Home visit action* to check you are being treated appropriately*

Tags

account, action, aktion, allowance, bank, benefit, building society, Conservative, Democrat, Department, duelling scar, DWP, employment, ESA, ethnic, euphemism, gay, Godwin's Law, government, hb, home visit, homosexual, housing benefit, in-work, Income Support, is, Jew, Jobseeker's Allowance, JSA, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minority, Nazi, payslip, pension, pension credit, Pensions, people, performance measurement review, political, politics, Post Office, rent book, social security, support, tax credit, tenancy agreement, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare, work

Too much for you? But Iain Duncan Smith’s DWP is adopting tactics that are ever-closer to those of the Nazis. Now they want to force their way into people’s homes, unannounced, presumably in attempts to catch out benefit cheats. What other reason could they possibly have..?

You may get a visit from a government officer to check that you are being treated appropriately* for your status.

A review officer may visit you if you are:

• Jewish
• Homosexual
• A member of an ethnic minority
• A member of a political party other than the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats

Your name is selected at random to be checked. You won’t always get a letter in advance telling you about the visit.

What to expect

The officer will interview you in your home and will want to see two forms of identification.

They’ll also ask to see documents about your ethnic origin, religion, and political or sexual history, including but not limited to:

• Birth certificate
• Synagogue at which you worship and the name of your rabbi
• Passport/details of your country of origin
• Political party membership card
• Medical records

Visits usually last up to an hour but may be longer.

You may be asked to accompany our officer and be conveyed to special measures* if a more detailed interview is required. You will be treated appropriately*.

Check their identity

You can check the identity of the review officer by:

• Asking to see their photo identity card and then checking their face to see if the duelling scars match.

Of course there would be outcry if the government released a press release in this form – except that’s exactly what has happened, and nobody batted an eyelid because the victims are people on state benefits.

If you are reading this and think that’s all right, ask yourself what you’ll do when they come for you. This government already has its eye on pensioners, and people who claim in-work benefits will not be far behind.

By the way, words and phrases marked * are euphemisms from an academic website and may be translated as follows:

• Action – Mission to seek out (in this case, Jews) and kill them
• Treated appropriately – Murdered
• Conveyed to special measures – Killed

What’s that you’re saying? “It couldn’t happen here”?

Oh. Well, that’s all right then.

You can go back to sleep.

(Anyone invoking Godwin’s Law will receive special treatment* for doing so inappropriately.)

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

Vox Political needs your help!
This independent blog’s only funding comes from readers’ contributions.
Without YOUR help, we cannot keep going.
You can make a one-off donation here:

Alternatively, you can buy Vox Political books!
The second – Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first, Strong Words and Hard Times
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

The end of free speech and free protest in the UK

Tags

@DeadParrotJCP, @Director_UKJCP, @IDS_MP, @Skip_Licker, @UKJCP, account, ACPO, agent provocateur, Andrew Lansley, Another Angry Voice, assault, association, austerity, BBC, bill, blacklist, Chief, close, co-operation, Commons, company, Conservative, contraction, control, corporate, corporation, crime, criminal, David Cameron, democracy, Democrat, democratic, development, drop, e-petition, economic, economy, expansionary, fall, fell, fiscal, France, Free, free speech, Funding For Lending, gagging, George Osborne, Germany, Glenda Jackson, government, Health and Social Care Act, Home Office, Home Secretary, House of, ideological, information, kettling, legal, Liam Fox, Lib Dem, Liberal, lobby, lobbyist, Lords, Media, member, Michael Meacher, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage guarantee, mouthpiece, news, OECD, organisation, paper, Parliament, parody, Patrick Mercer, people, Peter Cruddas, Police Officers, policy, political, politics, Pride's Purge, protest, protest group, real, recession, record, register, right-wing, riot, scandal, sheep, sheeple, spending limit, stimulus, student, television, Theresa May, Tories, Tory, trade, Transparency of Lobbying, Twitter, UK, unelected, union, US, violent, vote, Vox Political, wage, water cannon, website

It’s farewell to your centuries-old right to free speech today, after your Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs won their bid to get the Gagging Bill passed by the House of Lords. It won’t go back to the Commons because the Lords made no amendments.

While you, personally, will be allowed to continue complaining about anything you want, you will no longer have the ability to link up with others to protest government actions in any meaningful way as such action may breach Liberal Democrat and Tory government-imposed spending limits. Your personal complaints will be deemed unrepresentative of the people.

You will still be able to have your e-petition on the government’s website – if you win enough signatures to have it debated in Parliament – ignored by the Tories and Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons.

The Liberal Democrats and Tories have even managed to rub salt into the wound by creating a register of all the corporate lackeys who will still be able to influence their policies – freelance lobbyists employed by large companies for the specific purpose of swaying government policy. Lobbyists who are company employees will not be listed as the government says their purposes for meeting MPs should be obvious.

This means the new law will do nothing to restrict the power of corporations to write government policy or prevent lobbying scandals such as those involving former Tory MP Patrick Mercer, along with Tories Peter Cruddas and Liam Fox.

The new law protects in-house corporate lobbying operations from official scrutiny, while preventing the public from enjoying the same privileges of access to the government. That is what your Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs have fought so assiduously to obtain, over the eight months or so that this legislation, “one of the worst… any government produce[d] in a very long time”, has spent being digested by Parliament.

In a Commons debate in September, Glenda Jackson MP warned that her constituents “know that the Bill… would prevent democratic voices from being heard”.

In response, Andrew Lansley – the Conservative who gave us the hated Health and Social Care Act 2012, another incredibly poor piece of legislation – said; “I look forward to the Honourable Lady having an opportunity… to go back to her constituents, to tell them that the things they are alarmed about will not happen.”

They have happened already. Within 24 hours of the Lords agreeing the Bill in its current form, at least one parody account on Twitter, that was critical of Coalition policies, was closed down: @UKJCP – a satirical account parodying the DWP.

@UKJCP immediately resurrected itself as @DeadParrotJCP and @Director_UKJCP. We’ll see how long they last.

Let us not forget, also, that the third part of this law cracks down on trade unions, enforcing strict rules on membership records to ensure, it seems, that it is possible to ‘blacklist’ any trade unionist who finds him- or herself seeking work.

With free speech flushed away, you may still resort to public protest – but the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has that covered.

ACPO, which is funded by the Home Office, is lobbying the government for permission to use water cannons on the streets of the UK. This would be of no use at all in quelling violent criminal activities like the riots in 2011 – the police chiefs have already admitted that water cannons would have been ineffective in halting the “fast, agile disorder” and “dynamic looting” that took place during August 2011.

ACPO is an organisation that has tried to put ‘agent provocateurs’ into legitimate protest groups and promoted ‘kettling’ to stop peaceful protests (as used in the student protests early in the current Parliament), among many other reprehensible activities.

Considering its track record, it seems clear that ACPO wants to use water cannons against legitimate political protests, on the assumption that the increasing imposition of ideologically-imposed austerity on the country by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives will lead to more political protests, as people across the UK finally realise that the Tories and their corporate lobbyist friends are actually working against the wider population.

ACPO’s report on water cannons makes it clear that “it would be fair to assume that the ongoing and potential future austerity measures are likely to lead to continued protest” and “the mere presence of water cannon can have a deterrent effect”.

The Home Office response? “We are keen to ensure forces have the tools and powers they need to maintain order on our streets. We are currently providing advice to the police on the authorisation process as they build the case for the use of water cannon.”

So there you have it. Take to the streets in peaceful protest and your police service will assault you with water cannons, with the blessing of your government.

There remains one option open to you – your vote. You could get rid of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats at the next general election in 2015.

But that leads us to ask why the government has launched its attack on free speech and free protest.

Perhaps it wants to control the information you receive, on which you base your voting intentions?

We already know the unelected Conservative and Liberal Democrat government is using the predominantly right-wing media for this purpose. For example: George Osborne made a great deal of fuss earlier this week, alleging a huge resurgence in the British economy. With help from Tory mouthpiece the BBC, he was able to put out the headline figure that the economy grew by 1.9 per cent in 2013 – its strongest rate since 2007.

Osborne also claimed that Britain is doing better than all comparable economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and that the upturn is due to his imbecilic “expansionary fiscal contraction” policy, otherwise known as austerity.

All of these claims are false, or intended to create a false impression.

Firstly, his 1.9 per cent of growth started at a much lower level of output than would have been the case if Osborne had not imposed austerity on us all and stopped the 2010 recovery dead. GDP would now be 20 per cent higher than its current levels if not for this single act of stupidity from the stupidest Chancellor in British history.

Secondly: The US economy recovered from an eight per cent fall after 2008 to a five per cent rise above its previous peak by the third quarter of 2013. Germany is the only major European country to enjoy growth of two per cent or higher, after an initial recovery based on increased public expenditure – not austerity. Even France has nearly reached its pre-crisis peak. The UK remains two per cent below its previous economic peak.

Finally, Osborne did not even get to this miserable excuse for a recovery by imposing austerity. He quietly adopted a stimulus policy to avoid going back into recession. What do you think ‘Funding for Lending’ is? Or his mortgage guarantee scheme?

All this is clarified by Michael Meacher MP in his own blog.

If George Osborne, Home Secretary Theresa May, ACPO and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition in Parliament had their way, you would not have access to any of these facts.

You would be led to believe that the governments policies are working, exactly the way the government says they are working.

You would not have any reason to believe that the government is lying to you on a daily basis.

You would be tranquillised.

Anaesthetised.

Compliant.

Would you vote against a government that tells you such wonderful things, even when your own circumstances might not reflect that story (real wages fell by seven per cent in the private sector and five per cent in the public sector between 2007-13)?

David Cameron is betting his career that you won’t.

He wants you to be a good little sheep.

Is that what you are?

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

Vox Political stands up for free speech.
 This site could be directly threatened by the gagging law!
That’s why Vox Political needs YOUR help to continue.
You can make a one-off donation here:

Alternatively, you can buy the first Vox Political book,
Strong Words and Hard Times
in either print or eBook format here:

‘Papers, please!’ Harsher laws for immigrants could mean Nazi-style ID checks for British citizens

Tags

account, appeal, bank, BBC, benefit, benefits, bill, bma, border, British Medical Association, bullying, bureaucrat, check, Coalition, Conservative, contribute, contribution, control, deport, Dominic Casciani, Don Flynn, Dr Richard Vautrey, expensive, forced labour, government, Habib Rahman, health, Home Office, Home Secretary, ID, identity, illegal, ILPA, immigrant, Immigrants, immigration, Immigration Law Practitioners Association, ineffective, intrusive, Joint Council, landlord, Mark Harper, Migrants Rights Network, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, minimum wage, NHS, officer, overseas, people, politics, racist, railway station, Residential Landlords Association, sick, social security, spot check, streamline, student, tenant, The Guardian, Theresa May, Tories, Tory, unworkable, Vox Political, welfare, work

Prove who you are: Theresa May and David Cameron check the credentials of two police officers, to ensure they aren’t illegal immigrants. No, not really – but don’t be surprised if police checkpoints start appearing everywhere with people in peaked caps demanding your papers, just like in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 40s!

Theresa May has responded to criticism of her policies on immigrants by revealing her plans for the latest Immigration Bill – countering a threat that is perceived to be much worse than the reality.

Experts say this will require a system of identity checks for everyone, requiring British citizens or those with permanent residence to prove that their own presence in the UK is legal.

In a move that seems designed to appease the Daily Mail and its readers, she wants banks to check the immigration status of people applying to open accounts, and private landlords to make similar checks on their tenants.

You will notice that this means the government wants other people to carry out its responsibilities.

The Home Secretary also intends to “streamline” the appeals process in immigration cases. Under the current government, this word generally means “make less fair”, and this is borne out by a passage stating the measures aim to “deport foreign criminals first and hear their appeal later”. In such circumstances, how can we be sure they really are criminals?

There will also be a requirement for temporary migrants like overseas students to contribute towards NHS costs. This is not necessarily a bad thing – although it would be unfair if this money found its way to the private companies now infesting the NHS, rather than the public service itself.

But there will be no tightening of border controls, no “streamline” for bureaucratic deportation procedures, and no measures to tackle forced labour or lack of enforcement of the minimum wage.

Immigration Minister Mark Harper was quoted on the BBC website, saying: “The law must be on the side of people who respect it, not those who break it.” Fine words from the man who was unable to say whether flak-jacketed immigration officers had discriminated against people of ethnic minorities when they carried out their spot-checks at railway stations in August.

The BBC article also quotes Don Flynn of Migrants’ Rights Network, who reiterated that evidence contradicts the view that immigrants are attracted to the UK by benefits and free services; and Dr Richard Vautrey of the BMA, who said a system is already in place for hospitals to recover the cost of treating patients who are not eligible for NHS care – and introducing a system for GPs could be a “bureaucratic nightmare”.

The Guardian tells us the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) has warned Theresa May her plan, for millions of private landlords to face “proportionate” fines of up to £3,000 if they fail to conduct checks on the immigration status of new tenants and other adults living in their properties, is unworkable.

“British citizens, European economic area nationals and third country nationals alike would be required to produce identity documents at many turns in a scheme that would be intrusive, bullying, ineffective and expensive and likely racist and unlawful to boot,” said the ILPA response.

And the Residential Landlords Association said landlords would need to know about a potential 404 types of European ID documents, in order to operate the scheme – saying some landlords would refuse to house migrants, for fear of falling foul of the new rules – and isn’t that the point of the exercise?

The Guardian quotes Habib Rahman, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, who predicted that “these measures will divide society, creating a two-tier Britain, a return to the days of ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ and of ill people with no access to healthcare walking the streets of Britain. This bill is a travesty and must be stopped,” he said.

BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani tells us the ultimate goal is increased public confidence in the system.

But if we are doing all the work ourselves, why should this add up to increased confidence in the government?

Conservative conference will expose the credibility chasm at the heart of the party

Tags

academies, academy, account, allowance, Andrew Gimson ConservativeHome, Andrew Lansley, Andrew Rawnsley, Atos, bait and switch, bedroom tax, benefit, Big Four, caution, CCG, civil servant, civil service, Coalition, commissioning group, conditions, conference, Conservative, cost of living, crime, Customs, cut, David Cameron, death, detox, dismantle, education, employment, for profit, free schools, George Osborne, Guardian, have-yachts, health, help to buy, hmrc, HS2, Iain Duncan Smith, living wage, member, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, millionaire, morale, National Health Service, NHS, north-south railway, Pensions, performance related pay, privatisation, regressive, returned to unit, Revenue, rote, schools, social security, standards, support, tax, tax avoidance, teacher, threshold, top down reorganisation, Tories, Tory, uk statistics authority, unum, Vox Political, welfare, work, work capability assessment, Workfare

What Britain Wants: Delegates at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester were outnumbered three-to-one by the 50,000 demonstrators against the party’s austerity policies, who chanted “Out, Tory scum!”

Do rank-and-file Tories really believe their party’s “achievements” in taxation will propel it to victory in the next election?

To recap: The Coalition government has cut taxes to allow 13,000 income-millionaires an extra £100,000 each, but at the other end of the income scale, raising the tax threshold nominally gave the poorest in society an extra £600 per year – which has been completely wiped out by the rising cost of living and cuts in social security benefits. Most people in the UK earn less than the average wage so it is easy to conclude that many more people will be affected.

It might be a mouth-watering policy for the ‘have-yachts’ who now appear to comprise the majority of party membership after the mass defections and membership card-burning displays of recent months, but party leaders know that they need to keep that sort of thing quiet and woo the masses with a more attractive proposition.

They’re not stupid. They have learned a trick or two from David Cameron’s short-lived “detoxification” before they came back into public office, and they believe their “bait and switch” tactic is serving them well. They need a user-friendly “bait” to get the average citizens’ votes, after which they can “switch” back to the terrifying policies of oppression that we have tasted – yes, only tasted – over the last three years.

So Andrew Rawnsley in The Guardian tells us: “The high-speed rail link is to be rebranded ‘the north-south railway’ in an attempt to convince voters that the Tories want an economic recovery for all regions of the country.”

And Andrew Gimson on ConservativeHome states: “There is a bit of window-dressing about cautions, which is meant to show that the Tories are tough on crime. And there is an irresponsible scheme to help people buy over-priced houses, which is meant to show that the party is on the side of people who do not have rich parents.

“If I were a floating voter, I think I would find these attempts to gain my support rather patronising,” he adds – and we can all agree with that.

Then he has to ruin it with: “Why can the party not rely on the substantial reforms being made in such fields as taxation, welfare, education and health?”

Simple answer: Because nobody wanted them.

We have already covered taxation in part. To the regressive changes in income tax that have helped the rich and attacked the poor, we should add the non-attempt to handle tax avoidance, which amounts to a few weasel words spoken for the benefit of the public while the ‘Big Four’ accountancy (and tax avoidance) firms continue to write the law on the subject, ensuring that their schemes – together with the people and firms on them – continue to avoid the attention of HM Revenue and Customs.

Is that fair? Do you think it will appeal to the poverty-stricken voter-on-the-street?

Welfare: George Osborne was set to unveil a new intensification of Workfare today (Monday), in which everyone who has been unemployed for more than two years will have to go on work placements in order to receive their benefits. This is, of course, utterly pointless. Such schemes ensure that fewer real jobs are available (why should an employer pay anyone a living wage when the government is supplying a steady stream of workers for free?) and have proved worse than useless at getting anyone into the few positions that remain. The announcement may cheer the Tory faithful but Andrew Gimson’s article suggests that these people are further out of touch than their MPs!

It is interesting that the new plan is not being unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, but by his rival. It seems that Smith really has been ‘Returned To Unit’ for the time being – perhaps because he has done more to re-toxify the Tory brand than most of the party’s other front-benchers put together!

It is, however, a sad example of the power of media censorship that people are more stirred up by his bedroom tax than they are about the fact that his Unum-inspired and Atos-driven work capability assessments for Employment and Support Allowance claimants have led to so many thousands of deaths – yes, deaths – that the government is refusing to release the fatality statistics.

Education: Michael Gove is working hard to dismantle state education, so schools may be run for profit, rather than to educate our children. He has distorted international statistics to make it seem that our performance had worsened when in fact it had improved – and got an official warning about it from the UK Statistics Authority. He lied about the advantages of schools becoming academies – all schools already control the length of the school day, teachers’ pay and the curriculum. His claim that autonomy would improve performance remains entirely unfounded – non-academy schools outperform them. His expensive Free Schools experiment is pointless if intended to improve education – in Sweden a similar experiment increased racial and social divisions while education standards dropped. American ‘Charter’ schools were also held up as examples of “extraordinary” change, but almost half showed no improvement and more than one-third worsened. Gove’s next stop, following the ‘Charter’ schools’ example, will be privatisation – schools-for-profit. Meanwhile, he intends to worsen academic achievement by promoting an outdated, learn-by-rote, system of teaching that is scorned by the other countries he says he admires, in favour of creativity. And he has undermined not only teacher morale and conditions, but also the morale of his own civil servants. Our children don’t even have the right to a qualified teacher any more. Now he wants performance-related-pay, rather than national pay awards – further undermining teachers and teaching standards.

And Tory policy on health has been the biggest betrayal of the lot: If David Cameron had any support at all in 2010, it was because he had promised to support the National Health Service in the then-upcoming time of austerity. He promised no top-down reorganisations of the NHS, even though he knew his then-health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, had been working on exactly that for many years. After worming his way into Number 10, they immediately embarked on the piecemeal privatisation of this country’s greatest asset, and this is now well under way, with contracts worth billions of pounds awarded to private companies for work that was previously carried out by the nationalised service, and a quarter of the commissioning groups – that we were told would be run by GPs and other health specialists – now run by the private accounting firm (also one of the Big Four and a subsidiary of Atos) KPMG.

Even their performance on the economy – which both Cameron and Osborne made the yardstick for determining this Parliament’s success – has been poor. The current upturn has nothing to do with Osborne’s policies and everything to do with the UK’s current position in the economic cycle – in short, things had to get better eventually.

This is why the Tories are gathering under the false slogan “For Hard-Working People”, rather than the more appropriate “For The Idle Rich” that Andrew Rawnsley suggests. The party’s leaders understand what their dwindling support base does not – that they need the masses to believe the Conservatives are on their side.

This is why they can only wheel out watered-down or repackaged policies that they hope will please the crowds – the party’s leaders understand that anything more solid will turn us away.

If you get the chance, have a good look at the speakers in this year’s conference. Every one of them will be terrified that their message isn’t strong enough or that the public will see through it – and remove their snouts from the trough in 2015.

The fact is, they had already blown it – long before they got anywhere near Manchester.

Are these the men who would be king?

Tags

account, allowance, Andrew Lansley, Anne McGuire, Association of British insurers, Atos, benefit, benefits, Big Four, CCG, chief executive, clinical commissioning group, commissioning board, commissioning support unit, Conservative, csu, Department, despondency, DH, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disabled, disillusion, DLA, doctor, DWP, EC, Ed Miliband, employment, ESA, European Commission, George Osborne, government, health, Health and Social Care Act, Hong Kong, Incapacity Benefit, insurance, James Kingsland, John LoCascio, KPMG, Leicester, Liberal Democrat, Mark Britnell, Michael Andrew, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, misunderstanding, New thinking on the welfare state, NHS, no mercy, observer, Parliament, Pensions, people, Peter Lilley, politics, Pride's Purge, Reform, sick, social security, support, tax, tax avoidance, Tennessee, thierry breton, Thomas Ratjen, Tim Rideout, tom pride, Tories, Tory, Treasury, unemployment, unum, voluntary organisation, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment

Unelected rulers? Thomas Watjen of Unum, Thierry Breton of Atos, and Michael Andrew of KPMG. As things stand, it seems whoever you support in 2015, these people will be behind them. Do you want that?

There is a certain kind of person who takes great delight in commenting on political blogs with a variant of the following:

“It’s no use voting! They’re all the same! It doesn’t matter what you vote for – a politician always gets in!”

No doubt you’ll be familiar with their work.

They are extremely annoying. Their insistence that all politicians are the same breed of pond scum does a huge disservice to those in public service who genuinely want to improve the lives of their fellow human beings; the fanaticism with which they disseminate their opinions may be seen as an attempt to stop ‘casual’ voters from bothering, thereby condemning the country to the current status quo.

Also, most annoyingly of all, they may have a point.

Take the three men pictured above. The one on the right is Michael Andrew, chairman of accounting firm KPMG. This is one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancies who are, among other things, involved in rewriting UK tax law for George Osborne at the Treasury, partly to suit their own desires as architects of the largest tax avoidance schemes currently available to corporations and wealthy individuals resident in the UK.

Today, thanks to an illuminating blog article by Tom Pride over at Pride’s Purge, we learn that KPMG has taken over the running of no less than a quarter of all the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) that Andrew Lansley swore blind would be run by doctors when the Conservative-led Coalition government pushed through the NHS Privatisation Act of 2012 (otherwise known as the Health and Social Care Act).

The pretext for creating these organisations was that doctors were in the best position to commission health services in any part of England, as they had the detailed knowledge required to determine what was needed.

In fact it was well known that GPs would not be able to carry out this important work – it would be too much for them to take on in addition to their ‘day job’, and they simply did not have the necessary skills. Lansley knew this, and therefore knew that his law would open the door for private firms to take over.

This is borne out by an article in GP online which is now almost a year old; so readers should bear in mind that the current situation may be much further advanced. It stated that KPMG had confirmed the firm was working with “just over 50” of the 211 CCGs in England, along with 11 commissioning support units (CSUs).

The article indirectly quoted Tim Rideout, who said CCGs did not have the capacity to commission in an effective way.

This is an interesting revelation from the former chief executive of the NHS in Leicester City who was then seconded to the Department of Health as the senior responsible officer for the development of – guess what? – NHS commissioning boards. If the new commissioning groups don’t have the capacity to work properly, why didn’t he do something about it at the appropriate time?

Oh, wait. Here’s the answer: In March 2012, Mr Rideout was hired by KPMG as an associate director responsible for – who would have thought it? – commissioning.

In the same article, national clinical commissioning lead for England, Dr James Kingsland, said clinicians and GPs should not be involved in complex procurement, and added: “We are seeing a lot of misunderstandings, disillusionment and despondency.”

Mark Britnell, KPMG’s head of healthcare since 2009 – and another former NHS chief executive, was quoted by The Observer in 2011 as stating: “In future, The NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer”, and that “The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.”

The following day, KPMG released a statement in which he said the quotes did “not properly reflect” what he had said.

So we have a firm moving to take over CCGs, helped by the fact that its roster now includes the man responsible for setting them up in the first place. Going back to Tom Pride’s piece, he states that the situation chillingly reflects the way the Dutch health service was privatised in 2006. Provision of health services is being handed over to private companies, control of the health budget was handed over to private consortia made of doctors and consultants, but now those consortia are being taken over by private companies.

When private firms like KPMG run all CCGs, the Conservative plan to privatise the NHS will be complete. And the NHS, it seems, will be run by Michael Andrew, head of KPMG, from his base in Hong Kong.

But the rot doesn’t stop there.

Tom Pride correctly adds that the consulting arm of KPMG has been owned, since 2002, by another company – called Atos.

That’s right – Atos. The French firm run by Thierry Breton (pictured, centre).

The firm that Ed Miliband wants to fire from running work capability assessments for the DWP will still be involved in government work – at the Department of Health.

You see how this works? Let a private company inveigle its way into the plans of politicians and there’s no getting rid of it. Like the giant squid, it extends its pseudopods into every government department it can possibly contaminate, planting a sucker onto everything it thinks it can take for itself.

Over at the DWP, as everyone should know by now, Atos have been carrying out work capability assessments on claimants of Employment and Support Allowance. These were dreamed up by an insurance company called Unum, that has been working with the UK government – Conservative, Labour and Coalition – since Peter Lilley invited then-boss John LoCascio in, back in the early 1990s.

Unum is now run by Thomas Ratjen (pictured, left), who is based in Tennessee, USA. Its long-term aim seems to be the ruin of the British social security system, rendering it pointless for anyone to claim benefits. Instead, the plan appears to be to encourage working people to buy Unum insurance policies – which are themselves useless, as lawsuits in several US states have proved, while also giving the company a criminal record.

This blog recently revealed that it seemed Unum was trying to influence the policies of all three main UK political parties. The thinktank Reform, that has been part-funded by Unum, is running a fringe event at all three party conferences, entitled ‘New thinking on the welfare state’. This event was sponsored by the Association of British Insurers, which has Unum among its members.

Labour’s version of this event took place on Monday (September 23), hosted by Anne McGuire, shadow minister for disabled people.

She defended her role in an email today, as follows:

“I don’t know why you have been led to believe that I was hosting an event by Unum. For the record, I was speaking at a round table discussion with organisations which included the European Commission, voluntary organisations, insurance companies amongst others. As it was such a conversation, it was by invitation only as was the event I attended this morning organised though the Shaw Trust and Mencap. It is not unusual to have such events at party conference.

“I also spoke at an open meeting last night on the future of welfare reform and disabled people with many disabled people in attendance and participating.

“I am aware of the strong feelings on Unum and Atos. However I trust that you will appreciate that having discussions with a range of organisations should not be seen as anything other than that and in no way implies an endorsement of any particular company or organisation.”

It simply doesn’t ring true.

Let’s look at the context: This event was organised by a right-wing thinktank (they’re ideologically opposed to state-run social security systems) that has been sponsored by Unum; was about “new” thinking on the welfare state; was itself sponsored by the Association of British Insurers, of which Unum is a member; and representatives of insurance companies – and we’re willing to bet Unum was among them – took part in the behind-closed-doors discussion.

It seems clear that this event was intended to influence Labour Party policy away from providing a well-run and reasonable state benefit system, as was the case in the UK until Peter Lilley in the early 1990s, and towards dismantling that system to make way for a system based on privately-run insurance policies, such as those produced by Unum.

The fact that it is being mirrored at the other two party conferences clearly suggests that the firms involved want to influence all major British political parties in the same way. If successful, this would mean that it won’t matter who gets into office after the 2015 election; Unum will still be in power at the Department for Work and Pensions.

Just as KPMG will still be in power at the Treasury, and at the Department of Health, alongside its owner Atos.

And the three gentlemen pictured at the top of this article will be the unelected kings of the UK because, no matter which way you vote, they will be in charge.

Well now.

That would be a good place to end this article, but then, dear reader, you might be left thinking there is nothing you can do. There is something you can do.

You can write to your MP, to local newspapers, to the party leaders and the ministers running these government departments and you can bitch like hell about it!

The people of this country deserve elected representatives who are going to run this country by their own decisions, in the best interests of the citizens who voted for them – not employees of a dubious gang of unelected corporations, running this country in their own best interests and treating the citizens like dirt.

You can make a difference.

But you need to start now.

DWP denials: They would kill you and call it ‘help’

Tags

account, allowance, appeal, assessment, Atos, Atos Healthcare, benefit, benefits, Bro Taf, charge, charging, clinical, Coalition, compassionate conservatism, Conservative, corruption, court, cover-up, death, decision maker, denial, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, doctor, DWP, dying, employment, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, esther mcvey, evidence, government, GP, health, history, LMC, local medical committee, mark hoban, medical, mental health, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortality, Mrs S, New Statesman, opinion, Pensions, people, politics, PricewaterhouseCoopers, provider, refuse, regulation, sick, social security, suicide, supervision, support, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment, Work Programme

Employment Minister Mark Hoban: His attempt to cover up the failings of the ESA Work Capability Assessment, and his nepotistic use of a former employer to rubber-stamp the cosmetic changes, bring all politics and politicians into disrepute.

Who do you believe about the Work Capability Assessment?

Not the government, obviously.

You may have missed this – because it hasn’t been reported widely in the mass media – but a quiet row has been running for several months, concerning the collection and use of medical evidence to support applications for Employment and Support Allowance, the benefit people taking the WCA have applied to receive.

The government – whose spokesman appears to be Employment Minister Mark Hoban rather than Esther McVey, the Minister who is actually responsible for Disabled People – insists that decisions are made after consideration of all medical evidence supplied by claimants, and that they can provide further evidence during the reconsideration process or appeals.

But there is a mountain of evidence that this is a load of bunkum.

Back in 2010, an ex-military claimant, ‘Mrs S’ wrote a damning report on the service at the time. It stated: “This dangerous DWP contract offers the medical opinion of the Atos Healthcare Disability Analyst as a PRIORITY, which the DWP Decision Makers accept verbatim, so all additional specialist medical opinion of consultants, offered by the patient/claimant, is totally overlooked. Consequently, desperately ill people are now being declared fit for work because they are physically capable of collecting a pen from the floor. Patients, welfare advisors and MPs all presume that specialist medical opinion by a consultant will be accepted because they are unfamiliar with the details of the contract.

“The contract requires specialist medical opinion for several conditions… This is routinely ignored by Atos Healthcare with devastating consequences, whilst the UK government offer total support for this private company.

“Atos Healthcare doctors do not have access to a patient’s detailed medical history at the interview with the patient, as confirmed by Atos Healthcare, so one needs to question why so much detailed medical evidence is requested, which will be totally ignored?

“Atos Healthcare is totally unaccountable for all medical examinations. All usual patient safety networks in place for NHS and private healthcare do not apply and, according to the GMC and the Healthcare Commission, Atos Healthcare, as a company, ‘…have total immunity from all medical regulation.’

“There is no clinical supervision whatsoever.”

Get the picture? This situation has not changed in three years, despite the claims of Mr Hoban that he is “committed to ensuring that the Work Capability Assessment is as fair and accurate as possible”.

On Tuesday (August 13), New Statesman published details of several Atos claimants with mental health problems who – surprise, surprise – have been let down by the system.

One of these, who had previously attempted suicide, was driven to a further attempt to take her own life after receiving a string of 18 letters from a Work Programme Provider, all sent after it was advised to leave her alone for the good of her health.

“The DWP said it would not investigate the matter because [the Work Programme Provider] has its own internal complaints procedure,” the article stated, before going on to report on how that worked.

The company refuted the allegation and went on to say that it “takes its responsibilities to its customers and staff seriously. We have robust policies on safeguarding and data protection in place to ensure their privacy and safety is always maintained. With this in mind, it would be inappropriate for [us] to comment on individual any cases”.

It is clear that there is a culture of unaccountability running right through this system; the only people who bear the consequences of Work Capability assessors’ actions are the claimants themselves.

Perhaps that is why so many are dying that the DWP is now afraid to publish mortality figures for people going through the process. The suicidal person mentioned in the Statesman article would have been one more to add to the multitude, if they had succeeded in taking their own life.

This is what your votes support – a state-sponsored drive for sick or disabled people to kill themselves, rather than continue to be a burden on a Conservative-led government. Compassionate Conservatism – and this is at its most compassionate.

Let’s add in a few details. We know that the government recently lost a court battle in which it claimed that the current process was fair to people with mental health conditions. The Upper Tribunal disagreed and now the DWP is appealing against that decision – because ministers don’t want their underlings to have to consider medical information on anyone that hasn’t been gathered in the biased way ensured by the Atos Healthcare training system.

“We already request claimants supply any evidence they feel will be relevant to the assessment in the ESA50 questionnaire,” the department said in an email quoted by the Statesman.

But we already know from ‘Mrs S’ that this information is “totally overlooked”. It was in 2010 and we have no reason to believe the current situation is any different, judging from the treatment of claimants.

Now it seems claimants are finding it harder to get the expert medical evidence they need, because GPs are either refusing to hand it over, or are charging more money for it than claimants receive for their personal survival.

In southeast Wales, Bro Taf Local Medical Committee has come under fire for ordering GPs to stop providing support information to disability benefit claimants who were appealing against WCA decisions. The LMC has said its problem is not with the provision of evidence itself, but with the “increasing number of appeals [which] has resulted in more GP appointments being taken up to deal with such requests”.

Hoban said last month that he was bringing in “additional providers” to carry out assessments from summer 2014 and had already directed Atos to improve the quality of its written reports following assessments.

This will do nothing to improve matters, if the contract and the training given to the new providers is the same as that given to Atos.

And he has engaged a company to “provide independent advice in relation to strengthening quality assurance processes”. This company is PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr Hoban’s former employer. The connection with the Minister implies an inappropriate relationship from the get-go.

Put it all together and you have an attempt to carry out business as usual, under the veil of a ham-fisted cover-up involving friends of the Minister. Anyone bothering to check the facts will see it as further evidence of the corruption that is rotting the institutions of British government with staggering rapidity under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration.

But there is a worse effect, which has a bearing on all politicians: Even those who accept such announcements at face value will consider this to be a failure by government. “They can’t get anything right” will be the chorus from the Great Uninterested – and the continuing furore as mistakes – and deaths – continue to take place will only reinforce the view that we should not give any politicians the time of day.

They would kill us all and call it “help”.

Beware Coalition stooges who repeat Iain Duncan Smith’s lies for him!

Tags

account, avoidance, bank, bedroom, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, Brecon, Chris Davies, Coalition, Conservative, cut, Democrat, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, employer, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, family, genocide, government, haven, health, housing benefit, Iain Duncan Smith, income, inflation, Labour, Landlord Subsidy, lemming, Liberal, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Mrs Lloyd, offshore, Parliament, pay, people, pogrom, politics, Reform, sick, social security, tax, Tories, Tory, uk statistics authority, unemployed, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare

The pen is mightier: It is the war of words between Coalition distortion of the facts and those of us who value accuracy that will determine the outcome of the next UK general election.

It is most vexing when people refuse to believe facts that are presented to them.

Readers may recall an article on this blog nearly two months ago, in which the claims of Powys county councillor and Conservative general election candidate Chris Davies were thoroughly repudiated, using verifiable factual information. It was entitled ‘Does anybody believe this Conservative claptrap dressed up as information?’

You may be astounded to learn that, despite the veritable mountain of information in my 700-word missive, some people still did believe it!

Admittedly, they waited a while before breaking cover, but sure enough, in the letters page of the Brecon and Radnor Express dated June 6, a Mrs Lloyd of Brecon wrote the following:

“I must write to convey my disappointment at the handful of people who have written to your paper recently opposing welfare reforms. I assume from the tone of these letters that they are probably Labour Party supporters.

“Like lemmings blindly following each other off the cliff, these people have decided to oppose one of the most popular government policies in recent memory.

“I am no great fan of the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition but this handful of socialist Labourites must be the only people left in the UK who don’t think the welfare system needs urgent reform.

“I say I am disappointed because I have always voted Labour and it saddens me to see Labour so out of touch with public opinion.

“Our benefit system is far too soft and state handouts simply must be cut. Why can’t Labour see this?

“I am also ashamed that the local Labour Party… has decided to adopt a policy of scaremongering by trying to label one reform as a ‘bedroom tax’.

“It is not a tax and Labour knows that full well.

“A tax is a levy on something you own, earn or purchase: state provided housing benefit is none of these.

“Is it any wonder that people do not trust politicians when an established and legitimate political party like Labour resorts to such trickery?

“Having spare rooms wasting at the taxpayer’s expense is simply inexcusable and unaffordable.

“Why do Labour want the taxpayer paying for people to be in large flats or houses with unused bedrooms, when there are larger families who need this space?

“If people receiving housing benefit refuse to move to smaller housing and insist on staying in excessively large accommodation, then they should be prepared to pay for it just like every other family.

“To be fair to the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, they have decided to tackle an issue that Labour feels it cannot.

“The cynical amongst us would say Labour’s refusal to support benefit reform is because of their historic reliance on the votes of the unemployed and those receiving benefits.

“A turkey doesn’t vote for Christmas.”

You’re probably shaking your head in disbelief but in fact this is quite a cleverly-constructed letter. Look at the way she tries to establish that right-thinking people must approve of the way Iain… Smith and his mates are hacking apart our social security and that anyone who doesn’t – “probably Labour Party supporters” are a “disappointment”. She later attempts a feat of mind-reading when she tells Labour members that they feel they cannot tackle an issue that the Coalition parties have – and her final comment attempts to tar Labour with dishonest, or at least covert, intent by claiming that the party relies on the unemployed and benefit-receiving vote. One might hope that Labour’s recent adoption of a harder attitude to benefits will have persuaded Mrs Lloyd that this is not true, but this is by no means certain. It wouldn’t suit her purposes.

I particularly enjoy the next line because it conflates two gross misapprehensions: Lemmings do not fling themselves over cliffs suicidally. The makers of a Disney (!) documentary created that myth for reasons of their own, and it seems likely that Mrs Lloyd had reasons of her own for running it together with the myth that the Coalition cuts are “one of the most popular government policies in recent memory”. They’re not, and never have been.

Labour does not oppose welfare reform. It opposes the Coalition’s attack on the poorest and most vulnerable in society, carried out under the pretence of reform. The only Coalition welfare policy that has won any popular support – the benefit cap – is also supported by Labour. But the average family income is not £26,000 per year, as the Coalition states – that is a lie. That family would receive state benefits, bringing its income up to £31,500, or slightly more than £600 per week. This was glossed over because the Coalition would not be able to penalise enough poor people if the cap was set at that – realistic – level.

The other cuts to social security benefits have provoked a storm of protest – particularly the genocidal pogrom against the sick and disabled, and also the bedroom tax, which Mrs Lloyd singles out, and to which she applies her own quaint definition of ‘tax’.

So let’s put her straight. It is a tax, as it is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government against a citizen’s property, to support government policies. Mrs Lloyd seems unaware that 97 per cent of the 600,000 families it affects – that’s 582,000 families – simply have nowhere else to go. The smaller accommodation into which she expects them to move does not exist. And the definition of ‘bedroom’ has been applied to small box rooms that would not accommodate a bed, let alone the person who would be expected to sleep in it! The tax is therefore exposed as a scheme to screw money out of the very poor, put them into arrears with their landlord, and sling them onto the streets.

This is why I support the redefinition of these ‘spare’ bedrooms, as taken up by some councils, into ‘offices’ or ‘non-designated rooms’. This is legal tax avoidance – putting the tenants of such homes into the same category as the billionaires who are sitting on £21 trillion of untaxed earnings in offshore tax haven bank accounts. If the government kicks up a fuss about ‘bedroom tax’ avoidance, it can damn well go and get those trillions back first.

As for the taxpayer being made to pay for unused bedrooms, that decision was made by the Coalition government, not the Labour Party, when it decided to cut Landlord Subsidy (that’s Housing Benefit to you, Mrs Lloyd) rather than cap rents at a reasonable level.

The remark that people are refusing to move to smaller accommodation is so far removed from reality that it defies belief, as is the implication that they do not pay anything towards their rent. For Mrs Lloyd’s information, the vast majority of Housing Benefit claims are made by people in work, who do pay the majority of their rent; the amount of Housing Benefit they receive is a top-up because the wages they receive are too low. I don’t see you blaming employers who have increased their own pay eightfold over the last 30 years, while employees’ pay rises total just 27 per cent – far less than cumulative inflation, Mrs Lloyd.

The opinions expressed by this correspondent are based on nothing but myth and should be fought tooth and nail. If her distorted views are accepted as fact by the majority of the voting population, then the Conservative Party will win the 2015 election, and those of us who value facts and honesty will only have ourselves to blame if we have not done all we can to rectify matters.

By the way, the Brecon and Radnor Express‘s editorial email address is theeditor@brecon-radnor.co.uk

I was going to write about a more recent letter to the same newspaper, which prompted me to contact the UK Statistics Authority with a complaint. But that will have to wait for another day.

Standards watchdog orders MPs to repay ‘profits’ on second homes – why isn’t Osborne on the list?

Tags

account, David Jones, expenses, false, farmhouse, fraud, George Osborne, home, Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Interest, ipsa, land, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage, paddock, profit, scandal, second, Tatton, taxpayer, Vox Political

Shady: Why will the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards NOT investigate the new evidence that has come to light about George Osborne’s expenses?

Members of Parliament have been made to pay back nearly £390,000 in ‘profits’ judged by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to have been made on taxpayer-funded homes – with one highly-notable exception.

In total, 71 MPs have repaid cash claimed on mortgage interest payments between 2010 and 2012.

The highest amount repaid was £81,446, by Conservative David Jones. He had only claimed around £18,061 but the amount he had to repay depended not only on how much he had claimed, but how much the value of his property had risen.

Changes to the system after the expenses scandal meant new MPs could not claim expenses towards the cost of mortgage interest payments on their second homes. Those who had already bought properties under the old system were allowed to continue claiming until August last year, if they agreed to repay a share of any profit made over that period.

This leads us to the worst offender we know, and the reason he does not appear on this list.

We know that George Osborne falsely claimed mortgage interest on a farmhouse, a neighbouring paddock, and other land in his Tatton constituency as an allowable expense, stating that he needed the house to perform his duties as an MP. Taxpayers’ money paid the interest on the paddock and the other land, even though they were registered separately with the Land Registry and went unmentioned in his expenses claim.

Between 2003 and 2009, he claimed up to £100,000 in expenses on the building (and the two pieces of land, even though they went unmentioned on his claim), which he had bought for £455,000 in 2000. A 2005 re-mortgage allowed him to increase the value to £480,000 and add the initial purchase costs and £10,000 for repairs to the interest-only arrangement; all the money came from the taxpayer.

Osborne stopped claiming in 2009. This is why he cannot be included among the MPs being asked to refund the taxpayer. When the Standards Commissioner examined Osborne’s expenses claims in 2010, he was ordered to pay £1,936 – a derisory amount that mocks the taxpayers who stumped up the cash.

Osborne sold the farmhouse and land in 2011, for an amount believed to be around £1 million. He pocketed all the money and did not repay a single penny that he had taken from the taxpayer.

Considering the amounts these 71 MPs have had to pay back – and especially considering the amounts paid by those whose property (like Osborne’s) increased in value – one might consider him to have made a very canny decision to stop claiming when he did. Bear in mind that it was an interest-only mortgage, so it would not have been paid off when he stopped claiming.

He played the system, using taxpayers’ money to make himself £1 million. He also committed fraud, or at least false accounting, in failing to declare that he was also claiming for two extra pieces of land that would have invalidated the claim altogether, as they were not used for Parliamentary purposes.

While he keeps the money, those MPs who have paid back huge amounts – including prominent cabinet members like Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond – have a right to feel that the system has discriminated against them.

I bet they don’t do anything about it.

UK police state moves a step closer (to your door)

Tags

account, agreement, Amnesty, bill, civil, close material procedure, CMP, Coalition, Conservative, government, international, Justice, liberties, liberty, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, police, politics, public interest immunity, Reprieve, secret court, security, terrorism, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

It really was a good day to bury bad news.

As the press went into overdrive about the vote to permit gay marriage, a House of Commons committee quietly axed amendments to the Justice and Security Bill that would have made it less damaging to your freedom.

This is the controversial Bill to allow ‘secret courts’ in the UK, so cases that are potentially embarrassing to government can be held behind closed doors.

As it now stands, defendants – or claimants in civil cases – will be excluded from the hearings where their fates will be decided. They will not be allowed to know or challenge the details of the case against them and will have to be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer.

Are alarm bells ringing in your head yet?

Apparently the Bill has been drafted in close co-operation with the security services, who have claimed other countries may stop sharing intelligence with Britain if it risks being disclosed in open court. Clearly the intention is to deal with terrorism cases but there is no necessary limit to the possibilities.

The House of Lords had amended the Bill last November after concerns were raised about the threat to civil liberties. The changes would have meant judges could only grant secret hearings – or ‘Closed Material Procedures’ (CMPs) – if other alternatives like the existing system of public interest immunity had been ruled out.

A call to permit such hearings only after balancing the government’s call for it against the ancient legal principles of open justice was also thrown out.

Secret hearings could now become the default in cases where the existing system for fairly handling sensitive material could instead have been used.

Human rights organisations Amnesty International, JUSTICE, Liberty and Reprieve have condemned the changes, which mean secret material – never disclosed to the claimant, let alone the public or the press – would routinely be used to defend serious allegations.

In other words, if this Bill becomes law, the government would be able to do anything it likes, to anyone it likes, under a veil of secrecy. It’s a clear contradiction of the Conservative Party’s own pre-election commitment to a far more open and accountable Parliament, and also of the Coalition Agreement, which stated: “The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”

But don’t just take my word for it. Amnesty International UK Head of Policy and Government Affairs, Allan Hogarth, had this to say: ““If the Bill becomes law we will end up with victims of human rights violations being prevented from seeing secret evidence against them and even being prevented from talking to their own lawyers.

“It’s ludicrous and totally contrary to basic principles of open justice.”

The government says the Bill is perfectly safe because the final decision on whether to hold proceedings in secret will be up to the judge.

And we all know that they are entirely beyond reproach.

Right?

Osborne update: Standards commissioner ignores the facts

Tags

account, code, commissioner, conduct, duty, evidence, expense, farm, fraud, George Osborne, harrop fold, house, inquiry, Interest, land registry, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage, paddock, Parliamentary, profit, report, responsibility, rules, standards, taxpayer, Vox Political

Oily Osborne has slithered away from any chance of a fraud investigation by the standards commissioner, but he will have to live with the allegation for the rest of his career.

I believe I am one of many who received an email from the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards yesterday, turning down the call for an inquiry into possible expenses fraud by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Those of you who received it will be familiar with the wording. For those who didn’t, the relevant parts run as follows:

“The Commissioner has not accepted a complaint about Rt Hon George Osborne MP. There is therefore no current inquiry into Mr Osborne’s conduct.   “As you know, before she could inquire into allegations against a Member, the Commissioner would need evidence, sufficient to support an inquiry, that the Member might have breached the Code of Conduct and the rules of the House. The rules on Members’ overnight expenses have been tightened considerably since Mr Osborne’s original expenses claims, and the Commissioner would assess the allegations against the rules as they were at the time of the alleged conduct. Without evidence of a breach of those rules, which had not already been inquired into, the Commissioner would not open an investigation.”

Mine continued: “I am afraid I am unable to say what the police meant by their comments,” referring to my complaint to the Metropolitan Police and the strange response that it was being investigated elsewhere.

My first reaction was: How much evidence does the commissioner need? If he’s a villain, he’s hardly likely to sign a confession! We know Osborne claimed against his mortgage on the property in Cheshire and we know that the mortgage was for three land titles, not one. Therefore we deduce that he claimed money for Parliamentary duties taking place on at least two pieces of land where such duties could never have taken place, and the prima facie evidence (as the police would say) suggests further investigation is required.

Do we even have proof that Osborne ever actually used the Cheshire farmhouse to carry out Parliamentary duties? Whenever I have claimed expenses for a job, I have always had to produce proof of it. How has he used that house? When did he use that house? Where is the proof? If he met constituents, my understanding is that he used the Conservative office in the same building as the local Conservative Club (which is to close through lack of funding; interesting that Osborne is making out like a bandit while his local party suffers). Could he have travelled up from London, held those meetings, and travelled back within the same day? If so, then the farmhouse and the two pieces of land are now looking increasingly like long-term investments, maintained at cost to the taxpayer, that were to be sold at a later date for huge profit (as, in fact, they were).

Second reaction was: If the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner cannot investigate an open-and-shut fraud case (which is what this is) then what is the point of the office as it currently stands? On balance, it seems likely that Members of Parliament can continue to commit abuses of public money – and trust – and get away, free as a bird, in the current system. Therefore, with this decision it seems the commissioner, who only took up the post this month, is attempting a tacit resignation from it.

Let’s have a standards watchdog that actually investigates and prevents abuses, shall we? Maybe I’ll start an e-petition.

Third reaction was: Without a full and frank investigation, Osborne will always stand accused of expenses fraud and of abusing the trust placed in him as a member of Parliament. So, in fact, the commissioner has done him a great disservice. Mud always sticks, as the old saying goes. There’s no smoke without fire.

There’s no stink without a stinker, and in this case the odour can emanate from nobody else but Osborne.

He’ll never be able to live it down. And he’ll never be able to say that nobody raised the issue, because we have.

I think I might have a bit more work to do. For Osborne himself, as Churchill once said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”