As a sufferer of vertigo (I even get a rush of fear, nausea and exhileration if I drop something down the stairs!) these pictures caused me much discomfort and some amazement.  I recommend a look.

From The Guardian

Please do not be fooled.  Look into the policy, and see beyond the headlines.  Apart from the parade of old Tories being slotted comfortably into Cabinet seats, apart from the appointment of a homophobic Home Secretary, apart from the fact that 23 out of the 30 cabinet seats have been given to millionaires, there is one thing which we should all raise immediately with our MPs. One little piece of proposed legislation which was published yesterday in the ConDem agreements for a fixed term parliament is truly worrying.

Here is the agreement:

Effectively, in our system, if a major piece of legislation is not passed by a parliament, any party can call for a motion of no confidence.  This would obviously usually be the opposition, who would capitalise on the divided house to show that the leading party do not have the support they need to command the house, and if the motion is passed, parliament is dissolved and a new election is formed.

Now, this has always – for hundreds of years – been a vote on which a majority is needed. But according to this piece of legislation, the opposition would need to get more than half of the votes – 55%.  This is blatantly undemocratic. What really makes it a concern though, is that the Tories have 47% of the seats in parliament (don’t forget – won with only 37% of the popular vote).  If the LibDems find out that they cannot be shackled to a party which is not as progressive as it pretends (this is an if – but I’m setting out now for posterity that this would not surprise me one little bit), if they walk away wholesale from the Tories, if the alliance breaks down, then every single MP in opposition voting in favour could still not bring a no confidence motion.  So MPs representing a massive 63% of the country cannot dissolve Parliament.

Commentators have already been saying that this is a worrying proposal. Legal experts are troubled. This goes against history, democracy, common sense and fairness, and if the Tories pass this piece of legislation, as well as their proposals to reduce MPs – which many see as an attempt to gerrymander the system in their favour, they could easily lock themselves in power for decades.

So in the hope that one person might read this and change their mind, please think about the following when you vote today.

Remember that self-interest serves only a handful of people. Remember our great institutions such as the NHS and the BBC which need to be nurtured and preserved, not dismantled.

Vote against brutal hunting. Vote against allowing Murdoch and his vast media network to decide the political future of our country. Vote against the immediate withdrawal of funds from the economy and the inevitability of another descent into recession. Vote against a party which says they support the vulnerable but will not act to prove it.

Vote for the young and the old. For gay people, straight people, married people, single people.  Parents and grandparents and those who have no children. Vote for children and their futures – for all of them, not just the children of the wealthiest.  Vote for people with cancer and people with mental disorders. Vote for women and their equal place in society.

Vote for progressiveness and inclusiveness. Vote for fairness for all.

Vote however you want, but please just don’t vote Tory.

And so I quote our Prime Minister:

“My father taught me that life is about more than self-interest, that work is about more than self-advancement, that service is about more than self-service.  That happiness is about more than what you earn and own.

“Our shared belief is that wealth must serve more than the wealthy, inequality should not be woven into the fabric of our lives, people of compassion and goodwill should never journey without hope, and no injustice should endure forever”.

This is the man I want to represent me. These are the beliefs which I look for in an enlightened democracy. This is the only way forward for this country.

If you look back through my blog from the last three weeks you will see that the Tories have shown scant regard for the most vulnerable, for the marginalised and helpless in society. But look at Labour’s record:

38,000 more doctors, 80,000 more nurses, 35,000 more teachers, 14,000 more police, minimum wage, paternity/maternity leave, surestart, regional development agencies, child tax credits, quadrupled investment in education, record ALevel/GCSE results, record university students, lowest NHS waiting times in history, free cancer subscriptions, cancer specialist within 2 weeks of diagnosis, reductions of 65million tonnes in carbon emmisions…

Is it really that easy for people to forget all this?

Self-interest has no place in politics – for a country to be healthy, all of its people have to be considered, and there is only one party which promises with any credibility to do so.

Reason #21.  A vote for Labour is a vote for the party which will help the most people.

Let’s leave aside the “Big Society” hogwash which they’re trying to sell us, let’s even ignore for now the well known failures in the Swedish version of the free school system which the Tories are pledging to adopt.

What I really wanted to know is whether, as has been promised on a number of occassions during the campaign, they will really be able to afford to guarantee no cuts to the education budget.

On Saturday I read an ad placed by the NASUWT – the largest teachers union, which says that the Tories cannot guarantee that education won’t be affected by public sector cuts.  So I’ve done some rummaging, and was surprised to find that not only does the NUSAWT condemn the Tory education policy, but Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils both said that the education policy would not work.

A full description of the NASUWT comments, from the website epolitix.com, is below:

“Commenting on the public exchanges between leading Conservative Councillors and the Tory shadow education spokesperson Michael Gove on the hidden costs of the Tories’ free schools policy, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“I agree entirely with the Conservative leaders of Hampshire and Kent County Councils. The only way that the Tories’ free school policy can be funded, at a time of recession and promised cuts to public services, is by top-slicing the budgets of other schools.

“It is disingenuous of Michael Gove to claim that free schools will be funded from the current DCSF budget.

“Even if there were the ’slack’ he claims, which there isn’t, it has already been spent by the Conservatives several times over during this Campaign.

“We are clearly now in the phase of electioneering where the dire consequences of Conservative education policy are becoming so obvious to the public and their own party members that the Tories are desperately seeking to mask the stark truth until after 6 May.”  ”

Reason #20: The Tories have a risible education policy which they can’t afford, and which has already been proved not to work in other countries.

Inheritance tax is a very contentious issue, and one which Gordon Brown alluded to repeatedly in the debate last Thursday.

So I would like to look at exactly who it will benefit, and how.  Annually, the 3,000 richest estates in the country (ie those over £1 million) would benefit by an average of £233,000.  That’s £700 million annually taken out of the current tax system and back into the pocket of the richest people in the country. Or, as someone tweeted on Thursday, in response to Cameron’s answer on this topic (”We want to reward those who have worked hard all their lives”) – “we want to reward those who have inherited hard all their lives”.

People have contended that £1 million is not a huge amount when we look at property prices.  Don’t forget however that the threshold is £1 million per person so if we’re looking at couples, that’s a £2 million house we’re considering. In 2008, only 82 houses over £2 million were sold in the whole country – hardly a large proportion of the population, then. We should note too that the current inheritance tax system only affects 15000 estates – roughly the richest 3% of those who died. The Tories will reduce this tax at the “poorest” end of this, but more so at the richest end. Therefore it is undeniably elitist.

And yet at the other end, Cameron will cut tax-credits – money given to the poorest families (those who work though – so the very hard working people Cameron talks about).

Despite his protestations, it is not true that only families earning over £50,000 will have their credits cut. In fact, the Institute of Fiscal studies has shown that all families earning more than the relatively low £40,000 will lose out, and other independent financial analysts say it could be as low as £31,000.

The Tory plans are to take £400 million per year out of tax credits.  Wonder where they’re going to find the other £300 million to benefit their super-rich mates?

Reason #19: the Tories will use their budget to help the superrich and penalise the working poor.

The Centre for Social Justice was set up under Iain Duncan Smith, has had a strong influence on many of DC’s family policies, and claims to have formulated as many as 70 of the current Tory policies being promised to the electorate at the moment.

I’ll leave the final comment on this to Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall.”If Mrs Stroud has been praying to rid Britain of its homosexuality, she clearly hasn’t been praying hard enough. It would be highly regrettable if someone who continued to hold these views held any significant office in government.”

Reason #18 – their social policy is being heavily influenced by a woman who believes that being gay is caused by demonic possession.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Ashcroft case is so well documented that it will serve little purpose to go over the whole sorry episode again.

But what I do want to reiterate is that however much he wants to distance himself from it and no matter how long he refuses to be drawn on the specifics of what he knew, Cameron has not explained in a satisfactory manner whether Ashcroft’s tax status was known to him. We know that Hague had extensive and almost certainly compromising dealings with Ashcroft, but Cameron has sought to distance himself from the matter.

I find this very hard to accept, especially given that 5% of all Tory party donations since the last election have been from Ashcroft. That’s 1 in 20 of those Gordon Brown billboards, paid for by a company which wasn’t paying tax here and therefore was not allowed to donate this money.

Duncan Bannatyne is well known for his support for Brown, and for his recent scathing attacks in the press on fellow Dragon’s Den investor James Caan, who is, like Ashcroft, a non-dom.  He spoke to The Daily Mail recently, saying

‘Four years ago I asked Ashcroft if he was a non-dom, and he said yes. So if Cameron didn’t know, he is an idiot. We must change the law so non-doms can’t be in parliament in any form or receive any honour. Only British tax payers should get honours of any kind.’

Reason #17: The Ashcroft scandal exposed him as either stupid or dishonest – and neither of these is an attribute I would look for in my Prime Minister.

When the expenses crisis broke (and let’s gloss over the completely biased handling of it by The Telegraph – which published day after day after day of Labour expenses so that it was firmly established in the public’s and the media’s minds as a Labour problem, before going on to finally release details of the far more risible Tory claims), Cameron, no doubt fore-warned by his pals at The Torygraph, acted swiftly and decisively.

In fact, he acted entirely properly. His party came out as one which won’t tolerate those in a position of privilege abusing it for personal gain, even if they are doing so within the letter of the law. A slew of resignations followed, and all was well within the Tory Party.

But what is strange is how some of his inner-sanctum were protected from the  hammer blows dealt out to the rest of the party. We’ve already mentioned how Osbourne escaped. Alan Duncan, despite his comments (again, see previous post), was not sacked – perhaps because it would harm Cameron’s bid to open up the party to gays, to sack the first openly gay Tory MP?

It’s instructive to look at DC’s response to the whole Ashcroft palaver this year. I will be writing more on Ashcroft later, and  I’m sure you’ve all read the ins-and-outs, the who-said-what’s of the matter.  But it remains that Cameron has not acted on Ashcroft, paid back the money, or promised anything more than the same vague assurances over Ashcroft changing his status than Hague had given years ago, when he knew this was not the case.

Reason #16: So my concern, if I were a Tory, would be about a leader who is happy to hang members out to dry to look good to the electorate, while hypocritically defending the apparently indefensible acts of those who he wishes to protect.

But what I want to remind readers of today is Alan Duncan – the Tory’s own inappropriate comment generator.

After the expenses scandal, Mr Duncan (who had wrongly claimed thousands for gardening, and also claimed mortgage interest on a second home even though he owned several homes in London already), being filmed without realising it, said that MPs (who earn roughly £64,000 per year, a salary in the top 4% of the population) were being forced to “to live on rations and are treated like shit.”

So again, I repeat what I used to excuse Brown. He didn’t realise he was being recorded, he was just sounding off, it is entirely excusable.  Not the same his comments on Have I Got News For You, when surely he couldn’t claim he didn’t know he was being recorded?  On the show, he boasted about his mortgage claims, and said that he wouldn’t pay the money back, and that it was a “great system”.

When asked on another recording of the show his opinion of Miss California USA 2009, who publicly opposes gay marriage, he said “If you read that Miss California has been murdered, you will know it was me, won’t you?”

Again, I can see the intended humour, and don’t really blame Duncan for his comments.  I just thought they might help give some balance to the news today.

Reason #15: Alan Duncan betrayed an entitetlement in his recorded comments for which he was not removed from his position as an MP.