Young non voters

I agree with you, jane, about taking too little notice of select committees and expert reports. I sometimes think they are just a way to delay what the government wants to do anyway.
The government even ignores the OBR when it suits, even though they set it up to be independent and tell it off when things went wrong.

The problem with taking the NHS out of party politics is that you have to start somewhere. If they start where it is now, there will be continuing privatisation, and we will be stuck with the biggest reorganisation ever, which the Tories said before the last election that they would not do.

Maybe those in the NHA should set up the committee. They are doctors who say they do not want to be politicians, but feel they have to let the public know what is going on.

That is quite a good idea ja. Has it ever been sucessfully done ever?

I dont think that it would work with some departments, environment being one of them. The general population are poles apart on some of it.

Education and health might fare better though for example.

dj, why would there be continuing privitisation in that scenario?
[Not sure if you are directly replying to me, so ignore this part of the post if you wish].

jen and soon
As far as the NHS is concerned, I think that the Royal Colleges could perhaps have a defined role in informing Government of the clinical impact of policies. I am sure they are represented at Select Committee hearings, but if the reports of Committees are just left to gather dust then what is the point? It makes me angry.
I am not sure why environmental issues can't be considered in the same way. There are plenty of university departments who could help to provide s consensus.
This conversation has reminded me of George 111's Ministry of All the Talents.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_All_the_Talents (not to be confused with that of Gordon Brown two centuries later), a national unity government.
"The inclusion of Charles James Fox raised eyebrows as King George III had been previously heavily hostile to Fox, but the King's willingness to put aside past enmities for the sake of national unity encouraged many others to join or support the government as well. The ministry boasted a fairly progressive agenda, much of it inherited from Pitt."
That is what I would like to see as an election result - a coalition of the most able of our politicians putting enmity aside, and working together for the common good of our country, and healing the rifts that have opened up over the last 35 years.

Who decides who are the most able, though, jane?

soon people's opinions are usually poles apart on everything, but the job of Government is to do what is right, nit simply give people what they want.
For a long time after capital punishment was abolished in this country, the majority of the population thought it should still be carried out.
But the Government did the right thing and abolished it.

The speaker was chosen by parliament, and was a Tory MP. But you wouldn't have thought so at the end of parliament. It was the Tories who tried to have him replaced.
Margaret Hodge ran a very good public accounts committee, and tried to hold the moneymen in both the NHS and the banks to account. But not much has come out of it.

It only lasted a year, though, jane. Didn't George lll have to do that because his health wouldn't let him rule how he wanted to?

Well, how are people chosen to fill any responsible job, jen? Sadly there are always going to be opportunities to put puppets in place, I don't know how to get round that. It comes back to honesty and ethics and sadly we seem to have lost our way on that one.
I think elected representatives still have to make the final decision on policy, but I would like to see far more openness and debate about how the policies are formulated, and on what evidence, than there seems to be at the moment.

I would never claim that history was my strong point jen , but apparently it abolished the slave trade in Britain in 1807, so some good came out of it.
Yes I agree with you about Margaret Hodge, I thought she did a brilliant job.

Hodge for PM, then.
Yes I should have remembered the slave trade, being from Hull, and having connections to William Hutt, who was MP at the same time as Wilberforce. (He was also MP for Gateshead at one time.)

I'd quite like to see the man who wrote this in the government.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/05/02/tories-and-libdems-to-write-their-own-obituaries/

You might actually get your wish!

classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/the-first-100-days

Someone has ideas on what to do.

classonline.org.uk/blog/item/investing-in-a-future-for-young-people

Maybe if this happened, the young would vote in greater numbers at the next election.

Thanks for the links jen.

Some very interesting reading on Lady Hodge recently, I thought the Krishnan Guru-Murthy interview with Lady Hodge was interesting viewing on channel 4.

Did anybody see it?

I read that Margaret Hodge has 1.5 million stashed away in a tax haven. Unbelievable as she is a vociferous critic of tax evasion. I didn't see the Krishnan Guru-Murthy interview though.

Yes, I read that too. She's a hypocrite of the highest order.

It was two years ago, POGS.
Do you also think Cameron is a hypocrite as his father's money came from tax avoidance?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3060029/Labour-s-Hodge-1-5m-shares-offshore-tax-haven-Senior-politician-accused-hypocrisy-following-earlier-fierce-criticism-tax-avoidance.html

Read the full article. Margaret Hodge has shares worth £250,000, not 1.5 million.

Could well be DJ.

Perhaps the Public Accounts Committee could look into legal tax loop holes a little more robustly.

They go after the likes of Garry Barwell perhaps they could/should concentrate on Family Inheritance Trusts and Transfer Pricing during their next tenure.

So because the amount is only around £280,000 that makes it all right then, does it?

ja. As regards the environment and say windmills, some love them, some hate them. I cant see a consensus.

Lord Rothermere, owner of the DM, is a non-dom.
So the DM is not exactly impartial, is it?

soon I think the consensus on windmills shouldn't be about whether people like them or not.
It should be about a cost/benefit analysis of whether their impact in the visual environment, given that they are often situated in areas of outstanding natural beauty, is justified by how efficient they are in terms of energy production.
As I understand it, they are not very efficient because they only produce electricity on windy days and that electricity can't be stored, but I'm willing to be corrected on that one. Other forms of energy production may be more efficient, but they have their downsides too which people also feel strongly about.
It's actually a good example of how politicians should be guided by experts in their field, rather than taking a knee-jerk view simply to oppose their political opponents.

But experts dont live where things might happen.
What would happen if experts agree on say a nuclear plant at your back garden?
Science says yes so it goes ahead?

"But Mrs Hodge said she had ensured that 'any shares I held were above board and that I paid all relevant taxes in full. Every time I received any benefit from the company this happened.'

She has always declared her holding in the parliamentary register of financial interests.

Her share of the £1.5million was around £280,000."

So she inherited some money from her father and paid all the relevant taxes. What's the big deal?
I get tired of politicians of all hues being blamed for their family backgrounds, as if this somehow disqualifies them from holding office or empathising with anyone different from themselves.

I would have thought Margaret Hodge's personal knowledge of how foreign investment trusts and so on actually work would have helped her to do a good job as Chair of the PAC.