This Is (sh)It!

It's been a while since I've had a damn good rant... must get back into the habit. And where to start? There's a lot to rant about... idiots like Nicholas Stern and Keir Starmer, Euro-twats, eco-wackery, all-women shortlists and the like. There's no end to it.

But no, I'll focus on the Michael Jackson obitu-mentory "This Is It" (or maybe "That was That"). I saw an advert on the telly for it, and have drawn a conclusion from this: I think you might get to see the white-gloved one's face in it, were you to watch it.

The advert said "Contains infrequent scary scenes".

Count me out - I frighten easily!! Chamone mo fo!!!

A few musings from Party Conference

Apologies for the lack of posts - Right Ranter has been at Conservative Party Conference in Manchester for the last week and is currently on the train back to the Midlands, an M&S gin & tonic in hand, ready to ruminate over the conference.

It's been a mixed few days; on the one hand, one of the most successful I've been to...but on the other, quite sombre and with a strong sense that it will not be easy. Not easy to win (needing to win 117 seats, our best result since 1931) and a hellishly difficult challenge that awaits us even if we do. In a word, sobering.

A few pluses and minuses from the week in the North:

Pluses

DC. Cameron's speech this afternoon was a barnstormer, and well worth the Disney-style queue we endured to see it (which paid off: really good seats, but see below). He struck just the right tone, and said some socially conservative things we'd never have got away with even five years ago. It really 'gee-ed me up'; sent me away with a sense of purpose and vision, not just politically but in my personal life as well. The desire to fix things with our country and with myself as well. Powerful stuff - and one of his best. Or, as lazy media pundits would say, the speech of a lifetime. Oh, and he's a much better speaker than "One Term Barry" (hat tip: Donal Blaney), as he can vary his style & his tone. With Obam-bam it's all delivered in those same portentous tones.

Manchester. The city looked attractive, the people were friendly, the police did a good job. Some of the 'friskers' at the security check seemed to really enjoy what they were doing, but I will try to ignore this. I suppose it's just lucky if your job is also your hobby!

The Centre for Policy Studies fringe event. Fantastic - best I've ever been to. A well-informed audience makes all the difference. Fraser Nelson, Iain Martin (both late of The Scotsman) and Michael Fallon MP were excellent. Telegraph one was good (as always) but there was this stupid woman there who asked a lengthly question - about herbs. No, really.

Azerbaijian. Their reception was excellent - short speeches, good canapes and champagne! A repulsive case of builder's bum from some TV functionary marred it only slightly.

Minuses

Queuing. The conference has become a victim of it's own success, such that it gets very busy (even at fringe events) and is heavily over-subscribed. Sadly this involved queuing out in the p***ing rain on Tuesday morning - not good. Also, while the queue for the leader's speech was faster than in Brum last year, about a third of the seats had been reserved for the media, countless 'international visitors' and bigwigs. Oh, and one Perthshire git in a kilt who will otherwise remain nameless. More seats for the 'umble rank & file next year, please!

The cost. One thing about the seaside is that it's cheap. Blackpool and Bournemouth both have some decent B&Bs where £40 a night will buy luxury. Manchester is much dearer, and our budget hotel was certainly "no frills" - I had to go out and buy my own bloody shower gel! But it served a purpose!

The Chinese Embassy fringe event. Dull speeches, no booze and not a spring roll in sight. Hardly the Beijing Olympics.

More thoughts may follow - my thumbs are sore from much Blackberry-ing!

One from the Telegraph's top 100 lefties...

Found here:

44 (-1) Alan Rusbridger
Editor, The Guardian
How does he do it? Year after year, the Guardian survives and continues on its mission to hold a mirror up to the received wisdom of the Left in Britain. There is no liberal dogma too tired or anti-war rhetoric too clichéd that it cannot find a place in Guardian’s pages, or the online columns. No better, no worse than last year, the beauty of Rusbridger’s paper is that it never surprises and therefore always delivers.

Beautifully caustic, if such a thing is possible!

What a humiliation for the subPrime Minister that he no longer makes number 1.

More lunacy from Polly

I did enjoy my rant against la Toynbee last week. This Tuesday's column provides more delight, so a quick fisking awaits.

In fairness to her, it's no worse than the who-knows-if-Gordon-moves-to-the-left-he-might-even-win nonsense peddled by Mary Riddell in the Telegraph today (why that woman rights for the DT I will never know).

But one logic-defying column at a time. Polly's back to her old favourites with this one:

A deathbed conversion will do. It's now or never for PR

PR not being public relations but proportional representation i.e. electoral reform to gerrymander the House of Commons.

Gordon Brown today chaired a cabinet sub-committee debating whether to take the plunge on electoral reform. Its decision is about far more than giving voters a referendum on proportional representation: it tells us whether Labour has any will left to recapture the high ground from the depths into which it has sunk.

Well, they want to flog the motorist further, so not all hope is lost, eh?

Today's Guardian/ICM poll warns Labour that no one is listening any more. Now only big ideas can hope to make voters reconsider. Only an authentic change in Labour itself would show that the party's old political ways are over. At the time of writing, this decision hangs in the balance.

A giant "gravy train" sets off today on a tour of marginal constituencies where MPs have abused their expenses, demanding a referendum on electoral reform. The Vote for a Change coalition for proportional representation makes the crucial link between the scandal and the need for a Westminster clearout: safe seats for life create a culture of complacency and corruption.

But Polly, the introduction of PR will ensure that you can't kick out your MP if they are towards the top of a party list. Take the great Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for SE England. He topped the party's list for the 2009 poll, which meant that it was effectively impossible for him to lose (the Conservative Party's share of the vote in the SE would have had to have fallen by around four-fifths - it was as safe a seat as you can get. Neil Hamilton's Tatton constituency, on the other hand, was I think the third safest Conservative seat in the country at the 1997 election. But he lost, while the Conservatives held on to riskier seats. Why? Because it's what people wanted at a local level.

Oh, and there's no suggestion that MEPs, elected under PR, have ever fiddled their expenses? Perish the thought.

Reform will look yet more urgent when the expenses scandal breaks out again next month: offending MPs will be told how much to pay back and some bills will be shockers. Labour needs to get out ahead by declaring the Westminster closed shop over. If the party fails to ride the tide of anger, its MPs will be swept away by it. Radical reform is the best challenge to David Cameron, whose only reform is to raise the price of MPs' rock cakes.

A cheap shot. Cameron's plans to "cut the cost of Westminster" isn't going to save a lot of cash, but it shows that he 'gets it': MPs should be holding the Government to account, not fattening their arses at my expense.

The auguries are not good. Yesterday's cabinet sub-committee discussed a paper on options drawn up by Jack Straw, an outspoken opponent of PR. His trump card is a claim that a referendum is technically impossible unless the enabling bill passes all its parliamentary stages by 25 February – the last possible date before the last possible election day. The Tories in the Lords could filibuster the bill past that day. However, the Electoral Reform Society reckons the Lords have an obligation to pass it since a referendum was mentioned in Labour's last three manifestos. What's more, the society reckons that, with enough crossbenchers in favour, the Lords might well pass the bill anyway. Labour should go for it and expose the depth of the Tories' refusal to make political change.

And Labour always keeps its promises apropos referenda, so nothing to worry about there then Polly. Ever heard of a city called Lisbon?

Campaigners want a referendum on PR held on the same day as the general election because it is the only way to ensure it happens. The ballot paper would put two propositions: keep the present first-past-the-post system, or change to the alternative vote (AV) plus a top-up list – a system drawn up by Roy Jenkins, who
was commissioned by Tony Blair. The system would allow voters to put their candidates in 1,2,3 order and then make additional choices from the extra list,
resulting in a fairer alignment between votes cast and seats won. Straw and other cabinet opponents say they would tolerate AV without the top-up, but since that gives even less of a proportional result, it's not worth the effort of a referendum.

Again, if you have a top-up list system, as in Scotland, it means that it becomes literally impossible for some people to lose (if you stand under AV and also come at the top of a top-up list). It's completely undemocratic for a number of MPs to have literally 'unloseable' seats. FPTP may lead to 'safe' seats, but as Crewe & Nantwich 2008, Winchester 1997, Tatton 1997, Christchurch 1993 et al have demonstrated, sometimes when the chips are down, safe seats just ain't so safe.

The Lib Dems have for years campaigned for PR, though Nick Clegg has downplayed it for fear of sounding self-interested. Paddy Ashdown used to say that PR was not self-interest but high principle, since it could lose the Lib Dems more seats than they gain: tactical voters obliged to vote Lib Dem to keep their worst option out could, under PR, safely put their favoured party first. We shall see on Wednesday what passion Clegg puts into the reform cause in his big speech in Bournemouth.

But he has thrown a spanner into the works by opposing a referendum on election day, wanting a law passed now to set some date after the election. His good reason is that anything Gordon Brown puts forward "will turn to dust". Indeed a death-bed conversion by Labour after all these wasted years doesn't look good. Labour could legislate for a referendum to be held on local election day in 2011, avoiding any contamination with general election issues. Fine in theory, but it would probably never happen as Prime Minister Cameron would just rescind it. So, even if the timing is less than perfect, it has to be now or never.

And PM DC should rescind it. The current Government, with an unelected PM whose solution to every crisis is to bring in more of his unelected pals (by way of their elevation to the Lords), has no mandate to make this change now. If PR was such a great idea, why did it not come in term 1? It's interesting that they hark back to the Jenkins Commission - this group carried out its review eleven years ago! Roy Jenkins is DEAD! Can you imagine if the Tories had tried to implement electoral reform in late 1996, citing a report written in, oh, 1985? Polly would have crucified them... because it would be a shameless attempt of a decomposing administration to somehow cling to power. And she would have been right. But when Labour do it? Oh, that's different. It's "progressive" or some other such nonsense.

The cabinet has more PR advocates than ever, alongside the usual phalanx of old guard tribalists. But there is a tranche of converts and waverers, mostly younger, keenly aware of how far the party has fallen into disrepute. Brown is said to be listening, but is much influenced by Scottish MPs warning him that PR let the SNP win: they are in denial that Labour lost because it was so unpopular on both sides of the border. But the mood is changing: the TUC last week voted to open the PR debate.

Only a Guardian columnist could care what the TUC think about anything. True to form for Polly.

Arguments against the referendum will look persuasive to cabinet faint-hearts. It will be said PR means never again strong decisive government. But "strong" unaccountable government is absolutely not what people clamour for. The country would have been saved the worst of both Thatcher and Blair had it been moderated
by coalition partners. People complain bitterly of "strong" law-making by whipped party majorities elected by a minority of voters.

Or instead we could have the system they have in Italy, where each government trundles on for a few months and then collapses, or the crazy anti-democratic horse-trading of Israeli politics. Hannan / Carswell's "The Plan" has much better ideas for reconnecting power and people.

Thatcher took more votes than Blair - in 1979, 1983 and 1987, the number of people voting Conservative actually went UP each time. Blair's wins (1997, 2001, 2005) were with a declining band of voters.

It looks like a kind of gerrymandering, the last gasp of a dying party, say cabinet opponents. Yes, it smacks of panic that Labour never reformed parliament when it could. But this is no gerrymander: it's up to voters to decide, and it doesn't take effect until the following election. Meanwhile, Cameron unilaterally promises to cut the number of MPs – all Labour – and that really is a gerrymander: he certainly wouldn't do it if Tory seats were in the firing line. PR is the way to cut radically the number of MPs, without defrauding any party.

Perhaps there are more Labour seats in the firing line than Conservative because a boundary review is LONG overdue, and we have the situation where the Conservatives actually won the popular vote in England in 2005 but still had c. 90 seats fewer than Labour. I don't remember Polly trying to cite Michael Howard as some kind of Al Gore lost-leader figure a la Florida 2000.

What if the cabinet splits over the referendum? Some fear it will look chaotic. Nonsense. It will look like grown-up politics, allowing the party to think and vote as free individuals, earning public respect for more openness and honesty. An Electoral Reform Society poll showed that 30% of wavering Labour voters and 30% of Lib Dem voters were more likely to vote Labour if the party espoused electoral reform. Labour has lost 1.1 million to the Lib Dems so far.

Cameron, on current polls, is set to win a good majority in the Commons on the smallest proportion of votes cast since the last war. What's more, today's Hansard Society poll finds only 53% certain to vote, so he may win on the fewest votes ever. Disgust with politics and politicians will destroy Labour – unless it becomes the voice for cleansing Westminster. Leave the Conservatives to tell voters why everything is always for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

"Disgust with politics and politicians will destroy Labour – unless it becomes the voice for cleansing Westminster" - fat chance of that Polly!

And "allowing the party to think and vote as free individuals, earning public respect for more openness and honesty" - what has she been smoking? Yea Gods!

Polly at her best - an inaugural fisking

Dearest reader, I promised you a "fisk" of Polly Toynbee (meaning I will go line-by-line through one of her columns and tear it to shreds). And yet I have not found the time to do this, despite the fact that she has to be one of the shrillest, least logical and most inconsistent of columnist published in the British press.



But here goes:


Cameron's basic error will cost this country dearly

The all-conquering Conservatives are marching headlong into an elephant trap. Overconfident, they are starting to make mistakes. Too certain of victory, recklessly they dare to make enemies of the entire public sector.

Quite the reverse; half the trouble is that Cameron has yet to flesh out his agenda. The Tories haven't 'sealed the deal' with the electorate as people still don't undertsnad exactly what the party will do with power.

David Cameron transformed attitudes to his party overnight with that clever promise to stick to Labour spending plans: it blocked any Labour scaremongering about Tory cuts. It made Cameron look moderate, undogmatic and a friend of the public sector. He stole the trick from Labour, whose painful two-year freeze allayed old red fears. But now with Labour in directionless disarray, cocksure Cameron and Osborne ignore the perils of policies that lost them three elections. Their shrink-the-state glee is transparently ideological. Thatcher never promised cuts in advance.

Perhaps she didn't, but we have NO MONEY just now. We are stony broke, and yet public spending still outstrips tax revenues by £175bn this year. Public spending has soared since the early 2000s and we've got remarkably little to show for the extra money. And it's not as if taxes haven't risen; petrol duty is up, National Insurance conts went up by 10% etc etc etc... It's been said that we're actually in a worse position now than when poor old Denis Healey called in the IMF. And when did Polly become a fan of Mrs T?

The tax-and-spend battle began in earnest this week. But with every speech, Osborne and Cameron offer nastier medicine, sharper knives and worse to come: since when was inflicting pain a winning strategy?

When people realise that the Government have pissed away a boom that lasted for tweleve years (1995-2007), through spending the revenues of it, then spending some more, such that we have an eyewatering level of national debt. That's when.

Through ceaseless repetition they and their press have persuaded voters that paying down national debt fast trumps all else. So far they have won the argument, mostly because Gordon Brown was denying that anything whatever need be done. Now that Alistair Darling has forced Brown to his senses, the debate has shifted to whose debt-reduction plans are best.

Is paying down debt so bad? If you are a company that is "geared up" (have very high levels of debt), then much of your revenues will be used to pay interest on the debt. The recovery will be slower and more painful than it need be if most of the proceeds of any recovery are needed to pay the interest on the debt. And it will be even more expensive if we lose our AAA rating. This is more likely to happen if we stick to the drunken sailor spending policies of the last ten years.

With encouraging indicators this week that Britain is starting to emerge from recession a little ahead of Treasury forecasts, early signs suggest public opinion is shifting to the view that Labour's fiscal stimulus worked. Recovery will be fragile all next year, with fear of a double dip. So where are the Tories? Thoroughly trounced, proven to be wrong when all through the crisis they alone in the world opposed all intervention, including the bailing-out of banks. They have virtually no reputable economic allies.

People MIGHT thank Uncle Gordon for getting us out of recession (I'll believe it when I see it), but seeing as he's postponed the necessary tax rises to pay for the stimulus until after the next election. Remember: Churchill won the war...and was booted out of office in 1945. Why? Because people wanted to put the memory of WWII behind them. I'm guessing it will be the same this time... if Brown is lucky.

Economists Anatole Kaletsky of the Times and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, both conservatives, this week walloped the Tory fixation with rapid and savage paying down of debt. Mervyn King, no Labour friend, has been the great promoter of quantitative easing. Robert Chote of the IFS warns Britain may already be planning to withdraw fiscal stimulus too soon. Every country, except Argentina, intends to keep spending through 2010, despite equally high debts. Nonetheless, at the spring election, just as recovery is fluttering to life, the Conservatives' one great priority will be to put it all at risk with immediate deep cuts, unprecedented anywhere else. Whatever blame Brown deserves for the bubble, is that a winning ticket for the Tories, really?

I think Mervyn King is damaged goods and the fact that he's still in a job, along with, strangely enough, the chaps at the FSA, only goes to show how weak Brown & Darling are. You cannot keep spending money we don't have and not suffer the consequences. And there are not many countries with debts the size of ours.

Even less popular will be their assault on the public sector. They are winning the argument now by talking of quangos, Whitehall bureaucrats and gold-plated public pensions. Everyone has a pet example of public jobsworths to cull. But vague assaults on the public sector can't take the Tories through an election. Once they get specific, they will be in trouble. For example, Tory sabres rattle at public-sector pensions, but a TUC report based on Office for National Statistics figures shows that taxpayers contribute 10 times more in pension tax relief to the richest 1% of earners than the state pays to all retired public servants. If Labour made proper use of this killer fact, they would promise instead to abolish all higher-rate income tax pension subsidies, bringing in £6bn – far more than public pensions cost.

A "killer fact"? Completely irrelevant. Tax relief is imply giving people back a bit more of the money that they have already earned before Greedy Gordon gets his claws into it. I might also mention that this actually costs the State nothing - no money is being paid out, only less taken in, and these 'richest 1%' will pay tax on their pension income in retirement. Are we suggesting that people should be taxed TWICE on their pension (once for the money paid in, and again on the income in retirement)? Actually, the Finance Act 2009 brought in some such changes - no doubt Polly was in favour. But the trouble with the money that the State pays to "retired public servants" isn't that it is unaffordable now, it's that we have an aging population, an increasing dependency ratio and that benefits are still being racked up while the cash isn't set aside to pay for them. It's when Polly's baby boomer generation has all retired that we'll have a problem.

The Institute of Directors and the Taxpayers' Alliance just produced their own juicy menu of cuts. While this is rightwing kite-flying, it offers a good frightener for what lies ahead. People may be stirred to anger by Tory tales of public waste, but voters will swing back pretty fast once real cuts are spelled out. On this £50bn death-list was Sure Start, Labour's best hope for rescuing young children. Away goes the educational maintenance allowance that has kept poor children in school beyond 16. Away go all grants from the Department of Communities and Local Government – mostly to charities. Freeze public pay for two years, freeze the state pension, end child benefit and no free travel for the old. Harmless-sounding cuts to non-frontline NHS staff mean fewer clerks to find hospital notes, make appointments and send samples to labs.

What is the defining characteristic of a charity, Polly? I thought that it was that it was funded by voluntary subscription. The State should NOT be funding charities, but it does - have a look at fakecharities.org. Let's put a stop to this once and for all - the Government chooses groups that share it's view, and then provide them with cash to help them lobby the Government. It's corruption and it should stop. And the benefits of SureStart (a Polly favourite) perhaps deserve further scrutiny - either way it's more Big Government. The nationalisation of childhood - we can do with a bit less of that.

This useful report is a necessary reminder that few cuts are painless, most affect everyone, though the poor are hit hardest. Get out a political calculator and tot up how many tens of millions of voters will suddenly think that paying down debt fast is not the only priority after all. Ipsos Mori shows attitudes to the public sector are perverse: people criticise services in the abstract, but praise them mightily in their own community – where cuts will fall. I have been judging the Guardian Public Services Awards, looking at remarkable innovations and good ideas big and small by staff full of enthusiasm and energy. I can only think sadly that much of this would be gone when the Conservative axe falls. At election time, voters will contemplate this too – and daft public staff now telling pollsters they will vote Tory will come to their senses too.

In fairness, I've never heard of the Grauniad Public Services Awards, but "looking at remarkable innovations and good ideas big and small" is not necessarily a bad idea - lets find some efficiencies. But to describe public sector employees as "daft" for voting for the Tories? What a patronising bitch! Polly is one of these people that presumably believes that, say, black people, homosexuals and the poor have no business voting anything other than Labour - they should "know their place" and vote for the People's Party. But perhaps public sector staff can see the writing on the wall, same as everyone else. Perhaps they too realise that the gravy train has gone too far, and that the the money can be better spent. Perhaps they see waste every day and realise the game's up. I know a number of people who used to work in local government but packed it in as it was so soul-destroying, such a waste of time, full of make-work schemes where nothing ever got any better. And the taxpayer barely got a look in. Time for a change, Polly!

The autumn's pre-budget report must be bravely specific about what cuts and tax rises Labour will use to reduce the debt. Only clarity will force the Tories to produce their own plans. Labour will need to make some cuts – but they can raise some taxes too. One per cent on National Insurance yields £10bn. Capital gains on private homes would raise £3bn. Abolishing tax relief on savings and investments, which goes mainly to the rich, brings £3bn.

I agree - I'd like to see the Tories' plans as well. I think we need a proper, grown up debate about the mess we're in & how we get out of it. But let's look at Polly's ideas. 1% on NI - another 1%? They put it up to provide more money for the Health Service after the 2001 election (glad it wasn't wasted then), and yet she suggests we need a higher payroll tax. Just the thing to get companies to start hiring again. And capital gains tax on private homes??? Political suicide - Brown will lose the vote of pretty much every homeowner in the country. This idea was mooted before the 2005 election, but Brown had the sense to realise that it would have been a disaster. Oh, and a great way to discourage people from saving again (which Darling is telling us we should do) would be to scrap the savings tax reliefs that exist. As it stands, I think it's a bloody disgrace that we have ANY taxes on savings, given that the money has already been taxed as income, but that's for another day. So well done, Polly - these policies should give Cameron about, oh, a 400+ majority. And will bring in a whole £16bn - will pay for about ONE MONTH of the annual increase in the deficit caused by the spending outstripping tax revenue. Why not see if you can find a fiver down the back of the sofa?





Here's a suggestion - stay off economics when you're sharing your wisdom in the Grauniad. You're nearly as good at it as your Dear Leader. Have we got to the end yet?

This week figures showed that banks tripled the profit they made on mortgages in the last year: time to siphon some of that off. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll for Compass has found that 73% would support a new tax on bonuses above £10,000. Sixty-three per cent support the creation of a High Pay Commission. Labour has a chance to seize this public sentiment, since much public anger with politics springs from a sense that the parties are in cahoots with wealth. Cameron is making irreversible errors in his assault on the public sector. But Labour walks in an orchard of low-hanging fruit with its eyes tight shut, failing to take the chances on offer.

The banks profits will have been taxed then, along with the profits of ANY OTHER BUSINESS. You don't devise special retrospective taxes for sectors of the economy that you've decided this month that you don't like... unless you are running a banana republic. And the Compass poll? "Majority of people think someone else should pay more in tax" shocker. Everyone thinks THEY should pay LESS in tax, and 'someone else' ("the rich", invariably), should pay more. If you're a company deciding to locate in Britain, one of the things you will consider is the tax levels paid by the top people - I'm not saying it's a deal-breaker, but it's just one more reason to locate in Ireland/Switzerland/wherever... Same goes for Polly's High Pay Commission - I bet the New Labour toadies that would wind up serving on such a ridiculous body would not have to supplement their income by begging.



If the "low hanging fruit" is as poisonous as Polly's insane ideas listed above, Gordon's best bet is to cover his good eye and keep walking.



One down - many of Polly's columns to follow! In the future, I intend to make it a bit less heavy on the rant and a bit more on research, with links that disprove her "logic", but it's been a long day!

More hot air from the BBC

If ever there was an article on the BBC website that looks as if the writer was weeping into their tofu and mung bean stew, it's this one:

UK climate scepticism more common

It says:

The British public has become more sceptical about climate change over the
last five years, according to a survey.

Twice as many people now agree that "claims that human activities are
changing the climate are exaggerated".

Four in 10 believe that many leading experts still question the evidence.
One in five are "hard-line sceptics".

I'm at the very least in the four in ten, and maybe even the one in five.

Perhaps the reason why people feel it's exaggerated is because the left-wing press have over-played their hand. I'm surprised the BBC didn't add "...despite BBC's best efforts" to the end of the headline.

Here's to scrapping the all these "green taxes"... and the telly tax while we're at it.

#ithinktheNHSishavingalaugh

From the BBC:

Staff at Swindon's Great Western Hospital face possible dismissal after posting online pictures of themselves taking part in the Lying Down Game.

Read the whole story here - it beggars belief.

And yet we have all three main political parties wedded to ever-rising sums of money for the health service.

Are we really supposed to believe it's so short-staffed and there's no scope for a few cuts? The under-employed in Swindon might be a good place to start.