The Gravy Train...

... only stops to pick up, never to set down.

Just when we thought that the guard had made an exception in the case of Chris Huhne, we find that he was just in the toilets all the time and now has taken his seat again.

Chris Grayling to offer Chris Huhne a "rehabilitatory" post at the MoJ?

In a major speech to the Civitas think tank, Mr Grayling urged companies and the public sector - including the NHS - to hire convicted criminals.

And, asked by a charity for ex-offenders if he would consider taking on one in the Ministry of Justice he agreed it was right to ‘lead from the front’.

Mr Grayling said: "I'm very up for the idea of looking to see where we can find more educational or work opportunities for former offenders and of course we should lead from the front with that."

You've obviously confused me with someone else who was on trial at the same time, I wasn't in the dock for that long ..

but I'll happily pay a quarter of what you are demanding - I expect the ex will happily volunteer to cover the rest ...

Chris Huhne offers to pay quarter of £100,000 legal costs in speeding case

The former Liberal Democrat MP, 58, who is serving eight months in prison for perverting the course of justice for asking his then wife to take three speeding points, believed £25,000 was "just and reasonable", his lawyer told Southwark crown court in London.

"I just wanted to turn the clocks back" court hears shock and shame of Vicky Pollard

From The Evening Standard:

The ex-GF of disgraced former estate bully Chris today told a court of her shock and shame when news broke of the row over of their dodgy car deals.

Vicky Pollard said she had "wanted to, like, turn the clocks back, innit, because he said that means we can sell them for more, yeah? That's not illegal is it, right?". As a result she "hid" from Shaznay when she threatened to tell Keanu, the court heard.

Pollard had told Shaznay that her BF had forced her to help tamper with the mileometers as he was under a suspended sentence at the time in 2003. Shaznay agreed Pollard would not be identified in the Twitter account of the conversation, which appeared in May 2011, as the person who had turned back the clock on the car which Keanu Miller had bought from the pair.

But when it was published she immediately feared people would read between the lines and identify her. "I was a bit, like, shocked and horrified, right, and started, y'know, worrying very significantly, yeah, about the whole process that, sort of, had led to the Tweet. Know what I mean?" she told the jury at Southwark Crown Court.

"In my mind, yeah, I just wanted to turn the clocks back, innit, because I wanted to sort of help Chris, it didn't mean nuffink, I was, like, quite shocked at the way that bitch Shaznay told everybody, bitch, and I was sort of beginning to feel I had perhaps been, like, manipulated and things had probably been pushed too far. Yeah?"

She added: "I felt pretty, y'know, bad and not happy, right, at being involved in this as I felt I was not able to sort of control the story at all. I could do nothing about this now and I felt quite ashamed and upset. Yeah but no but yeah but no but."

Nick Clegg issues hasty correction to misreporting of a speech he gave in January

Spotted by Bob E at Huff Post:

Nick Clegg has said he's delighted that no way will Chris Huhne return to the cabinet now that the former energy secretary has been convicted of perverting the course of justice related to a speeding offence.

The Lib Dem leader told journalists in Westminster on Thursday that Huhne was a "formidable and accomplished liar" who he wanted to see "banged up" and that there was no way Huhne could ever expect to be back at the "top table" of British politics.

Clegg's desire to have Huhne back inside a correctional facility may in part be motivated by the view that it is better to have him inside having nasty things done to him, than outside it doing nasty things to those in the Cabinet.

Fun Online Polls: Chris Huhne, deportation, extradition

With a high turnout, the results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

One a scale of 1 to 10, how chucklesome did you find Chris Huhne's resignation?

11/10 - 78%
10/10 - 8%
9/10 - 5%
Other, please specify - 10%.

I thought the whole thing was splendid, it cheered me up no end, largely because the whole thing was so pathetic. Thank you to everybody who took part.
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There is of course a subtle difference between deporting somebody and extraditing somebody. You deport a foreign national back to his own country if you don't like him (whether he has committed a crime, here or aborad, or not). You extradite somebody (usually but not necessarily one of your own citizens) to another country if they have committed a crime in that other country.

But let's gloss over that. To the person concerned it doesn't make much difference what you call it. I see that the Yanks are taking the piss yet again, so this week's Fun Online Poll is a "court of public opinion" and you are judge, jury and executioner.

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar; it's multiple choice so you can send off as few or as many of them as you'd like.

Fun Online Polls: Cutting the deficit and Chris Huhne's resignation

Thank you everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll. With a good turnout, the result was as follows:

Would you be happy for the government to eliminate the deficit by reducing spending 2003-04 levels?

Yes - 85%
No - 9%
Other, please specify - 5%

So that's the deficit sorted out then; they could keep taxes at their current levels and eliminate the annual deficit by dusting down departmental budgets for 2003-04, indexing them up for inflation at 3% a year and Bob's your uncle.

A couple of disgruntleds said they'd prefer to go even further back than that, let's say to the 1990's, when government spending was a sixth lower than in 2003-04 (the 1997-2001 Labour government did not run a deficit or increase taxes unduly), but that wasn't the question. I'm not holding the 2003-04 budget as a shining example of sensible small-government spending (it wasn't), that just happens to be the most recent year in which spending, adjusted for inflation, would match forecast tax receipts for 2012-13.
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This week's Fun Online Poll: "On a scale of one to ten, how chucklesome did you find Chris Huhne's resignation?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Chris Huhne: Put out more flags!

Nick Drew suggests we celebrate this momentous occasion by hanging out the bunting. I don't have any bunting handy, so I'll just repost a caricature of him looking glum:For good measure, here's his ex looking smug:

George Osborne: running rings round Chris Huhne

I'm no big fan of Osborne, but he's not quite the same danger to us all as Huhne. There's a fine article in today's FT about Osborne merrily thwarting Huhne at every opportunity, the highlight is this:

The latest controversy surrounds the £3bn Green Investment Bank, which has been set up to fund low-carbon projects. The bank was due to start borrowing money to boost its firepower in April 2015, but George Osborne, the chancellor, introduced a crucial proviso: that it would only be able to borrow once [government] debt was falling against gross domestic product.

After forecasts on Tuesday by the government’s spending watchdog suggested borrowing may not fall against GDP until a year later than planned, the fund appears unlikely to become a proper bank until 2016 at the earliest.

Lazy Energy Secretary to blame for high energy bills, say domestic customers

From The Daily Mail:

Millions of hard-up householders have risked insulting Chris Huhne by saying that he is to blame for high energy bills.

Families said that the Energy Secretary 'does not allow energy companies to bother' to hunt for the cheapest sources of fuel, but would rather spend more time making them look for hugely overpriced windmills and wrecking what's left of the UK's heavy industry with a Carbon Tax.

They also said the Energy Secretary could save up to £3,000 in legal fees if he didn't get involved in speeding incidents and could use the spare money to go on a short weekend mini-break with the woman he dumped his wife for.

Domestic energy users said: "He frankly spends less time shopping around for an energy source that's on average more than £500 a year cheaper than what we are being forced to buy than he does shopping around for a £250 toaster from the John Lewis list. Or for something like £250 billion's worth of windmills and other green tomfoolery. If he got that in perspective and said, 'OK, we are going to save a huge amount of money shopping around' [we] could save very substantial amounts of money,' they said in an interview with the Times.

Households said Mr Huhne spends 85 per cent of his time dreaming up new ways of making gas and electricity eye-wateringly expensive, and challenged him not to 'just sit back and take all the bungs from the windmill and power lobbies and succumb to the myth that all sources of energy cost the same'. Their comments came after energy firm EDF announced a 15.4 per cent jump in gas tariffs as it became the last of the major suppliers to put up prices...

The Pryce Is Right

Fun Online Polls: Chris Huhne and E.coli

Last week's Trial By Internet returned a clear majority verdict:

Did Chris Huhne persuade his ex-wife to take his speeding points?

Yes - 85%
Case not proven - 15%
No - 1%

So that's that setlled then.

I'd like to ask those doubters who chose "Case not proven" or "No", do you really think that an embittered ex-wife would lie about something like this? Surely not! To everybody else, thanks for taking part, it was a good turnout. It's a pity that the internet can only decide guilt or otherwise but not pass sentence.
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In the same vein, this week's Fun Online Poll asks you to apply your vast knowledge of biochemistry, epidemiology and international hygiene standards (if these are not your specialist topics, then you can rely on petty prejudices) to the burning issue of who caused the E.coli outbreak.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Stuffed toys & Chris Huhne

On a good turnout, the results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which stuffed toy is cooler?

The PG Tips Monkey -44%
The Bird's Eye Bear - 16%
Other, please specify - 3%
Don't ask me, I never watch the adverts - 38%

So, well done PG Tips Monkey (formerly known as The ITV Digital Monkey) and thanks to everybody who took part.
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This week, let's put Chris Huhne to Trial By Internet, vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

If you really want to know a bit of background you can read up here.

Cautious Driver Of The Week

Don't blame me, I voted UKIP

From the Evening Standard:

Cameron ready to approve euro bail-outs without a referendum: David Cameron clashed with Tory Eurosceptic MPs today as he offered to approve a new scheme to bail out the single currency without holding a referendum. At the start of an EU summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister signalled his support for a permanent new emergency rescue mechanism for economies in trouble.

But British diplomats were rebuffed when they tried to obtain a cast-iron guarantee that under the proposals the UK would never again have to pump taxpayers' money into the rescue of countries in the euro. More trouble brewed as Mr Cameron and other EU leaders planned to push through the bail-out plan as an amendment to the EU's contentious Lisbon Treaty without a referendum.

The BBC spins it thusly:

The eurozone stability mechanism will require a change to the EU's Lisbon Treaty - but the wording has now been agreed, diplomats say. As the UK uses the pound it will not have to contribute to the fund, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.
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Also from the Evening Standard:

New power plants could put bills up: Energy bills could rise by hundreds of pounds under plans for the construction of a new generation of power plants unveiled by the Government... Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said private-sector investment of £110 billion in new power stations and grid upgrades is needed over the next decade* to replace ageing plants, to hit the UK's climate change targets and to ensure that the lights do not go out...

Additional financial support for the construction of reserve plants to provide a "safety cushion" as Britain increasingly relies on electricity from intermittent sources such as wind; and a cap on CO2 emissions of 450-600 grammes per kilowatt/hour generated, which should ensure that all future coal-powered plants use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Which the BBC spins thusly:

Price comparison website uSwitch has estimated that bills will rise by £500 a year if the measures are introduced. But Mr Huhne told the BBC that the average electricity bill of £500 a year would rise by £160 a year over the next 20 years, and if the new measures were not put in place, bills would rise by £190 a year.

In fact, the Treasury has calculated that the average annual household electricity bill will be between £4 and £28 higher in 2016, but should be between £20 and £48 lower by 2030.

Right, they can forecast electricity prices twenty years ahead, can they? Best of luck with that.

* These forecasts are also usually wildly understated, see also Olympics 2012, but let's take £110 billion over ten years at face value, that's £11 billion a year, two-thirds of which will be paid by households, unless we somehow imagine that private investors will pay for this out the goodness of their own hearts, that's about £300 per household per year.
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From The Sun:

Banned driver Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, 33, left Amy Houston, 12, to die under the wheels of his Rover car and fled the scene following the accident.

But the Iraqi Kurd was today told he can stay in Britain after judges said deporting the dad of two would breach HIS human rights following a seven-year legal battle.

Moderate Land Value Taxer appointed to Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee

From today's Evening Standard:

Martin Weale was today named as the ninth member of the interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England. The economist, who has been director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research since 1995, replaces Kate Barker.... As an “external” member of the MPC, he was appointed by Chancellor George Osborne and will earn £96,000 a year.

From The Grauniad 8 January 2007:

... as Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, puts it: "People say that not everyone is benefiting from house price rises. The problem is that house prices are rising in the first place."

Residential property is an unproductive asset. If all houses rise in price, we do not, as a society, get richer. As Mr Weale noted in a fine paper last year, rising house prices do not create wealth, they merely transfer resources from people who will own houses in the future to those who own them at present... Mr Weale and other economists say the burden of taxation needs to be shifted off income and profits and on to those untaxed gains in property values. In short, we need a land value tax.

One of the few vaguely interesting things in my long and otherwise pleasantly uneventful life was sharing a platform with Martin Weale and Chris Huhne at a pro-land value tax conference back in 2007.

Mr Huhne appears to be busy with other things, like getting lesbians back onto the straight and narrow and will probably never mention land value tax again. Mr Weale appears to have been co-opted onto the MPC for his as all-round dove-ish ness, i.e. he wants to keep interest rates low; i.e. he wants to keep asset prices (and especially house prices) inflated, so no doubt he'll have a similar Paul-on-the-road-back-from-Damascus conversion as well.

Intellectual coherence, lack thereof.

From an interview with our new Minister For Eco-Fascism in today's Times:

“I’m not ideologically opposed to nuclear,” Mr Huhne insisted. “My scepticism is based on whether or not they can make it work without public subsidy. One of the things the coalition agreed with some passion in the current circumstances of fiscal restraint was that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear power.”

Even support in the event of a disaster was out of the question, he said. “That would count as a subsidy absolutely. There will be no public bailouts . . . I have explained my position to the industry and said public subsidies include contingent liabilities... It is a challenge for them, as no one has yet built a nuclear power station without public subsidy for some time... The key thing about it is that if the operators think they can make it work then they take that commercial risk... My view is that historically nuclear is prone to going over budget and as a result there has not been private commercial finance for nuclear for a long time.”

Jolly good, I couldn't agree more. I am also rabidly opposed to subsidies for anything whatsoever (above and beyond simple redistribution to fellow citizens). Similarly, we all need electricity, and we have to pay for it through our electricity bills, so all things being equal, we want electricity to be generated as cheaply as possible but without subsidies or artificially imposed costs, which for the electricity companies means getting planning permission for the power stations and overhead cables.

So if things like nuclear power stations or windmills can be self-financing, they can go ahead, else not. Ah... sorry, did I say 'windmills'?

“We ought to be able to put together a policy that is non-carbon and independent from foreign sources.” But he admitted that it is “inevitable” that Britain is going to become “more reliant” on imported energy over the next few years. In the election the Lib Dems called for 15,000 more large wind turbines. Mr Huhne thinks wind farms are “beautiful” and says: "We can do a lot more although we have to be sensitive to local communities.”

When he says 'we can do a lot more', does he mean 'the government can subsidise them a lot more'? For incredibly heavily subsidised they are: in terms of £ per kW, they are even more heavily subsidised than nuclear.

Minister For Eco-Fascism

I'm no expert on criminal law, but ...

... Chris Huhne's ramblings* about how brilliant the EU is here just don't make sense:

The European Arrest Warrant, shepherded through the European parliament by Liberal Democrat MEPs, has slashed extradition times across the EU from an average of 18 months to just 43 days. Without it, rapists, murderers, armed robbers and paedophiles would not have faced trial, conviction and prison. If the Conservatives had their way, it is likely that many of these crooks would still be sipping sangria on a beach. It is astonishing that a party that sees itself as tough on crime would oppose something that makes it easier to make criminals face justice.

Has he never heard of the ancient concept of extradition? If you know that one of your criminals has gone abroad, you just ask for him to be sent back; there's little reason to assume that the other country would want to shelter them. The UK has plenty of extradition treaties it can fall back on.

Another consequence of Tory hostility to the warrant is that they would have us spend £25m a year warehousing criminals in our overcrowded prisons rather than sending them swiftly to face trial in another European country. This is the best-case scenario. Without the increased co-operation between police forces fostered by the European Arrest Warrant, many of these felons might still be stalking British streets. If the Tories take us out of the European Arrest Warrant, as they have promised, then they will turn Britain into a safe haven for the worst offenders in Europe. There is no better example of why they are unfit to govern.

Wouldn't an independent UK have the right to deport foreign criminals, whether the other country had asked for their return or not? Are non-EU countries like Norway, Switzerland or Iceland, or indeed the Channel Islands, really all "a safe haven for the worst offenders in Europe"?

It is astonishing that anyone would want to make it more difficult for us to check whether people coming to this country are dangerous criminals. It is reckless in the extreme.

Again, wouldn't an independent UK be able to do whatever checks it feels like? There's no bar to reciprocal exchanges of information - they tell us about their crim's and we'll tell them about ours?

I am appalled that this election campaign has not allowed for a serious discussion about how to tackle cross-border crime.

If his dream is a 'Europe without borders', then by definition there'd be less cross-border crime, or what's his point? Agreed, borders make life a little bit more complicated for everybody, but they must make things a whole lot more difficult for criminals**, so from that point of view the more borders the better.

* Via WfW.

** If you steal £26.5 million in Northern Irish banknotes, you're pretty restricted as to where you can launder them; steal the same amount in Euros and you've a much wider choice ...

Chris Huhne - one word too many

From the intro to his article in The Independent, on the topic of Geert Wilders:

Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it. The decision to stop people from exercising this fundamental right must never be taken...

Excellent stuff, I'm with him so far. But then he does a DoubleThink and turns the whole logic on its head by ending that second sentence with the word "... lightly" and concluding that "It is precisely the prevention of harm to minorities that justifies the restrictions to Mr Wilders' freedom of speech."

Dude, WTF? "Harm to minorities"? Wasn't Labour peer Lord Ahmed threatening to 'mobilise ten thousand Muslims' who would march, presumably armed with pitchforks and blazing torches, on the Houses of Parliament? Who's threatening to harm whom here, exactly?

H/t DK