New Labour's Child Catchers

The UK Orwellian NewLabour state is desperately rolling out the quite sinister National Children's Database designed to contain details of and track everyone in the UK under 18.

One wonders how long it will be before they decide to keep the details for life...

The alleged reason for it is to enable "more co-ordinated services for children" and of course to ensure none slips through the net like Victoria Cimbie.

It is questionable if such a database would in fact have prevented her death, or that of baby "P", local co-ordination, lower case loads and effective working practices would almost certainly have far more impact and cost far less.

In the same way they try to uses the fear of terrorism to justfy a national ID database. It is well known thatID cards would never have prevented the London Tube suicide bombers. Or those who attempted to bomb busy London clubs and attacked Glasgow Airport.

This governemt though seems to have only one kneejerk reponse, cataloguing, regimentaion and control of the ordinary citizen - and it seems their children too.

It is terrifying to think of the numbers of people who will have access to what should be private details of our children. Will all council employees be vetted in the same way as youth workers? No. The potential vulnerability that access to this data lays children open to is truly concerning.

Then there is the potential to just loose the details releasing them into the public domain.

The way local councils have misused anti terrorist laws gives an indication they are not to be trusted with our children's details, that are effectively also our details. How long before they routinely check them to establish where you live for instance?

Those who take comfort that these are the twilight days of New Labour and hope the scheme will die a death with their electorial demise are probably fooling themselves. Once rolled out could an new incoming governemnet be trusted to remobve such a big state friendly tool of control?

Maybe the economic facts of life might make a difference. The database is currently slated to cost £224 million, as with all such things this will be underestimated by a whole order of magnitude. Perhaps in the end it will prove to be too expensive.

Arrested for filming changing of the guard?

Well that is interesting. It seems. The UK Government has been busy “protecting” us all from TERRORISM and ORGANISED CRIME again… oh so quietly.

Why quietly? Because as is usual when they are ”protecting” us It is at best a two edge sword, but usually just involves another mechanism that is curiously suited for oppression.

Even Dame Stella Rimmington former head of MI5 thinks the New Labour State is exploiting the fear of terrorism to restrict our civil liberties - and she ought to be able to spot it if anyone can.

So what have New Labour quietly sneaked in under the radar this time? Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act is what. It is supposedly there to stop TERRORISTS gathering intelligence on the police and Armed Services by taking pictures of them.

Now what did they do with Communists who wanted to take pictures of sensitive stuff and situations during the Cold War? Presumably arrested them for spying. They didn’t need such a law then. Presumably the government of the time had a greater regard for civil liberties.

Part of the blizzard of new laws that make it an offence to do things like commit murder on a Tuesday as opposed to say just committing murder. Then there would be committing murder on Wednesdays whilst wearing a hat…

So what does this effectively do? It gives the police the power to arrest anyone filming them or taking a picture of them, say for instance, when they are doing something that might lay them open to criticism.

It seems even the rank and file police officers feel this may be a step too far and their “union” the Police Federation have expressed concerns.

We have already had it repeatedly demonstrated that the New Labour Sate and their pet New Labour senior police officers can be relied upon to misuse any such legislation, practically as soon as it is passed to suppress political dissent and embarrassing revelations/facts. Even to the extent of having senior opposition ministers arrested.

And they have the nerve to criticise Mugabe, when he is only watching them and learning.

Another day, another New Labour Governemnt Database

The Nanny state, apparently deeply concerned that it is leaving us any privacy at all, is now turning it’s attention to the creation of a newsuper database to record when we make phone calls, or send emails and who to, oh and all the web sites we visit.

Of course this is purely ‘for our own good’, to protect us all from terrorism. That catchall ‘bogeyman’ excuse of the Authoritarian state, ‘protecting the citizen from the terrorist and criminal’. The same citizen that the State will not permit to defend themselves against criminals with the frequently used threat of prosecution hanging over them if they do.

A Home Office spokesman disingenuously attempted to claim that: "Changes to the way we communicate, due particularly to the internet revolution, will increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data - essential for counter-terrorism and the investigation of crime - and use it to protect the public.

Now as far as I know it is still possible for the authorities to tap phone conversations and intercept post, within the law. They do not currently have a database of all letters sent and to whom as far as I am aware. Nor have they ever had one.

So when the spokes person claimed:"Losing the ability to use this data would have very serious consequences for law enforcement and intelligence gathering in the UK." it did not follow logically at all.

The simple fact is that the state already has access to this and more, such as emails and web useage if they suspect someone. It is going too far to monitor us all.
And we all know the State can be trusted to look after this information and not loose it on a bus, or sell it, or something.

And we all know just how much the promise of the State is worth when they say they will only use legislation only for the purpose it was framed.

...Or maybe we could ask Islandic banks about how anti terrorism legislation was recently limbered up ready to be used to freeze Islandic funds in the UK. Or how other legislation was used to silence and eject hecklers from a Labour party conference.

Is the UK state just too big?

Is it too big? If you have visited this blog in the past then my opinion will be quite clear to you - Of course it is..

This article By Iain Martin in the Telegraph examines the matter intelligently and is well worth a read.

Time to roll back the state.

Local Council use anti terror legislation to spy on ordinary family over school application

This is not the first time this blog has touched upon the UK’s sinister (but innocuous sounding), Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Now don’t get me wrong - in this day and age there may be a place for some of the draconian measures within it. But only if kept under the tightest controls, left exclusively in the hands of the police and security services - and fiercely overseen and regulated.

As was predicted, this slapdash piece of state control legislation is being used by local councils - and who knows what other jumped up junior clerks, to spy and intrude upon ordinary people - on us.

It seems Poole Council are getting into the James Bond business, spying on school children and their parents. Petty beurocracy given powers far beyond their remit or capability.

If this act gives them the powers to do so, when it was railroaded through on the basis of countering terrorism, then it is simply yet more of New Labour’s Fascism-Lite (or maybe not so Lite anymore) at work; and deeply, morally, wrong. It should be repealed, or amended beyond recognition at the earliest opportunity.

It is part of the same mind set that uses so-called anti terror legislation and the police to violently eject and bar an 82 year old who speaks up for what they believe in from a party conference and heckled a minister. The same mindset that wants us all to have to carry ID cards to prove we have a government granted right to even exist.

It is supposed to be the other way around, we the citizen are supposed to grant the government the limited right to exist for around 4 years.

Make no mistake. If legislation exists it will, sooner or later, be used. None of us should countenance any legislation without keeping it in mind that it may be used - not as allegedly intended, or advertised, but on ordinary people.

Not just mad bombers, or criminals who ‘deserve it’ but people like you and me.

How long before they use this and other legislation to spy on you over something like your council tax, or a library book or parking ticket, for all we know they are already…

New Labour Back bencher threat to agency staff

One wonders if the MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, New Labour's Andrew Miller, is actually intent on damaging the UK economy, or if it is only a side effect of his attempt to grab more influence for the unions.

Supported (of course) by the trade unions he has tabled a private members bill to force the same rights/benefits as full time employees receive on agency staff, such a sick pay.

The union said there should be a "level playing field" with permanently employed people.

I have often heard full time employees express slightly jealous amazement when they find out what agency staff are paid by comparison.

The fact is that agency staff usually get a higher pay scale than permanent staff. This generally makes up at least the financial difference for sick pay and annual leave, etc. that they don’t get.

They usually also get a premium to make up for the lack of job security, as they generally fill posts where full time employees are off long term sick, having children, or the post is unable to be filled. They are also used when capacity suddenly and temporarily needs to be expanded for a project.

These people tend to be independent and avoid union membership. They also tend to take far less sick leave; so can spend that portion of their wage as they choose.

If they had the same rights and conditions as full time employees they would no longer be competitive, or of any use to an employer, in the capacity they are generally used in. It would not be economical to pay them the same rates as they get now.

If these rights were introduced then this sector would become much less competitive and be markedly reduced. The knock on is that all the businesses that make use of them to fill in would be less efficient and less cost effective.

This would in turn force them to look for redundancies more often and make full time employees positions a little less secure. It would of course strengthen the union’s position.

Tesco willing to work with the UK State (thus logically against it’s customers) on banning 'cheap' alcohol

It is interesting to note that Tesco appear to be cravenly responding to New Labour’s, authoritarian, patrician, health fascist line, that supermarkets are selling alcohol to the proletariat too cheaply.

At first thought one might wonder that some are willing to go along with anything and conjecture they may be hoping for a position of relative authority over the other prisoners in the concentration camp.

It is also quite possible that they are just boxing clever by responding to the likes of Professor Julian le Grand, when they know the only route is really even higher punitive taxation.

This is undoubtedly where the government would desperately like to go, but even they clearly realise that, without first demonising alcohol and all those who sell and drink it, this may be a step too far - even for New Labour supporters. That is why they now have their like minded medical glove puppets whipped into doing a chorus line on the subject.

Tesco's executive director for corporate and legal affairs, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, pointed out that it was actually really in the State’s hands as: "We can't put up our prices because people will simply shop elsewhere - it could be commercial suicide - and we (the supermarkets) can't act together to put up prices because that would be against competition law.”, in other words a price fixing cartel and "Supermarkets are not allowed to act together to put up prices because that would be bad for the consumer."

Tesco knows perfectly well the government can’t bypass that - or they would run afoul of the real law of the land in this respect - the EC and the European Court.

It is possible they are betting both ways… any further such pronouncements though - and I will be voting with my feet, on principle.

le Grand calls for UK supermarkets to be banned from selling alcohol

The ‘Chair’ of the Department of Health mouthpiece, Health England , Professor Julian le Grand is at it again.

This time he wants to ban the sale of alcohol in supermarkets, because he clearly doesn’t think adults are capable of managing their own alcohol intake, one suspects he believes unlike him and his elite cronies.

He puritanically sees alcohol as "adult candy" and apparently believes that customers are being ‘seduced’ into buying alcohol, on offer, on their way around the supermarket.

One might be tempted to wonder if he has a relative that runs an off licence ;-)

He also believes the price of alcohol is “disgracefully low" and there should (magically?) be a "dramatic rise" in prices - one presumes he would wish to rectify this by means of yet more taxation.

He seems incapable of understanding, or maybe doesn’t know, that there is no such thing as a “disgracefully low” price, without interference from his ilk the market sets the price. One suspects he would prefer it if the state controlled and set the price of all goods and services.

I have news for him. He may get his wish, at least in the short term and for beer, due to market forces.

The director of food at the British Retail Consortium, Andrew Opie, reacted angrily to what they pointed out was a ridiculous suggestion.

He pointed out that no one buys alcohol accidentally and drew attention to something anyone who regularly shops in a supermarket will have probably noticed: “Supermarkets have the best record on preventing under age sales and are helping to drive a culture of sensible drinking."

A permit to allow you to do lawful things the ruling political elite disapprove of

It is arguable that Professor Julian le Grand a lecturer in social policy at the London School of Economics, is a very scary person.

Why? Because of some of the more sinister methods of state control of the individual that he advocates, coupled with the fact that, as a former aid to Tony Blair and chairman of Health England, a ministerial advisory board, he has the ear of those in power, so wealds undue influence.

He is advocating the introduction of licences to permit people to purchase perfectly legal goods.

He proposes that the licences should be made as difficult as possible to obtain, with complicated forms to fill out and that they should cost between £10 and up to £200 (presumably to penalise the better off) and be renewable annually.

You know it must be something to concern citizens of every political stripe when both the Telegraph and the Guardian have commented on it detrimentally.

He is talking about smoking in this case and the permit would be to purchase tobacco products – but the principle is dangerously easily applicable to anything the state, as the tool of the ruling political elite 'disapproves' of.

But hey! The money would all go to the good old NHS, so that’s OK then – Right?

Once the principle is accepted and applied to a limited hate group, who many non smokers will not worry about, it can be rolled out further.

Alcohol? All those binge drinkers disrupting society, it would keep underage kids away from the stuff right? Stop those middle class wine lovers inadvertantly drinking themselves to death right? Probably not…

‘Unhealthy’, ‘fattening’, food and drinks like burgers, or even tea? Apparently drinking bottled water is ‘immoral’ now. How about that?

A petrol/diesel permit?

What about certain activities like taking a cheap flight, or maybe taking a foreign holiday?

This is actually pretty scary stuff - and by no means beyond the realms of possibility.

In a truly bizarre piece of convoluted newspeak he attempts to brand this classic example of fascist thinking as “libertarian paternalism". An oxymoreon if ever there was one.

It is certainly a fine example of the Political Patrician classes mental processes at work. Showcasing the patrician view of the lower orders he feels and possibly intends this to impact more on poor and less well educated, justifying it on the grounds that it should contribute to a reduction in 'health inequalities'.

It clearly about as diametrically opposed to actual Libertarian thinking as it is possible to get.

One wonders if this may be deliberate on his part, in an attepmpt at black propaganda, targeted at the political ‘meat and two veg brigade’, to put them off realising what Libertarian ideas are really about, given that those ideas are such a threat to his way of thinking.

New Labour - Is it time they went?

New Labour was looking pretty tired when Tony Blair was still in charge. They thought getting rid of him might mend their fortunes. It seems they were wrong. Now we know for sure it wasn’t ‘just’ Tony Blair at all.

First there was their Government by increasingly empty sound bite and spin.

Since then, they have definitively demonstrated their manifesto promises can’t be relied on, by Gordon Brown’s betrayal of the electorate over his utter refusal to allow a the promised referendum over European Constitutional ‘Treaty’ – Demonstrating New Labour’s word can’t be trusted.

Brown then demonstrated a contemptible opportunistic vacillation over weather he should call a ‘snap’ election, allowing his minions to make preparations, brief and bluster at first in favour, when they thought they could win comfortably, then pulling their necks in when they thought things might be a bit closer than they liked. Finally his bottle went and he precipitously called it off . There he trashed his reputation for nerve and decisiveness.

Then their handling of the problems of the Northern Rock. As it is more by luck than judgement if the Virgin deal goes through they should eventually get their money back, the shares will be worth something again in the long term and the employees will keep their jobs, but if the Government had handled the matter more adeptly the public money would not have been hazarded in the first place. Yes economic factors were involved and the management of Northern Rock business model was also at fault, but New Labour demonstrated they could not handle a financial crisis without having a crisis themselves. This has sunk their reputation for financial competence.

They have managed to loose the personal details of millions and millions of citizens with their loss of the child benefit data. This is not the only case, just the most prominent. Other details have been lost on several occasions and some were sent to contactors and had to be returned. And these are only what we are aware of. New Labour’s Darling glove puppet chancellor, twisted, turned and made explanations to parliament that were frankly untrue, pathetically trying to blame a clerk a long way from Westminster, the best light that can be put on his performance is that he is incompetent and so are his officials, but then they already demonstrated that by loosing the data in the first place. And they expect us to trust them with a national ID database they will let every Tom, Dick or Harry, junior council clerk, trawl through at their leisure.

Then there is their holier than though posturing over finances. They bring in a new system, trumpeting their virtue - and then break the rules themselves. Firstly there is the accusation of selling honours to enrich the party coffers where the police find insufficient evidence. Then this matter of the secret donations laundered through third parties, in at least one case is seems, by subterfuge. So much for honesty, probity and trustworthiness.


They have mismanaged the health service. It has had billions poured into it to no obvious effect. NHS Hospitals today are riddled with super bugs, where if you can get treatment it is a real threat. People are refused treatment because the hospitals have a policy against their lifestyles. All to the extent that those who can go private, or abroad for treatment.

State education has had it’s reputation destroyed. People no longer trust the exam system to be an honest indicator or ability or achievement. Again it seems so much so that people are willing to beggar themselves to send their children to a good private school if they can’t gain admission to a reasonable state school. Every interfering initiative or new target only seems to make matters worse.

Then there is the creeping slide towards some sort of soft fascism with their manufacturing alarming statistics in order to justify intrusion, social engineering/controls and increased taxation over aspects of our lives that should be nothing to do with the state. Threats of increased taxes on ‘fattening’ foods, alcoholic drinks, even dustbins, etc.

Endless un-needed duplication of legislation in order to appear to be doing something.

They ignore petitions when it suits them, no matter how many people may have signed them.
The catalogue seems endless. This isn’t a blip - it’s the way it is.

UKERC worried they have their sums wrong.

The UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) recons it may have got it’s sums wrong by up to 30%.

Firstly we need to realise that the figure up to 30% clearly includes zero percent, the weasel words are ‘up to’.

Of course the underlying implication is that just persuading people to buy energy ‘saving’ devices is not going to do it, because those wacky citizens will just waste the money saved by using less energy on something else that uses energy and destroys the planet anyway.

So ‘SOMEONE’ needs to ensure they can’t spend all that extra money that would otherwise just be burning (and that produces CO2 too, doesn’t it) a hole in their pocket.

Well taxation ought to solve that problem and it will be a ‘GOOD’ and ‘MORAL’ tax that saves the planet too.

Now lets follow the money…

The UKERC are funded by three ‘Research Councils’:
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

And who finds them? Why the UK Government - they are basically organs for distributing tax payers money. Much from the Department of Trade and Industry’s share of it.

Now lets look at the UKERC’s argument. Take Compact Fluorescent ‘bulbs’, leaving aside the mercury pollution they can cause and the fact that, at least in my actual experience, they do not last anywhere near as long as advertised.

An equivalent 60-watt bulb that can actually be used with a dimmer would cost around £11.60. The saving that can be had from using it is around £7 per year. Even a standard 100w equivalent would cost around a fiver. So in fact initially one would have less money to spare having paid out more for the bulb than normal. One could not expect the bulbs to have paid for themselves before at least 9 to 19 months.

Only then can you nip out and waste your extra £7 a year on a 4X4, or a plasma TV. Or maybe loft insulation, or another CF Bulb, or double-glazing - Because if you are into saving energy then that is the direction you will probably be thinking in.

UK Government s DNA database includes over 500,000 inaccurate records

It seems that Nu-Lab’s National DNA database now contains over 500,000 records with false or inaccurately recorded names.

Apparently some of the problems are caused by people fibbing to the police about their actual names. Whatever next? “It’s Michael Mouse, honest officer” ;-)

Given this, one has to wonder how many record have the wrong DNA profile attached, or other ghastly errors.

Civil rights group Liberty’s Director, Shami Chakrabarti, suggested that the problems with the database raised serious questions about the police’s unrestrained permanent fishing expedition drive to keep expanding the database to include those arrested for non criminal offences, such as dropping litter.

What next one wonders, walking on the cracks in the pavement? ;-)

A further cause for concern is that the database contains DNA profiles of around 150,000 children, a significant number having been arrested and then found to be innocent.

She pointed out that: "It is bad enough that we have a DNA database stuffed with innocents not charged with any offence” “Now it turns out we don't know the accuracy of the data. How many Postman Pats and Donald Ducks have entries on a system worthy of the Keystone Cops?"

Once you are on the system, even if arrested as a result of mistaken identity, your profile is never removed from the database.

It’s never likely to happen with the antidemocratic undertow in the way Government seems to operate these days, but the system needs to be radically overhauled, root and branch. With an independent system for expunging records, stringent limits as to when DNA data can be taken and provision for temporary records that are expunged after an investigation. Otherwise it is just another tool for a potential police state.

All these wonderful policing tools such as, ever more powerful computers, DNA databases and wall to wall CCTV...

It can not have been lost on some of NU-Labs ‘former’ Marxists, Trotskyists, etc., that if only the Soviet empire had been able to hang on, for just a few decades longer then the Berlin wall might well have fallen the other way and the Stasi could have been busy,, improving upon these new policing techniques.

UK Chief Medical Officer pushing for social conditioning through higher taxes

Not content with driving through an authoritarian attack on smokers, Sir Liam Donaldson, the UK Chief Medical Officer, is now targeting alcohol and food consumption. How is he planning to do this?

Through typical Nu-Lab Government social conditioning and large increases in taxation.

He apparently plans to try to make drinking alcohol generally too expensive to drink much of through high taxation. "I would certainly strongly commend increased taxation, the evidence is quite strong that putting the price up helps. Prices of alcohol have fallen relative to the cost of living.", he said.

He is also planning to get a ban drinks companies sponsoring sporting events.

He supports the plan for a "fat tax" (applying vat in line with EU policy) on what he classifies ‘unhealthy’ food. He apparently feels this would also deal with the fact that currently ‘unhealthy’ food is "often cheaper".

"We just need to keep plugging away. Often big behavioural changes in health take time."

No - you just need to treat the citizens of this country as adults, not children and leave them alone to manage their own lives and keep your. We are not your serfs Sir Liam and it is not your patrician right to ‘manage’ us as you see fit.

You are here to advise what you think is good for us so we can decide - not give us no choice and force us to do what you think is good for us.

Official self congratulation at English smoking ban

Don’t tell a small lie, no one will believe you – but tell a big one…

Trade union leaders have applauded the smoking ban in England as a step forward for workplace safety - describing passive smoking as the "third biggest cause of deaths at work".

This is absolute patent drivel. How many work places actually allowed smoking anywhere, other than in very limited smoking rooms? As we can all attest not many.

Most employers effectively banned smoking on various grounds such as fire safety years ago. It has been banned for years on public transport and in most offices. I don’t know of any factories where it is allowed.

So, even if we accept the ever inflating claims of the passive smoking brigade, this ban will have virtually zero impact in reducing so-called passive smoking, except in environments where smoking was still actually allowed like pubs and clubs.

These days? ‘Third biggest cause of deaths at work’? Indeed...

Alan Johnson the UK Health Secretary lauded the smoking ban in England as the: "single most important public health legislation for a generation". Suggesting the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, would improve the health of hundreds of thousands of people.

It is only likely to really improve the health of ‘hundreds of thousands of people” if it makes smoking so much bother that hundreds of thousands of people were to give up smoking as a result of the ban.

He might have done better, with out setting a dubious authoritarian precedent, by offering a substantial cash bounty, as a one off, to those who gave up smoking for over a year. To be paid back with interest if they took it up again.

Anti smoking figs for death by passive smoking in the UK vary between 1,000 and 4,500 pa. Given the amount of pollutants around how can they tell with any certainty if these are due to cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, or in the case of older people all the muck from coal fires and smog?

Mill on Liberty

ON LIBERTY

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually, or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do, or forbear, because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise.

To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others.

In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

Mill lays down a simple principle to govern the use of coercion (coercion here covering both legal penalty and pressure of public opinion). We may only coerce others in self-defence - either to defend ourselves, or to defend others from harm.

This rules out paternalistic interventions to save people from themselves, and idealistic interventions to make people behave in some 'better' way.

Politicians take note!

Hip chick Ruth Kelly makes an announcement...

Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly announced today that the introduction of Home Information Packs (HIPs) is now to be delayed until 1 August.

They will also be for sales of four bedroom and above properties only, presumably this will change later.

Initially sellers would just have to have commissioned a pack, before marketing their property. It would not be necessary to actually have one. So provided you had paid, the sale could go through with never an actual physical pack changing hands.

That telling point suggests where Nu-Lab's heart really lies ;-) a sordid tale of stealth taxation all on it's own.

The packs had been due to become compulsory for all home sales in England and Wales from 1 June.

Packs are to contain: Evidence of title (I would rather trust my solicitor on that one), Copies of any planning consents (they would use that as a selling point anyway), listed building, or building regulations consents (my solicitor). A local search (my solicitor again), Guarantees for any work on the property (fall over themselves - again) plus an energy performance certificate (more interested in last year's gas, electric & council tax bills, also again - from experience - falling over themselves).

So then - utterly pointless legislation really, with a hint of FacismLite - "The fragrance for Statists everywhere.".

Ministers have increasingly tried to justify pushing the packs on the grounds they are a sure fire way to persuade people to make their homes more energy efficient and thus cut carbon emissions and save the world!! – Absolutely.

Has anyone noticed ‘They’ (particularly politicians) are increasingly using anthropogenic global warming (AGW) to justify - and try to stampede voters into - accepting chains round their necks that even the ‘war on terror’ couldn’t make them stomach.

If there were actually any demand for HIPs then surely market forces would have already forced (probably) estate agents into providing them.

Quite frankly, if I were buying a property and wanted a HIP I would get it done myself. I wouldn’t want the seller to provide it - and if I didn’t want one then why should I be forced to have one?

I suppose these inspectors will be yet another cohort, of the army of state clients, dependant on Government force to keep their livelihood milking the rest of us.