Good work, Mandy!

Continuing my occasional series on Peter Mandelson keeping his options open, from today's Queen's Speech:

Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Creates basis in law for Parliament to scrutinise treaties ("scrutinise" - not actually "vote on" or "reject" or anything). Ends the by-election of hereditary peers to sit in House of Lords. Provides for disqualification of peers convicted of serious offences or subject to a bankruptcy order. Allows peers to resign peerages. Repeals legislation limiting protests around Parliament. Generally extends to whole UK.

One for Dearieme

From The Metro, "Roadkill calendar proves surprisingly popular".

FakeCharity and Quango Festival

If you'd like the opportunity to see the following speakers:

Martin Narey, Chief Executive, Barnardo's
Ivana La Valle, Director of Research, Evidence and Evaluation, National Children's Bureau
Yvonne Roberts, Senior Associate, the Young Foundation
Simon Antrobus, Chief Executive, Addaction
Debbie Scott, Chief Executive, Tomorrow's People
Kathy Evans, Director of Policy, Children England
Liz Railton CBE, Director of National Programmes, Serco Education and Children's Services
Cllr Brian Connell, Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Family Policy, Westminister City Council
Hugh Thornbery, Strategic Director of Children's Services England North, Action for Children Lisa Harker, Co-Director, ippr (Chair)

... and to rub shoulders with these sorts of people:

Regeneration officers
Senior management: heads and directors of services
Social services: adult, children, education, family and mental health services
Voluntary sector organisations involved in the whole family agenda - children’s charities, homeless and substance misuse fields
Parenting and family support organisations
Youth Justice Board and Youth Offending Teams
Drug and alcohol support services
Probation and ex-offender officers and managers
Children’s centre practitioners
Civil servants and policymakers
Clinical psychologists
Connexions partnerships
Primary Care Trust / Mental Health Trust representatives
Regional Development Agencies
Trades unions
Education sector
Employment service providers
Academics and think tanks
Adult learning and skills providers
Media,

... then sign up to this shindig hosted by the Institute For Public Policy Research. Don't forget to take some plastic cutlery with you to prevent serious injury should you be overcome by the urge to stab someone (or indeed to stab yourself).

More Barnardo's fun

There was a longer article in The Grauniad yesterday, giving Barnado's the opportunity to ask for more taxpayers' cash, ending with the surprising admission "We don't know the true extent of this problem ... But we know, however hidden from the public eye it might be, that it affects many thousands of children."*

Oh come off it, chaps. Either you know or you don't. Or are you taking a leaf out of Donald Rumsfeld's book?

* I was sorely tempted to edit that down to "We don't know the true extent of this problem ... it might be, that it affects many thousands of children." But that would have been cheating.

That Barnardo's story continues

Yesterday, Obnoxio reckoned that Barnado's phrase "sophisticated networks of older men ... grooming hundreds of British children to be trafficked within the UK for sexual exploitation" was in fact a euphemism for "sophisticated networks of Asian men ...".

Which seems quite likely to me, and makes it even more ironic that on the day after the big Barnado's money grabbing exercise, the government's Forced Marriage Unit is cutting off the modest funding to the very people who might, just possibly, be able to make a bit of a difference.

OK, I think Obo meant Asian men abusing white children, forced marriage is about Asian families abusing Asian children, but you get the general idea.

Sign up to Unity's letter...

... over here.

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.

Times Sudoku Number 2863

Nick Drew reckons this Sudoku puzzle has two possible solutions, and that somewhere you can swap round 6's and 9's. The yellow squares are the numbers provided and the rest is my suggested solution. Can anybody work out which 6's and which 9's?

Drumming up a bit of business (2)

If you were aware of serious crimes being committed, what would your first instinct be a) to inform the police*, or b) to ask the government for money?

From the BBC:

Barnardo's says that thousands of girls and boys are at risk of organised trafficking, and accuses councils of failing the victims. The organisation says the vast majority of local authorities do not provide expert help for such children.

It urges councils to commission research and to act on the results. In its report, Whose Child Now?, the charity says that, although there are more than 200 local authorities across the UK, only 40 are known to provide specialist services for the victims of sexual exploitation. Barnardo's runs just over half of those services...

So, well done all those of you who chose b)!

NB, Barnado's has form for this. The government pays it £120 million a year for looking after children who have been taken into care. Two months ago it called for more children to be taken into care.

* OK, on reflection you probably wouldn't. The police are only interested if you report trivial offences or hand in a shotgun nowadays. But that would be your first instinct, I hope.

I should CoCo

As I have been pointing out for two years, the free-market way to fix the banks is via debt-for-equity swaps, i.e. this is exactly what happens if a bank is allowed to go 'bankrupt' - that doesn't mean that its payment system freezes up, all its loans are magically called in (which would be impossible) and that all branches are shut - all that happens is that debt-holders cancel some of their debt and issue themselves shares instead (as happened with CIT Group recently).

There are infinite kinds of debt-for-equity swaps, another good example is the idea of splitting Northern Rock into a 'good bank' (which takes over good loans, branch network and deposits) and a 'bad bank' (which is a closed fund which collects repayments on bad loans and pays off bondholders as and when the money comes in).

A more forward looking plan is for banks to issue "contingent convertible" or "CoCo" bonds, which Lloyds Group is now planning. The gimmick being, as soon as there is a shortfall in the banks shareholders' funds (i.e. if ordinary liabilities and customer deposits exceed the value of their assets - primarily mortgage advances to borrowers), the equivalent value of CoCo's is converted to share capital (i.e. the liability to repay is cancelled).

Sure, this means that banks will have to pay a higher interest rate to holders thereof to compensate them for their lose-lose position (they share in the downside but not in the upside), but so what? There has to be a balance between the return on finance paid to depositors, bondholders and shareholders and the free market is the best way of finding that balance.

If all non-deposit finance raised by banks were in the form of CoCo's, we'd never really have to worry about bank failures again.