It really is time for change...

Further to my last post, it would seem prudent to emphasise the fact that this Government is smelling of cheap incompetence. As this HMRC scandal deepens – with another six packages unaccounted for and evidence of recorded phone calls being sent on CD to bemused householders across the country – we look back at a Brown premiership that has encompassed an evasive Home Secretary who attempted to cover up the true details of the country's asylum seeker situation. We have also seen the Northern Rock fiasco, a by-product of the credit crunch and of Gordon Brown's haphazard control of the Treasury for over 10 years, and not to mention the latest loans scandal which threatens to undermine further the credibility of senior Labour Party officials.


And, if that wasn't enough, further evidence of Gordon Brown's incompetence can be linked to the aforementioned HMRC scandal. Why did he cut the budget from that agency, thereby minimising the opportunity for proper checks to be carried out to trace data and to ensure that only appropriately-trained staff had access to such data?


Gordon Brown has been prided as a man of strength and of conviction, yet his premiership is derailing fast and it actually seems that he has been a very convincing actor for the past 10 years and a very unconvincing prime minister for the last 5 months.


And in the same way that he has allowed Alistair Darling to remain as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he also found the time to promote Dawn Primarolo from her previous job of Paymaster-General (a post she held from 1999 until June 2007, which exercises direct control over HMRC and made her the de facto minister in charge of that agency) to Minister of State for Public Health. So we have a prime minister who is incompetent, a Chancellor who cannot run his own Treasury, and a minister in charge of our public NHS who has a previous record of laying the (dis)organisational foundations for this HMRC crisis.


Wonderful.


Isn't it time that the citizens of the UK had the chance to vote on this crippled Government? When can we vote for change and for optimism? For real fiscal prudence and free market economics? For sharing the proceeds of growth and cutting stealth taxes? And, above all else, when will Gordon Brown give us the chance to vote for a new Conservative Government that will deliver the fair and just society that Britain desperately needs?

A Matter of Competence

No doubt by now commentators elsewhere are highlighting the horror of the loss of 25 million personal records by the Revenue and Customs.  

Errors occur in every business.  Post goes astray.  These kind of things are often unavoidable.

What is avoidable is allowing a 'junior official' the access to so many personal records, the ability to download them and the authority to send them willy nilly to another agency without there being any system to authorise, track or confirm receipt of the information.

It is a matter of competence.  Yes, Revenue and Customs are a semi detached agency of the government, but the responsibility for their operation still lies, ultimately, with the Treasury.  That means the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

If he has an honour at all he should resign.