Vote Johnnie Curwen - SLDC Bowness North 3rd of May 2007

Please read my weekly blog on this page.
Updated every Friday Morning - The current one is for the week beginning Friday 20th April.

Friday 20th April

Cowardly politics.

Here we go again. Every time an election is called in South Lakeland a certain group of local activists rush to erect their posters, and then take their time during the rest of the campaign to remove or vandalise all ours.

During the General Election Campaign two years ago 400 of our posters were ripped down in one night. Last year numerous poster sites were vandalised in and around Ambleside and Kendal.

This year things have taken a turn for the worse, not only has a poster board been vandalised and torn down twice in a private garden in Windermere, but the owner and their family have been subjected to intimidating and threatening phone calls.

At last years Count for the local elections in the Town Hall at Kendal, the husband of a well known County Councillor from South Lakeland, was heard bragging about all the Tory posters he had ripped down and stolen. And it is an open secret that a certain County Councillor not far from Windermere delights in tearing down Tory posters himself.

This is childish and cowardly behaviour. If you have differing opinions on the political front, engage in meaningful debate. To hide behind threatening phone calls is sinister, intimidating and alarming, especially when coming from members of our own community.

Monday 16th April

The real Gordon Brown (a little longer than normal but very important)

I hope you all had a good Easter, ours was very busy with the B&B but the weather was a real bonus and the children are finally over the Chicken Pox outbreak!

I have decided to dedicate a piece to Gordon Brown. Whilst the recent pensions raid scandal emerging around the Chancellor will be uncomfortable for him, it is interesting that it has taken so long for this story to surface, and that this is the only one to emerge from a large number of unsavoury episodes our Chancellor has been deeply involved in. In this piece, I will explain that this is because our probable future Prime Minister employs ruthless and dishonest tactics to manage the news agenda around him, and it is this system of manipulation and duplicity that is the real essence of the New Labour project, typified by Gordon Brown.

Prior to gaining office, Brown created an inner circle of lieutenants around him to ensure tight security and to insulate himself from the disreputable black arts he was to employ to gain and then underpin his power in government. He recruited, at the recommendation of Peter Mandelson, Charlie Whelan as his press spokesman. With a public school education, and a poor politics degree from the City of London Polytechnic, Whelan started his career as a foreign exchange dealer in the City, but a year later he adopted a cockney accent and went to work for the AEUW as a researcher. A member of the communist party for fifteen years until 1990, the raffish Whelan was perfect for Gordon. He set about mercilessly manipulating the press and instigating Brown’s dirty tricks agenda. Ken Clarke, when Chancellor, was one of the first to suffer from the underhand use of leaks used to destabilise the Conservatives. His private correspondence to European commissioners was leaked to the Sunday Times and a total of twenty nine embargoed budget press releases were leaked to the Mirror newspaper. Jill Rutter, the Treasuries official spokesman, enthused that Whelan was;

“Doing a great if disreputable job. His Guerrilla tactics are creating problems for us all the time. The leaks are spun in a damaging way for the government”.

With feigned sincerity Brown commented that;

“Nobody can condone the leaking of sensitive budget matters the day before a budget.”

Once in office, Brown was determined to manipulate the system to ensure he would not fall victim to the leaks he used so effectively against the Tories. To do this he would set about completely controlling the news agenda around him. Prior to his arrival, the Treasury considered its relationship with the press to be restricted to the minor but necessary task of releasing carefully checked statistics and figures into the public domain, but to the incoming Brown, the press was a weapon to attack opponents, conceal mistakes, and protect his reputation. Treasury officials quickly found themselves sidelined and ‘external advisors’ were instead recruited to manage policy implementation, full-scale politicisation of the civil service was underway. Brown eliminated any potentially damaging paper trail by installing his principal economics advisor, Ed Balls, in an adjacent office and communicated with him directly or electronically using floppy disks. He held regular daily conversations with Tony Blair, but in a break with convention, the historic practice of allowing officials to listen to and take notes was dismissed by them both as ludicrous. Gordon Brown had no intention of being held to account by anyone. Once elected and installed as Chancellor, Brown was presented with a state of the nations finances with what Treasury officials described as a ‘fantastic set of figures’, this he immediately resented, and began plotting to mis-represent the facts to bolster his position, undermine the Conservatives, and remove from the record any credit they could legitimately claim.

Brown began by repeatedly using the slogan ‘black hole’ to describe what he was faced with on arrival in office. Setting about his first budget speech he then described his inheritance as “instability, underinvestment, unemployment, and a waste of talent.” He then manipulated the first economic statement issued from the Treasury whilst under his control. On his instructions, the public would be given less information about taxation, Treasury spending tables would be removed and replaced with analysis damming the Conservative legacy, and he also ordered that the strong growth of the economy should be concealed from the public so that he could claim the credit.

This gives some indication of the real Gordon Brown, and the story surrounding the pensions scandal is another, but by no means exceptional, example. But to understand the pension tax story properly, one needs to start with a broader view of the situation. Once in office, Brown set about implementing the biggest change to the welfare system for generations. He admired the system of ‘tax credits’ that Clinton had introduced in the United States, and set about introducing them in Britain. The attraction to Brown was that the cost of tax credits, unlike benefits, could be concealed from the welfare budget, additionally the high cost of implementation would be principally borne by employers. But the principal attraction was that the recipients would be increasingly dependant on the state for their income, which appealed greatly to Brown’s fondness for social engineering and controlling the way people live and behave.

Tax credits, however, would only form one half of his eye-catching flagship initiative, the other was the ‘New Deal’, a vastly expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful, benefit to work scheme. His real dilemma however was paying for this without overtly increasing taxation, but he had already worked out how to do this before even gaining office. At this point we need to introduce Geoffrey Robinson to the picture, another of Brown’s trusted lieutenants and a handy bankroller too. A millionaire businessman and Labour MP close to Brown for many years, Robinson had an interesting past that included receiving £200,000 from Robert Maxwell for signing off the accounts of a business that was going into liquidation (he also failed to register this income as was required in the House of Commons). Rather more conventionally, Brown also received legitimate but significant sums of money from Maxwell, writing self promoting propaganda for the Mirror’s sister paper the ‘Daily Record’ in Scotland. Brown had closely associated himself with Robinson, a businessman who was busy opening secret Swiss bank accounts, undeclared to the Inland Revenue, whilst employed by British Leyland and who held large amounts of cash in secret offshore tax havens. Significant amounts of this money would be offered to Brown whilst in opposition to covertly employ accountants from the firm ‘Arthur Anderson’ to devise ways of raising stealth taxes to pay for pet schemes like New Deal (Andersen’s you may recall were the infamous accountants for the Enron Corporation). As a result of this work, a windfall tax on the utility companies was neatly combined with, here we go, the abolition of tax credits for pension funds to raise the money Brown required for his vastly expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful, New Deal scheme. Despite detailed and convincing advice that this was a bad idea, Brown needed the money. To him a pension was money the state handed out to poverty stricken people in Labour constituencies like in his home town Kirkcaldy. In his mind, hard working Middle Englanders honestly trying to save for their future retirement were disregarded as unimportant.

Gordon Brown exemplifies the New Labour project, a project that has done nothing for the people of Britain, except deliver a new way of functioning in Government. A system that relentlessly employs lies, dirty tricks, falsehoods and emotional blackmail to ensure power by misrepresentation. Gordon Brown seeks to relentlessly project himself as a good honest man, a great Chancellor, and an even greater future Prime Minister. The reality is very different and very ugly. Recent events have hardly touched on the levels of dishonesty this man has projected whilst in office. If you are interested in really finding out about Gordon Brown, I strongly urge you to read his biography by Tom Bower, the source for the material here, and a book that should be compulsory reading for all Conservative Party activists dedicated to defeating New Labour and their Lib Dem puppets.

Monday 2nd April

At long last we seem to be on the home straight re Chicken Pox in our household. I hope you all have a very happy Easter.

Council tax revaluation is taking place by stealth across England

I am very concerned at reports of “paparazzi” surveillance being covertly rolled out by the Valuation Office Agency – an arm of the Inland Revenue. In a stealth council tax revaluation exercise, every home in the country faces photographs of their home – inside and outside – being stored on a computer database, in order to identify feature’s which could be taxed.

• Two million homes already snapped by stealth: Covert photogrpahy is already under way by the council tax inspectors, despite the supposed delay in the English council tax revaluation. New figures have revealed that in the last year, the number of photographs of homes stored on the system has soared from half a million to over two million.

• Estate agents collaborating in privacy raid: The Valuation Office Agency is also using taxpayers’ money to obtain information on the outside and inside of people’s homes – by buying up the data from estate agents, Rightmove. Unsuspecting homeowners are putting their property on the market without realising that the tax inspectors are using it to find out how to hike up council tax bills.

• Tax spies armed with clipboards and long-distance cameras: The ‘Health & Safety’ manual of the council tax inspectors reveals that they are being armed with telescopic lenses & cameras, clipboards, laser pens and location plans and maps of every home. The inspectors are instructed to record any abusive or hostile behaviour by householders. They have the power to impose £500 fines, via the courts, on any household who refuses entry or obstructs the state snoopers.

• Scrap these powers says Opposition: Conservatives are pledging that the next Conservative Government will abolish the powers of the inspectors to enter people’s homes and gardens.

“I am concerned that the privacy and property of honest, law-abiding citizens is under threat from paparazzi-style council tax inspectors.

“There is already public unease at Labour plans for a compulsory national Identity Card Database and the new Children’s Database. The Government is now rolling out a property photo database to match and conducting a council tax revaluation by stealth across the country.

“Not only are civil liberties under threat, but I fear the photographs taken by these tax inspectors will be used to hike taxes on family homes – by taxing features like conservatories, extensions, gardens and patios. Conservatives are the only party campaigning against these plans to send camera-wielding inspectors into Bowness & Windermere’s bedrooms, bathrooms and gardens, and we will abolish the snoopers’ powers of entry.”

Monday 25th March

Another week another case of chicken pox in our household, Gray developed spots on Friday afternoon, 15 days after Olivia’s first spot! Any way on with this week’s blog…

This Government has given us more laws but less order.

As a result, violent crime and gun crime have doubled under Labour.

The Liberal Democrats claim that their policies would cut crime. In reality, they would allow shoplifters, burglars, vandals, car thieves and other ‘non-violent’ criminals to escape punishment in jail and give prisoners the vote, Simon Hughes recently confirmed this Lib Dem policy, saying that prisoners ‘should retain their vote.’ (Liberal Democrats, Press Release, 18 December 2006).

However, I welcome the Lib Dems’ conversion to proposals for ‘honesty in sentencing’ and for more police on our streets, both of which we called for long before the last General Election. We also welcome their opposition to Labour’s ID cards scheme.

To cut crime, we must tackle the underlying causes, such as family breakdown, children living in state care, drug addiction, unemployment and educational under-achievement.

I accept that the state does not have all the answers. Tackling crime, anti-social behaviour and poverty is a social responsibility in which we all must take a role. Individuals, our community and businesses must all play their part and I intend to lead the way in our local community, working for a better future for us all.

Monday 19th March 2007

Thank you for visiting my second weekly blog.

What a week in our household;

Olivia has had Chicken Pox, along with most of the rest of the village and Gray seems to have gone down with some form of sympathetic illness we can only pray won’t lead to him catching it as well. Anyway onto the political stuff…

 Government plans to levy £120 year bin taxes on South Lakeland

New taxes will be unfair and harm the local environment

Government plans to introduce new rubbish taxes, on top of council tax are becoming an increasingly likely proposal. It has been revealed that Downing Street is actively considering introducing additional ‘user charges’ for household rubbish collection.

·            Under the clandestine plans for new bin taxes, hidden microchips will be used to weigh the contents of each household’s rubbish bin and then allow the town hall to levy a weekly or monthly bill based on its weight. Locks would have to be installed on every bin, and wheelie bins would be compulsory.

• New municipal ‘bin inspectors’ would be employed to police the system, fining those who do not use their wheelie bins or who leave rubbish bags outside the bin.
• The Keep Britain Tidy Campaign has warned that rubbish taxes would cause a surge in fly-tipping, with families being hit the hardest. Such taxes are also expected to cause a surge in ‘backyard burning’; in the Republic of Ireland where such controversial taxes have already been introduced, one in ten households now burn their rubbish in their back garden to avoid paying, filling the air with toxic chemicals.

This on top of their recently announced proposal to reduce rubbish collection to once every other week would seem utter madness.

“There is already massive public resentment at the way working families and pensioners are being punished by punitive levels of council tax. Now every household in South Lakeland faces the prospect of new rubbish taxes on top. I fear poorest families will be hit the hardest.

“Such bin taxes threaten to damage the local environment by causing a surge in fly-tipping and backyard burning in local neighbourhoods. No one believes that Gordon Brown would cut council taxes if top-up charges were introduced. This threatens to become yet another Labour stealth tax quietly supported by the Lib Dem’s.”

Monday 12th March 2007

Lib Dem - Labour plans to tax South Lakeland homes with new house price tax

I am increasingly concerned at joint moves by Labour’s Gordon Brown and Liberal Democrats’ Menzies Campbell to hit South Lakeland with a new house price tax.

• New house price tax say LibDems: Liberal Democrats have recently endorsed new tax plans, backing a controversial new house price tax. It calls for taxing “unearned economic rent” to “stabilise the property market” by introducing the “satisfactory” Danish model of a “national 1 per cent property tax”. This would be on top of plans for a new local income tax of up to 5 per cent on both basic and higher rates of income tax.
• House tax backed by Labour: This house price tax is already being introduced in the UK by Labour Ministers. From April 2007, Northern Ireland residents will be hit with a house price tax of 0.63 per cent of their home’s value every year (local taxes in the Province are lower than in mainland Britain). Gordon Brown’s review of town hall finances is actively considering how to implement such a scheme across Britain. The Government has sheepishly admitted that middle classes will pay more under such a tax.
• South Lakeland would be hit hard: Under a 1 per cent house price tax, the average property in Bowness & Windermere would now pay a local tax bill of £2,153 a year.

 
 I am concerned that both Gordon Brown and Menzies Campbell are actively planning to introduce a house price tax – and cynically tap into the rise in property values in recent years.

Families and pensioners who have saved and improved their homes face the threat of soaring tax bills, without any improvements in their local services. Just because house prices have risen doesn’t mean that local residents can afford even higher local taxes.

Law-abiding, decent people are already struggling to meet the rising cost of mortgages, utility bills and local taxes. I doubt that these Liberal Democrat - Labour plans for weighty tax bills will be welcome on Bowness & Windermere’s doorsteps.