The story the media isn’t telling: falling business confidence in the budget
Last week a major survey showed that confidence in the economy is falling sharply.
What was extraordinary about the latest Markit/ CIPS UK (PMI) survey was that the fall in confidence related to the upcoming Conservative budget.
And so while the national media is breathlessly repeating the Tory line that our deficit is unmanageable, what they’re paying little attention to is how Tory cuts are weakening our recovery.
The survey also showed that business confidence for future activity suffered its greatest monthly drop in its 14-year history.
continue reading… »
Oh no, the EU is now after our dead!
Last week the Daily Express ran a story with this headline: EU’s plan to liquify corpses and pour them down the drain.
OMG! They plan to do what???
The next day a letter duly appeared in the Express expressing horror:
I felt sick to my stomach when reading the article “EU’s plan to liquefy corpses and pour them down the drain” (July 8).
If this abhorrent act is to become law under EU ruling I hope David Cameron will be strong enough to say this would never be allowed in our country.
You know where this is going already don’t you?
In fact it was a plan by the… *drumroll* Flemish Association of Undertakers, in Belgium.
The Daily Express journalist presumably couldn’t contain their excitement at such a brilliant story to bother check facts.
[hat-tip Tabloid Watch]
The Daily Express have since taken the story off their website, without posting any explanation. Another Euromyth “liquidated”.
Lewisham shows how poor people are all in it together
Last week I went to Lewisham Town Hall, where local Labour centrist legend Sir Steve Bullock was due to hold a cabinet meeting on service cuts.
Sir Steve’s cabinet is positioning the axe (with a perverse enthusiasm, some say) over £3m worth of services.
But that, alas, is not all. Weirdly keen to shine in this first leg of the coalition’s local government service-slaughter challenge, Lewisham council has bullocked ahead and forecast a budget gap of up to £60m for 2011 to 2014 (although it’s still in the dark about government plans for key grants).
continue reading… »
Conservative: climate deniers are a liability
A senior writer at the National Post, a Canadian newspaper that frequently promotes global warming denialism, says: Global-warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause.
Jonathan Kay is executive editor at Canada’s top right-wing newspaper and also writes for American magazines on conservative issues.
And this is how his article begins:
Have you heard about the “growing number” of eminent scientists who reject the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the earth’s temperature? It’s one of those factoids that, for years, has been casually dropped into the opening paragraphs of conservative manifestos against climate-change treaties and legislation. A web site maintained by the office of a U.S. Senator has for years instructed us that a “growing number of scientists” are becoming climate-change “skeptics.”
This year, the chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation gave a speech praising the “growing number of distinguished scientists [who are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research.” In this newspaper, a columnist recently described the “growing skepticism about the theory of man-made climate change.” Surely, the conventional wisdom is on the cusp of being overthrown entirely: Another colleague proclaimed that we are approaching “the church of global warming’s Galileo moment.”
Fine-sounding rhetoric — but all of it nonsense.
In a new article published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, a group of scholars from Stanford University, the University of Toronto and elsewhere provide a statistical breakdown of the opinions of the world’s most prominent climate experts. Their conclusion: The group that is skeptical of the evidence of man-made global warming “comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers in the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups … This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that [about] 97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of [man-made global warming].”
97% – you heard that right. And that’s a conservative stating something that is increasingly likely to tear apart conservatives over coming decades.
Kay ends by saying:
Rants and slogans may help conservatives deal with the emotional problem of cognitive dissonance. But they aren’t the building blocks of a serious ideological movement. And the impulse toward denialism must be fought if conservatism is to prosper in a century when environmental issues will assume an ever greater profile on this increasingly hot, parched, crowded planet. Otherwise, the movement will come to be defined — and discredited — by its noisiest cranks and conspiracists.
Mr Kay – say hello to James Delingpole – your nightmare.
Will Iain Duncan Smith lose his fight with Osborne?
contribution by Richard Exell
Yesterday’s Observer reports that the Treasury has told the Department for Work and Pensions to “do its sums” because Iain Duncan Smith’s plans for welfare reform would either cost too much or disadvantage too many people.
Last month, I pointed out that the DWP’s options for major reform necessarily involve a choice between cutting the benefits of current claimants (including many who will suffer real hardship as a result) and spending more money – £3.6 billion to implement the ‘Dynamic Benefits’ proposals the Secretary of State developed when he was in Opposition.
continue reading… »
Andy Burnham also supports gay marriage
Last week we reported that two of the Labour leadership candidates: Ed Balls and Diane Abbott, had publicly affirmed their support for gay marriage to this blog.
The Labour party upper hierarchy has dragged its feet considerably on the issue; the Greens have already stolen a march on them.
But we’ve been informed by his team that Andy Burnham had affirmed his support for gay marriage before our story.
In an interview with the Catholic weekly magazine The Tablet, dated 26th June, Andy Burnham said civil partnerships can be seen as “second-class arrangements”.
Here is the relevant extract from the interview (which ie behind a paywall)
I welcome his stance too.
With Andy Burnham, Diane Abbott and Ed Balls all supporting a move towards gays to marry rather than just have civil partnerships, that leaves just the Miliband brothers on the fence.
In an interview with LC, Ed Miliband said he would listen to others on the issue but pointedly declined to offer full support for gay marriage.
David Miliband, in an interview with Pink News, also declined to go as far as offering support for gay marriage.
John Taylor didn’t lose because he was black
As part of my commitment to political education, my blog on Friday pledged to identify and challenge those media outlets which repeat the widely believed but pernicious political myth that John Taylor lost “a Tory safe seat” at Cheltenham in 1992 because he is black.
On cue, the only two broadsheets to recap Taylor’s previous political career repeated the error on Saturday.
continue reading… »
BNP could face financial ruin over Marmite ad
A few weeks ago we pointed out how Marmite brought down the BNP website.
In short, using Marmite in an ad, which many within the BNP thought would be a good stunt, backfired badly when Unilever decided to sue.
The Daily Mirror reports today that the party had to privately settle the court claim, and may now face financial ruin.
The party has reportedly been hit with a claim – estimated at up to £170,000 – over the TV stunt, in which leader Griffin was pictured beside a huge jar of the spread.
The party then showed a jar of Marmite – slogan “Love it or hate it” – with its own motto “Love Britain Vote BNP”.
A recent investigation by Searchlight magazine explained how the Marmite incident backfired so badly on Nick Griffin and how it exposed internal infighting.
After Unilever responded by launching proceedings over copyright infringement, Griffin and Dowson realised they had underestimated the severity of the legal and financial consequences and came up with pathetic excuses, such as a claim that a “joker” had amended the film.
When Unilever’s lawyers refused to believe them, [Simon] Bennett says he was expected “to go to court and lie through my teeth in order to bail them out of a ridiculous hole they had dug themselves into”.
Simon Bennett was the party’s online campaigns manager.
He responded by attacking the BNP upper hierarchy and taking down the websites for Griffin’s MEP website, as well as sites for Andrew Brons, the other MEP, and their London AM Richard Barnbrook – all just before the election.
Those websites are now back up but the party has not yet recovered from the stunt.
It was my baby too
contribution by Anonymous
Way before we had a kid, my husband agreed that the kid’s middle name would be my last name.
Then we had the kid, and he pretended he never agreed.
In the hospital, filling out the forms, I’m having this giant argument with the man whose baby I just gave birth to.
continue reading… »
Where New Labour led, the Tories follow
It’s so long ago it gives me a little warm glow of nostalgia, but time was that New Labour tried to ban the largest demonstration in British history, all for the sake of some grass.
No, not the sort Ministers stuff into their crack pipes, the grass in Hyde Park of course.
The demonstration, which eventually attracted over a million people, making it the largest mobilisation in the history of the UK, was to be cancelled because the grass issue may also mean…
continue reading… »
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
|
62 Comments 15 Comments 23 Comments 8 Comments 24 Comments 16 Comments 16 Comments 83 Comments 203 Comments 85 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » Chaise Guevara posted on How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » anna-rose phipps posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Jamie Scott posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Judy Hamilton posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Cherub posted on Watch: Obama sings the blues at White House » Common Sense posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Jonny Mundey posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » mushroom77 posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » James KM Blake posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Steve Rooney posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Andy Hicks posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » Ian posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? |
