Dave's apprenticeships

David Cameron has said that he wants further cuts to benefits so as to fund more apprenticeships for young people without jobs.  This is at the same time as leading Britain into another war in the middle east which could cost billions of pounds and yet achieve nothing.

It appears however that David Cameron's plan is actually for young people on benefits to pick up litter.  Does this really deserve to be called an apprenticeship?  In times of old, an apprenticeship was an arrangement whereby a young boy learned a skill - usually a craft - which ideally would allow him to earn a living for the whole of his working life.  Nowadays however the word appears to be almost devoid of meaning.

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband wants to tax bank bonuses so as to fund a jobs programme for young people.  He seems to forget that Tony Blair's Labour government in the late 1990s used a windfall tax to fund a rehash of failed Conservative policies known as the New Deal.  Have Labour learned anything from their time in opposition?

Related previous posts include:
Ed's apprenticeships
LibLabCon failure on youth unemployment

Court victory on bank charges

I am impressed by this recent item in the national press:

Oliver Foster-Burnell from Taunton, Somerset, went a few pounds over his £500 limit with Lloyds while he was in between jobs in 2008. 

Within weeks, the 28-year-old received a letter saying for that every day since he had been charged £20 by the bank. 

The fees spiralled to £750 before Mr Foster-Burnell was able to find a way out of his financial mess. 

But, after settling his debts, he took his case to county court where a judge ordered the bank to pay back the fees with interest. 

His victory could pave the way for billions to be returned to customers in similar situations if Mr Foster-Burnell is able to convince a High Court Judge that his case could apply to others. 

First, I am very pleased that Mr Foster-Burnell won his lawsuit.  It is very unfair of the banks to exploit people in genuine poverty.

It is questionable however to what extent his case is relevant to other similar cases, given that it is based on a law which bans companies from changing a contract without an explanation.

The last Labour government bailed out the banks using taxpayers' money.  Is it too much to argue that the government should also protect the general public from exploitation by the banks?

I would like bank charges to be regulated by statute law, and I would also like banks to be required by law to waive bank charges altogether in cases of genuine hardship.

In the meantime, we have to be grateful for small victories.
 

Related previous posts include:

A small victory in Barnet

Emma and Chris are veritaphobic

Actress Emma Watson has recently made a speech to the United Nations about gender equality.  A video of this speech is included below.  Meanwhile, the Daily Express has published an essay by Chris Roycroft-Davies, who if I've got it right is or used to be a speechwriter for the war criminal David Cameron.  His essay can be read here.

Chris Roycroft-Davis

Emma Watson makes some good points, whereas Chris Roycroft-Davies makes hardly any.

He begins by quoting Otto von Bismarck about blood and iron, although I'm not sure that Bismarck is the best possible role model for humane government.  In fact I'm quite sure he isn't.

Roycroft-Davies then asserts that Britain will soon be joining in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, although my understanding is that that is subject to a vote in parliament which has not yet taken place.

He argues that Britain has no choice but to enter the war, but he is wrong.  Last year British MPs voted against entering a war against Syria in order to remove President Assad, but now they are expected to vote to go to war against the enemies of Assad.

Perhaps the only truth he utters is that we are faced with an enemy fighting a war without borders.

In recent years, Britain has gone to war against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and each of those wars has made the world a more dangerous place.  This new war is unlikely to be any different.

And so to my central point: Emma Watson and Chris Roycroft-Davies are united in their veritaphobia - the fear of the truth.  Emma Watson does not mention the fact that Islam is a huge obstacle to gender equality.  Islam is after all founded on a book which says that Muslim men may beat and rape their wives.  Chris Roycroft-Davies does not mention the fact that Islam is fundamentally belligerent.

I am proud of the fact that I maintain a high standard of factual accuracy with this blog, but I will admit to having been wrong about ISIS.  I have previously argued that Muslims killing other Muslims cannot be explained in terms of The Koran.  I am indebted to David Woods for pointing out that Muslims are commanded to strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them (9:73).

Unbelievers are non-Muslims, whereas hypocrites are fake Muslims.  Any Muslim is free to regard any other Muslim as a fake, and of course the true Muslim is required to be belligerent.

It is highly unlikely that Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated while Islam exists.  The Muslim who is sweetness and light today could be a soldier of ISIS tomorrow.  Missiles can kill individual Muslims, but the war will never be won by missiles alone.

As well as being veritaphobic, Chris Roycroft-Davies is devoted to the cause of open door immigration.  If the British government wants to protect the British people from Islamic terror, then it should close our borders to Muslims, and seek to persuade Muslims in this country to abandon Islam.  I say persuade and not coerce, as coercion rarely works.

I am sure that a lot of people would happily demonise me for holding that point of view, but surely closing our borders to Muslims is more humane than bombing other countries.

Related previous posts include:
Your Muslim faith - really?
Now study Islam
Now ban The Koran
Bacon does not kill Muslims

Independence versus devolution

The outcome of yesterday's referendum on Scottish independence is bad news.

I had previously argued that Scotland should seek independence so that its soldiers are no longer used as cannon fodder in illegal wars.  That opportunity has now been lost.  Nevertheless I still believe that independence is now inevitable.  It is just a matter of when the next referendum will take place.

The situation now is that the government is expected to deliver on promises for more devolution to Scotland.  This is problematic, however, and it appears that many English MPs will either oppose it or else demand devolved powers for England - maybe even for English regions.

Devolution has little to commend it.  Whatever arguments can be made for it in principle, the fact remains that in practice it tends to be disastrous.  Consider the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh.  Completed in 2007, it cost over £414million.  By contrast, the Shropshire Women and Children's Centre at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford was completed in 2014 at a cost of £28million.  In other words, the money spent on the Holyrood Parliament could possibly have funded as many as fifteen specialist centres at hospitals around Scotland.

If Scotland were independent, then the Holyrood Parliament would be its only parliament, and it would no longer have to contribute to the costs of the Westminster parliament.  If its legislators were smart, it would also no longer contribute to the costs of the European Parliament, and neither would it fund illegal wars.

Independence is definitely the way forward.

Related previous posts include:
Independence: Scotland must vote yes.

Read the full article at: http://www.shropshirelive.com/2014/09/04/shropshire-women-and-childrens-centre-set-for-open-weekend/

The three hostages

Some readers of my blog may be aware that I took my online name from a novel by John Buchan, although not the one entitled The Three Hostages.

If we believe the press, then three hostages have recently been killed by beheading - James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Haines.  In each case the killer is supposedly an ISIS combatant from the United Kingdom who is known to the press as Jihadi John.

It has already been pointed out that the videos which purport to show the beheadings of these three men do not necessarily show any such thing.  Likewise one national newspaper is publishing a photo of a woman holding up a severed head.  As the severed head is obscured by a black rectangle, however, I cannot know for certain that she is not in fact holding up her new handbag.  As she is wearing a burqa, I cannot even be sure who she is.  The person holding up the severed head (or handbag) could in fact be a man wearing a burqa.

When Britain entered the First World War illegally in 1914, it was reported that German soldiers in Belgium were murdering babies.  It is now widely accepted that this was never true.  When Britain entered the Second World War illegally in 1939, it was not widely reported that the British government was effectively supporting the genocide of ethnic Germans in the Danzig corridor, even though it was true.

I do not know what exactly is going on in either Syria or Iraq because I am not convinced that I can trust what is reported in the press, and because I can have no confidence in what I am told by either the British or American governments.

Maybe these three hostages are dead, but equally they may be still alive.  If they are dead, then their deaths may not be recent, and may not be the work of ISIS.  Can anyone think of a reason why the so-called beheading videos should not have been produced by the American government?

Is Britain the puppet of the USA?

The former Conservative MP and government minister Neil Hamilton - now the Deputy Chairman of UKIP - has written an essay in a national newspaper about the ISIS threat.

What interests me particularly about it is this quote:

From the 1930s the US was determined to destroy the British Empire and then enmesh us in the EU, seeing Atlanticist Britain as the agent of US foreign policy and free market economics.

I am not sure I have ever heard an establishment figure make such a remark before.

Britain has changed a lot since the 1930s.  In those days, Britain had an empire, and so far as I can make out no one minded.  Not one political party in this country supported abolishing the empire - apart from the Labour Party very briefly - and neither am I aware of any public clamour for abolition.  Britain seemed also to be its own country in those days, entering both the First World War and the Second World War before the Americans did.

Nowadays we have long since let go of our empire, and we seem to be obsessed with following the USA into illegal wars.

I am not sure about Hamilton's reference to free market economics.  So far as I am aware, successive governments in the USA have thrown one subsidy after another at their biggest companies, and yet in a genuine free market there would be no subsidies whatever.

As for the EU, I am not sure I have ever before heard anyone argue for the involvement of the Americans in its foundation and development.  I had always understood that countries like Germany and Holland and Belgium were the guiding lights.

If Britain is a puppet of the USA, as Hamilton seems to imply, then why has Britain long since abolished the death penalty while most states of the USA have not?  Why has Britain never adopted a written constitution like that of the USA?  Why are our senior judges not appointed on a blatantly partisan basis?

Either way, the policy objectives of both the United Kingdom and the USA in recent decades seem to me to have been riddled with inconsistency, and it is hard to discern an underlying logic.  Maybe that is part of the reason why they now seem impotent in the face of the ISIS threat.  It is not that they no longer know what to do, but rather that they never had a clue in the first place.

Related previous posts include:
MH17 and Gaza: more lives lost to western imperialism
Air strikes against Iraq are wrong

LibLabCon failure in schools

Sarah Smith used to be a teacher.  She has now written an essay in a national newspaper about how she was one of countless state school teachers who were paid salaries well above the minimum wage despite being barely literate.

If you do not have time to read her essay in full, she observes that:

The products of a liberal education system that eschewed the ‘rules’ of the English language for trendy educational methods, we were as bemused as the children we taught. So how on earth are teachers going to deliver the Government’s demanding new school curriculum with its emphasis on grammar?

While I am sure that there is a lot of truth in what she says, I am not impressed by her attempt to smear the Labour Party.  She argues that: 

... the rot started in 1964 when Harold Wilson’s Labour government came to power and abolished the 11-plus in many areas. Parents were told this was to enable primary schools to develop a more informal, child-centred, progressive style of teaching, with the emphasis on learning by discovery.

As a teacher, I can see this is rubbish. The belief that grammar could be ignored was virtually all pervasive until 1988, when the Conservative government introduced the National Curriculum.

I can assure her that standards in schools did not improve after 1988, or at least not significantly.  I would also note that the Conservatives had been in power for nine years in 1988, which hardly suggests that improving education was a priority for them.

Sarah Smith says she entered the profession in 2005, and yet someone starting as a teacher in 2005 could have been as young as five years old when the national curriculum was introduced, and so would have been educated very much according to Conservative Party ideals.

Are we really to believe that the failings of our educational system should be blamed entirely or even primarily on the Labour Party?

I repeat what I have said before on this blog: the Conservative Party is the Labour Party.  They both believe in failure, and both are happy to indulge in a stupid game of blaming the other.

If the Labour Party is really so bad, then why don't Conservative politicians urge us never to vote Labour?  If the Conservative Party is really so bad, then why don't Labour politicians urge us never to vote Conservative?  And why don't the Liberal Democrats urge us never to vote either Labour or Conservative?

I care about the future of my country, and that is why I will never vote Labour or Conservative or Liberal Democrat.

Related previous posts include:
The abuse of education
Does teacher training improve schools?

The bedroom tax and the nasty LibDems

The Affordable Homes Bill, sponsored by a Liberal Democrat MP, has passed a critical hurdle in The House of Commons.  If it becomes law in its unamended form, then it will implement changes to the under-occupation rules, also known as the bedroom tax.

The bedroom tax is a reduction in housing benefit entitlement for social housing tenants who are deemed to have at least one spare bedroom.

According to the BBC, the bill would mean people who could not be found a smaller home would be exempt, as well as disabled people who need a spare bedroom or who have adapted homes.

Victims of the bedroom tax, who are all of working age, can respond in various ways.

They can make up the shortfall in housing benefits from other income - or at least some of them can.

They can find a job (if they are unemployed) or secure extra hours (if they work short hours).  That is to say that they can find a job or secure extra hours if they are lucky, which not everyone is.  Job opportunities remain scarce in this once-proud country.

They can move to a home with fewer bedrooms, but only if a home with fewer bedrooms is available locally, and also there is no help available with the cost of moving.  Also, many people might not want to move to a smaller home.

Imagine your teenage son leaves home to start university.  Your house is no longer his primary place of residence, and so his bedroom is now deemed to be a spare room, and your housing benefit is reduced accordingly.  If you move to a property with one less bedroom, however, then your son might not be able to stay with you outside of term time as you will no longer have a bedroom for him.

Sadly a lot of bedroom tax victims have to go hungry, or rely on food banks, and yet the government still does not take the matter seriously.

The government is happy to save money by further impoverishing people on benefits, but sees no reason to save money by not going to war.  It seems that the United Kingdom can afford military action against the Islamic State, but cannot afford to reverse the bedroom tax, and this is a state of affairs which the Liberal Democrats do not oppose.

Related previous posts include:
Another victim of the bedroom tax
Bedroom tax fiasco

How important is manufacturing?

It is reported that Britain's manufacturing sector is expanding but only at a slow rate.

Manufacturing is critical to prosperity, because most of us measure our personal prosperity very much in terms of our ability to acquire manufactured goods such as mobile phones or mountain bikes.  Of course we can also measure our personal prosperity in terms of our ability to buy tickets to concerts or football matches, but which one of us does not value manufactured goods?

Another reason why manufacturing is important is because manufacturing jobs tend to pay good wages.  By contrast, the retail and catering sectors tend to pay little more than the minimum wage to many of their employees.

The things we buy can be manufactured here or abroad.  Goods produced abroad are often cheaper than goods made in Britain, but most of us like to think that at least some of the things we buy are made here in this country by our fellow countrymen.

I refuse however to lecture anyone about buying British.  If we buy British goods, it should be because British goods represent quality at a fair price.

Having said that, I do think it is fair to judge governments by the success of our manufacturing sector.  Any government with any sense will look for ways to help British factories to compete internationally.  The fact that Britain's manufacturing sector is expanding at only a modest rate is yet one more reason why I have no regard for David Cameron.