First they reduce your sentence by half and then they reduce it by a third instead and call it 'tough on crime'.

Ken Clarke

Plus ça change...

"We will ensure that there is no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament."
-
Those were the exact words of the coalition agreement. Now, something that the EU has never managed to do is take away from the UK Parliament and Courts jurisdiction over contract law. That isn't going to stop them trying though, hence the Ministry of Justice (run by Euro-enthusiast Ken Clarke last time I looked) is now obliged to ask you your view on having an EC directive on contract law.
-
"A Directive on European Contract Law could harmonise national contract law on the basis of minimum common standards. Member States would be able to retain more protective rules, subject to compliance with the Treaty. It could also be foreseen that the resulting differences are notified to the Commission and then published to increase transparency for consumers and businesses operating across borders."
-
From the EC Green Paper.

More one per cent fun

It was reported last Friday that the Tories say that they would spend one per cent of GDP less than Labour by 2015-16. Ken Clarke has apparently upped the ante a bit and promised to to spend one-and-a-half per cent less.

Well whoopie do.

I've no reason to assume that yer average Daily Mirror reader is stupider than anybody else, but I doubt whether maths is their strong point. The article insists that this spending cut is equivalent to half of the education budget. If one-and-a-half per cent of GDP = £20 billion = half the education budget, then the education budget must be £40 billion. According to HM Treasury's Public Sector Finances Databank, it's £87 billion.

But given that the government plans to spend £671.4 billion this year, are Daily Mirror readers happy with the fact that only £40 billion of that goes on education? Do they not wonder where the rest goes? Or all they all public sector workers, like Grauniad readers?

The whole thing then descends into parody from there on in. Especially Liam Byrne saying that "It would mean we would have to take £20billion out of public services by 2014. That would do irreparable damage to public services or to taxpayers." Possibly the most injudicious "or" of the week.

Having a fulsome chuckle at our expense...

It's Sunday, so apart from that, it's comment-only blogging for the rest of the day (to the extent I haven't got other things to do)..

I'm surprised he was that brazen about it

From yesterday's FT:

Ken Clarke, the outspoken former Conservative chancellor, has warned David Cameron not to translate his "standing up to big business" rhetoric into policies in government.

I'm struggling here. We know that politicians lie about nearly everything and can only hope to achieve a small fraction of whatever bright new future they promise during an election campaign.

But if Dave's "standing up to big business rhetoric" was just rhetoric, how much else of what he has said was "just rhetoric" as well? How is the voter supposed to distinguish between "rhetoric that will be translated into policities" and "rhetoric that won't be translated into policies"?

But like I said, it's surprising that Ken Clarke was so blatant about admitting it.

Outbreak of commonsense ...

... at HM Treasury!

I have been pointing out for ages that VAT is The Worst Tax Of All, to little avail. Happily, the CEBR got a lot of coverage recently with their suggestion that the standard rate of VAT be reduced from 17.5% to 12.5%. Former Chancellor Ken Clarke suggested in an interview in today's Times that the best thing that The Badger could propose in his much vaunted Pre-Budget Report next Monday would be to reduce VAT to 15% (as a good EU-phile, Fatty Clarke knows that the EU demand that each country has a standard rate of no less than 15%), and hey presto ...

From The Times (breaking news): "Gordon Brown to cut VAT as winter recession bites" (note: not "Alistair Darling to cut VAT ..."). A similar story has appeared on The Telegraph's website.

Equally heartening, another of the bullet points in that article suggests that there'll be: "A tax exemption for foreign dividends, designed to persuade UK-based multinationals not to relocate abroad."

I have also been saying for ages (e.g. item 2 here) that the UK ought to exempt foreign dividends from tax, just like all other civilised European countries (i.e. all of them except the UK and Ireland).

The static 'cost' per annum of these two eminently sensible tax reduction simplification measure would be around £12 billion for VAT and £1 billion for the foreign dividends, the dynamic 'cost' will be less than half of that, i.e. about one per cent of current government spending, one-fifth of which is pure waste and corruption anyway.