Ken takes up ‘class war’ theme against Tories
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has taken up the ‘class war’ against the Tories in this week’s Tribune magazine.
In it he attacks David Cameron’s Conservative Party for waging a ‘class war’ against average voters.
Livingstone argues that the Tories have ‘reverted to type’, and that ‘those on average incomes, the least well off, the unemployed, teachers, health workers and others must suffer from a savage attack on public spending’. Livingstone also claims that ‘a meaningful fight against climate change would be abandoned’.
‘These are open class-war policies, with a vengeance’.
But he also argues that just focusing on lower income voters cannot build Labour a winning electoral coalition.
Labour “can only win when it has the support of both those on ‘middle incomes’ and the less advantaged,” he says.
He also calls for Labour to engage in dialogue with those who “support a progressive agenda but who, for various reasons, are not natural Labour supporters”.
Ken Livingstone will be the main speaker at next week’s Progressive London event.
More from the Tribune interview here.
Cameron shamelessly exploits crime for political gain
The Press Association today reports:
Tory leader David Cameron will warn that Britain is in a “social recession” even deeper than its economic one as he steps up pre-election campaigning. And the Tory leader will point to the torture of two young boys as an extreme symptom of what he dubs Labour’s “moral failure” as he launches a raft of social policies.
“When parents are rewarded for splitting up, when professionals are told that it’s better to follow rules than do what they think is best, when single parents find they take home less for working more, when young people learn that it pays not to get a job, when the kind-hearted are discouraged from doing good in their community, is it any wonder our society is broken? We can’t go on like this.”
Mr Cameron will point to the brutal attack on the nine and 11-year-old boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire, by brothers aged 10 and 11 to reinforce his case.
It’s beggars belief that Cameron thinks it is right for a party leader to shamelessly exploit such a brutal crime so he can simply take cheap political swipes. Does he plan to strengthen legislation and provision for domestic violence? Nope, nothing about that in here.
Perhaps he is advocating that every single family in the country is placed under supervision so nothing like this could ever happen? It’s a possibility but the details of any policies are still vague.
Oh wait, the murder of Jamie Bulger took place under a Conservative government. Perhaps that was the start of this “social recession”? I suppose under a Tory government there will no violent crime ever. Right?
Cameron airbrush spoof most popular politics site
The website publishing spoofing the airbrushed posters of David Cameron – MyDavidCameron.com – has become the most popular politics site in the UK.
Founder Clifford Singer today posted Google Analytics stats showing the site was now more popular than the official Conservatives website.
Launched only two weeks ago, ‘Airbrushed For Change’ had received 105,928 visits, of which 89,827 were absolute unique visitors.
Our busiest day to date was Friday 15 Jan, when we received 20,343 visits.
We had also recorded more than 1400 tweets linking to our site (although there were many more tweets that referred to us without linking and these were not recorded).
More than 500 posters have been submitted.
The stats also show that the site is already more popular than the top Tory blogs.
Our new favourites
More at: MyDavidCameron.com
Exclusive: MPs were misled on alcohol deaths
Liberal Conspiracy has uncovered evidence that strongly suggests that a parliamentary committee which, last week, came out in favour of introducing a statutory minimum unit price for alcohol, was given misleading evidence on the scale of alcohol-related deaths in the UK.
We’ve found that that official government statistics for alcohol-related deaths, produced annually by the Office for National Statistics, have routinely been inflated by anything up to 1,100 deaths a year by the inclusion of deaths from liver diseases for which alcohol was not identified as a cause on individual death certificates.
One of these diseases, biliary cirrhosis, which accounts for around 160-180 deaths a year in the UK, was initially linked to coeliac disease in the late 1970s (Logan RF 1978) and was clearly identified as being caused by an auto-immune disorder by the year 2000 (Nakanuma Y 2000). It was not, however, excluded from official statistics for alcohol-related deaths until 2006.
However, there is also clear evidence that, overall, official ONS estimates fail to show the true extent of alcohol-related mortality in the UK by excluding mortality data for a significant number of causes of death in which alcohol use is known to be a significant causal factor, including several common cancers, road traffic accidents and alcohol-related violence.
continue reading… »
Labour ‘triumvirate’ push on electoral reform
The heads of the Labour party’s three biggest activist groups have joined forces today, telling Gordon Brown if he wants to be a reforming prime minister he has only a small window in which to act “decisively” and bring in legislation that would ensure a future government of whatever stripe would have to hold a referendum on electoral reform.
Leaders of the Fabian society, Progress and Compass groups – together spanning three large blocs within the Labour party – are writing to No 10 to say: “Over to you, Gordon.”
The three pressure groups want the prime minister to use his position to cut through divisions in the party and government and put down a paving bill for a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) form of electoral reform.
They hope this would bind any future government in to holding a referendum on the issue, irrespective of whether or not their party is in favour.
Learning about war through Hitchens
“Any fight you’re going to have eventually, have it now… We should pick the time, not them”
…and a belated happy new year to Christopher Hitchens, who I’m starting to suspect is neither misguided nor a deluded optimist, but rather a brutal psychopath and a raving homicidal maniac.
The subject matter is, of course, the hated Iranian regime: aggressions and provocations by, and the tonnage of bombs we will have to drop on the Iranian populace in order to bring them the joy of freedom.
The tipple is Johnnie Walker Black Label, and the crimes of the mullahs – or the Revolutionary Guard, as Hitch now terms the Iranian regime – they go into countries where they’re not wanted, arm violent insurgent groups and militias, shoot protestors in the streets, send death squads to the other side of the planet, seek nuclear weapons and they torture, rape and disappear prisoners.
“The existence of such regimes is incompatible with us,” Hitchens says, with a straight face.
continue reading… »
Daily Telegraph: distorting debate on public sector pay
Opportunities to skive, doss, bugger about on Facebook in company time, spend three hour lunches down the pub, take multiple fag breaks and generally put in as little effort as is consistent with not being sacked are not entirely lacking in the private sector.
I make these elementary points after reading the latest bollocks in the Daily Telegraph on ‘the record gap between public and private sector pay’. The article is shockingly private sector supremacist, and built on the assumption that state and local government employees are labour market Untermenschen poncing off the soul-sustaining largesse of the wealth creation master race.
You know this guff off by heart by now:
Workers in the public sector are now being paid more than £2,000 extra a year compared with employees in the private sector, after public sector pay continued to race ahead of inflation.
The average public sector worker was paid £23,660 a year, compared with private sector workers who were paid £21,528 a year, in the three months to the end of November.
Cue the inevitable whingeing from the sort of people who often pull down 20k a month.
David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, warns us that public sector pay has “exploded out control”.
John Philpott, the chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, weighs in with the observation that “everyone knows the public sector gravy train is going to be derailed.”
Doubtless he would argue that the investment banking gravy train – a veritable Train à Grande Vitesse compared to the council white collar employee suburban stopping service – must be allowed to trundle on in the national interest. Perhaps I am missing something here?
Corin Taylor, policy director at the Institute of Directors, adds: “There will have to be a public sector pay freeze or public sector pay cuts. It will be painful but it is necessary.”
And here’s Frost again: “This just isn’t sustainable … The wealth-creating private sector is losing out to the public sector.”
Now that’s what I call a broad spectrum of opinion, ranging all the way from private sector bosses’ organisations to, well … private sector bosses’ organisations. Maybe the reporter didn’t have the number for the Unison press office.
Yes, there is a gap between public and private sector pay. There is also an obvious reason for it. Most unskilled jobs that were once in the public sector – refuse collection, hospital cleaning and that sort of stuff – have long been outsourced to private companies.
Public sectors workers are increasingly likely to be graduate professionals and expect a graduate professional’s wedge. Of course civil engineers get paid more than crew members at Burger King.
Inevitably, then, comparing mean averages is not comparing like with like. Grade for grade, any disparity remains decidedly in favour of forex traders rather than social workers.
Writer Harry Wallop and the Daily Torygraph damn well know this elementary argument. Yet they prefer to slant the debate to suit their small state ideological agenda. Opinion pieces should be labelled accordingly.
The hypocrisy over Cadbury’s is nauseating
“A bitter taste in Bournville” and “Cadbury: Not such a sweet deal“, said the Guardian. “Why takeover bids rarely work“, warned Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph. “Kraft takeover jobs bloodbath” and “High price for handing UK PLC to foreigners” were the headlines in the Daily Mail, while the Independent noted that “Bournville laments saddest day for 10 years“.
Yesterday’s papers couldn’t agree more. In essence, the widespread opinion across the spectrum was that another British institution is going, that the usual City “short-termists” are making a mint off the back of a local community, that the economic long-term interests of the country are being ignored and that Britain’s surrendering to one too many foreign takeovers.
But scratch beneath the condemnation for Cadbury boss Roger Karr’s own admission that job losses were an “inevitability“, the CEO’s £12m payout, or the simple fact that the buyers Kraft are a company ridden with something like £22 billion of debt, and few grasp the fundamental reasons behind the potential loss of Cadbury.
For instance the fact that the industrial policy of the past thirty years has been coherently and systematically biased towards the professional short-termism that turned London into the Mecca of City spivvery. And that’s under the active complicity of both Tories and Labour.
continue reading… »
Should Labour / Libdems be targeting Osborne instead?
contribution by Vinay Nair
At this Saturday’s Fabian Society annual conference, Vinay Nair made a presentation to the assembled audience arguing that both Labour and the Libdems should be aiming more directly at George Osborne, and asking whether the electorate were happy with him as Chancellor.
Vinay narrowly lost out to being voted the best policy idea to defeat the right. He used a presentation to make his point and we publish them below the fold. continue reading… »
Public backs reform of Press Complaints Comm.
An opinion poll published today shows strong public support for reform of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).
Public expectations of independent press self-regulation far exceed the role, responsibilities and resources of the PCC.
The poll revealed public support for:
(52% of the public want the press regulated by an independent self-regulatory body vs only 8% who want a newspaper industry complaints body – as now)
(73% of people think the chief purpose of this body should be to monitor compliance with the code of practice and conduct investigations where there is public concern vs 12% who believe it should be to mediate complaints between newspapers and complainants – as now)
(Almost half (48%) of the public think this body should be obligated to investigate where there is evidence of inaccuracy in newspapers vs 5% who think it should wait for a complaint from someone directly referred to in an article – as now)
These findings come at the end of written public consultation (Monday 25 January).
Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, which commissioned the poll by Ipsos-Mori, said:
This research shows there is a significant gap between public expectations of press self-regulation and what the current system can, and does, provide. It is critical that the PCC’s current governance review works out how best to meet this challenge.
The Media Standards Trust is making its own recommendations on improving the PCC.
Another campaign has been launched by blogger Tim Ireland to reform the PCC.
You can sign up for that campaign from here.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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