Last year's predictions

Every year I make some predictions and then see how well I do. Here's what I predicted for 2012 and how I mark it.

1. At least one country, probably Greece, will exit the Euro. The Euro will survive though. 0 points.
2. Ed Miliband will have another bad year, though the talk will be of being replaced by Yvette Cooper. 0 points
3. Britain will win around 24 golds at the Olympics. 1 point, quite close
4. The Diamond Jubilee will be a great success and provide a bounce to the coalition of around 5% in the opinion polls. 1/2 point.
5. Sebastien Vettel will win his third World Championship, closely from Lewis Hamilton. 1 point
6. Chris Huhne will resign from the Government when facing charges of speeding & perjury. 1 point
7. A reshuffle will see David Laws make a return to Government. 1 point
8. In the Euro 2012 championship, England will get knocked out in the quarter finals. 1 point
9. Mitt Romney will face Barrack Obama in the presidential election, and Obama will win. 1 point
10. The polls will remain similar to now, Tories 39%, Labour 42%, LibDem 12%. 1/2 point, Labour correct, Tories and LDs overestimated
11. Boris will win the London Mayoral election, defeating Ken by 6%. 1 point

8 points out of 11, not bad really.

Tomorrow, I'll do my 2013 predictions.

Squiffy.

Why is it okay to hate Tories?

There are rules in this country against inciting hatred. It can lead to a custodial sentence.

It's ok to hate Tories though. I know that because on the BBC News Quiz, two panellists announced their hatred in the first five minutes. This is the unbiased license fee funded BBC. Left wing comedians think it's ok to hate forty percent of the population.

Right wing people don't doubt the motives of left wing people just their methods, the reverse is not true. The 'compassionate' left show real hatred. How nice.

Squiffy.

"The poor didn't cause this problem..."

The title of this post is a statement often used when left wingers complain about austerity, and it is obviously true that the poor did not directly cause the financial crisis.

It must be noted, however, that we were running one of the largest structural deficits of the developed world before the financial crisis. Had we not run a deficit we may have been able to get y without an austerity drive. The reason for the deficit was due to excessive Government spending, and where was all this spending targeted? Quite rightly at the poor and needy.

The last Government created many tax credits and systems which meant that more people and families became dependent on Government benefits. Unfortunately, this means that when there is a squeeze, because the country has run out of money, the benefits are going to have to be squeezed too as it has become a larger part of Government spending.

The present Government wants to take people out of benefits but tax them less, so that they keep more of their own money before depending on the state for handouts. The Universal credit will be a great way of making work pay too.

Just don't always take simple phrases at face value.

Squiffy.

Go out and vote for your Police Commissioner

In the next few days there will be elections for police commissioners. Going from having an invisible police authority to an identifiable person holding the police to account is a big change and one that I support.

Unfortunately there will be a lot of politicos calling it a failure, mainly due to the fact that turn-out will be low. It's pretty much guaranteed as it's not been well publicised and I blame the Government for this, even though it's their policy. And I blame the Lib Dems for having the election in November rather than next May at the same time as local elections. It costs more and will then be seen as a failure on low turn-out. Sometimes the LDs are the most cynical of all!

Don't believe when they tell you that it is a failure. Over the next years each police commissioner will get air time in your local areas. They will get blamed for lots of problems and there will be lots of independent minded people stepping out to challenge at the next elections. Mark my words that turn out will be higher next time round, it will build and these positions will become more important.

We don't have elections in London but I implore you to find out who is standing who represents your views and make sure you go out to vote. It will be important.

Squiffy.

Some common sense is needed...otherwise it's just reckless

Mark Reckless MP has launched his proposal to reduce the EU budget. The Prime Minister's position is to call for a real terms freeze.

Personally, I'd love the see the EU budget reduced but I'd don't think it is possible. There are too many other countries which will not accept the position whereas there's quite a few influential countries who will stick by the real term freeze. We have to be realistic and if we go in with an unrealistic prospect we will just have to use the veto. If we veto then the budget will go up two percent, and we run the risk of future budgets being decided by qualified majority voting.

It's also playing into the Labour party hands. They've leapt onto this as a way of causing problems for the PM, they're not a real believer in lower budgets - otherwise they wouldn't have built up a huge structural deficit. Also at the last negotiation, they willingly gave up £5 Bn annual rebate for a supposed reduction of the CAP budget - which of course was never going to happen. They're just being cynical.

So let's be serious, stick to the freeze and hope we can push it through.We're going to have to reserve our vetos for the point when we have to threaten to stop further integration without a looser arrangement for the UK within an EEC type Europe.

We have to play this smart.

Squiffy.

If it's Merkel To Cameron, you're muppets - then bring it on!

It's been reported that Angela Merkel has compared David Cameron and Britain to Statler and Waldorf from the muppets. We're always grumbling and being obstructive.

Too right! Yes, we grumble. The reason we grumble is that no-one under the age of 50 has had a say on the terms of our EU membership, and those that did get to vote in the 1975 referendum believed they were voting to stay in an economic union. Only a few in 1975 believed we were on a never ending story of integration and submission to an unelected bureaucracy.

We are now at a crunch point. Our politicians in the UK are also coming to that conclusion. We now have an administration which on the whole wants to change the status quo. Although the core of the EU is trying to head to some federal system, probably without consulting the EU population, as is their way. We know we don't want it.

Finally the EU leaders, such as the German Chancellor, have realised that they can't just shove what they want past the UK PM and have come to the conclusion that there will need to be a two speed Europe. There's even talk of a separate budget for Eurozone members.

Hurrah, it's what a lot of us has been saying for a long time. Finally the EU elite is coming into line with the general population. It's taken about 20 years, but sense may finally be about to break out. We may finally get to be in a sphere like the old EEC, pity the poor countries which will not have a say.

It will still take several years though!

Squiffy.

Ed Balls: Zero Based Policy

Exactly. A way to have no policy.

Ed Balls has announced the adoption of Stella Creasy's policy of deciding Government spending by starting at zero and justifying every line item of spending. Brilliant, I love the policy - exactly the right thing to do. It should happen every time a Government comes in.

But, and it's a big but. I don't believe Ed Balls sincerity to the policy. I don't believe that he thinks that every item of public spending needs to be justified in this way. I think it is a happy diversion for every question about what Labour would cut. Remember this when Ed Balls is interviewed, the question will come "What would you cut?", the answer will come "I've announced that we will look through every existing spending decision on its merits, we will not announce our plans until we have looked through the books".

It is the perfect device in order to have no policy. So, call my cynical, but I don't believe that Spender Balls is really committed to reducing the deficit and justifying every single element of spending.

Squiffy.

Lewis to Mercedes: Good or Bad

Only time will tell.

I feel a little sad that Lewis Hamilton has decided to move from McLaren to Mercedes. I know a lot of Lewis fans will also, indeed it's a little like Nigel Mansell moving from Williams to Ferrari for 1989 or Jensen Button moving from Brawn to McLaren for 2010. Feels like the end of an era, and indeed it is. The all British team (just about) is over.

It feels like the wrong decision. McLaren creates cars that wins GPs nearly every year, it knows how to win, and at the moment it has the fastest car - so why would he leave?

Look at it from Lewis's point of view, though, and you may come to some different conclusions. McLaren has not won the drivers championship since 2008 (Brawn in 2009), and has not won the constructors championship since 1999 (Brawn in 2009). This year McLaren have had the best car for most of the season, barring a few races mid-season, and yet, even with Lewis driving magnificently, Lewis is 52 points behind Fernando Alonso in the championship. Pit-stop cock ups, bad performance on wet tyres, a major mess up in Barcelona qualifying, and a little unreliability have nearly destroyed his championship.

Even though McLaren know how to win races, they are a bit rusty on winning championships - the days of 1989 are long gone. Ross Brawn has much more recent experience of running a consistent championship contender.

Look to the future. In 2014 there is a new engine formula and the Mercedes engine could be the best one and gelled with a Mercedes chassis, designed so well for it, could be the class of the field. McLaren will be a customer team and might not have so privileged access to the data. There's rumours of Vodafone leaving McLaren too, probably hastened by Lewis's departure. Mercedes has also hired some big names this year; Aldo Costa from Ferrari and Bob Bell from Renault. They could be just about to set the world alight, whereas McLaren tend to build a good car every other year.

I think it's likely that the McLaren and Mercedes offers were pretty similar in monetary terms with a little more branding opportunities at Mercedes, but I don't think this is the crux of Lewis's motivation to move. An article on Autosport struck me as very pertinent. The essence of the article is that Lewis has grown up with McLaren, it's a parent-child relationship and now it's time for Lewis to break out and become an 'adult'. A good point made was that in 2007 Hamilton was on the verge of winning the championship on his first attempt in China and was kept out on very visible thread-bare tyres. I remember shouting at the TV screen for 5 laps that he should go into the pits and McLaren kept him out. That must rankle with him, he should have definitely won that championship. We know Lewis believes he should have won more than his solitary championship.

The relationship has soured in the last few years a little. There was the lying row in Australia a few years back, and there has been friction about Lewis's use of twitter. You may call this the teen years.

Once the parent-child relationship is formed, it's pretty difficult to break free (as any child returning to the parents would know) until you leave home. And as anyone knows, you can always return home and who knows Lewis may one day return home, calling the shots, as did Nigel Mansell.

But as I say, only time will tell.

Squiffy.

Forza Monza

or Force Monza!

I was lucky to be at the Italian GP two weekends ago. It was spectacular. Deep in a country park you find this incredible circuit of speed.

I managed to view the old banking - which would be terrifying in a modern car, or anything to be honest! The atmosphere was electric, the weather was hot, the tifosi devoted and action unstoppable.

Enough superlatives. It was better organised than Silverstone, you didn't need to wait more than 5 minutes waiting for a bus to take you between Monza train station and circuit, likewise on the way back. I was surprised that McLaren had a great deal of support - lots of Lewis and Jenson fans. It was great to be able to invade the track afterwards - and funny to watch guys taking away the polystyrene bollards at the first corner.

It was fantastic that Lewis won too, so shortly after his family bereavement. He was on it all weekend, and deserved the win.

A brilliant weekend. As Murray used to say, Faaantastic.

Squiffy.

Clegg was right to apologise

Nick Clegg has apologised for the tuition fees debacle.

Not for the U-turn, or for the policy, but for the fact that he promised to remove tuition fees in the first place. It is, finally, a moment when the Lib Dem leader has fully grown up. Hopefully the Lib Dems will follow.

For all my life, I have got used to the third party making rash promises, not tied down to the realities of possible Government. It was annoying to see the holier than thou, purer than pure attitude through the years - promising anything without a care. Safe in the knowledge that it would come to nothing. Every election they would say they would go into it to win and not talk about coalitions.

The last election taught a valuable lesson. You must have realistic costed policies. You must never make an absolute promise you are not certain to keep. As the third party your main chance is through coalitions so you need to take other party's manifestos into account. Nick Clegg has learnt this lesson, but I suspect the sandal wearers will have trouble adjusting to this, as they have to the nature of coalition (likewise the right wing Tory headbangers).

Unfortunately, I don't expect the grown up attitude to continue into the Lib Dem conference! There will be more grandstanding and unrealism.

Squiffy.

Virgin: What short memories people have!

The Downing Street petition to have Virgin Rail re-instated as the franchise holder of the West Coast Main Line has now reached 100,000 people. That's pretty impressive, especially for a private company involved in railways.

It does amaze me, however, why so many people have jumped on the bandwagon. It was only 10 years ago or so, that Virgin had a really bad name when it came to railways. It was the company cited by comedians and others when trying to point out that the railways were in a mess. Now it's all turned around, which is fantastic for Virgin.

I must say that I was always impressed by Virgin's commitment to give a good service on the troublesome West Coast. So, I am a little sad that Virgin lost out. The worry is that First Group will give a worse service, after all it's been panned for the service on the Great Western line. But one has to remember that the service provided is dependent on the state of the track, and whereas the West Coast has had a lot of investment, the Great Western has been neglected. This also explain's Virgin's turnaround in fortunes.

People are also wistful about the old British Rail. They also forget how bad it was. Years of under investment with old trains and bad service. The British Rail soggy sandwich was its emblem! Privatisation enabled new investors to enter. Now we ride new trains. New services like Great Central give variance to the old ways of doing things. It's not a coincidence that passengers numbers increased year on year since privatisation in 1995. We now have the most number of passenger journeys on railways since World War 2, probably ever:

So let's have a little perspective! Good luck to Virgin and First Group in the future. Thankfully the Great Western is about to get a lot if investment.Hopefully Virgin can take on the Great Western franchise!

Squiffy

Resolve

Today the borrowing figures showed that we borrowed £600 million for the last month, in fact for July we'd normally see a surplus. It gave me a jolt, but we need to have some resolve. Remember that you cannot borrow yourself out of debt.

The economy will come good, the GDP figures do not add up, employment is growing. If only George Michael had sung Faith at the Olympics closing ceremony and not his new one. We need to keep the faith.

Squiffy.

Olympics...

Just a short note to say "How brilliant was that?". London put on one hell of a show and I loved every minute of it.

Squiffy

Clegg does the dirty

Today, I am mainly being disgusted with Nick Clegg. After confirming that the Lords legislation has been shelved, he also stated that the Lib Dems would vote against the equalisation of constituencies. He needed to make up some reason and so it was that a reduction in MPs could not be allowed now that the Lords would not have greater legitimacy. What cock.

As I said in an earlier post, the boundary changes were the trade for an AV vote and that the coalition agreement only said that proposals would be brought forward for an elected chamber. Mr Clegg is being entirely duplicitous. The bad legislation he brought forward was the reason for the Tory backbenchers rebelling.

After a promising start to the coalition, I'm now fed up with the double dealing Lib Dems. They are dishonourable. It may be time to bring forward an election and see them be decimated. Will be difficult, but only a truly Tory Government can get us out of this mess.

Squiffy

0.7% drop, don't believe it

The shock figures today, I'm pretty damn sure are incorrect. One has only to detect the mood of the country, although subdued we are growing.

The employment figures are going up, the unemployment figures are going down, inflation is falling. The individual growth surveys are showing a country in growth not contraction.

The GDP figures will be revised as always, but having an initial figure so out of whack with the end figure is extremely unhelpful to a real growth strategy. The GDP figures can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Remember in the latter half of 2009 the initial figure was -0.4% but was revised to +0.4%!

The scandal of this is that we cannot trust these figures and yet they set the mood of the nation. There should be an urgent review.

Squiffy.

Travails of a commuter: Olympic special

I have previously ranted about the awfulness of mindless tube announcements destroying my morning commute. It got worse on Friday.

Dear Transport for London,

I have to take the Jubilee line to work, and unfortunately it is the key line for the Olympics. I knew that it would become busier, and at the beginning of last week I started to notice it a bit. I expect the next few weeks to be more difficult and crowded, and I accepted it as part of the downside to having this spectacular event.

What I didn't counter was that every journey was going to be intolerably punctuated and interrupted by infernal announcements telling me to find a different route. After every third station the tube driver came on the tannoy to tell me to avoid Baker Street, Westminster, Waterloo, London Bridge, Canary Wharf and Stratford. The announcement went on for two minutes. I live on the line and work at one of the stations to avoid, but I don't have much choice.

I'm a commuter, which is why I travel at 7.30 am and 6 pm along with 98% of others travelling at that time. We are adults with enough intelligence to keep down jobs. We know the Olympics are around the corner, we know the trains will be busier, we will find easier ways to get to work if necessary. It's what we do day in day out. 

It's going to be difficult enough, please don't make the minutes on the tube reading the newspaper even more awful by talking our internal voices - let us live in peace. Only tell us when it's up the spout again.

Yours with hands over my ears,

Squiffy.

Lords Reform: Ditch the bill

Tonight there will be a vote on the programme motion for reform of the House of Lords. This is in effect a vote on whether to bring in a guillotine on the debate, in this case for 10 days. There are many Tory rebels, and Labour are voting against.

If I were an MP, I'd be voting against too. On principle, such a large constitutional change should have significant debate as this is the largest change since joining the EEC.

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems and pro-reform Tories are doing themselves a disservice with their arguments. Firstly they say that it was in all the party's manifestos. True, they all mentioned reform but not these details (450 Senators, 15 year terms, PR). Secondly they say that it was in the coalition agreement, but the agreement only stated that they would bring forward proposals to seek consensus. That doesn't mean legislation if there isn't consensus - the fact that whipping is needed shows there is no consensus. Thirdly, they argue tit for tat with the proposal to equalise constituency boundaries, no no no, the quid pro quo was the AV referendum and you've used that.

I completely disagree with election terms being 15 years. That's nearly half someone's working life! Terms should never be that long, what if you get a dud? We still haven't got powers of recall for dodgy MPs so I don't think measures for Senators would be handled well either.

The relative powers of the Commons and new Senate has not been settled with the Commons as primus. Flash forward 15 years and it is easy to imagine Lib Dem Senators talking about them having more electoral validity due to PR being their election method (even if that is wrong).

I also disagree with party lists driven by party leaders, we'll just get second rate MP wannabees. What about the expertise we have gathered in the upper house, the beauty of the current system is that the combined wisdom of many appointed Lords helps bring knowledge to our Parliament which is sadly lost from the Commons.

So please vote this down.

My revised solution is as follows. Each group within the Lords; Tories, Lib Dems, Labour, Crossbenchers have internal elections before a General Election of existing members and prospective new members. These elections give rise to a preferential list of candidates for each group.

At the General Election, the groups are awarded Lordships based on the proportion of votes cast for each party. The Crossbenchers are allocated from the percentage of electorate who did not vote at the General Election.

I think this solution enables an element of proportionality to make sure no one has a majority. It enables Crossbenchers to have a good sizeable representation. The internal election makes sure that it is not in the hands of the party leaders, enabling experts to remain on the list if they are effective in the House. Also, being based on the General Election results but not directly elected should put the Lordships in their place when it comes to primacy.

Hey presto, keeping all the elements that are good and stopping the patronage nonsense. If only anyone would listen. David, are you there?

Squiffy.

Michael Gove: the best Education Secretary in half a century

While some members of this Government have been plodders and others less than inspirational, a few have really shone. One is Eric Pickles, another is Iain Duncan Smith and finally Michael Gove.

He is a controversial figure, and took a big misstep in his first few months when he announced the schools which would not receive money in the schools building fund. Since then, though, he has been mightily impressive. I find the ideas of free schools inspirational, the vastly increasing numbers of academies a great idea and Kenneth Bakers University Technical College's and fantastic solution to vocational courses.

The most impressive aspect of Michael Gove's secretaryship is his absolute adherence to rigour, standards, discipline and the sense that failure is not acceptable. After years of fashionable educationalists and liberal thought driving our schools, we have had declining literacy, numeracy and behavioural standards whilst our exams have led to hugely inflated results. Standards have dropped, exams are not as difficult as they once were and, without denigrating the achievements of our bright young pupils, I don't believe our children are vastly more clever than they were thirty years ago.

I don't think going back to the 11 plus is a great idea, but streaming at an early age with the facility to move between the streams is good. A new set of exams, whether they are called O-levels or something else, is fine to replace the now discredited GCSEs, as long as rigour is re-introduced. There are already different levels of exams, for instance Maths had three sets of exams (P, Q & R) when I took the second year of the exams with the brighter pupils taking two (P & Q) and other pupils taking the other two (Q & R). I think there are foundation exams too now.

All power to Mr Gove. He is interested in what works, what prepares our young for work and isn't fussed if it shows our young passing less exams (making the Government look bad). An inspiration.

Squiffy.

Tough for the Cleggies

After the Lib Dems failure to back Jeremy Hunt, watch what happens when the next Lib Dem minister finds himself in trouble. Labour will know to play the same card, and this time the Lib Dems will be reliant on Tory MPs. Somehow I think their support is not guaranteed! Treason and treachery were two words I saw on Tory MP tweets.

Squiffy.

It's here, the weekend when the Euro might start to disintegrate

On Sunday, the Greeks go to the polls to determine their place in Europe. A win for the left of Alexis Tsipras will mean they renege on their austerity commitments and head to Euro exit. A win for New Democracy means more of the same. It's for that reason that I, unusually, want the left to win. We need a game changer to sort out the Euromess. A Greek friends thinks the centre right will win, but I'm not so sure.

It's been a bad week for the Eurozone. The cack handed way in which they added capital to the Spanish banks by adding to Spain's debt has brought Spain to the brink. Yesterday their bond yields hit the unsustainable 7 percent. Now it's only a matter of time before the country's first bailout (as opposed to the bank bailout). It was such a stupid way to do it. The next target is now Italy, watch their yields rise over the next two weeks.

If there was ever an explanation for why we're in such a mess, the Spanish bank bailout was it. Just bloody dumb.

This weekend the endgame approacheth. We may be about to witness a very swift end to the badly conceived Euro project and we can put the Euro elites back in their box. But not before the people of Europe suffer terribly.

Squiffy.