The Artesea

Just picked this at random:

(292409)
61 Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

A few days ago a tweet asked if those emails had been Wikileaked. Which made me think, why doesn’t Dolly just do it?
Firstly there is the “no smoke without fire”, some people will believe that there is something slightly truthful about these allegations.
Secondly, who would really believe that Dolly would be that stupid/clever to put them up there? The finger of blame would surely be pointed towards Paul or the NotW.
Thirdly, if something “did” turn out to be true, just think what kind of response the left could have towards the right?

This morning reading the Beeb website I came across this:

‘Legal’ bid over Scots banknotes
An attempt is to be made at Westminster to make it legally binding for shops and businesses in England to accept Scottish banknotes.

For those who have never ventured North of the border, may be suprised to find that the Scots don’t just have their own version of our notes, but 3 different versions each issued by different banks.
The reason why shops don’t accept them is that with any currency you need to know that the note is worth the paper it is written on.
I’m pretty good at spotting a forged twenty. The feel, the watermark, the silver foil, the bit that rubs off etc. But I have no idea what a scottish twenty looks like, and the same goes for many staff in shops outside of Scotland.
Forcing shops to accept them will just result in a large number of forged notes being passed around in the smaller shops miles away from the issuing banks.

Luckly this is a Private Members Bill, so hopefully it’s not going to go far in Parliament.

We’ve just moved house, not far from the last one (still in Park Ward) and tomorrow would have been our bin day. However I can see no sign of any bins out on the street. Remembering that I had seen something on the council website with a list of street names and days I tried to find it.
First I came across the GIS site run jointly with the County Council. This can tell me who is my MP, MEP, County and City Councillors, where the nearest Library, Doctor or Dump Recycling Centre is. However for the day of bin collections I just get a link back to the City Council website.
Trawling through here I can see that my bins should be out by 7am, if my bins should have been collected on Christmas or Boxing Day the alternate day I should have put them out, that the weekly large black bin trial has ended, if I have a real Christmas Tree it can be collected during the next two weeks, but nowhere I can find which day my bins will be collected on.
The closest I have found is on this page which states

To find out what collection services are available for your street, please refer to the Waste Collection Calendar (NOTE: This is currently being updated and is due to be available in March 2008).

As it’s nearly March 09, I really hope that it would be up by now.
I guess I’ll have to try the old fashioned way of working out which day the bins are, talking to the neighbours.

Last night when I got home, I discovered that Parliament were debating “Council Tax Limitation – Lincolnshire police authority budget”. The bill was to place a cap on the 78.9% increase that Lincolnshire police authority had made on the council tax bills. I blogged about this in March (Council Tax up by 11.1%).

So how did those Lincolnshire MPs vote?
Quentin Davies – Grantham & Stamford (Lab) – aye
John Hayes – South Holland & The Deepings (Con) – absent
Douglas Hogg – Sleaford and North Hykeham (Con) – absent
Edward Leigh – Gainsborough (Con) – absent
Gillian Merron – Lincoln (Lab) – absent
Mark Simmonds – Boston & Skegness (Con) – absent
Peter Tapsell – Louth & Horncastle (Con) – absent

Out of the 7 Lincolnshire MPs with consituents affected, only one went down the lobby.

However, at least unlike 44 LibDems, the Tories didn’t actually vote against it.

My twitter last night summed this up:
artesea disapointed to see the LibDems voting no on the Lincolnshire Police Council Tax cap on BBC Parliament.

Amazingly due to the magic of technology I got this response:
joswinson is voting against the unfair Council Tax system.

However I still can’t see how a “Local Income Tax” would have stopped the Lincolnshire Police from asking for more money than anyone would expect. Instead we now have it on record that the LibDems are “pro” 78.9% increase.

Maybe someone from the Parlimentary party would have like to have asked those who have been affected by the issue, and campaigned in elections last May what our views were first, or is that just a bit too hard?

* Voting records taken from PublicWhip.org.uk

I’ve been away, so sorry for this being a bit late. There seems to be a bit of an outcry on both LibDemBlogs and Facebook about the LibDems not standing in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election. However almost all of them have failed to realise that if Nick had said that we would stand against Davis during their private chat on Wednesday night, he would have shat himself and not resigned. Instead Clegg played a blinder making the Tories look weak, and Davis like a tax payers waste of money.

According to the BBC Brown defends ‘U-turn’ on 10p tax. Yet looking at the article and listening to what he has said I can’t see a U-turn.
I can see some distant promises to give old people some extra cash at winter, and some young people a bit more via the minimum wage (notice not actually via the government) and some more tax credits to those without children.
However here’s the problem, at the moment to get Working Tax Credits you need be earning less than £13,000 as a single person over 26, or £18,000 (combined income) as a couple over 26.
Meaning a married couple earning £9,000 each get NO tax credits, yet get hit with a 10% tax increase on their income.
Gordon Brown (who last time I checked was no longer the Chancellor) is still screwing over those on low incomes.
I get paid next Monday and for the first time my actuall wage will be less than last month, something that I never believed would happen with a Labour Government (well at least while my income was nowhere near the 40% rate).

Alistair Darling today suggested that he couldn’t rewrite the budget. Almost trying to put the blame for the tax rise on one Gordon Brown. However he LIES!!!!!! On the 12th March 2008 he read out his first budget. It would have been possible for him in this one to either re-introduce the 10p tax band, or alternatively put up the tax free threshold so that no one was worse off. However the Labour Party seem to be a bit thick and didn’t realise that this was such a big issue that they would have ministers almost resigning, yet over a year ago I was already pointing out that low income earners would be worse off.
I expect that most of the shouting is to do with the local elections and that once May 1st is over you won’t see Darling making any attempt to help anyone out.

In Thursday Echo we had the front page How does your garden grow?. The article is about the Environment Protection Team taking four households to court over the state of their back gardens. All of them had been asked several times to sort them out, and finally the magistrates fined them over £150 each.
Hopefully other households in Lincoln will realise that the mess in your backgarden affects your neighbours and that the council have a right and a duty to sort it out.

Unfortunately for those in Lincoln (and very similar for those elsewhere in Lincolnshire), the 11.1% increase isn’t over 2 or 3 years. Nor is it calculated against the odd stealth local charge. Nope the figure of 11.1% is the actual increase in council tax on my bill right in front of me.
For this year Lincolnshire Police Authority have been fcked by the government and in return fcked every single council tax payer in the county.
Last year our band A house paid £87.72 to the police, this year it’s £156.90. That’s an increase of 78.9%. Seriously 78.9%! I now pay the police more than I pay the City Council (£147.84).
What seems to be worse is there is nothing we can do about it. If the county or city wanted to raise their portion by over 5% the government would stop them and if they didn’t at the next election the electorate might, but as far as I can see the police seem to be a law unto themselves.