Yet more gloriousness!

There was much rejoicing earlier this week when "Commander" Ali Dizaei finally got his come-uppance. Keep your fingers crossed - it looks as if Trevor Phillips might be next!

Fun Online Poll Results, the EHRC and the Royal Family

Turnout was quite low in last week's Fun Online Poll, but thanks to the 51 people who took part. The responses to the question "What should income-related benefit withdrawal try to achieve?" were as follows:

Minimise the cost of welfare - 47% (1)
Show people they can't get something for nothing - 24% (2)
Create jobs for bureaucrats and snoopers (incl. those who voted 'other' and specified something similar) - 22%
Encourage claimants to work cash-in-hand - 6%
Discourage claimants from working - 2%

1) I'm glad that nearly half voted for "Minimise the cost of welfare". Remember that people on welfare (including Tax Credits) lose between 70p and £1 in tax and benefits withdrawal for every £1 they earn gross (to which we add the unascertainable cost of all the form-filling and hassle). I see income-based benefits withdrawal as a kind of income tax on welfare claimants.

We know from the Laffer Curve that the revenue-maximising income tax rate is probably a lot less than 70% (let alone 100%), so if we want to collect as much 'tax' from welfare claimants as possible, surely it must make sense to see what happens if we reduce the withdrawal rate to the same as the basic rate of tax (which means, in practice, they would continue to be paid benefit and be given a BR tax code for PAYE if they work) with an extra 19% deduction for social tenants, instead of charging them below-market rents and then making them claim Housing Benefit if they can't even afford that (which could be collected quite simply by giving them a K-code for PAYE).

2) I simply do not understand why so many voted for "Show them they can't get something for nothing". The basic rate of benefits must surely be set at just above the breadline, i.e. £64.30 for Income Support seems 'about right'. Under current rules, a welfare claimant who finds low paid, temporary or part time work is barely better off if he accepts it, but with the withdrawal rate set at 31% or 50%, it would be easy to double or treble your net income. Isn't that far more likely to 'send a message' that work is the best route out of poverty?

I accept that 31% or 50% are probably not the 'cost minimising' rates of benefit withdrawal (it's probably more like 60%), but surely it is better to pitch them on the low side, as this makes work more worthwhile, with all round wider benefits to society and to employers, which are difficult to quantify but no doubt significant.
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OK.

Having found out that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission cost the taxpayer £51 million in its first two years of existence, roughly as much as The Royal Family (which costs either £7.9 million a year or £41.5 million a year, depending on how you interpret this article), so that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Who is better value for taxpayers' money: The Royal Family or the Equalities and Human Rights Commission?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

£70 million well spent!

From The Evening Standard:

MORE bad news for Trevor Phillips (left), beleaguered Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Last week he squirmed as Parliament’s Select Committee on Human Rights grilled him about claims made by prominent former colleagues who resigned from the EHRC, which costs the taxpayer £70 million a year...

Sorry, how much?

UPDATE, as Adam C points out in the comments, the EHRC 'only' burned through £52 million in the first two years of its existence. Their accounts are an absolute joy to read.

Pots, kettles

From the BBC:

"One hundred public figures have joined a pressure group's campaign for a High Pay Commission to curb "excessive" pay, amid concern over high City salaries.

Politicians, as well as unions and academics, are backing the centre-left Compass group's campaign for steps such as maximum wage ratios and bonus taxes. Chancellor Alistair Darling said he was ready to curb bonuses if necessary.

Media reports suggested Barclays was seeking to hire five JP Morgan bankers with bonus deals totalling £30m. Seperately, the Times on Monday said Barclays paid million of pounds to its head of Barclaycard, Anthony Jenkins, for a role that never came to fruition. Barclays declined to comment on both reports.

Barclays has not benefitted unduly from the taxpayer-funded bail-outs, so I'd suggest that their pay structures are none of the government's business. As to the bonuses paid by government-backed banks, I'd suggest that the problem is the government backing, not the bonuses.

The group urging for control over pay issued a joint statement, which said the "unjust rewards" of a few hundred "masters of the universe" exacerbated the risks to which the British economy was exposed. The campaign's backers include Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable and Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who argue that high levels of pay and bonuses led to the financial crisis.

The campaign compared the wage levels of the highly-remunerated to those of employees who worked a 40-hour week earning the minimum wage. It argued someone earning the minimum wage would have to work for about 226 years to receive the same annual pay as a FTSE 100 boss.

Tee hee! And how many years does that person have to work to earn as much as MPs can claim each year as Second Home Allowance? About two?

If we are to focus on those people who earn high salaries at the taxpayer's expense, shouldn't we be looking at MPs, all the heads of quangos, Town Hall fat cats and organisations like the BBC?

Trevor Phillips misses the point

Other bloggers, e.g. Phil T, have already covered the ridiculous article on the front of yesterday's Times*

My first thought was this: if Obama Bin Laden were over here, would he be that bothered? Why would he want to be PM on a salary of £189,944 with all the hassle involved, when he could choose an easy life as head of the Equality & Human Rights Commission on a basic package of £110,000, together with all the side income from journalism etc?

Indeed, TP hints at this himself in the painful ("This guy [Obama] walks on water, he is a miracle ...") interview on pages 42,43 of the print edition:

The man who has perhaps come closest to being Britain's Obama ... seems to have given up his ambitions for elected office. "Some of us are born to be John the Baptist," he said....

Woah! I'm not that au fait with The Bibble, but was John the Baptist on the equivalent of £110,000 per annum? His Wiki entry certainly mentions nothing of the sort.

* I like Tim W's comment best: There are substantial parts of the Labour Party that have a blind hatred for America and Americans. No way would they let an American rise to the top.

Immigrants and social housing

Trevor Phillips* and his crew have come up with this meaningless statistic:

"...90 per cent of people living in social housing were born in the UK"

Er, yeah ... out of the UK population as a whole, how many % were born in the UK? As at 2001, it was about 91.7 per cent, so given the mass immigration in the last ten years, on the face of it, that looks 'fair'...

"The study found that more than 60 per cent of people who have come to the UK in the last five years live in private rented accommodation".

In plain English ... "... nearly 40 per cent of people who have come to the UK in the last five years are in social housing**"

* A totally devious, corrupt, two-faced, lying shit, as it happens.

** Minus those who are owner-occupiers, of course. Possibly more relevant is that a lot of the 60 per cent in private rented accommodation might be claiming Housing Benefit.

Update: Madasafish lays into sloppy use of statistics here.

Trevor Phillips is a devious bastard

... right, now I'm angry enough to post again!

1. Social housing, the way I understood it, is for people with lower earnings capacity - postmen, hairdressers, shelf stackers etc (and the disabled and elderly). Fair enough.
2. It is quite probably true that blacks and Muslims have, on the whole, a lower earnings capacity (whether this is due to racism on part of employers, counter-productive anti-discrimination legislation or lousy work ethic is a different debate).
3. There is a widespread perception that recent immigrants are given priority in the allocation of social housing (again, whether this is true or not is a different debate).

Given 1. and 2. it would be hardly surprising if UK-born blacks and Muslims are over-represented in social housing, that is neither here nor there - the question is 3. "Do recent immigrants get priority?", bearing in mind that most recent immigrants are East Europeans, i.e. white*.

The government recently asked the LGA to look into whether recent immigrants really do get priority. But how does Clever Trevor spin it? "And one area where this idea of unfairness is most frequently alleged - is in housing allocation. Specifically that white families are cheated out of their right to social housing by newly arrived migrants."

Trevor, you smug shit, the question was and is "Do recent immigrants - most of whom are white - get priority over UK-born people - of whatever colour?"

* I subscribe to the libertarian/pragmatic idea that immigrants are broadly welcome, provided they can support themselves and play by our rules.

1984 (2): Rewriting history

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future", summarised Winston Smith in the book '1984'.

Trevor 'Coconut'* Phillips seems to have taken this to heart and now wants British history to be rewritten to make it more 'inclusive'.**

* This is not a term of racial abuse. It means an outwardly black person who has totally sold out.

** See also James Delingpole on the subject of Mary Seacole in 'How to be right', a book I am not ashamed to recommend.