Please Pay Polly To Shut Up

Public pay is bloated. But don't forget the virus source | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

Nice to see Polly Toynbee toeing the government line on public servants' pay. Just a few days ago Harriet Harman was blaming the private sector for the high rates of public pay.

Toynbee reiterates this nonsense:

Harman wants a clampdown on mushrooming public pay – and she quite rightly identifies the cause of the problem: "The huge salaries in the private sector have fed across into the public sector in a way that has got to be pulled back." Liam Byrne, the Treasury chief secretary, is conducting a review of public sector top pay, but as Harman points out, this is a virus caught from the greed in the private sector. Overpaid public officials are still paid less than their private sector equivalents – despite the propaganda of the Taxpayers' Alliance to the contrary. There is a limit to how far public salaries can fall behind. Eventually these would become disrespected jobs for disrespected people, second class, depressed and despised.

This umbilical link between the sectors means Byrne's review of public pay will be meaningless if it has nothing to say about private salary scales. The weak promise of a bill to curb future bank bonuses will not calm public fury as this year's bonuses of some £6bn are announced.

And who, pray, established this 'umbilical link' if not the government itself? And is not the real virus in this country people such as Toynbee and her ilk?

So, having shed responsibility for the government what does Toynbee then suggest is the answer?

A new quango! Of course!

That is why the government needs a high pay commission that, as well as defining reasonable top-to-bottom ratios for public pay, can set guidelines for the private sector too.

Toynbee is well remunerated for writing this cobblers every week and people in the media village are thick enough to think she's worth listening to.

No wonder the country's fucked.

Guardian Gagged

Guardian gagged from reporting parliament | Media | The Guardian

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself."

The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.

He said: "Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of 'Colonel B', granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of 'national security'. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published."

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, "it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to".

Better be juicy.

Guardian Taxpayers' Bombshell Alliance Bilge

The Guardian today makes the astonishing discovery that a pressure group devoted to tax-reductions is actually a bit right of centre and supported by rich people! I'd never have thought that. I'm glad they let us know.

Apparently the Taxpayers' Alliance, as it's cleverly called, is 'arguably the most influential pressure group in the country', which is pretty frightening, especially as we know there are absolutely no pressure groups or lobby groups supported by the current government to influence its own policies.

Mind you, the Guardian's acute and perspicacious reporter also notes that the Fabian Society, who oppose what the Taxpayers' alliance are proposing, are 'left-leaning', so we can be happy the Guardian has its best minds on the case.

It's also truly disturbing to find out that one director was appointed to the TPA, 'despite living in France and not paying any British tax.' I do hope the French authorities are onto him, making sure he coughs up whatever he owes them under their already very lenient tax regime. And we have to question whether someone living in a foreign country should be seeking to influence how we run things at home.

We can be sure that democracy is assured in the UK with papers like the Guardian looking out for us, keeping us informed about secretive, authoritarian groups trying to take control of our lives.