Looks Like someone at the Sunday Times has been reading a Very British Dude.....

Her Pollyness today is suggesting that David Camerons' Tories are some-sort of 'New Labour lite', as the Tories power ahead in the polls. Cameroons, by her anaylsis, are stealing Labour clothes whislt committing the (to the Toynbee mind) appalling sin of voting against increased maternity leave. (To put it another way, the Tories took the view that companies shouldn't be forced to pay women do do no work whilst on Maternity leave any longer than nessesary, for fear of companies being unwilling to employ women of child-bearing age - thus hurting the very people La Toynbee and her statist ilk want to help.)

A musician activist speaks in favour of enterprise - and the Guardianistas squeal. Check out the comments for the ususal Guardian "head-in-the-sand" bollocks. Bono, however is talking sense.

It's summer in England, our Cricket team is struggling to beat opposition they should punish*, it's been pissing it down and there's totally unreasonable hope about our prospects at the World cup (Rooney's Metatarsal) and Wimbledon (Andy Murray - Yes I know he's Scottish, but the English do not have a chippy, spiteful inferiority complex about supporting other home nations).

Despite "life on Mars" (which I have never seen, being homeless), I think anyone who's lived in this country since the second world war would recognise the paragraph above.

* in fact, as I write this Mahroof has been put down by strauss at 3rd slip.
* No matter before I posted it he's been caught behind for 5 off Hoggard. 65-6. (Just like Lords all over again)

This is the wettest drought on record. I should know, I'm sleeping out in the fucker.

The British, and especially those bonkers west-country folk, have always been eccentric. It is so heartening to see that in these days of health-and-safety nazis enforcing Zanu-Labour's nanny state conformity on everyone, that you can still chuck yourself off a hill at great risk to your person without enforced insurance, registration, entry fees and bureaucratic obstrusification, just a polite request that you tip a bit to a charity on the day and pay for your parking.

I'm going before it's banned. Wish me luck!

I always knew the Guardian should be taken no more seriously than the Sunday Sport,

There are 8,164,350* children in England's schools

• Poor teaching
• Poor students
• a culture of low acheivement - especially the "discrimination of low expectations" with regard to inner city children in particular.
• Under resoursing
  

1. Close down LEAs
2. Shrink the DFES to a rump with responsibility for setting exams and publising results (yes, on a "value added" basis too - i'm not totally unrealistic).
   
3. Give every parent a voucher for £6,736.60 (could be a lot more - but only if we abolish the welfare state)
   
4. give heads control of budget and admissions
5. let the market sort out the rest.

So the Tories are Hammering Labour in the South East and London and yet remain stagnant elsewhere in the UK.

Well that's not surprising. The statistics for State spending as a percentatge of the economy for areas north of Birmingham are horrifying. They look more like East Germany or Soviet Russia - and are already thouroughly part of The Bastard in No11's client state. People in the North and Scotland receive 20% more state spending per head (even before wages are taken into account). Of course they are not going to vote for a party committed to reducing the size of the state. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Northerners vote for the hand that feeds. (who's policies keep them them in their place as miserable supplicants to the state's will)

This is not a Party political post - many of the trends I mention were set in train so long ago that the root causes are societal and not to be blamed on one lot or the other. Though naturally the socialists are more to blame than us, and I hate Gordon Brown.

21-22% of the working age population are "economically inactive". That is some 8 million people. Of these 2.3 million are looking after home, 1.85 million are students, though many are simply doing non courses in "tourism management", or "Golf Studies" (a three year degree? I think not) to massage the unemployment figures. 591,000 are retired, 200,000 are Temporary sick, which leaves 2.1 million Long term sick and the remainder some million or so "discouraged workers".

There are about a million people on the dole, so the unemployment figure, if you include the fucking lazy (did I say that, I mean "discouraged workers") is actually about twice what the government publishes as the claimant count.

These people do not starve. They exist on benefits. Whilst there may not be dole - unemployment benefit - for those not looking for work, the state will see to it that you never actually need to. Housing benefits, Disability benefits (for those lucky enough to be able to threaten a doctor into signing him off sick) . Income support pays £2,987 per year. Housing benefit will see to your rent, and for single mothers on benefit, the career prospects are staggering.

In allowing people to live totally supported by welfare, the state creates perverse incentives in housing and employment. Couples cohabiting lose some income support, and are less likely to be moved into a bigger council house. Savings are penalised and benefits are often lost on the commencement of work. So people choose not to live together to bring up children, and do not get their foot on the employment ladder, because they lose money if they do so. There's certainly no incentive to save when employed, because savings too cost you benefits. The socialist has no faith in the human as a rational agent and dismisses concerns of the incentives and moral hazzard of welfare by pointing to his compassion for these people.

This traps people on the subsistence income of benefits. What's worse is the damage that it does to the spirit of those in thrall to the state's munificence. Read "life at the bottom" by Theodore Darymple for anecdotal evidence of the collapse of the work ethic amongst what used to be the working class.

So when the lefty says "you try living in Lambeth on benefits" as if that's the only reality - you should point out that it is the welfare state that traps these people, the very policies their socialist compassion has created is destroying lives. Benefits are the problem. And it it is a huge one. Not only are 8 million people entirely dependendent on benefits, much of the lower middle class is also in receipt of tax credits, child benefit and other distributions from the state (this is Gordon Browns client state). In 2001, the police and Judiciary cost £20 billion, defence £25 Billion, Education £44 billion, health £53 billion. Social Security cost a staggering £101 billion - and the grasping presbyterian bastard in no.11 has subsequently increased welfare spending.

this was 11% of GDP and something like 40% of government managed expenditure. So cutting this bill should be a priority if there is a shortage of resources for the police, our overstretched Army, schools and the Sainted NHS.

So why isn't anyone screaming to cut this bill? Because to do so would be presented as taking form the poorest (which in a way it is). Because after 3 generations of welfare, there is a section of society - the underclass - who have never worked, know no-one who works and more than likely will never work. Benefits as a career. Without serious incentives these people will not look for work and don't know how. Getting people off benefits and into work is possible by looking at incentives - making work pay, and the penalties - cutting benefits progressively. In effect, a carrot and stick to getting these people into the Labour market. Look to the incentives and the outcome will follow.

In housing the situation where the more catastrophically you mess your life up, the higher up the housing list you go should be seen as the perverse incentive it is. It is also manifestly unfair to the hard working families who are pushed aside, creating a sense of indignation amongst the people who are trying to better themselves, often in desperate circumstances who see people with no personal responsibility jumping ahead of them in the queue for adequate housing. This issue, more than any other is driving support for the BNP, who are adding immigration and bogus asssylum seekers to create a heady cocktail of anger.

Realistically, the state shouldn't be in housing at all, and the hopeless maladministration of local authorities would end, and much of the incentives to house the worst people in the best homes - the political correctness which offends so many people, would also go - to be replaced by the private sector which is better because the owner has a stake in his property and will see to it that it is properly maintained. ("No they won't" scream the socialists - oh yeah... and the council does a good job, does it?)

Does the state have a duty to pay people not to work and does the state have a duty to house people who don't work? Yes - if they genuinely can't, but no if it's actually a lifestyle choice, which for many long term unemployed, it is. The welfare state should be a safty net, not a hammock. (mine's very comfortable by the way)

There are lots of issues facing the world economy at the moment

• The dollar is collapsing
• The oil shockis probably knocking .5% off global growth.
  
• The commodity price bubbles in Copper, Aluminium, Gold, Silver and Platinum mean industrial goods are more expensive to produce.
  
• The unwinding of carry trades has seriously undermined the Emerging markets of for example Iceland and New Zealand and left a lot of hot money sloshing around the world financial system - pouring petrol on smoudering fires.
  
• A House price bubble is inflating in many parts of the world.
• In short, inflation (and therefore High Interest rates) is back - held in check only by cheap export goods coming out of China, which has a seriously imbalanced economy.
  

I moved my stuff into storage this weekend (moving all the heavy stuff on Sunday, despite drinking tequila until 5am - a tactical and strategic error for which I am still paying). I am now liberated from my things - can anyone tell me the name of the artist who burned all his posessions? Whilst putting them in a relative's garage is less drastic than the petrol and match option, there is a lot to be said for decluttering your life - forcing me to ask the question: "what do we actually need?". Whilst I am coming at this from the point of view of convenience, not marxist "thought" or environmentalist anti-consumerism, I do beleive that we would all be happier if we focussed on our personal relationships rather than material posessions.

I feel wonderfully free. Instead of a grotty bedsit, I woke up this morning in a wood, surrounded by bluebells - and despite at least one shower last, night I stayed dry. Can anyone tell me why I need a house more than the £1,200 or so it would cost me to stay in one for 2 months?

I failed to knock my opponent off his perch, polling 1028 against my Liberal Democrat opponent's 1390. (Labour were humiliated with just 178 votes - as they were across the whole district council).

IT shows that people do vote on local issues. My opponent is a very hard-working councillor with a strong local following. Many local tories support him (perhaps not his party), then vote for Peter Lilley in the General election. Nevertheless, at 3pm, it looked like I might do it. A late surge in voting however handed the seat to the Liberal Democrats. It's probably for the best, but I shall certainly contest the ward next year and hopefully with another years' effort, win aganst a lower profile candidate.

Despite dissapointment for the Dude, with gains still coming in, the Tories are back! Ye naysayers on the blogosphere - Dave's strategy is the right one. A rebranding exercise - but we remain the party of sensible taxation, smaller government and civil liberties. That will not change. 65% of the population like our policies, which falls to 40% when they are told that it's conservative - we've got the policy right (and always have done - poll tax excepted). We now need to regain the peoples' trust. That's hard.

But the local councillors are the people to do it. Hundreds more hard-working Tories delivering services as inexpensively as possible and suddenly the Parliamentary Conservative Party looks like a government in waiting. Furthermore, every councillor represents several boots on the ground in General elections. I know the blogger likes the big idea - tax cuts, pulling out of Europe and so on, but this is not what will get us elected. Getting Out The Vote will - and good Conservative councillors will be the agents of this. Harping on about Daves's weakness on right-wing fetishes will not help remove the worst government this country has ever had. The regaining of the people's Trust will.

Trust - and that requires work and discipline. Once we have that, we can bring the country to our way of thinking on Tax and Education - moving the centre ground as Margaret Thatcher did. Eventually Labour will follow onto our turf.

Politics is the art of the possible and If you want Gordon Brown destorying this country, then you can make the Conservative Party appear split and Idealogical to the country. Or you can work to elect a government which, whilst it doesn't do everything we want nor go as far in shrinking the state, at least has our interests at heart.

Yesterday vindicated David Cameron's strategy. We should all give him our support.

The Animal Rights crowd have claimed public support and the moral high ground for too long. They are terrorists and monomainiacs. Have you signed?

Vivisection is a nessesary evil and the British have amongst the highest animal welfare standards in the world. If you believe truly in animal welfare, you would want all animal research done at the likes of Huntingdon Life Sciences. Instead the animal rights lobby have demonstrated themselves to be fanatiacal, incoherent and have damaged the cause of genuine animal welfare - as well as science.

By causing the likes of HLS to have the kind of security which would put British Military bases to shame they have created undue fear, harmed a business in which Britain set the world's standard and destroyed peoples' livlihoods.

Send a message by signing the Peoples' Petition - if you support the advancement of science and a right not to be intimidated by nihilist thugs whilst going about your lawful business.