Competiton Winner : Green Tax Cut

Surprisingly, knowing the mindset of co-conspirators, they voted not to give tax relief to farting and shitting, but to not having children.

Guido of course being a good and fertile Catholic is not impressed with the no-children Green tax credit idea, but it does have a certain anti-humanity, Green ideological logic consistency to it. Perhaps Huhne or Zac will take up the idea...

If AntiCitizenOne is not too paranoid to email in with his address, his prize will be sent to him by return.

Lunch with Thatcher

Just got back from lunch. On the table next to me was a denim clad Carol Thatcher. Obviously Guido listened in to her conversation. She was drinking rosé with a younger Latino, possibly South American guy, bemoaning the tax man. "No the money in Switzerland is in my own name" was the tone of the conversation. Out of respect for her mother and a shared loathing for the Inland Revenue, Guido will leave it at that. She definitely has no luck with men - she split the bill...

Friday Caption Contest (Flint & Smith)

Splitter! Splits! Hooray!

Political correspondents can breathe a collective sigh of relief. As we exit the substance desert that was the silly season they can now start writing "party split" stories.

Keith Vaz, a former minister for Europe, is calling for a referendum on the European constitution that Jim Murphy, the current minister for Europe says isn't a constitution, just a bit of administrative tidying up. The FCO traditionally lies for its country, Murphy is lying for a foreign superstate. Blunkett says a referendum was promised and Miliband says Labour is not split. Super...

Gummer is getting a kicking from John Redwood saying basically that the mad burger-eater will damage the economy with his Green taxes and plans for increasing airport congestion. Cameroonie sources are briefing that they won't pay much attention to the loopier ideas from Zac and Gummer. Fantastic...

So we have splits, splitters and lots of easy copy ahead of the party conferences. Cynics among you might wonder if the splits haven't just been teased out by the media to manufacture a storyline, the Sun (Vaz article) and GMTV (Redwood interview) can take the credit for getting it going. The show must go on...

Blog Today, Print Tomorrow (Again)

Iain Dale has alerted Guido to the fact that the blog post on Huhne was recycled in the newspaper diaries this morning. Guido doesn't usually read 'em, but they clearly read him...Peter McKay's Ephraim Hardcastle in the Mail even pinched the carbon based life forms crack. Is Guido bitter? He'd like a case of decent Margaux sent over from Associated Press this time. The Evening Standard's diary has been stealing stories from Guido and Iain for years without ever paying a penny. Guido is still smarting from receiving a mysterious letter from the Evening Standard headed "Dear Londoner's Diary Contributor"... is someone fiddling the expenses at Associated?

Competition : Vote for Best Green Tax Cut

Guido has selected for voting some of your Green tax cut proposals that seemed workable:

1. Big Jock Knew: Weight based transport tax - skinny people pay less for train and aircraft fares as they burn less CO2 transporting them.
   
   
2. AntiCitizenOne said... The ultimate green tax-cut would be a No-children tax credit. No people, no anthropomorphic. Go on, it's for the children!
   
   
3. Anonymous said... Give tax cuts to people who fart into emissions capture devices.
   
   
4. Barry said... Human Excrement tax credits for those who donate their human waste to facilities that turn it into energy. See here and here.

Vote: Which Green tax cut proposal do you favour?

View Results

Winning proposal gets a copy of the Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze.

Dave on Newsnight

Everyone seems to think Dave did well on Newsnight last night, in the sense that he was calm and didn't get rattled. However, Michael Crick is in all honesty no Paxman, the four presenters combined are actually easier to face than Newsnight's Grande Dame.

To be fair Dave faced a slippery nipple obssessed Paxman in 2005. It takes a bit of political courage to face Paxman. When did Gordon ever face Paxman?

No Sign of Bush on Porn-trait

Disappointingly, not as vulgar as Guido was hoping..

Cars are Greener than Planes & Trains

Back in 2004, Lancaster University's Professor Roger Kemp, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering, produced a report for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on the environmental impact of high-speed rail versus air and car travel. He used the example of the London to Edinburgh route to illustrate his findings. The conclusions were startling and rather annoying for the car hating Green fundamentalists.

With electricity generated from fossil fuels:

• Travel by conventional rail contributes as much to global warming as travel by car
• Over a 600 km sector, travel by high speed rail is as environmentally unfriendly as air travel
• Cars are more fuel efficient than planes or trains. Cars are greener.
  

Source : www.engineering.lancs.ac.uk/research/download/Environmental impact.pdf

Trains are heavy, get their energy inefficently down wires where much of the energy is lost and are fundamentally a nineteenth century point-to-point technology belonging to a slower era. Cars are light, fuel efficient, and a liberating, flexible form of transport suited to modern life. Greens hate them so much because they are ideologically opposed to capitalist modes of consumption. So why are the Tories giving headspace to this anti-Car, anti-Air travel nonsense with their penalty tax proposals?

Huhne : "Ban Petrol Cars"

It must be "Green Loon Day" today - the LibDems have just released (on recycled paper) a 46 page plan for a "Zero Carbon Britain". Which is a bit scary since we are carbon-based life forms.

Huhne also wants to ban petrol cars within a generation (by 2040). How he has changed from his days as a City slicker when he drove about the Square Mile in a big black petrol guzzling BMW 7 Series, with the self-effacing number plate "H11HNE". He now drives a greenish poseur politician's electo-petro Toyota Prius hybrid. The only green vehicle is a bike, like Boris has...

Competition : Suggest a Green Tax Cut

Lets have some suggestions for Green tax cuts in the comments. Guido might even dig out a prize, say a copy of the Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze for the best.*

Exempt bicycles and insulation from VAT was one suggestion. Maybe windmills should be VAT exempt, along with watermills and solar panels too. Sailing yachts are very environmentally sound, exempt them while we are at it...

Suggestions in the comments please...

*"Best" defined as whatever Guido likes.

Gummer-Goldsmith Green Taxes

If like Guido you remain resolutely unconvinced that the world is about to suffer climate catastrophe because of man-made carbon emissions, the idea of slapping "green" taxes on everything that moves just looks like an excuse for more taxes. The truth of this is evident in that they don't propose to cut taxes on less carbon intensive modes, which would incentivise their uptake.

If, as with Guido's family, there are three countries you call home, it is particularly penal. Short of slowly sailing around Western Europe with a horse and cart in the hold, Guido is going to have to pay a lot of "green taxes". Will it change his behaviour? No, it will just cost more. Will it make a blind bit of difference to the condition of the planet? No.

Gummer and Goldsmith (in particular) are obssessed with reversing the modern way of life for the many and returning us back to some romanticised peasant life. If they didn't have the carbon emissions bogeyman the environmentalists would make something else up to further this aim. This is just another racket giving eager politicians an excuse to raise taxes.

Rich & Mark's Monday Morning View

Times : Brown hit by new sleaze row over Labour funds

Friday Caption Contest (Late August Edition)

Evidence of the Coulson Effect?

When Guido first saw the "Anarchy in the UK" headline for yesterday's speech press release by Dave, he thought it was a little too knowing. But it worked for The Sun today. Today Dave's speech steals a line from Hilary Clinton, "it takes a village". Is he re-branding the the Tories as the Village People?

GuyNews TV : Cheney Argues Against Occupying Iraq (1994)

This fascinating clip doing the rounds is from Cheney's time back at the AEI think tank. Dick lucidly and cogently explains why Bush senior did not go to Baghdad in the first Gulf War. So what changed ex-Halliburton CEO, Dick Cheney's mind?

See what Cheney looks like when he is speaking the truth on GuyNews.TV.

How the Crowd Welcomed Them...

A number of co-conspirators have mentioned that the moment the stadium big screens showed* Brown and Merkel at the match last night, there was a rare example of spontaneous Anglo-German unity. Both ends of the crowd started booing. Alles Gut...

*If you recorded the match, stick it up on YouTube please.

See You Later

Every Week 2,000 People Go Bust

Gordon likes to talk about stability and prudence, but rising indebtedness and rising interest rates have led to people going bust and losing everything at the rate of 2,000 a week. Individuals are losing homes and businesses at an astonishing rate - triple that seen during the 1991/92 recession. Hardly evidence of a strong economy...

Insolvencies England & Wales

Source : Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) Insolvency Service and Companies House Executive Agencies.

Prezza's Million Pound Pension

Prezza will get a pension valued at well over a million pounds and paying him over £1,000 a week. He of course has no declared interest in his son's property dealing - largely involving politically sensitive planning applications or public sector land.

But it is nice to know the family has prospered so well while he was fighting so eloquently on behalf of the poor.

Prezza To Announce Retirement as MP Saturday

The Hull Daily Mail is reporting that Prezza will tell constituency activists at a party at his home on Saturday that he intends to step down as an MP. After trousering £300,000 for his memoirs (ghost written obviously) this was always on the cards.

Guido will miss the entertainment that the grammar mangling, pie-eating pugilist and serial adulterer brought to politics.

In the running for his seat: former Shipley MP, Chris Leslie, Jonathan Ashworth: a Tresury SpAd and Brownite loyalist, popular local councillor Steven Bayes and his spin-doctor son David Prescott.

It also occurs to Guido that the timing of the decision might indicate that Prezza thinks the election is very imminent...

Sith's Konrad Rewarded with Downing Street Job

Guido can reveal that Konrad Caulkett, the former Smith Institute "charity worker" who was responsible for organising the nearly two hundred events at 11 Downing Street which proved so controversial that the Charity Commissioners launched a statutory investigation into the affair, has become a Downing Street Special Adviser.

The Smith Institute, a charity widely seen as a front for Gordon Brown, who seemed to be the only beneficiary of the charity, acted as an integral part of his long campaign to become PM. By law it was supposedly a non-partisan, non-political organisation, yet it hosted a "how to beat Cameron" event to which the Conservatives formally objected.

Wilf Stevenson, the director of the institute claimed, somewhat implausibly, that there was no direct link to Gordon Brown. Guido revealed that Sarah Brown got Konrad Caulkett the job at the Smith Institute. Despite Konrad being at the centre of allegations that the Smith Institute broke the law, Sarah Brown has once again stepped in to help him get a job, this time as her SpAd. So despite him being suspected of various breaches of the Charity laws, despite denials of links to Gordon, he has been brought onto the No. 10 payroll. Downing Street sleaze clearly didn't end with Blair.

See also Sith attempt to cover-up use of No. 11, Mrs Brown recruits Konrad as the Sith apprentice, The back story to the Sith's Konrad, The public charity which refuses to talk to the public, Non-political charity does policy at No. 11, Sith's Konrad paid by charity to campaign for Balls' election, The Charity Commission announcement, The Sith and the Statesman.

Redwood Wrong on the BBC and the Bogeyman

John Redwood writing in the Sunday Telegraph about the BBC's coverage of his recent Policy Commission report made two interesting points.

The first point was that since the report was finished before Gordon became PM, how could it be, as claimed by Labour, a "lurch to the Right" after the negative polls of the last few weeks?

The second more bitter point: "I do not recall, every time Neil Kinnock made a statement as EU Commissioner, the BBC running the clip of him slipping on the beach. Gordon Brown's statements are not introduced by running the recent pictures of him picking his nose on the front bench. I look forward to fairer treatment in future."

Actually that is not quite true, BBC News 24 explicitly re-ran Gordon's nosepicking the next day. The presenters were smirking in a weirdly restrained manner and referred to "the allegation". French TV's premier late night current affairs show ran the footage to much hilarity in the studio, the female TV presenter saying haughtily something like "this is the man the British want as Prime Minister". Guido never misses an excuse to show it - much to the annoyance of some.

Here, once again, is the re-mixed version of "Gordon the Bogeyman". It has also been reconfigured for viewing on video enabled mobile phones (http://messagespace.co.uk/bogey) and released as a text-messaged viral to download. The idea being that people will show it on their phones to their mates down the pub.

Once you watch it, you won't be able to get it outta your head, unlike Gordon. You can see the close-up Bogeytastic re-mix again on GuyNews.TV.

Is this just typical Guidoisation, the trivialisation and personalisation of politics? You bet. Does this type of thing have an effect on voter opinion - for sure - ask David Steel about his spitting image puppet. For intellectual support for Guido's thesis read the hit political book of the summer, Drew Westen's The Political Brain: How People Vote and How to Change Their Minds: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

Gordon and House Prices

"I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery."

Gordon Brown, 1997 Budget Statement.

But Gordon did allow house prices to get out of control. Some of the housing market numbers are scary, the average house now costs 6 times average earnings - in London the figure is 10 times earnings. The historical long term figure is some 3 and half times earnings.

Is it any wonder that the average age of a first time buyer is 33 years old? Twentysomething families can't afford a home of their own.

Yield models suggest* that house prices have to fall 40% to return to the long term average.

The simple truth is that in real terms it is now twice as expensive to buy a house as it was before Gordon promised he would "not allow house prices to get out of control".

*Or rents could rise a corresponding amount.

Rich & Mark's Monday Morning View

Undercover Journalist Uncovered by Google

Iain has a story about the Daily Mirror Caught Trying to Infiltrate Conservative HQ with a posh girl. She came unstuck after they Googled her name and came up with her Mirror byline, then they checked the source of her email back to the Mirror's offices. Doh!

Iain mutters darkly about legal action - presumably lying on her CV and at the interview - which is a form of attempted fraud. Don't hold your breath on that going anywhere. Who hasn't?

Anyway isn't this what investigative journalists are supposed to do?

Friday Caption Contest

Mortgage Repossessions Set to Explode

"We will not return to the old boom and bust."

Gordon Brown, 11th Budget Statement, 21 March 2007

Housing market: Repossessions
Court actions for Recovery of Residential Housing and Land, England and Wales, from 1996

Source: Department for Constitutional Affairs & HM Courts Service

Telegraph Political Team in Meltdown

As reported here three weeks ago, it seems that the Little and Large blog is dead, it is an ex-blog. Jonathan Isaby and Brendan Carlin seem to have abandoned the idea. Look around some of the other blogs and they are also pretty dead. Ben Brogan at the Daily Mail and Danny Finkelstein at The Times are really the only serious Dead-Tree-Press political bloggers going now.

Elsewhere at the Telegraph the experienced George Jones has apparently been given the push in such a cack-handed way that he's suing and expected to get a six-figure pay-off. His job is being given to the silent-but-deadly Andrew Porter, of the Sun, formerly on the Sunday Times who is an old chum of Telegraph editor Will Lewis. Key qualities: won't tell Lewis not to be such a silly boy; won't be a member of Telegraph ancien regime.

Porter's place on the Sun (keep up) is being taken by Graeme Wilson of the Telegraph. Wilson's place on the Telegraph is being taken by James Kirkup from the Scotsman. Toby Helm is rumoured to have wanted to get out of the Lobby - if you'd been passed over for the top job you might conclude there was little point in hanging around to see if you got it next time. One of the things the imported Mailograph newsdesk didn't realise about him - his sister is married to Jonathan Powell, although that is not such an asset nowadays. The new Mailograph is obsessed with getting scoops, a-la Andrew Pierce. But a lot of Pierce's scoops stay exclusive, and with good reason.

Politicians Can't Hide from Guido

Dateline : Tuscany, Tuesday - via a co-conspirator.If Guido can get a shot David, so can Al Qaeda. Perhaps he thinks the feeble boyish moustache and tan disguise will fool them...

Boom to Bust : Stocks Down 10% this Month

Stocks dropped 4% today, the FTSE 100 is down 10% this month and big UK mortgage lender Northern Rock has halved in price since the beginning of the year. What are the political ramifications for Gordon? Well didn't he tell us he had abolished boom to bust?

BBC v Bloggers

Am enjoying the BBC being on the back foot and apologetic as a result of stories by Iain and the chaps at the Biased BBC blog being picked up by the Dead Tree Press.

The fact is that the BBC worldview is a cultural suppressant. We all learn from the BBC that America is bad, Israel is very bad, businessman are bad, all problems can be solved by throwing more money at them, but we are all going to die from global warming anyway. They are the BBC, that is what they do.

Worse still the BBC is an innovations black hole. It sucks young talent into a slow monolithic bureaucracy, we don't have a Silicon Valley culture of innovation because our best and brightest go work for a not-for-profit para-statal broadcaster which crowds out private sector start-ups. The iPlayer? Re-hashed Microsoft crap which is not even open source, despite the BBC being a "public service". How many enterprises never get off the ground because the BBC is in the market sector and for-profit enterprises can't compete and make a profit? With the lack of a for-profit mentality comes a depressing culture.

Come the party conference season the hangar-sized media centres will be filled with journalists, approximately half of whom will be from the BBC. Yet Sky News, with a fraction of the resources, will match their output story wise. Last year at the Tory party conference Guido watched various BBC camera teams film the media pack that was surrounding Boris. They all had their own presenters reporting duplicate stories for different BBC outlets. A complete waste of money that would not happen if the BBC could not coerce billions from the public.

UPDATE : Bloggers are even correcting NASA climate change data - it now turns out that 1934 not 1998 was the hottest year in the US since records began.

Guido Writes for New Statesman

Bet you thought you'd never see that. Don't worry it "was for charidee". Amnesty actually. The article is about the Chinese online campaigner and now political prisoner, Shi Tao, and an email that got him a ten year prison sentence.

Tomorrow Guido will be writing here about the wrongdoings of a New Statesman ex-staff member. Someone who should actually be locked up for political corruption.

Bring Me Sunshine..

Schools Shadow Michael Gove has just sent out a press release saying “I’d like to congratulate Britain’s A-level students on their successes. Securing good results in these examinations follows years of hard work and dedicated application. Today is a day for celebrating achievement and excellence and I very much hope that as many students as possible now find the place they want at university.”

Which is a change from the Tory responses of the past "these dumbed down grades are worthless and will only get you a place doing some mickey mouse degree at a third-rate graduate factory". The Govemeister is doing that Cameroonie thing of being sickly sweet and positively optimistic. They are voters after all...

The Miliblog is Back...

And this time it is Ed. Guido understands that David wanted to continue blogging but the FCO mandarins explained that whilst it was fine to pontificate about green wonkery on his blog when he was at Defra, blogging about the negotiating strategy with the North Koreans was more problematic.

Never mind, his brother Ed is going to continue the family tradition of wasting the taxpayers money writing the blogging equivalent of drying paint. This is a screenshot of the prototype site. Stop monging on the web Miliband minor and do some work...

Wonder how many thousands this will cost the taxpayers?

Lembits News Bits

Katy Taylor-Richards emails to confirm that she reads the Daily Sport and can confirm that the Cheeky Boy has a Lembits News Bits column. "I only get it for the political commentary" - the perfect excuse to buy the Daily Sport...

Totty Watch : Remind You of Maggie?

The on/off Margaret Thatcher movie from Oliver Stone, the maker of JFK, is rumoured to be on, with the gorgeous Sienna Miller to play the young Margaret Thatcher. Just in case anyone accuses Guido of sexism, note that the pictures (from Layer Cake) are from her memorable scene with Daniel Craig, the male totty d'jour. He has not been lined up to play Dennis...

click to enlarge