Orwell prize longlist announced
Congratulations to three of our contributors – David Osler, Laurie Penny and Hopi Sen – and to the other eleven bloggers who were all named on the Orwell Prize longlist for Best Blog. Particular congratulations to Hopi and Iain Dale, who were the only two to make the list for the second year running.
The full list of nominees is:
David Osler Dave’s Part (www.davidosler.com)
David Smith Letter from Africa (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/david-smiths-letter-from-africa)
Gideon Rachman rachmanblog (http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/)
Hopi Sen Hopi Sen (http://hopisen.wordpress.com)
Iain Dale Iain Dale’s Diary (http://iaindale.blogspot.com)
Jack of Kent Jack of Kent (http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/)
Laurie Penny Penny Red and others (http://pennyred.blogspot.com)
Madam Miaow Madam Miaow Says (http://madammiaow.blogspot.com/)
Mary Beard A Don’s Life (http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/)
Morus PoliticalBetting.com; Daily Kos (http://politicalbetting.com; http://www.dailykos.com)
PC Ellie Bloggs A Twenty-First Century Police Officer (http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com)
ray The Bad Old Days Will End (http://thebadolddayswillend.blogspot.com)
Tim Marshall Foreign Matters (http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters)
Winston Smith Working with the Underclass (http://winstonsmith33.blogspot.com)
More information and details of the nominees in the other categories can be found at their website
Cameron’s money problems
My brief reaction to the Budget is: I heard loads of micro-things from Darling, all of them adding up to “support for investment”. MoneySupply at the FT has 50 different items, from the questionable ‘forcing banks to lend’, to the substantial £2bn Green Investment Bank, from a tiny £35m for University Venture Capital to £5bn in cuts. All in all I think this was an attempt to do what Michael Burke called for: invest.
Yes, there was missing detail on spending cuts, and the usual optimism about efficiency gains. But as Ed Conway explains in more detail, it all adds up to quite sensible. The deficit improvements have nearly all been banked. Investment is more about pushing the private sector in that direction, with measures such as doubling the annual investment allowance, and bringing all the various schemes they have under an umbrella called “UK Finance for Growth”.
So, in many ways fussy and micro, but insofar as it risked public money, it tried to do the right things. Like David Smith, I suspect a lot of people in small businesses will like it.
You would not be surprised that I was annoyed by Cameron’s response continue reading… »
VAT on Royal Mail services?
I think I’d better nip this one in the bud before any conspiracy nuts latch on to it…
VAT on Royal Mail services in 2011?
Here’s a curious thing, buried in the back of the Budget document it says;
“VAT and postal A.96 – From 31 January 2011 VAT will be applied at the standard rate to certain postal services provided by the universal service provider (Royal Mail).”
Did the price of stamps and other stuff in the future just go up by 17.5% or more?
So much for his comment of “I have no further announcements on VAT”
NOTE: Currently Royal Mail services are zero-rated and exempt from VAT.
Google is your friend as a quick search turns up this report from last November…
Royal Mail is facing another serious threat to its efforts to compete with private-sector rivals, just weeks after trades unions agreed to call a halt to a debilitating series of strikes during negotiations with the company.
The postal operator has been told by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that it will soon be forced to begin charging valued added tax (VAT) for many of its services, having previously been exempt. At a stroke, that would add 17.5 per cent to the prices it charges businesses, rendering it at a serious competitive disadvantage.
HMRC’s ruling follows a judgment in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a case brought by TNT Post, one of Royal Mail’s fiercest competitors in the UK. Under European Union law, publicly owned postal operators are exempt from having to charge VAT on their services and Royal Mail has always been able to enjoy this protection.
However, last month, TNT successfully challenged Royal Mail’s exemption, on the grounds that it should not apply on commercial contracts subject to a competitive tendering process. The ECJ ruling means that in most cases where Royal Mail pitches for work with business customers – the most crucial part of its market – it will now have to begin charging VAT, as all of its private-sector rivals already do.
So, no – the price of stamps won’t be going up and as technical change resulting from an legal ruling on the correct interpretation of existing law, its not something that would announced in the main Budget Speech.
Budget round up
Here’s a quick summary of what the liberal-left people in our live budget discussion did and did not like about today’s Budget:
Good things:
Labour’s record on keeping unemployment down
Nigel Stanley (TUC): Tax credits, a desire to keep skilled workforces together by employers, and sensible union negotiators have all helped build the right kind of flexibility – not easy hire and fire.
Sunder Katwala: Where tax credits flexed upwards, for 440,000, that average £38/week is worth quite a bit more for those families even than the £700/year threshold change for earners over £10k in the LibDem tax threshold plan.
Will Straw: Job Guarantee extended for young people – a really critical development for dealing with youth unemployment. Will the Tories support it? continue reading… »
BNP: “civil partnerships are a Marxist plot”
Iain Dale has published an excerpt of his interview with Nick Griffin, on the subject of gay rights. This interview was quite controversial, but when we discussed it, the majority of our readers thought this was a worthwhile exercise and not something worth boycotting, so do go and have a look.
They discuss whether the BNP is anti-gay, the “militant gay lobby”, civil partnerships, and whether Griffin had an affair with the leader of the National Front.
One slightly strange bit – Griffin argues that “most of what’s been done to our society [have] been deliberately done by a hard core Marxist left who have infiltrated their ideas into all aspects of our society,” to which Iain responds, “I accept that could be the case with some things.” [but not civil partnerships]
Would be fascinated to hear from Iain which things the hardcore Marxists have deliberately infiltrated into our society, as this is a very, very wingnutty conspiracy theory. Or any other right-wing bloggers who care to explain how the BNP’s belief that gay rights is a Marxist plot to undermine the family fits with the analysis that the BNP is a left-wing party?
Anyway, at the time of writing, a majority of the nice people who leave comments on Iain’s blog seem to be rather persuaded by Griffin’s arguments (perhaps unsurprisingly, as Griffin’s views on gay rights are essentially indistinguishable from the vocal minority of people who obsessively leave comments on the most popular right-wing blogs). Perhaps as a bit of liberal solidarity, some of our readers from the non-bigoted silent majority might consider popping over and supporting Iain’s arguments?
Budget 2010 Live – #budget2010
Join us from 12 Noon for our live coverage of this year’s crucial pre-election Budget speech, where we’ll be linking up with our friends at Left Foot Forward (who’re providing the hosting), Labour List and the TUC’s ToUChstone blog.
For twitter uses, you can follow all the action via the #budget2010 hashtag, where you’ll find us and Channel 4.
See you below the fold at Midday – and bear with me if it takes a minute or two’s tinkering to get everything running smoothly.
Lord Carey: Mendacious and Hypocritical
Even with the Budget coming up, I can’t resist having a bit of a polite rant over this letter, which appears in today’s Times newspaper:
Sir, At the time of the passage of the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 we were reassured by the Government that there was a clear distinction between such partnerships and marriage. Churches were told that they would not be compelled to “marry” homosexuals. With the passage of Lord Alli’s [sic] amendment allowing civil partnerships to be conducted on church premises this distinction has been broken. Yet another example of creeping legislation that is often hasty, ill conceived and opportunistically tacked on to existing Bills without a proper chance for scrutiny.
If there is a genuine need for a change in the law this should be done properly by revisiting the Civil Partnerships Act.
Yesterday Christian Concern for Our Nation delivered a petition to the Government, signed by more than 6,000 church leaders and Christians, asking it to reject the amendment, which they believe could coerce clergy into acting against their conscience.
How long will it be before church ministers are threatened with legal proceedings if they perform marriages between a man and a woman, but not civil partnerships?
Lord Carey of Clifton
House of Lords
The mendacity on display here would be breathtaking, coming as it does from a former Archbishop of Canterbury, were it not for the reference to Nadine Dorries’ buddies, Christian Concern for Our Nation, who are well known to be habitual bullshitters. continue reading… »
Budget 2010 – sign up for our Liveblog
For what will be the final Budget speech before the general election, we will be linking up with Left Foot Forward, LabourList and the TUC’s ToUChstone blog to host a special livechat event.
We’ll be kicking off proceedings at 12 Noon with coverage of Prime Minister’s Questions and going straight through into the Budget speech, giving you immediate reaction to the Chancellor’s announcements.
And if you’re the forgetful sort, you can also sign-up below, using your email address, to receive a reminder when the webchat goes live.
Right wing rebels
Guest post by badstephen
Somehow, over the past half-century, the right have grabbed for themselves the mantle of revolutionaries.
Right-wingers, the argument goes, are the anti-establishment mavericks, battling the status quo. Liberals now control everything. That last part might come as a surprise to many liberals.
Interestingly, the faux-revolutionary stance disguises the essential nature of the right’s project – the preservation of existing structures of power and wealth.
Friedrich von Hayek got the ball rolling in 1944 with The Road to Serfdom. Keynesian economies, allegedly, were every bit as repressive and socially restrictive as the totalitarian regimes they were fighting. Only the free market model could deliver genuine social mobility, with no single dominant class. Well, the UK has had the experiment of the last 30 years to demonstrate exactly how successful the market is at breaking down social divides. It’s not looking good, Friedrich.
In the 1960s, Richard Nixon further developed the concept of the anti-establishment right-winger. There was, apparently, an urban elite entrenched against him. The liberal media was out to get him (“You guys won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.”) And he invented the ‘silent majority’ – the right’s imaginary friend ever since. “Grocer” Heath was doing much the same thing in the UK. He was the first Tory leader to break the patrician mould and present himself as an outsider. Oddly, the modern right is reluctant to acknowledge its debt to these two pioneers.
Yet their legacy is all around us. Take climate change. Sceptics project themselves as bold iconoclasts, bravely taking on the great global green conspiracy. It wouldn’t be quite so cool to be seen as apologists for the fossil fuel industries. Whenever Jeremy Clarkson questions global warming, he does so carefully, as a naughty schoolboy making jokes about polar bears, not as a cheerleader for the automotive conglomerates. continue reading… »
Straw backs libel reform
In what is, for bloggers, very welcome news, Index on Censorship are reporting that Jack Straw has announced that the government believes the case for libel reform has been made, and that the Ministry of Justice will now move to make reforms to England’s defamation laws, potentially with a Libel Reform Bill.
In terms of the specifics, it appears that the pernicious Brunswick (multiple publication) rule will go and will be replaced with a single publication rule operating under a one year limit, but with scope to allow judges to extend that limit where necessary.
Consideration is also to be given to the creation of a statutory defence for publications that are in the public interest and to procedural changes designed to curb the growth in libel tourism.
All-in-all this appears to be several steps in the right direction and a significant victory for the ongoing Libel Reform campaign.
It is, however, only the beginning for campaigners.
What is now needed, and quickly, is the commitment of all the main political parties to, at least, the MOJ’s proposed reform package.
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» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
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