Eastleigh By election

I suspect the main effect of the Eastleigh by election result will be a sudden, and very welcome,silence from the Liberal Democrats on the 'unfairness' of the 'First Past the Post' election format.  It is all very well bleating about how 'unfair' and 'undemocratic' the First Past the Post system is when you would be the major beneficiary of  some form of Proportional Representation but hey - now - oh dear - those beastly UKIP people would get representation in Parliament - actually rather a lot representation too if the Polls are to be believed - rather more than us 'right on' Liberal democrats in fact - and that would never do would it?

 I mean you really can't let people like UKIP into Parliament - because they actually believe in something - something really horrible too -like putting their country first - like controlling immigration -like getting a grip of Human Rights abuse - like giving the people a referendum on Europe - like thinking - horror of horrors - that looking after our armed forces is a little bit more important than dishing out Overseas Aid to all and sundry.  I mean what they believe in is really disgusting - isn't it?

Because you see the Liberals - like all the current political establishment - are not really 'Democrats' at all.  If - by the word - Democrat - you mean governing according to the wishes of the people. It is -in fact - a very long time since politicians of any party bothered to actually take into account what people actually wanted.  No - today's politician - is like an old fashioned Nanny - Nanny knows best - so no matter how much you shout and scream there is nothing you can do about it because if you get rid of Nanny Cameron - you will get Nanny Milliband - whose medicine will be much the same but slightly nastier.  Except now there is a new kid on the block - UKIP - which actually stands for something - and oddly -an increasing number of people like what they hear.       

Invitation to View

I often receive requests from individuals asking if they can come and look round my house to which I reply yes - of course - but at a price.  After all  - as the Good Book says; "The labourer is worthy of his hire" and as showing someone round takes up at least an hour of my time - then my minimum charge is £150.  This may sound a lot but then a girlfriend of my wife's is getting divorced and is being charged £700 per hour by some grease ball divorce lawyer (is there lower species of life than a divorce lawyer?)  - so frankly at £150 an hour I reckon I am cheap at the price.  Obviously though this puts a tour out of reach of a lot of people so I  - together with some other house owners in South West England have joined together to do something called -Invitation to View.

This idea originated in East Anglia and is simple. Houses such as mine designate certain days and times when they are willing to show people round their houses.  People book in and pay in advance via the Invitation to View website and then turn up on the appointed day at the appointed time and get my undivided attention. It is good for me because normally there are between ten and fifteen people each paying  £15 a head for 'a tour and  tea' and good for people interested in crumbling piles such as mine which are not normally open to the public. Everyone - in other words - is a winner.    

Mansion Tax

Living in what is undoubtedly a 'mansion' I am naturally a little nervous now that Ed Milliband has adopted 'Baby Face' Clegg's idea of a Mansion Tax.  For a politician the attractions of such a tax are easy to see.  There are , apparently, some 70,000 houses in the UK worth over two million pounds (out of a total housing stock of some 15.0 million)  of these 70,000 houses some 70% of them are in London and - though no one has mentioned it- some 70% of those in London are owned by fat Arabs, greasy Frenchmen, or criminal Russian oligarchs  and -those Brits who do own houses in London worth over two million pounds - are almost exclusively bankers - and we all hate them anyway.  So actually - for a politician - it is a no brainer - very few votes -if any will be lost - while - at a tax rate of 1% on values it is estimated that £1.6 billion will be raised.

Unfortunately though - for politicians - things are not that simple. If you bung on a tax of 1% on the capital values of any home worth over £2.0 million then something is going to happen and that something is that homes worth £2.0 million or more are going to drop in value probably by around 20%. Why?  Because that's how economics works. Add on an annual cost to owning a property and the value will shrink -that is why -incidentally - house prices in  the USA look cheap to us in the UK  - the reason they are cheap is that property taxes are very high in the States and that is reflected in the price.

So the mansion tax will not raise anything like what Baby face and Ed Milliband think as something like 50% of the properties they hope to tax will immediately fall in value below the £2.0 million threshold.  Then - of course- in rural Britain someone will have to decide what is a mansion. That might sound silly until you think that most houses worth more than £2.0 million in the country come with land attached - take away the land and the house suddenly becomes worth much, much less. So a monster mansion like mine would be worth very little if I tried to sell it with two acres of garden.  Add in the fact that a lot of such properties are Grade 1 listed buildings and you immediately fire up the Heritage Lobby which - after the fluffy animal lobby- is probably the most feared by politicians.

So actually 'the Mansion Tax' is yet another example of 'sound bite' politics to which -sadly - all three party leaders are addicted.  Have a brain wave - try it on a 'focus group' - then make a speech and get acres of newsprint and TV coverage- later -of course -in the cold light of day - harsh realities come to the fore - but by then you are trapped by your sound bite.  that - of course -is how Cameron became entangled with Gay marriage - Overseas Aid - the Royal Succession - to name but three of his more asinine policies.
       

NHS - What's wrong

Anyone who knows anyone who has had an elderly relative in a NHS hospital knows that the horror stories from West Stafford Hospital are not unique to that establishment.

Thirty odd years ago nurses where revered by all people as being angels in uniform - they were beyond criticism.   How things have changed. Mention nurses now and you are likely to be inundated with stories
which reflect badly on them and their profession. So what's gone wrong?

When I spent a week in my local hospital one thing struck me. I never saw the same nurse twice. The only human 'continuity' on the ward was provided by a super lady who did the cleaning and wheeled a tea trolley round. Now I am sure it is -technically - a lot more 'efficient' to allocate nurses to different wards etc, but if you have no continuity how can you have any pride in your ward and -if you have no pride in your ward - then you will do -being a humane being - the minimum you need to get by.  That -presumably - is why -at West Stafford - no one is being blamed or punished for the appalling standard of care because -to put it simply - no nurse was around long enough for any blame to stick.

So the first reform is to allocate nurses to wards as part of a team under the control of a Matron who has real powers of discipline. That way standards would rise - nurses would be accountable  - and- hopefully - pride in their ward and job would rise.

The real villain though is surely the Royal College of Nursing who - over the last thirty years have presided over a profession which has fallen so far - and so fast -in the public esteem. One of the key reasons for this has to be their insistence that nursing was a 'profession' and not a 'calling' and that therefor nurses should all have university degrees.   So let's throw nursing open to anyone who wants to do it providing they pass the necessary test and abolish the degree qualification.

An ABC for Baby Patriots 1899

No wonder literacy rates among children where higher in the 19th century than they are now. They had great books like this from which to learn their letters. Brilliantly illustrated it contains marvellous rhymes like this one for the letter K.

K is for Kings
once warlike and haughty
Great Britain subdued them
because they'd been naughty

Or what about C;

C is for colonies
rightly we boast
That of all the great nations
Great Britain has most

Sadly much of it is now out of date but not everything - Surely A is still -just - true;

A is the Army
that dies for the Queen
It's the very best army
That ever was seen

Though not perhaps for much longer as 'Our Dave ' persists in cutting it to the bone so he can continue to finance his ridiculous obsession with Overseas Aid

But there is one rhyme which is still as true today as it was in 1899. The letter Q.

Q is our queen !
It fills us with pride
to see the Queens coach
when the Queen is inside

Anyway if you have children starting to learn their letters go on the internet and get this book - It is great . Personally if I was Mr. Gove I think I would make it a set book in every Primary School in the land. Children would not only learn their letters but a bit of history as well and then they might ask how- in just over a century -a great country could piss such legacy down the drain. Well the answer is simple -one word-  Politicians.  

First World War anniversary celebrations

The anniversary of the start of the Great War is already being hijacked by the bleeding heart liberals who believe that 'there is nothing to celebrate' and 'that the dead of both sides must be commemorated together' and other such rubbish. 

Well I don't agree.  There is a lot to celebrate.  First and foremost is the superb performance of the British Army in stopping the Germans dead (literally) in their tracks.  By doing so they prevented the defeat of France which would have led to the domination of Europe by Germany.

If you want to find out just how good the British Army of 1914 was then don't read the sort of drivel put about by the likes of Sebastian Faulks but a book by a truly brilliant historian, Lyn Macdonald,  who dedicated most of the last forty years to first hunting down survivors and then, when they were no more, their letters and diaries and weaving the resulting information into a series of superb books on the Great War.  Here, to give you a taster, is an extract from her book 1914 and is the account  of sixteen year old Jimmy Naylor a trumpeter with the Royal Field Artillery who witnessed the British infantry in action.: 

"He was saying , At four hundred.......At five hundred .......at threee fifty.......at three hundred. the rifles blazed, but still the Germans came on.  they were getting nearer and nearer and for the first time I began to feel rather anxious anf frightened. they weren't and indeterminate mass any more - you could actually pick out details, see them as individual men, coming on, coming on.  And the officer, still as cool as anything, was saying , At two fifty ....At two hundred ......And then he said ,ten rounds rapid!  And the chaps opened up - And the Germans just fell down like logs . I've never seen anything like it, the discipline, the fire discipline of those troops, I've never forgotten that, I was so impressed. As a boy of sixteen I was simply astounded. I thought, 'What a marvellous army we are!' The attack was completely repulsed - probably not for long but it was long enough for us to get the guns away. It saved us. "    

If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and your heart burst with pride at being British then you probavly live in Notting Hill Gate or Chipping Norton (or both).   

Business Leaders

In my own small way I suppose I am 'a member of the business community'  so I am oddly annoyed when I read in the paper that 'business leaders' want the government to do something, especially when virtually everything these self styled unelected 'business leaders want is the diametric opposite of what I want.  Why is this I wonder?  Well it could be because the average time horizon of most of these businessmen is a maximum of say three years while mine is, anyway when I plant an oak tree, two hundred years. You get my point I hope. So when these drips warn Cameron against doing anything which might jeopardise our relationship with Europe they don't have the long term interests of the country at heart but purely the next couple of years P&L account. Similarly of course when they complain about immigration controls they are worrying about the supply of cheap labour drying up not of the long term social costs which uncontrolled immigration brings.

In any event the track record of 'business leaders' is abysmal.  A trawl through the newspapers of the past would reveal the 'business leaders' have very little judgement about what is good for the country or indeed for business. Business leaders for instance were loud in their desire for us to join the euro.  Enough said, but it would be better for their businesses if these self important prats concentrated their efforts on running them rather than telling the Prime Minister how to run the country.