It turns out to mean pseudo-charities like Atlantic Bridge and individuals like Adam Wewwity taking over from the civil service and arranging meetings for cabinet ministers with foreign businessmen. Why didn’t they just say so in the first place?

He then goes on a bit longer explaining why he decided to abstain, which didn’t really make sense. He says he wanted to send a clear public message that further large bail-outs should cease. I would argue that abstaining (or voting for and against) is not a very clear message. Voting one way or the other is a clear message. Voting both ways is a mixed message. All it says is “I am against this but I don’t want the vote to go the way I feel because I don’t want to upset the whips and miss out on a junior ministerial assistant job in the future.”

But of course, the real criticism from the Autonomous Mind and EU Referendum blogs was not that he effectively abstained (although they obviously don’t like that either) it was that, having abstained, he tried to give the impression that he had voted one particular way. On finding himself listed as one of the MPs who voted ‘for’ he did not get in touch to say that he had actually abstained: he got in touch and just referred them to the list of MPs who voted ‘against’.

That was the real criticism, and nobody seems to have noticed that Henry’s reply to the Obby avoided that completely but instead answered the much less important question of why he voted both ways. Incidentally, I can never understand why MPs put up with such rubbish. Why don’t they change the protocol so that abstentions can be registered? Building a third lobby would be a bit difficult admittedly, but then why are they still voting by such an old-fashioned, impractical and time-consuming method anyway? Surely Caroline Lucas can’t be the only MP out of 650 who thinks it is time to move to the 21st Century? Even the 20th would be a step forward.

Anyway, the cherry on the top of the cake is the final comment from Henry:

I don’t often read blogs as my time is very limited and I haven’t read any critical blog comments regarding this issue but I respect their right to free speech.

That would be fair enough but… this all started when the EU Referendum blog published a critical comment in the form of listing Henry as one of the MPs who voted for the bail-outs and he sent them an e-mail asking them to remove him from their list. A pretty clever trick if he hadn’t read because, as he says, he hasn’t “read any critical blog comments regarding this issue”.

The EU Referendum site reckons Henry is being “a tad disingenuous” about this so it is only fitting that his response to those criticisms should also be a tad disingenuous. In my mind his response has not answered anything. It has just responded to an accusation of bending the truth with an outright lie.

At the vote in Parliament he voted for it and also voted against, effectively abstaining.   Personally I don’t have a problem with abstention as such.  If you don’t have enough knowledge of an issue to form an opinion, or just don’t have an opinion then why vote arbitrarily, or vote the way somebody else tells you?   I would go further and say that it makes a nice change from MPs having to pretend to know everything and have an opinion about everything.

But why do it that way when staying in your seat would have exactly the same result, why go to all that bother?  I can think of one good reason and one bad reason.  The good reason would be that voting twice at least shows up as a vote, a positive abstention if you like.   When TheyWorkForYou publish their stats of how many votes an MP attends there is no other way to register that you were actually there but didn’t care one way or another whether to spent £9billion of public funds on the IMF while councils are laying off staff.  By just abstaining you are lumped in with those MPs that couldn’t, or didn’t want to, turn up.

The bad reason?  Well when you meet a constituent, journalist or blogger with a stronger opinion than yourself you can, semi-legitimately, say you agree with them to the extent you voted the way they wanted you to.  You just don’t mention that you also voted the other way too.  Whether this was Henry’s intention or not he certainly seems to be exploring the possibilities of it, as Autonomous Mind has pointed out – and pointed out using enough sarcasm that any more would be superfluous.  The EU Referendum version of it is quite amusing too.

As far as I can make out, Conservativehome was running a list of MPs who voted against the increase, hailing them as Eurosceptic heroes.  The EU Referendum site, on the other hand, were listing those who voted for the increase, listing them as traitors.  Henry emailed them, asking to be removed from their list and then… referred them to the the Conhome list as proof that he voted the other way.  EU Referendum, in a masterpiece of understatement called this “a tad disingenuous” when they went to Hansard to double check.

Had he asked to be removed from the list because he effectively abstained that would be fine.  Had he asked to be removed from both lists that would be fine.

It may be a small thing, but if somebody can lie about something so easily checked then what else are they up to?  Is ‘lie’ too strong a word or is it just spin?

Or maybe Henry finally made his mind up on the trifling matter of £9billion and is now regretting and denying his other vote.  Now how about that vote on bringing in legislation for constituents to recall MPs?  I think a few people in Crawley might fancy a go at that if they knew their MP’s statements on even something as straightforward as which way he voted were as trustworthy as a News of the World reporter.

And talking of reporters… maybe those working for our local press will manage to get more of an answer from Henry then EU Referendum did.

Hat tip to Peter for sharing this on his Facebook page.

What happened was that the registration for the domain name for the campaign (c4pph.org) was allowed to lapse and it was hijacked by porn-related Germans.  Unfortunately Henry Smith and Francis Maude still had links to that domain on their various websites.  No doubt there are more sites that link to it.  I have probably linked to it myself at some point in the past, so it will be in my archives somewhere.

The Register enquired to Maude’s office about it and the link disappeared from his website.  All quite understandable, and nothing more than a bit of mischief by The Register.  There are a couple of interesting things about it though.Firstly, if Francis Maude’s office is to be believed, it was a deliberate decision to allow the domain name to lapse.  According to WHOIS the domain was re-registered by something called Extreme Proxy in San Jose on December 22nd so the dubious content could have been there from that date until today – about a month.   (It is not there now though, so don’t bother looking.  It has mysteriously disappeared.)

This raises some questions.  If you knew the domain name was being dropped by you and would then either point at nothing, an error page, or content you have absolutely no control over, why not check your own websites for links to it?  A better move would be to fork out the few quid it costs to keep a site registered?  That would be normal, sensible practice.  It is a natural oversight, and an easy mistake to make  – the only problem is that Francis Maude is supposed to be on top of these things: isn’t he in charge of the government’s IT strategies?

If he can’t keep his own little websites in order you have to worry a bit about the multimillion pound IT contracts he is responsible for on our behalf.

Of more local interest will be the question of why the domain was allowed to lapse.

Had Maude and Smith decided, before December, that the campaign was over?  Mission complete?   Only if the mission was to get Henry Smith elected – not if the mission was (as the name suggests) to get a hospital built at Pease Pottage.   That looks like it has failed miserably as all the signs point at North Horsham instead.  I don’t think a ‘Campaign for North Horsham Hospital’ would have gone down quite as well with the Crawley electorate.

I while back I was trying to get information about the original detailed plans seven-page outline of the proposed Pease Pottage hospital and had trouble finding it on that site because it wasn’t there.

I have noticed how the langauge used to describe the proposed hospital has been gradually evolving from “a new Crawley hospital” to “a new hospital for Crawley” to “a new hospital for the Crawley area” to “a new hospital for the Crawley and Horsham area” to “a new hospital for Horsham”.  Was it just too much of an embarrassment to have a website that clearly reminded everybody of what was being promised at the beginning?

Might it be that Smith and Maude found the risk of accidentally linking to German porn sites to be less embarrassing than reminders of what they had been promising the voters of Crawley?  Letting it lapse means less chance of us coming across old press cuttings of Henry Smith talking about how bad it is that you can no longer be born within Crawley’s borders as a justification for a new howpital which turns out to be well outside Crawley’s borders perhaps?

While the Haiti earthquake is terrible, the winter death toll in Britain will be similar. No aid here though.

Hmm… from the Times on Jan 7th

Weather-related death toll rises to 22 as Britain braces for coldest night yet

From the BBC web site

Tuesday’s earthquake has left as many as 45,000-50,000 people dead.

45,000 to 50,000 is about the smallest estimate I have seen.

Of course, it is possible that Dick-I-beg-your-pardon-Nick Griffin is unable to distinguish between large numbers; he may have a counting system like several remote tribes are reputed to have that goes “1, 2, 3, many”.

[Thought I posted this the other day, but it ended up in the drafts.  Must have done it just when my internet connection went down.]

I’ll just have to keep using the thing as an expensive paperweight.

As ever with Philip Circus the reality is much more complicated than the black-and-white (literally?) view he has.  One major factor that is entirely ignored is that we live longer now, and are able to live in our own homes instead of being shipped off to nursing homes for a lot longer.

Divorce and family breakdown is undeniably a factor, but so is the combination of being expected to leave home younger – or having to for work or for higher education – and not settling down.  In the past it was quite normal for young adults to go straight from living at home to living with their husband or wife.

Ironically, it is the immigrants who Mr Circus seems to dislike so much who often buck that trend, particularly those from the Indian sub-continent.  I know plenty of indian familes happily living in one house where it would be three or four households in my family.  There are fifty-year-olds with parents living with them as well as children in their twenties, and there are retired people sharing their house with their child, his wife and their children.

Another factor in demand for housing is the huge demand for affordable housing caused by the combination of the deliberate depletion of social housing stock and the over-inflated prices of other housing.   The house price inflation puts buying a place out of reach for many people, while the supply of social housing is so low most people are disqualified from it.

The column starts by saying how somebody at a recent public meeting asked “Why do we need these extra houses when we, the local community, are not aware of any obvious local need?”.   You would expect somebody who is a local councillor to be aware of the local need, or the size of the housing register in his own council, and of the results of housing need surveys that show the so-called hidden homeless that do not necessarily register on that list, and to therefore recognise that the questioner is basing his question on false premises and gently correct them.

The clue is in that word ‘hidden’.  Just because there are not people curled up in every shop doorway it does not mean that everybody is suitably housed.

Later on he comes out with some statistics about 70%  of the population wanting a severe cut in immigration.  Of course they do – they have been told it so many times by the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Sun that they are conditioned to think that.  There has been a particularly long-running and insidious campaign by the Mail and Express along those lines which has been so persistant that other newspapers and media have been obliged to follow suit.

The answer to our housing situation is not to pull up the drawbridge and turn the clock back to when we all stayed at home until we got married, only a few per cent would go away to university, and average life expectancy was below seventy.  We are where we are because of  increases in equality and opportunity such that we can all either enjoy or aspire to the sort of life that previously was only within the reach of a self-defined ruling class.

I am expecting the Circus clown’s next column to be entitled “Women! Know your place!” like in Harry Enfield’s Cholmondley-Warner sketch, blaming unemployment on women working and not staying at home to cook, clean and pop out babies at regular intervals.  Or maybe he will blame the state of our economy on the minimum wage so that we can’t effectively employ slave labour to compete with other countries.

I was halfway through reading the story and was speculating that maybe a load of oil people with English as a second or third language got together without any professional help and came up with the name unaware of potential unsavoury connotations elsewhere.  And then I read the end of it and thought again.

There is a long history of such branding cock-ups because something that is meaning less in one language, or has a positive meaning, can turn out to be a problem in some overseas market.  The most famous case is probably Toyota’s MR2 car, where in French it sounds very like ‘merde’ when you say it, and the runner up is probably another car, the Nova, which translates as “doesn’t go” in some languages.

More obscure examples are the mobile phone company Orange, who were unable to use their famous slogan in Northern Ireland – and then Ben & Jerry came along with a flavour called “Black & Tan”.    In the 1970s the American computer company tried to use the marketing slogan “Wang cares” in Britain and found some resistance from the UK office.

So anyway, when the story introduced a ‘top branding consultant’ I was expecting some comments about how this could have been avoided by employing a specialist like him, and how much the brand has been poisoned by taking a name deemed to be extremely offensive in much of the world.

To be fair, he does say that such mistakes are more common in government ventures where they do not have marketing experience – although I find that hard to believe: government bodies seem to spend half their budgets on marketing and branding consultants to choose a name and logo.  But he  also says that when companies make such faux pas they very rarely change the brand name when they discover their mistake, that it is usually harmless, and in this case the fuss will soon die down as people will soon forget that the name sonuds bad.

There is some truth in that.  Coca Cola brought out a drink called Fresca, which apparently means ‘Lesbian’ in Mexico, but it didn’t hurt sales.  Hoover managed to markey a vacuum cleaner called the Zyklon in Germany without too much trouble – though Bosch re-considered when they were going to use Zyklon as a trademark for, among other things, gas ovens.

Bearing that in mind, why bother with expensive marketing ‘experts’ when even that admit that if you get it wrong it doesn’t do any harm?  And why bother with them when even someone regarded as one of the top experts can’t see anything offensive about a company called Nigaz?  If it turns out that Gazprom and NNPC actually paid somebody thousands of dollars to come up with the name I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  As I type this, they are probably engaged on their next commission – finding a snappy name for Welsh Oil and Gas…

Brand consultants… prime candidates for the B-Ark!

I still can’t believe it is not a clever piece of satire cooked up by Chris Morris or someone like that.   His argument seems to be that the whole expense claims controversy is the fault of the Labour government because…  they introduced the Freedom of Information act.  If it wasn’t for that everything would be fine because ignorance is bliss.

Also he says the criticism of him is motivated by jealousy about his “vewy vewy large house” that “some people say looks like Balmoral”

The best ever comment on minimum wages came from the comedian Robin Williams, back when minimum wage was an Americanism that we didn’t have over here.  He said that when a company pay minimum wage it is their way of saying we would pay you less if only we were allowed to.

This is not how it is meant to be.  The Tories are supposed to be pretending to be nice until enough people fall for it and vote them in.  As soon as that happens, then they are allowed to drop the mask and start dismantling all the protections for ordinary workers and families that have been created in the last ten years.  They are not supposed to show their true intentions until then, and Christopher Chope is not sticking to their game plan here.

Makes you wonder what other things they have set their sights on.

This Chope has an extra job as a director of a company because he feels that an MP’s salary is insufficient, and yet he can’t see why your average shop worker should be so greedy as to insist on £11,918 a year for working 40-hour weeks…

Incidentally, Chope claims that the TUC support this, which I find hard to believe.    Maybe I should check on Wikipedia: I’m sure there has been enough time for CCHQ to insert the necessary cobblers to back up the claim.

(hat-tip to Mike Ion over at Labourhome)