Why is political advertising exempt from rules on lying?

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) only considers lying an offense if it fools more than half the target market. 


If OFT rules were applied, all UK elections would be judged completely "fair". 

This is because no political party for decades has won the votes of more than a third of the electorate let alone half. Therefore it cannot be said more than half the target market had been 'fooled'.

Does anyone doubt that politicians lie? Politicians know we know they lie, not least because they themselves work so hard to point out each others' fibs. Labour snitches on the ConDem coalition and the SNP, the Torygraph snitches on Labour. The question isn't why they lie, the question is how they keep a straight face when they are doing it.

After all, they are all honourable (and right honourable) men and women, our MPs in Parliament. We know because they tell us so. So why do they use deceit and dissembling as a key tool in getting their jobs, and getting into power? The answer, of course, is because it works.

Taking a Conservative Party leaflet as an example, our guest author, Barrie Singleton (author of the Spoil Party Games blog), provides an insight below:

Read More

Graphs At A Glance: The cost of putting £1 into an employee's pocket in the UK is the fourth lowest of the 28 EU nations. Only Malta, Ireland and Cyprus are lower.

http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/#Database:

Why have the wages of the 90% stagnated in Britain in recent decades? Is it because employment taxes make it too expensive for employers to pay us better?


An interesting graph from the "New Direction" foundation (founded by former prime-minister Baroness Thatcher) sheds some light. The graph from a 2014 report shows the cost to an employer of putting £1 into an employee's pocket - after income tax and National Insurance (employee's and employer's contributions) have been paid - is close to the lowest in Europe. Only Malta, Ireland and Cyprus are lower.

Perhaps the problem is we are already paid too much? Eurostat provides figures on this, showing that of the five largest EU nations, the UK's labour cost is at the bottom together with Spain.

Read More

60 Second Vote: Does the government cull of "Independent Expert Panels" need to be halted?

Does the Government have a policy of killing off bodies that hold government accountable? What do you think?

It's not just the badgers. All
independent monitoring panels are endangered species, when it is government that is being monitored.

October 2012: The "Badger Culling Pilots" panel was created by DEFRA "to help Ministers evaluate the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of controlled shooting".

February 2014: The panel reports that the badger culls were 'cruel' and 'ineffective'.

April 2014: Government announces the committee will not report on the next cull.

Added July 2014: University of Warwick study contradicts basis of Government badger culling policy. The Guardian reports:

“A mass cull of cattle, not badgers, is the only large-scale action that can end the scourge of tuberculosis in England’s livestock, according to new scientific research that represents a heavy blow to the government’s current policy.”

The Government has prior form, killing off those who would keep an eye on it. In August 2010, soon after winning the General Election that year, the Government announced that it would cut back the independent Audit Commission. The Audit Commission stated:

“In August 2010 the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) announced plans to put in place new arrangements for auditing England’s local public bodies. Eventually our responsibilities for overseeing and commissioning local audit will stop, as will our other statutory functions, including those relating to studies into financial management and value for money. At this point the Audit Commission will be disbanded”

Read More

10 Second Poll: The recession saw job losses in all age groups. The recovery is seeing these losses reversed, except for the 60-64 age range:

Figures from the DWP (Department of Works and Pensions) show that the number of people on Job Seeker's Allowance (JSA) is falling for all people upto the age of 60. 

However, people between 60 and 64 years of age are still not getting the jobs they need - they are still nearly 3 times more likely to be on unemployment benefit than they were in the year 2000.

Why do you think this is? (You can select upto 2 answers from the poll):

.

Read More

Why do both the Conservatives and Labour push so hard for cuts to taxes and public spending when the British Social Attitudes Survey shows only 1 in 10 Brits want this?

A graph from the 2013 British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey shows fewer than 1 in 10 Britons have wanted this in the 30 years since 1983. More than 90% have consistently wanted the level of tax & spend to remain the same or to increase.

Read More