Govt cuts funding for children’s playgrounds
£5 million is being cut from England’s Play Strategy – which aims to improve children’s play facilities and build new adventure playgrounds. Children and Young People Now report that while the capital budget is not facing direct cuts savings will have to be made from the rest of the funding pot, which includes money for staffing refurbished play facilities.
In addition, Play England (which is also facing further as yet unspecified cuts) has highlighted that as grants to local authorites are no longer ringfenced, it is likely that some will now chose not to use the money provided by the strategy for building new play areas.
In response to suggestions last week that play funding could be cut, Play England’s Director, Adrian Voce, stated that:
The play strategy has so far produced 2,000 new or improved play areas and 30 fantastic staffed adventure playgrounds…This translates as hundreds of thousands of children having the healthy, outdoor activities that they long for and that every parent knows is good for them. Research tells us that in terms of impact on children’s health, learning and wider benefits to the whole community such as the reduction in crime, the play strategy has demonstrated excellent value for money and real benefit to the economy.
This is part of Touchstone Blog’s CUTS WATCH
David Lammy’s backing for Ken is a double-edged sword
On Tuesday former cabinet minister David Lammy announced he was going to chair Ken Livingstone’s Mayoral campaign.
This signals two things: that Ken wants to shake up his campaign and bring in someone new who would have fresh ideas. It also means that David Lammy is positioning himself as the main Labour mayoral candidate in four years time.
I wish him well in that, but it is a double-edged sword and he should be careful of that.
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Boris filmed threatening Bike protesters
Members of the group No to the Bike Parking Tax were protesting in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday evening.
London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson was caught on film asking a protester: “Do you want to stay in the bus lanes or what? Then stop this protest.”
The group said his behaviour was “disgraceful, bordering on blackmail”.
Boris is all in favour of free speech and expression until, it seems, it applies to people protesting against his own administration.
Watch the video
Who would you blame for Cumbria shootings?
With Britain waking up to the worst firearms tragedy since Dunblane, the predictable finger-pointing begins.
And yet the police are still trying to piece the story together. It was unclear what exactly tipped 52-year-old Derrick Bird, the killer, over the edge. Was he having financial problems? Did he have a row with his fellow taxi drivers over queue-jumping and touting?
Did he fall out with his relatives over a will?
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How Pakistan has terrorised its Ahmadi minority for decades
contribution by Sadaf Meehan
My family are Ahmadi Muslims, a small Islamic sect that was declared non-Muslim by Pakistani authorities in 1974.
This pacifist sect – one of the central tenets is never to meet violence with violence – make-up less than three per cent of the Pakistani population, yet have been described by the BBC as one of the ‘most relentlessly persecuted communities in the history of Pakistan’.
A few years ago, it was to be my first Eid in Pakistan since childhood, and I was excited. My parents, both Karachi-ites, left in 1972 and settled first in Yorkshire, where I was born, and then in Macclesfield, Cheshire, home to New Order, the Macc Lads and me, until I went off to Uni at 18.
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Harriet Harman is right to demand half the cabinet is female
Harriet Harman has called for half of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet to be women.
She’s right.
There’s no good reason why Labour’s shadow cabinet should be male dominated.
If the issue is that there aren’t enough “Brilliant/ Talented/Experienced/whatever women” that’s a fault of the system we’ve employed, not a reflection on the abilities of Labour women.
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Fake police asks people to take off England shirts
Remember the slew of stories claiming that the police were banning people from wearing England tops? I debunked that here, as others have repeatedly.
Now, the Worksop Guardian reports (via @JonnElledge):
A BOGUS police officer is operating in and around Worksop telling people to remove their England shirts and take down their flags.
A probe was launched after the Guardian revealed that a woman in the town had been asked to take down her England flags by what she thought was a genuine police officer.It has now emerged that someone is posing as a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) and was in Clumber Park last weekend asking people to remove their England shirts.
Chief Superintendent Dave Wakelin said: “I am aware of last week’s publicity regarding the story that one of my staff members advised a local Worksop resident to remove her flag from her balcony as it was upsetting foreign residents.”
“We are now absolutely certain that these were not bona-fide members of Notts Police, and this, linked to reports that over the weekend similar incidents occurred with people in Clumber Park being told remove their England shirts, leads me to believe that there is someone in our local community intending to cause unease.”
You know, it might make sense to do that if you were a Daily Mail or Daily Express journalist… but I’m sure they’d never do that.
Israel’s PR offensive gets basic facts wrong
A short package by Al-Jazeera looks at Israel’s attempts at public relations regarding the Gaza blockade.
But as the video shows, Israeli officials try and dodge questions on how many people within the Gaza strip are below the poverty line or under-nourished.
They also produce ‘facts sheets’ on how much aid is delivered into Gaza. But basic calculations show that amounts to 4kgs of food per person per week.
Israel’s PR team also circulates a video of Mahmoud Abbas dining at a Gaza restaurant to illustrate that food is plentiful. Except that Abbas has not been in Gaza since the blockade began three years ago.
[via War in Context and @earwicga]
UKIP MEPs avoid Bilderberg book launch
On Tuesday we revealed that UKIP MEPs were listed as hosting a book launch at the European Parliament with a far-right politician from Italy.
The book was about how the Bilderberg Group was controlling the world.
Yesterday the Independent Diary column picked up the story:
Conspiracy theories abound in the corridors of the European Parliament, where yesterday Room 0A50 was booked for a press conference, apparently hosted by Nigel Farage and fellow Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom. The occasion was the launch of a new book about the Bilderberg Group, the elite annual conference whose attendees plan to take over the universe, or so conspiracy theorists claim.
The book’s author Daniel Estulin has blamed the global recession on the Bilderberg’s “shadow masters” and was invited to speak in Brussels by Mario Borghezio, of Italy’s Lega Nord Party; Borghezio began his career with the fascist group Ordine Nuovo.
The blog Liberal Conspiracy joined the dots: secretive international groups, fascists, UKIP… Can the famously reasonable Farage really be consorting with these cranks? Well, yeah but no but. A call to Ukip spokesman Gawain Towler confirms Farage is still in bed with broken ribs following that plane crash, while Bloom was at a meeting in London when the conference took place.
“The hosting was a question of good manners to a group member… to ensure good relations internally in the EFD [Europe of Freedom and Democracy] group.” So Lega Nord are in the same European grouping as UKIP? “There are interesting coves in every group,” Towler says, “as the Tories know.”
That’s a nice way to deflect a question isn’t it?
Does Nigel Farage know about Mario Borghezio’s background? Does he approve of his politics? Borghezio is Italy’s equivalent of a National Front thug. And this is the sort of people UKIP are allied with in Europe and planning book launches with.
Having a minimum price on alcohol is a crap idea
I’m glad to see the Conservative government is opposed to a minimum price law on alcohol. As I said last time this issue came up, I am opposed to such a law on the grounds that people should be allowed to drink to excess if they wish.
The issue has recently flared up because Tesco came out to support a minimum pricing system, and because NICE has subsequently also come out for a minimum price per unit of alcohol.
What few enough people noticed when Tesco came out for the law is that this view is self-interested; it will mean they no longer have to worry about cutting prices.
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