In defence of Young Tories
The inestimable Laurie Penny took upon herself the grim task of “infiltrating” a Conservative Future bash hosted by the Young Britons’ Foundation and found, shockingly, that those in attendance tended to be of a right-wing bent, approving of Margaret Thatcher and perhaps a trifle strange.
Without wanting to question Laurie’s journalistic integrity, you also can’t help but wonder whether when you go into something with an already pre-determined level of contempt for those you’re about to meet, you’re looking from the outset for confirmation of your view.
That said, having your leg stroked and your bottom pinched by your social betters is hardly likely to make you reassess your initial verdict.
continue reading… »
Leaked memo: Gove bans civil servants from Labour phrases at DfE
A memo leaked yesterday lists 30 terms Michael Gove wants to ban at the Department for Education.
The internal document was leaked to Children and Young People Now magazine, which called the changes “utterly pointless”. Most relate directly to children’s services.
For example, Gove says “narrow the gap” should now be replaced with “close the gap”, and “delivery” should now be called “implementation”.
Civil servants have been told that “integrated working” should be replaced with “people working together to provide better services”.
No really, this isn’t being made up.
One of the key terms being banned is ‘Every Child Matters’ (ECM) – a key Labour government policy that the Tories have said they would maintain.
Editor of CYP Now magazine wrote:
Education Secretary Michael Gove repeated his (consistently unsubstantiated) view that the ECM agenda is a “massive bureaucratic superstructure” when taking questions from the education select committee as parliament broke up for summer recess.He did also say: “I’ve got no problems with Every Child Matters as a list, but I do think it’s important that we recognise it should be policed in a hands-off way.” A bar on use of the term in government is a bit more than “hands-off”.
The changes in terminology were detailed in an internal DfE memo that splits into two columns for terminology used before 11th May, and words replacing them on the right.
To Michael Gove, the terms apparently “reek too strongly of Labour”.
John Chowcat, general secretary of children’s services union Aspect, said it looked like a gradual move away the ECM agenda. “I could not imagine this government making a bold announcement to the effect that Every Child Matters has gone or anything like that… but I can see a step-by-step shifting of the approach to the agenda.”
A government spokesperson told CYPNow.co.uk that the changes to terminology did not indicate a change of policy direction: “The coalition created the new DfE to carry through radical reforms in schools, early years and child protection.”
SOME CHANGES OUTLINED IN THE MEMO
| Pre-11th May 2010 | Post-11th May 2010 |
| England will be the best place in the world for children to grow up | Make Britain the most family-friendly place in Europe |
| Targeted services | Fairer services |
| Targets and outcomes | Results and impact |
| Children’s trusts | Local areas, better, fairer services |
| One children’s workforce framework/tool | Local areas self-assessment tool |
| Five outcomes/ECM | Help children achieve more |
| Narrow the gap | Close the gap, vulnerable and disadvantaged |
| Integrated working | People working better to provide better services |
| Safeguarding | Child protection |
| FIP | Key workers providing intensive support to families |
You really could not make this up. Welcome to the new age of spin.
[Hat-tip: Touchstone blog]
Update: Shadow children and education secretary Ed Balls told Liberal Conspiracy today:
Instead of issuing ridiculous memos like this, Michael Gove’s department should concentrate on getting the policy right and not making more mistakes with botched lists of school buildings and Academies.
There is a more serious point here too. Just like his renaming of the Department, trying to airbrush Every Child Matters out of existence betrays Mr Gove’s failure to prioritise children’s services or to understand why they need to work closely together and with schools to tackle the barriers to the progress of every child.
Cameron’s cuts will fail because he sees the UK like a company
David Cameron’s agenda for reform is misguided. It’s not just that his cuts won’t work – because they’ll create mass unemployment – but his current plan to fill the void a retreating public sector will create by promoting private sector activity won’t work either.
Cameron’s recent article in the Sunday Times refers to the UK as if it were a company.
There are two problems with the analogy. The first is the UK isn’t a company; the second is that countries don’t behave like companies.
continue reading… »
Gove axes hundreds of community playgrounds
Hundreds of community playground schemes in England are being scrapped or scaled back because of government cuts. Education Secretary Michael Gove has frozen grants to 122 councils for building and running up to 1,300 playground schemes, many designed by youngsters.
Only schemes where construction has already started are to be allowed. The government said it had inherited unrealistic spending commitments. The £235m Playbuilder scheme was started more than two years ago under Labour to develop 3,500 playgrounds designed by and for the communities they were to serve.
…
Parent Emma Kane has worked with children in Hook Norton to set up a playground scheme which is now unlikely to go ahead. She said: “It’s insane to cut what is such a small amount of money.” She said playgrounds were a “soft target” for the government’s “drastic cuts.”
It’s likely Ed Balls will use this as further ammunition today to attack Michael Gove.
Gone! BNP legal eagle tells Griffin he quit
Lee John Barnes, the subject of much fun for many anti-fascist bloggers, will no longer act as legal director for the British National Party.
In his resignation letter he despairs at the “avoidable court cases” the BNP have become involved in under the orders of “Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson [who] have repeatedly chosen to break the most obvious of laws”.
Those cases, LJB cites as:
- The Marmite Case
- The use of stock images from a photoshop company during the European Elections
- The EHRC court cases
- The sacking of Michaela Mackenzie
- The suspension of Peter Mullins and many others
LJB has accused Griffin of ignoring his advice, then later referring to him in an Employment Tribunal as a ‘crank’.
During the conclusion of his rambling resignation (3000 words in length), LJB admits that he:
cannot remain as the Legal Officer of a party that acts unlawfully towards its own members, that rewards years of party loyalty with unlawful suspensions and expulsions, that covers up serious allegations of sexual abuse by senior officers, that expels long standing members who ask for financial transparency within the party and that refuses to act to protect its own officers when they are threatened with violence by other senior officers.
He finishes up by saying: “[s]uch a political party cannot be trusted with political power in our society.”
On his blog, LJB accuses BNP officers such as Griffin, Andrew Brons, Simon Darby and Andrew Moffat, of “going around telling people [he] was ‘expelled’ and that [he] did not resign.” He goes on to explain how “[t]hey are paid to lie – to the members and the public” and that he does “so despise liars and idiots” and who he calls “the Griffinite idiot squad.”
Clues of an unsteady relationship between LBJ and other members of the BNP hierarchy had been present for some time. Griffin, notably uncomfortable talking about LJB, told Iain Dale during an interview for Total Politics, that he is “a very strange and complex character”.
Dale wondered why Griffin continues to employ “someone obsessed by Jewish issues to hold national office in the BNP” to which Griffin replied:
As I say, if you look at his blogs and his arguments with people in the round, you will see that he’s one of the people who’s taken the obsession with Jews out of the BNP. It was there. But he’s one of the ones who’ve taken it out by putting it in context.
Reading what LJB has said before about Jewish conspiracies, it is difficult to place what “context” Griffin is talking of here; but then this is a man who thinks the English Defence League are run by Zionists and who has authored a book called Who are the Mindbenders? about the Jewish dominated media – perhaps not the greatest authority on the subject.
We all have our favourite LJB moments, whether here or here, and now that he has stopped pulling his hair out over the stupid BNP, no doubt he will have more time to appeal to his Norse Gods and troll websites seeking out undercover Jewish plots – though he will not be welcomed.
Revealed: Complaining Tory got 2 emails a day
The Conservative MP Dominic Raab, who was yesterday slammed for demanding his email not be made public, only got on average two emails a day.
That stands starkly in contrast to his claim that he was being “swamped” by automated emails.
The campaign group 38 Degrees today revealed:
Since the election Mr Raab has received on average less than 2 e-mails a day from constituents using the 38 Degrees website.
Note that he only gets emails from his constituents, not people from all across the UK.
38 Degrees add further:
The messages Raab received aren’t spam. Mr Raab has received on average less than 2 e-mails a day from his constituents about issues his constituents care about.
Today, Left Foot Forward also pointed out that dozens of Tory MPs, including Dominic Raab, had themselves sent back automated emails to constituents who had got in touch with him.
Hypocritical much?
1%: the real extent of benefit fraud
The trouble with working out with the radio on is that you cannot fully concentrate on what is being said. But as I was on my fourth set of bicep curls this morning, I heard something that nearly made me drop my dumbbells on my toes.
Work and pensions minister Chris Grayling was debating some policy wonk from Demos on the Today Programme over the announcement that credit checking agency Experian will be put on payment-by-results incentives to tackle benefit fraud.
And either the wonk or the minister – I forget which – proclaimed that only 1% of benefit is fraudulently claimed. That’s right, just 1%. One sodding measly barely perceptible little per cent.
Government is “bullying the vulnerable”
David Cameron’s plans to pay private companies to snoop on benefit claimants have been criticised by East London-based charity Community Links:
Government’s latest wearily predictable spate of bullying the most vulnerable in society for cheap political gain – or ‘cracking down on benefit fraud’ as they prefer to call it – is as tiresome and damaging as ever.
As many have already pointed out, the £5.2bn figure being bandied around is for fraud and error, with error (£3.7bn) far outweighing fraud (£1.5bn). Cameron would claim he has said that all along, but his spin has been enough to deceive the Telegraph, who this morning were claiming that “Mr Cameron discloses that £5.2billion of the £87billion welfare budget is lost to fraudulent claims for tax credit and welfare, while administrative error wastes £1.6billion.”
Secondly, the latest figures I have (for 2006/7) show that 6,756 were successfully prosecuted, a further 12,000 were cautioned, 10,000 received an administrative penalty, 95,000 had their benefit changed but weren’t deemed to have done anything serious enough to warrant any kind of sanction, leaving an enormous 196,000 people who experienced a hugely stressful investigation and were found to have done nothing wrong.
We regularly talk to terrified people who are about to be hauled in front of a Jobcentre advisor and quizzed about their claim. Their only source of income is at risk – that five minute interview could mean the difference between scraping by and being plunge into destitution. And they might only be there because a neighbour has fallen out with them and phoned the benefit fraud hotline, or they had a bit of paint on their hands at their last interview. These advisors, don’t forget, are the same people who are supposed to be supporting people into work.
Huppert’s right – MPs do need a crash course in science.
Is rookie Lib-Dem MP Julian Huppert right to suggest that MPs should be required to take a ‘crash course in basic scientific techniques‘?
Although some are clearly not enamoured of the idea, I think there’s ample evidence that Julian is on to something here, particularly in suggesting, by implication, that many MPs lack the skills and knowledge necessary to understand much of the information that’s presented to them on a regular basis.
Only the other day, Tory Health Minister Anne Milton provided a prime example of the merits of Huppert’s suggestion while making a concerted effort to reclaim the title ‘milk snatcher’ for a new generation of Tory ministers; continue reading… »
Why won’t ministers follow through with promises of cutting their cars?
The Coalition Government pledged to cut waste by axing chauffeur driven ministerial cars. Based on information supplied to me through parliamentary questions, I’ve estimated that this could deliver savings to the taxpayer of at least £6.2 million per annum.
An important job of any opposition politician is to hold the executive to account.
That’s why nearly 80 days into David and Nick’s “new politics”; I am providing a progress report on their efforts to reduce the ministerial car fleet.
continue reading… »
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