Michael Gove’s excellent education proposals are, rightly, receiving lots of praise.  I’ve just read the Coffeehouse article, and my eye was caught by the first comment, which included this:

From my wife’s experience, teaching is a badly paid and high stress environment (with virtually no support from parents, and none from her own management). She left a job with better money and lower stress in order to do it. A man in her position could not have possibly supported a family on the salary.

So a man needs to earn more in order to support his little wifey who can’t support herself? People who still think like this make me seethe.  If you do a job, you should be paid the going rate - the rate that the market will support.

I have, I think, mentioned this before, but I was once in discussions about a payrise and was told that really I had no need for one because I might get married eventually, so someone else would pay the mortgage. It was years ago.  It still rankles. I still wish I had made a formal complaint about it at the time.

As Andrew Lansley tried to explain in an interview with the Health Service Journal and subsequent clarifications, “pay [should be]… defined by what is necessary to recruit, retain and motivate the staff, and also what is affordable”.  Sky and Paul Waugh are saying this is another Lansley gaffe; I don’t know… The last one turned out to reveal some pretty useful information.

Anyway, as a Conservative, the DWP’s recent exercise in fake job applications made me splutter like a Telegraph-reading ex-colonel.  But as a supporter of equality, I actually think it was a useful experiment. Clearly there are still places where your identity matters more than your ability.

All salaries should reflect what the market will support - the value we place on the output, the number of applicants, the skills required, the results we will achieve are what should count. In the immortal, if somewhat corrupted, words of Michael Jackson, it doesn’t matter what colour, gender, orientation, ethnicity or whatever you are.  It does matter what you’re capable of.

Alan Johnson’s announcement that he is not going to make ID cards compulsory could be any number of things.

It is, first of all, yet another reannouncement – the cards have never actually been compulsory (except for airside workers in Manchester and London, and for foreigners).

Secondly it’s an acknowledgement that the funds just aren’t there.

Thirdly it’s an acknowledgement that the government doesn’t really know what their purpose is – it used to be combating terrorism; then benefit fraud; then underage drinking then probably something else.

And fourthly, it’s a flexing of the power Alan Johnson currently holds.

What it’s not, however, is the abolition of ID cards and/or the National Database. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy loon, it’s not the card itself that is the big worry; it’s the database.

When I lived in France, I had to have a residency card, which had my photo, name, address, date of birth and nationality on it. I don’t really have any great objection to that; it served as a secondary piece of photographic ID, and I only ever had to produce it when I would have had to do so here (for example, as official proof of address at the Post Office or at France Telecom). I imagine that, had I ever been stopped by the police, I would have been asked to show it but again, I don’t think that providing evidence of who you are in the event of being arrested is really a problem.

My big problem with ID cards and their database is two-fold. Firstly, (unlike France) the UK is not a country where things have to be authorised – the assumption is that you’re allowed to do something unless you are expressly prohibited. Our tradition is much more liberal and free than countries where you’re not allowed to do something unless the law specifically permits it.

But my most major objection is this. Look what the state does when it’s given too much power. Look what Poole Council did using anti-terror laws – they went after people trying to make sure their child got a good education. Look what Labour does with its massive majorities – makes bad laws, wrong decisions and nearly bankrupts us. As I have often argued, the relationship between us as citizens and the state has shifted and is now the wrong way round.

Concrete proposals to restore power to people are a good start. But I suspect an even better one might be to go through and simply repeal law after law after law.

Rachel Sylvester in yesterday’s Times had an important piece about the election of John Bercow as the new Speaker on Monday.  I’m not going to go over the arguments for or against any of the candidates - none of them were particularly inspiring. Most of them have expenses problems. Almost all of them had in some way acted against more openness in the House of Commons, either by voting to exempt themselves from FoI requests, or by other votes. Most of them were virtual non-entities.

I quite liked some of Parmjit Dhanda’s ideas.  I particularly liked his insistence that MPs don’t understand why the public have disdain for them.

Until MPs understand why so many voters are so angry, there is no chance of the changes that are needed. The constant carping against John Bercow, for example (who, for the record, I thought did a pretty fair job at PMQs today) is pointless - who the Speaker is is just not that important in the wider scheme of things, and it smacks of self-obsession to continue to complain. The Speaker is who he is. Get over it.

What is important is that MPs grasp the mettle of reform.  They need to make changes to the way the Commons works so that MPs’ activities and the laws that are passed are responsive to their constituents, transparent, honest and provide value for money.  It is no longer good enough for whips to stitch up backroom deals or for MPs to be able to hide behind bleats of ‘we regulate ourselves’.

It’s time to change how politics works.  This speech is a good place to start but there’s plenty more to be done.

So it’s finally done. The new grouping for Conservative MEPs is called the European Conservatives and Reformists group.  It’s a bit of a mouthful, I suppose, but does the job.

Two observations. First - it was a promise made in the leadership campaign, it took a while (somewhat longer than planned, but better to do these things properly than to get put off at the first hurdle), and the campaign pledge has been delivered in full.

Secondly, and I think more importantly for the long-term, it shows a determination to deliver.  And to deliver properly. This new grouping is only the first step.

The point of this pledge was never just to remove Conservative MEPs from a grouping to which British Conservatives generally are ideologically opposed to.  It was to start to reform the way the EU works, and to make sure it does the things it’s supposed to, doesn’t do the things it’s not supposed to, and delivers for Europeans.

That’s the big challenge. This new grouping of ECR MEPs (55 MEPs from 8 countries, with a ninth already announced to be seeking to join) will need to work hard to deliver what they’ve promised. This is a good start, but it’s only the beginning.

Geoffrey Lean writes in today’s Telegraph about why it is no accident that conservation and Conservatism are neighbours in the dictionary.