This is Rupert Matthews's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Rupert Matthews's activity
Rupert Matthews
England
Recent Activity
I think NO.6 just about sums up the LibDems. Tactical, not strategic, has been their reaction to almost everything. I first spotted this in a big way back in the '90s. They were strong in local government, but opposed the community charge for short term electoral advantage and thus threw away the chance for local government to be more free of central government financially. They don't change
Conservatives worry about Clegg's increasingly petulant reaction to EU veto
By Tim Montgomerie Follow Tim on Twitter Conservative insiders are worried that the fallout from the EU veto might be greater than they first expected. While Lib Dems may be unable to reverse the veto (which Cable brazenly told Andrew Marr was a political act by Cameron) they might sabotage ot...
Well said Roger. Government continues to think that it alone can pick economic winners (British Leyland anyone?), but it never works. Huhne's madness is being driven by political dogma, not by scientific evidence nor economic reality.
Roger Helmer MEP: Green Jobs? What Green Jobs?
By Roger Helmer MEP (A wind turbine self-immolates, but that's nothing compared to the damage they do to the economy) Chris Huhne, described as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, has no time for any carping or questioning about his energy policy. Sceptics point out that increasi...
I think that a major problem for you, Larrie, and others like you is that increasing numbers of us no longer buy into the whole "climate change is bad and entirely the fault of humans" thing. We don't swallow whole Lord Stern's views and we no longer are willing to sit adoringly at the feet of climate scientists and accept what they say.
Matthew Sinclair: The political price the Conservatives are paying for embracing the green rip-off
Today my new book Let them eat carbon is out. It looks at the incredible cost of failing climate change policies; the special interests profiting; the corporate lobbying and taxpayer-funded environmentalist ideology driving it all; the myth of green jobs; and much more. But what I wanted to fo...
A typically insightful piece by Mr Bridgen. I particularly liked the comment about Local Directors of Public Health. I had not thought of them...
Andrew Bridgen MP: Failure to introduce the NHS reforms would be tantamount to caving in to innovation-stifling Stalinists whose views have perpetuated poor health outcomes for too long
Andrew Bridgen is Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire. When I look up a definition for the National Health Service, the most common definition is ‘the system of national medical services since 1948, financed mainly by taxation’. This seems a fair enough explanation. Medical servi...
On the basis of recent press stories about green policies, Huhne has taken leave of his senses - I trust coalition will not go along with such suicidal daftness.
Three reasons to respect the Liberal Democrats
By Paul Goodman This isn't a great time for relations between the Coalition partners. Which set me thinking: is there any reason at all for Conservatives to respect the Liberal Democrats? I can think of three. They're playing their part in helping to eliminate the structural deficit. Getting...
Well done an d well deserved.
Alex Deane elected as Common Councilman in the City of London
by Paul Goodman Cry Freedom in the City. Let it scrub its DNA records, tear down any CCTV cameras happen to be in place, and steel itself for the full disclosure of the last drop of information: Alex Deane has been elected as a "common councilman", as the post is called. Doesn't he look comm...
Well said Andrew, a nicely argued article. Of course, the bail outs are not about saving Ireland, Portugal or Greece at all. They are really about saving the Euro, which as you correctly point out is a political project not an economic one.
Andrew Bridgen MP: Bailing out Portugal would be throwing good money after bad and urgently needs to be debated in Parliament
Andrew Bridgen is Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire. In 1999 I was actively involved in the Business for Sterling and NO campaigns, working and campaigning against Britain’s adoption of the Euro. Like many businessmen and women and who understood economics, I could see that the Eur...
"Local peace pacts"? I think not. Peace pacts imposed from on high would, I think be more likely.
Rule change eases the way for Coalition candidates
Tim Montgomerie The Daily Mail reports of a rule change that some will see as making it easier for candidates to stand as joint Lib/Con candidates at the next General Election: "Ministers are to change the law to allow candidates standing for two parties at the same time to put a joint emblem ...
Thank you for your comments.
Starting with Donald Trump - "So what you're basically saying is that schools need to be built like prisons and students like convicts?" - and I think Furor may have been making a similar point. No this is not what I am saying. What I was trying to get at is that schools need to provide a safe learning environment for pupils, but that the open-plan buildings favoured over the past half century or so fail to do this. I am glad to note that you do at least accept my basic point that the building can affect behaviour.
Donald has also mentioned two other points in separate paragraphs which are, I think, quite closely related. He claims teachers cannot be expected to control 30+ students, then later talks about changes in discipline. I would agree that disciplinary changes make it more difficult to control higher numbers of pupils, but the built environment also contributes to this problem as do teaching methods for that matter. There are a number of inter-related issues here. In the original article I was seeking to highlight one that I feel does not get the attention it deserves in the popular discourse on this subject.
John asks "Or are you saying that we all should be living behind high walls and subjected to 'firm discipline'?" No, I am not. I am saying that for pupils to be able to be educated they need to be in an environment where learning is easy and disruptive behaviour is difficult. I did not extrapolate out to the rest of us, and neither should you.
CCTV Installers suggests that by solving one problem area we simply move the "anti-social cretins" on elsewhere. This is to despair of the whole problem and give up. I cannot accept that. By solving a problem in one specific area - in this case schools - we solve the problem there, which is good. Then we can move on to the next problem.
Thank you again for your comments.
The folly of CCTV in schools
Guest post by Rupert Matthews There has been much concern recently about CCTV inside schools. As ever BBW has been at the forefront of the issue with articles such as “Rising number of CCTV cameras in schools”, “CCTV in York Schools (and new research which says it's a total waste of time)” and...
Have just heard on the radio that the ECJ has so ruled, well predicted Alex. The increasingly strident demands of the powers that be that we must accept what is plainly not true (Global Warming is caused by Humans, the EU is democratic etc etc) is truly worrying.
Good book, by the by.
Alex Deane: The unreality of European "justice"
By Alex Deane As Jonathan discussed on this site yesterday, the European Court of Justice will rule later today on whether offering young women lower rates of car insurance than that offered to young men is sexual discrimination. I can save you all the hanging on tenterhooks I'm sure this otherw...
Nice point, well made. Keep up the good work Andrew
Andrew Bridgen MP: We need to push at every opportunity the fact that the cuts are Labour's cuts
Andrew Bridgen is Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire. For those of you who have watched the classic Blackadder goes Forth series, you may remember a scene where Blackadder refers to the lawyer Bob Massingbird, who, he claims, is the finest legal mind in British history and, in the ...
"A Lib Dem fights dirty"
Are we supposed to be surprised? This is what they are like. Their motives are pure, so therefore they can behave as nastily as they like in order to achieve those highly moral objectives.
A Lib Dem fights dirty in Solihull
Tim Montgomerie PragueTory has drawn my attention to an unpleasant leaflet being distributed by a Liberal Democrat councillor in Solihull. You can't tell from the scan but, printed on blue paper, the Lib Dem has circulated a leaflet on the eve of poll, apologising for dirty Tory campaigning. In ...
So, the Tories in opposition oppose big government ideas. Now they are in government they support big government ideas. And we are surprised?
What happens when the intrusive census goes wrong..?
Cats get summonsed to do jury service. No, I'm not kidding, click the link. That kind of farcical mix-up becomes more likely, the more questions you ask - and this year's census is the most intrusive yet. We warned you about the census before the last election. The Tories agreed that it was i...
Well said Alex. I have made my complaint as you suggest.
Alex Deane: The BBC's attack on the Freedom Association should not go unpunished
I have made my position on the BBC pretty clear on this site and elsewhere and had intended to let the subject lie for a while.But I'm afraid that something specific has happened that merits a further post. As Dan Hannan has explained over at the Telegraph, unfunny comedian David Baddiel has ...
IF he is snowed in in Norfolk, perhaps he could read up on how the Climate Change Act is costing the UK billions in order to stop climate change and - errr - lower temperatures and give us colder winters.
Government whip makes speech from the Despatch Box - is this a first?
By Jonathan Isaby The above screengrab from BBC Parliament shows an image I have never seen before - a Government whip making a speech from the Despatch Box. Convention states that Government whips never speak in the chamber - so what on earth is James Duddridge doing at the Despatch Box? It's...
There is, or should be, a clear distinction between the Conservative Party and the Coalition. It is therefore entirely correct that the Conservative Party should have a policy developing structure - though I am quite relaxed about what form that should take.
I don't think this should be especially tied to the manifesto for the next General Election. There are plenty of other elections taking place around the country in which candidates would appreciate a steer from the Party. Not to mention the fact that crises may come upon us - such as Euro bailout, AGW and so forth
The 1922 Committee should give the leadership an ultimatum over the next manifesto
by Paul Goodman Earlier this year, I asked how Party policy was to be developed for the next election - since the Government's official machinery, such as the Downing Street Policy Unit, works for the Coalition, not the Party. I identified three non-mutually exclusive options, as follows - Th...
Generally good stuff from Mr Middleton. There are some obvious missing points and lack of detail, but on the whole it is going in the right direction.
The real problem is whether it will come to anything. Somehow I doubt if CCHQ will put a huge amount of effort into it as they seem to be wedded to the idea that they alone win elections and the associations and members are a pesky nuisance. The lack of distribution given to this document is a case in point
How the Voluntary Party intends to grow and develop - the final, official plans in full
By Jonathan Isaby Earlier in the summer, Jeremy Middleton, the chairman of the National Conservative Convention, analysed the state of the voluntary party and wrote some draft proposals as to how to regenerate it. He then spent several months consulting on those issues and in the mean time her...
I don't think that is what I meant. I am all in favour of intellectualism, and education, but it is the automatic assumption that the Classical world is superior that I oppose. We English have a perfectly good artistic, political and intellectual tradition without needing to import concepts and ideas from the Classical world as if they were, per se, better. They might be, they might not, but are not automatically so.
Call to select councillors by lot
Professor Vernon Bogdanor writes in The Times (£) this morning proposes a change in the way local councils are governed with some councillors being chosen randomly. The "political class" must be broken to enhance the "democratic spirit." He says: One way to do this is to select a small proportio...
Just this once then. It is a special case. What is the betting that the next demand from the EU will be a special case as well?
Osborne tells Radio 4 that Britain won't be part of future €uro bailout mechanisms
Tim Montgomerie The Daily Mail signalled its concern, this morning, at the news that the UK will contribute to the bailout of Ireland: "Every family in Britain will have to contribute nearly £300 to prop up the ailing Irish economy. Chancellor George Osborne has agreed to pay £7.5billion towa...
Methinks a Classical education can go a tad too far sometimes. This is England, not ancient Greece. And in those polis that had this system - if memory serves correctly - you could not refuse to serve.
Call to select councillors by lot
Professor Vernon Bogdanor writes in The Times (£) this morning proposes a change in the way local councils are governed with some councillors being chosen randomly. The "political class" must be broken to enhance the "democratic spirit." He says: One way to do this is to select a small proportio...
Hmmmmm. All very interesting. But how would the VOTERS react?
I do not think that all Conservative voters and all LibDem voters would vote for a combined party. By effectively creating a centre party, the new entity would shed some LibDem voters to Labour or Greens and some Conservative voters to UKIP or the English Democrats.
You can't just take the voters for granted. They have minds of their own and some very varied reasons for voting as they do.
Could the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats merge to fight the next election as a single force?
By Paul Goodman This morning's papers report yesterday's political Cabinet, which sought to answer the question: how can the Liberal Democrats be rescued? The Prime Minister faces a dilemma. He wants his partner's poll ratings to go up, but he doesn't want his own to go down. A logical res...
Remind me which Commons Committee Mr Yeo is Chairman of...
There is so much that needs doing, but clearly this man will do none of it.
The 10 worst examples of dodgy reasoning in Tim Yeo's new book
Last night, I attended the launch of the new book from Tim Yeo MP "Green Gold: The Case For Raising Our Game On Climate Change", published by the Tory Reform Group. It was reported in the media yesterday and is available for download here. The book is a bit of a masterpiece of green convention...
Surely it is the quality of the research that counts,not who funds it.
In either case, the CRU at East Anglia falls down. They are funded by governments that are fully signed up to man-made climate change. Also their research is ummmm questionable. It has just emerged that the man who chose which aspects of CRU work should be investigated was - the head of CRU.
ExxonMobil funds climate change sceptics
By Tim Montgomerie For once it wasn't BP that was making the headlines but the US "oil giant", Exxon; This morning's Times (£) led on a report that "ExxonMobil, parent company of Esso, gave almost £1 million last year to organisations that campaign against controls on greenhouse gas emissions...
I hate to be the bearer of disappointing news, but they have only suspended funding pending the outcome of a review. No doubt the review will be as searching, detailed and unbiased as those to which Mr Yeo refers in such glowing terms.
Tim Yeo MP: The Coalition should introduce Personal Carbon Trading
Tim Yeo MP is Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee. 'Green Gold: the case for raising our game on climate change' is published today by the Tory Reform Group. It has become fashionable, especially in right wing circles, to be sceptical about climate change. When leaked e...
Unbelievable twaddle. Nobody has been exonerated of anything. The three inquiries, by thier own admission, never looked at the science behind all this. They focussed on side issues and never even looked at - never mind exonerated CRU of - the main problems. If the Chairman of the Committee can peddle this nonsense with such sincerity, the chances of Parliament actually bothering to find out what is really going on at CRU are nil.
Beyond that, the idea of individual carbon credit trading is so misguided that it is difficult to know where to begin.
God help us.
Tim Yeo MP: The Coalition should introduce Personal Carbon Trading
Tim Yeo MP is Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee. 'Green Gold: the case for raising our game on climate change' is published today by the Tory Reform Group. It has become fashionable, especially in right wing circles, to be sceptical about climate change. When leaked e...
More...
Subscribe to Rupert Matthews’s Recent Activity