How Britain Can Win In Europe

How the Tories can still win in Europe | The Spectator

Fraser Nelson spells out some obvious points about how to deal with the EU, points that the British political class and its supine civil servants should acquaint themselves with:

A practical Euroscepticism can be deployed not as a strategy for summits, but as a day-to-day policy for dealing with Brussels. It is time, in other words, to go rogue.

Because if they don't, we will.

Bastards To The Left, Bastards To The Right

Don't trust the Tories | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Henry Porter makes a sensible point. After all, these people are all absolute shits.

I was particularly cheered by the fact that he also names people off-piste, as it were, such as Matthew Taylor, CEO of the Royal Society of Arts:

But any pleasure one feels at the party and leader's discomfort is tempered by a strong suspicion that the Conservatives will follow more or less the same path. The Sun's defection was proceeded by the smarter parasites from think-tanks like Demos, which is lifting its skirt in an indecent way at the Tory conference next week, and by people like Matthew Taylor, formerly of Blair's No 10 and now the RSA and the sinister Julian le Grand of the London School of Economics, also formerly of No 10, who of course suggested that the state should forcibly marry pregnant teenagers.

These characters long ago sensed the flow of power from one party to the other and have hopped like so many fleas on to the new host. The fact that someone like Le Grand is granted any kind of hearing at all the Conservative conference, even though a fringe event, is a rather bad sign.

Reading Matthew Taylor's blog posts recently had led me to the same conclusion.

None of these people is to be trusted. They all trim their sails to the winds of power. Older voices may call them Vicars of Bray. I wouldn't be so polite.

What Will The Tories Scrap?

The Tories have said that if they win the next election they will scrap Contactpoint, the government's child-surveillance database which was due to be up and running this year (Telegraph). This database would contain details on every child under 18.

Apart from being another intrusive, expensive and unnecessary project, it also poses security problems - data security not being one of the government's strong points. And, given that its purpose is to help prevent cases such as that of Victoria Climbie, isn't it a bit odd that they decided not to include contact details of children with violent parents?

The Tories say they'll also scrap polyclinics (or super-surgeries, or whatever term the government comes up with this week). The government have consistently lied about polyclinics, at one point saying they would only be introduced in London first as a trial, then immediately forcing every Health Trust in the country to set one up. And other lies, as well.

The question is: will the Tories actually do this if they get into power? Or will they make the promise then quietly forget about it, as often happens?