The Jury.

I felt ever so sorry for Barry Devonside, whose son Christopher, 18, died in the disaster at Hillsborough, when he said: "I'm shocked and stunned by the verdict of the jury.   We, the families, have fought for 30 years valiantly."  It's a nightmare for their families that will never go away.

But what did they fight for all these years?  I thought they were always fighting that the cases of their loved ones would find its way into a Court and that a jury of their peers would decide if the person charged was indeed guilty.    

Apparently not.  They simply wanted the person in the dock to be found guilty.  What’s the point of jury and a court if you simply get the verdict that you want.  The jury are asked, on behalf of society, to review the evidence and assess whether or not the prosecution has indeed made the case for the guilt to be seen as being beyond reasonable doubt.  That’s how a free and fair society works.      

Surely they didn’t expect that a jury would simply rubber stamp their personal view that one individual was guilty?   If they did, then only one of two scenarios can exist.  They have been deceived by their legal council. Or they didn’t listen to their legal council.

Amazing stuff from the BBC.

Something very remarkable happened today on the 1pm news on BBC1.  Live on BBC tv a reporter was allowed to say, totally un-challenged, that Mr Johnson told lies.   

First of all, lets take the Twitter feed. The Conservatives didn’t actually change the label that said it was the Conservative Twitter account.  It’s there.  Bold.  No one could miss it.  Unless that is you were deliberately seeking to undermine the Conservatives.    

The party clearly were not touting it as an independent fact checker.  Only the most obtuse individual could surmise that it was genuine.  

Then Amol Rajan, the BBCs Media Editor, popped up with one of the most remarkable things I have ever heard journalist say on the BBC.  His exact words at 5:05? 

“The party of government …. has basically used Twitter … as a way of putting out something that is less than true.”   

He then goes on to say at 5:28 that the information on the Conservative twitter feed “wrong and false”.   

Now, I have no problem a Labour of Lib Dem saying that kind of thing in the hurly burly of an election.  

But not, a BBC journalist accusing the Conservatives of telling lies.  With not a shred of evidence to back it up.  Remarkable.  Balance?  Make up your mind.

Who can you trust?

I know that the Lib Dems are very unhappy that Ms Swinson did not appear in the debate with Messrs Corbyn and Johnson last night.  But fear not for all is still well in her camp.   

Take what was said on Sky News a month or two ago.  “The Lib Dems fightback is real – and it's changing everything”.  And in the Guardian, “Lib Dems winning and on the up after by-election victory”.   

Well, I would be very happy as a party leader hearing these words.  Indeed, I would be so happy I would plaster them all over my election literature.  Why wouldn’t you.  And that is exactly what she did.  And had it posted through letterboxes all over the country.  Though interestingly, I haven't seen it through my letterbox yet and I live in her constituency.

The only problem is, these words were not from some independent commentator who was observing things from a neutral stance.  These are words that Ms Swinson herself used to these news outlets.   

As you can see from the leaflet, nowhere does it say that these words are hers.  And she has the audacity to point the finger at others who are being "economical with the actuality" as the late Alan Clark used to put it.   

If Ms Swinson is what we deserve as prime minster, as it says that on the other side of the leaflet, what have we done wrong?  

I know.  We voted to Leave the EU.  And she wants to put that right (in her eyes) and stop the democratic mandate of the people being implemented.   

Or putting it another way, if you can’t trust what she puts on her leaflets, how could you trust her in No 10?

Having a laugh?

The Lib Dems really are having a laugh.   

Though with their figures in the polls steadily falling, Datapoll’s findings say they are now down at 11%, they are not the ones laughing.  Unless they are in denial.   

Ms Swinson, in the latest polls from Survation, the Pollster who called it right at the last election, is in trouble.  When asked who would be their preferred PM, Mr Johnson is up 6pts to 47% while Ms Swinson tumbles 6% to even below Mr Corbyn, on only 15%.   

To parody their leaflets, LibDems NOT winning here.    

The party that seeks to undermine the democratic mandate of the Referendum by simply, should it have the power to do so, wipe away the 17,410,742 votes that won Leave the victory, now seeks to claim the democratic moral high ground.  Its President, Baroness Brinton, in an interview after the party lost its Lib Dems ITV debate legal challenge, had the audacity to say that the decision was “disappointing for democracy in this country”.  

Let me get this right Baroness.  You think it is ok for the president of a national party that, at every stage over the past three years, has sought to undermine the democratic vote of the people of the UK to leave the EU, to have the right to call a decision by a judge as disappointing for democracy?  This is more nauseating distasteful stuff from a party that long ago gave up on agreeing with the principle of Losers' consent, the very bedrock of our democracy.

What is our health service for?

In my childhood, we were not a wealthy family.  We simply had to match our spending to what money we had coming in from my dad’s salary.  We struggled like many families did in the 60’s.  And sometimes it is only when you look back you see that the generation then simply lived by their means.  And got on with it.  Did it do us any harm?  Not really.  Did we borrow money to pay for the day to day living expenses?  No, we just didn’t get that new coat, the old one had to last a bit longer. 

It is the same attitude that exists in business. If we would like to buy an additional bit of machinery to make the business more efficient, but we don’t have the money, we would just make the old machine last a bit longer.  Or borrow money to buy a new one.  But what we would never do is borrow money just to run the business.          

But when it comes to the taxpayer funded National Health Service, all logic goes out of the window.  In the current situation where there are hospitals that are not hitting their target times, the immediate response is Accident and Emergency needs more money.  And perhaps it does.  Though if you do look more closely at the figures rather then the headlines, you realise that actually, 83.6% of A & E patients are admitted or transferred within four hours in October is, on the whole, not too bad.  Definitely a first world problem if you have to wait a little longer.  

And it is all the more impressive when you go and sit in an A & E unit as I have had to do on occasion recently and see people clogging up the system with things that a locally pharmacy or GP could have dealt with.  They are certainly not emergency cases.   But the response then generally continues, well, let’s just take more taxpayers money and throw it in the never ending deep hole that is the NHS.  No one says, as you and I would do at home, or a business would do, ok, what else can we trim in order to pay for this.  The assumption is, if the NHS needs it, extra money will be given.     

Of course, take money away from the taxpayer, and that means they will have less money to spend on a new coat.  Or a business on a new machine.  And if people have less money to spend, then shops will eventually feel the pinch and have to lay off staff.  And so it goes on.      

What nationalised industries have is what you and I don’t have.  A money tap that can be switched on.      

What should be happening in the current situation is, the NHS should say, well, A & E is more important so we will allocate resources to it and another part of the free at point of delivery health care provision be considered as less important so we will cut money to that.  Yes, there would be a hue and cry.   

But that brings us round to the question no political party is willing to address as they promise to spend billions on propping up an inefficient health care service that really has no thought out mission except to keep doing what it used to do and add more in.  What should the NHS actually be doing?   

What actually should be free at the point of delivery?   Everything?  From Abortion to Zenker's diverticulum and everything in between?  That’s the real debate we should be having in society.   

One thing is certain, the nation’s finances cannot be 100% spent on health care provision.  Our party leaders are being reckless in the extreme suggesting that more and more money is the solution. 

Votes for women.

An interesting day today in Westminster.  We had two women stating the reason for them to be allowed to where they would like to be was because they were women.   

We had Ms Swinson with her increasingly shrill voice and, how shall we put it, impassioned face, demanding that because she is a woman she should be in the one TV debate that has been announced.  Listen to her outside St Stephens Entrance, that really was the order in which she set it.   Yes, almost as an afterthought she said it was because she was leading the only party committed to overturning the wishes of 17,410,742 people, that she should have equal footing.   

The other was Ms Harman who was seeking to be become Speaker in the House of Commons.  Her main reason for thinking she should assume the chair?  She is a woman and it is time that a woman should be in the chair.  Not that she is the best skilled and competent.  She’s a woman.  You can listen to her speach at 15:02 on the Parliament TV website.

So there we have it, we should not appoint people by the level of their ability but because they’re a woman.  Now, when giving people opportunity not because of their ability but because of the colour of a person’s skin in South Africa in the olden days, we called that apartheid.   

What should we call what Ms Swinson and Ms Harman are seeking to do?

Different economic views.

I am always slightly bemused when I see a headline that is in parenthesis.  Take yesterday’s article on the BBC web site.  Brexit deal means ‘£70bn hit to UK by 2029'.  So the national broadcaster can make a statement on its website that may or may not be true, it's fall back position being we were merely quoting someone else.  No one knows if it will happen that way or not for that is just one economist’s view.   But that is not made clear in the article.  It is presented as fact.  Indeed, it may be completely the other way around; we may have a £70bn bounty by 2029.  But anyone who reads the article would think it to be true because it is a headline on the BBC.  While not fake news, it certainly is very misleading.     

There are other economic visions of the future that are different ones to those of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research that the BBC is quoting.  Some people have said there is political bias in the NIESR.  I’m not so sure that’s true.  But what I am sure of is that NIESR is a very devout follower of Keynesian economic theory.  And a highly respected one too.   So if you want a Keynesian approach, they are the people to go to.       

And there is the problem.  Keynesian thinking is only one way of seeing the economy.  And the NIESR is very biased if we mean it seeks to see the world though a Keynesian macroeconomics perspective.   It is true, Keynes certainly isn't politically biased.  It is not his fault that some on the moderate Left support his views and policy recommendations.  And yes, some to the right have been devoutly Keynesian as well.  But the reality is, there are dozens of different flavours of economic thinking.  But the BBC has showed a bias to Keynesian thinking by its failure to reflect there are other mainstream economic models that would fundamentally disagree with the headline of the article.   

One economic model to watch in the next few weeks of the election campaign will be the one espoused by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.  They come from the Little Red Book from Chairman Mao, the man who’s economic and social polities caused the death of up to 35 million people.  Indeed, nowhere in the world has this brand of economic theory ended in anything other than utter failure.   

Yes, I know his answer, chillingly, is always along the lines of, ‘yes but they weren’t fully and properly implemented, that’s why they failed’.   

So over the next few weeks as we head to an election I am sure his brand of Marxist economics, which to be honest are as legitimate a position to hold as any other, even though its implementation around the world has caused unimaginable misery and destruction to once great economies, will be tested to the limit with the likes of Andrew Neil holding Mr McDonnell’s feet to the fire.