Dodgey Lib Dem Candidate (Letter to the Press)

Dear Sir

It has been drawn to my attention that a quote from me features in campaign material, for the forthcoming County Council By-election in the Thornton Dales and Wolds Division, apparently endorsing the candidature of a Liberal Democrat.

I am really dissapointed that this individual has sought to cynically misrepresent my views in such an outrageous way. I do not support this man and would urge people to put their faith in Janet Sanderson, a candidate with integrity, when they vote on the 27th October.

Thank you, for allowing me to set the record straight.

Yours sincerely

Greg White
former County Counillor for the Pickering Division)

North Yorkshire Police (Letter to the Press)

Dear Editor

As a former member of North Yorkshire Police Authority, who played a small part in the selection of Grahame Maxwell as Chief Constable, I feel compelled to comment on the recent Gross Misconduct verdict.

Whilst Mr Maxwell has clearly let himself down, in trying to give a family member an unfair advantage and, most especially, in his apparent attempts to discredit the investigation against him and so evade any sanction, I believe the system has also been found wanting.

Mr Maxwell, his former Deputy Adam Briggs and his immediate predecessor Della Cannings were all recruited and, supposedly, held to account by The North Yorkshire Police Authority. Each of these appointments has led to controversial and embarrassing press stories of excessive expenditure and/or rules broken and, as a former insider, I can state that there were plenty of other potential stories which never made the papers.

In my opinion these problems stem from a lack of effective local accountability. Chief Constables are theoretically accountable to their police authorities, made up of local councillors and independent members, which are supposed to represent the interests of local people and ensure value for the money they raise as part of our Council Tax. Unfortunately they are not fit for this purpose.

The Home Office rules for hiring chief and deputy chiefs undermine the recruitment role of police authorities, by preventing all but a select handful of approved police officers from being considered. In essence, the police authorities get to choose from a very small number of very similar candidates.

Once recruited, some Chief Constables seem to treat the Police Authority as a problem to be managed. To this end, they can exploit rules on operational independence, intended to prevent political interference in policing, to control the flow of some management information, in order to avoid the proper scrutiny which is the legitimate role of their Police Authority.

During my time on the North Yorkshire Police Authority, we certainly did manage to uncover some truly eye-watering examples of waste and mismanagement, but I was convinced that we were only scratching the surface.

The Government apparently plans to abolish police authorities and replace them with much stronger, directly elected, police commissioners. Surely, for North Yorkshire, this change cannot come soon enough.

Yours

Greg White

Lending to Ireland

The fundamental point, that some people seem to be missing, on the debate over cuts in UK expenditure versus loans to Ireland, is that they are not interchangeable. A pot of money can be loaned and repaid many times, but it can only be spent once.

If the Government borrows money from the market, at a low interest rate, to lend to the Irish Government at a higher rate, it is an investment which will be paid back with interest. If the Government borrows money for its own use, it is expenditure, which can only be repaid by higher taxation or cuts to services in the future.

As far as I can tell...

If the Public Sector spends a million pounds, which has been raised through new taxes, it could employ around 30 to 40 extra people for one year. The net effect would, however, be zero new jobs, as a similar number would be lost from the private sector which had to stump up the tax.

If the Public Sector spends a million pounds, that has been borrowed, it could create around 30 to 40 jobs for a year from spending its debt. Unfortunately if the debt is repaid the following year, through the making of savings or higher taxation, 60 to 80 jobs will be lost (ie all the new jobs funded from the previous year’s one off borrowing, plus a similar number as a consequence of funds being diverted to loan repayment). So, once again, the net effect, over two years, would be zero.

So, governments can't really create jobs through expenditure. At best they can smooth out employment troughs, through judicial borrowing and expenditure on the downward part of an economic cycle, when times are hard, provided they take care to reduce borrowings at the top of the cycle. It is this last bit which both Blair and Brown’s Labour Governments apparently failed to do – the old fixing the roof cliché. Since the Country has already borrowed to the limit, that its creditors believe is sustainable, painful cuts in expenditure must now be made on the downward part of the economic cycle.

The only way to sustain an increase in overall employment is from economic growth, where the private sector is able to produce more saleable goods and services. Unfortunately, excessive taxation and government borrowing both tend to inhibit economic growth.

Kipper Williams cartoon borrowed from The Guardian, copyright acknowledged

NIMBY Councillors?

A letter to the Malton & Pickering Mercury....

Sir

I read, with interest, your report on Cllr John Savage's decision to join the left-wing Liberal Party.

Whilst it is possible that he has the "deep misgivings about the financial cuts nationally", that he aired when leaving the Conservative Group last August, I am not convinced that this was the real reason for his departure.

Your readers may like to consider that Cllr Savage's home is only two miles from the County Council's proposed new waste treatment facility near Knaresborough and that his new best friends are among the principal opponents of that plant. It is my opinion that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the 'not in my back yard' objections of the NIMBY, after all almost no one would want an incinerator (or even a sour gas plant) on their doorstep, but it is patently dishonest for a politician to claim a less selfish motivation for their protests.

Incidentally Ryedale residents may like to know that Liberal Party policy on the treatment of waste clearly states that they "would welcome a nation-wide programme for the construction of small scale incineration plants." So presumably, if Cllrs. Savage and Clark manage to stop the Knaresborough facility going ahead, all of us can look forward to having waste incinerators built in our back yards.

Kind Regards

Where will the Coalition Axe cut deepest?

As the Goverment plans to cut public services, by reducing the expenditure on which they rely, I find there is a new and unexpected advantage of living in rural North Yorkshire. Relatively speaking, the last Government did not spend much here in the first place so, using the principle of half nowt is nowt, the impact of any cuts should be less significant than in other areas.

For example, once you exclude the ring fenced money, which is mostly for schools, the Government picks up roughly two thirds of the cost of Policing and Council Services in Middlesbrough, but only one third of their costs in North Yorkshire.

As a result a 30 per cent cut in Government support, for police and council budgets, would translate into an overall 10 per cent cut here, whilst it would be 20 per cent in Middlesbrough.

Don't feel too guilty about this, as in North Yorkshire we benefit from neither the high levels of services nor the low levels of Council Tax that our urban neighbours enjoy.

Cars and Christmas

When I was an aspiring PPC I needed to have an answer for what law I would seek to enact, if successful in the ballot for Private Members' Bills.

My original suggestion was a bill to reform vehicle taxation, making it cheaper to own but more expensive to use a car.

Currently around a third of the cost of owning a car relates to the miles driven, with the other two thirds being the fixed cost of ownership. So, once you have committed to owning a car, the marginal cost per mile is rarely high enough to offer any financial incentive to use another form of transport.

My idea was to shift the balance, to around fifty/fifty, by eliminating as many of the mandatory fixed charges and taxes for owning cars as possible (including those for Tax Discs, MOT testing, Initial Registration, the Uninsured Driver Levy and VAT on insurance, vehicles, parts and servicing) then increasing fuel duty to make up the difference.

The measure would:

• Be revenue neutral overall, although costs for high mileage drivers would increase whilst those of low mileage drivers would reduce.
• Improve both sides of the cost/benefit analysis for any fuel efficiency technology.
• Encourage people to use a greater mix of transport options, appropriate to their specific journey.
• Justify the keeping of a task specific second vehicle (such as a motorcycle, caravanette or 4WD) without encouraging its inappropriate use.

I thought this was a great idea, but then I learnt that Private Members' Bills have to stay clear of taxation and be revenue neutral for the Government, so it was back to the drawing board.

Then someone reminded me of an old joke:

Q: How can you tell its Christmas?
A: There's Easter Eggs in Woolworths.

and I resolved to advocate what, for me, was the somewhat illiberal measure of:

"A bill to outlaw the advertising or promotion of Christmas, in any retail or leisure business, until after Remembrance Sunday".

My reasoning was that the Christmas and New Year period is being undermined, both as a religous festival and as a time to party, by "seasonal lines" appearing in shops during August and Christmas shopping proper being well underway by October. The overall effect seems to be that many people, instead of enjoying their Christmas holiday, are heartily sick of it all before the end of December.

If enacted, my bill would have eliminated the relentless Christmas creep, moving its celebration back into December. There may be some for whom 15 per cent of the year (the equivalent of one day a week) is insufficent time to indulge in their Winter Orgy of Consumption, but I believe that for most people the contraction would prove popular.

Stage Two could be the even more radical measure of starting the January Sales in January.

Happy so far?

I had a note from Mauvais Garçon asking: "So, are you happy with the progress thus far?" I replied....

What progress?

I'm relatively unimpressed with the token paperclips stuff. I believe that it will sometimes be appropriate for senior Civil Servants and even MPs to travel first class and they should be trusted not to when there is no need. In any case, much greater savings would probably be made by smarter rather than meaner procurement. As for the "I'm not flash, call me Dave" stuff, cutting his bodyguards and walking to the Palace of Westminster, one suspects that a car will always be 20 seconds away, whilst any cost reduction in overt protection might be surpassed by a coresponding increase for covert work.

I suspect that David Cameron has always viewed the Party, both grassroots and Parliamentary, as a problem to be managed. Although, to be fair, few of the free world democratic leaders seem enthusiastic about freedom or democracy in their own parties. If I were an MP, I would have voted against Ministers taking part in elections to the 1922 Committee Executive and would not support the 55per cent requirement for Dissolution.

As to the Queen's Speech. Personally I can probably wait a little longer for a free vote on the repeal of the fox hunting ban, provided they get on with cutting the deficit, repealing some other anti-liberal laws and stopping all those expensive preachy campaigns telling us how to live our lives.

When it comes to inheritance tax I am completely off message anyway, as I believe it to be entirely avoidable. It is my humble opinion that people should shove any important assets, which they 'steward for future generations', into a family trust, with the rest being spent and given away whilst they are living, or bequeathed to charities when they die.

Regards

Greg