Angel Eagle, yesterday

This is hilarious; never liked Angela Eagle; she has all the charisma of a particularly snotty head mistress or carry-on Matron without the mirth.

I'm certain people will realise my position on this but here it goes for clarities sake; Lord Freud was clumsily making the point that wages are a *cost* to employers and that cost has to be met by the value of that persons production and, sad as it is, with productivity improvements brought about by innovation and an increasingly sophisticated workplace people who can't grasp this struggle, being severely disabled more so.

What Lord Freud was alluding to was making it easier for disabled people to get into work by making their hiring cheaper for employers; personally given the sheer scale of the problem with NEETs in this country and chronic unemployment we should abolish the minimum wage altogether and change welfare to a 2-tier negative income tax system: first tier to prevent anyone starving in the streets (say welfare risings to £13k in line with the cost of living calculations the Joseph Rowntree calculations) and  the second working tier where guaranteed income rises to £16k depending on hours worked (say £16k window at 30 hours/week) before further income is taxable. You could make work more profitable and worklessness bearable and you could quickly give people the life skills they are(/were) so critically under prepared by schools for.

This actually underlines the different between the statist and liberal left here and which camp most of New Labourious' useful idiots are in; they are happy to mutter about what should happen ("employers should pay the minimum wage") rather than what could happen ("employers struggle to pay minimum wage, but the state could top it up and redistribute the cost"). I'm more in the could camp.

Yes, but is it a swing?

I have a lot of respect for Dougy Carswell; many moons ago he took me to task for challenging Bory policy before I had thoroughly read through the proposals, teaching me to be humble and try to get a rounded view on subjects outside of my normal sphere of knowledge. Its good to see a man returned to power and not a party.

But how big a swing is this to UKIP? A cursory glance at the wiki page for Clacton as a parliamentary constituency shows that Dougy Carswells' victory in 2010 as a bory candidate on a turnout of 64.2% of the electorate meant that a little under 1 in 3 people actively wanted him in power: 34% to be exact with Labour trailing at over half that at 16%; almost certainly a decisive vote against the Brown Gorgon.

This by-election however, assuming turnout numbers are roughly comparative, saw only 52.6%, meaning his win of 59.7% of this number amounts to 31.4%, a drop in the numbers actively voting.

I don't think we are seeing a dramatic turning on the Bory's or ship jumping to UKIP; I think we are ultimately seeing a good man returned to Parliament in spite of his party and not because, as many UKIPpers and the MSM believe; on this I think I concur with the good Dr. North.