David Tredinnick MP – giving MPs a worse name
contribution by Josh Plotkin
While second-home flipping and suspect renting arrangements are the stuff of which headlines are made, public scrutiny of expenses has revealed the weird and wonderful reality of some of our MPs. Let’s take…oh, I don’t know, David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth.
David Tredinnick has superb form in the field of, well, being an idiot. Over the years he has come out with torrents of rubbish, popping up to add his own ridiculous noise to any debate on homeopathy, alternative medicine or other new-age nonsense.
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Is James Purnell using Sen?
Amartya Sen and his capabilities model is all the rage in cabinet, and ex-cabinet. Gordon Brown’s read all about it, Liam Byrne’s been quoting Sen in the Guardian, and now James Purnell’s been using him as the basis for his attempt to portray himself as a leading left thinker, ready to lead Labour and the left out of the electoral wilderness with his new best think-tank mate Jon Cruddas.
So what are we to make of the adoption of a piece of thinking which dates from the 1970s, and set out most famously in Sen’s seminal 1979 Tanner Lecture ‘Equality of What’? Like Stuart at Next Left, I’m not a little worried about how Sen’s being used and abused.
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What the coverage on crime statistics doesn’t say
contribution by Gabe Trodd
I’d like to offer a different take on today’s crime statistics, which: have been boiled down and put on the front page of the Guardian and has been securing significant coverage on BBC News all days. They will inevitably be subject to the patronising and cynical ‘Broken Britain’ drones and hand-wringing of David Cameron, George Osbourn and Chris Grayling.
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Tory councils: rhetoric versus reality
The Tories are decimating local services, even as David Cameron claims he’s a great fan of local power: here’s more on local Tories who see the public spending squeeze as a justification to keep flogging public services off to the voracious private sector.
Another windy night in the Tory borough of Barnet, and your reporter is snuggled in with the crowd at yet another Barnet council cabinet meeting, watching and listening as this council’s rightist zealots pour forth another torrent of pro-privatisation, efficiencies horseshit.
As many good burghers of Barnet already know, Barnet Tories are working up a mad, massive and massively unpopular scheme (tweely dubbed Future Shape) for future public service delivery in lucky North London.
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The media execs who apparently knew nothing
After the statement from News International over a week ago, and last Sunday’s News of the World editorial, you might have expected that Tom Crone, Colin Myler, Stuart Kuttner and Andy Coulson might have came out defiant and dismissive to the Commons culture committee, especially after last week’s bravura performance from Nick Davies.
The News of the World stance appears to have now changed three times. First it was to deny nothing; then it was to deny everything; now it seems to be know nothing.
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The BNP’s lies in Norwich North
Much to my joy I received my first Norwich North by-election leaflets from the BNP yesterday. The first one was pretty much as I expected:
I think its the same layout as the one they used for the Euro elections a couple of months ago: it’s got the Battle of Britain spitfire picture which caused some hilarity last time round when it was revealed to be a Polish (in BNP speak: dirty-foreigner-Eastern-Europeans-coming-over-here-and-taking-all-our-jobs) squadron plane, and it’s got four numpties, I mean ordinary British working people, trying to make excuses for their decision to embrace fascism.
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Turn Left: report from the Demos launch
There are only so many ways round you can ask ‘what does it mean to be of the Left in Britain today?’ before you start to sound like Yoda in the small hours of a party conference booze-up. Nonetheless, yesterday’s launch of Demos’ new Open Left project, spearheaded by James Purnell, threw up some very interesting points.
Purnell believes that left ideology necessitates ‘choice in public services’, which is a tad rich coming from the man who single-handedly purged the welfare state of its last remaining shreds of compassion earlier this year with his intricate schemes for lie detector tests, workfare-style sickpay deals and a punitive scheme for addicts and alcoholics.
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Boris ambushed over crisis centres
The Boris Keep Your Promise (over rape crisis centres) campaign yesterday ambushed London Mayor Boris Johnson.
Watch Boris squirm as he tries to explain why he hasn’t kept to manifesto commitments, given the money needed is less than his “chicken feed” second salary.
There’s also a report on the Sauce blog (via The F Word)
Political tweets of the day
Useful insight of the day from Nadine Dorries: “We refer to MPs as MPs but we’re people.”
NOTW/NewsInt complaining about repeated investigations like a drug mule bitching about cavity searches. Boo hoo.
Feel free to highlight your twitter accounts in the comments.
Purnell: What might have been
As James Purnell launches his new think tank project, having seemingly learned nothing from his undistinguished ministerial career, it seems an appropriate moment to look at how things might have been so different.
So let me present, from Paskini’s alternative history files:
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