mudhook

Has the Conservative party changed? No longer the nasty party but centrist and caring and kinder; for example, determined to tackle child poverty?

This matters for families in Cornwall: I have explored child and family poverty among some in parts of Cornwall several times on this mudhook website.

Begin by looking at the record. This is the party that sat back when last in government while the proportion of children in poverty doubled; that since has opposed Labour’s introduction of the minimum wage; that periodically fumes about lone mothers and tells us marriage (between one man and one woman) will save the planet. This is the party that cut the link between the state pension and pay rises, thereby costing pensioners dearly – something Labour is putting right and which will benefit thousands of people in Cornwall, as has the minimum wage.

The Conservatives are the party that gave us privatised expensive water and privatised expensive trains. This is the party whose government approach to welfare was to bayonet the wounded. Its record on poverty is appalling.

At present the Tories are weeping publicly for those losing out in the Labour government’s 10 pence tax folly or villainy. Last year when Frank Field moved an amendment in the Commons to assess the impact of the abolition of the 10 pence rate and to mitigate any adverse effects, the Tories abstained. No Tory tears then.

Now look at this, perhaps a glimpse of Tory future. The other day on the launch of a reactionary childcare report it both welcomed the report and promised the party would consider its ideas. At present £1.5 billion of help is targeted on low paid working mothers; the reactionary, regressive ideas that the Tories are considering are to give all mothers, working or stay-at-home, poor or comfortable, and, yes, including the very rich, a flat rate tax-free payment of about £55 a week. This would cost around £5.4 billion and be paid for in part by abolishing the £1.5 billion of the childcare part of the working tax credit and the one-off sure start maternity grant; that is, money which at present goes to the poorest working mothers, including those in Cornwall. I don’t know where the rest of the cost will come from, widows’ mites perhaps.

The idea, then, is to take from the working poor and give to the comfortable and well-off: and this is what the Tories promise they will consider. The very thing that they now denounce the 10 pence folly for. To me this looks like the same old Tories after all.

Equo ne credite.

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You can read more about these reactionary ideas at:

The cost of caring Guardian 22 April 2008

The Tories are eyeing up a plan to take money from the poor to give to the middle classes Times 23 April 2008

Policy Exchange parental care allowance

PS 28 April 2008:
And perhaps contrary to my views, here’s a joint initiative.

Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis (Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they are bringing gifts). Laocoon warning the Trojans, in Vergil’s Aeneid 2.48-49.

Some of the lowest paid people in the UK are presently worse off because the Labour budget has abolished the ten pence income tax rate, though belatedly the government is perhaps putting this right. I explain here (Soaking the poor) why I think about 48 000 are affected in Cornwall.

I’ve looked at some publicly accessible Cornish nationalist websites. Not one of those websites I’ve looked at, as far as I can see, has discussed this pauperisation of the poor in Cornwall, let alone protested it.

An odd silence.

Of course, individual nationalists may be protesting to their MP or the chancellor.

There is a moving account in today’s Guardian of a group of schoolchildren at Tintagel school from the 1940s. It looks at their health through life and shows well the chances and changes of life people face.

Incidentally, some of the people have remained in Cornwall or have returned here but others are found across England. Every corner of Britain knows its own diaspora.

As we glide effortlessly into the unitary set up, let me recall the present political disposition of Cornwall.

In 2005 there were elections for the eighty two county council seats and a general election for the five seats; in 2007 there were elections for the six district councils, elections for the whole council in five of the districts and for a third in Penwith. The results of these give us the present party make-up of Cornwall.

Overall nearly 800 000 votes were cast in the three sets of elections. Here they are in percentages:

General election 2005
Liberal Democrats 44.4, Conservatives 31.8, Labour 15.9, UKIP 5, MK 1.4, Greens 0.7, all others 0.9

County council elections 2005
Liberal Democrats 39.2, Conservatives 24.1, Independents 19.5, Labour 10.5, MK 3.2, Greens 1.3, UKIP 1.1, all others 1.1

District elections 2007
Liberal Democrats 36.1, Conservatives 30.7, Independents 20.0, MK 3.9, Labour 3.5, UKIP 2.5, Greens 0.7, all others 2.6.

There are caveats.

These figures do not compare the same seats over time but different seats. The aim is to give a general county snapshot using the latest figures available in the three sets.

In the county and district elections some seats had more than one councillor elected and so people had more than one vote. The percentages are based on totals of votes not ballot papers. The “others” include unlabelled candidates, Liberals (a separate party from Liberal Democrats), two BNP candidates, and Veritas. Uncontested seats are excluded.

The votes cast for a party depend in part on how many candidates stand for that party though how many candidates a party puts up reflects its organisational and membership health and its estimate of its chances.

The parties perform differently in the seats and these overall figures, which represent general averages of real votes, do not reveal those differences. A couple of very popular candidates do wonders for a small party’s total vote and percentage and make it difficult to assess that party’s general standing with the electorate. These considerations suggest that in local elections at any rate some people do not vote only for a party.

The general election throws up very different results so here are the two local government sets in percentages of votes cast, county 2005 and districts 2007, more than half a million votes:

Liberal Democrats 37.9, Conservatives 26.9, Independents 19.7, Labour 7.5, MK 3.5, UKIP 1.7, Greens 1.1, Others 1.7.

Finally, these figures are about people’s choices. Seats won are a different matter, about power.

The next elections are in spring 2009 for the unitary council.

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Bewildered in the maze of schools: Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An essay on criticism

About 48 000 households in Cornwall worse off

Labour argued for and introduced a 10 pence income tax rate because, it said, it was fairer to the low paid and would make work pay and thus be an incentive to work for the poor. I think in fact that the best way to help the poor would be to raise the tax free threshold and to cut regressive indirect taxes such as VAT, but Labour chose another, less efficient way. Nevertheless Labour did act on tax and also created a minimum wage to help the low paid.

In his 2007 budget Gordon Brown announced the abolition of the 10 pence income tax rate. The change comes into effect tomorrow.

Belatedly some more Labour MPs have just realised that this abolition will leave about 5.3 million households worse off. These are largely the households without dependent children and who do not have tax credits and who have incomes of between about £5400 and £18 500 a year. Way back in October 2007 the government gave its estimate to Frank Field of how many would be worse off and even said 900 000 of those had incomes below £10 000 a year – actually the number refers to the household reference person (Hansard 18 October 2007 column 1266W).

Field was on to this unfairness at the time of the 2007 budget and tried to get an impact assessment of tax changes on different groups and transitional arrangements if necessary for those on the lowest pay: his clause was rejected by Labour MPs though a handful of six Labour MPs and most Libdems voted for it, along with a few others (Hansard 25 June 2007 column 108 onwards). Julia Goldsworthy and Matthew Taylor both voted for Field’s clause and Dan Rogerson was a teller for it.

I can estimate how many households in Cornwall are adversely affected by the abolition of the 10 pence rate by comparing the number of households in Cornwall with the number in the UK and those adversely affected in the UK. This arithmetic suggests that suggests about forty eight thousand households in Cornwall are worse off because of the abolition of the 10 pence rate. As the proportion of low income households in Cornwall is greater than in the UK generally, the number affected is probably greater too.

Labour has done much, though nothing like enough, to help the poor since 1997 while keeping the economy sound and the bulk of the electorate on side. It has wrought a sea change since the barbarian days of the Tory governments 1979-1997. Things are now beginning to fall apart. It is difficult to understand this 10 pence tax policy. Labour is making a lot of low paid people worse off and doing it on purpose. Is this what people voting Labour thought they were voting for? How does this square with the minimum wage? This policy of soaking the poor is pitiable and shameful. The government should put its mistake right and ensure the low paid are not worse off.

PS The Conservatives officially abstained in the 25 June 2007 vote.

The office for national statistics (ONS) has published some estimates of life expectancy at birth for the 8797 wards in England and Wales for 1999-2003. As well as giving the expectancy in years the ONS also assign them to five groups (quintiles) based on life expectancy. The tables are here and an explanation, which should be read to understand the data, is here. If you read the explanation you will see why the title of this post, while possibly intriguing, is wrong.

There are 122 wards in Cornwall. Twenty four are in the top (ie longest-living) England and Wales quintile, thirty five in the second quintile, thirty three in the third, twenty seven in the fourth, and only three in the fifth. Those unhappy three wards are St Enoder, St Ives South, and Penzance East.

The range in Cornwall wards is from 83.2 years to 75 years and that is disturbing but much less than the whole range for England and Wales. It is clear from the data that Cornwall generally does well in life expectancy.

There’s a capital story in the West Briton of 27 March 2008 about Richard (Dickie) Jose, born in Lanner near Redruth in 1862, died 1941. I had not heard of him before.

He emigrated to the USA when fourteen and in poverty after his father, a copper miner, had died and became by his twenties a famed countertenor singer. Thanks to enterprising people, his singing from the first decade of the twentieth century is now available on a cd.

Here’s some more about him.