About LC         Contact         Write for LC         FAQs         Archives

Miliband shouldn’t back down over Cameron’s EU friends

by Sunny Hundal    
October 2, 2009 at 5:59 pm

It annoys me about lefties that they get scared too easily by the media. David Miliband is likely to be the latest victim of Tory faux-outrage and he shouldn’t back down. He said in a speech:

Last week on the BBC, and you should go through the transcript, Eric Pickles, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, explained without a hint of shame that we should not condemn one of their new allies, the ‘For Fatherland and Freedom’ party, who every year celebrate the Latvian Waffen SS with a march past of SS veterans, because they were only following orders.

It makes me sick. And you know what makes me sicker? No one in the Tory party batted an eyelid. What do they say? All you need for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent. I tell you conference, we will never remain silent.

All this is factually true. But the Tories have gone on the offensive, calling it an anti-semitism row.
continue reading… »

The BBC is good for household debt

by Chris Dillow    
October 2, 2009 at 5:08 pm

The financial crisis suggests there’s a strong argument for the BBC remaining state-owned and not carrying adverts.
Yes, this claim looks bald. But the reasoning’s simple.

Let’s start from the assumption (which might be questionable) that high levels of personal debt were a contributory factor to the recession, and/or that a desire to pay down this debt might hold back the recovery.

The question then arises: why is debt so high?

TV advertising, that‘s one reason. A new paper by Matthew Baker and Lisa George establish this very cleverly. They exploited the fact that TV’s spread across the US in the 1950s was uneven, with some areas getting it earlier than others. They show that, in those areas where TV reception arrived earlier, households were more likely to take on debt.

In other words, TV – and TV advertising – contributes to household borrowing.
continue reading… »

Charity in inquiry over Tory bias; cancels party

by Sunny Hundal    
October 2, 2009 at 2:17 pm

Following a complaint from blogger Stephen Newton, the charity Atlantic Bridge has had to cancel its reception at this year’s Conservative Party conference where ‘members of the Shadow Cabinet [were to] be joined by a prominent American leader’.

The organisation, which had charitable status, is now the subject of an inquiry by the Charity Commission because they are supposed to be politically neutral by law.

Stephen Newton reveals:

The Atlantic Bridge’s partisan agenda was clearly affirmed by Margaret Thatcher (with whom they are obsessed) at a dinner in New York. Concluding what the Margaret Thatcher Foundation has ranked as a major speech, she set the Atlantic Bridge a clear goal: it was to become ‘a bulwark against the… people on the left’.

With Margaret Thatcher as its honorary patron, the Atlantic Bridge includes on its advisory board shadow chancellor George Osbourne, former Tory leader and shadow foreign secretary William Hague, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling and two other shadow cabinet members. Another shadow minister, a hereditary Conservative peer and a backbench Tory MP complete the UK line-up.
…
Typical Atlantic Bridge activities include paying for Tory MPs to visit Washington to meet fellow Conservatives, or to have dinner in Los Angeles with Fox News personalities. No similar opportunities are offered to politicians from other parties or any attempts made to share what they have learned with the wider public.

The Guardian reports that the Charity Commission has released a statement saying a case has been opened.

Atlantic Bridge did not return any calls by the newspaper.

Also at: Left Foot Forward

Hopi Sen adds:

Ooooh – You know who might be interested in this example of conservatives possibly abusing charity law? Guido Fawkes and his pet “Sunlight Centre for Open politics” I bet they’ll be right onto this with real passion- and not just some token blog post or something.

I’m sorry. It’s hard to keep a straight face…

A social democrat is a conservative with some research

by Don Paskini    
October 2, 2009 at 11:09 am

A while back, I wrote that:”One criticism of the welfare state is that once you include tax credits, child benefit, housing and council tax benefit and so on, a lone parent who is not in paid employment and has two children has roughly the same income as a single person who works and gets the average wage.”

One possible reaction to this is “that’s a disgrace, and it shows that benefits are too high.” This is the one which you will read a lot in the newspapers.

Fraser Nelson, Thatcherite editor of the Spectator, wrote something similar a couple of weeks ago:

Take, for example, a British girl leaving school and imagining a life of lower-paid work. The UK government presents her with two options: employment or pregnancy. If she has one child and no job, the benefit income of £207 a week is more than the average wage for a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it is £260 a week — more than a receptionist or library assistant earns. With three children, it is £324 a week, more than a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper.

Fraser is not, however, arguing that benefits need to be slashed.
continue reading… »

Compass was right to invite the Greens

by Sunny Hundal    
October 2, 2009 at 7:46 am

At the Compass rally last week at the Labour party conference, a bust-up between Caroline Lucas (leader of the Greens) and government minister John Denham threatened to overshadow the heavily-over subscribed event.

Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, invited Caroline Lucas to speak at the Compass rally. This was seen as high treason by many die-hard Labourites because she is fighting for a seat in Brighton and Hove against a soft-left Labour candidate.

John Denham was not happy and made a deeply impassioned speech against the move at the event.

But I think he and many others within the Labour Party miss the point.
continue reading… »

Brown’s ratings rise after conference speech

by Sunny Hundal    
October 1, 2009 at 8:47 pm

YouGov’s daily tracker poll brought some interesting news today.

While the Tory lead widened again quickly after a post-conference bounce, it brought some interesting news on how the speech was generally received which the media has ignored.

The results show that the party conference and Brown’s personal standing improved by over 10% after his main speech.

The poll also asked people how important newspaper endorsements and recommendations were on their voting intentions:

Very important 2%
Fairly important 10%

Not very important 25%
Not important at all 59%
Don’t know 4

Not encouraging for the impact of the Sun.

The public were also generally positive to the idea of moving to an AV voting system and having a referendum on the issue:

If a referendum were held on whether to stick with FPTP or switch to AV for electing MPs how would you vote?
Keep FPTP 30%
Switch to AV 58%
Would not vote 2%
Don’t know 10%

Do you think it is a good idea or bad idea to hold such a referendum?
Good idea to hold a referendum 59%
Bad idea 22%
Don’t know 19%

A law to recall MPs: Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea?
Good idea to hold local referendums such as this 76%
Bad idea 12%
Don’t know 12%

More results here.

Libdems condemn Tory alliance with bigoted MEP

by Sunny Hundal    
October 1, 2009 at 5:45 pm

I’ve just had a statement from Libdem Shadow Foreign Secretary Edward Davey condemning the Tory MEP alliance with Lithunian MEP Valdemar Tomaševski. He said:

This is yet more evidence of the shameful way that Cameron has taken the Tories out of the centre-right mainstream of European politics, and allied them with a lunatic fringe of extreme right wingers and homophobes.

Cameron has been at pains to portray his party as one of modern, ‘liberal Conservatives’. It is hard to see where this fits in with an alliance with parties which support homophobic laws such as this.

Soho Politico has been doing the digging on this saga and we’ll bring you the next installment soon.

I’m just trying to coordinate a few things. More statements and dirt yet to come.

Did liberal intervention work?

by Conor Foley    
October 1, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Normblog picked up a good point by Jonathan Freedland talking to delegates at Labour party conference. He said that whatever their other differences on New Labour’s legacy there was

close to a consensus on the debacle of foreign policy. Voices of left and right agree that Blair’s doctrine of “liberal interventionism” is one part of the inheritance that should be dumped in the nearest skip. Even those who liked the idea in theory concede that its practice proved disastrous.

I think that is probably right. Those of us working in the humanitarian field were the first to realize how badly wrong the policy was going and it is one of the reasons why our critique of liberal interventionism came earlier and was much sharper than that of many others on the centre-left.

I would not change a word that I have written about Afghanistan in the last six years. I wonder how many of the liberal interventionists can say the same?
continue reading… »

Telegraph trying to find source for Labour ad

by Sunny Hundal    
October 1, 2009 at 2:38 pm

If you search for ‘labour’ on Google, or are on a page with Google Ads containing the same word, you may notice this ad:

The Sun back the Tories
After 12 years in power the Labour Party loses The Sun’s support

Although the ad has now been changed to:

Labour loses The Sun
The Sun backs The Conservative Party for the next general election

A minor flap occurred yesterday when it turned out someone had bought Google ads stating:

You Can’t Trust The Sun
Wrong on Hillsborough
Wrong on Labour

These then linked to the Labour Party website.

A comment on the blog that highlighted this suggested it may be the work of a female Labour-leaning blogger.

This was then picked up by the Telegraph who went on a hunt to find who did it.

An enterprising Telegraph hack then decided to email more than one Labour-leaning women blogger. Liberal Conspiracy has been leaked the email:

From: Matthew Moore
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:45:27 +0100
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: daily telegraph inquiry

Hi,

Apologies if I’m barking up the wrong tree, but we (the Daily Telegraph) are trying to get to the bottom of who bought a Google advert for Labour mentioning Hillsborough earlier today.

A commenter on another blog mentioned it might be a female, Labour-leaning blogger. If they wanted to explain why they did it – a heat of the moment decision instantly regretted – we would be very interesting in publishing their side.

Would be grateful for any help you could give,

Regards,

Matt

Our source told us by email:

We do not that it was a Labour activist. We do not know their motivation, and as I didn’t even see the advert I can’t even confirm this whole thing took place. Luckily the ad, which of course probably did exist, was removed soon after and the incident itself caused no great pain.
…
The emails that went out were an attempt at a clever right-wing stunt, aimed to trick the receivers into saying something stupid, so that they could run that persons picture…

Luckily it didn’t work, the emails were ignored or smartly responded to, but that is very far from the point. Bloggers are not professionals; they are unlikely to have ever communicated with a journalist, let along one from a national broadsheet and they certainly not have media teams and yet female labour bloggers, some of whom we know and some of whom we don’t, were being harassed by a conservative reporter.
We can’t let this happen again.

Let us know if you hear more.

BNP: a very British Berufsverbot

by Dave Osler    
October 1, 2009 at 2:17 pm

Police officers and prison workers are already banned from becoming members of the British National Party. Now the government is considering the addition of the teaching profession to a growing list of jobs covered by Britain’s slowly expanding backdoor Berufsverbot.

But should the left support the introduction of a softly-softly version of the German system, which forbids members of all organisations deemed by the state to be extremist from holding public sector employment?

Is such legislation somehow OK if it applies to sensitive positions only, keeping the fash out of the classrooms and the cop shops while still allowing them to Sieg Heil to their heart’s content while emptying our wheelie bins? continue reading… »

LATEST COMMENT PIECES

’43% of young women sexually harassed’ 19 Comments How Newsnight demonised a single mother 71 Comments UKIP higher than Libdems over May 21 Comments Red Tory Blond: gay marriage “homophobic” 46 Comments Nick Cleg u-turns on economy too 10 Comments Funny bits of TPA report you probably missed 24 Comments Poll: banks not paying fair share for crisis 22 Comments Frank Field wrong on workless households 69 Comments TPA report quotes Bible to preach low taxation 44 Comments Ed M disliked Byrne’s hard line on welfare 25 Comments

LATEST COMMENTS » Roger Mexico posted on Red Tory Blond: gay marriage "homophobic" » Roger Mexico posted on Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan » Ben2 posted on '43% of young women sexually harassed' » steveb posted on How Newsnight demonised a single mother » Chris posted on How Newsnight demonised a single mother » Chris posted on Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan » re posted on '43% of young women sexually harassed' » Peter Stewert posted on '43% of young women sexually harassed' » s cullen posted on How Newsnight demonised a single mother » cim posted on On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people » steveb posted on Do older people really need more NHS healthcare? » re posted on '43% of young women sexually harassed' » Ben2 posted on '43% of young women sexually harassed' » steveb posted on UKIP higher than Libdems over May » Just Visiting posted on On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people