Barclays, Redwood and Cable

It sounds like a firm of solicitors.

Once again, John Redwood calls it right. On his blog yesterday he says

Last autumn Vince Cable was busily talking down Barclays. He was keen for Barclays to accept taxpayer subsidy. He cast aspersions on the stability, financing and business model of the bank. I thought this wrong at the time, as I did not believe Barclays needed taxpayer support.

My favourite blogger (as he is of many others) is Guido Fawkes who reported of Cable (and via the FT) that

[I have] been calling him over-rated ever since he called for the nationalisation of Northern Rock.

 Cable was calling for Barclays to be taxpayer funded even when it didn’t need to be. When Barclays needed to get extra funds it found them in a form other than that funded by the taxpayer. For some bizarre reason, Cable thought this was unacceptable and wanted the UK taxpayer to invest in the bank.

“We have to ask why Barclays is willing to offer a better deal to foreign investors than the British taxpayer,” Cable said. “The answer is simple: they don’t want the British government stopping them from paying massive bonuses to their executives.”

So there we have it – LibDem politicians would rather the state get involved (with other peoples’ money) in a publicly traded bank, and intervene in an equity deal, because of a perceived advantage that the bank might gain by avoiding an uninvited apparition of state control – rather than prefer the bank do its own deal on its own terms . . . ?!!

I am a Cameroon

Douglas Carswell blogs (about tonight’s Cameron speech)

“The first step is to redistribute power and control from the central state and its agencies to individuals and local communities. …. A necessary counterpart to decentralisation is greater transparency. That’s because information is power, so by giving people more information we give them more power… The third element of the power shift we want to see is accountability … We will require the people and organisations acting for the state to be directly accountable to the people they are supposed to serve.”

- David Cameron speaking tonight at the Hugo Young Lecture

I bought “The Plan” before Hannan became an internet meme, or before Carswell found synergy with Cameron.

Maybe DC’s visit to Windsor Fire Station invigorated ?!

Giving power away

“For all his English wariness of grand plans and ideologies, David Cameron, the Tory leader, is keen on the centrifugal theme. If there is such a thing as Cameronism, it is giving power away.”

http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14750203

hat tip: ConHome.

Important Visitor

 

David Cameron visited Windsor Fire Station this week and gave his support to our application, under the Sustainable Communities Act, to decide the level of fire cover in the Royal Borough.

I was lucky enough to join Windsor’s MP Adam Afriyie and other firefighters with David Cameron over a cup of tea where we discussed some of the issues facing the station, the details of our application and the rationale for the sustainability of a locally determined service.

It does surprise me when some people question the merits of localism, because defending the status quo of big government is the antithesis of progress. As I am fond of pointing out, if big organisations have efficiency because of “economies of scale” then the NHS would be the most efficient organisation in the western world ….

In the internet age, you can procure pretty much anything from anywhere for an outstandingly low price.

Our application under the SCA is currently with the LGA and is due to be considered in November. We hope then that the CLG will see fit to grant the relevant legislative changes to make it possible, and then we can Save Windsor Fire Station.

David Cameron Visits

More soon, but great support from the party leader who visited Windsor Fire Station yesterday. Good to be hosting the boss, with the crews at Windsor and Adam Afriyie.

Smart Metering

More kudos from the top of the party for our green initiatives….

Smart metering (see link at right hand side of page) of a number of Council buildings is increasing the visibility of our energy usage. Once we’ve had a few weeks the management in the buildings will be able to see that efforts to reduce lighting / heating (tea/coffee …?) to save energy have had an effect.

Amusingly, in the David Cameron speech, he also mentions incentive based recycling that has been piloted at “some conservative councils” but avoids mentioning us a second time, after all that would look like nepotism….

Conference Credits

Our implementation of spending transparency was a gold star that followed me round last week – I didn’t see Caroline Spelman’s speech but it was just Boris and ourselves that got namechecked.

Fifty years ago, Margaret Thatcher – as a backbencher – championed a bill requiring council meetings to be held in public.

It made local politics more accountable and accessible.

The time has come to do the same with the money.

As you might expect its our councils who lead the way.

Under Boris Johnson, City Hall publishes all expenditure over one thousand pounds.

And Windsor & Maidenhead already publish all spending over five hundred pounds.

We want the rest to be as good as the best.

Attending a fringe meeting with John Redwood, Ruth Lea and Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance on the scale of the economic crisis, I was amazed and impressed that Windsor and Maidenhead were credited out of the blue (by Matthew Elliott) with transparency as being one of the ways to keep public spending under control to a very large fringe meeting. (He didn’t even know I was in the audience!)

And keeping public spending under control is something we need to do.

And talking to Tim Montgomerie from ConservativeHome, he said “ah, you’ve done the spending transparency – well done!” …..

Now Caroline Spelman is going to legislate for it !

Blue Bins demo

Last week Nick Herbert, Shadow Secretary for DEFRA visited us to see the Recyclebank pilot in Windsor. Pictured here are Nick, Jason Eldridge our contracts manager and Paul Levett from Veolia.

Sutton visits

My opposite number from the London Borough of Sutton came to call yesterday. Paul Scully is, with great credit, visiting a number of Conservative Councils that have been achieving great things so he can construct a good plan for his elections in London next year.

When we were in opposition, we visited Wandsworth to see how they did things. Our Libdems tried to find things that were bad about Wandsworth to prove that we shouldn’t learn from them.

We didn’t visit Sutton….

On a related note, I see that the LibDems are continuing to advertise for candidates saying “you don’t need to be an expert on council matters or politics”.

Good thing airlines don’t advertise like this – “Pilots wanted, help us fly our planes to exotic destinations, expertise not necessary!”

Now I’m not saying you need years of training, but it does help to know something about how Government works if you want to be running it. Local Government is hard.

So it’s no wonder they’re a complete shambles (like Labour have been nationally, incidentally) when they do achieve power!

“I want to be Prime Minister”

says Nick Clegg, apparently forgetting the David Steel moment of rashly preparing for Government. At least Steel and Owen had poll ratings over 20% - and at one point over 50% . . .

He’s gone from rising hopeful to elder statesman in record time and with absolutely no interval in between!”
- Michael Foot on David Steel in 1979.

This is a good page to find the SDP’s national conference arrangements.