Recognise this bloke? I’d be surprised.

This regular down-to-earth, man of the people is the Lord Currie of Marlyebone. He’s also the chap who pretty much tells your favourite radio and TV presenters what they can and cannot say about candidates in upcoming elections. That’s because he’s the chairman of Ofcom - the “independent” regulator who deign to tell us what can and cannot be said over the airwaves.

Long-standing shock jock James Whale has just lost his job on Talksport for advising listeners to vote for Boris in the recent mayoral election. Whale’s employers indicate their hands were tied, describing the sacking as “very unfortunate” because there was a “clear breach of Ofcom rules.”

The BBC, by the way, is immune to Ofcom’s malign interference. So wise and benevolent is the Beeb, that their board of governors determines how they spend the cash they forcibly take from you in the form of the licence fee. Perish the thought that the BBC’s political coverage is anything other than immaculate.

Although, that said, they were the people who thought it acceptable to spend a large wad of cash getting Jeremy Vine to dress as a cowboy and mimic a Texan drawl while trying - and failing - to explain what last week’s local elections meant for LibDem leader Nick Clegg. A piece of television so pitifully bad that Progressive Vision has demanded to know - under the Freedom of Information Act - how much money the BBC wasted on it. Watch this space.

I just can’t get a handle on the LibDems’ obsession with post offices and the Royal Mail. In fairness, the general outrage at the mere suggestion that Britain’s postal system should move beyond a 1950s Postman Pat service goes far beyond the Liberals. The Tories, the Daily Telegraph and even alleged “comedian” Victoria Wood are all in a state of clinical shock that some dingy, antiquated post offices might have to close.

Sarah Teather, the diminutive LibDem business spokesman, has today said “Successive Conservative and Labour Governments have starved Royal Mail of investment. Royal Mail urgently needs a cash injection to allow it to modernise and compete with the private sector. Selling 49% of the Royal Mail shares would allow major investment without breaking the public purse.”

It’s enfuriating when the Liberals get halfway (or in this case 49% of the way) to a decent policy, but don’t quite have the courage to pursue it to its logical conclusion. How about selling off 100% of Royal Mail instead? That would encourage real innovation and lead to falling costs for consumers. Propping up this antiquated institution - or even 51% of it - is a recipe for continued disaster. 

What with it being International Workers’ Day, I was delighted to see a colourful and eclectic bunch of folks marching through the streets of London today. I think it’s fair to say that the protestors represented a wide and discordant range of views. But while the hard left might be bad for the future of your economy and catastrophic for your human rights, no one can accuse them of lacking a deep sense of irony.

One of the banners, proudly bore the faces of, amongst others, mass murderers Mao Tse-Tung and Jo Stalin.

These couple of cheery comrades were, of course, responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of innocent civilians between them.

Now, I thought that most of those who take to the streets on May Day would generally be against the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children.

Fortunately, a banner just twenty yards behind that of Stalin and Mao clarified the whole thing…

…they are against “capitalist barbarism”.

Presumably, “communist barbarism” is just fine. Or have the hard left now developed an ironic, rather sick, sense of humour? 

Links:

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When we launched Keep London Moving the day the RMT called off their last threat of strike action, we thought that the issue would disappear until the next strike action.  However, we naively thought this would take months – not weeks!

We were not totally surprised to learn today that the dinosaurs at the RMT have decided to threaten the misery of another Tube strike at the end of April.  The arrogance of this union ceases to amaze us.  This time they are striking over the possible loss of staff transfers and pensions for Metronet employees.  Transport for London has denied that these workers will loose these benefits.  This doesn’t stop the RMT though.  Given any excuse, the first solution of the RMT is to strike.

It is tragic to see 1970s-style industrial strife threatening London’s vital transport network in the 21st Century.  It is time for a showdown with these unions.  A future mayor must follow the example of Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of the coalminers or President Reagan’s sacking of air traffic controllers.  These victories for the average person against the self serving unions were only achieved by careful planning:  Maggie ensured that coal was stockpiled, while Ronnie has contingencies to quickly replace striking air traffic controllers.  The next Mayor of London should remember this and take firm action.  Only by careful planning and strong action can these dinosaurs be defeated.

The citizens of London must not be held to ransom by extreme left-wing trade unionists.  I hope many of the citizens of London will join our Keep London Moving campaign to show that Londoners won’t be bullied by Bob Crow and his mates.

I have just received a credit card offer from BT.  It’s good to know that they are still offering credit to just anyone, but an offer like this isn’t of any great note except for one thing … it is for BT’s Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Visa card.

In a minute I will stick the whole package into the shredder as there is no way I would seek be associated with a propaganda stunt for one of the world’s most repulsive regimes.  I need not think much more of this, apart from the consideration of cancelling all my other Visa cards and signing up to MasterCard, because in the free market the consumer is sovereign and I get to send a message through my purchasing decisions.

Sadly, this is not the case in the political market.  If Gordon Brown wishes to attend the closing ceremonies of the Olympics (it’s a bit like tuning up late signing of the EU Constitution) or if Ken Livingston wishes to cuddle up with monsters like Fidel Castro, I don’t get to withhold my taxes. 

Only the free market empowers people to send a message and a powerful one at that.  If ten per cent of people decide to cancel Visa card in protest at Visa’s association with the ugliest Olympics since 1980 or 1936, Visa and other sponsors will think more carefully about who they associate with.  Gordon and Brown don’t care if 49 per cent of people loath them – all they care is that 50 per cent + 1 will vote for them (now looking increasingly unlikely).

More free market and less oppressive government is they way to a freer and more responsive society.  Now to the shredder…

London has been spared a pointless Underground strike this weekend by the RMT, however we can be sure that the threat of another strike is inevitable. 

We have had enough of these incessant threats of strikes and have decided it is time it is time to do something about it.  Today, we are launching our Keep London Moving campaign seeking volunteers to step in to help run the Underground in the event of a future strike. 

If we can provide enough volunteers to Transport for London, wishing to keep the Tube operating during the next strike, TfL and the unions will not be able to ignore us.  We believe that a few thousand volunteers could – in theory – be enough to maintain a service on the Underground if the unions went on strike.

We hope that the volunteers will never be needed and hope that the extreme left-wing unions will be deterred by the presence of such a citizens’ campaign.  This is an opportunity for Londoners to demonstrate their annoyance with the unions, TfL and appeasing politicians.

You can sign up to the campaign at www.keeplondonmoving.org. 

It goes without saying that this is an independent campaign, funded by private donations, and has no association with TfL, London Underground or any mayoral candidate. 

I hope you will join us.

As a highly self-disciplined and mild-mannered sort of person, I just about manage to stop myself from shoving my foot through my television set when a health campaigner pops up on the airwaves. But the strain is starting to show.

What grates with me is that virtually every time some health organisation appears on the media, they either want to instruct me how to live my life or tell me I should be paying more in tax to save my fellow citizens from their own idiosyncracies and pecadillos.

Now, the Mental Health Foundation has released a survey showing that a third of the population have a friend or family member who struggles to control their anger. Apparently, this can lead to cancer, heart disease, divorce, a higher incidence of crime and a host of other very bad - and quite possibly fatal - afflictions. Their solution? More research and education (at the taxpayer’s expense, presumably) and - chillingly - “earlier intervention in problem cases”.

Don’t worry, just as you’re on the verge of losing your rag, some do-gooding representative of the Happy Police will be right over to soothe your troubled soul. It’s at this point, of course, that any right-thinking person will struggle to hold back from knocking the said representative’s teeth out.

But this report from the MHF does at least serve to highlight the intractable problem at the heart of the NHS system. They point out that the state already provides considerable assistance in dealing with anxiety, stress and depression. Why should “anger management issues” be any different, they ask?

And so it is that the National Health Service - and the state more generally - gets its tentacles into more and more areas of our lives. As soon as the NHS is empowered to act in one area, there will be a multitude of “me too” lobby groups arguing - logically, but enfuriatingly - that  extra state support and funding needs to be made available for their particular pet cause. Only by radically overhauling the whole approach to healthcare in this country - and adopting some form of personal health savings account - will we reverse this well-intentioned but massively inefficient extension of the nanny state. 

I’m one of the countless millions of intelligent adults who have always found Victoria Wood deeply, deeply unfunny.

Until now.

The comedian finally brought a smile to my face with her idiotic protest at the impending closure of her local post office in Highgate. So incensed is Ms. Wood that she might even take the radical step of chaining herself to a pillar box if she thought this would do any good. On Radio 5 this morning, she actually said she would do it if she thought she might get any publicity. Given that she was getting acres of coverage for merely contemplating such a protest, I hope her PR advisers have instructed her to take the next logical step. In fact, why not go even further and burn yourself alive outside Parliament? That should get some camera crews interested. You bring the paraffin, Victoria, and I’ll bring my Zippo lighter.

What is it about people and post offices? You’d think that given the blind fury that descends when some grim, dingy post office outlet is threatened with closure that they have some religous or spiritual significance. There seems no limit to the subsidies that taxpayers are expected to cough up so that Mrs. Miggins can easily send a parcel or pay her TV licence fee.

We should privatise the whole network right now. That would have two positive effects. Firstly, if local people want to keep wholly inefficient outlets open then they can raise the cash themselves, just as they would to repair the roof of the village church. Secondly, a private network of post offices would be less likely to run up the massive losses presently being incurred. They’d look for innovative solutions - such as providing mobile units in remote rural areas. And they would have a direct financial incentive to teach certain sections of the elecorate an important lesson of surviving in the 21st century - learn to use the goddamn internet!

Another mad piece of state intervention from the ferociously gimmick-driven Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls. His latest wheeze is a £200m+ plus project to sort out unruly children by deploying a crack team of “assertive and persistent key workers”. God help us.

This ludicrous project gives real meaning to the oft-used term “nanny state”. It seems Ed Balls sees himself as the nation’s daddy-in-chief.

Of course, many of the problems with unruly kids stem from the dependency culture and erosion of parental responsibility that this government has presided over. A welfare system which picks up many of the costs - and day-to-day duties - of parenting is almost certain to lead to an increase in dysfuntional families - especially in the country’s poorest areas.

Parents need to be told that they are the people responsible for the upbringing and behaviour of their offspring. Once government ministers start acting as proxy parents, don’t be surprised when the nation’s youngsters go off the rails. A new platoon of “key workers” - particularly if they are assertive and persistent - can be safely relied on to make matters worse.

In a virtual mirror image of Tony Blair’s recreation of the Labour Party in the mid-1990s, the Conservative conference this weekend has placed economic prudence - and adoption of the incumbent government’s tax and spending plans - at the heart of the its message to the electorate. The party makes plain that it wouldn’t be able to promise cuts in taxation until the start of its putative second term in office - so that’s up to seven years until the hard-pressed British taxpayer gets some much-deserved respite.

Following three crushing election defeats on the spin - in which the Conservatives advocated tax cuts and were widely mistrusted on touchstone issues such as health and education - such modest ambitions are perhaps understandable. But that doesn’t make them right.

Nothwithstanding the likely economic downturn, the official opposition should be able to identify vast swathes of planned government expenditure (such as Labour’s obscene ID cards project) for wholescale elimination. So even if one is prepared to stomach the Conservatives’ craven caution on the issue of health reform, they should still be able to pledge measurable reductions in taxation in their first budget.

Their failure to do so might be portrayed by some as a canny appeal to moderate, middle ground voters. And today’s opinion poll in the Sunday Times certainly gives succour to the Cameronistas.

But the lack of imagination and courage on the part of the Tories, must surely incline Nick Clegg and Vince Cable to firm up the LibDems’ vulnerable southern flank by promising smaller government and less tax-and-spend as a centrepiece of their next manifesto. If they have the courage to do so, then middle England Liberal-held seats such as Cheltenham, Bath, Winchester and Richmond Park - which many pollsters expect to fall to Cameron -  would very likely stay in the LibDem column.

With Brown’s government and the British economy seemingly heading towards meltdown, saying very little and promising absolutely nothing on taxation is no way to enthuse the jaded, cynical and despairing electorate.