here are some suggestions why the liberals might loose

Good Morning Sarah
I am voting for you but if you don't get the job, here are some suggestions why.

• There was no adult conversation in the leaflets about NHS claims. Liberal coalition ministers were keen to promote an income tax cut on low earners. There is a vague suggestion in the leaflets that Liberals are more in favour of NHS spending than conservatives. So there needs to be an adult conversation with voters with links to the manifesto or statements about what is a lower priority than the NHS.
• There was no adult conversation in the leaflets about Heathrow - the alternatives, the detail, and what Vince Cable MP did specifically about the issue when a cabinet minister.
  
  
• There was no adult conversation in the leaflets about single markets and tariffs; the candidates' blog post was simplified, the differences between herself and the other main candidate not spelt-out.
• There was huge spending and effort put-in to a Dame Edna style of politics that lost the last Liberal MP her seat. She was caught absolutely un-deniably pretending that there would be a hospital closure in order to "campaign" against it, whatever that means. Her claim and name are repeated in current Liberal literature and she has been appointed to the House of Lords with a junior trade minister position in the coalition dispite being thrown-out by voters. Just before being thrown-out she held a series of seminars around the constituency, I remember. I asked about national politics. She said "most people are interested in local issues - we may have another meeting about national issues later-on". This was extraordinary. There were also individual accounts of voters asking her to lobby about some issue or other - fairness at work or social care spending - and finding that she lobbied one way for individual constituents while voting the other way in the house of commons. This sounds a bit vague, but I tried to find a contact in the Lib Dems to raise a concern in clear detail and got no reply.

If anyone in the Lib Dems would like to speak in detail, I live a few hundred yards from the party office and could drop-in any time.
good luck

John Robertson, 2 Avenue Gardens, London SW14 8BP 0000 286 9947
(no reply recieved yet dispite email and paper copies sent)

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Good evening John,
I’m not a career politician. It was never in my plan to stand for Parliament. But after Brexit and after seeing the direction the Conservatives were taking our country in, I couldn’t just sit idly by.
By-elections can really change things and tomorrow, you can use your vote to send the Government a powerful message about the direction they are taking the country.
The choice you face is simple.
For many years Zac Goldsmith has been one of the strongest voices calling for Britain to leave Europe. In this campaign he is backed by UKIP and many of the most Eurosceptic Conservative MPs.
If he wins it is a green light for this Government to continue its plan for a hard Brexit. Britain out of the single market – regardless of the damage that will do to our economy.
If he loses, we will send a strong message to this Conservative Brexit Government that will force them to change course.

Help send that message

Like so many people here, I voted Remain and I still believe that being a member of the European Union is what is best for Britain.
If you elect me on Thursday, I’ll take that as a personal mandate to vote against article 50, oppose Brexit and protect our membership of the single market.
So, if you want an MP who will stand up for you on Brexit and if you want to change the direction of our country, please, vote for me tomorrow.
Thank you,
Sarah,
Sarah Olney
Liberal Democrat candidate
Richmond Park and North Kingston by-election
PS: Some of the polling stations have changed since the last election - make sure you know where you’re voting tomorrow and check your polling station here: saraholney.org.uk/plan

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Zac Goldsmith's pitch to be an experienced independent MP

The man invited anyone on his email list to turn-up to the Bear Kick this morning, listen to an explanation of why he's resigned and re-stood (which everyone knows) and answer questions. 
What a lot of words all in a row! Issues and details have this effect on people.

I won't vote for Goldsmith because if his line on welfare benefits - on the state as a kind of national insurance company. He doesn't seem to vote for that, so I suppose he only suits voters who want to pay for services privately and some of them donate to charities for those who don't have medicare. Somewhere more like India or parts of the USA.

Face-to-face you get an impression of a highly rational man, rather than a slogan-driven one or a point-scoring one. For example he talked about work to reassure EU passport-holders working in the UK (I forget the exact point but it was a rational reasonable one).

I got the same impression as a constituent: he forwarded a few emails for me a year or two ago, understood my unclear language, found exactly the right people to contact, and got a very clear reply.

The same impression comes from the leaflets his supporters put through letter boxes (the other party's ones loose them votes I think, by assuming the voters are mentally deficient).

Speech and answers: Heathrow.

Any of the other options would be better than Heathrow; Gatwick is the main one at the moment.  (I think the Gatwick Obviously ads in papers make the point)

Well-informed, obviously. Willing to work cross-party which some colleagues don't do.

Notices the blurred devision between Heathrow and HM Government in peoples' career-paths, which would be illegal a lot of European countries. Hence the default position which has always been Government = Heathrow.

A colleague noticed 20% Chinese ownership of Heathrow which is part of the strange George Osborne pattern that's emerged these past few years; we have to wait another 20 years till papers are released to find out.

Gatwick can build another runway but can't use it at the moment (someone asked about this). Heathrow might soon be allowed to build another runway but can't pay for it: loads of issues in recent estimates aren't costed and aren't going to be paid-for by Heathrow. The airport is already one of the most expensive in the world; if it wants free money it has to put-up prices even more or pay to borrow it. I didn't follow this closely because the argument seems to be won; it's just the habitual default position of government that has to change.

"Open for business" as a slogan is now the deciding issue for the cabinet, one questioner said, but, if it's good for business for people to fly more openly, then Gatwick surely answers that need.

Speech and answers: Non-Heathrow.

Nothing to add to what he says in his leaflets. No great "difference between Hard Brexit and Soft Brexit" as he sees things. A couple of people asked what other issues the independent MP might persue. He referred them to his record. His opinions are conservative with a small c, he has a track record of working on environmental issues. "The whips will tell you that I regard every vote as a free vote", he said.

"Zac Goldsmith is a Conservative MP, and on the vast majority of issues votes the same way as other Conservative MPs" - The rest of this page is pinched from the url below where it might be easier to read than here. The red ones put me off. Skip the T-shirt point to see his voting record below.

"I want a national social care budget" - T shirt statement

I printed that on a sheet of A4 and paperclipped it to my T shirt at the meeting. It seemed efficient and polite. Nobody complained, but I wore draft 1 instead of draft 2 by mistake. Draft one has the words "national social" on one line, which looks a bit alarming

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24911/zac_goldsmith/richmond_park

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Social Issues #

• Consistently voted for equal gay rights Show votes
• Generally voted against smoking bans Show votes
• Consistently voted for allowing marriage between two people of same sex Show votes
• Generally voted against laws to promote equality and human rights Show votes
• Consistently voted for allowing terminally ill people to be given assistance to end their life Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Foreign Policy and Defence #

• Almost always voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas Show votes
• Almost always voted for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system Show votes
• Generally voted against more EU integration Show votes
• Almost always voted for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU Show votes
• Consistently voted against strengthening the Military Covenant Show votes
• Generally voted for a right to remain for EU nationals already in living in the UK Show votes
• Generally voted against UK membership of the EU Show votes
• Consistently voted for military action against ISIL (Daesh) Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Welfare and Benefits #

• Generally voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the "bedroom tax") Show votes
• Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices Show votes
• Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability Show votes
• Almost always voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent on such support Show votes
• Almost always voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits Show votes
• Consistently voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed Show votes

This list ends "miscellanious"

Goldsmith's work is great. I subscribe to something or other - probably theyworkforyou - and get the odd update when he is recorded in parliament which I usually delete without glancing. Even I noticed that antibiotic resistance is an important subject which I doubt other MPs are interested in, and that he asked what a waste Hinckley Point is in a rather informed kind of way. Anyway, the automated result for "misc." is at the bottom of the page.

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Taxation and Employment #

• Generally voted for raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax Show votes
• Almost always voted for increasing the rate of VAT Show votes
• Generally voted for higher taxes on alcoholic drinks Show votes
• Almost always voted for higher taxes on plane tickets Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against lower taxes on fuel for motor vehicles Show votes
• Generally voted against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000 Show votes
• Consistently voted for encouraging occupational pensions Show votes
• We don’t have enough information to calculate Zac Goldsmith’s position on automatic enrolment in occupational pensions. Show votes
• Almost always voted against a banker’s bonus tax Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against higher taxes on banks Show votes
• Consistently voted against an annual tax on the value of expensive homes (popularly known as a mansion tax) Show votes
• Almost always voted for allowing employees to exchange some employment rights for shares in the company they work for Show votes
• Almost always voted for more restrictive regulation of trade union activity Show votes
• Has never voted on reducing capital gains tax

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Business and the Economy #

• Generally voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax Show votes
• Generally voted for measures to reduce tax avoidance Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against stronger tax incentives for companies to invest in assets Show votes
• Almost always voted for new high speed rail infrastructure Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Health #

• Almost always voted against restricting the provision of services to private patients by the NHS Show votes
• Almost always voted for reforming the NHS so GPs buy services on behalf of their patients Show votes
• Generally voted against smoking bans Show votes
• Consistently voted for allowing terminally ill people to be given assistance to end their life Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Education #

• Consistently voted for greater autonomy for schools Show votes
• Consistently voted for raising England’s undergraduate tuition fee cap to £9,000 per year Show votes
• Almost always voted for academy schools Show votes
• Consistently voted for ending financial support for some 16-19 year olds in training and further education Show votes
• Consistently voted for university tuition fees Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Constitutional Reform #

• Generally voted for reducing central government funding of local government Show votes
• Consistently voted for an equal number of electors per parliamentary constituency Show votes
• Generally voted for fewer MPs in the House of Commons Show votes
• Generally voted against a more proportional system for electing MPs Show votes
• Generally voted against a wholly elected House of Lords Show votes
• Generally voted for local councils keeping money raised from taxes on business premises in their areas Show votes
• Generally voted against greater restrictions on campaigning by third parties, such as charities, during elections Show votes
• Almost always voted for fixed periods between parliamentary elections Show votes
• Generally voted against removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords Show votes
• Generally voted against transferring more powers to the Welsh Assembly Show votes
• Generally voted against transferring more powers to the Scottish Parliament Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against more powers for local councils Show votes
• Consistently voted for a veto for MPs from England, Wales and Northern Ireland over laws specifically impacting their part of the UK Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against a lower voting age Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Home Affairs #

• Generally voted for a stricter asylum system Show votes
• Almost always voted for the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners Show votes
• Generally voted for requiring the mass retention of information about communications Show votes
• Almost always voted for stronger enforcement of immigration rules Show votes
• Generally voted for mass surveillance of people’s communications and activities Show votes
• Has never voted on merging police and fire services under Police and Crime Commissioners

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Environmental Issues #

• Voted a mixture of for and against measures to prevent climate change Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against lower taxes on fuel for motor vehicles Show votes
• Consistently voted against selling England’s state owned forests Show votes
• Almost always voted for higher taxes on plane tickets Show votes
• Generally voted for financial incentives for low carbon emission electricity generation methods Show votes
• Almost always voted against culling badgers to tackle bovine tuberculosis Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against greater regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract shale gas Show votes
• Almost always voted for new high speed rail infrastructure Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Transport #

• Generally voted against greater public control of bus services Show votes
• Consistently voted against slowing the rise in rail fares Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against lower taxes on fuel for motor vehicles Show votes
• Almost always voted for higher taxes on plane tickets Show votes
• Voted a mixture of for and against a publicly owned railway system Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Housing #

• Almost always voted for phasing out secure tenancies for life Show votes
• Generally voted for charging a market rent to high earners renting a council home Show votes

How Zac Goldsmith voted on Miscellaneous Topics #

• Generally voted for greater regulation of gambling Show votes
• Consistently voted for capping civil service redundancy payments Show votes
• We don’t have enough information to calculate Zac Goldsmith’s position on Labour's anti-terrorism laws. Show votes
• Consistently voted for the privatisation of Royal Mail Show votes
• Generally voted against requiring pub companies to offer pub landlords rent-only leases Show votes
• Almost always voted for restricting the scope of legal aid Show votes
• Generally voted for allowing national security sensitive evidence to be put before courts in secret sessions Show votes
• Generally voted against a statutory register of lobbyists Show votes
• Almost always voted for limits on success fees paid to lawyers in no-win no fee cases Show votes
• Generally voted against restrictions on fees charged to tenants by letting agents Show votes
• Generally voted for the policies included in the 2010 Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement Show votes

More on their full voting record on Public Whip

Note for journalists and researchers: The data on this page may be used freely, on condition that TheyWorkForYou.com is cited as the source.
For an explanation of the vote descriptions please see the FAQ entries on vote descriptions and how the voting record is decided

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Saddest news for human rights and democracy in Turkey

Dear Diary: notes to self about Turkey
Dear two or three passers-by who read this by accident.

Sad news came this morning from Turkey.
I'm not clear whether the failed coup in the name of human rights and democracy really was for human rights and democracy, or whether it was just a way of doing business, but the failure of the coup will be bad for human rights and democracy.

[18.07.16] I wondered whether Faschist Erdoğan had organised the coup himself, which seems rational. Just recently I saw that someone who inspires democracy and human rights in Turkey - I forget his name - said the same thing. More recently still I see that the fascist who closed newspapers has now closed TV stations and suspended thousands of teachers, as well as rounding up thousands of judges and military. Don't ask me how I know, but I guess it's hard to round-up thousands of judges and suspend thousands of school teachers without a great deal of advance planning, so it looks more and more as though President Faschist Erdoğan really did plot a coup against himself in order to run a counter-coup. I also wonder: when he ordered troops to take a kurdish village and shoot all the people hiding in a couple of basements while some of them were on the phone to their MP, did he do that to help provoke a revolt in the military?

This is relevant to every back bench MP in the UK, if they can lobby their colleagues who will set tariffs; a tariff system to promote human rights and democracy will exert a gentle pressure on each country to get better, rather than worse as a lot of the Turkish electorate want to do.

A tariff that is simply about trade will benefit neither side, even to those who only think about one country. The waves of diseise and hatred and ignorance and refugees will wash-up on the UK just as surely as the sweatshop T-shirts will under-cut UK-made T-shirts; the cost of military intervention and peace keeping and charitaable help will build-up just as bargain-hunters will sometimes save a few pounds in buying a new Primark T shirt when otherwise the bargains would only be second-hand.

The new Foreign Secretary started his career with a metaphor about stages, which is the sort of thing I hoped we would get-away from when leaving the EU; I wish he'd said something about tariffs for human rights. I don't know which of the new ministers will begin to set the pattern for tariff negotiations and whether the Foreign Office will have an influence, or whether the Department For Business will have its own foreign policy when it comes to trade talks, but I hope some system comes-up that prevents the likes of Turkey getting worse.

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EU referendum notes to self

Nobody else reads this, but I will, when I come back just as undecided in future.

The sticking points for me are

• subsidy,

• good tariffs & bad tariffs.

• immigration is too difficult so I don't like to think about it
  [Added July 2016] I have just realised that a low pound partly answers this. If money from the New Zealand is worth less in the UK, I am less likely to go sheep-shearing there for a few months. On the other hand, less people will come to the UK to do leek-picking for a few months and I might have more chance of a job near home for that reason.
  
  Add to that the chance that that UK products and services will be more in demand, so perhaps employing steel workers and call centre workers and everything else.
  
  On the telly "pound falls" is bad; I think "pound falls" is good news.
  [Added 17 July 2016] I have just realised that a politician would need to sell the idea of a low pound to the electorate.
  
  Petrol prices are a problem; some kind of fix on fuel duty would be good. So that the basic rate of fuel duty is on the dollar price, and there is some extra compensation if the pound falls against the dollar, if I'm right that oil suppliers price in dollars.
  
  Pensions for ex-pats are a problem if the ex-pat has a state or a private pension in pounds and has discovered that it goes further in another country like Spain. These ex-pats could be compensated by some scheme by which the UK government has investments that pay in euro (and maybe other currencies) and can offer a currency swap for your pension. This would be a state-run service to do something that the private sector can do in theory, but would do much more expensively I think and reach far fewer punters. The service could be run so that it is only available to people on fixed incomes in pounds who wish to spend most of their money in other currencies.
• Shared trading standards are another headache but I can live with them, as exporters will do anyway when exporting to EU countries. Oven glove insulating standards. Bananas. That stuff.
  
  
• What next after the referendum

Subsidy.

Most people now know that the figures are about £10bn lost forever and more that comes-back for farming or folk-dancing or regional development. I don't see any continued deceit by Brexiters - just a patronising use of headline figures that the electorate have now worked-out. Presumably the UK could opt-in to schemes for EU-wide funding of something, like science research, if there is a good reason to do it collectively, so complaints by nobel-prize-winning scientists are just stupid. Odd, isn't it?

Fullfact.org refers to this government web page with the figures
€10,879 (£8473) million and €16,586 (£12,918) million if you include vouchers claimed-back. I assume the figures describe grants claimed from the UK. (Not money spent by an EU employee on blue flags, that happen to be made in the UK, which is a distraction.)

£64.1m was the population of the UK in 2013, and rising.

€10879million / 64.1million =
€170 (£132) a year per head.
(Therefore more during the parts of our lives when we pay income tax but a big chunk for all of us because we all use goods that have VAT in the cost, even when we are babies, and when retired we still pay for the goods and so pay VAT).
€259 (£201) before claiming vouchers for various special offers that reduce the total price.
The cost in 2013, the year of the population census, was slightly higher; costs have fallen.
The cost in a few years might be much higher as the rebate deal ends and the EU's commitments increase. A system in which 28 countries can vote but only a few are net contributors is going to spend more, most likely.

€170 (£132) a year is the bill in a country that can't afford social care.
It's the kind of money per head spent on pensions. Or health.

If you don't mind about the lack of social care, or benefits sanctions, or low rates of housing benefit, or under-funded ministries, then it's no problem, you can enjoy grand designs as grandees do. They don't mind where the money for the flags comes from. They're on BUPA.

Immigration

I don't like to think about this, because my preferred option would be to insist that countries like Romania have a welfare state before they are allowed free movement of people, and the Eurozone devalues its currency before being allowed free movement of people.

I also hope that the Eurozone gets itself sorted-out with a devaluation. There are also Eurozone countries with far less of a welfare state than the UK - Romania is just the extreme example - and I'd like that problem sorted out.

And I want tariffs used to keep countries like Turkey or Egypt on course to getting a decent democracy, human rights and welfare state too. Neither is in the EU. Niether has free movement of people. Both have trade deals which allow them free trade without decent levels of human rights. As a result, there are asylum-seekers refugees, students, and well-qualified legal migrants all coming-into Europe from the south just as europeans move north to the UK looking for jobs.  A different trade deal would sort this out.

No political group offers me this option.

Meanwhile I see on telly that 30% of new jobs and 10% of current jobs are held by people born outside the UK and realise that, as a rather past-it kind of employee, I would have little chance competing with them for ordinary accessable jobs which are apparently paid 10% less nowadays as a result of immigration. These people may be fit, honest, nice, hard-working, taxpaying, and willing to live in shared bedsits sometimes, but that's the problem if you have to compete with them for work. Those who claim that bad employers wouldn't survive without desparate staff seem to miss the point as well: there is always a cartoon character who says you can't get the staff without immigration. I think of these characters as like Fanny Cradock and her assistant Sally.

There follows a debate about public services. With or without cheap, willing, intelligent staff, public services need to expand very quickly the moment demand increases, and they don't. When I look at a row of politicians and think "could that lot organise a way of funding schools in proportion to pupils?", I think they couldn't. They're too thick. There are also technical problems getting english-speaking trained consultants and GPs, but those arguments are above my head, so I'm a bit think about this as well.

Then there is the problem of housing on a crowded island with a green belt and not much industry. Is the UK really going to give-up a green belt and build one or two new towns? Or relocate clusters of work and traders to run-down parts of the UK to take jobs there? If not, what other way exists of bringing affordable housing anywhere near accessable jobs in the UK?

Good Tariffs & Bad Tariffs

Remain campaigners on TV last night simply muddle; I dislike them so much that they put me off remaining. They muddle the idea of a single tariff zone like the EFTA with a single shared set of trade standards like the EU.  The free trade zone already exists; it does not need to be negotiated-into.

What's possible is that EU governments would be so piqued by lack of subsidy, if the UK left, that they would find some way around EFTA deals and impose some kind of spite tax like 5% on financial services or such like. Or exclude from any shared discussion of standards on financial services and find ways of making the market difficult for UK companies, just as Swiss companies have tariffs and such imposed from the EU.

If that's possible, it makes me all the more anxious to leave before the EU people get any worse. Now I have to remember immegration. That's such a fundemental point to EU members that they would be piqued; I need a better account of what each EFTA member state gets as a tariff deal before I have enough facts.

Lastly, I want good tariffs. I want tariffs against goods from India or Bangladesh or China because those countries have lower costs for lack of a welare state. They also have lower costs because of cheaper housing, but I think that's a UK issue; the lack of a welfare state is something the UK government can't control except by tariff. So their goods are cheap. Attempting free trade gives them all the money and us a large pile of plastic appliances for landfill, by which time the rich in those countries will have bought a lot of assets in the UK and the poor will be just as poor as before. Mr Johnson of the Brexit campaign suggested a trade deal with China and an Asean of East Asia. Once in place, market forces would force parliament to decide that the UK had to be more competative and could no longer afford a welfare state. These politicians would negoatiate tariffs without experience; they are over-confident. They're already tried to negotiate a dodgy TTIP trade deal with the USA and got rescued from it by (I think) an EU backlash at the last minute.

Shared trading standards

Shared trading standards on oven-glove insulation properties are over-done, I guess, but would exist anyway if the EU left and UK oven glove manufacturers had to sell into the EU. The ideal would be to re-join a slimmer version of the organisation set-up with sympathetic and similar countries. The trouble is that the UK doesn't seek them out.

So

At the moment I want to vote Brexit because the remain side are so very, very annoying, but I'll probably change my mind at the last minute and vote remain. In fact I did, but am happy that Brexit won.

----------------------------------------------
Oh, this came-up in the news:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jun/15/eu-referendum-live-osborne-punishment-budget-farage-flotilla-thames?Micheal Gove had a story that his father's choice to sell-up a firm in the fishing industry, some time in the early 80s. The Guardian link shows a transcipt of their phone call to Earnest Gove, former fish firm owner and worker, word for word. I can't find Earnest Gove as a former limited company director, so I don't know how to check the dates exactly.

I studied economics in the early 80s, about the same time that my own father had to wind-down a business and just about everybody else's father who had a business to wind-down. The problem was a newly over-valued pound allowing cheap imports via the new container ports. The choice to over-value the pound was quite deliberate. It was sold to the public as a way of reducing inflation, and it was done by raising the interest rate enough to tempt-in overseas investers for things like government stock. That sloshing-in of money made the pound rise, import prices fall, and export prices rise. Anyone competing against goods from other currency zones was in trouble, whether it's fish or anything else.
----------------------------------------------------

What next after the referendum

The good bit is now: lower pound, hopes of £10bn+ to save in future, and the EU likely to transform as other donor countries rebel too.

The bad bit is if the likes of Johnson and Gove try to negotiate trade deals. The only recent one negotiated, that I know of, is one for Bangladesh sponsored by the UK, which got them 0% tariff and did neither side any good.

I hope we join EFTA, and MPs will ask for this in the next EU debate. I hope they win. I hope we can somehow get around the need for an "australian style points system" as a lot of voters hoped they were promised by voting "leave" in the referendum, because I guess, without really knowing, that things like tariffs both ways on european trade or EFTA membership are not possible without free movement of job-seekers. This leads to some other bad bits for voters who hoped for the points system.

A bad bit.
The problem with a lot of job prospects in the UK is that they are available but pay less than the cost of housing. The problem with a lot of commentry and political debate is that it is not related, doesn't know, isn't interested. In summery: "Ordinary people aren't educated enough to know that low wages make all of us richer", and "housing - what's that?".

So I hope that whatever comes of this there will be a lot more housing or a lot of better-paying jobs or both. (oh - here's a map of one of them) Preferably

• more jobs in places where housing is cheaper, and
• more housing in places where jobs pay better.

And better training in self-employment, better workshop availability for the self-employed, better availability of information to say who makes what in the UK, better use of that information to send-out government tenders... it is possible to write a list of things that could be done, like this linked post

• Things to be done to promote better self-employed jobs - including jobs in high unemployment areas

A bad bit.
The reason that loads of europeans seek jobs is that there aren't enough jobs in other parts of europe. It would be good to sort that out by lowering the price of the euro, but now Lord Hill has resigned his job at the EU commission, I don't know how anyone in the UK - voter or politician - has anything to do with this. Stating a case is about all that anyone can do. So even if the UK had a lower exchange rate, good ideas for helping job creation, and massive housing developments where there used to be green belt or offices, then there would still be a lot of people coming-in from Europe to fill-up the housing and do the jobs.


A neglected bit.
Government ought to charge enough tax for the public services that people want and provide them where wanted. The cabinet finds niether task possible.

A school pupil system by which a school got a few thousand a year from the day an extra pupil registered would be good. I think something like that is planned. A system by which schools could get the grant for the first pupil without proving demand would be good.

A GP patient system by which GPs get paid by the patient exists, so I don't know where that system fails.

I do know that the Barnett formula is a deliberate attempt to provide services in the wrong places, and should end.

Oh, did you know that there is a vegan shoe shop that sells mainly UK-made vegan shoes? It ought to do a bit better on a lower pound. I just need to get the web site working in a 21st century way.

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Third world people deserve better

A report on Department for International Development corruption does not find that it is corrupt - it is much more transparent than most departments with an "aid tracker" web site and a link to report corruption in any specific program you see tracked.

The same report says that its efforts to reduce corruption in countries where it works are muffled towards zero by political sensitivities. In other words, British taxpayers have to subsidise the people of whatever country that has poor people in it, but British politicians will not offend the rich people who live in that same country and extort money or run it badly or do bad things.

http://icai.independent.gov.uk/report/dfids-approach-anti-corruption-impact-poor/

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london manifestos of goldsmith and khan

People look at this blog by accident because of the London election. Here are notes to self & others: https://www.londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/who-you-can-vote

• BERRY, Sian Rebecca - Green Party
• FURNESS, David - British National Party
• GALLOWAY, George - Respect (George Galloway)
• GOLDING, Paul - Britain First - Putting British people first
• GOLDSMITH, Zac - The Conservative Party Candidate
• HARRIS, Lee Eli - Cannabis is Safer Than Alcohol
• KHAN, Sadiq Aman - Labour Party
• LOVE, Ankit - One Love Party*
• PIDGEON, Caroline Valerie - London Liberal Democrats
• WALKER, Sophie - Women's Equality Party
• WHITTLE, Peter Robin - UK Independence Party (UKIP)
• ZYLINSKI, Prince - Independent*

*Did not submit a mini-manifesto.


It says you can make a 1st & 2nd choice for mayor, even if you live in a marginal constituency. You can also look-through manifestos for good ideas or the usual, which is to say "more housing" and "be nasty to people who aren't in the room or voting", so it would be good to see the small print. The two likely candidates in reverse order are..

https://backzac2016.com/

http://www.sadiq.london/a_manifesto_for_all_londoners

I have not done my homework about how each candidate hopes to get more homes.

• They all tend to spout the stuff about needing more external investment and visitors in order to raise the value of the pound, make manufacturing jobs harder to get and housing more expensive. To me, that is an opposite thing to the commitment to make more housing available.
• The usual idea about "brown field" housing is good, but doesn't mention the fact that landlords don't let it to willing employers who want to make things, which is another very high priority, nor mention office space that could be re-zoned as office/residential if the mayor has legal power to do that.

I have not done my homework about how each candidtae hopes tobe nasty to people who aren't listening.

I hope they don't and that I am being rude un-necessarilly.

The Livingstone regime was nasty to clothes manufacturers and under-employed people by diverting money for job training towards a thing called Ethical Fashion Forum that promoted goods at zero tariff from a badly-run countries - Bangladesh in particular - that have no welfare state but plenty of money to set-up special trading zones with even less employee rights than existed at Rana Plaza, or export subsidy out of taxes on Bangladeshis. Their goods are already cheap and their countries already over-populated because of bad government. A few paragraphs of tariff law could change Bangladeshi's life massively by insisting that their government builds-up a national insurance system in order to get access to european markets, rather than the current 0% tariff and subsidy from Dfid. Similar to the recent Daily Express story about Dfid giving subsidies to Chinese steel works - which I have asked Channel 4's fact checking service to check.
http://election-richmond-park.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/httpsfullfactorg-full-fact-is-uks.html
lists three fact checking organisations

I hope they don't and that I am being rude un-necessarilly.

The Lingstone regime was also nasty to people who used its many services delivered through organisations that claimed grants. The organisations were not required to publish their bid, nor request that users of the service sign to say that they have seen the detail and know how the organisation is funded. Those who ask a disaibility and job training service, or a youth employment service, to talk in an adult way are brushed-off; those who need a service delivered in a more competant way are also brushed-off.

The Livingstone and Johnson regimes were nasty in falling for PR projects like the Olympics or London Fashion Week with their implausible claims to help londoners - hower carefully dressed up by long reports commissioned from Oxford Economics.

The Goldsmith manifesto headlines suggest more parks but also more parks police. In Richmond, a group called Friends of Barnes Common and an associated company have been given £48,000 of taxpayers' money in a single year to do the kind of thing that cartoon characters do: be nasty to people who are not listening. They have built steel arches to prevent travellors parking their caravans in secluded car parks, and cut-down undergrowth nearby to maintain lines of site to make life harder for cruisers who want a bit of privacy. They have sent reps to police liaison comittees to badger them to send police around each night with search lights, just in case someone should want to go and cruise in the park. They say they have visited a similar scheme in Tower Hamlets where special laminated signs are left when alcoholics, cruisers, or rough-sleepers use the park telling them to clear-up after themselves and not come back. In summery, these are bad people doing bad things with money that should be spend on social care.

The Social Care problem.
I guess both candidates see it as health or social care, rather than olympics or social care or parks or social care or streetlights or social care.

Anyway, I have not done my homework but people search for things things so I have posted the links

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Taxes and Public Spending: 2014 to 2015

Tax year: April 6 2014 to April 5 2015 Your taxes and public spending

This shows a break down of how your taxes have been or will be spent by government.

	Amount
Welfare (25.3%)	£165.62
Health (19.9%)	£130.27
State Pensions (12.8%)	£83.79
Education (12.5%)	£81.83
Defence (5.4%)	£35.35
National Debt Interest (5.0%)	£32.73
Public Order and Safety (4.4%)	£28.80
Transport (3.0%)	£19.64
Business And Industry (2.7%)	£17.68
Government Administration (2.0%)	£13.09
Culture eg sports, libraries, museums (1.8%)	£11.78
Environment (1.7%)	£11.13
Housing and Utilities eg street lighting (1.6%)	£10.47
Overseas Aid (1.3%)	£8.51
UK Contribution to the EU Budget (0.6%)	£3.93
Total	£654.63

Oddities.
The biggest items are not accounted as an insurance-like service, paid-for at one point in life and claimed at another; there is no fund that pays for pensions for example.

The smaller item of transport is the same - a problem with a lot of national  statistics - in presenting a neat aggregate figure but leaving-out the nitty-gritty. Isn't there a road fund? Maybe there is another page on Gov.uk that I haven't stumbled-on yet to explain these things.

The smallest items are a puzzle. How come money is being spent at overseas aid to the country where Rana Plaza is based, when tariffs aren't used to make that country better governed?

Lastly, the figures seem to continue year-on year, even when there is a crisis in the higher priority areas. If street lamps are turned off, your granny might get mugged. If social care is turned-off, as it has been, she will definately get mugged or similar, and then become a bed blocker in a hospital. That doesn't stop government from having a budget called "sport", which is obscene.

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