Slight virtue through flagellation

Tory MPs are quietly seething. Speaker Bercow was bad enough but Cameron is infuriating them.

The bidding war among party leaders to win the purity expenses crown is irritating the tightwads. There is Tory round robin objecting to Cameron’s self-flagellating zeal. The Tory Star Chamber appears to be fining MPs on some of their allegedly ill-gotten gains. But the fines appear arbitrary.

 

Eleanor Laing MP was reported to have made a £1million profit on the sale of her flat. She declared it to be her main home and avoided a capital gains tax bill of £180,000. Yes it was legal. (In self-defence I emphasize that I paid mine, a very modest sum by comparison.)

Compelling Eleanor to cough up £25,000 invites the question, if it’s wrong why wasn’t she told to repay the whole £180,000? Who decides how much should be repaid? It’s either right or wrong. This is an attempt to be a slightly virtuous. It won’t wash.

There’ll be tears before bedtime.

Ectoplasm fog

English is my mother tongue. It is also the cradle language of one of our PASC Select Committee witnesses today from Lockheed Martin. Yet we could not understand each other. 

The subject was the 2011 census. As MP for the Statistics Office, I am going gently on this one. It will be the last of the ten-year censuses. There are few local jobs involved as it being handled by other parts of the Office for National Statistics. The whole thing is costing half a £billion. Shed loads of cash have been outsourced to Lockheed Martin to computerise the data collection.

The Census Form is 32 pages long. Completing it on Census day is mandatory. It is envisaged that 25% of the population will fill it out on line. I asked the Lockheed Martin man, what would happen if 15 million people spent an hour on line on Census Day. Wouldn’t the system crash? Possibly the country’s whole electricity system might be overloaded.

While I listened carefully to his explanation, which I recognized as being in English, I could not dredge any meaning from what he was saying. I told him I did not understand his reply. I asked again. What if you under-estimated and 20 or 30 million went on line simultaneously, would the system crash? He burbled on about ‘robust trials. ‘Not with 15 million people’ I suggested. But there was still no answer.

I gave up. I told him that PASC is looking at the use of Good English. I thanked him for his example of verbal ectoplasm, which we may quote as a fine example of how to speak without communicating.

Hari-kiri

What did Eric Joyce MP agree to do a television interview in these circumstances? The Scottish version of Newsnight had him bang to rights.

Parliament first

Hansard today records the answer I had from the Foreign Secretary yesterday is the heated Iraq debate. It left me and eighteen other Labour MPs no choice but to sidle through the Tory lobby. This issue is one for Parliament, not Government, to decide. Tony Blair has been consulted. The relatives of the fallen have not been heard.

Paul Flynn: Will the Foreign Secretary clarify the answer that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), who asked whether there would be another discussion on these matters and a vote? Is the only way of supporting the point made by my hon. Friend to vote against the Government amendment? The Foreign Secretary’s answer was that we would have a vote today. Would he interpret a vote in favour of the amendment as a decision by the House that it is against a further vote and a further discussion on the final proposals?

David Miliband: No. I would interpret it as indicating that my hon. Friend supports the Government amendment, which says that Sir John Chilcot has set out the appropriate way in which to conduct the inquiry. My hon. Friend has been in the House longer than I have, and I certainly would not seek to prevent him from articulating his views further at any stage in the future, but I would interpret his support for the amendment as an indication that he believes, as I do, that for all the comings and goings of the past 10 days, the Chilcot approach now meets all reasonable aspirations for a comprehensive, independent, thorough inquiry into the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.

Comments

[Kay Tie]

"Kay-Tie and the rest of awkward squad"

I wear my awkward-squad badge with pride!

[Paul Flynn]

I will publish the transcript of the 'answers' I had from the Lockheed Martin man as soon as it is available. I am told it is 'contractors-speak'. I wonder if anyone can translate it for me?

Thanks for the information about the likely crash or not. Perhaps the online contributions are spread over a few days. The idea is to record the state of the population on one specific day.

Kay-Tie and the rest of awkward squad, immigrants, poor speakers of English and migrant workers, those living in gated communities will certainly diminish the value of the results.

[DG]

I wouldn't worry about the electricity supply, most people who'll fill in their forms would have their computers on in the evening anyway. But yes, the capacity issue is huge. Wasn't that why the Working Tax Credit online scheme was abandoned?

[Tony]

Well we all know the track record on IT projects with reagrd to the Census

I suspect that the answer would have said that the census does not need to filled in on one day so the 15m will be a spread load ..

So the load projections will work on an average - the question to these guys is:

'do you have enough 'on demand' capacity if the workload on the census system exceeds the projected average ?' So is it scalable to respond to demand ?

For example the servers for the All England Tennis Club are miniscule for 50 weeks a year because traffic to the web site is low - for the next two weeks they effectively wheel in lots of extra servers to handle the load - ask 'em if they've got that set up ..

IT - don't you just love it ?

[DG]

"Tory MPs are quietly seething. Speaker Bercow was bad enough but Cameron is infuriating them."

That's a point in his favour, I guess.

[Kay Tie]

Quite how you pay tax when it's not due is rather interesting. The whole hairshirt fines concept is just bizarre. That's politics.

Oh, on the topic of the census: I shall lie through my teeth. The Government collects too much data on us already so I will do my best to make it worthless. If enough people join me then the whole project will be wrecked and the New Stasi apparatchiks will have to resort to snooping some other way.