How Labour MPs keep aping Tories on welfare reform
Labour MP John Woodcock continues the series of “To win again, Labour must do as I’ve always said“ with an article about how Labour must be the party of radical public service reform.
He argues that “we were at our best in government when we showed we were resolutely on the side of the users of public services and when we avoided being captured by the concerns of the producers of those services, valid though those concerns may have been”.
He adds that “if the British people detect that we no longer have the zeal to embrace real and difficult change to our schools, hospitals, and welfare system, they may not show any great zeal for renewing their embrace of us.”
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Robinhood Tax launches Spending Challenge copy
The Treasury recently launched the ‘Spending Challenge’ site to: “help shape the way government works. We need to reduce the deficit by cutting public spending in a way that is fair and responsible.”
They wanted people to help them ‘get more for less’.
Now the Robinhood Tax campaign have launched their response: The Saving Challenge site.
They say:
We all understand the deficit we are facing and remember how we got here. The financial crisis started in the banking sector and we spent £1.4 trillion bailing it out. With the economy in a mess, the government’s Spending Challenge is asking us to make difficult choices over what it should cut.
But there is a better way. A series of taxes on the banks in the UK could raise tens of billions each year to help recoup some of this lost money and help the poorest at home and abroad who have been hit hardest by the economic crisis.
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We’ll pull your ideas together into a daily blog and overall report at the end of August. We’ll take it to the heart of government and you can use it to pressure your own MP. By putting our ideas together, we can make them stonger.
This weekend the Spending Challenge site also came in for ridicule in the Sunday Times, which covered the story of Gideon the Goat being more popular on Facebook than their own site.
Well done to Political Scrapbook for spotting it. The goat was supported by Liberal Conspiracy, Political Scrapbook and Other Taxpayers Alliance. Our victory is complete.
Blood diamonds are a girl’s best friend
When you are one of the world’s most beautiful women, it must be infuriatingly easy to lose track of exactly which guys are giving you diamonds at any given moment.
And while I have not personally dated a supermodel for any length of time, friends that have tell me that only the merest handful of them boast the postgraduate background in international relations necessary for a self-assured grasp of the politics of west Africa.
But it would take a particularly dozy gold-digger to fail to recognise hugely valuable uncut gems when a couple of government heavies wake you up in the middle of the night and present them to you in a pouch.
So Naomi Campbell’s sworn statement that she had no idea of either the provenance or the real nature of a bag of dirty stones bought to her hotel room in Pretoria one night 13 years ago do her little credit.
The Australian elections and the muzzled dog
contribution by Climatesock
Last week, we saw that Australian PM Julia Gillard’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to analyse and propose climate policy was widely criticised – but that despite the hype, there really wasn’t any evidence that it was turning the election against Labor.
A week on, and it looks like the fuss about Gillard’s plan has completely disappeared, and climate change has become the muzzled dog of the campaign.
For anyone not following the election – you’re missing out.
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Abortion support network events
The Abortion Support Network is a London volunteer organisation that provides accommodation for women living in Ireland who need to stay overnight when travelling to London for an abortion.
ASN also fundraises to help cover costs of abortions for women who struggle to pay.
So. If you’re a feminist and/or a believer in a woman’s (rather than the Conservative party’s) right to control fertility, you’ll open your wallet for: continue reading… »
New report predicts more job losses
Recovery in the jobs market will “stall” this year as demand for workers in the public sector falls, new research has warned.
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), a third of employers expect to cut jobs in the next three months.
The public sector employers in particular are planning cuts, with 36% of them looking to lose staff. The size of the cuts being considered has also increased, the CIPD said.
Across all sectors employers are expecting to make an average of 5.5% of their workforces redundant, the survey of 600 companies suggests, up from the 3.6% average cut being considered three months ago.
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He added that a rise in unemployment over the medium term was now on the cards.
How right-wing think-tanks laid the foundation for the Coalition’s agenda
contribution by Mark Carrigan
In recent months it has become ever more common to see the interventions of think tanks reported upon within the mainstream media.
While most political actors were left transfixed by the playing out of a once in a lifetime financial crisis, it seems that many pro-market think tanks seized upon unfolding events as a rather unique opportunity to further their longstanding interest in redefining the role of the state within the British economy. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”, as Rahm Emanuel famously said.
Witness a small selection of their recent output:
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Unite union rules out big strike action soon
Union leader Derek Simpson has played down the prospect of widespread strike action by unions this autumn.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, the joint general secretary of Unite said the union would instead try to educate people about the impact of big cuts in public spending.
Other unions have called for a “national day of action” in protest. The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union and the RMT, led by Bob Crow, have been among those calling for co-ordinated strike action in response to the cuts.
But talk of an “autumn of discontent” would only help the government by deflecting attention away from the spending cuts and their impact, Mr Simpson said.
“Here we’ve got cuts that are going to affect women much more than men, poor people much more than richer people,” he said.
Burma protests anniversary today
Today marks the 12th 22nd anniversary of the famous 8/8/88 protests in Burma, when hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors took to the streets to call for human rights and democracy.
It was to end in bloodshed – a brutal crackdown by the ruling military junta would leave an estimated 3,000 people dead in the weeks that followed.
The leader of the protests back then was Min Ko Naing. He was also involved in organising the protests in 2007. He is now in jail and is one of Amnesty’s priority cases.
There are estimated 2,200 political prisoners there, and torture, slave labour and unfair trials are all far common place.
Waihhin is a Burmese student living in London, and her father Ko Mya Aye was also involved in both protests. He is currently serving a 65-year jail sentence.
Interview
You can find more about the human rights abuses in Burma at the Amnesty site.
From an Amnesty press release
Domestic violence ‘orders’ were deferred for the sake of £700K
Don’t ask me why, but something about the Indy’s report that the new Domestic Violence Protection Orders had been ‘scrapped’ by the Home Office managed to set my ‘something’s not quite right here‘ bump itching, so I’d thought I take a bit of a closer look at what’s actually going on.
Perhaps the first thing to note is that these new orders, which were due to piloted from October in two police areas – Wiltshire and the West Midlands – haven’t officially been ‘scrapped’ as yet.
As the Guardian noted in its coverage of the same story, the pilots have thus far only been deferred pending a final decision to be taken after the autumn spending reviews and after the Home Office had ‘”explored options for reducing costs of implementation”.
Somewhat curiously, while both newspapers were happy to report that the Home Office are currently trying to find ways of reducing its annual £10 billion budget by 25%, i.e. £2.5 billion, neither the Indy nor the Guardian indicated just exactly how much money would be saved by, at the very least, deferring the two pilots.
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
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» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
» The world is entering the third phase of the crisis, warns ILO
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