Report shows cutting road safety cameras will kill more people
In recent Cuts Watch postings we’ve reported on the rapid disappearance of road safety cameras.
Figures out yesterday revealed that the price in extra deaths and injuries will be more likely to be paid by the poor.
Philip Hammond, the Secretary of State for Transport has said that the decision to stop funding local authorities’ cameras is about more than saving cash. He says it is a good thing in itself: the government will “end the war on motorists.”
This is despite the findings of independent research funded by his own Department, which found that, at camera sites, speeds were down and excessive speeding was substantially reduced and there were 100 fewer deaths a year.
Yesterday saw the publication of the Child Casualties Report 2010 by Road Safety Analysis Ltd. This study looks at the level of risk on the roads faced by children in 2004-8, analysed by where they live.
On average, one child in 427 in Britain is injured on the roads each year, but there are huge variations from area to area – in Preston the rate is one in 206, in Kensington and Chelsea, one in 1,158.
Using postcodes, the report is able to link casualties to the Experian MOSAIC socio-demographic classification system (increasingly used by marketers). The study specifically looked at which types of community are under- and over-represented; in the table below, 100 means that a community has the same proportion of accidents as its share of the population.
A lower number means a lower risk rate, a higher number a higher rate:
Children’s relative risk of casualties, 2004-8
| Mosaic group | Risk index |
| Symbols of Success: People with rewarding careers who live in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products |
61 |
| Happy Families: Families with focus on career and home, mostly younger age groups now raising children. |
96 |
| Suburban Comfort: Families who are successfully established in comfortable, mature homes. Children are growing up and finances are easier. |
79 |
| Ties of Community: People living in close-knit inner city and manufacturing town communities, responsible workers with unsophisticated tastes. |
122 |
| Urban Intelligence: Young, single and mostly well-educated, these people are cosmopolitan in tastes and liberal in attitudes |
44 |
| Welfare Borderline: People who are struggling to achieve rewards and are mostly reliant on the council for accommodation and benefits |
118 |
| Municipal Dependency: Families on lower incomes who often live in large council estates where there is little owner-occupation |
211 |
| Blue Collar Enterprise: People who though not well-educated are practical and enterprising and may well have exercised their right to buy. |
154 |
| Twilight Subsistence: Elderly people subsisting on meagre incomes in council accommodation. |
54 |
| Grey Perspectives: Independent pensioners living in their own homes who are relatively active in their lifestyles |
51 |
| Rural Isolation: People living in rural areas where country life has not been influenced by urban consumption patterns. |
80 |
The social distribution of car ownership is different. The table below shows the proportion of households in each income quintile with access to at least one car in 2007:
Access to one or more cars, GB, 2007
| Top fifth |
90% |
| Next fifth |
90% |
| Middle fifth |
84% |
| Next fifth |
64% |
| Bottom fifth |
45% |
There is a class dimension to scrapping road safety cameras; yet again, the cuts harm the interests of groups disproportionately likely to be poor and benefit the interests of groups disproportionately likely to be better-off.
Why Alistair Darling is wrong
Alastair Darling says:
We rather lost our way. Rather than recognising that the public were rightly concerned about the level of borrowing, we got sidetracked into a debate about investment over cuts. By failing to talk openly about the deficit, and our tough plans to halve it within four years, we vacated the crucial space to make the case for the positive role government can play. “You will only convince people you’ve got the answers if they believe you know what the question is in the first place.
But..
continue reading… »
Polls find huge support for protecting services
Labour may have lost the debate on the deficit, for now, but that doesn’t mean people agree with the scale and the type of cuts carried out by the government.
These two graphs were in a big Ipsos-Mori survey of the Coalition’s first 100 days.
Yesterday Ed Balls said:
By cutting the deficit this quickly and this sharply thousands of public and private sector jobs will be lost, the recovery could be stalled and we risk a double-dip recession. George Osborne got the big judgement wrong three years ago when we took action to stop recession turning into depression. He is making the wrong calls again now.
Labour needs strong leadership to set out that there is an alternative based on a clear plan to support jobs and growth, a more sensible timetable for deficit reduction, and a robust explanation of why that will better support our economy and public finances for the long term future of our country.
The polls above show much more support for the stance taken by Ed Balls over that of George Osborne.
Will Cameron apologise for accusing Labour of lies over winter fuel payments?
The Telegraph is reporting today that ministers have “resolved to increase the qualifying age” for the winter fuel allowance from 60 to atleast 66. Even that may be increased.
The basic winter fuel payment will also be cut by £50 for new recipients and £100 for the oldest.
Contrast that with Cameron only in April this year
continue reading… »
Labour polls same as Tories after 100 days
Headline polling results: Lab 37%, Con 37%, Libdems 18%
David Cameron’s first 100 days in Downing Street have witnessed the coalition win the key argument over the economy with a Guardian/ICM poll today showing that voters back austerity measures to reduce Britain’s record peacetime budget deficit.
The monthly snapshot of public opinion suggests strong initial support for George Osborne’s controversial cuts-based recovery strategy, with the chancellor re-iterating today that the government would wreck the economy if it “budged” from its plans to slash borrowing during the course of the parliament.
Despite claims from Labour that front-loaded spending cuts risk a double-dip recession and will hit the poorest the hardest, 44% of those polled said the coalition was doing a “good job” in securing economic recovery against 37% who said it was doing a “bad job”.
…
Where the Conservatives are holding on to the 37% vote share which achieved in the election, a quarter of those who backed the Lib Dems then have since switched sides, leaving the third party on just 18% – down one point on the month, and six on the election.
We’re not “deficit deniers” Mr Osborne – we worry about how you cut spending
contribution by Tamsin Omond
“We are engaged as a Government in a collective effort [...] to create a simpler, fairer welfare system that, above all, gets people into work,” said George Osborne.
And if you don’t agree that cuts are the way to deliver a simpler, fairer welfare system then Osborne knows what to call you: “deficit-denier“. A deficit denier (despite the wording) isn’t someone who actually denies the deficit – that would be ignoring the facts in front of us.
Rather it is someone who disagrees that Osborne’s methods will give us fair and progressive cuts in public spending, or (even worse!) it is someone who’s found that cutting public spending is not the only way to save or make public money.
continue reading… »
What the Blair memoirs are not going to say
Random House has paid Tony Blair a $7.5m advance for his memoirs. Given that the company is the largest English language publisher in the world, one presumes it knows what it is doing. But the truth is that political diaries only rarely sell in sufficient quantity to recoup major outlays.
Often such deals are not guided purely by commercial considerations. HarperCollins, part of the Murdoch empire, has a track record of handing out huge sums to influential public figures in return for the rights to tedious books unlikely to shift many units, especially if crucial votes on sensitive legislation are in the offing.
There is no suggestion here that the Blair deal is anything other than entirely properly and based on a reasoned projection of likely sales, of course. What is more, all royalties have been pledged to the British Legion, a charity for former service personnel. The gesture does not impress the Stop the War Coalition, which is planning to picket a book signing session at Waterstone’s next month.
New poll: voting reform in trouble
A new YouGov poll shows that for the first time, more people would vote to keep First Past the Post than to replace it with the Alternative Vote system.
37% would vote Yes in the referendum, while 38% would vote No. Two months ago, 44% were planning to vote Yes, while 34% were planning to vote No.
There has been little change in the attitudes of Tory voters, who oppose reform by 53%-33%, or amongst Lib Dem voters, who back it by 68%-15%. But Labour voters now oppose AV by 46%-34%, whereas in June they backed it by 44%-31%.
When will the Right admit the Coalition has gone too far?
There’s a classic rhetorical trick right-wingers employ when feeling desperate: say Labour has been taken over by the ‘loony left’ and isn’t reflecting Middle-England. For Labourites still shell-shocked from the 80s and 90s this is a cue to start worrying about their electoral prospects.
But in fact the evidence right now points to the opposite.
Labour has risen about 8-9% in the polls since the election without even having a leader with one coherent message. The public overwhelmingly supports more taxes on the very rich to deal with the deficit. They overwhelmingly thought Labour was too close to bankers at the last election.
continue reading… »
Audit Commission slams Pickles for inaccuracies
The head of the Audit Commission yesterday published a letter challenging media reports – pushed by Eric Pickles – for ‘factual inaccuracies’.
The chair Michael O’Higgins said that he was “disappointed and dismayed at misleading press reports”, which were pointed out in the letter:
The Commission was not reluctant to disclose its spending:
The Chairman wrote to the Secretary of State on 9 June offering to publish its own £500+ spending data from July. The Commission was asked by the Department of Communities and Local Government to delay publication to meet CLG’s own timetable for disclosure, on 12 August 2010. The Commission has always favoured openness, accountability and disclosure, being among the first to publish the expenses of its Chairman and Chief Executive online.The Commission’s spending details do not show ‘days at the races’:
The Commission made payments to Newmarket racecourse for meeting and conference facilities. These were briefings for local government and NHS bodies on technical issues the might arise from the current programme of audits. The dates were not race days. Racecourse facilities often offer good value for meetings compared to hotels or conference centres. The £8,000 payment to Newmarket was for three events training 90 officers from local authorities and the NHS – around £67 a head. And not a horse in sight!The Audit Commission did not hire a PR firm to ‘lobby’ against shadow ministers:
The Audit Commission did not pay a public affairs company to lobby shadow ministers. In January 2009, it asked Connect Public Affairs to undertake a specific piece of work called a Perceptions Audit and Influence Map, to help staff better understand the expectations of the forthcoming Comprehensive Area Assessment. This report cost £9,000 and was an assessment of views among opinion leaders across the political spectrum. It was used by communications staff and not seen by senior managers or members of the Commission Board. Neither Connect, nor any other business, has ever been asked by the Commission to ‘lobby’ anyone on its behalf.The Commission has not forced councils to adopt fortnightly bin collections:
The Commission has only ever encouraged local authorities to review their waste management plans and rubbish collection arrangements. It is the Commission’s duty to push for maximum value for money in local services. But it holds strictly to the view that it is for local elected members to decide their own policies, which includes the frequency of bin emptying.
A report in the Financial Times today says in fact that the move was “ideological” and “the culmination of a bitter feud” between Pickles and the Commission.
In the 1980s the Audit Commission uncovered the “homes for votes” scandal, which was being run by Tory councils.
Yesterday Accountancy Age also reported that the ACCA body, which represents 13,000 workers, said the benefits of scrapping the Audit Commission would be “short-lived”.
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