Month: August 2014

#ukip, @MarkReckless, #NigelFarage, #NMW & Tax ‘Cuts’ #RochesterandStrood #RochesterStrood

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Nigel Farage recently announced that he would take all those on the National Minimum Wage out of Income Tax. On the surface that sounds like a bold move. On the surface.

From 1st October this year, the hourly rate for someone on the NMW will be £6.50 per hour.  If that someone works 40 hours per week, 52 weeks of the year then that works out at £13,520 per year.  Their personal tax allowance will be £10,000 so they only pay Income Tax at 20% on £3,520.  The amount paid works out at £704 or £13.54 per week.  Certainly not to be sniffed at, but hardly the largesse that one might first think.

However, Value Added Tax is levied at 20% and, if those benefiting from Farage’s tax cut spend all or most of that £13.54 per week then they are receiving with one hand and paying most, if not all back to the Treasury with the other.  VAT, being a regressive tax, bears down most on those with the lowest incomes, because, more likely than not, they will spend every extra pound that they receive, unlike those higher up the income scale.

It would also seem that some ukippers (on Twitter at least) think that VAT is levied purely to pay our annual EU subscription and so it too may be scrapped.  True, it is a requirement of membership, but the money raised by it in the United Kingdom is well in excess of that needed to pay our sub.  As a consequence, we will not be scrapping VAT any time soon, if ever, given Farage’s proposed (costed?) spending plans to date. Moreover, Farage recognises that we get £7 back from every £10 we pay into the EU and plans to continue (at the moment) with maintaining that 70% of EU spend, but not via Brussels.

The hourly rate for the NMW that I have quoted above is for those aged 21 and over.  The rate for those aged between 18 and 20, inclusive, is £5.13 per hour or £10,670.40 per year.  The amount of Income Tax paid being is £134.08.  If Farage makes good on his promise the cut amounts to a pay increase of £2.58 per week for 18 to 20 year olds.

The NMW hourly rate for those aged under 18 is £3.79 (or £7,883.20 per year) and for apprentices is £2.73 per hour (or £5,678.40 per year).  Neither group would, of course, benefit from Farage’s tax change.  The rate for apprentices is for those aged 16 to 18 and those aged 19 or over who are in their first year of their apprenticeship.  All other apprentices are entitled to the National Minimum Wage for their age.

I am not holding my breath as to whether Farage would raise the NMW for those not benefiting from his taking those on the hourly higher rates out of the range of Income Tax.  Elsewhere in the ukip forest, influential members of ukip want to see the NMW scrapped.  One assumes this is not so employers may pay more per hour.  There are some benighted individuals who think the NMW keeps wages low.  Perhaps it does, but do they seriously want to go back to the days before its introduction?

Also, you will have noticed that if you work 29 and a half hours per week, at £6.50 per hour for 52 weeks, then you already pay no Income Tax and, if you work 37 and a half hours per week, at £5.13 per hour for 52 weeks, then you too already pay no Income Tax. Who is more likely than not to work less than 40 hours per week for 52 weeks per year? Women, often in part time jobs; Black and Ethnic Minorities; People With Disabilities; anyone in part time work; people with casual contracts and those on zero hours contracts. Oh, and those white working class (left behind) males flocking to ukip to be shorn like sheep whose fleeces are more than ready for the clippers.

It has been estimated that taking all those out of the NMW out of tax will cost £13 billion per year.  We have no idea where that money will come from, although as mentioned above, it may well be partly, if not almost completely recouped through VAT. And I have not added in the revenue accruing from purchases on which other imposts are levied, for example alcohol and tobacco.

Look at in another way, though.  Farage would lose £13 billion of tax revenue per year were his proposal implemented and yet the resulting benefits per person on NMW would be modest, to say the least.  There are, therefore, a lot of low paid people in the United Kingdom.  If Farage really wanted to make a real difference to their lives, he would be lecturing his mates in the City, ukip’s big business backers and its members who are business people, like many of its MEPs, on the need for business to raise the pay of their workers.  Instead, he is once more revealed as all style and no substance.

May be not, though. Join up the dots.  You have taken everyone on the NMW out of paying Income Tax so why do you need the NMW and big government?  You may scrap the NMW and promise to increase the 20% starting rate and the 40% starting rate every year by the Cost Price Index.  I assume you will not wish to be overly generous by increasing it by the Retail Price Index?

We now have a policy that will be music to the ears of libertarians, like Douglas Carswell; business people with no sense of corporate social responsibility and the Hard Right of the Tory Party.  Without the NMW there will be nothing to stop paying new recruits less than now as well as freezing pay for current staff and possibly even reducing it.  And, increasing the 20% and 40% starting rates benefits those paying Income Tax at the highest rate the most.  And there you were thinking a tax cut for the low paid was born out of pure altruism.  Think again?

ukip, the party of the left behind? ukip, the party of the low paid working man (and sometimes working woman)? ukip, the party that cares for the plight of the young?

No! Not when Farage wants to cut the top rate of tax from 45% to 40%.

Now you know who will benefit from Farage’s tax cuts.  People nothing like you, me and most of the electorate. Certainly not those whose pay is currently guaranteed by the NMW.

Data and politics…

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Paul Bernal's Blog

CarswellOne of the less obvious side shows to the defection of Douglas Carswell MP from the Tories to UKIP has been the report that he may be taking his data with him – detailed data about his constituents, it appears, and according to the Daily Mail people at UKIP are ‘purring’ at the prospect of getting hold of the data.

This raises many, many issues – not least data protection issues. The excellent Jon Baines (@bainesy1969 on twitter) has been blogging about political data issues for some time, not least how it appears that political parties ride roughshod over data protection law and yet somehow the Information Commissioner’s Office does not want to get involved. He’s written something today in relation to Douglas Carswell – you can read it here.  As Jon Baines explains, there are many legal issues to deal with, including a possible criminal offence.

Even setting…

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Can We Make #ClactonByElection About #BedroomTax and #WOW For @DouglasCarswell? #Clacton

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The political circus and the media are about to descend on Clacton.  The story?  Will ukip manage to get its first Member of Parliament elected.  The issue?  Europe or at least that is what ukip wants it to be and what the likes of Nick Robinson will want to talk about.

However, Douglas Carswell brought up the Bedroom Tax just after his defection.  Despite voting strongly in favour of the Bedroom Tax (and the rest of IDS’s welfare ‘reforms’) in the House of Commons, Carswell says he is now minded to switch his position that of ukip:

“I used to be staunchly in favour of the bedroom tax and then I met a man who was living quite near here. He suffers from mental health issues, his partner died and now he is being forced to move out of a place he calls home. My heart actually was telling me about the bedroom tax: ‘Hang on a second,’ and now I discover that Ukip is against it as well.”

Carsewll was deaf to the many similar cases, anticipated by MPs and debated during the passing of the Bedroom Tax legislation.  Carswell was all for it then and he has still not shifted to backing repeal, because ukip only says it will oppose the Bedroom Tax, even in Government.  Like a lot of ukip policy, it is a case of trying to be all things to all men (and sometimes women).  In other words, Carswell proposes to switch his position to a middle of the road one.  A position that would, even if ukip came into Government, leave the legislation in place and still causing misery and death.  Is this a sign to the Tory Party that their opposition to the Bedroom Tax policy is one policy that ukip would be happy to negotiate away in any post May 7th negotiations about coalition with the Tories?

Apart from possibly sending a signal, Carswell may have revealed a concern about a possible campaign issue.  An issue that might well help to reduce his chances of being returned to Parliament.  An issue, that if brought up at every opportunity during the by election campaign, would smoke out ukip’s stance on Social Security once and for all.  In the process, ukip might find its position driving away supporters.  Will it be seen as weak on welfare or a party wanting to go further than IDS.  Either way ukip jumps, it stands to lose support

Why might the Bedroom Tax be an issue in Clacton out on the stump?  Unemployment, using the monthly JSA count figures is relatively low.  Clacton is ranked 173 of the 651 Parliamentary seats.  The higher up the charts you are, the higher the proportion of the working age population, using the JSA figures, who are out of work.  However, the total number of people of working age on Social Security (scroll down the page) such as ESA propels Clacton much higher up the charts.

Until now there was not an opportunity to send a clear and direct message to Parliament about the Bedroom Tax.  However, Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions intends to put down a motion in the House of Commons that would repeal the Bedroom Tax legislation.  Nick Clegg’s wobble over the Tax earlier in the year means that repeal is much more likely than at any time since the introduction of the Bedroom Tax.  Therefore, a vote for Labour in Clacton that returns a Labour MP into Parlament might well further improve the chances of repeal before next May.

Ah John, you say, Labour are not to be trusted on matters like the Bedroom Tax.  Well now is a chance to see if Labour will do its best before next May to do what is says it would do after May 7th next year.  If it does not, then voting for Labour in Clacton will only return a Labour MP for a few months and the voters of Clacton may hold that person to account on May 7th next year.

I say to the cynics and the apathetic, voting for Labour in Clacton in the upcoming by election is surely a small price to pay for possibly bringing the end of the Bedroom Tax a bit closer?  And, in stopping ukip in their tracks then you send a clear signal to ukip that they cannot ignore your votes and that they should think again about the negative attitudes they so often display towards People With Disabilities, the LGBT and BEM communities, women and quite a few elderly people too.

There is plenty that people may do to put the Bedroom Tax front and centre in this by election campaign.  For example, pester ukip at every turn out on the campaign trail; get involved in radio phone in programmes; write to your local newspapers and Carswell; e-mail Carswell; approach him on Facebook; Tweet him; petition him; stand behind him at every turn with placards, particularly during interviews with the media and gatecrash his press conferences.  In short, make the issue of the Bedroom Tax a nightmare for him, both day and night, throughout the campaign!  Who knows, if he is returned to Parliament, he might undergo a Damascene conversion and abstain on a vote about the Bedroom Tax and possibly, just possibly vote against it.

Help send a message to Farage, Carswell (and Clegg) that, as Aneuran Bevan observed, people who stand in the middle of the road get run down!

Community responses to child sexual exploitation. Pt 1 Helping children to be less vulnerable

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itsmotherswork

When the #Rotherham report was first published, I spent an evening reading it in full and commenting on Twitter as I read. One of my remarks was this:

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A good Tweetmate, @rattlecans, very reasonably asked what that community involvement should look like. This is not easy to define, any more than what the professional response should be is easy to define (despite everyone who doesn’t have to do this work thinking it’s simple and common sense, and pretty much effortless and only the truly stupid, corrupt, venal or incompetent could have failed to protect the girls who were raped, trafficked and abused in other ways).

This blogpost is intended to examine the community actions which could help to prevent child sexual exploitation. The same steps would, incidentally, protect vulnerable adults from sexual exploitation too. The post is not intended to absolve professionals from their own responsibilities but rather to make…

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ukip Bedroom Tax Stance Clear Evidence Would Prosecute #WOW Like #IDS? #Clacton #ClactonByElection

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ukip intends in September to confirm its “opposition to the Bedroom Tax” (see paragraph 8).  However, all its other policy ideas are definites, we will cut this, set up that and repeal something else. ukip, therefore, is not committing itself to repealing the Bedroom Tax if it were ever in government.

ukip seems to be setting out to be tough on welfare, despite the contention it is pitching for a bigger slice of the working class ‘left behind’ vote.  I guess saying that you will be opposed to the tax suggests otherwise and may provide some comfort to a few ukip voters, who think the tax is not a national government policy.  I have often sat across the desk from someone on Social Security who was unaware of the difference between a civil service department and their local council.  Although how ukip would cope if they were running a council is anyone’s guess.

To be fair to ukip in one way, they may have inadvertently repeated, without amendment, a pledge made in their Local Authority Elections Manifesto 2014 (see page 9, Environment, Planning and Housing), but failing to amend this policy for its policy launch hardly suggests that they are getting better organised at presenting their policies.  However, the LA Manifesto contains references to policies that would require Parliamentary legislation for local authorities to implement.  And those policies are mostly clear cut, too.

If ukip is attracting a goodly number of the ‘left behind’ then some of them must be paying the Bedroom Tax so why not say you will cut it?  Could it be because of ukip’s Libertarian, small government, everyone should stand on their own feet wing?  Oh and the 50% of its vote who are ex Tories?  Keeping hold of their votes and attracting more implies that ukip will be hard on ‘benefit scroungers’, despite some of them currently being its voters and supporters.

There are three references  to benefits in the LA Manifesto:

Up to 29 million more people are, therefore, entitled to come here, to take advantage of our benefits, social housing, primary school places and free health care, having contributed nothing to them. (Page 3)

We must end benefit and health tourism and give priority to local people for housing, education, health and social services. In planning, the local people’s opinions should be respected and not overruled. (Page 8)

Our membership of the EU costs £55m a day – and another £23m a day goes out in foreign aid – while jobs, services and benefits are being cut at home. UKIP believes that we should save that money to help rebuild our debtridden economy. (Page 9)

Now £55 million and £23 million per day might sound like a lot to most people, especially ukip supporters, but, believe me it is a drop in the ocean of government expenditure.  Our total annual EU subscription amounts to (using Farage’s figures) £20 billion and our Overseas Development Aid to £8.4 billion per year. Now Farage has recently conceded that we get back £7 for every £10 we pay into the EU and that he wants to reduce, but not end ODA. He proposes to reduce it from 0.7% of GDP to 0.2%.

ukipers have assured me on Twitter that the 70% of our EU subscription we get back will be spent in a similar way as now, but instead of on the advice of chaps like me in the Regions (hence European Regional Development Fund), the decisions will be made in Whitehall.  I am sure we are confident, particularly everywhere outside of London and South East, especially in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, that this centrally directed money will still go where it is most needed.  I will talk more about that topic in a later post.

£8.3 billion divided by 7 and multiplied by 5 equals £6 billion and 30% of £20 billion equals £6 billion. After an expensive referendum and making a decision that will reduce the UK’s standing in the world we will have an extra £12 billion, ceteris paribus, per year to spend on ukip’s policy proposals.  The proposal to cut Income Tax for those on the National Minimum Wage has been estimated, if implemented, to result in a loss of tax revenue to the Exchequer of £13 billion.  ukip cannot contend that BREXIT and reducing ODA will make any immediate financial difference to those receiving Social Security.

I think it is not unreasonable to assume, given that reference to “debtridden (sic)” above, that ukip may well be considering slicing a further £73 billion from annual government expenditure and some of the policy ideas listed in Goodwin’s article would seem to support that contention. There is also no evidence to support the theory that cutting the top rate of Income Tax from 45% to 40% will, as Farage asserts, raise more revenue than before the reduction and as ukip wants to make sure the 40% starting point is not subject to fiscal drag then something has got to be cut.  I leave you to ponder where the axe would fall, but do not forget that the Hard Right of the Tory Party not only likes the cut of ukip’s jib, but has openly talked about getting into bed with them.

Has Matthew Goodwin of Revolt on the Right Fame Developed a Crush on Nigel Farage and ukip?

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I have been planning for some time now a series of blog posts looking at the 21-year-old phenomenon that is ukip. Yes, this ‘young’ political party has now reached the age of consent. Handsome chaps from the right wing of the Tory Party are even courting ukip with the aim of co-habiting at least by March 2015. Conveniently, for me, Matthew Goodwin has provided the ideal ukip article against which to pitch my views and analysis (and those of others).

Goodwin, since he erupted on to the domestic political scene earlier this year with Revolt on the Right, has moved from being an impartial commentator on ukip to being a cheerleader for the party and, in particular Nigel Farage. Whether it is because he is suffering from a variation on Stockholm Syndrome, shares Farage’s take on politics and/or is cynically exploiting the party is not for me to say. However, Goodwin has managed to cash in on ukip’s recent notoriety and, in the process has raised his profile significantly amongst the very classes, metropolitan liberals he routinely has a pop at in his articles.

What I do propose to question is Goodwin’s competence to hand out the tablets of stone that he has been passing out with ever-greater frequency since Revolt on the Right came out earlier this year. I confess I have been blocked on Twitter by Goodwin for challenging his analysis so perhaps I am not as objective as I might otherwise be. I leave you to come to your own judgments in that regard over the coming months.

I did do Goodwin, after being blocked, the courtesy of looking at his book on Amazon. I say courtesy, because he was quite nasty about me personally for daring to suggest that my worm’s eye view was arguably a better one than his from which to describe ukip’s ‘left behind’ supporters and voters. You will note from the foreword to Revolt on the Right that Goodwin’s book is based on various sources of research and survey material, including opinion poll data, news clippings and interviews with ukip activists. Some of the activists asked that their identities be kept anonymous. Unless I have read it wrong, Goodwin made no efforts to interview a representative sample of ukip’s wider party, supporters and voters. Yet he feels capable of speaking for and about them in his book and articles. By the way, I think you would be hard pressed to say confidently that the activists of any political party are a representative sample of their party’s broader membership, supporters and voters.

Goodwin with seemingly no background in psephology peppers his articles with favourable projections down to constituency level as to ukip’s electoral prospects.  A continuing contention, regardless of contrary evidence, is that ukip is more likely to damage Labour’s prospects than those of the Tory Party.  I detect a degree of cognitive dissonance and a whiff of despair that he may find his credibilty as an expert on ukip severely damaged, if this thesis fails to come to pass in the only place that counts, the ballot box.  The West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner by election held on 21st August certainly does not back Goodwin up and it contradicts his contention that ukip is an organisation fit to fight elections.

Goodwin spent two years writing a book about ukip that conveniently came out two months or so before an election in which ukip was expected to receive a great deal of publicity. Of course, Goodwin benefited even better than he might have dreamt from the arguably disproportionate level of media coverage that ukip received in the run up to 22nd May this year. Goodwin cannot have believed his good fortune. The media needed an ukip expert and who better than Goodwin, the author of the recently published, critically acclaimed Revolt on the Right?

Goodwin has a stake in talking up ukip’s prospects in order to keep him in the public eye and maintain his current and future earnings potential. I assume his book and articles will not harm his future as an academic and researcher (for Government bodies and the like), specialising in extreme right-wing movements? Unless, perhaps, questions are raised about his objectivity?

I am of the opinion that most academics do not live in ivory towers, but then I have worked with a fair few on issues very close to those that ukip is purporting to address through its policy ideas. None of those academics prepared papers on the topics they were studying without interviewing the people who were their prime focus. In my case, those studies with which I was involved included a cross section of people living within a regeneration area and the barriers to employment faced by those in the third age of their working lives. I invited Goodwin to Kingstanding, Birmingham to meet likely ukip voters and see which of us was right about their upbringing, attitudes and leanings. He declined.

Personally, I think Goodwin has been to date insufficiently rigorous in his study of ukip. Goodwin has become a Boswell to Farage’s Johnson and why not? He is so trusted by ukip that he seems to have gained unhindered access to ukip, unavailable to other people in the media and “Currently, he is writing a new book on the 2015 general election that will be published by Oxford University Press in 2015.” (extract from Matthew Goodwin’s website).  I foresee further books such as Nigel Farage on the Stump with Matthew Goodwin and Matthew Goodwin’s Biography of Nigel Farage.

Of course, Goodwin had a partner in the writing of Revolt on the Right, Robert Ford. Has anyone heard from Ford since the book was launched?

As I said above, this is the first of a series of posts about ukip. I want to stress that, when talking about its supporters; I will endeavour to avoid sweeping generalisations as much as possible.

I accept that some of ukip’s supporters, seemingly unaware of its true nature, back it for quite understandable reasons. In addition, that there is a case to be made that ukip is not a fascist party, based on the range of beliefs of its members, but then the same argument can be made for most fascist parties, past and present. However, the sum of ukip’s individual prejudices and bigotry are greater than its whole. If you choose to lie down with mangy, flea bitten curs then do not be surprised if, on getting up, people suspect you have rabies.