Musical and Political Twists

What an odd 18 hours or so. My emotions – so far as I have any – are mixed. The joy is easy: my arch-nemesis Paul Uppal lost resoundingly. His campaign to return as Tory MP relied on keeping utterly silent about his record and his distasteful business activities while hiding behind Theresa May's coattails. Faced with three excellent young women running for the Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour, he avoided almost all public appearances, and turned a 400-vote loss in 2015 into a 2000-vote one in 2017. Next time he might think twice about campaigning by covering a £70,000 SUV with his posters and driving through one of the country's most deprived areas. He was venal, dishonest and self-interested. Let's hope that he will slide back into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

I'm also hugely impressed by my students. After indulging in the usual academic's lament ('you're so apathetic, you've got no politics or beliefs', as my UG tutor constantly told us) for years, I've been hearing my students plan and discuss and read political material and register to vote. I think most of them voted Labour, but it's more important that having been on the receiving end for so long, they're riled up. It's a shame they won't get the immediate reward of a decent minimum wage and the abolition of tuition fees, but as long as they stay enthused, we can help mitigate the damage of Brexit and the decades of neglect to which they've been subjected.

I also had two friends standing for Parliament, neither of whom won: Julia Buckley for Labour in Ludlow, who didn't win but did achieve the best placing for Labour in nearly 50 years, and Daniel Williams for Plaid in Neath. Labour won by a massive amount and the Tories nearly doubled their vote to 20%, squeezing Daniel out, which I'm very sad about.

Nationally I'm confused. It was glorious to see places like Canterbury turn Labour, and Labour's result is far better than expected, but other aspects confuse and sadden me. I still find it almost impossible to comprehend why Welsh and Scottish people would vote for the Conservative Party, and I don't really understand how Scots could move their votes from the separatist SNP to the Unionist Tories so decisively in several constituencies. The ideological gulf just seems so wide. I was also hugely disappointed that Amber Rudd just about survived, alongside various other excrescences. But most shocking – though not surprising – is May's decision to form a government with the DUP. A party which took less than 1% of the UK vote is now dictating British political policy. Despite May's howling about Corbyn's links to Irish Republicanism, she's in bed with a party that has consorted with and encouraged sectarian terrorism since its foundation. Its leader held a meeting with the Ulster Defence Association's commander only last week.

They oppose women's reproductive rights, firmly believe that homosexuality is a sin and should be illegal, and believe that the earth is six thousand years old. They also designed a renewable energy incentive that was so badly (or carefully) written that £500m was paid out to their friends. They refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Irish language, they accepted a secret donation of nearly £500,000 to spend on Brexit adverts…in London, and they believe that the Pope is the Anti-Christ.

Live footage of Offoster negotiating legislative priorities with the DUP
You're all going to need a DUP name now. I've bagged Ofpaisley.

The DUP's idea of Utopia is that depicted in the current adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale: unremittingly brutal, hostile to joy, self-expression, women, ethnic and sexual minorities, imperialist and sectarian. Theresa May will shortly find that she has a new name: Offoster.

So I'm torn: pleased that a radical agenda can attract votes, saddened that it hasn't attracted enough to take power. I wish Plaid, the Greens and the SNP had done better, and I wish that this country would grow up and adopt a proportional electoral system that reflects the obvious complexity of voters' beliefs: there should be more Greens, nationalists and – sadly – UKIP MPs. Instead, we have Conservative and Labour MPs elected with literally a couple or tens of votes more than all the other parties in their constituencies combined. Nowhere is this more outrageous than Northern Ireland, where parties shamelessly collude to make sure that 'protestant areas' get a protestant MP and 'Catholic' ones get a Catholic representative regardless of political beliefs. Look at Jim Wells:

Many complaints about Sinn Fein canvassing in Rathfriland yesterday. They are not welcome in this unionist town- particularly on a Sunday.

So much for the idea that individuals have a right to hear a variety of views then make their own political decisions (and Rathfriland is 40% Catholic). One of my friends campaigned for the Workers' Party in Belfast in the 70s, shortly after it spun off from the Official IRA and ran on a socialist, cross-community ticket. He tramped 'Protestant' Streets in the company of 'Machine-Gun Tommy' for protection, and was surprised to get a warm welcome from people sick of being taken for granted because of where they lived or which chapel they attended.

For now, I'm going to enjoy the crestfallen misery of the Conservatives, and worry about the new regime next week.

Yesterday wasn't all politics. In 2008, I went to see Sigur Ros the night Obama was elected, and ended up partying with some Dutch students as we watched history unfold. I now associate ethereal music with political success. So last night a few of us went to the Arena Theatre for Powerplant, a percussion-electronica-visuals musical performance. I knew that some Steve Reich pieces were on the programme, but nothing prepared me for one of the best and most mind-bending performances I've ever seen. Joby Burgess mixes various percussion instruments with live-looping and samples to produce immersive, hypnotic performances. The first piece was a drums-only version of weird visionary Conlon Nancarrow's Piece for Tape: Nancarrow's music is so fiendishly complicated and fast that he ended up writing for mechanical player-piano, because humans couldn't manage it: the invention of tape loops and sampling brought it into the realms of the possible.

Here's a few seconds of Burgess's version, plus another bit of classic Nancarrow.




Here's Burgess's percussion plus taped piano performance of de Wardener's 'Im Dorfe', essentially sampled and warped from a Schubert phrase used in The Piano Teacher:



Burgess also played this astonishing piece by Gabriel Prokofiev, written for 3 Nigerian Fanta bottles and sampler: apparently Nigerian bottles have striations, and the musician consumes some of the Fanta to change the pitch during the performance.



Burgess also 'played' Steve Reich's 'My Name Is', which I hadn't heard of. He recorded several audience members including a distinguished member of my party saying 'My Name Is (their name)' and looped it in phases, moving in and out of comprehensibility. Having to extract meaning from a babble of my managers' voices was eerily reminiscent of being at meetings. It was amazing though, and wonderful to think that those sampled people made a piece of amazing art that can never be reproduced. It's gone for ever.



There was also a piece called 'Temazcal' by Javier Alvarez, a sampled piece about music censorship by Nicole Lizée called 'The Filthy Fifteen', then two classics given amazing twists. He performed Arvo Pärt's 'Fratres' (usually drums and choir) using drums and a Canna Sonora, or Aluminium Harp, a weird friction-operated metal contraption. Sadly there's no recording but the effect was astonishing, moving and ethereal. Here's a different bit of music played on this odd instrument.



Burgess finished by playing Reich's 'Electric Counterpoint' on the xylosynth - amazing performance, but I admit to hating the sound of that instrument. Try the marimba/vibraphone and (original) electric guitar versions instead. If you liked The Orb's classic 'Little Fluffy Clouds' you'll recognise this piece.



So, mind blown, I went home for a night of anxious election coverage. I was not disappointed.

Your Uppal round-up

Hi everybody. As it's a while since I updated the world with the activities of my local MP, elusive millionaire fantasist Paul Uppal, here's a bumper edition. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll vote to throw him out in May 2015. 

Firstly, Paul's previously noted hilariously unconvincing photo-opportunity following the budget has attracted the attention of better-known satirists than I. Here's Private Eye's take on George's Beer and Bingo debacle:

Insult of insults, they don't even deign to mention who the 'next man' is. But we know, readers. We know. Incidentally, I haven't seen any mention during the Beer/Bingo coverage of the long-standing working-class suspicion of the continuing links between the Conservative Party and the brewing industry. There were even songs about it. Here's Paddy Ryan's 'The Man That Waters The Workers Beer':



THE MAN THAT WATERS THE WORKERS BEER
Now I'm the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer,
Yes I'm the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer,
And what do I care if it makes them
  ill,
If it makes them terribly queer,
I've a car and a yacht and an
  aeroplane,
And I waters the workers' beer.

Now when I makes the workers' beer,
I puts in strychinine,
Some methylated spirits and a drop of
  paraffin,
But, since a brew so terribly strong
Might make them terribly queer,
I reaches my hand for the water tap,
And I waters the workers' beer.

Now a drop of good beer is good for a
  man
Who's thirsty and tired and hot,
And I sometimes has a drop for myself
From a very special lot;
But a fat and healthy working class
Is the thing that I most fear,
So I reaches my hand for the water tap
And I waters the workers' beer.

Now ladies fair beyond compare,
And be it maid or wife,
O sometimes lend a thought for one
Who leads a wandering life,
The water rates are shockingly high,
And meths is shockingly dear,
And there isn't the profit there used
  to be
In watering the workers' beer.

And if you've ever tasted Banks's beer (where George and Paul did their gruesome duet) you'll understand where the song comes from.

Anyway, that's enough of the comedy. Paul next popped up on Channel 4 News during a piece on why Asian voters aren't turning to the Conservatives. The obvious answer ('Paul Uppal') sadly wasn't featured, but after a quick chat with Paul's dad (presumably no non-relatives could be found to endorse him), we got some words of wisdom from the great man himself. And what words they were! In perhaps the most audacious instance of inclusion and revisionism in political history, Paul found a way to claim that Enoch Powell, his notoriously racist predecessor in the constituency, would have been pleased that Paul is the MP. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Enoch Powell predicted race war if immigration into the UK wasn't stopped (he later went to Northern Ireland to represent the unionists who'd immigrated into Ireland by force, demonstrating a keen sense of irony). To claim him now as some kind of kindly integrationist is beyond bizarre and into the realms of dishonest. Personally, I'm very pleased that Tory voters in the area are now prepared to vote for an Asian candidate. I just wish a) it wasn't Paul and b) they'd consider not voting Tory. But to appropriate Powell: breathtaking. To mix ethnic cultural references: that's chutzpah on a grand scale.

Finally, Paul also has a job as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Higher Education, presumably a reward for his bravery in voting for £9000 tuition fees despite having a majority of 619 and a university serving the economically disadvantaged in his constituency. A while back, I wrote to him asking why the government hasn't projected HE funding streams beyond 2016, a break with normal behaviour. My suspicion – shared with education guru Andrew McGettigan and many of the experts I spoke to at an HE leadership event recently – was that it's simply because they have no clue and have given up. Instead, they've savagely reduced the teaching grant and slashed the support funding for disabled students, which I think we can all agree is the mark of a competent and classy administration.

Anyway, Paul wrote back saying that he couldn't currently answer my question and would get back to me later on. (In case you don't know: MPs have to respond to sensible letters from constituents and more people should take advantage of this). Teasing aside, this seemed perfectly acceptable to me: there wasn't any indication of slipperiness. A few weeks later, a substantial letter arrives.

The first paragraph is the normal waffle about HE being a paradise:

The principal aim of our reforms was to put higher education on a sustainable footing for the long-term. Our universities are now well funded and this is driving up the quality of the student experience while helping to stimulate economic growth. What is important is that we have protected our world-class higher education system; we have not deterred students from participating in HE and we have increased the participation of those from lower income backgrounds. 

Then we get on to the details.

As you are aware, the government has announced its intention to realise value for the taxpayer through sales of English pre-2012 income contingent student loans. The loan book will be sold in a series of tranches over a number of years. The first tranche of loans is expected to be sold by the end of financial year 2015-16. However the decision to proceed with first sale has not yet been taken. As is normal with transaction of this type there will be a value for money assessment made before each sale. 

'Realise value' of course means selling the student loan debt off to financial institutions. It automatically incurs a massive loss because the banks will calculate the non-repayment rate, build in a profit and offer the government a price far less than the face value. But it moves a debt figure on the government current account to an entry on the income list – essentially exchanging a reliable future income stream for the equivalent of a payday loan. As you can probably tell from the undertone of this paragraph, there's a considerable amount of uncertainty about whether the government actually can flog off the loan book. As non-repayments approach the 48% level at which the whole student finance model becomes economically pointless, the banks reckon it's a dog and aren't queuing up. 

The department will ensure that sales from the pre-2012 ICR loan book represent value for money to the taxpayer. A refined model has been developed to provide an accurate forecasts of future repayments. This will be used by government and purchasers to assess the value of the loan book. In reaching a sale decision, careful consideration will be given to the comparison between the value of the sale and the value of retention. 

We'll have to trust Mr Uppal about the value-for-money model because he doesn't provide it and I presume it won't be made public at all. Let's hope that their model is better than the one which led to the disastrous Royal Mail giveaway (disastrous for us, not for the Tory donors who snaffled up the shares at a bargain price before flogging them on at a huge profit). 

Current market conditions are favourable and BIS advisors have confirmed there is potential interest from a range of buyers in investing in the loan book. This has informed the estimates of potential proceeds of approximately £12 billion over a five year period. It has been calculated that the additional outline of loans for the expansion of students numbers over the forecast period will be more than financed by proceeds from pre-2012 loan sales. If the sale of the loan book does not go ahead or does not provide the expected receipts, The Treasury will need to consider the impact on public sector net debt. This will be a wider consideration of the state of the public finances, but will include the affordability of higher student numbers.

I'd love to know what makes him think market conditions are favourable. Graduates aren't repaying their loans because the country is in a deep recession; jobs are low-paid and often part-time, and because graduates are filling positions previously open to non-graduates. We are running a low-wage economy, quite deliberately. Labour did it, and the Conservatives are extending it, because their primary concern is corporate and elite profit, not sharing the wealth.

The second half of that paragraph bothers me. The Conservative Party recently removed student numbers from the existing university sector and transferred them to the private HE sector to kickstart it: not to improve the quality of education but an ideological act designed to damage existing institutions which are viewed in Conservative circles as Marxist enemies of freedom. An astonishing range of institutions appeared as if by magic, some of them very flaky indeed, and overloaded the student finances to such an extent that an emergency cap then had to be re-introduced. Now the cap is supposedly off again but nobody I've spoken to knows what on earth is happening. Clearly that last line refers to the possibility of numbers being cut again - and we all know that unfashionable former polytechnics like mine will be hit hard, while private and elitist universities will be protected.

Moving on:

The higher education finance projections are aligned with other areas of government expenditure in not going beyond the final year of the current spending review period, 2015 to 16. These reforms mean that higher education institutions on how well funded; this has been sustained through recession and is driving up the quality of student experience. Students now have a greater stake in their learning and their future but can expect to be protected should they go on to learn low incomes and do not repay their is loans in full.

I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that projection are in line with government methods. Universities are large, complex organisations which require stable and predictable funding arrangements, as governments have long understood. At the HE leadership seminar I attended, one finance director described the HE funding model as OK for universities but bad for the country, and I can understand their perspective. The system is in fact an accounting ruse, not a policy. After all, university funding has actually dropped (fees don't increase in line with inflation, other funding streams have been abolished) and been shifted from the state to the individual. 

I find the last couple of lines particularly depressing. I really resent the idea that students need £50,000 of debt to feel that they have a 'stake' in their education. It fails to recognise the innate benefits of higher education, and denies that students understand their education as contributing to the public good. Instead, it implies that education is simply a means to individual enrichment: the custom mentality writ large. 

I'm pleased that Mr Uppal took the trouble to write a substantial reply to my letter. I remain troubled, however, by both the economics and the ideology contained within. I hope you all write to your MPs asking for further enlightenment – and vote accordingly.

Update: HE finance expert Andrew McGettigan has unearthed the contradiction between this letter and what MPs were told. Read it all here.

He's in the brewery: what can he organise?

What shall we do, said the Tory adviser. We tried to cosy up to the plebs by marketing tax breaks for gambling and brewing companies as a little tip for them:

and it didn't really work because everyone found it patronising. What we need is to get the Chancellor into a pub, enjoying a decent pint of beer with the proletariat. Like this:

On second thoughts, perhaps not. People don't seem to warm to George. Let's arrange a date in a pro-Tory brewery's tap bar so there aren't any inconvenient members of the public to cause any unpleasantness. Better still, let's hold it in a marginal constituency to give the cannon fodder a boost. 

And lo! It came to pass that we lucky punters were blessed with a painfully awkward photograph of the Worst. Date. Ever. 

There. Doesn't Paul Uppal look beatific. And as for George: well, there's a man who likes nothing better than to settle the whippet at his feet, loosen his cufflinks and sup up a refreshing pint of the working-man's brew. Honestly, he looks like a hawk that's spotted a mouse, or an Action Man having his eyes toggled by some unseen child, or just like a man who can't quite manage to make his face do what the PR man says it should.

What a shame that the symbolism doesn't quite work: usually it's the banks taking the piss out of him,  but now he's managed to extract a pint from Banks's, the beer that tastes of…

From Pizza to Pedagogy

Yesterday my MP, the elusive millionaire Paul Uppal made a daring foray into social media. He'd spotted the most outrageous waste and corruption in the city council's accounts!

Mr Uppal, Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, claimed in a live radio interview that the council spent £70,000 at the Westin Pune Koregaon Park in October last year. The council says this was 70,000 rupees and that the cost at the time came to £723.80.

And it wasn't just hotel costs!

Mr Uppal said the council spent £1,428 in a Pizza Hut in India. The council confirmed this was also in rupees and the bill was around £14. 

This is of course purest opportunism. It really shouldn't take a genius to work out that a £1428 bill for pizzas is unlikely, to put it mildly. No, I don't believe this was an act of good faith on the MP's part. It was a cynical sleight of hand to distract citizens from the truth: that Mr Uppal voted in Parliament to impose massive funding cuts on councils, impacting disproportionately on Northern, poor and Labour-run councils. He voted through the cuts and is now campaigning with breathtaking cynicism against them in the local press. 

However, I agree with Mr Uppal when he says that 

(Actually, it's taught us two things: the other is 'never trust a Tory campaign'). It's also an interesting position to take from a keen supporter of the city's only 'free school', which was given £220,000 of taxpayers' money for 20 pupils, with a promise of £1.6m more while the rest of the city's schools rot away or get spatchcocked into defensive alliances simply to limp on. 

I took Paul at his word, because I've been trying to work out just what the hell the government is up to in regard to Higher Education finance and student funding. Higher Education is (depressingly) in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Its Secretary of State is David Willetts and his Parliamentary Private Secretary is one Mr Paul Uppal. 

So I sent him a letter:

Dear Mr Uppal,
as you’re Mr Willett’s PPS, could you clear something up for me in regard to ongoing HE expenditure?
 As far as I can gather, the Autumn Statement says that funding for lifting the university numbers cap is guaranteed for 2015-16. Section 1.203 makes it clear that the outlay on loans will be covered by proceeds from the sale of the student loan book. However, this outlay is less than the projected expenditure, and neither the Autumn Statement nor Mr Willetts’ discussion with the BIS Select Committee mentioned the years subsequent to 2016, during which the cost of the extra places is calculated in the BIS to reach £720m.
 I can see that selling the loan book will bring in over £2bn in the short term, but results in a net loss when the reduced repayments are calculated. While I understand the theoretical possibility of selling new loans ad infinitum, I gather that Rothschild’s advice to BIS is that there is only limited appetite in the city for student finance.
 Could you further establish why projections stop with 2015-16 rather than – as is usual – taking a view for several more years?

As far as I can see, there's no budget for increased student places other than a vague plan to flog off the student loan debts to the private sector. The problem there is that the debts will be bought for much less than their face value, so the taxpayer will be making a loss and funding the university while the student will still be paying the costs of their education – but the money will be going to some shiny-suited charlatans. Bad for the state, bad for the students. And incredibly short-term…as though they reckon they won't have to worry about anything scheduled for after the 2015 election. 

So that's me, asking Mr Uppal to 'scrutinise public spending and justify every pound'. Along comes his reply:

Unfortunately this is an issue which at the moment I am unable to address fully. However, I am writing to inform you that I have raised your concerns with David Willets MP, and will contact you again when I have received a response, please be aware that this could take up to six weeks.

Which translates, I think, as 'er…no idea mate' though of course I await a detailed explanation with bated breath. Willetts has appeared before Select Committees recently and completely failed to explain where the money is coming from. Or as his opposite number put it:

But that of course might be ascribed simply to political jockeying. So I asked Andrew McGettigan, scrutineer of Higher Education funding and policy and author of the shocking, excellent The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education whether he understood just where the hell the money's coming from:

I understand that this has been deliberately left vague by the Treasury as an incentive to get value from a sale.…The other impediment is the level of financial engineering required to effect a sale of the new loans.

Oh great. So the future of UK HE depends on the Treasury, Willetts and Uppal trying to flog off student loans by pulling the wool over the eyes of City sharks, to mix species and metaphors. What could possibly go wrong? The only certainties are that the taxpayer will lose out, university funding will fall and students will suffer. 

Perhaps Paul should leave the pizzas alone and spend a little more time with a calculator in his own office rather than staging cynical opportunistic stunts like Pizzagate. 

What a tangled web Uppal weaves

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for my awful MP, Paul Uppal. He's a Tory MP with a majority of 619 in a working-class city, whose majority exists because the Labour vote slumped. He relies on the votes of the elderly, white, middle-class people on the western edge of the city, and he thinks they're going to vote UKIP.

What's the magic Tory solution? Well, the city has a large Sikh community which has traditionally voted Labour. The (slightly racist in my opinion) Tory thinking appears to be that Sikhs will set aside their political beliefs in favour of identity politics and vote en bloc for a fellow Sikh. Bingo: Tory majority, hence Paul's recent focus on Sikh affairs.

Distasteful and patronising, but it's a strategy. Sadly though, the worst thing in politics that can possible happen is, as Harold MacMillan never actually said, 'events, dear boy, events'. Operation Sikh Vote was going rather nicely last year, when Paul managed to cling on to David Cameron's coat-tails and get himself on the trip to Amritsar, the spiritual home of Sikhism.

Here's Mr Cameron at the Golden Temple:

So far, so good. Great photos, support no doubt rising. And then! Calamity! It turns out that Paul's political hero, one Margaret Thatcher, supported the Indian government's full-scale attack on the separatists occupying the temple, leading to 3000 deaths. Not only did she offer political support, she sent an SAS officer over to help plan it. All very unfortunate: Paul was pressing the government for 'the truth' about Amritsar for political advantage, and it turns out to be very unhelpful indeed.

So poor Paul's in a bit of a bind. As an ultra-loyalist, does he break with his party's view that this is all a fuss about nothing and pursue the truth and re-election, or does he shut his mouth and continue to enjoy the torrent of dodgy money pouring in from various funds to help marginal constituencies? I imagine that if anything will encourage Sikh voters to work together, it's throwing out the party which connived in the deaths of 3000 of their young men.

Paul's solution? Hush it up. It turns out that he organised a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary this week, and decided that concerned MPs from other parties didn't need to be there. He wanted a quiet little chat so they could organise a cosy little deal that would save his political bacon and would have got away with it too if he hadn't let it slip during a TV appearance.

"I want to take the politics out of this. I want to go and see Sir Jeremy Heywood. He is going to have some other representatives of the Sikh community there. If he wants to have a meeting with Tom Watson I am sure he will be happy to do that.”

Uppal, who eventually met the cabinet secretary with the former Labour business minister Pat McFadden, said: “As the only Sikh MP it was only reasonable and sensible that I should go and see the cabinet secretary,” he told the Guardian. “I got an invite. I had been pushing for it. I made it clear I wanted to see the cabinet secretary.”

Let's hope poor Paul's manoeuvrings don't rebound against him on election day as he stands for the party that gave a big thumbs up to murdering his own people. And in case you think I'm being cold and cynical, the Sikh 24 Channel knows exactly where the Tory Party's interest lies:

Cameron, who is said to be deeply concerned about the impact of the revelations from 1984 among Sikh voters, recorded a message for the Sikh Channel in which he spoke of the “dreadful incident” at the Golden Temple which “remains a source of deep pain to Sikhs everywhere”.

Update: the fix is in. 
William Hague made a risible statement yesterday, with a report attached which carefully doesn't include the key document, a letter from Margaret Thatcher to Indira Ghandi, and there will be internal reviews. The Guardian is not impressed:

Yes, it is the case that an exhaustive review of paperwork took place. That is Sir Jeremy's way; he is our top civil servant. But it wasn't quite everything, because in 2009 the Ministry of Defence came across one of the relevant files and destroyed it. That was regrettable, said Hague, but not catastrophic. Sufficient was unearthed for Sir Jeremy to conclude everyone had behaved properly. 

There will be a review, said Hague, led by Sir Alex Allan – the PM's adviser on ministerial standards – to ensure no more files are destroyed in circumstances that later become difficult to explain. Thus there will be an internal review by Sir Alex, prompted by the internal review by Sir Jeremy. But no, there will be no apology or public inquiry, for there is nothing new under this sun. Unsurprisingly, Labour members were disinclined to accept Hague's assurances at face value.

But Paul is:

British involvement was not in any shape or form malicious

Really? Sending military advisers to help storm the home of Sikhism, leading to 3000 deaths?

But then Paul gets clever:

If documents cannot be released to the general public, will my right hon. Friend take the unusual step of making sure that they are released to the widest possible audience, but within a proper environment?

One of the reviews going on is into how the documents got released at all: apparently they were meant to be suppressed, which would have been very convenient all round. The magic words here are 'within a proper environment'. Without them, it sounds like Brave Paul is calling for openness and facing up to the truth. But hey presto! 'A proper environment' means 'never' or 'selectively' or 'amidst a massive spin-doctoring operation' to ensure that political discomfort is avoided. That's certainly how the Foreign Secretary sees it:

questions arise over when documents should be withheld and how the 30-year rule, which is to become the 20-year rule, is implemented. Those are fair questions that can be looked at in Sir Alex Allan’s review.

What Paul really means is 'bollocks: I've a 619 majority in a constituency with a significant Sikh population and now I'm in trouble you bastards'.

Capitol Capers in the Silly Season

Actor Brian Cox is in the news: he called for Parliament to be sited in a provincial city, such as Wolverhampton. A staunch Labour supporter on the soft left of the party, he makes the reasonable point that the costs of London and its associated lifestyle led inevitably to the expenses scandal. 

This of course got all the local papers going, as well as the region's politicians, never averse to a bit of free publicity earned by spouting some patriotic cant:

Mr McFadden, Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East, said: “I think it’s a great idea. We have plenty of areas in need of regeneration and I am sure all the MPs would get a warm welcome.” 

Wolverhampton North East MP Miss Reynolds added: “If there was a serious proposal on the table to move Parliament outside of London, I can think of no better place than Wolverhampton.

Nauseating enough, but not nearly as bad as (of course) multimillionaire property speculator and MP by 619 votes Mr Paul Uppal:

I think the idea of Parliament moving to Wolverhampton would be very welcome. It would make the whole place less London-centric and introduce more Black Country traditional values. I’ve always tried to bring Wolverhampton common sense into Westminster, if that could be reversed too by Westminster coming into Wolverhampton I think everyone would benefit.”

McFadden's point is simply economic, while Emma Reynolds avoids any substance at all. Both efforts are less appalling than Uppal's lazy attempt to ingratiate himself with the locals. What are 'Black Country traditional values' and 'Wolverhampton common sense'? A strong case could be made for them being old-line socialism. There's also a streak of racial prejudice: Paul's predecessor was Enoch Powell. They're just empty phrases, the usual cant of the professional politician. It's a bit cheeky of Uppal to appropriate the city's supposed values: he doesn't even live in his own constituency and can't vote for himself. Could he point to a single example of 'Wolverhampton common sense'? His voting record is of 100% loyalty to the party line. He voted to cut benefits for disabled children, to abolish the Educational Maintenance Allowance, to privatise the postal service and to triple student tuition fees.

In this company, Brian Cox looks like an intellectual giant. Whether he knows it or not, he's echoing the sentiments of the Syndicalist movement of the 1910-20s. Particularly strong in the South Wales coalfields, the Syndicalists believed that their political and union representatives were bound to lose touch with the rank-and-file: once dressed up in sharp suits and drinking sherry with the enemy in negotiations, they'd become part of a political class. Here's what the 1912 manifesto The Miners' Next Step has to say

‘All leaders become corrupt, in spite of their own good intentions…They… become “gentlemen”, they become MPs and have considerable social prestige because of this power.’ 

The leadership then starts to see the rank-and-file as a mass to be controlled for his/her own prestige, rather than as a set of independent thinkers. The syndicalists' solution was to dissolve the state and employers in favour of workers' control of their own industries, negotiating directly with the workers controlling other sectors of the economy.

Cox is nearly there. He sees London as the Great Maw, sucking in innocent politicians and turning them into self-interested cogs in a self-perpetuating machine. This isn't necessarily a leftwing or progressive position of course: plenty of rural Tories – especially those calling themselves the Turnip Taliban – see the city as a site of moral degradation. This is a long-running cultural theme too, hence the juxtapositions of bucolic idyll and urban corruption in Shakespeare and a host of poets' work.

As usual, I'm way ahead of Cox, McFadden, Reynolds et al.. When the Supreme Court was founded in 2005 by separating its functions from the House of Lords, I saw an opportunity. I wrote to my New Labour MP observing that it had no need to be in London. Justice – being an abstract concept – could be served anywhere, and locating the court away from the symbolic and actual centres of power in London would be a good way to communicate the separation of powers (even though Blair's cancellation of investigations into BAe/Saudi arms corruption proves that there is no actual separation of powers). Furthermore, perhaps judges and lawyers conducting their affairs away from the cosy confines of central London, gentlemen's clubs and Establishment haunts might inform their perception of life as it's lived by the rest of us.

JB Priestley said something similar in English Journey. Visiting West Bromwich (which makes Wolverhampton look like Manhattan's Upper West Side), he wrote about the degrading squalor of one street he called Rusty Lane. Despairing of the division between rulers and ruled, he says this:

There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, West Bromwich.

The truth is, of course, that the political classes, particularly those on the Conservative side, either never see such places or blame the inhabitants. As Boris Johnson recently said, wealth is the natural product of genetic superiority: poverty must therefore be the inevitable result of congenital inferiority.  There's no solution to that.

Finally, the establishment of a major state institution in a poor city like Wolverhampton or Stoke would be good for the local economy.  It wouldn't just be judges appearing from the train station: lawyers, administrators, civil servants would all settle locally. I pointed out the Irish government's decentralisation strategy (now sadly ended) and suggested that the UK should try the same thing.

Rob Marris replied to me with good humour. Nice try, he basically said, but no chance. He didn't go into any detail, but we all know that the UK's political class considers that it deserves certain associated rewards: Gothic architecture, agreeable accommodation, high security and little contact with the conditions the rest of endure unless under strictly controlled circumstances.

I would support moving Parliament to Wolverhampton, Stoke or any other deprived area. I would fund MPs at exactly the same level our poorest citizens are expected to survive. They could lodge in private rented accommodation and have to prove that they were working hard enough to claim these perks. They should not only see but experience the lives of the hardest-pressed citizens. I would make our representatives much more insecure and end their culture of entitlement. Proportional representation would end the blight of safe seats and key marginals. Second jobs and directorships would be banned and our political representatives would be encouraged to rediscover the privilege of serving the citizens, not 'leading' us like cattle.

But let's not kid ourselves. Britain's political class is a centralist as France's. They're too habituated to moving in a closed physical and social circle. This is just a silly-season story out of season, an opportunity for local big-wigs to get on their high horses and into their local rags. It's a bit of a laugh then our lords and masters will retreat behind their blast walls and smoked glass and we'll forget there was ever another political possibility.

Fancy Footwork With Paul Uppal

There's an old saying in Texas politics relating to that corrupt state's political fundraising, popularised by the great muck-raking journalist Molly Ivins, and it goes like this:

You got to dance with them what brung you

It means, basically, that you pursue your donors' interests in politics. If you don't, no more money. And in a hollowed-out democracy, it's the money which brings in the votes. With this principle in mind, let's have a look at who funds Mr Paul Uppal, my lazy local millionaire who was once described as 'our man in Parliament' by the British Property Federation.

First up: £8000 from the Government of India for a lovely all-expenses paid trip. Simple enough transaction and one MPs engage in all the time. Free holiday; quick photo op, warm feelings forever after. Then there's Ranees Ltd. They appear to be a clothes shop in London's East End: why they want to give a West Midlands MP £1500 baffles me, especially as they have a capital value of £2.00 (yes) but there must be some reason.

Up next: £1500 in cash and hotel rooms from LTC Investment Ltd. Who are these people? As is so often the case, they're very shy. No website, no public profile. A few scattered references to property and a lot of donations to Conservative MPs across the Midlands. It's almost as if they're buying friends - and as Paul made millions in property speculation, I'm sure they already had a lot in common.

Moving on, we find that Paul is in bed with the Big Beasts: £15,000 from the Midland Industrial Council. With a name like that, you're pretty much guaranteed that they're not cuddly chaps doing their bit for the nation. No: from the limited information about, they're hard-faced men with serious money ready to ensure that a government of crooks, con-men and cash keeps on screwing the poor and making life sweet for shareholders and directors. Who are they? Well, even the hard-right Telegraph calls them a 'mystery'. What is known is that this group has a shared fortune of £4 billion and puts large amounts of it at the disposal of the Conservative Party: and yet the Tories go on about Labour being run by 'union barons'. It was founded to fight the Atlee government (the one that introduced the NHS and the Welfare State) and has spent the past 70 years opposing every civilised measure introduced by government - all hidden behind a wall of anonymity. Are its activities legal? Hard to say, as no court has tested it yet, but it may be dubious if its acting as a channel for donations by unqualified donors. We can't tell who they are. That's democracy, baby!

Next: £5,000 from Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd., the personal piggybank of Lord Ashcroft. Yes, the Lord Ashcroft whose businesses seem to be dubious at very best and largely reliant on activity in agreeable offshore tax havens and of course Belize, which he appears to own. The Lord Ashcroft who thought that being given a seat in the House of Lords and a central role in British democracy shouldn't entail paying tax in the United Kingdom. Me? I say 'no representation without taxation', not a slogan likely to adorn Conservative posters in the near future.

Then there's Millway Shippers (£2,500), another London company with a serious attack of stage fright: not even a website. They apparently do 'import-export' which can only be above board and honourable, but there's nothing else to say about them other than to commend them for their public-spirited concern for the citizens of The Dark Place. I'm sure their interest in funding Paul Uppal is entirely altruistic.

After them comes some old favourites: the Conservative Friends of Israel, who handed Paul a shade under £6000. This is the classic lobbying operation. Paul got an expenses-paid 'fact-finding' trip to Israel courtesy of the Israeli government, which funds the CFoI. It included a ride in an armoured car or similar to the Golan Heights, which as far as the world is concerned, is Syrian and illegally occupied by Israel. CFoI is simply an exercise in buying Tory support for what is essentially an apartheid state, one in breach of multiple international laws and human rights treaties. Think of it as an investment: you can guarantee that whatever the Government of Israel does, Paul will never murmur a word of criticism. Money well spent! His constituents' views, you say? Talk to the hand.

Another big donor is Sun Mark, funding Uppal to the tune of £15,000. The company exports junk food across the world. It has no interests in this city, but its owner is a very active Tory donor and he's active in Sikh politics, working hard to make Conservatism attractive to British Sikhs.

After Sun Mark comes JCB Research Ltd. One of the JCB construction company's subsidiary, it seems to exist solely to channel the company's and its owners' money to the Conservative Party: Cameron has used its helicopter often. JCB has a reputation as a fearsomely rightwing company never scared to back up its vile ultra-capitalist views with cash directed to eager Tory mouths. What research does JCB Research undertake? Not mechanical experimentation, it seems: more like lobbying for tax breaks and state support, going by this presentation. With that level of generosity, you'd think that Anthony Bamford who owns JCB, should be in line for a peerage like most Tory-loving plutocrats. Sadly, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Fat Tony's tax affairs are so outrageous that even the spineless HMRC refused to play ball.

Finally, Paul's received £2500 from the United and Cecil Club. Now, I know the streets of this city pretty well. I've searched and searched for the United and Cecil Club, and can't find it anywhere. Is it an ex-Servicemen's association? Perhaps an old folks' organisation dedicated to tea dances? A group of aspiration young people looking for a way out? Sadly not. The United and Cecil club is yet another bunch of very rich people hiding behind a corporate shell because either they shouldn't legally be donating to political parties in this country, or they're simply ashamed (anyone who gives a political party more than £1500 has to be publicly identified). It works like this: they give the money to the United and Cecil Club and then – completely independently and spontaneously – the United and Cecil Club decides to give exactly the same amount of money to needy Conservative Members of Parliament. As long as it's less than £7500 per person per year, the real donor never has to be named.

So while the Tories bleat about – declared, legal, identifiable – Labour donations from the Conservative Party, every penny of Paul Uppal's declared funding comes from shadowy companies and front, not one of which is based in the constituency. It's almost as if nobody here wants him and his party as an MP, and all these shady bodies are piling in to support a marginal seat. You won't hear Paul mentioning these groups in public: he's cleverer than that. But you know that their calls and good wishes go a damn sight further than those of his constituents.

It's really simple. If Paul's proud of his funding by these groups, and they have the courage of their convictions, why don't they identify themselves? Why doesn't he tell us who these people are, why they're funding him and what they get out of it? Just so we're reassured that he hasn't been bought, lock, stock and barrel. Because as far as I can see, his current strategy is to accept large chunks of cash from very obscure sources with shady agendas.

And that, folks, is how democracy is bought. You got to dance with them what brung ya. The question is: who's calling the tune?

Hypocrisy, thy name is UPPAL

My MP is Mr Paul Uppal. He is a multimillionaire property developer with a fairly distant relationship with Truth and Honesty, as I've chronicled over the three years since his marginal election.

One of Paul's proudest boasts is that he has never ever voted against a single Government measure, despite supposedly representing one of the poorest, hardest-hit areas in the country. Disabled children's support? He voted to cut it. £9000 tuition fees? Yes please. The bedroom tax? Get those shirkers! NHS privatisation? It couldn't come fast enough for him. Education Maintenance Allowance? A disgusting subsidy. Sweep it away!

And yet, what's this? Paul and I have both signed a petition opposing the closure or sale of the local municipal swimming baths! He objects to any 'front-line' service cuts'. What can possibly be going on? I know why I oppose closure: I use the pool a couple of times a week and know how good it is not just for individuals but for public health. The fitter people are, the less likely they are to need NHS support for obesity and other ailments.

But why is Lazy Paul suddenly discovering the joys of grass-roots democracy? Surely it isn't because he believes in public provision of services for the common good, with his track record? Don't be silly: it's because he's a cynical hypocrite. He'll sign anything that gets him in the local paper or on the radio, anything that gets him a few votes. Does he care about the Central Baths? Not a bit. If anything, I suspect he'd privatise it tomorrow without a care in the world.

I'll say this for the Conservative Party: they've played a blinder with the massive public sector cuts. The true genius was to load the biggest cuts on to local council budgets, and in particular on to northern, poor and mostly Labour councils. Stricken Stoke, for instance, lost £200m over the past couple of years, well over 10%: plenty of rich Southern areas saw reduction in the 1% range. The political genius was to funnel the cuts through councils which are largely not Conservative. People will blame the immediate axe-wielders – in Wolverhampton's case, Labour – and (the Tories hope) vote in the opposition in the next local elections. If that's not breathtakingly cynical, I don't know what is.

The immediate effect is that you get millionaire Conservatives signing petitions and on the streets crying crocodile tears while solemnly voting in Parliament for massive cuts that they'll then oppose locally. We've seen it before with Cabinet Ministers such as William Hague campaigning against local hospital closures that they've supported in principle and in practice at the higher levels, while claiming to be entirely innocent.

I'd like to hear more from Paul Uppal. He voted through massive cuts for public authorities to pay for the banks to be bailed out. If 'front line' services are to be protected, where should the cuts go? This council has been cut to the bone and beyond in recent years, thanks to him and his friends, yet they have absolutely nothing to say when challenged about this. Rather than take a principled line for or against these attacks on the public realm, they have their cake and eat it: vote through disgusting cuts then campaign against them when there's a photographer around.

Will he change his behaviour in Parliament? Of course not: he's going to go round attacking the council for doing what his party has made it do. Thanks to the lack of any serious media scrutiny, people like him will be able to play it both ways: vote for cuts and attack cuts simultaneously. He's probably writing a speech about 'local government waste and inefficiency' right now.

Uppal's is one signature this petition can do without.

Green Shoots?

Finally, there are signs of economic life in The Dark Place. At least, according to Paul Uppal, the invisible MP:

From anecdotal evidence in recent canvassing sessions, I have noticed a pick up in drug dealing, particularly in the
south of the city.

An honest Tory would be delighted. Increasing custom implies that there's more money around for luxury purchases. Drug dealers are of course natural Conservatives: they don't like paying taxes, they respond readily to the laws of supply and demand, and they're entrepreneurial small businessmen opposed to regulation and state intervention. They're opposed to Health and Safety, few of them are unionised and they're fully integrated into the globalised economy. What's not to like? Uppal had no criticism to make of HSBC becoming an integral subsidiary of the Mexican drug trade so why's he so down on hard-working local drug dealers? They might well help him keep his seat given his tiny majority of 619.

And of course the more constituents get smacked-up and delusional, the more likely they are to vote for him.

Random opinions

You're probably expecting a pithy, contrarian comment on the Royal Baby from me.

Nothing doing. I have so little interest in the affairs of the hereditary rulers that I can't even be bothered to work up any outrage. It all reminds me of Diana's death. There I was, momentarily saddened by the death of a complete stranger who couldn't be bothered to use her seat belt, surrounded by ordinarily calm and reasonable people openly crying and lamenting the loss of someone they only every knew through the distorting lens of the media. I prefer to save me grief and joy for those I know, and for those less privileged. I'm a little embarrassed that the country has (at least according to the media) regressed to the 13th century simply because someone has managed to give birth.

So moving swiftly on. Other momentous events are afoot. I was all poised to collect my shiny new bike, but the day-long thunderstorms have reduced my enthusiasm… maybe tomorrow. I also got a cheque for £100 today - all for expressing my slightly unhinged opinions of R S Thomas's poetry in the latest edition of Poetry Wales. I don't know if anyone's told them, but the New Media age involves people writing for free while the outlet coins it in. Just look at the Huffington Post. PW is a small, beautiful literary periodical, not a globe-bestriding news maw, so it probably has an excuse not to pay its contributors, particularly as we academics are used to publishing for free (and in science, paying to be published). So hats off to Poetry Wales: old-school and lovely.

I was going to give you the gist of Paul Uppal's latest letter. After he voted against a carbon cap on the grounds that it wouldn't, er, cap carbon, I asked him to comment on the news that the UK's carbon emissions have gone up. Needless to say, his letter entirely fails to mention this. If I can face it, you can have it tomorrow, and I'm going to send him an even simpler letter, and one after that ad infinitum until I extract a single true, relevant and non-evasive sentence from him. Or until he's sacked at the next election, whichever comes soonest.

Finally, some bossy and exasperated advice to some students.

I'm sorry you're disappointed with your grade. I'm sorry you feel you've been treated unfairly and I'd like to talk to you about why this might be the case. Simply handing in an essay or a re-sit essay doesn't entitle you to a passing grade. Nor does putting in a lot of effort. Lord Lucan put in a lot of effort to bludgeon Sandra Rivett to death, but nobody thinks he should be given credit for it. It's what you've written that matters. But please don't throw accusations around until you've collected your work and read the comments. Don't tell me that your friends think it's a good piece of work: I've taken four degrees to qualify me to decide that (similarly, don't ask friends when work is due in: look at the module guide we give to every one of you). I still get things wrong and that's why two of us look at your work. We want you to pass, but it would be dishonest and a disservice to you to pass any work you hand in just because you think it deserves a pass. Essays aren't judgements on you as a person: there a means by which we assess how far you've got. We aren't out to get you, but we do ask that you pay attention to what's required and assume our good faith.

Rant over.

The dumbest guys in the room want a word with you

In case you've missed the obscure rustlings in the Tory undergrowth, there's a new and only fitfully literate manifesto out from the Forty Group. These are the forty Tories in the most marginal seats - the mediocrities not expected to win last time and destined for a watery grave in 2015 barring the government giving us all everlasting-life pills and flying cars between now and then.

It's a fascinating read. It's the product of people who appear to have been imprisoned in the basement of a think-tank since the Suez Crisis. Everything has passed them by: racial equality, the EU, the crashes of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, sexual liberation and equality, the end of Empire: the lot. It's like the company directors of Barnes' satirical England, England, or the near-future Tory government of McEwan's A Child In Time: fuelled by paranoia and sexual damage. All you need to heal the country is to hand it over to Big Business and sterilise the poor and the young. You think I'm joking? Read on…

Needless to say, my egregious, poisonous, dishonest and vacuous MP Mr Paul Uppal is one of the conspirators, never having met a short-sighted, reactionary and revanchist idea he hasn't liked. Not that he contributed any of the ideas, of course: his grey matter is too busy inventing evidence for Parliamentary speeches. One of life's sidekicks, our Uppal. He's the Richard Hammond to the government's Clarkson: he enjoys the cruelty but doesn't have the imagination or wit to do anything more than cheer it on.

So let's have a look at these intellectual adventurers' solutions to the country's ills:

1. “Excessive regulation is the biggest brake on our business
expansion."

This sets the tone for the entire document. The innocuous tone of this assertion belies a total absence of fact (who says? one-third of Chambers of Commerce survey respondents: not exactly clinching), and in particular ignores the biggest credit crunch and recession since the Weimar Republic, which I would consider a greater drag on business than 'excessive regulation'. This is simply imported American small-state ideology unconvincingly dressed up as fact. Surely nobody could object to 'excessive' regulation? But what do they mean by 'excessive' and 'regulation'? Easy: they're free-market ideologues (in theory: Uppal wants tax breaks for commercial landlords like, er, him). To them, all 'regulation' is excessive. And what they mean by 'regulation' is things like pollution restrictions, the minimum wage, unfair dismissal protection, the right to organise, to be protected from sexual or racial harassment, to a working life that takes into account family needs. It also – explicitly in this manifesto – means exempting small companies from contributing to employees' pensions. The result? Either they starve or the costs are passed on to the state.

What these people want is the capitalist dystopia of Back to the Future II before Marty goes back and saves the day from Biff Tannen. The problem with the Forty Group is that given a choice between Democracy and the Triumph of the Market, they plump for the market every time – because they've benefited from both markets and (though they'd deny it) democracy and the state. The experiences of those they're meant to represent are far less important than the Hayek and Pinochet they cream over in private. The Market is what needs appeasing: not the humans for whom (they forget) politics serves.

Big idea No 2 is 'more female entrepreneurs'. And celebrating the ones we have. Not exactly a policy, and again, it leaves unquestioned the notion of entrepreneurship, which is far less economically important than the discourse around it suggests. All 60 million of us can't be entrepreneurs, nor can all 30 million women. The glaring absence of any actual ideas suggests that 'women' as a concept are fairly alien to the authors and not at all a priority.

Moving on to number 3, we discover that discredited, dystopian, Ballardian notion of handing over Town Centres to private businesses, neatly ensuring that Consumers (we're no longer citizens) aren't impeded by unproductive drones: people taking the air, holding protests, chatting or otherwise subverting the Business of Business. The dreaded Portas is invoked in the course of a plea to turn over our towns to cars and shopkeepers: physically and legally. It's a bleak vision but a profitable one for someone who'd directly profit from this policy.

The next bit wounds me deeply:

“Universities offer a perfect environment for fledging businesses.”

Actually, universities offer a perfect environment for critiquing and comprehending the status quo, including capitalism. The problem is that these guys are spiritually poor: like Gradgrind, they can't see further than the balance sheet (and certainly don't want to address capitalism's manifest failures: another advantage of ignoring recent history).

The plot here is to make universities become profit centres, mini-industrial estates, the butlers of businesses, entirely subservient to the (often short-sighted) demands of businesses, which would – surprise – get another tax break. In case you've forgotten, universities are about new ideas and not simply reinforcing the prejudices of the hegemony (which is why Mr Gove hates us so much).

No. 5 proposes encouraging more people to start their own business. Hard to object, though it's marginal at best: most people work in, and want to work in, stable established businesses. The meat of the idea, if we're being kind, is to suffuse schooling and higher education with capitalist propaganda: this isn't policy, it's a naked attempt to turn Britons into a nation of alienated privateers, a programme already advanced by the wholesale abandonment of secondary education to the tender mercies of the very shady businessmen currently 'sponsoring' academies. The result will be a country of obedient conformists in a nation safe for exploiters, polluters and rent-seekers.  

The same is true of the next section: elevating 'workplace skills' rather than merely 'intellectual skills'. Presumably this will include Advanced Loyalty, Total Submission and Shutting Up. Then we're back to free-market capitalists' demands for more taxpayers' money. The State is evil, unless it's bankrolling these Tories' friends:

A state-backed Enterprise Bank could be a permanent solution to the lending gap and would lend to any company

The next section continues the theme: it namechecks Germany's industrial success without mentioning the employee-union-owner structure. Instead, industrial success depends (brace yourself) on handing over the State to business:

More must be done to address politicians’ knowledge gap of industry through better cooperation and collaboration with industry itself. This means having those who have served in the sector taking more prominent roles in the relevant departments of BIS and the Treasury and more policies that actively promote manufacturing. 

This is a tacit admittance that these politicians are anti-politics. They don't negotiate the competing requirements of the people: they just want to hand the state over to their mates. They also don't want to address economic matters. To them, manufacturing is held back by whinging lefties, not macro-economic factors. Once we 'free' children to stitch footballs, we'll all get rich. And once we unblock those outflow pipes:

Policies that are aimed at tackling climate change have their heart in the right place but are stifling industry.

They also want us to fly everywhere too.

The global trade section is particularly backward looking, to the League of Empire Loyalists. Instead of trading with those perfidious Europeans, the UK should demand that those disloyal Commonwealth johnnies should show some gratitude and shovel their dinero Britain's way. You know Godwin's Law? That the first person to mention the Nazis in pursuit of an argument, has lost. Voila:

World War Two demonstrated the extent to which we need countries like Australia and New Zealand to overcome obstacles and challenges, and in present times the Commonwealth could provide the key to our part in the global economic recovery… Traditional links should be at the forefront of any anti-trade barrier argument and there is nothing wrong with playing on old sympathies

And then we get to another nasty little surprise: the 'logistics friendly' government, i.e. one which encourages more and bigger lorries onto the road while ignoring mass transit such as rail. Less a policy, more a present for their mates. But this is just a warmup for the real nastiness: energy policy. Dig, drill, burn and rape with no regard for environmentalism – particularly fracking. The Big Idea is in fact Deny and Defer.

This gas should be used to replace coal and oil in our power stations, producing a reduction in our carbon emissions on an order of magnitude greater than anything achieved to date by wind or solar.

This is offensively dishonest: shale gas is a fossil fuel. It's better than coal, but there's no way on earth it'll be used as a temporary stopgap on the way to a carbon-free future. It's just a greedy, selfish fuck-you to our descendants. The only think climate change is good for is making money: the unspoken assumption is that it's all a big hoax:

let the market take its course. The plethora of artificial incentives, such as feed in tariffs and renewables obligations, should be phased out…

Though they are deeply interested in geothermal energy, which I had no idea was or could be a major player in UK generation. Presumably one of their donors has some hot water going cold without subsidy.

But we need to give projects like this greater government support.

To help geothermal companies attract private investment we need to create the right financial incentives using the Strike Price and the Renewable Heat Incentive. At the moment less technologically proven and cost effective renewable energy technologies receive larger incentives. 

But now we're getting close to these guys' hearts. Having spent an awful lot of our imaginary money subsidising their mates' businesses, they address tax. And guess what? They're not keen. The magic word here is 'simplification', by which they mean 'less tax for corporations and the rich'. But they don't say so. Embarrassingly, the policy doesn't have a single word to say about income tax, corporation tax, artificial vehicles, off-shoring, evasion or avoidance. Instead, they propose that public servants' tax returns be made public. And that's it.

But when we turn to property, we're reminded strongly that this is the manifesto of the 1%. The pressing issue is apparently too much taxation on property sales. Not the massive gap between salaries and property prices. Instead, they want to reinstate the Property Madness which condemned most of to mouldy flats and the extortion practiced by landlords like Uppal.

The housing market is in need of a tax neutral nudge in the right direction to make it more buoyant and fair. 

Ah yes, the 'nudge theory'. Who needs to bother the populus's pretty little heads with ideas? And what to we onlookers get as a reward for tolerating gimcrack developments thrown up willy-nilly?

Maybe a playground for local children, maybe the renovation of the Parish Hall. The sums will be minor

Even the most naked attacks on our collective decisions are dressed spuriously in the language of liberation. Everything our local authorities do, it's assumed, is repressive and incompetent. We busy people are to be freed… but only to choose a different corporate interest:

the localism act introduced a ‘community right to challenge’ clause which gives community and voluntary groups a ‘right’ to challenge a local authority for the services they provide.
The clause is limited in that it merely provides for a local authority to trigger a procurement process which may mean that the challenging group is not successful in being commissioned to provide the service.
There is a need to create much more diversity of provision at the local level which harnesses the expertise, skill and knowledge of a the community and voluntary sector. 

Yes, it's illiterate, but you have to look at the discourse as well as the typing. Elected local government = Stalinist Monster. 'Diversity of provision' sounds lovely.

Local groups should also be encouraged and similarly incentivised to challenge as consortia which would enable a consortia of local groups the ability to challenge for a range of services. For example a consortia of local groups currently providing youth services outside of that which is provided by the local authority could come together to put in a joint bid for the whole of a local authorities youth provision. Local authorities should actively encourage and facilitate these local consortia.

It took me a while to get the hang of this illiterate garbage, but I think what they're really saying is this:

We all like diversity. But really it means public services sold off to offshore, tax-evading, profit-increasing, service-reducing, unaccountable, wage-lowering exploiters.

Only they think these are positive terms.

You can have a small prize if you can explain this sentence:

we need to write the independence of local government into our unwritten constitutional arrangements.

Er…how?

Apparently Local Government is going to be freed from the Tyranny of Central Government through establishing a Decentralisation Committee. Excellent. Where's it going to be located? 10 Downing Street! Who's going to head it? The Prime Minister. Glad that's clear.

Another example of the group's faux niceness is the section on Community Hospitals. They're for them, and opposed to the centralisation of specialities in mega-hospitals. Medical madness, of course: you want your child's heart surgery done by a doctor who does these ops every day, not one who gets one every few years. But there are no votes in closing down St. Teacosy's down the road. Perhaps, though, they have in mind the Cuban polyclinic initiatives, which are hugely successful.

Er, no. They just want to close the NHS:

Community hospitals also need to be freed from the central control of the NHS. They should be free to own their own buildings and service users and employees should be encouraged to develop new ownership models based on mutual, cooperative or social enterprise models where that would maintain or enhance existing community services. 

But more positively, their plan for transforming Britain – in the depths of a serious recession, mass unemployment, failing services, overworked hospitals, environmental apocalypse etc – come in Idea Number 30: Cleaner Beaches. You want detail? They've got detail! They're going to test the water a few times a year rather than just in the summer. Seriously, these Tory kids are blowing my mind with their wacky, zany ideas!

Is all this affecting your mental health? Don't fret: they've a policy idea to treat your aching brainpan! You'll never guess what it is…

GPs should to be encouraged to look beyond traditional approaches whether through drugs or short term psychological therapies so that patients do have a viable range of choices appropriate to their condition. Commissioning should be opened up to allow therapists operating in private practice, in longer term therapies, to be able to bid for services within the NHS. 

So that's a) homeopathy on the state and b) more privatisation. 

I feel better already.

And in case you're thinking 'at least they care about my children's mental health even if they're deluded about the solution, let's see why they want you to get better:

Increased levels of achievement, education and productivity on an individual level that will translate to an increased ability to contribute to the state. 

They don't care why you're ill. Causes are irrelevant. They just want you back up that chimney and paying your taxes (not you, Mr Vodafone, you're excused) because someone's got to subsidise those corporate taxes and let's face it: you'd have to be mad to go along with this stuff.

But some citizens are Just Not Playing The Game, and Spoiling It For The Rest Of Us. The bankers? Guess again. Corrupt MPs? Nope. News International? Keep trying. Google, Starbucks, Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail? No, no no and no. It should be obvious.

Teenage mothers. 

If it wasn't for those greedy bastards, we'd all be living in Easy Street right now. The banks would be solvent, the job centres empty, the Volvos full and the kiddies dancing round maypoles spontaneously erected from Walthamstow to Moss Side.

Take access to housing benefit, for example. 16-17 year olds are currently entitled to claim housing benefit if they “have a good reason for not living at home.” Some teenagers may view this, quite incorrectly, as an automatic right to free housing, encouraging them to have a child. 

Evidence? Oh really, what planet's political discourse have you been engaged with recently? We all know teenage mums have caused a) the credit crunch b) SARS c) 9/11 d) Charles Saatchi's violent behaviour d) Jimmy Savile and e) the decline of Channel 4's credibility, to name just a few of their crimes against humanity. So what if there's no evidence? Mr Duncan Smith made it very clear in his radio interview yesterday: evidence schmevidence, it's what he believes that matters.

All benefits to teenage mothers should be made on the condition of them living with their parents or in supervised hostel accommodation

So what if some of this very tiny number of people are fleeing abusive and neglectful homes? They need punishment. They might be old enough to join the army, kill people, be killed and pay taxes, but the female youngsters are still the property of their parents. If they're not forced back into the home with their little one, or locked up in a Home For Shamefully Disgusting Incontinent Little Slappers Who Are No Better Than They Ought To Be and taught to Know Their Places, how are they ever going to learn that female abstinence unless within the boundaries of a middle-class heterosexual official marriage is the cornerstone of Western Civilisation. Or more simply, ladies of a teenage persuasion: keep your legs crossed or the terrorists win. And the fathers? No mention. Presumably they're just 'sowing their wild oats'. Boys will be boys!

Note the sheer, despicable cowardice here:

The public perception of these policies adds to the general view that many teenagers are having children to attain benefits and subsidised housing, creating a great deal of resentment and unease. 

There's no attempt to ascertain any facts. Instead, they're nakedly endorsing 'the general view', 'resentment and unease' generated by… well, by them and their friends at the Mail.

Teenagers will be left in no doubt that teenage motherhood will not lead to an automatic right to subsidised housing and other benefits, while the general public can be assured that a teenager’s motivations for having a child are not related to housing access. 

They've found a victim, the lynch mob's waiting and these Tory scumbags are knotting the nooses for a very profitable hanging. And people wonder why they make me angry.

And then it gets really sinister. Under the guise of 'contraception efficiency', these Tories have decided that abortions have got to go. Especially for women who've had more than one. Yes, they're extended CCTV and GCHQ's activities to the final frontier: the uterus.

The Government should, for example, consider the merits of allowing agencies to check in with women post abortion, ensuring that they are continuing to use contraception provided to them.

Can you imagine the conditions and content of these 'checks'? Present yourself at the DSS for a Paupers' Duff-Upping Prevention Swab? Perhaps an RFID tab on your pill box. Or simply a two-way TV screen through which the Leader (in this case, Jeremy Hunt) conducts a uterine inspection before work on Monday morning. Free membership of the Primrose League for any C2DE who volunteers for sterilisation!

Marriage, of course, is key. What's stopping people having a proper (i.e. religious) marriage? The 1753 Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage, which bans religious marriages in any random location. Spot on, Tories! That's why marriages have been declining. And not a widespread perception that it's not appropriate for the range of sexual and romantic dispositions now available. Thank heavens you've got to the root of the matter.

But what if some feckless oiks slip through the net, have some kids, and can't make them go to school for their daily class in (Significant Dates in Conservative Party) History? Can't pay the fine?

fines should be taken directly from child benefit payments… It might just give the most dysfunctional family the incentive to get their child to school.

Starve them into submission. That's the ticket! It's not as if truancy and other social problems are at all complicated. It's the poor kids who are to blame:

Pupils on free school meals are around three times more likely to play truant than their counterparts. 

I'm too depressed even to bother presenting you with Idea 37: male role models in schools. Apparently all engineers, fire-fighters and soldiers are men. And we should be getting trained killers into school to give the boys something to which to aspire. 

Still, at least they're tackling the Timebomb of Obesity. Which could be very messy if we don't defuse it. But don't worry, it's easy to fix. Just abolish the 'risk-averse culture' and it'll all be fine. Anybody who mentions the pervasiveness of fat-laden food and the massive sell-offs of school playing fields will be sent to the Coca-Cola-sponsored naughty step.

And now we're back to education. One of the Forty, Paul Uppal, has a large university in his constituency. A university which finds itself repeatedly victimised by a government determined to restrict funding, research and high-achieving students to a small band of élite universities. A university which is doing its best to make ends meet by providing a decent education to overseas students. 

What does Paul want to do about this state of affairs? 

The permanent cap on non-EU workers has been a success and should now be extended to include some of our universities. We must be unashamed in our policy of only wanting to attract the very brightest and best students to come to the UK and so our top universities would be allowed to continue to enrol all students on an unlimited basis as they do now. 

That's right! He wants to deport all our non-EU students. They didn't get in to Oxford or Cambridge, so they must be thick (because obviously all universities offer the same courses) and they're just scrounging, even if they do pay massive fees which subsidise the EU students. For Christ's sake. 

And there we have it. Forty fag-packet ideas to keep the UKIP wolf from the Tory door. A rag-bag of cruelty, prejudice, hysteria, pandering, reaction, hypocrisy, bare-faced lies, omissions, distortions and fantasies. Many of them are dignified by the name 'idea': they're mere wisps, dispersed on the lightest intellectual breeze. All concerned should be ashamed and embarrassed. 

If I was Labour, I'd buy a million copies and send them to every household in these MPs' marginal constituencies. IF you thought Hunt et al. are vapid, this lot need the attentions of a mortician. Certainly there's no detectable cerebral activity. They're dead men (and 8 women) walking. If this is the best the Conservative Party can do, they're history. Let's make sure.