Gordon Prentice - Talking Politics

I suppose I shouldn’t feel guilty. But I do.

In 1998, our ever trusting Canadian cousins bought four ex Royal Navy submarines for C$750m (about £470m at today's exchange rate).

Bad move!

The Canadians bought rust buckets and have spent a fortune getting them ready to put to sea.

Only now – 14 years after the purchase – is the re-fitted HMCS Windsor ship-shape. Well, sort of.

I’ve been following the fortunes of these submarines for over a decade.

In 2002, four years after their sale to the Canadians, I was told that the cost of making the submarines fit to put to sea was commercially confidential. I then discovered that the subs were sold without a warranty covering their design and build.

The subs were decommissioned in 1994 and taken out of service by the Royal Navy after spending – for the four of them – a combined total of 1,077 days at sea.

HMS Ursula was at sea for a mere 199 days before it was decided she was surplus to requirements.

Three of the four submarines, now reincarnated as Her Majesty’s Canadian Subs, are expected to be operational next year – an incredible 15 years after their purchase. 

Defence procurement is, and always has been, a national scandal.

On both sides of the Atlantic.

Here in Canada, the entire political establishment is focussed on the F-35 scandal where the Conservative Harper Government knowingly deceived Parliament and the nation by claiming the super expensive fast jets Canada is buying from the US are a lot cheaper than is, apparently, the case.

There is a staggering C$10 billion gap between what the Auditor General says is the true cost of the fighter programme and what the Harper Government says. 

The F-35s featured prominently in last year’s Federal election campaign.

The Conservatives, who were returned to power with a clear majority, persuaded Canadians their sums were right.

When they were wrong.

Here, the CBC's political pundits, assess the damage to the Harper Government.

Lord Ahmed

If there is ever a case for electing the House of Lords we need look no further than Lord Ahmed.

Did he or did he not offer a bounty on Barack Obama?

Who knows? But it sounds plausible to me.

Just the kind of thing that would get a tumultuous round of applause from any audience in Pakistan.

Lord Ahmed gets coverage because he is a Peer of the Realm and his utterances are, by that fact alone, intrinsically newsworthy. Had he remained a fishmonger in Rotherham I doubt his views would be reported so widely.

His peerage gives him a platform to say what he wants to say.

(That’s why John Prescott took a peerage. Not to please his wife.  Not for the fine dining. Oh no no no!)

But Lord Ahmed got me thinking about Pakistan.

This is what the late Christopher Hitchens had to say in Vanity Fair, published in July last year and re-published in his compendium of essays, Arguably, which I am currently dipping into.

…(quoting myself from 2001) if Pakistan were a person, he (and it would have to be a he) would have to be completely humourless, paranoid, insecure, eager to take offence, and suffering from self-righteousness, self-pity and self-hatred. 

That last triptych of vices is intimately connected. The self-righteousness comes from the claim to represent a religion: The very name “Pakistan” is an acronym of Punjab, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and so forth, the resulting word in the Urdu language meaning “Land of the Pure”.

The self-pity derives from the sad fact that the country has almost nothing to be proud of: virtually barren of achievements and historically based on an amputation and mutilation of India in 1947 and its own self-mutilation in Bangladesh.

The self-hatred is the consequence of being pathetically, permanently mendicant: an abject begging-bowl country that is nonetheless run by a super-rich and hyper-corrupt Punjabi elite. As for paranoia: This not so hypothetical Pakistani would also be a hardened anti-Semite, moaning with pleasure at the butchery of Daniel Pearl and addicted to blaming his self-inflicted woes on the all-powerful Jews.

Whoa! Steady on.

Hitchens was never one to mince his words.

But there is some truth there.

Pakistan is a completely dysfunctional country, surviving on financial transfusions from the loathed United States. 

Their military spending, for example, is out of control while illiteracy, especially amongst women and girls, is scandalously high – and tolerated.

In private conversations, Pakistanis - at home and in the overseas diaspora – readily admit the country, mired in corruption, is a complete basket case.

Few are brave enough to say so out loud. 

The Toronto Star reacquaints its readers with George Galloway following his surprise by-election victory in Bradford last week.

Olivia Ward describes the firebrand MP as 

a grizzled Scots-Irish scrapper with a pugnacious style and pumped-up ego

The Canadian Government banned Galloway from entering the country in 2009 but the decision was overturned by the Courts the following year.

Here is Galloway telling an admiring crowd in Toronto in October 2010 how Canada has lost its way on its Middle East policy.

Doctors for Fair Taxation

Most political parties freak out at the very thought of raising taxes. They believe, quite mistakenly in my view, that such a stance would condemn them to perpetual opposition.

So it needs others to raise the issue to shame politicians into action.

Here is a nice piece in today’s Toronto Star from a group of Ontario doctors who treat the health consequences of growing inequality.

I was right. Cash for access is not going away.

Canada’s Budget

Today, we await the Federal budget when Canada’s Finance Minister traditionally sports a new pair of shoes.

Jim Flaherty’s Budget has been well trailed and everyone expects a raft of austerity measures and a hike in the retirement age to 67. 

In the last Federal Election in May last year there wasn’t even a hint of this happening.

No point having an election on the real issues that matter to people!

Meanwhile, the minority Liberal Government in Ontario delivered its Budget on Tuesday, vowing to eliminate the C$15.3 billion deficit and balance the budget by 2017/18.

The Leader of Ontario’s Conservatives, Tim Hudak, promises to vote against the Budget, leaving the NDP in the powerful position of bringing down the Government and forcing a new election, if it so chooses.

The pundits predict the NDP will get enough in the way of concessions to prop up the Liberals and avoid the expense (and voter irritation) of another election six month’s after the last one.

So the NDP are “consulting” Ontarians before the big vote on the Budget on Monday.

This kind of “consultation” is totally meaningless.

Last year’s election campaign was almost completely silent on the deficit even though the Auditor General had flagged up the issue, warning that wage freezes in hospitals and schools were on the cards.

There is not much point having the Auditor General publish, by law, a pre-election report on the Province’s finances if the political parties, for their own reasons, conspire to ignore his findings. 

Attachments:

Ontario Budget 2012.pdf

[Ontario Budget 2012]

5169 Kb

Cameron tries to draw a line under it all and put the cash for access row behind him.

Somehow, I don't think this will be quite so easy.

NDP elects Mulcaire

Canada’s left of centre NDP has a new leader.

After a gruelling seven month leadership campaign, the fluently bi-lingual Quebec MP, Thomas Mulcaire, is now the leader of the Official Opposition and – with a little stretch of the imagination – the Prime Minister in waiting.

Mulcaire follows in the footsteps of Jack Layton, the revered leader who brought the NDP from third party also-rans to become Canada’s Official Opposition.

Tragically, Layton died last year after his election triumph swept the sclerotic Liberals away. For the first time ever, they are relegated to third party status in the Commons.

The NDP has 101 MPs in the 308 seat House of Commons. But in last year’s federal election, the NDP came second in a further 121.

So there is everything to play for.

Today, Mulcaire is pitched straight into the fray as the Commons returns after its March recess.

Toronto Star columnist, Tim Harper, writes that the Liberal Leader, Bob Rae, will lose his free ride as the big man across the aisle (from the Conservatives) with the arrival this afternoon of Mulcaire.

Curiously, Mulcaire used to be a Liberal before joining the NDP which he now leads.

And Bob Rae used to be the NDP Premier of Ontario many years ago and he is now a Liberal.

This kind of cross dressing couldn’t happen in the UK.

At least, I don’t think so.

An international arrest warrant has been issued for Michael Misick, the former Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

He is wanted in connection with allegations of corruption and money laundering.

Misick featured in the recent BBC Panorama programme about the tax cheat Lord Ashcroft in which the peer’s financial interests in the islands were put under the microscope.

So far there is no indication that Ashcroft will be suing the BBC for defamation.

He wouldn’t dare.

Instead, the usually litigious Ashcroft wants to know if there is an audit process to ensure the BBC is politically neutral.

Pretty timid stuff.

Greaves and Birtwistle. Compare and Contrast.

In the third reading debate on the Health and Social Care Bill, Baron Greaves of Pendle tells the House of Lords 

I am frightened by this Bill and will vote against it.

True to his word, Greaves is the only Lib Dem peer to vote against. 73 of his colleagues combine with 170 Conservative peers to force this deadly Bill through the Upper House.

Down the corridor, Burnley’s one term Lib Dem MP, the gullible Gordon Birtwistle, believes the Bill will usher in a bright new future where

Decisions about the health service will be taken by GPs and the people they represent.

In a rambling speech, painful to read, he returns to a favourite theme – accident and emergency at Burnley General Hospital.

Seems to me that people must be fed up hearing Birtwistle endlessly going on about marches he led and petitions he organised to have the A&E department reinstated.

Why doesn't he just put a sock in it?

50p top rate “too difficult to collect”

I laugh out loud when I hear George Osborne explain that the 50p top rate is too difficult to collect and should therefore be cut to 45p.

I recall a nice piece written by the Herald’s Iain MacWhirter a couple of weeks ago

…imagine if this principle were applied to people further down the income scale? The builder, for example, who offers to do your bathroom cash in hand, no questions asked. "Well, you know", he'd say "I'm sorry, but VAT is a very inefficient tax because it's so easy to avoid. So I'm going to do the Revenue a favour by not paying it." And I wonder what the Revenue would do if we miserable PAYE payers said: "Look, income tax is economically harmful because it lowers my incentive to work, so I've decided, in the interests of the broader economy, to withhold payment until further notice."

Two years ago, the American Supreme Court bizarrely ruled that Corporations are persons and, as such, can make political donations to candidates of their choice.

This eccentric decision is about to fuel the most expensive Presidential election in the nation’s history.

Now people in Vermont want to change the US Constitution to make it clear to all (including Justices of the Supreme Court) that corporations are not persons.

Despite the encouraging response from voters in Vermont, this noble effort is, alas, doomed to fail. The US Constitution is notoriously difficult to change.

In the meantime, the Republican Presidential hopefuls continue to slug it out.

I laugh out loud when I hear the BBC’s Jim Naughtie describe the contest as a knife fight in a phone box.

Roughly half of all UK State Pensioners who retire to live overseas have their State pensions frozen. The other half enjoy regular annual upratings.

So a London pensioner retiring to, say, Jamaica gets an uprated pension but her neighbour who retires to, say, Trinidad sees her pension frozen from the day she leaves the UK.

Unfair?

I’d say so.

UK Pensioners living abroad are naturally angry and upset about this. But they had great hopes that things would change with the arrival of Lib Dem, Steve Webb, in the Department of Work and Pensions.

After all, Professor Webb is the pensions expert.

And he signed an early day motion in 2007 which specifically called for all UK pensions to be uprated annually.

This is EDM 858 which Webb supported on 18 April 2007: 

That this House notes with concern that 520,000 British pensioners living abroad have their pensions frozen in value and thus not increased when the pensions in the United Kingdom receive annual increases; believes the practice of freezing these pensions is wholly unfair, discriminatory and irrational especially when some pensioners living overseas do have their pensions increased annually; believes that all pensioners living abroad, many of whom have made lifelong mandatory payments to their state pensions, are deserving of this annual increase; and urges the Government to bring forward proposals to end the evident unfairness in the current arrangements.

Many ambitious politicians steer well clear of signing Early Day Motions. Signing one pins you to a position. It means the loss of flexibility that upwardly mobile politicians prize so dearly.

But in 2007, I suspect Webb believed he had more chance of winning the national lottery than becoming Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.  It probably never occurred to him that he might be in a position to deliver the clearly stated position set out in EDM 858. 

Webb has been actively involved in the debate on frozen pensions for years. He can’t say he signed the EDM in ignorance of the facts.

In January 2004 he asked the then Pensions Minister, Malcolm Wicks, for an estimate of the cost of increasing the state pension in line with the usual uprating for UK citizens who reside in countries where the UK state pension is frozen. (£400m since you ask.)

He tabled an amendment to the Pensions Bill in 2004 stipulating that

all state retirement pensions in payment to pensioners living outside the United Kingdom shall be subject to annual uprating by the same percentage rate as is applied to such pensions payable to pensioners living in the United Kingdom. 

The Daily Telegraph reports he withdrew it “after some blandishments from the then Minister, Chris Pond”.

Steve Webb knows there is an injustice that cries out to be remedied.

And he is in the fortunate position of being able to do something about it.

If he chooses to.

Attachments:

Frozen pensions.pdf

[Frozen Pensions. House of Commons Library note]

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Andrew Scheer, Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons was in the Strangers Bar on the night Eric Joyce allegedly head butted a Conservative MP.

We are told he left before the brawl began.

Just as well. 

Imagine the headlines if he had been caught up in the melee.

Delicious!

The Toronto Star colourfully observes 

While visiting the Mother of all Parliaments in London, the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, Andrew Scheer, just missed the mother of all punch-ups between two British MPs.

Can’t recall ever seeing a fight in the Strangers bar myself but, then again, in my day very few Conservative MPs ventured in.

They were upstairs in the Smoking Room where the leather upholstery was more to their liking.

The absurd Minister for Public Safety, Vic Toews, tells the Canadian House of Commons on Monday that MPs should back the Conservatives who want to give the police powers to snoop on internet users without seeking a warrant first.

If they disagree, says Toews, they are siding with the child pornographers.

Whoa! Steady on.

The Globe and Mail’s distinguished columnist, Margaret Wente, goes into print today declaring that, on this one, she is with the child pornographers.

Such has been the reaction in the on-line community that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pausing to reflect.

A perfect storm is engulfing Canada's Conservative Government with even some of his own MPs declaring the legislation goes too far.

Now, in a further twist to the story,  Toews’ private life goes public with tweets promising further revelations.

“Vic wants to know about you. Let’s get to know about Vic.”

I strongly disapprove of this.

So why am I writing about it, I hear you ask.

Good point.   

I suppose the tweets reflect the outrage many Canadians feel that their right to privacy is about to be invaded.

And that those who care about privacy are being branded as the allies of child pornographers.

Here is internet lawyer, Michael Geist, explaining everything you wanted to know about lawful access, but were (understandably) afraid to ask.

Tomorrow, 10 February is Barclay's Bonus Day. That’s when we find out how much Bob Diamond will be getting.

In 2010, Diamond’s total remuneration was a cool £9,000,000 but other top bankers also hit the jackpot. (see attached note)

Move Your Money suggests people with Barclays Accounts should take this opportunity to do something.

They could close the account. Or write to Bob Diamond. Or, perhaps, do something a bit more inventive.

Move Your Money and its sister organisation in the United States encourage people to bank with their local financial institutions and credit unions.

There has never been a better time to give the big banks a poke in the eye by taking your trade elsewhere.

Meanwhile…I see that Peter Mandelson once cited Bob Diamond as being the “unacceptable face of banking”.

There's an accolade from the man who is –or rather used to be -  “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”.

Attachments:

Remuneration in the UK.pdf

[Banking Executives' Remuneration]

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