Hilton’s Half-Decent Idea
Steve Hilton is coming under all sorts of fire for some mad blue-sky ideas he may or may not have thrown around in Downing Street. The FT are running with the fact that he suggested cutting maternity leave, job centres and pondered why the PM had to obey the law. Though the article is somewhat weakened by the concession that “the shaven-headed policy guru’s friends admit that three-quarters of his ideas fail to get off the drawing board – to the relief of colleagues.”
There is all sorts of speculation flying around about who leaked it, the knives seem to be out for Hilton again, and this article looks suspiciously like the revenge of Sir Humphrey. The theory that this was Steve himself flying a kite can’t be discounted though. Amongst the bait, upon which the opposition have dutifully bit, there was a gem though:
“When Mr Hilton was looking at ways to cut the deficit, he suggested replacing hundreds of government press officers with a single person in each department who would convey all necessary information via a blog.”
Guido thinks this is a fantastic idea. Imagine all those efficiency savings. If three-quarters of Hilton’s ideas go in the bin, this one, along with his Eurosceptic conversion should be the last to go…
Very worrying that an idiot like this is at the heart of government. To even think about suspending consumer protection laws is the sort of nonsense we’d expect from the 1930s shambles of governments and to cut maternity leave and pay, well, that one isn’t even worth discussing.
Pictured: Inside Camerons’ £9,500-a-week Italian countryside holiday villa… and unlike the Blairs, they’re paying!
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019368/Pictured-Inside-Camerons-10-000-week-Italian-countryside-holiday-villa.html#ixzz1TO1Ex4R4
“They are flying out on a budget airline and are sharing the grand 11,000-euro-a-week mansion on the Petrolo Estate with two families who are old friends.”
Brooks and Andy?
Rupes and James
Great ideas, all benefits should be converted to repayable loans except for the disabled and pensioners. Everything else should be named as Charity, which is what it is, paid for by the UK Mug Taxpayers.
Some sensible ideas there. After all, what is the point of Job Centres under a Conservative government? You’re just going to get people’s hopes up.
Anybody can save money with slash and burn tactics.
Surely the skill is in doing it while maintaining essential services and/or regulations?
There are, however, some regulations that should be scrapped immediately.
By the end of this year there will be number of changes in this country. I don’t know whether it will be good or bad but we will have a new order in this this country.
Don’t be daft, never going to happen.
we already have on e NOW
the telegraph has an interesting article about MP Djanogly hire detectives to spy on his constituents …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8666881/Minister-Jonathan-Djanogly-faces-investigation-over-blagging-by-detectives.html
funny just as Wiggin has sent the police round to one of his constituents ….
what are we paying these bastards for????
He might not be the only MP.
He is a Tory minister in the Justice Department. Cameron is still keeping him as a minister.
expect a lot of coverage of this Tory MP’s misdeeds from Guido
or not.
Taxpayer, I would bet my tax dollars on a lot of the jobs having nothing to do with essential services!
Dollars? WTF has any of this to do with you?
I’m sick of the Brit-bashing in the U.S., which is currently being exacerbated by a certain P. Morgan, and therefore feel entitled to invite you to fuck off.
Screw you Monkey-boy!
… and take that God-damned Piers Morgan douche-bag back, will ya!
I would like to say sorry to Vicky, my children, the police, Nick, my constituents and God. If that is what it takes to stop me from going to prison.
Don’t worry Cameron might share the room with you.
Other one might want to share a bed with you. What is happening to our bed sharer?
If you can’t afford to have time off work to have a baby.. don’t have a baby!
Rocket Science, is that sharia law you are quoting?
Never thought Cameron employed Paris Hilton as well!
Fuck all that shite
It is the idiot’s ideas about why does scum like the PM have to obey the law that enrage.
This piece of shit needs his melon busting good and proper.
Euro-sceptic or not
“pondered why the PM had to obey the law”; just look at Cameron’s friends.
Simon Lewis is surely trying to be ironic! Getting UK Ltd off it’s arse ain’t rocket science. We need to work and compete. Trouble is we have laws discouraging employers to employ and stopping producers producing. This needs to change. The Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese ain’t stopping for no one and all we will becomeLondon centered retail outlet (of foreign goods!) for them to shop in unless we change our attitude to competition and embrace change. The ‘ Elf and Safety regimes that can cripple a business needs to be made less onerous and the employment “protection” laws re balanced. Britain could become a mercantile power house again what we need is a capitalist revolution of the kind the Chinese “Communists” encouraged. And yes we can so that a remain a democracy.
Maternity leave is crazy. So is childcare paid for by the state. Who benefits? Estate Agents and lawyers. Now houses have rocketed in price thanks to double mortgage tax relief, women who don’t want to abandon their children have as little choice as the hamstrung employers
Maternity leave costs a bomb for council tax payers too. Local government officers are all too often unavailable – on maternity leave – when they have only just landed their gold-plated jobs.
Wake up Billy
He was posting hard yesterday, even for him. Must still be in bed dreaming up new witticisms.
Lets hope laughing boy is in a coma!
Blah blah, something about Hilton.
More importantly, where the hell is Billy?
We want Billy,We want Billy.We want Billy
KRAAAWWWUURRKKH!!! (ping) BILLYBILLYBILLY!! (flutter) OW’ZAT!!!
http://cyberboris.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/barnstorming-olympics-speech-by-boris-enchants-londoners/
A barnstorming speech by Boris yesterday had Londoners in stitches. Video here.
Intelligence will out.
10 minutes of Boris is all the “Opening Ceremony” 2012 needs.
Half the teams will be storming off home insulted
and the bad news is?
Good. May be the Brit team will pick up some medals then.
“We are so ready that we should call a snap Olympics and catch the rest of the world napping!”
Brilliant! Can he be our PM please?
And how does a stitchmaking speech provide a solution to the many problems the govt have to deal with? Wake up & smell the coffee misterned.
Anything that cuts those costly government non-jobs created by the last profligate labour government is welcome.
“Anything that cuts those costly government non-jobs”
Never mind cuts, if we had a half-decent government for the last 14 months, by now there’d be no government non-jobs remaining.
You can’t just sack people you know. There’s all that humanrights legislation (admittedly put in place to keep bliar’s odious wife in pin money), employment protection laws and equal opportunities twaddle put in place by hattyharpic.
There was one thing labour excelled at and that was messing up the country and then putting laws in place to ensure that it stayed that way!
I guess if your boss sacked you immediately for no reason and with no compensation you’d be looking to the law. I guess.
“There’s no money left”, is a pretty good reason for culling public sector non-jobs.
And they put in place extortionate and insane levels of redundancy protection for these expensive wasteful non-jobs, to make sure that it would cost any future government a lot more to lay people off, than they could save by doing so.
Not only were labour intent on totally wrecking our economy (so we too would have to go cap-in-hand to the EU and integrate further) but they put in place policies to ensure future governments would not be able to easily correct their fuck up!
So undo that last lot of laws and policies first – and then once they are the law, get the choppers out properly.
He’s a sort of Tory John Birt isn’t he?
so now we know….Billy Bowden IS Steve Hilton, and he’s too upsert to comment
Steve Hilton was Bhownaggree, erstwhile troll of this parish, who managed to wind many of the Tory faithful up to the point of apoplexy and then beyond.
Nothing any country needs more than hundreds of middle-management drones on the dole. Now, they wouldn’t get preferential treatment. Certainly not. Its not as if thousands of lesser beings wouldn’t find themselves short-changed and tossed off to make room for the once-lords-and-masters.
Lets not forget the fucking top management
Middle managers are mainly crawling scum who do the dirty work ordered by the trash at the top.
No reason not to ruin them but the top-level shite must get theirs as well.
i see Roy Hatersley has said northerners have bigger brains than the southern softies in the mail today.
Shame they dont use them when voting at elections.
Because nobody south of Watford Gap votes Labour. Or at least not until they move the BBC to Manchester.
Two nonsense statements: one from him and one from you.
so you say most northern people dont vote Labour.
do imigrunts count as well here in the north
Hattersley gets it wrong. The original story was bigger heads, not bigger brains. and I think most of the South will agree with that.
New Position: a single person in each department who will convey all necessary information via a blog.
Salary: £60,000 – £70,000 + pension, 8 weeks holiday, travel, medical benefits.
Successful applicant will have a degree in Media Studies. Excellent IT skills and written English are essential. Unless you’re an immigrunt, in which case don’t worry about IT, literacy or English skills (and we can probably make the salary higher to compensate you for finding the job difficult).
Veils preferred.
Plis kip dis jib for my hisbund.
Plus every Friday off and an office that points towards Mecca.
Single person in each department eh? So we will departmentalise all floors so that each office is it’s own department.
So far as I can see only the Independent mentions hackgate/Morgan today. Wonder why?
It made it onto R4 Toady program, shortly after 7.00am, with the Man with Diction of a Donkey pedaling it somewhat softly I thought compared to the last couple of weeks. No h/t to Guido, as you’d expect from the Bogus Broadcasts Cabal.
I’m comin’ huhne, I’ve done my time
As the part owner of a business, maternity leave causes chaos but we really have to keep it.
Without it, the hard working 20/30 something couples will simply not have children and their offspring are the most likely to be the law abiding,taxpaying population of the future-very different from those from Brown’s welfare underclass.We can’t afford to lose them.
Are we really so bankrupt, both financially and morally, that we cannot afford maternity leave?
Having children isn’t about providing the factory drones of tomorrow.
People coped OK before it existed. You are just too soft. Stiffen up man.
But isn’t state support for families a sign of a civilised society? It shows that we value that institution?
However, I’m also happy with no maternity pay and much lower taxes.
You miss the point – the government does not pay the maternity leave.
And in any case the government does not have any money – only confiscation of the public’s wealth.
Surely the government does pay? OK – the company administers it, but it’s offset by other NI or tax somehow?
Totally agree with your second point. But we are where we are, unfortunately.
And all Governments in confiscating our money through numerous guises called taxation “think” they know how best to spend it. They don’t!!! E.g. The International Health Service gets worse and worse. Privatise it and allow me to keep my own money and I’ll pay for my own medical needs and not Mohammeds, his 9 wives and 30 kids as well!!
State support for families nowadays is a sign that a family can no longer be supported on a single average income. Child allowance and Family tax credits provide the State with an excuse to grow the Nannie State and intrude into the lives of most people in the UK, while providing 1,000′s of non-jobs, which could be culled by leaving the money in the hands of those who earn it in the first place. Raising the income tax threshold to £13,000 would more than pay for itself by enabling the dismantling of the family support scam and a serious slimming of the Nanny State. Will it happen? Would any of the current flush of politicians allow the relinquishment of so much power? Yeah, right.
Yes, I’d rather my husband just kept me and our children, and not everyone else’s family too, especially the ones we aren’t historically connected with in any way.
True but my generation (I’m now in my 50′s) did not have repay student loans and house prices were affordable from my pay when I was 25.I’m not saying that maternity leave/ pay is either good or bad but that abolishing it would in practice have the result I predit.
If only one partner worked, unemployment would drop, house prices would drop and children would stop beating-up their teachers.
Remember the 40s till the 70s when mums actually looked after their kids.
And their neighbourhoods. Women were the real police of the past.
“hard working 20/30 something couples”
Are you serious? Anyone born since 1973 who went through British state education is unemployable.
They need to address the quality and training of the teachers. Most are numpties themselves and uneducated. Then, how about a bit of …………discipline reinstated, and where Mum from the sink estate can be told to f**k off when Wayne is punished for being rude or assaulting other pupils. Barred from the school permanently if he doesn’t comply? Ooops, Labour stopped that didn’t they. So they put their kids in religeous schools like Blair/Harman/Clegg to avoid the problems THEY created!!
Because they’re worth it!
In my day, you worked and saved up for a deposit on your house, then you got married, then you worked and saved up to have a baby.
Once pregnant you gave up work at 7 months and embraced motherhood.
In other words you worked to fund your own aspirations , you didn’t expect the government to fund them for you.
Now they spend their teenage years getting pissed, having unprotected sex with anyone, getting pregnant, getting a house given by the grateful taxpayer and then settling down for a few months at a time with various temporary daddies.
Which system is the most beneficial to society as a whole? Yours Nell, or this one?
Which political party favours this selfish, harmful and reckless one over the sensible, wholesome, responsible one you describe? And what the fuck are they thinking?
How about we handle the whole Lobby apparatus along these lines too? Transparent, cheaper to deal with and all on public record.
Even one lobbyist is one too many. They are all a distortion of democracy. Their mere existence proves that government is bigger than it needs to be.
Did Siralen tip Piersy off about Viglen?
Sugar chaired Viglen – Morgan bought 67,000 quid’s worth of Viglen shares the day before his paper announced Viglen was to get an internet division – Hipwell follows Morgan:
“Mr Hipwell and his colleague on the Slickers column, Anil Bhoyrul, bought shares in Viglen, a company chaired by Sir Alan Sugar, on the same day. The court has heard that Mr Hipwell bought more than £36,500-worth after hearing that Mr Morgan had bought 20,000 shares.
The following day, when a story about Viglen appeared in the Mirror, Mr Hipwell sold his shares at 9am, making a profit of more than £19,500. Viglen’s share price more than doubled that day, following the Mirror’s claims that Viglen was to set up an internet division.”
SO MORGAN MUST HAVE SAT ON AN IMMEDIATE 24 HOURS 70,000 PROFIT – WHAT DID HE SELL HIS SHARES FOR? WHAT DID HE SELL HIS ‘WIFE’S’ SHARES FOR?
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT HE (MR PUGHE-MORON) BET THE FARM, ALL HE HAD IN READIES, ON VIGLEN.
WHO TOLD HIM ABOUT THE VIGLEN INTERNET DIVISION???
SEEMS PRETTY OBVIOUS TO ME…
The state is a force 4 good. It should be big and interventionist, using its power arbitrary and foster benefit dependency and high government employment as symptoms of clientelism. One press offcier per department does not comply with the FT’s view on the state, which is the same as that of our ex-colleague Balls, who ran budget deficits when the economy boomed. The Met ‘gets it’, with about 65 press officers, rather than 60 for the whole government. Unfortunately the Met hired 10 officers from NotW rather than from Mr Morgan’s labour supporting Mirror.
PS Write-up in Guardian today about Mili’s nose job makes too transparent a mockery of the operation, i.e. Mili indeed had the operation for his voice. Be prepared for Mili’s voice in future sounding like that of US House speaker Boehner; well, maybe one octave higher.
The Pink ‘un has been that colour in paper and politics for some time. Isn’t it also owned by NI? Surely Rupe can’t be keeping a foot in both camps?
If you DO have the nuclear bomb hovering over Morgan the Pirate’s head, can you get on with it?
Obliged –
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/hackgate-the-morgan-denials-are-what-you-might-call-rebekah-coulson/
And don’t forget his pal sugar whilst you’re at it.
Sugar chaired Viglen – Morgan bought 67,000 quid’s worth of Viglen shares the day before his paper announced Viglen was to get an internet division – Hipwell follows Morgan:
“Mr Hipwell and his colleague on the Slickers column, Anil Bhoyrul, bought shares in Viglen, a company chaired by Sir Alan Sugar, on the same day. The court has heard that Mr Hipwell bought more than £36,500-worth after hearing that Mr Morgan had bought 20,000 shares.
The following day, when a story about Viglen appeared in the Mirror, Mr Hipwell sold his shares at 9am, making a profit of more than £19,500. Viglen’s share price more than doubled that day, following the Mirror’s claims that Viglen was to set up an internet division.”
SO MORGAN MUST HAVE SAT ON AN IMMEDIATE 24 HOURS 70,000 PROFIT – WHAT DID HE SELL HIS SHARES FOR? WHAT DID HE SELL HIS ‘WIFE’S’ SHARES FOR?
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT HE (MR PUGHE-MORON) BET THE FARM, ALL HE HAD IN READIES, ON VIGLEN.
WHO TOLD HIM ABOUT THE VIGLEN INTERNET DIVISION???
SEEMS PRETTY OBVIOUS TO ME…
SORRY FOR DOUBLE POST BUT THIS BLATANT INSIDER DEALING MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL.
OOPS caps off. A certain other trougher who used to head up a certain newspaper’s business section, made enough money in a very short space of time to buy 5 or 6 houses. His name rhymes with Hunt. All completely above board, of course. Just like Mandlebum’s house purchases.
Have a guess who it may be.
likewise…I thought you had something dramatic Guido…the kirsty young interview is old news as is his book and other ramblings…start digging amongst his old muckers amongst the mirror hacks…he will have trodden on plenty on the way up so you can be sure some will be delighted to return the compliment on his way down.
Nah. Make the Bugger sweat a little while the septics get their heads round the situation.
I used to think Hilton was just a weird hippy with a chronic case of marketingspeak, but he is turning out to be a better Conservative than Cameron.
Piers Morgan said he was touched by the lovely messages left on Amy Winehouse’s voicemail.
“When Mr Hilton was looking at ways to cut the deficit, he suggested replacing hundreds of government press officers with a single person in each department who would convey all necessary information via a blog.”
Clearly, Mr Hilton know fuck-all about how journalists and publications work.
If I need a statement from an official spokesman about some particular aspect of government policy from, for example, The Highways Agency, I do not want some pillock directing me to a blog that is filled with irrelevant shite.
Hilton has never had a real job. Not that it shows…
You’re obviously not ready to embrace the internet age…..:)
Maternity leave is a nightmare for small businesses. My daughter works in the NHS, so that is OK – she recently had maternity leave and followed it with two weeks holiday. “How come you can take holiday at the end of maternity leave”, I asked her. “Oh I have to” she replied – “I have to use up my holiday entitlement before I can go back to work”.
In short, you still qualify for annual leave, even when you are on maternity leave for a year – now that really is taking the piss!
In the public sector there is also ‘adoption leave’……..
What on earth is that?
I assume it is paid time off work to get to know the new addition to your household.
Do they do that for people who adopt cats or dogs too?
What it says on the tin. Up to 26 weeks leave to …” settle the child into its new home….”. Applies if adopted through a British adoption agency. Not sure if there is an entitlement to ‘ considering adoption leave ‘ or even ‘ stress induced by talking about adoption leave ‘. My flab was gasted when I heard about it.
Actually, it sounds like she was using up her leave accrued before she went on maternity leave. But I don’t know.
This comes from an EU ruling in early 2010 (Feb I think). It gets worse, an individual accrues annual leave whilst on long term sick leave. I worked with an individual who, each and every year, too all of her sick leave ‘entitlement’ immediately followed by her annual leave she had accrued during that period.
Shown a directive once from a public sector HR unit: “.. employees should have a management interview if more than 16 days sick leave taken in any one year…”
I said that surely means some will interpret that as 16 days they can use in addition to their holiday leave. “Yep, and many do” was the reply.
140 press officers in the Department of Health alone, and that is before all the others in every trust in the country. We only need one.
talking of looney ideas – who saw purnell’s party political broadcast on behalf of the Liebore party on Newsnight yesterday? how can that be classed as impartial broadcasting?
whoever told you the beeb was impartial?
True – the BBC invariably disses trade unions, strikes etc and favours capitalism. You can always tell by this test – the BBC sees rising profits as good news but rising wages as dangerously inflationary.
I don’t know where you are getting your news from, but it’s not the BBC I watch.
And rising profits ARE good news, but the BBC will soon start to gripe, bitch and moan if any profits are seen as too big, and rising profits go against the BBC narrative of the tories wrecking the economy.
Unemployment has been falling for several months and the 1 million extra unemployed that labour and the unions and the BBC were fearmongering about have failed to materialise, but that does not stop the constant economic fearmongering on the BBC does it
I agree with Cato Street Conspirator. Fed up of the BBC’s right-wing bias, they need to take in more of what the public are thinking instead of what the Coalition is feeding them
How left wing are you then – to perceive the BEEB as being right wing ?
I can’t say I’m ever impressed by lonny right-wing ideas – but the press officer suggestion is brilliant and would be widely applauded.
If on ly one part ner wo rked, unemp loyment wo uld dr op, hou se pr ices wo uld dro p and chi ldren wou ld st op b eating-up their tea chers.
Rem ember the 40s till the 70s when mu ms actu ally loo ked after their k ids.
At last just add spaces to modded comments.
Nell you’re the expert, why on earth would the above be modded@
Haven’t got a clue. the automod on this blog is a law unto itself. Although Billy reckons he’s got it sussed.
I’ve long treated it as another part of the fun. ‘beating the automod’ is a game, like crosswords, that I play when I have time. Enjoy!
hou se pr ices is a fairly reliable fru itcak e indicator.
On the other hand there is plainly no general rule against fru itcak es posting here.
Quite right, even you are tolerated.
Why do goverment departments need press officers?
I thought that was what the minister was there for?
Billy, if the minister spent all day talking to people like me, when would he have time to minister?
The minster is responsable for the department, ok it might mean waiting a week for a answer, but why cannot he answer? he is in charge and all that.
Do we need to pay x amount of people to just give a standard holding answer?
SQUWAAAARRKK!!! (tapittytappitytap) BILLYBILLYBILLY!!! NOTOUT! (grape)
Billy, he minister is in charge, he does not know the details of day-to-day operations.
Ministers used to cope perfectly well when they had neutral civil servants, Far too many propaganda merchants these days.
The Tories already have as useful idiot doing this, eh Guido?
Ed Miliband?
Did we send Ed a get well card?
Ed Miliband got lots of messages from Well Wishers !
All wishing he’d fall down one !
It has always seemed to me that the British people are deliberately thick.
When a government takes money away from its citizens in order to pay bureaucrats to tell you how wonderful is that government, and those bureaucrats, it is FUCKING PROPAGANDA!
It is a corruption of democracy and is one of the most obvious signs of a government, and a nation, that has lost its ability for moral reasoning. Previous examples are legion. Most recent Nazi Germany, Zimbabwe, Blair’s New Labour, Brown’s evil clusterfuck. Anybody spot the common thread there?
PG (PhD in ‘The Blindingly Bleeding Obvious).
Job Centres–anyone with any sense who has ever used them know that they are a huge waste of money, and of people’s time. They merely exist, it seems to me, to create jobs for thousands of not particularly ‘skilled’ people, mostly i’m afraid chippy young women. The quality of staff is wretched. There are other, and cheaper, ways of advertising job vacancies.
Well said.
“the shaven-headed policy guru’s friends admit that three-quarters of his ideas fail to get off the drawing board – to the relief of colleagues.”
I think these ideas are great …
Job centres are crap. Anybody who says otherwise must either work for one or remember the days when you received your UB40 from them.
Maternity leave is simply a lead weight around the necks of employers and an even greater lead weight around fellow employees who have to put on the extra work to cover the extended holiday.
We never used to have maternity leave and everyone did ok … have a baby and a job or don;t have a baby and have a career instead … simplzzzzzz
Some have suggested that extended maternity leave has had the Unintended Consequence of making it harder for women of child-bearing age to find employment, especially in the better-paid jobs or careers. If you were an employer seeking a thrusting young professional to take on a demanding role, you might just be tempted to hedge your bets against the possibility of said professional disappearing for an extended period when the business needs their efforts.
Not sure that the idea of making all Government press communication via a website or blog is a good one. Too easy for Ministers to control what’s disseminated. It certainly makes sense for the basic press releases to be made fully publicly available through the ‘net, though.
There has to be ways for journalists and members of the public to hold Ministers to account, so questions from the press will still have to be arranged regularly. However, replacing the Lobby system would be a good idea; it doesn’t work. For example, the whole Lobby knew all about the excesses of MPs expenses for years, but not one of them ever so much as squeaked to those of us paying for it all. The Lobby system is far too cosy – we need MPs and Ministers to fear the Press, not keep them as pets.