Help with legal challenge to kettling
News just in that the Climate Camp is trying to move forward with a legal challenge to the police kettling at Bishopsgate on April 1. As I argued in an earlier post, there is good reason to think that the kettle at Bishopsgate was illegal even if the Law Lords’ decision in the Austin case earlier this year is good law. There is a strong case that the kettle in question did not meet the tests of reasonableness and proportionality which the Law Lords laid down.
However, the Climate Camp needs money to mount the legal challenge:
‘We really, really, need to raise £40,000 quickly to challenge the kettling. It may seem a lot but we think we can do it – small amounts from lots of people will get us to this target. See the Camp Donate page to donate to the Legal fund. Please tell all your friends and rich aunties.’ Relevant links are here (Legal Team) and here (Donations). Let’s give generously!
cross-posted from Next Left
The Broken Party?
Gordon Brown’s definitely finished now…
… when even his most ardent supporters urge a campaign against him.
Oh dear, Demos
Think-tank Demos last week launched their vision for how power should be “radically” devolved.
But Jenni Russell at Comment is Free went to the launch, and “no one mentioned women’s existence once”:
As I stood listening, I began to feel a rising tide of outrage. There was just one problem with this message of transformation and innovation – which was that every single one of the five speakers arguing for change was a man (white, at that). That every name mentioned as a new Demos adviser was that of a man. That no one mentioned women’s existence once. And that when we were shown a brief video about how power must be shared with the people, every silhouette and every symbol on the screen was – quite unselfconsciously – that of a man.
Very… er… radical.
(Crossposted from The F-Word)
Time for Hazel Blears to go
This was reported in the Guardian today. I’m surprised not only at the sheer dishonesty, but that more isn’t being made about this.
Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, faced a fight for her political life after apparently making contradictory declarations about a publicly subsidised flat to avoid a £18,000 tax bill.
Blears appeared to have avoided paying capital gains tax when she sold a flat in Kennington, south London, in August 2004 for £200,000, making a profit of £45,000. To avoid paying tax of about £18,000 on the profit, she would have had to declare the flat to the Inland Revenue as her main residence. But in April 2004 she designated the Kennington flat as her second home to the Commons authorities. This allowed her to claim mortgage interest payments on it of £850 a month. Blears said yesterday she had done nothing wrong.
Unbelievable. And yet she keeps claiming she has done nothing wrong. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see how dishonest this is.
In an earlier thread commenter redpesto suggested we need an Italian style ‘clean hands’ campaign. I agree. And for a start we need heads to roll on all sides of the political spectrum to show that this behaviour cannot be batted away with ease. Starting with Hazel Blears and James Purnell – both of whom should be fully investigated by the HMRC for avoiding Capital Gains Tax. What other recommendations would you suggest for such a campaign?
MPs are paid enough already!
Guest post by Tom W
You know what really makes me mad about the MP expenses scandal? It’s not so much the ludicrous claims – for bathplugs, ugly ceilings, scratched sinks etc – as the attitude from many MPs that this was all OK because they weren’t being paid enough in the first place.
I am enraged by this excuse. The basic salary for a backbench MP is £63,291 – and ministers and junior ministers get more. Yes, that’s less than GPs, management consultants, PR reps, bankers and so on can expect to earn. But it is still around three times the UK median income, which varies from between £21-24,000 depending on measurements. It’s considerably more than the 50% of UK citizens below the national median survive on.
continue reading… »
A shadow cabinet full of scammers
Expense claims from the shadow cabinet
• Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary and a member of Cameron’s inner circle, spent more than £7,000 furnishing a London property in 2006 before “flipping” the second home designation to a new one in his Surrey Heath constituency.
• Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, spent thousands of pounds renovating a thatched Tudor country cottage before selling it. He then moved the second designation to a London flat.
• Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the Commons who chairs the Commons audit committee which oversees MPs’ expenses, had a claim for £3,194 gardening expenses declined in March 2007. He says this hapened after he raised the matter with the Commons authorities.
• Francis Maude, the shadow cabinet office minister who is leading the Tories’ preparations for government, tried to claim mortgage interest on his family home in Sussex. This was declined by the Commons fees office.
• Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary and another member of the Cameron circle, claimed for the renovation of a London flat which is 17 miles from his family home.
• Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh secretary, claimed for dog food. She has agreed to repay the claim.
• Oliver Letwin, who is in charge of the Tories’ general election manifesto, charged £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under a tennis court. The pipe was not related to the court and Letwin was obliged to mend the pipe after an order from the local water authority.
• David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary, claimed more than £100 for workmen to replace 25 lightbulbs at his home.
How can we trust police intent now?
“Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards. Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon,” reports the Guardian today.
I really hoped that the assault on Ian Tomlinson had been an accident. It wasn’t. I really hoped that the police medics had not been engaged in violent assaults: they had. I really hoped that the police medical teams had been provided to care for the injured; in fact protesters were explicitly refused help, by medics, while bleeding. I really hoped that the police had not been targeting legal observers and arresting them, harassing them, stealing their recording equipment, defacing their notebooks. All of these things were happening.
But now there is much more.
continue reading… »
Review: Jessica Valenti of Feministing’s new books
Jessica Valenti, editor of the popular blog Feministing, in an effort to make us all feel like we should get up earlier, has not one but two new books out. Both were released in the UK this week on May 7th.
‘He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut (And 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know)’ looks like one of those rather meaningless “gift books” that you buy for friends when you can’t think of anything else they’d like or you’ve only just remembered that it’s birthday drinks you’re heading to when you get to the train station with two minutes to spare.
But we know Valenti better than to expect anything so simple. Inside, chopped into sassy bite-sized chunks Valenti presents an overwhelmingly compelling case for the existence of a double standard for women in every branch of society.
continue reading… »
Labour plummets; polls says publish all expenses
91% of the public have backed a call for the full uncensored MPs expenses to be published, in a poll published by the News of the World today. 89% said the reputation of Parliament was being tarnished.
More worryingly for Labour, the Mail on Sunday reports a poll today showing Gordon Brown had become Labour’s most unpopular leader ever.
If the poll’s findings were repeated in a General Election, Tory leader David Cameron would have a majority of 220 seats, beating Tony Blair’s majority of 179 after his landslide victory in 1997. The Tories would gain 237 seats, of which 200 would come from Labour. The figures make particularly bleak reading for Gordon Brown: even with Michael Foot as its leader, Labour support did not fall below 23.5 per cent.
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