TUC: Why the unions must raise their game

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brendan barber -more than fiery rhetoric needed. Pic courtesy Daily Telegraph

 Expect the standard sound and fury at the TUC Congress next week.  Union leaders’ rhetoric will be at fever pitch as they denounce the planned biggest cuts since 1945. Threats of another “spring of discontent” and co-ordinated strike action across the public sector will abound. But will it amount to little more than fierce words and a damp squib when it comes to the point?

 True the TUC has started well, releasing well researched reports on the cuts already announced, and promising a lobby of Parliament next month and a march against the cuts next March. Individual unions are certain to draw up strike plans to protect jobs and there is embryonic co-ordination between unions representing civil servants, fire fighters, journalists and rail workers. But there is a real issue that the effect of any strike action will be to alienate the public and play into the hands of the coalition.

So hasn’t the time come for union leaders to raise their game and think outside the box.

There are two good reasons to do this. One is that they will be daft to think that the coalition will sit idly by while they organise. The recent release to the Guardian of all the secret Cabinet committee papers (both ministerial and officials)on the 1984-85 miner’s strike show s an extraordinary resolve by Margaret Thatcher, William Whitelaw, Leon Brittan, Norman Tebbit and Peter Walker to co-ordinate action against the miners, using the law, the courts, the police , media and pit  and power station management. Often they could pre-empt and weaken the NUM’s action.

It’s not beyond the wit of the present Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, to follow his predecessor Lord Armstrong and set up a small Cabinet committee to co-ordinate action against protestors and unions should the opposition become really serious.

 This is why the unions need to be savvy. 2010 is very different to 1984. We now have mobile phones, the internet, social networking sites and an alternative festival network. The scope for instant protest abounds and with the coalition planning a small state, the resources David Cameron and Nick Clegg have at their disposal to monitor and control protests can only diminish as they cut back.

 Why can’t Bob Crow, the RMT leader and Gerry Doughty, the TSSA leader, organise a more popular free travel day as well as one day strike? If the unions asked all the members to deactivate the barriers at every tube and Overground station, will Transport for London want to prosecute thousands of its staff? The public would love them and Transport for London would lose as much revenue. Could Mark Serwotka, the PCS leader, decide to programme the VAT and Income Tax computers to refuse to send any demands out?

The mobile phone is also a brilliant for organising instant protests at any venue you might want. With Googlemaps pinpointing locations how about a “flash mob” protest when Nick Clegg  publicly announces his next constitutency surgery? Or put some fun into protest by organising a “Rock against the Cuts” festival  preferably applying to hold it in the grounds of the country estate of  one of the  millionaire Tory Cabinet ministers.

So how about it, Brendan Barber? You need a bit of imagination as well as fiery rhetoric. With luck and public support you really could turn the Big Society into the Big Protest.

Does the train take the strain? East Coast good, London Midland bad

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A helpful East Coast express: pic courtesyLocoPix

An unhelpful London Midland train

Travelling around with a recovering fractured shoulder  is not much fun. Particularly if you have to load your heavy luggage on a train. But fortunately there is a free public service offered by the rail companies to get assisted help if  you are disabled. Or is there?

I had two opposite experiences going on holiday from Berkhamsted to Edinburgh. One showed the worst aspect of rail franchise companies, the other the best.

I contacted both London Midland and East Coast Trains by e-mail in advance for help. East Coast trains replied by return, saying my e-mail did not make it clear how much help I needed and giving me a number to ring them for more help. London Midland did not respond and never did.

When I rang East Coast they could not have been more helpful. They took details of the trains, the seat reservation, and because I wasn’t sure how we would arrive at Kings Cross where to go to get assistance on the station.

I then rang London Midland on a freephone number on their website. No reply, not even an answering service and finally a member of staff disconnected the call.

So no help for the journey from London Midland. East Coast – despite the train being overcrowded because of two other cancellations at Kings Cross – kept their bargain. With the luggage space full, the porter obligingly moved the cases to the guards van. At Edinburgh Waverley there was a porter to meet us as we got off the train ( they wanted the seat reservations so he could meet us at our carriage). On the way back to Kings Cross exactly the same experience – the porter even found one case after another passenger had moved it.

Is there a political point in this?  East Coast is state owned, and seems to train its staff to beleive in public service. London Midland is not. It is a state subsidised profit making private operation – whom I have already  crossed swords with issuing ” ghost tickets” at different prices from Berkhamsted. (see earlier blog on this site).

My suspicion is that London Midland’s  disabled help service is a fake, just a cyberspace invention on their website invented by their pr department, to make it look as though they care. Or perhaps their training programme for staff centres on how to lose e-mails and put down phones on customers, thus saving them any inconvenience or cutting into their large proft margins.

Either way East Coast deserve congratulations, the managers of London Midland  need their shoulders breaking.

London Midland’s  response is  attached as a comment to this piece ( see above).

Four Cabinet Ministers and a Tory special relationship “charity” get off lightly

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Henry Kissinger- a star speaker at Atlantic Bridge's uncharitable events- picture courtesy UPI

Any political activist knows that party politics and charitable status don’t mix. And if they do and someone complains the effects can be toxic for the organisation and any leading figures involved.

The Smith Institute found this to its cost when it was torn apart by a Charity Commission investigation two years ago accusing its trustees and organisers of appearing to be too party political and too close to Gordon Brown. The damage to Labour was enormous and the Commission used its powers to hold a full inquiry and directed its trustees to reform the organisation or else.

This week it was the turn of the Tories – or did you notice it?

 Atlantic Bridge- patron Margaret Thatcher  and an advisory board composed of four prominent Tory Cabinet ministers, Liam Fox, George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove – was given a year to change its act- after facing exactly the same allegations as Labour. The charity which promotes the “special relationship” with the US – was found in a damning report to be little more than a promotion for Thatcherite party political beliefs and neo-Cons in the US.

But one reason why it may not have hit the headlines is that the Charity Commission was far softer on the offending Tory charity. For a start its press officer advised after they received the initial complaint from Labour activist Stephen Newton that the word investigate could not be used as they had not launched a formal investigation. Instead the phrase “engaging with the charity to address concerns” through a regulatory compliance case was used instead.

Now nine months later the report has been issued with the almost same findings against The Smith Institute. The key phrase is the finding that the charity is “promoting a policy which is closely associated with the Conservative Party.”

But instead of a six month direction the charity has been given a year to change and only then is there a threat against the charity’s trustees of further action.

But more significantly while it is clear that the charity had broken the rules for at least seven years nothing is being done about its tax free position.

These are not minor sums. This was the charity that was charging £700 a seat for VIPs and £400 a seat for ordinary mortals to hear Henry Kissinger speak at a luxury London hotel last year and see him presented with a Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom. The commission’s report discloses that the charity admits this event was part of a tax free fund raising drive. The donors – probably mainly higher rate taxpayers – could claim the money against their tax returns. And it is now clear that Atlantic Bridge can’t claim the same charitable status as the National Trust.

So why hasn’t this been referred to Revenue and Customs?  Why aren’t more searching questions not being asked of the advisory panel of Cabinet ministers who presided over an organisation that clearly broke charity rules?

Atlantic Bridge is not actually being repentant either. In a statement they reluctantly promised to follow the Commission’s ruling and have taken down their website for “updating”. But it expressed its  “ disappointment” at the Commission’s ruling  and refused to answer any questions about the role of their trustees or advisory panel.

 The Charity Commission is being a little too careful in handling this scandal. I wonder why.

A similar version of this blog has now appeared on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.

Misdiagnosis,bad prognosis then last minute brilliance: my treatment by the NHS

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preparing to go under the knife(not my operation)

Being treated by the NHS is like riding a rollercoaster or watching England play in the World Cup ( even as a non football fanatic).

One minute you cannot believe professionals can make such errors, the next you can’t quite believe how they brilliantly they got their act together.

I had the misfortune to trip over a rock on a remote headland path on the Isles of Scilly – falling flat on my face with my arm outstretched skidding across another rock. I was unable to get up unaided.

 I should have known not to do this except on Tuesdays between 2.0 pm and 4.0pm – the only time there are X ray facilities on these  islands some 30 miles from the Cornish mainland. I was later to find that while Scilly has  brilliant first aiders and paramedics who use a jet ambulance boat, its cottage hospital at St. Mary’s is a one man and a dog operation.

And unfortunately for me this was a Thursday afternoon- so no x ray without calling in an air ambulance to Penzance. I was diagnosed as to have nothing wrong with me except  sprained and badly bruised muscles and sent home with Paracetamol and Ibuprofen.

For the rest of our holiday we spent quietly on Tresco. Only after visiting my GP in Berkhamsted nearly a week later and being sent off to casaulty at Watford General Hospital, did I find I had fractured my shoulder in three places. But never mind, the prognosis was that the bones would heal by themselves. I would be sent to the fracture clinic at Watford to arrange physio.

A week later and seen by orthopaedic doctors at the clinic, it suddenly emerged that I needed an operation to restore my shoulder and upper arm to full mobility. And worse still there was only a week left to do  it, because my bones were well on the way to trying to heal themselves  in the wrong position.

Here despite a horrendous reputation trying to run a busy overstretched hospital on a  shoestring (West Herts having closed down our nearest  a&e hospital Hemel Hempstead), fingers were (metaphorically) pulled out.

Within two hours, I had a CT scan, bloods and swabs taken in case I was carrying MRSA without knowing it. Within 24 hours the hospital found me an orthopaedic surgeon, South African Andrew Irwin, who specialises in smashed shoulders and upper arms.

They had a problem- no bed. A hospital administrator -Jane Ward- came to the rescue ( remember those people politicians despise because they don’t  do front line care) and three hours before I was due to come in-had found one.

My 44 hr stay on Flaunden  general surgery ward was a minor miracle -with almost every NHS cliche in the book. The surgeon turned out to be the typical no bedside manner type – in the one minute consultation- it was simply  “you have a smashed shoulder. We’ll fix it.” The nursing care-despite staff shortages- was superb with one staffer, Trish, doing a double night shift and staying on an extra hour to  complete unfinished tasks. And while the operation took six hours -described as ” a tricky one” by a junior surgeon the next day, I actually did feel safe before and afterwards.

Slight shock at being turfed out with one hour’s notice the next day- but I suspect that with one or two patients with undiagnosed infections surrounding me, it was for my own good. Yet they managed to get me to see a phsyiotherapist, get a final X ray ( when I discovered I have a metal plate and a long pin in my shoulder), get some drugs and talk to a pain nurse and after a strong representations from my anxious wife, arrange for patient transport home.

The experience suggests -despite Labour’s spending boom –  an NHS much on the edge trying to provide best patient outcomes. My shoulder is starting to recover. All I can say is that if David Cameron or Nick Clegg – start thinking of squeezing the NHS in any way- I shall use it to thump them when I meet in the House of Commons as part of my job.

Roast beef rebels plan Cameron Stew

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Will Tory Roast Beef Rebels carve up Cameron? pic: courtesy BBC

Today’s first tranche of  spending cuts  will be small beer to rebellious right wing Tories  who are now heading for a serious  battle with David Cameron.

Already angry the he has given too much away to his new coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, Tory conspirators are already gathering in Commons dining rooms to plot the blue lines he should never cross.

The full story is in my blog at http://www.progressonline.org.uk/ in my Tory Tracker column.

  Cameron may have won a vote  by rewriting the election rules for the 1922 committee to allow fellow ministers to vote but his decision infuriated his own whips and some of his own Cabinet colleagues – who seem to have been given no prior warning. And it could come back to haunt him this week. 

All this is going to do is to  further anger some of  his biggest  critics -the Cornerstone group- the Thatcherite No Turning Back Group and  Conservative Way Forward.

The first lot are now dominating Dining Room A  in increasing numbers   where they plot over traditional English Fare -like roast lamb and beef – hence the name the ” roast  beef rebels”. Their champions  vary from Iain Duncan Smith, the new works and pension secretary, to young right of centre Tory blades like Greg Hands.

They are starting to attract support from mainstream Tories who are reporting bad news from the golf courses as angry middle class  Conservative activities find out they may well be paying 40 per cent capital gains tax on their second home or seaside flat – which had been earmarked as their ” second pension”.

One of them faced with people saying to him ” I did not vote Tory for this” had to lamely reply ” It is a Liberal Democrat policy”.

The growing anger means that Camerom will find it an increasingly rocky road- as cuts and tax rises bite. Today covered the easy cuts, tomorrow will be different. And Cameron will have to be careful that the roast beef rebels don’t turn his new coalition into an overcooked stew.

Election Campaign:What the politicians and civil servants didn’t tell us

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Are you voting without them telling you all the facts?

The election is virtually over. Tomorrow  you can cast your vote.  The parties will concentrate on their key messages over the last hours before polling day. But have all the issues been covered? No way.
 
Just as there is a black hole in all the parties’ planned spending cuts, there are lots of issues that have not been properly covered and many more that have been completely ignored.
They fall into three groups: there are issues that have been discussed but  not properly explored; there are issues that have been ignored by the political parties; and, perhaps surprisingly, there have been issues that Whitehall – not the politicians – has buried under the carpet.
 
The biggest issue that has not been properly explored is immigration. It was partly catapulted into the election by Gordon Brown’s “Bigotgate” gaffe after meeting pensioner Gillian Duffy, but the parties have tried to obscure the facts.
 
The Tories have promised to introduce a cap on immigration – but it will not apply to the 27 existing members of the European Community. They account for 80 per cent of immigration – according to Channel Four’s fact check file – almost 1.8 million people coming into Britain against 1 million Brits going to live in the EU.
 
While those coming from outside the EU account for only 20 per cent of immigration, according to a BBC analysis for the last recorded year, 8,000 more people left than came in. In effect this makes Cameron’s cap almost meaningless.
 
The Liberal Democrats, while promising to give an amnesty to illegal immigrants who have been here for 10 years, estimate it could help 600,000 – but, as Nick Clegg admits himself, nobody knows where they are. UKIP would block immigration altogether – but that will mean leaving the EU as well. The Liberal Democrats’ policy would mean hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants paying taxes, while Labour say they would deport them all, if they can find them. So more heat than light.
 
Then there are buried issues. The biggest is pensions and how we are going to fund an ageing population. The Tories have promised to raise the pension age to 66 but not until 2016, after the next election.
 
And while the election is taking place, more companies are ending final salary schemes, which will make it more difficult to get a good pension, and the cost of providing care is going up all the time. The parties have touched on the cost of care but the multi billion pounds for pensions has not even been debated. Anyone thinking seriously about this would know that something has got to give.
 
Similarly, for younger people, one issue that might have been raised is the draconian measure – rushed through Parliament just before the election – to curb illegal file-sharing.  There is now a law that could give the music and video business powers to demand internet providers disconnect people from the internet. This has been barely mentioned.
 
Other issues hardly touched on include the environment, overseas aid, transport and housing.
 
But probably the most surprising thing that happened during the election was a decision by Whitehall – which runs the country while the PM is busy campaigning – to ban the release of new statistics which would have revealed how much you are funding farmers and agribusiness through the European Union.
 
Last Friday the EU expected every one of their 27 members to release details of the billions of euros spent subsidising farmers and big companies to produce food for last year. Every country except the UK published these figures.
 
In Whitehall, civil servants took the decision that to release this information in the middle of an election campaign would be wrong. They justified this on the grounds that some Parliamentary candidates might be receiving the  subsidies. I quote the explanation: “This decision reflects the need to maintain, and be seen to maintain, the impartiality of the UK Civil Service, given the potential risk that … payment  information relating to any individuals involved in the election might be used as part of election campaigning.” Possibly as many as 80 candidates, mainly Conservative, and a few UKIP and Liberal Democrats are benefitting from this.
 
Extraordinarily, in Scotland – where there is a devolved government – the figures were released. They showed that 19,000 farmers and businesses shared nearly £600m of taxpayers’ money. The figure for the UK was over £3 billion the previous year.
 
But the effect was to close down any political debate on the cost of the EU to the taxpayer. Other statistics like hospital admissions, road statistics and all the economic data have all been released.
 
So it is not only politicians who have limited debate during the election.

This blog is also on the msn website as part of their general election coverage.

Whitehall’s censorship of farming subsidies spares Tories (and UKIP’s) blushes

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tucking into censored farm subsidy pic courtesy daily mail

Over the bank holiday weekend senior civil servants running the country took an extraordinary decision to ban the public  from seeing  information because  they thought it was so controversial that it would disrupt election campaigning.

They decided to protect candidates from being asked questions on the issue and thought it best the public be left in ignorance about the facts.

 What was this issue? Not some horrendous economic figure, some real facts on immigration. No, it was decision not to reveal which farmers and agribusinesses scooped up some £3 billion from the taxpayer from EU farm subsidies last year.

On Friday statistics were published simultaneously in the other 26 EU countries revealing who had been paid what – it is part of a victory by European journalists to force countries under freedom of information acts to release all this previously secret information.

But in London – against an EU directive – the information was banned. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs website says: “Due to the general election campaign, this website will not be updated with the 2009 figures until after the election.”

A letter from a DEFRA official to Jack Thurston, head of farmsubsidy.org, which campaigns for transparency for EU payments, says why:

“This decision reflects the need to maintain, and be seen to maintain, the impartiality of the UK Civil Service, given the potential risk that CAP payment  information relating to any individuals involved in the election might be used as part of election campaigning.”

Yet ministries continue to publish information on hospital admissions and roads just to name two. And in Scotland because of devolved government – they have taken the opposite decision. They published their figures over the weekend –revealing that 19,000 farmers and agribusinesses shared nearly £600m of public money and the world has not fallen apart north of the border.

So who does this protect? Initial research by farmsubsidy.org reveals that possibly up to 70 of the 650 Tory candidates standing at the election could be receiving some sort of subsidy. Up to half a dozen UKIP candidates- who campaign against the EU- could be receiving EU cash as well as a smattering of Liberal Democrat and BNP candidates. On the Tory side they have discovered that the declared postcode for receipt of EU subsidies is often the same one as used by a local Conservative Association, suggesting that leading officials of the local parties are also receiving subsidies. These are all taken from the previous year’s subsidy figures.

 Yet we won’t know, thanks to Whitehall, until after the election- even though the EU has made it clear in an article in the EU Observer today that it is disappointed with Britain and intends to write to the new government pointing out it is not in line with the EU directive.

Frankly disappointment is too weak a word. It is scandal that unelected officials should decide what information should be made public and when. The decision is also partisan in that it appears to protect opposition party candidates more than Labour candidates from scrutiny – particularly in the case of the Conservatives.

Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, should reverse this now. Otherwise it bodes very badly if we are in “ hung Parliament “ territory when Whitehall  will be effectively  running the country while politicians sort out a new government. If officials are going to select what information the public should know and what should be kept secret, they are exceeding their brief.

This blog is also on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.

Election debate: Why you should treat Dave,Nick and Gordo like dodgy car salesmen

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nick clegg:pic courtesy daily mail

gordon brown:pic courtesy apoliticus

david cameron: pic courtesy greenpeace

Tonight is the last time you can see the three party leaders go head to head before polling day. The subject for the last TV debate on BBC1- the future of the economy – could not be more important for you, your family and your future.

 This time don’t treat the clash like watching the X factor. Instead think of your vote as the equivalent of writing a very big cheque at a car showroom for a dream motor or at a department store for a designer kitchen. You are going to spend a lot of money. You want a good product that lasts, is not going to cost you a bomb to service or repair, and some guarantee that you can afford to pay for it.

Now treat the three party leaders not as politicians but like the salesmen you would encounter on the forecourt or in the shop and take a very critical view of how they pitch their sale to you.

On the economy you already have your own independent Which? report provided by the Institute for Fiscal Studies about the huge hidden failings in the product. Look it up before the debate. In short you will discover, just like many salespeople, the politicians may not have deliberately lied, but they have seriously misled you about the huge cost of the product you are about to buy.

They have not told you the price they will charge you to bail out the bankers either in lost services or higher taxes and charges.

 The scale of their deception is highest among the Tories, pretty bad from Labour and slightly better from the Liberal Democrats.

David Cameron – the smoothest of the salesmen – has concentrated on the nice extras you will get from the Tories – an extra £3 a week for married families, no extra bills on your national insurance, a freeze on your council tax.

But he has not told you how you are going to cope with a whopping £52.4 billion in public spending cuts- beginning weeks after May 7. It’s like 

a salesman diverting you to look at the car’s funky stereo system while not telling you the motor does five miles to the gallon.

To get such cuts the Tories will have to go much further than anything they have said. You are looking at things like a dramatic rise in the retirement age – not their stated 66 but more like 70 – or doubling commuter rail fares if they  have to remove the transport subsidy. Or VAT will have to go up. Their unfunded cuts are the largest of any party.

 Labour’s salesman, grumpy Gordon Brown, has promised to exempt front line staff in the NHS, schools and the police from cuts. What he hasn’t told you is that this means you are going to face much steeper cuts to find the £52.1 billion of savings from other departments like local government, the arts, housing, transport, social security and  defence .And this is on top of higher national insurance. Or again VAT will go up. The problem with Labour is that you have to pay more to safeguard what they have promised to exempt and this will happen from next April.

The Liberal Democrats salesman genial Nick Clegg is the nearest the IFS find to being anywhere near honest. They have to find the lowest sum – some £34.5 billion.

They may not have to introduce more tax increases but they will have to introduce more cuts. Their policy sees a meaningful tax cut worth £700 a year to anybody earning between £10,000 and £113,000. Those earning less than £10,000 including many pensioners on low incomes will be exempt from tax altogether.

Better off families with children will lose out on child tax credits, lose their child trust fund and the NHS, schools and the police will not be exempt from cuts unlike Labour. What you have from the Liberal Democrats is the nearest to a consumer product guarantee but you still don’t know the call out charges.

By the end of the debate it is likely that none of the leaders will have  genuinely spelled out the real cost of their policies to tackle the deficit. It is up to you to decide which is the least worst option. Unlike a disgruntled shopper, you can’t entirely walk away because you are going to get one of the products anyway.

You also should not forget that these were the people who conned you over their expense claim system and you should not allow them to con you again. Also ignore the distractions over hung Parliaments, that is a problem for the politicians not you.

Remember also there are other candidates standing from the Nationalists,Green Party, UKIP and independents. It’s your vote.

This blog also appears on the UK site  of MSN’s general election feature page.

Has Cameron blown it?

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Cameron- what's going wrong: Picture courtesy Greenpeace

In an election that began competing with the Icelandic volcano for volatility and unpredictability, it is probably tempting fate to write any epitaph for David Cameron midway through the campaign.

 Yet what has become clear is that Dave has not “sealed the deal” with the electorate and has squandered a ten point plus lead which should have ensured that he easily formed a government on May 7, albeit with a small majority.

If he fails he faces a damning post mortem by his party but the seeds of his own potential destruction have been around before the campaign even started. They lie in the weakest links in his own shadow cabinet- George Osborne, his chancellor, and Chris Grayling, his shadow home secretary.

The  rise in Liberal Democrat support following the first debate is not so surprising when you compare the quality of the two key spokesmen backing Clegg with their Tory counterparts-Vince Cable dominates Osborne and Chris Huhne, a former leadership contender, outsmarts Grayling. The weakest link in the Liberal Democrats was until then Clegg who? Then came his first performance on our TV screens, reinforced by the second.

Osborne has been tainted ever since a Parliamentary investigation into the undeclared funding for his office during the last session (Tenth report  Standards and Privileges Committee. Conduct of Mr George Osborne HC 560) revealed that it had received some £487,000 of donors’ cash to fund his office from high fliers in the city and a scion of the Rothschild family.

What is extraordinary is that these huge sums to fund research and the access he had to brains in the City have failed to produce an economic policy to challenge Labour. Instead there seems to have been a combination of policies that would particularly benefit the donors (the big hike in the threshold for inheritance tax), a rush to introduce public spending cuts and a claim that a £6 billion jobs tax would snuff out the entire economic recovery..

The latter appeared to be holed last week when Sir Terry Leahy, the head of Tesco’s, announced he was not supporting a Tory co-ordinated call to cut the job tax – but was creating 9000 new jobs in the UK despite it. No explanation from Mr Osborne on that one.

Grayling has been effectively marginalised by Cameron during the campaign. He is symbolic of the fault line dividing the attempt by the leader to present a new “green blue” caring Tory agenda and the traditional Tory “ slash and cut taxes” backwoodsman – still the majority of old Tory voters. Expected to toe the new party line on gay tolerance, his mask slipped when he defended a Christian B&B owner turning away a gay couple.

Grayling is an Old Tory in New Conservative clothing – and the electorate are rumbling this. They don’t know where the Tory party really stands or if they are traditional Tories, what they stand for. This made the vacuous “Time for Change” slogan open to easy hijack from Nick Clegg.

Of course, Cameron might just bounce back to squeeze a minute majority by polling day, but time is now against him. Votes can be cast by post from this week so by the time the third debate takes place  it will be too late to sway millions.

The right wing press attack on the Liberal Democrats also had a fatal flaw – the majority of the new voters attracted to Clegg are the internet savvy under 35 generation.They don’t buy the papers anyway, so it would have zilch influence.

Whatever happens in this election – short of a miracle doubling of the Tory lead- Cameron has thrown away the Tories best chance for 13 years.

This blog is also on the Progress website.

Own Goal by the Revenue:Why we must foot their bill

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gordon brown:His watch saw inept off shore tax deal for revenue -pic courtsey apoliticus

If you have just had a new tax code or VAT demand, it is likely that the Revenue and Customs office that issued it is managed in a tax haven.

And if you have recently visited an old Abbey National office of Santander Bank you are on the premises of an off shore managed office.

You probably didn’t know either. Today an analysis by Parliament’s watchdog the National Audit Office reveals the off shore company that managed both deals are legally set to avoid paying hundreds of millions of tax to the very offices making tax demands on you.

The findings by the Commons Public Accounts Committee is the latest revelation on signing an outsourcing contract 8 years ago which MPs describe today as “ highly damaging to the Department’s reputation”.

 In effect to save an estimated £1.2 billion Revenue and Customs signed a £3.3 billion contract with a firm now called Mapeley to hand over for 20 years the ownership and management of 591 tax offices including the freehold of 132 offices to an offshore company then based in the Cayman Islands.

Today the cost of contract has risen to £3.87 billion, the maximum potential savings have dropped by £300 million and the department has found that it cannot recover its own VAT from the rent. It will have to draw up contingency plans costing over £100m should the company walk away following a decision to close 130 tax offices as part of the first wave of efficiency savings.

But the most extraordinary revelation is the rare glimpse given into tax avoidance by auditors from the NAO. After a stormy hearing at the Commons public accounts committee, the company allowed the NAO access to its offshore books to see the effect of the loss of tax revenue to the government. The figures, hidden at the back of the report, are staggering.

If Mapeley, now part of the US offshore Fortress Group was based in Britain rather than Bermuda, the tax coffers would be swelled by £184m. Easily enough to build a teaching hospital or renovate a lot of schools. In fact the company is expected to pay £14m –saving £170m. That is hardly enough to renovate a big secondary school. Furthermore Gordon Brown’s efficiency savings by closing down tax offices is going to give the offshore company a tax bonanza if it can get a good price for them. Only the recession is stopping them.

These tax savings are only on the Revenue and Customs contract. The company has a similar deal with the old Abbey National and if branch closures follow bank mergers under Santander, logic dictates even more tax savings.

No wonder the NAO concludes in its prosaic way; “There is unlikely to be any overall benefit to the Exchequer from such arrangements as any apparent savings for the Department are accompanied by reduced tax revenues.”

With everybody living in this country having to pay more tax and face cuts in services to pay for the bail out of the banks, the prospect of the Treasury being deprived by the  Revenue of extra tax is obscene.

The people who negotiated this deal should hang their heads in shame and the politicians, and that includes Gordon Brown, chancellor at the time, should be brought to account for such an inept negotiation.

For while we debate the scale of tax rises and cuts in the general election campaign, the directors of the company involved must be laughing all the way to their offshore bank.

This blog is also on The Guardian’s Comment is Free website.