Cameron's shoddy shallow election call

David Cameron was on radio 4 this morning, demanding a General Election, to sweep out the old, corrupt House of Commons and bring about a fresh start and a new dawn.

What is wrong with this picture? Of course opposition leaders must call for a general election, every day during the lame duck 5th year of a parliament. That's textbook. Of course they must use any issue that comes up to justify this call. That's obvious.

But this particular call is shabby and shameful. Firstly, it tries to identify in the public mind a cross-party scandal with the government. Yet his party is just as guilty. (As is UKIP.)

Second, do we really think the Telegraph is finished with us? Let the bright light of scrutiny shine on every corner of this issue before we jump to conclusions regarding how to deal with it, and who to elect or re-elect.

Third, let's give the parties time to deselect their wrongdoers. It would be absurd to hold an election so quickly that major culprits go unexposed or undeselected, and get to serve (themselves) a whole extra parliament.

There is a public mood that politicians are "all the same", based on a handful of serious concrete cases. Over time, we can but hope a distinction will be drawn between the guilty and the innocent, whatever party each is found in. Is that what Cameron wants to pre-empt?

Put the boot in harder, and aim better

It is difficult to put the boot in, to demand prosecution of expenses fraudsters, when you are in a grey area vulnerable position yourself, and the whole house is being condemned for the normal use of expenses, as if that were the same kind of thing as fraud. It is bothering me now that the frauds - of whom there have been a handful - are getting lumped together with those who are merely making use of the allowances they have been given as part of their job.

However I am not in a grey place so I can spell it out.

Having an allowance for buying TVs, hiring cleaners, etc, and using it is not fraudulent or corrupt. Asking whether you can buy item X on expenses and doing so if you are told you can, is not fraudulent or corrupt. If the allowances cover moats, swimming pools and chandeliers, then they are stupid, but that does not make using them fraudulent or corrupt. Waiving your expenses is a superogatory act, not a moral duty.

However claiming for a mortgage you have already paid off is fraud. An MP couple claiming 2nd home allowance on both their homes is fraud. "Flipping" to maximise allowance spend is fraud. Telling the tax office something different to the fees office is fraud.

These MPs should be expelled from their parties, deselected, and prosecuted, in no particular order. So far Labour have "suspended" two, and the Tories merely kicked one off the front bench. Luckily no frauds in the Lib Dems, so far.

The rest of them are not frauds. But giving yourself an allowance system more generous than it ought to be is corrupt. So judge them not by what they claim, but whether they voted to reform it or not. Whether they voted for transparency - or for the exemption to the Freedom of Information Act. Large numbers have voted both ways on this, but even those who voted the wrong way, may honestly think the package is not too generous.

People of similar seniority in the private sector are on 6 or 7 figure salaries, with bonuses and expense accounts that will make your eyes water. MPs could vote through the same for themselves, but they don't. Because it would be corrupt.

So this is what I want to see from the party leaders. Rather than being caught between trying to defend what is reasonable and condemn what is wrong, let's throw the handful of fraudsters to the lions, condemn the system, and condemn those who have voted to keep it secret and unreformed. And three cheers to the Telegraph, and the Freedom of Information Act for making reform possible. And shame on Cameron and Brown for ignoring the big money spinner of property speculation on the back of subsidised mortgages.

David Cameron blames spelling reform for social breakdown

In the context of talking about social breakdown, violence on our streets, and so on, Cameron offered three planks of policy to begin to tackle the problem: Families, Schools and Welfare.

Under schools there was the usual complaint about standards, and then this:

Listen to this. It's the President of the Spelling Society. He said, and I quote, "people should be able to use whichever spelling they prefer." 

Isn't that shocking, that the Spelling Society doesn't stand up for correct spelling? Well no. The Spelling Society is a campaign for the simplification of English Spelling. They have slogans like 

Why don't 

comb

tomb

bomb

rime?

Why do

they

say

weigh

rime?

The point being that illogical spelling makes it harder for children to learn to read, leads to lower educational achievement, and contributes, presumably, in the long run, to, er, social breakdown.

This is not a campaign of trendy educationalists to take over our schools, but a campaign aimed at us, and in particular publishers, to spell words in a sensible way.

You might not agree of course, you might find the ossified spellings of a some particular previous century - I forget which - "quaint". Fine, but by putting that first you are the agent of social breakdown, not its opponent.

Cameron has taken the opposite view - saying that only by failing to reform English spelling are we going to staunch the tide of social breakdown. Or something like that. The full speech is parodied here, at Dave, nice but knave. (Which is me, really. Plug plug)

But perhaps I am reading too much into what Dave said. Perhaps it was just a pathetic retreat into a Tory comfort zone when faced with a difficult problem.

Update: more from Alix

Cameron round-up

This supposed round up of links is really just a barefaced plug for this. Dave, Nice but Knave, leader of Liz's oppo, has clarified his new statement of values a little for us. Compare it to the less accurate BBC version here.

See also

A nice angle from Femme De Resistance:
http://forcefulandmoderate.blogspot.com/2006/02/david-cameron-radically-redefines.html

Apparently, this is also related:
http://millenniumelephant.blogspot.com/2006/02/day-1883-mr-balloon-is-on-telly.html

David Cameron: What on Earth is his game?

I confess to being somewhat bewildered by the current behaviour of Cameron and the Tory Party. Cameron is obviously staking a claim to the centre ground, and this is a tactically sound thing to try to do. But ventures like Lib Dems for Cameron www.libdems4cameron.co.uk stretch credulity.

We keep hearing things like the party being liberal, green, in favour of redistribution, suspicious of big business. It is hard to believe that the rest of the party isn't choking on its cornflakes every morning at each new announcement.

Try not to be the nasty party, by all means. But deal with the fact that everybody who wants to be in the nasty party is in your party. Become more moderate, by all means, but it has to be plausible that you actually believe it.

It is hard to see why, if Cameron does believe the "New Tory" message, he ever joined the Conservative Party at all. The alternative is that it is what he thinks he has to say to be electable.

Sure, he might be making life a little bit difficult for Blair, Brown and Kennedy. But the Tories will not tolerate so much wetness for such meagre rewards for long. I think Cameron knows this, and he is playing another game. Cameron wants to appear as genuinely nice; genuinely caring, so that when he proposes or implements regular Tory nasty policies, it can be spun as necessary, hard choices. Cares about you and can make tough decisions, the best of both worlds, etc.

But this suggests very strongly that he is approaching the leadership like a game of chess, manipulating pieces and perceptions to gain an advantage on the board. This approach is doubtless very useful from time to time, but if it is all you do, people will see you as cynical and won't identify with your values.

I think the halo effects of youth and good looks have dazzled the conservative party into electing a visionless waffler as their leader. Getting on for twice his age, the Tory party membership somehow thinks he can identify with 'young people'. And worse, he thinks so too.