It stinks.

We learn nothing from history do we? After a couple of decades of hard lessons about nationalisation and 'central economic planning' we learned by 1979 that the last people who should make business decisions are politicians, especially Labour politicians.

The whole sorry tale of New Labours attempt to introduce a more relaxed gaming and gambling regime is rapidly looking like a return to the bad old days of Governments interfering in business - with similarlily disasterous results.

On the one hand the one remaining 'supercasino' that is going to be allowed is looking more and more like a pre-scripted stitch up rather than an open merit based contest. When the idea was first mooted for a supercasino the prime candidate was Blackpool, which would have been the perfect place; now it looks like it will be a white elephant at the wrong end of London.

Meanwhile we read that places like Luton and Canturbury are more likely to be 'selected' by the Government for the next generation of casino's than Torbay.

What in the name of all that is useful have the Government got to do with it? Why should some Whitehall quango know better than the Casino operators and local planners what is best for us?

Emerging news on the Lord Levy arrest....

Stories are slowly emerging in the press that contrary to earlier speculation and his own press statements Lord Levy is refusing to co-operate with the police investigation into cash-for-peerages.

I am hearing that during interviews Lord Levy has insisted on reading out a pre-prepared statement and refusing to answer questions.

There is growing recognition (and frustration) that Levy is blocking the investigation progressing any further up the chain (i.e. to No 10) by saying nothing more than he has to unless he is actually charged.

There is a downside, which is that if he is charged his uncooperative behaviour will look very damaging in court.

I conclude one of two things - 1) He is confident that there is not enough evidence to charge anyone, including himself or 2) He is acting as a 'body shield' to protect Tony Blair for as long as he remains in office.

Could this ' pretty straight kind of guy' be the first Prime Minister in living memory to be arrested?
I have been musing on the prospects of the police interviewing Tony Blair under caution at 10 Downing Street ever since Lord Levy was interviewed.

the Independent reports this morning that “..There is a shiver going down the spine of No 10,” one insider said yesterday. “The paper trail is proving stronger than the police expected. They are pretty good at persuading people it is in their best interests to talk.”

I asked a friend who is a senior police officer what he thought and his view is that even a face-to-face interview with the PM is highly unlikely, and an arrest is unthinkable. The Prime Minister would be assumed to be cooperating fully and there would be no precedent to interview him under caution.
They may submit questions to him but they would probably just ask for a written statement in reply.

In fact senior officers say that arresting very high profile 'suspects' is often done merely to knock the stuffing out of them first so that officers can 'cut them down to size' and interview them as equals.

It seems to me highly unlikely that any charges will ever be brought but just the prospect of the Prime Minister having become embroiled in a scandal leading right to his door must be hugely damaging.

At the very least it suggests massive poor judgement to have allowed things to get this far, at worst it could be that there really is some truth in the allegations.

Going... going.... gone?

Joy of joys. There are reports everywhere in the media today about the almost certain demise of the ID card scheme.

I am lifted this morning by this news. I cannot explain why I have such a determined hatred of the concept of an ID card, other than the fact that it goes against everything I thought we valued in the country in terms of being free citizens. The concept of a British policeman being able to stop you on the street one day in the future and say "your papers, please" was just too chilling for words.

Outright abandonment in one go is unlikely but there will I am sure be a series of 'amendments' which will mean that the all encompassing biometric card and the 'big brother' style universal citizens database that go with it will not now be instigated before there is a change of Government.

Thank goodness for that.

David Cameron is going to make a major speech on young people today, a move which has already been attacked by the Labour Party.

I’m glad he has decided to say something about this because I hate the way we tend to demonise all youngsters just because some groups of young men (and women) can seem intimidating.

One of the worst habits of modern politicians is to play up ‘threats’ in the hope of being seen as the white knight with the solution.

Blair and Bush have invested a great deal of time and effort to play up the threat of terrorism which, although real, is not really any greater here in the UK than it has been since the 1960’s.

It is true to say that we Conservatives have also been guilty; during the 2005 election I was unhappy with the tone of some of our crime posters.

Gangs of young people hanging around on street corners can appear threatening, especially to old or single people and even more so late at night.

But it doesn’t help if the press and politicians between them have worked the public into a frenzy of fear based on a handful of shocking incidents of violence being blown out of all proportion.

In the main we live in a safe place. Your chances of being mugged, robbed or violently attacked in Torbay by a stranger (hooded or otherwise) are absolutely miniscule. The Herald Express faithfully detail every incident and never have more than a handful each month - in a town of 140,000 people and 660,000 visitors.

You are probably more at risk of injury from an uneven paving slab than a hooded youth while walking round Torbay.

It's been silly season in Torbay.

To make a change from the normal web posts I thought I'd try something different. The fuss about 'dangerous' palm trees and wild traffic wardens made me wonder what people REALLY think about our local authority.

So I thought I would ask you.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TORBAY COUNCIL?
Take my poll and view the results :

I think Torbay Council is:
	Very poor, and getting worse
	Very poor, but improving slowly
	Poor, but not as bad as people say
	Poor, but no worse than most other Councils
	Not too bad.
	Moderately good, trying hard to be better
	Moderately good, could do better
	What is all the fuss about? They are fine by me
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Dr Pedrick-Friend - my Labour opposite number at the election, had a letter published in the Herald Express today entitled "Labour inherited economic meltdown" unsurprisingly full of inacurracies and errors.

Firstly, far from being 'in meltdown' in 1997 Britain was the most competitive and fastest growing economy in Europe with low tax, low Government borrowing and fully funded private sector pensions.

Clearly David's doctorate is not in economics - his statement 'the treasury lost over three billion (on Black Wednesday) ... which could have been used to build schools and hospitals' is completely wrong.

Sure, if the government had maintained $24bn foreign currency reserves (ie not sold sterling) that day, and the pound had fallen by the same amount, the UK would have made a 'paper' £2.4bn profit on sterling's devaluation. But it makes no difference to the Governments spending ability in Britain, either way.

As it happens Chancellor Gordon Brown has lost much more by selling 60% of our gold reserves between 1999 and 1992 raising £2.1bn for gold that would be now worth £4.5 bn - real money that really could have been spent on UK hospitals and schools.

But if Mr Pedrick Friend wants to compare facts, how about these:

ONS figures show the total of people out of work rose to 1.61 million in April. Overall the level of people 'economically inactive' has reached a record 7.9 million, the highest number since records began in 1971.

OECD figures show British productivity is now languishing behind that of both the EU and the US.

According to the ONS the UK's current account deficit grew to £31.9 billion in 2005, the highest on record in cash terms.

Gordon Brown is now running a budget deficit of 3.2% of GDP and earlier this year the European Commission stepped in to call for the chancellor to rein in his spending.

One in five British employees is working for the Government, 9/10 of whom are members of taxpayer-backed, index-linked, final-salary schemes. One expert, Stephen Yeo of consulting firm Watson Wyatt, estimates the government's (unfunded) liability for public-sector pensions comes to a staggering £30,000 per UK household.

There have been 80 new taxes since Gordon Brown took over. Figures produced by the OECD show that the UK's tax revenues are set to hit 42.7% of GDP this year, up from 40.7% in 1999 (and below 39% under the Conservatives).

Britain's personal debt is increasing by £1,000,000 every four minutes. According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders total household debt has grown sharply as a percentage of disposable income over the past decade - the unsecured debt to income ratio was almost double that of 1995. According to a recent Financial Services Authority (FSA) report 14 million adults (35%) are relying on their overdrafts to get by each month; 3.5m are permanently overdrawn, while two million workers start the month in their overdraft, even after they have been paid.
New Labour have squandered the economic legacy of low Government borrowing, low tax and high productivity they inherited in 1997. Bit by bit the country and most of it's citizens have used up their reserves and for the last few years have been surviving on borrowed money.

There is going to be a long hangover to sort out the national finances and George Osbourne is absolutely right not to promise early tax cuts under even these circumstances, let alone those that might face an incoming Conservative Government in three years time.

I fear the complete reverse of Dr Pedrick Friends comment- that it may in fact be Conservatives who inherit Labours economic meltdown.