When red tape is needed

+The Evening Standard carries an interview with Jeremy Corbyn, that nice old gent who is standing in Islington North. One revealing bit:
 
‘It’s hard to get Corbyn to admit to mistakes as leader. “What I regret most was trusting in people who clearly were not going to be supportive or loyal,” he says. “I wish now I’d removed far more people from offices within the party… not so much Parliament, I can’t control that so easily — but within the party.”’
 
Yes indeed, he’s too nice for his own good. You do need a little bit of ruthlessness in politics. I have said before that one of Corbyn’s first acts as leader should have been to sack the General Secretary (or as we call it, giving him a peerage). But Corbyn left things too late, and the party hierarchy assiduously worked to undermine him. For Corbyn to say that he trusted these people suggests that he was rather credulous—surely he must have known beforehand that he couldn’t trust them? John McDonnell I doubt would have had any qualms. And he always looked comfortable wearing a suit. Having said which, I hope Corbyn wins his seat, so we can all look forward to his first question to shape shifter Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions.
 
+Yesterday I may have sounded a wee bit sceptical about Labour’s vision of insulating five million homes. That scepticism stems partly from my own experience as a councillor trying to promote the Tories’ warm homes scheme. It was a crap scheme, but one had to try. It didn’t work and the scheme was dropped, albeit without the fanfare with which it was launched. Here I will look at another home insulation issue. The BBC’s You and Yours programme the other day reported how some guy had fallen for the spray foam insulation sales talk and has now faced multiple problems. Coincidentally I saw this ad (left) on clickbait. £1,500 off! If you are eligible. There’s a subtle hint in the word ‘eligible’ that there’s a formal, perhaps even official test of criteria. It suggests of course that some people may not be eligible. But whose insulation service is being advertised? Actually, nobody’s in particular. This is merely a lead-generating marketing campaign, run by a company called Desquared Marketing Ltd. If you fill in their online ‘eligibility’ test, they will no doubt then forward your name to several companies that subscribe to their service. If you go ahead, your ‘voucher’ will be applied to the final cost. It is inconceivable of course that a quoted price might already have factored in the ‘discount.’
 
A search on Google ‘how good is spray foam insulation?’ brought up first an advert for a company based in Cambridgeshire (below). So, there’s clearly an issue with spray foam insulation, or perhaps more to the point I suspect with some spray foam installers. I cannot say whether it is a good or bad thing—the point here is that home insulation carries its own risks to the unwary. The big question is how will Labour ensure that its home insulation scheme is thoroughly regulated and policed? It seems these days, thinking of the PPE scandal that people with no experience or qualifications can get in on the act, with the taxpayer picking up the tab. Will there be independent regulators, or will the industry be allowed to mark its own homework?

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