PJC Journal – Original » 2009 » January

Jan

NuLab greed culture has turned good public servants bad.

IanPJ Main Page Add you comment

Labour,
in Mandelson's words, is intensely relaxed about senior public sector
managers making themselves wealthy at the taxpayer's expense.

Since
1997 the salary spread between admin staff at the base of the
bureaucratic pyramids and the boss at the apex has changed out of all
recognition. In 1997 you could reckon that a Chief Constable or Chief
Executive would earn perhaps 5 or 6 times the salary of a base level
employee. Labour have widened the gap to 10 or 12 times or more by
ensuring that those at the very top of the tree have enjoyed above
inflation salary increases and fake bonus schemes, and every time an
incumbent boss retires with a massive multi million pound pension pot,
they hike the salary for the next one on the basis that they need to
'attract the most able candidates'.

On 13th January the Standard ran a piece
that revealed that almost 400 London council bosses pay themselves over
£100k each. Hackney paid up to £320k to former Chief Executive Penny
Thompson. Ita O'Donovan at Baby-P / Climbie Haringey gets up to £180k.

Today the Times reveals
that Chief police officers are also on the 'greed is good' bandwagon,
awarding themselves massive bonuses. Presumably for overseeing such
massive increases in burglary and knife crime. Ian Blair awarded
himself a £25k bonus on top of his £247k salary in his last full year,
for what?

And
why, you may ask, has this been allowed to happen? Well, for two
related reasons, I think. One is because they can. They have no
effective democratically elected governing bodies that regulate their
pay. Town hall bosses and police chiefs take their orders directly from
Whitehall these days; councillors and police authority members are an
inconvenient irrelevance.

Secondly,
the old management consultant con. A public sector boss who wants a pay
rise engages a management consultant to advise on modernising,
streamlining, making more efficient, effective and responsive the
organisation that they govern. Inevitably the first recommendation is
to increase the boss' salary by 25%. The management consultant picks up
a six-figure fee, the boss pockets the wedge and the whole thing was
done on the basis of 'independent, external expert advice'. All very
NuLabour and transparent.

And
a central Statist government has no incentive to interfere. They want a
compliant cabal of obedient council and police bosses, and these
rewards are a small price, especially as the taxpayer bears the cost.

The
answer, of course, is not legislation or greater State regulation or a
new senior pay quango. It is to empower local citizens to have real
control over their own local services and policing. But you all knew
that, didn't you?

H/T Raedwald

In reading the above, you should also take note of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace) a private limited company who act in the same capacity for Local Authorities, of which I have written before, and the ACPO sideline businesses using confidential data supposedly protected by the DPA, here and here.

There is Politicisation and Racketeering by the Police and Local Authorities on a massive scale, but Mandleson and the Labour Party are happy with that, so long as they achieve their aims.

When the ordinary copper realises what is going on, then the game is up.

I am absolutely sure that we, the Police, have found that prosecuting
“Decent Folk” is easier than going after the “Evil Poor” and just as
countable and valid for the bean counters. We are increasingly
following a path of least resistance. Policing is going to be just
another business before we know it with a product consisting largely of
cautions and the detection of miserable non crimes. We need to get back
to using local knowledge and discretion before we stop being citizens
in uniform and become just another imposition of the State.
NightJack

I am now researching and working on a new article which shows how the ACPO, the APA (Association of Police Authorities, another Ltd company), CSAS and the Association of Local Authorities (another Ltd company), with the assistance of the NPIA and SOCA with databases and intelligence, are exercising a form of racketeering on the public, all with 'Legislative Protection'.

It will all be published before the ACPO green paper recommendation to the Home Office of making it illegal to investigate the police comes into force. I wonder why they recommended that?.

Watch this space……

and if all else fails, just ask a Labour peer to change the law for you..Mandleson must be so proud of the corruption he has pioneered.

Iceland is no longer a democracy

IanPJ Main Page 1 comment

In the following article, you can easily find the parallels between what is happening in Iceland and the undemocratic role that our own politicians have taken for themselves. Not one that we have given them, or allowed them, but one that they have taken.

In an Interview with online blog Iceland Weather report, they speak with Njörður P. Njarðvík, writer and professor emeritus at
the University of Iceland. He has written a number of articles in
Icelandic newspapers recently harshly criticizing Iceland’s government
and parliament, and calling for a new constitution. Note that the
interview was taken before the most recent protests began.

IWR: You have said that Icelandic democracy is dead. Can you explain?

NPN: Iceland is no longer a democracy. The Icelandic democracy that
was established in 1944 has been reduced to nothing. Iceland today is a
state of political party leaders. Its government is not a
representative government. It is subject to the dictatorship of a
handful of political leaders on a daily basis. The separation of the
three branches of government is disregarded, Althingi [Iceland’s
parliament] has been turned into a processing and handling institution
for the executive power [the cabinet] and even the appointment of
judges is subject to the whims of those in power.* This has become
evident in the wake of the economic collapse.

Just as the heads of the banks walked out when the banks collapsed,
the government should walk out and relinquish power. It should be clear
to everyone that a government that has failed as utterly as the
Icelandic government has can neither investigate nor clear up the past,
nor forge a new path into the future.

An emergency government should be appointed temporarily – let’s say
for 12 to 16 months. It should be an extraparliamentary government made
up of honourable men and women with extensive powers. Its primary
responsibilities should be two-fold.

On the one hand this emergency government should commission an
extensive investigation into the economic collapse. It should also
conduct a necessary cleansing in certain institutions, including the
Central Bank and the Financial Supervisory Authority. All outcomes
should be made public and should be followed up with legal action where
necessary.

On the other hand, the emergency government should draft an entirely
new constitution. This should be possible to do within a year.
Subsequently the new constitution should be voted on in a national
referendum, followed by parliamentary elections in accordance with the
new government administration. It should be possible to do this within
16 months. The emergency government would then hand over the reins to
the new government and new parliament.

IWR: Why do you feel that a new constitution is necessary?

NPN: The main purpose of a new constitution would be to ensure a
real separation of powers between the three branches of government
[executive, legislative and judicial] – thereby resurrecting Althingi
as Iceland’s highest power institution.

We need a new procedure for elections where, for example, the
Parliamentary Speaker is nationally elected, alongside other members of
parliament. It would be sensible to take up the Finnish model, where
the candidates from all political parties have a number and voters
choose one candidate, who then brings other candidates from the party
into government.

In Iceland today, the situation is thus: we elect a political party
– not people, not individuals, but a party that has placed its
candidates on a list. We don’t elect a government. We have no say about
the basis on which it will operate. When elections have been held,
party leaders – usually two of them – sit down and decide to form a
government on the basis of some sort of “coalition agreement” that is
so nebulously worded that it is virtually meaningless.

The “elected representatives” then take their seats in the
legislature [parliament] under the new government, where they are to
work on the basis of a division of power between the three branches of
government.

However, in the Icelandic parliament the executive branch sits at a
high table – facing the rest of the parliamentarians! Just to make it
perfectly clear who is in charge! I know of no other legislative
parliament where representatives of the executive branch are considered
to have higher powers than other members of parliament. And the rest of
the parliamentarians obey. In the blink of an eye, MPs are transformed
into humble processing clerks. Not too long ago a young MP voted
against her own convictions because she was “on the team”. In another
instance, a parliamentary bill was blocked from debate because the
government was preparing another bill about the same issue. Committee
chairmen are instructed to put the matter to sleep.

It has now gone so far that it is not even enough for the executive
branch to bully the legislature, they are also appointing their
relatives and friends as judges. In other words they are also
determined to subject the judicial power to their dictatorship.

It should be the main purpose of the new constitution to eradicate
such corruption. However, above all else, the new constitution should
include clear and strict provisions on ethics and responsibility that
parliamentarians and cabinet ministers are subjected to. If they
violate those provisions, they should resign.

The constitution that formed the basis of the Icelandic republic in
1944 is dead. The Icelandic nation is no longer independent and free –
it is so enmeshed in debt that it can barely move. The government – and
ultimately Althingi – are to blame for this.

For this reason the arrogance demonstrated by some cabinet ministers
at this time is unbelievable. The Icelandic nation will not take this
much longer. There is a danger that it will stop obeying authorities
and that the result will be chaos and disorder, with unforeseeable
results.

What has happened here is not some short-term phenomenon. There was
a lengthy lead-up to the current situation. The problems this nation is
facing are so great that they will not be resolved unless there are
radical changes made, including fundamental changes to the government
administration.

* Iceland’s Minister of Finance, who was acting Minister of
Justice at the time, appointed Þorsteinn Davíðsson, son of Central Bank
Director Davíð Oddsson, as regional judge in North Iceland last year.
The appointment was highly controversial, and a complaint was filed by
one of the other candidates. Last December, the parliamentary ombudsman
ruled that the criteria for the appointment were “seriously flawed”.

Iceland is no longer a democracy was the title of this posting. Well the UK is no longer a democracy. The politicians in Westminster have stolen that from you, they have given your sovereignty to a foreign power, and they have usurped democracy.

Democracy is a very fragile thing, and it must always be defended if it is to survive. What we have seen in Iceland is also happening in the 3 baltic states, it is also happening in Eastern Europe and in Greece, and it can so easily happen here.

Politicians who steal power will never freely give it back. Democracy must be fought for, and it is clear that neither this government nor the opposition are going to return to you the rights that they have denied you, nor will they freely give back the power that they have stolen.

Direct action may very soon be the only option left to the people of the UK, as their protests are denied and ignored, and our politicians drive us deeper and deeper into debt.

To the politicians I would say, Look well at what has occurred in Iceland, when the people have had enough, they WILL face you down. The EU knows this and have called an Emergency Summit on the matter.

So urgent in fact, that its not until March.

A senior EU source has told The Daily Telegraph that a March summit of
European leaders will examine the increasing unrest as unemployment
rises across Europe and cuts to social programmes bite.

By then, it could all be over. The people don't need the EU, the people don't want the EU.

In Debt? Jack Straw plans to kick you even harder

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Jack Straw in planning to increase court fees for debt proceedings by up to 233%

The plans were set out in a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) consultation document.

The cost of a debtor being summoned to
discuss their finances would go up from £30 to £100 under the new
pricing scheme.

And the charge, when courts give permission for creditors to send in the bailiffs, would increase 186% from £35 to £100.

The cost of committal proceedings, which allow authorities to take
residents who owe council tax to court, would increase 178%, from £90
to £250.

The court fee charged when a debtor is ordered to attend goes up from £45 to £50.

The new fees will raise £38m per year for the Ministry of Justice,
which faces a £46m shortfall in the courts budget next year after
similar reforms to child protection fees (which rose from £150 to £4,825) led to a collapse in income.

This is Taxation without Representation.

A spokesman for the MoJ said: “We are committed to making sure those
who face money problems are given the best support possible.

ZanuLabour Newspeak translation = When you get into trouble and you are well and truly in the shite, Jack Straw is going to kick you even harder to make sure you stay there.

The Libertarian Party finds this new fee structure to be abhorrent and working against the interests of justice. This proposed fee structure can only be to the detriment of those who are already hard pressed by the economic recession, and in conjunction with the new rules for bailiffs is very much anti citizen in nature.

Iceland protests force General Election

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Iceland to call early elections for May 9.

Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde has announced he is stepping down
and has called for early elections on May 9th.

The government has been
under growing pressure from a financial collapse that shattered the
island's economy. Speaking at a news conference Haarde said he had a
malignant tumour in his oesophagus and would not seek re-election as
leader of the Independence Party.

Protests highlighted on this blog calling for the resignation
of Haarde and the central bank governor turned violent on Thursday
accusing top officials of failing to manage the financial crisis.

Haarde's Independence Party is part of a coalition government with the
Social Democratic Alliance. It was not legally required to call a
general election until 2011.
(source Deutsche Welle)

So, now we know that people power works, when are we going to force some change in the UK.

Who would like to stand as a Libertarian Party Parliamentary Candidate?