Cameron’s ‘typical family’ is a rich one
If you missed yesterday’s edition of The Sun – which I guess means most of you – then I’d suggest that pop over to Tom Watson’s blog, where you’ll find a copy of David Cameron’s ‘10 Key Pledges‘ for the upcoming General Election, much of which the FT’s Westminster blog has already neatly picked to pieces.
However, one thing that did intrigue me was the very first pledge on the list…
We will work with councils to freeze council tax for two years – saving over £200 for the typical family.
Oooh, a saving of £200 in just two years – can that be right?
And if it is then exactly how typical does a family have to be to make this kind of saving?
Let’s crunch a few numbers shall we…
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Francis Maude caught in lobbying conflict
A senior member of David Cameron’s frontbench team was last night forced to pull out of an appearance as the guest of honour at a reception for a corporate lobbying firm at the Tory conference.
Francis Maude, who recently issued a tough warning to lobbyists that they must clean up their act or face statutory legislation, had agreed to meet “clients and friends of APCO Worldwide” at a private suite in the Midland Hotel in Manchester on Tuesday.
A party spokesman said: “Francis Maude is not attending the APCO event at conference.” The effort to avoid a potential conflict of interest follows last week’s disclosure in The Times that dozens of Conservative parliamentary candidates have been working as lobbyists, with some admitting to having arranged meetings for clients with frontbenchers.
…
Many of the private interests will be represented in Manchester next week where, according to one party insider, “wealth and power is stampeding in a way not seen since the collapse of the Berlin Wall”. Such comments reflect the unease felt by some senior members of the party at the bombardment from firms seeking to influence the next manifesto.
Miliband shouldn’t back down over Cameron’s EU friends
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.
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The BBC is good for household debt
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.
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Charity in inquiry over Tory bias; cancels party
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
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
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.
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Compass was right to invite the Greens
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.
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Brown’s ratings rise after conference speech
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%
Libdems condemn Tory alliance with bigoted MEP
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?
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?
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