The Professors passion for "The Science of Deceit" started here...

Employed by the Ministry (in a covert capacity) to help introduce the law ending dishonest politics, you can see his hand all over the posts of past.

Current political circumstances have forced him to reveal himself and as we speak, MPs are signing up to re-introduce The Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill for debate with over 80,000 voters supporting them.

Posts before Jan '08 are purely for the record (with hindsight they make fascinating reading). Posts after May 13th mark the Professor's return.


Meet the Professor

Monday, April 02, 2007

the Brown smelly stuff



One of the many counter-arguments thrown at us by MPs in our attempt to get support for the Misrepresentation of the Peoples Act is that we’re better off not being able to hold an elected representative to account on a daily basis. They should be judged on their performance over a decent period of time. There’s some validity to this – however, for us to be able to judge their performance we must know the facts. Strange then, that a government committed to the Freedom of Information Act should fight so hard against the release of such facts…

For the last two years the Treasury has been fighting a court battle with the Times to prevent their official advice to Gordon Brown being released under the Freedom of Information Act.

On Friday we learned why it was a two year battle. We also learned why it was released on a day when Parliament was in recess and Gordon Brown was abroad.

Turns out back in 1997 the Treasury and the Inland Revenue warned the Right Honourable Gordon that his first budget could lead to a hole in Britain’s pension funds.

Brown doesn’t deny he ignored the advice, nor does he deny the hole in Britain’s pensions and the crisis they face. In fact, he has yet to comment – he’s in Afghanistan.

What Ed Balls, his junior minister denies is responsibility, “The Times analysis is abject nonsense and a complete travesty of the information they have received.” Amusing in the face of the Treasury’s fight to keep the information from us. Less amusing if you’re an impoverished pensioner trying to figure out which way to vote.

The Times summarised it like this ;

The warnings Brown ignored

Warning There will be a “big hole” in pension finances. Result The pensions black hole of Britain’s top 100 companies now stands at £32 billion.

Warning Employers may have to “fork out” additional contributions. Result Leading companies are now paying at least £5 billion a year extra to cut pension deficits.

Warning The shift away from final salary pensions “might accelerate”. Result In 1997, 90% of company pension schemes were final salary. Two-thirds of such schemes are now closed to new members.

Warning The local government pensions scheme, with 1.3m members, will require extra contributions. Result More than a quarter of council tax bills now go towards pension payments.

Warning The change will lead to “a reduction in pension benefits for the lower paid”. Result The government has been forced to increase the pension credit for those on low incomes.

It’d be nice to find out how much of our money the Treasury spent to keep the information buried. I can smell an FOI request coming on…

6 comments:

  1. Hold on a sec.... where's the lie ? Nothing in there to show GB's lied to us ?

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  2. Troy said..."Hold on a sec.... where's the lie ? Nothing in there to show GB's lied to us ? "

    Give him a chance, he's doing a bit of leadership campaigning in Afghanistan. Let's see what he's got to say for himself when he gets back.

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  3. the obfuscation is part of the problem. its baffling that they would try to withhold that kind of information

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  4. Not baffling at all if you think it's embarassing and would indicate the current Chancellor's a bit of a knob/his record doesn't stand up to scrutiny/he's impoverished a whole sector of society/he doesn't listen to you. etc.

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  5. And the Times has known about this for the past two years? What’s the point of FOI requests if the government can block them for so long?

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  6. Did he lie or was it short sightedness?

    There are few politicians who, if you look back over ten years, would be free from the accusation of ignoring advice. D.A UK Debate

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