from!  Apparently the source will be ‘whatever it takes’…remind me…just which Bank is that?

Anyway…back to the real world…..

What was the King’s Fund response to Burnham’s more recent response to the NHS review that said it would need that extra £8 bn?…from the 27th January 2015…..

The elephant in the room is how this will be paid for. Labour has not yet committed to finding the additional £8 billion identified in the NHS five year forward view as being needed to close the NHS funding gap by 2020. While Burnham’s plans to improve social care and increase the pay of care workers are very welcome, they will come with a hefty price tag, which Labour will need to balance with its commitment to reduce the deficit.‘The challenge for the Labour Party is to demonstrate how it will provide the funding to implement such a positive vision of the future.’

So let’s get that clear….Burnham pledges to improve the NHS in line with an ‘ambitious’ 10 year plan that Labour hasn’t funded despite it necessarily having a ‘hefty price tag’, and Labour hasn’t come up with any plan to do so….that ‘elephant in the room’.

And yet the BBC are relentlessly attacking the Tories for making ‘unfunded’ promises.

What of  Labour’s actual funding sources…the Mansion Tax, a levy on tobacco and a crackdown on tax avoidance…just how credible are they?

Let’s start with tax avoidance, we can dismiss the tobacco levy as that will  raise a measily £150 million…the BBC is always quick to criticise the Coalition for making over ambitious claims about how much money it would raise from tackling tax avoiders with Swiss bank accounts and yet it accepts Labour’s claims that it will raise £1.1 bn from such measures…..what do the tax experts say?....

Doubt surrounds the funding of the Labour leader’s flagship NHS policy as finance experts question the lack of detail and potential “unintended consequences” in his plan to close tax loopholes to pay for it.

Regina Borromeo, a money manager at Brandywine Global Investment Management LLC, told Bloomberg it was difficult to know how to react to Miliband’s stance on Eurobonds as it “could be just political posturing”.

“With the UK elections approaching, this type of statement adds to concerns of more political headlines to come that could affect the bond market,” she added.

Miliband also plans to scrap a tax relief for hedge funds that exempts them from stamp duty when they transfer shares to an intermediary, such as a broker, as part of a financial transaction.

But it isn’t just hedge funds who use this exemption. Pension funds, financial institutions and ordinary investors also benefit from the relief, the abolition of which threatens to disrupt and penalise the savings of ordinary consumers.

“The real stinger is that it would indirectly hit UK pensioners whose pension funds invest into hedge funds.”

Not much confidence there….political posturing from Miliband that provides little detail and will have unintended consequences…and may well hit pensioners and the economy badly.

What of the Mansion Tax? It will possibly raise only £1.2 bn and again there’s not much confidence that it will work or that it is any where near the best scheme to raise money in that manner….the BBC report that the IFS said….

The idea was misdirected.

“Rather than adding a mansion tax on top of an unreformed and deficient council tax, it would be better to reform council tax itself to make it proportional to current property values,” the IFS report said.

Labour’s own Lord Mandelson doesn’t like it…

Lord Mandelson has launched a blistering attack on Labour’s flagship mansion tax policy, describing it as “crude” and “short-termist”.

In what will be seen as yet another criticism of Ed Miliband’s leadership by one of the architects of New Labour, he suggested the idea for a tax on properties worth more than £2m was not thought through and unsophisticated.

Legal and financial experts don’t like it and think it is far too complex and likely to lead to huge costs and delays.

The Spectator has a look and isn’t impressed…..

How mansion taxes will make us all poorer

 

So let’s recap….the tax avoidance measures are unlikely to raise anything like Labour promises, the tobacco levy is small beer and the Mansion Tax is probably unworkable and Labour has only promised to fund £2.5 bn of the necessary £8 bn to keep the NHS going….though Miliband makes the ‘unfunded’ promise that he will do whatever is necessary for the NHS….and the King’s Fund says Labour’s plans are themselves unfunded promises.

And yet the BBC still insists that Labour have provided us with a comprehensive funding solution that sets out how they will pay for their largesse despite, as the BBC’s Hugh Pym admits….

In the end £8bn could prove too small a government top-up for the NHS.

If £8 bn is too small what price £2.5 billion that Labour thinks is adequate?  Where is the BBC question mark over  that?

When there was some alleged ‘islamophobic’ daubings on an Islamic building and a supposed arson attack (any charges for the mysterious 5 who were arrested by police?) after the murder of Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists the BBC wasn’t shy about reporting that the EDL may have been involved and that Muslims were in essence ‘under siege’….though the suspicion must be that the ‘vandalism’and ‘arson’ were done by Muslim activists in order to bolster their claim to be under siege.

Not so quick to report the ‘racist’ vandalism to Labour and Tory offices in Aberdeen which was reported early this morning by STV…

Police probe after Tory and Labour offices vandalised in Aberdeen

A swastika sign, the word “scum” and a letter Q standing for “quisling”, or traitor, were painted on the front of the Conservative offices in the city’s West Mount Street.

Tory councillor for Hazlehead Ross Thomson, who is also the party’s candidate for the Aberdeen South constituency, posted a picture of the graffiti on Twitter on Saturday morning.

Scottish Labour’s office in nearby Rosemount Place also had a large Q painted on the door.

Mr Thomson said: “Once again we see the ugly side of nationalism on display.

 

Why are the BBC so slow to report this appalling racist attack and attribute it to the SNP’s supporters as they did with the EDL, the EDL who apparently ‘pollute’ people’s minds according to the BBC?

Then again the BBC themselves are happy to slyly suggest the Tories and UKIP are racist…today we had the first episode of ‘Dead Ringers’ and heard that Cameron was on tour….might even have a few Black people along they joked…and UKIP liked to look smart in their coordinated ensemble of purple tie and brown shirt….get it?

Have to say Dead Ringers was more Dead Sheep than Dead Funny….very laboured and strained…..you could hear the cogs grinding as they ground out the jokes….and the David Cameron impression was abysmal…more like Prince Charles snogging MacMillan and both talking at once.

The BBC reports…

Man held over ‘US army base plot’

A 20-year-old US citizen has been charged with attempting to explode a car bomb at Fort Riley in Manhattan, Kansas.

John T Booker Jr was making final preparations to carry out the suicide attack on behalf of the Islamic State (IS), the FBI said.

Mr Booker previously had tried to join the US Army, but was denied entry because of internet posts about “jihad”.

Authorities say that US personnel were never in danger.

And that’s it from the BBC…..ah….the BBC has just updated….but not really…….still a ‘Mr Booker’ in the frame.

And yet there is so much more out there……

John T Booker, also known as Muhammed Abdullah Hassan…

He’d already been arrested by the security services in the US last year, put in  mental health facility and presumably released as he has been re-arrested today.

On 20 March 2014, the Kansas City Division FBI became aware of an individual named BOOKER aka Muhammad Abdullah Hassan who had publicly stated his intention to commit jihad, bidding farewell to his friends and making comments indicating his jihad was imminent. BOOKER had been recruited by the US Army in Kansas City, Mo., in February 2014 and was scheduled to report for Basic Training on 7 April 2014. Kansas City Division Agents interviewed BOOKER on 20 March 2014.

His YouTube site is still up offering us videos from the likes of Anwar Al Awlaki.

A much fuller report than the BBC’s is available from ‘Business Insider UK’.…very strange….are they the UK’s premier news gathering service with the largest number of journalists outside of China?

Why is it so many other people, including mere bloggers, report so much more than the BBC?

 The BBC is entirely corrupt…imagine if this were a UKIP candidate complaining about the number of ‘foreigners’ in his country……do you think the BBC would categorise it merely as a case of incitement to commit vandalism or would the UKIP candidate be hung out to dry as a ‘racist’?…..This isn’t from a BBC report….

‘Chavs and their sickening England flags’ Words of Labour candidate who called for resignation of Plaid rival over ‘outrageous’ remarks

“I agree that it’s completely sickening how many England flags are to be seen around Wales. It truly shows the degree our society has been infiltrated by incomers who are not ready to integrate.

But this is……

‘Personally I don’t know if I trust Ed Miliband one bit. This is a guy who ran for Labour leader against his own brother, and didn’t even tell him that he was doing it. If he can stab a member of his family in the back like that, what can he actually do for our country, if (when) Labour get back into power?’  A Labour voter.

The BBC has been spending a great deal of time trying to persuade us that Miliband isn’t the geeky nerd who will sell  his soul to be in power and who is definitely not the love-child of Labour washouts Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot.

Today they investigated the issues surrounding the great outpouring of outraged sanctimonious left-wing warbling about this…

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Mr Miliband had “stabbed his own brother in the back” to lead Labour and was now “willing to stab the UK in the back” by doing a deal on Trident with the SNP “to become PM”.

Wasn’t so long ago that the Labour Party itself was trying to stab Miliband in the back…

The Tories must be rubbing their hands with glee. They are facing an existential threat and about to lose their second by-election in a row and suddenly we distract the media with our favourite party game, “stab the leader in the back”.

The BBC of course forget that Miliband has long based his election campaign almost fully on the basis that Cameron is a ‘poshboy’ who is ‘out of touch’ with the needs of ordinary people….

British opposition leader Ed Miliband will cast himself as a humble man of the people on Tuesday in a bid to underscore Prime Minister David Cameron’s image as a privileged ‘posh boy’ whose government is out of touch with voters.

Miliband only recently called Cameron a ‘coward‘….

Labour brands Cameron a coward for refusing head-to-head TV debate

But it is ‘personalising politics’ to say Miliband ‘stabbed his brother in the back‘….calling Cameron a poshboy and a coward isn’t then?

Labour are trying to spin Fallon’s comments by saying the backstabbing is unimportant…Ed’s character is unimportant…but even Ed, in a Guardian puff piece , admits that knifing David was going to cause trouble, and did….

“I knew it was a big decision at the time, but it was an even bigger decision. It had bigger ramifications for my family, and for my relationship with David, than I had anticipated.”

If Miliband is prepared to sacrifice his brother and tear the family apart in order to get into power what else will he be prepared to sacrifice in that ‘lust for power’?  Fallon is right to question Miliband’s motivations.

The whole of the Guardian’s piece is about building up Miliband’s character and presenting him as fit for office…it’s even titled with that in mind…

‘Ed Miliband: don’t mistake my decency for weakness’

So Miliband’s character and personality and the judgments he makes are relevant as to whether he could be Prime Minister…and we know that Nicola Sturgeon thinks he wouldn’t be PM material.

Labour’s stab-proof spinning tells us that ‘personalising’ politics in this way brings the profession of politics into disrepute…or so says Margaret Hodge…lol….Oh yes….Margaret Hodge …

A senior Tory has accused Margaret Hodge, the Labour chair of the public accounts committee, of bringing parliament into disrepute by being “abusive and bullying” towards senior HSBC executives when they appeared before her panel.

“You maligned her reputation and suitability for her current role at the BBC and called on her to resign or be sacked. This is inexcusable. You were rude, abusive and bullying in a manner which brings your committee and the proceedings of the house into disrepute,” he told her.

So what would Margaret make of a leftwing news organisation that promotes this very personal video....

The rap cuts David Cameron’s party conference speeches to Eminem’s 2002 track Lose Yourself.

Cameron can be heard rhyming “I’m hardcore and I know the score” with “I am disgusted by the poor” followed by “I’ve made sure we’re ready for class war.”

David Cameron v Eminem Conservative conference rap: ‘I am disgusted by the poor’

The Labour Party has been relentless in carrying out a class war against Cameron suggesting he is unfit to govern as he is an ‘Eton Toff’, out of touch with the lives most people live and therefore unable to shape policies that are relevant to their lives….the Labour Party are always ready to use Cameron’s membership of the Bullingdon Club as a stick to beat him with...

The image of the Tory leader, which shows him in about 1986 dressed in the uniform of the elite Bullingdon Club, has appeared in several newspapers.

It is thought Labour was planning to use the picture on an election poster.

….and does membership of such a club tell us anything useful about Cameron?  Peter Hitchens thought so….

‘I think it tells us something about David Cameron that he doesn’t much want us to know’

Perhaps there is something about Ed Miliband that he doesn’t want us to know that stabbing his brother in the back might reveal.

But, apparently, such personal attacks are now taboo….The Labour Party are furious that Fallon could accuse Miliband of backstabbing and Miliband says that Cameron “sends out his minions like Michael Fallon to engage in desperate smears.” 

The BBC has been filling the airwaves with tributes to cricketer and commentator  Richie Benaud and telling us he was so popular and good at his job because of his personality and character…..but now apparently Miliband, who would have his finger on the nuclear trigger, who would be running the NHS and schools, who would be off chatting to world leaders, shouldn’t have his character and personality asssessed for suitablity for the biggest job in the UK?

Even Labour supporters didn’t think that before the electioneering began…..

A Labour voter said..in 2010….

The big news this week – at least for me – was the result of the new Labour Party leader, which was announced yesterday. I was backing, and voted for, David Miliband, but it was his brother Ed who won and is now the leader of the Labour Party.

Personally I don’t know if I trust Ed Miliband one bit. This is a guy who ran for Labour leader against his own brother, and didn’t even tell him that he was doing it. If he can stab a member of his family in the back like that, what can he actually do for our country, if (when) Labour get back into power?

We’ll see how he does, but it doesn’t seem likely right now that I will be renewing my Labour membership next year.

 

Three weeks ago on BBC3 Ed Miliband was asked ‘Do you regret stabbing your brother in the back?’ by a young audience member…

Guess it’s not what you say but who says it that makes it taboo.

Here you go, on time and all ready to go. Over to you! This is where you can detail the bias.

Peston’s latest is an out and out party political ‘broadcast’ for Labour, even going so far as to try and compare Miliband to Thatcher…somebody at the BBC really should start reading Peston’s stuff before they let it go to press.

Miliband as Thatcher not Foot?

Yes…Miliband and Thatcher…soul mates….

Peston shows himself to be more the wide-eyed stagedoor johnny than a hard-nosed journalist with a handle on reality.  Here he tells us that the wealthy are being shut out of the tent…it’s a new world, a new politics…all thanks to Miliband…

….the last nail in the coffin of a political approach – not quite an ideology – which had at its core the idea that it was better to get the wealthy and powerful in the tent, rather than doing what they typically do if they are outside the tent.

Really?  Never happen.  The wealthy and big business will always have huge influence in politics….even Lenin admitted that capitalism was absolutely necessary for Communism…only once Communism was well established would capitalism be rethought…but of course that was never going to happen just as Peston’s ‘Milibandism’ is never going to happen.

This next part illustrates how Peston is not interested in critiquing Miliband’s policy but in praising him personally…

I spoke to a New Labour veteran. This is what he said to me about the non-dom cull: it would “alienate some people whose goodwill is a good investment for us, send the wrong signal about the UK and [is] a rather useless piece of posturing (as the last Labour government concluded for 13 years)”.

Symbolic break

In other words, it is a powerful and important symbolic break with the Blair era.

When a Labour ‘veteran’ criticises the policy Peston ignores the criticism as to whether it is a workable policy or not and instead glorifies Miliband using trigger words ‘powerful’, ‘important’ and ‘symbolic’…all chosen to make Miliband and his policy look like something of substance rather than the squalid ‘posturing’ that we now know it really is that will not in fact end non-dom status, and, rather than raising money we know Labour actually thinks it will lose the UK money.

Nice bit of dramatising from Peston..

[For] Miliband, that calculation has had to be re-done, as living standards were savagely squeezed in the years after that profound economic shock, and the welfare state has been rolled back.

So living standards were ‘savagely’ squeezed?  Was the welfare state really ‘rolled back’ or just trimmed to make it more cost effective and to encourage people into work…as it did?  Peston is peddling the Labour narrative as if it is the only interpretation, or indeed the truth, never mind the interpretation.

He goes on…

Miliband would also say that the stagnating gap between the incomes of rich and poor and the widening wealth gap have shown that collaborating with the wealthy has not delivered adequate fruits to the poorest.

Like that word ‘collaborating’…another dog whistle. And how true is that when most people’s lives have improved enormously…the fact that some get mega rich due to globalisation resulting in an increasing ‘gap’ between the man in the street’s pay and that mega rich person’s income doesn’t mean the man in the street is getting poorer.

Then Peston really goes to town…Red Ed’s not red at all, he’s doing his best to make the world a wonderful place for the poor and deprived….

Now the conventional view from the centre of politics of what he’s doing is that he is a throwback to Labour’s left-wing past, a Michael Foot in a sharp tailored suit.

But that doesn’t feel right to me. He isn’t resorting to the traditional left-wing solutions of nationalisation, significantly increased state spending, incestuous deals with trade unions or penal increases in tax rates.

What he is attempting to do – perhaps naively, perhaps clumsily – is encourage competition, give more power to consumers, nudge up the minimum wage and take on vested interests.

 

‘Naive’ and ‘clumsy’…again words meant to engender some sympathy for Miliband, an innocent doing his best while the nasty world rails at him.  And not nationalising stuff?  How about the railways…or price freezes on private companies?  No incestuous deals with the unions?  He’s Labour leader only because of such a ‘deal’…and as for taxes.…to cut the deficit Labour has said 50% will come from tax rises.  Peston is blowing smoke up our derrieres.

He then reinforces this image with the claim that the ‘Establishment’ is out to get Miliband, he’s an outsider like Thatcher battling the vested interests….curious that the ‘hated’ Thatcher is always the one they turn to when they want a bit of credibility to rub off onto them….Thatcher would have scorned Miliband, his policies and his shallow political posturing.

Peston finishes off with this…

So what is striking, as the election looms, is the sheer scale of Miliband’s repositioning of Labour, both in respect of fundamental policy and the communication of policy.

Miliband hasn’t repositioned Labour he’s just ‘posturing’ and headline grabbing, he isn’t ending non-dom status merely tweaking it, he isn’t an outsider…he read PPE like all the rest of them at Oxford and he was safely ensconced well within the Establishment for all of Labour’s term in office…and apparently was spending much of the time wrapped in the arms of the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders…whilst in office….as Guido reveals…

Who was Ed’s secret girlfriend in 2005?

“I first met Ed when I went to a friend’s house for dinner,” Justine Miliband tells the Mirror today:

“I was interested in him, I thought he was good looking and clever and seemed to be unattached. But we just went down a conversational cul-de-sac. Apparently we had nothing in common. He wanted to talk about economics – one of my least favourite subjects. None of our conversations went anywhere. Then I found out he was secretly going out with the woman who had invited us for dinner. I was furious.”

But who was Ed’s secret lover at the time? According to John Rentoul it was Stephanie Flanders…

Flanders has admitted to dating both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, though friends had always claimed it was in the nineties. Curious…

“Could the secrecy have been because he was a Treasury special adviser Stephanie Flanders was BBC economics journalist”, muses Rentoul on Twitter today. Questions to which the answer is oooooh.

Miliband blamed the banks and ‘someone’ in his speech today for the lack of regulation and oversight on the banking world but it seems to have been forgotten, conveniently buried by Labour’s non-dom shambles…

We are still paying – you are still paying – the British people are still paying – for what happened because of the global financial crisis.

We were told that the wealth flowed from these institutions, and while it appeared that in bonuses, practices and cultures, there were a different set of rules, that was to our benefit.

And if only the regulation came off, the wealth would magically flow.

For a time, it did.

And then we saw the financial crash.

What the banks called over-regulation turned out to be the dam protecting us from a tide of disaster.

The dam was weakened and it burst.

With all that followed.

 

So just who de-regulated the banks and allowed them to run riot? Who pulled the finger from the dam and let the tidal wave of debt in to overwhelm us?

Here’s Gordon Brown in his Mansion House speech in 2007:

Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader….So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.

Your international success is critical to that of Britain’s overall and considering together the things that we must do to maintain our competitiveness….enhancing a risk based regulatory approach.

 

A year earlier in 2006 he made quite clear that he believed light touch, risk based regulatory system was the way ahead….a policy headed up by one Ed Balls…..

London has enjoyed one of its most successful years ever, for which I congratulate all of you here on your leadership skills and entrepreneurship.

Financial services are now 7 per cent of our economy. Financial and business services as much as 10 per cent. A larger share of our economy than they are in any other major economy, contributing £19 billion of net exports to our balance of payments, a success all the more remarkable because while New York and Tokyo rely for business on their large domestic base, London’s international ranking is founded on a large and expanding global market.

I believe that London, like New York, is already the capital marketplace of the world.

And I do not believe this has happened by accident.

The message London’s success sends out to the whole British economy is that we will succeed if like London we think globally. Move forward if we are not closed but open to competition and to new ideas. Progress if we invest in and nurture the skills of the future, advance with light touch regulation, a competitive tax environment and flexibility.

Mr Lord Mayor, we will not forget that the first and foremost duty of government is to maintain and indeed to strengthen the monetary and fiscal stability that has enabled us, successively, to grow and remain free of recession.

Ed Balls, our new City Minister, will work with you to develop publish and then promote a long term strategy for the development of London’s financial services and promoting our unique advantages and assets. We will set a clear ambition to make Britain the location of choice for headquarters and services, including R&D, for even more of the world’s leading companies.

In 2003, just at the time of a previous Mansion House speech, the Worldcom accounting scandal broke. And I will be honest with you, many who advised me including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown.

I believe that we were right not to go down that road which in the United States led to Sarbannes-Oxley, and we were right to build upon our light touch system through the leadership of Sir Callum McCarthy – fair, proportionate, predictable and increasingly risk based.

Perhaps the BBC will catch up on that important narrative and tell us who really is to blame for the economic crash we have suffered and the subsequent austerity that had to be imposed rather than allowing Miliband to make a completely false pitch to the electorate that denies Labour’s part in the worst recession in one hundred years.

Who said this in 2010?…

I welcome this debate. It is an important contribution to the Government’s commitment to fairness in the tax treatment of non-domiciles. I hope that I have made clear the importance of the current non-domicile tax regime for the UK economy.

Businesses see it as playing an important role in ensuring that the UK attracts skilled people from abroad to work, do business and invest. We would place ourselves at a significant competitive disadvantage if we simply scrapped the remittance basis at a time when countries with low tax regimes are competing to attract talent and investment-that would be an own goal.

Of course, it should not be forgotten that non-domiciles still contribute a significant amount of tax-it is estimated at £4 billion a year-to the Exchequer.

That was Labour’s Stephen Timms, then financial secretary to the Treasury, responding to questions from Norman Baker

I think the BBC was caught on the hop this morning as on the day of the much heralded Miliband announcement of the abolishment of Non-Dom status it turns out Balls had recently declared this would cost Britain money not make it money.

The BBC journo’s were so shocked that their natural journalistic instincts won over their usual carefully measured bias and the truth came tumbling out…well, a couple of them allowed themselves to dish the dirt.

The usually pro-Miliband Jon Pienaar told us that this was ‘The mother and father of all banana skins’ and Norman Smith, he of the ‘utterly terrifying’ prediction on Tory plans, said that Labour’s own plans had all gone ‘pear-shaped’….a corker of a story!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9JTMO0DZiM

The ‘BBC’ itself headlined with this all day despite the Balls revelation coming very early in the day….

Election 2015: Labour would scrap ‘non-dom’ tax status

If the Tories had made the same cock-up the headlines would have instantly been ‘Tory Policy chaos’ or ‘Tory Shambles’….the BBC’s reticence is all the more remarkable when Norman Smith tells us that Miliband’s Non-Dom policy was ‘the party’s most significant announcement of the campaign so far. ‘

Only at about 17:00 did the headline reflect the new situation…

Labour defends plans to scrap ‘non-dom’ tax status

…but even then the report attached hardly changed merely adding this…

Labour has defended its plans to end the non-domicile rule that allows some wealthy UK residents to limit the tax paid on earnings outside the country.

What is even more surprising, or not, is that two other of the BBC’s ‘star’ economics correspondents both fail to mention Balls’ earlier comments about the dangers of abolishing Non-Dom status when they are ‘analysing’ Miliband’s grand plan…..

Here’s Peston…

Are non-doms bad for UK?

And then there’s this curiously titled piece from Nick Robinson….

Election 2015: Non-doms – whose side are you on?

Strangely Peston also quotes Duncan Bannatyne…..

Strikingly the Dragons Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne has argued that non-doms have an unfair cost advantage over other UK based business people.

But Non-Doms do get taxed on any income they make in the UK and if they bring money in from abroad to the UK that is also taxed….so they get no advantage.

What does Bannatyne think of foreign companies who get state aid to encourage them to set up in the UK and bring jobs here?

What benefits do Enterprise Zones offer for businesses?

Businesses basing themselves on Enterprise Zones can access a number of benefits:

• Up to 100% business rate discount worth up to £275,000 per business over a 5 year period

• Simplified local authority planning, for example, through Local Development Orders that grant automatic planning permission for certain development (such as new industrial buildings or changing how existing buildings are used) within specified areas

• Government support to ensure that superfast broadband is rolled out throughout the zone, and, if necessary, public funding

• 100% enhanced capital allowances (tax relief) to businesses making large investments in plant and machinery on 8 Zones in Assisted Areas

The BBC doesn’t really ‘fisk’ Miliband’s plans…..for instance where do they mention any other tax breaks such as those on offer in Enterprise Zones, or the double taxation jeopardy of the Dual Residents who don’t get taxed on foreign income if they are taxed on income earned abroad by the country they make that money in….. most Non-Doms will also get taxed on the income they make in other countries….so Miliband is threatening to tax them twice…or sabre-rattling for Public consumption when he knows full well that this is all headline grabbing nonsense from him.

The BBC doesn’t ask the difficult questions about the Labour claim that their policy has been audited by an ‘independent’ tax expert who confirms they may make up to a billion pounds from the policy….the BBC is not so keen to tell us that the IFS, an organisation the BBC usually quotes with allacrity when it criticises the Tories, said this……

It’s very difficult to say how much if any revenue Labour’s policy would raise.

“That’s partly because they haven’t yet given us the full details of the policy, it’s partly because there is a lot about these non-doms that we don’t know… and what’s hardest of all is to guess at how these people would respond to higher tax charges.”

Nor do they tell us that that ‘independent’ expert, Jolyon Maugham QC,  is in fact a Labour Party member who promotes them and their policies enthusiastically.

Here’s what the Tax Journal says….and look who stands out as the only one who supports the policy…

The move has been greeted with concern from some professionals. ‘It is a gamble in both a financial and a political sense,’ warned BKL Tax.

Blick Rothenberg partner Nimesh Shah agreed, saying: ‘The government needs to be mindful of the fact that non-doms and their businesses are internationally mobile by their very nature, and could decide to base themselves elsewhere.

Mark Pearce, tax partner at Thomas Eggar, said: ‘Simply abolishing the non-dom rule would be a disaster for the UK economy, as it would inevitably lead to a mass exodus of wealth and talent from the UK.’ He added: ‘Politicians are making sensationalist comments for column inches without giving true thought to the consequences of their stated position.

However, tax barrister Jolyon Maugham QC argued on his blog that the non-dom rule is ‘an unsightly bribe to those with some foreign connection to come to or remain in the UK’.

Here’s the Telegraph…

Ed Miliband’s non-dom crackdown is ‘cataclysmic’

Leading tax barristers warned that 30,000 of Britain’s 115,000 foreign investors could leave Britain in the wake of Ed Miliband’s announcement that a Labour government would abolish the tax rules surrounding non-doms.

Mr Miliband claimed that the party will raise “at least” hundreds of millions by abolishing the rules, which he described as “the right thing to do”.

But private banks, accountants, financial advisers and even the ‘independent expert’ who instructed Labour on the policy cast doubt on the Labour leader’s assertions.

And where is the exploration of the lie from Ed Balls about the Tories?

Craig at ‘Is the BBC biased?’ gave us the low down on the latest (well not quite…more of which later) bit of bias from Peston favouring the Labour camp…he is relentless and quite blatant…

Robert Peston gets carried away

It seems he has been giving us some very dodgy statistics about the cost/benefits of leaving the EU whilst cheerleading for Blair…which reminded me that I forgot to add this to the post on Blair….it’s the number of referendums that have been held in Europe, about European membership…and all without causing economic meltdown and market chaos….the EU even demanding countries that had referendums that voted no to Europe hold another one….so it looks like referendums can be good depending on whose asking…

Since the vote by the Republic of Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty [in 2008], the European Commission has stated that the Treaty would not force Ireland to change its view on issues such as having a permanent (as opposed to rotating) commissioner, military neutrality and abortion. The Irish voted again on the Lisbon Treaty on 2 October 2009. The vote was 67.1% in favour of the treaty.

Referendums related to the European Union

Of course it was Tony Blair who opened the borders to flood the UK with EU citizens….one intention was to have a large number of immigrants who who almost certainly vote for the UK to stay in Europe and who would tip the balance in any referendum which undoubtedly would be close anyway.

Blair and his unscrupulous sidekicks, many who still lurk in the shadow cabinet, committed serial crimes against the UK People and constitution….it is quite extraordinary that the banks and bankers are being held to account and scourged when politicians like Blair can walk free making millions off the back of a career that saw the UK brought to its knees, its culture and society undermined and sabotaged for Labour’s own ideological ends regardless of who got hurt.

There really should be a mechanism to put politicians like Blair who set out to betray the nation in prison.

Of course it would help if there were at least some sort of counterweight in the Media….such as an impartial news broadcaster that could challenge the politicians and bring to light their devious actions and intentions.

Shame we don’t have one.