From the Right Side

As they used to say in school exams, compare and contrast the following:

This, from the Daily Telegraph:

Tony McNulty has been allowed to keep almost £60,000 he claimed in expenses for a house where his elderly parents lived just eight miles from the "main" home he shares with his wife.

And this, from the BBC:

A benefits officer who admitted falsely claiming over £75,000 has been jailed for 14 months at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Your details safe in their hands? In an exclusive in The Farmer, it is reported that:

The bank accounts of every farmer in England have been at risk after the Rural Payments Agency lost confidential data belonging to anyone who has ever claimed a single farm payment.

The responsibility lies with that model of administrative efficiency, DEFRA. The Register accurately assesses their competence:

DEFRA is currently making a complete manure pile of the single payments system for farmers and this tape loss revelation will confirm farmers' views about DEFRA. Namely that it's a complete pile of poo so bad that they wouldn't even spread it on their fields.

...and couldn't you guess, all in the name of climate change:

The European Commission has recommended EU nations pay up to 15bn euros ($22bn; 13bn Pounds) a year from 2013 to developing nations to help them cope with climate change.

Local councils are to be granted powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act, allowing them to seize the assets of minor offenders. Given their record of abusing the powers of the Prevention of Terrorism Act we can surely expect even more heavy-handed and inappropriate enforcement by local bureaucrats and pencil-pushers.

The most scandalous thing, however, is that this further extension of state power will be achieved by government decree. Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, is to increase the scope of the Proceeds of Crime Act by Statutory Instrument - which means that it will not be debated in Parliament.

The party has spoken, through the person of John Maples:

Up until the summer, in Conservative held seats, 10 women (37%) had been selected and 17 men (62%).  Since then there have been 5 selections under the old process and 3 under the new procedure (with shortlists of 6 candidates, half men and half women).   All 8 selections have produced male candidates.  The only woman selected has been Sarah Wollaston, in the all postal primary in Totnes.  This trend is not acceptable..We have avoided using all women shortlists so far and had hoped to continue to do so, but we cannot let the current trend continue. [My emphasis]

I let my membership of the Conservative Party lapse some time ago, because it seemed to me that the influence (however small) of the ordinary party member was steadily being eroded. The most significant power of the local associations and party members has always been the selection of election candidates. This has been steadily undermined over recent years. This latest example is merely another step along the route to complete central control over candidates. Is this is a foretaste of the much-vaunted localism that the Modern Conservative Party has been promising?

I watched it, and I expect you did too. And, contrary to the opinion of the overwhelming majority of commentators, I don't think that Nick Griffin did too badly.

Firstly, I think the BBC made a terrible misjudgement over the format of the programme. What we saw was an hour long bullying session of five (the four panellists plus David Dimbleby) against one. There was no attempt to cover recent political events, only a relentless concentration on one man and his party. Have you ever seen that on Question Time before? The focus of attack was on entirely predictable grounds. None of this told us anything about the BNP or Nick Griffin that we didn't know before.

Nick Griffin had a few (well, quite a few) wobbly moments, he looked nervous, and he was at times hesitant and evasive: but no one landed a killer blow on him. There were also a couple of passages when he spoke quite effectively (on immigration and Islam), and made some points with which a great many people will agree.

Following a week of unprecedented media coverage - publicity that money could not buy - and a performance that wasn't an absolute disaster, I don't see how the BNP can emerge from all of this other than with their position enhanced.

It will not be the glare of the spotlight that will weaken the BNP, but the actions of the two main political parties. As soon as they seriously address the concerns of ordinary people over immigration, support for the BNP will plummet. But what are the chances of them doing that? I wouldn't hold my breath.

Like most many people I am desperate for an end to Gordon Brown's premiership, and for the disastrous New Labour 'project' to be consigned to the dustbin of history. That means that when the General Election arrives, I shall vote Conservative. But I shall be holding my nose when I do.

There is a great deal to admire in the 'modern Conservative Party'. I'm thinking in particular of Michael Gove's proposals for education reform, and of the influence of Alan Duncan Smith in social policy. There is also a great deal that is vacuous and, quite simply, wrong.

The latest example is David Cameron's announcement at today's Speaker's Conference that he will impose all-women shortlists in the name of 'representativeness'.

We need to make sure that the conversation we have within the Conservative Party and the conversation we have within Parliament is like the conversation that's going on in the rest of the country

In order to achieve this equality of 'conversation', he will intervene in the selection of candidates by local constituencies:

It's my intention...that some of those shortlists will be all-women shortlists to help us boost the number of Conservative women MPs

If he were really interested in the question of 'representativeness', he would be more concerned with ensuring that the Conservative Party and its policies more accurately reflect the opinions of the electorate, rather than their gender composition; he would be more interested in representing the electorate's views on immigration, crime and Europe, amongst other things, rather than in replacing the unlamented Blair's Babes with Cameron's Cuties.