‘Yes to Fairer Votes’ campaign launches
The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign has announced the first appointments to the team that will lead the call for a ‘Yes’ vote on the Alternative Vote (AV) in next year’s referendum.
The campaign is currently building the grass roots organisation that will take the message to the country ahead of next May.
The campaign decided early on to avoid calling itself the ‘Yes to AV Campaign’ and focus on language people would relate to.
The people leading the campaign will be:
Pam Giddy, Chair
John Sharkey, Vice Chair
Neal Lawson, Compass
Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy
Willie Sullivan, Electoral Reform Society
Carina Trimingham, Electoral Reform Society
Pam Giddy said:
You can be an MP today with less than one in three voters on your side. It’s not how any normal job interview would work, but we hire and fire our MPs using a voting system that gives candidates the edge over us, their employers. The system has produced safe seats where many MPs are set for life, and that’s bred complacency and allowed voters to be taken for granted.
For millions of us there is precious little point in voting for what you really believe in, a view politicians actively encourage. Next year we’re out to win a stronger voice, and the chance to cast an honest vote.
Voters aren’t looking for a revolution. By voting ‘Yes’ in the referendum we can take what works with the current system and improve on it, and give politics a long-overdue upgrade.
The campaign’s website is at: www.yestofairervotes.org
Senior MPs told others to ‘back-off’ Coulson
Channel 4 News has learned that members of the committee set up to investigate the phone hacking scandal shied away from forcing News International chief executive and former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks to attend a meeting with them.
After Mrs Brooks had repeatedly avoided being interviewed, four MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport committee wanted to ask the Serjeant at Arms, the Commons official in charge of security, to issue a warrant forcing her to attend.
In an exclusive interview, former Plaid Cymru MP, and a member of the committee, Adam Price said he was warned by a senior Conservative committee member that if the committee pursued this plan, the tabloids might punish him by looking into his personal life.
…
Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat MP who also sat on the committee, told Channel 4 News the its chair John Whittingdale had hinted to colleagues of the personal repercussions of pursuing the newspaper group.
Burning books is rarely just about the book, is it?
So, to Qur’an burning then. What the Dickens is that about, eh? Is it just a book?
Well no, it isn’t. I doubt Pastor Redneck would be satisfied if all paper copies of the Qur’an were destroyed but all e-books remained in tact.
Unless I’m sorely mistaken, his issue isn’t with some bound bits of paper you can pick up for £5.99 in Waterstones: it’s with ideas.
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How can Vince Cable predict what is useful science?
One of the more unpleasant aspects of the New Labour government was its anti-Hayekian pretence that central government could acquire knowledge which, in fact, is unobtainable. The coalition has inherited this boneheaded idea.
Take Vince Cable’s recent speech:
There is no justification for taxpayers money being used to support research which is neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding.
The problem here is that it is impossible to predict what research will be commercially useful.
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Polls show Boris less popular than believed
London’s Mayor Boris Johnson today announced that he would stand again as the Conservative candidate in 2012.
He will be endorsed officially by the Conservatives next month.
With a well-timed leak to ConservativeHome today, Boris’ team let it be known that internal polling shows he has a 55% approval rating.
Paul Waugh at the Evening Standard however publishes a graph that shows Boris Johnson’s net approval at around 40%.
But it’s not clear where those figures are from.
The GLA does do an annual survey of London opinion. This is published in the public domain and shows things aren’t as rosy for the Mayor as ConservativeHome would like to believe.
The last survey (via Adam Bienkov) shows that satisfaction with Boris Johnson’s record was actually only 26%.
And this is perhaps more worrying for Boris.
In other words – not all is well in Boris world despite what you read on ConservativeHome.
Update: Ken sent out this statement today:
Since he was elected he has cut the police, raised a single bus fare by a third and broken promises on affordable housing. He has betrayed outer London with higher fares, cuts to new transport links and breaking his pledge to protect tube ticket office opening hours.
I believe there is an alternative to Boris Johnson’s and David Cameron’s cuts. As Mayor of London I would work to hold down fares, build homes, protect policing levels and defend investment in public transport. While Boris defends the bankers and polluters, I will stand up for ordinary Londoners.
Oona’s response is savage.
You get the impression Boris has no idea how he ended up as Mayor and now doesn’t know how to escape. When Nick Ferrari on LBC invited him to list his successes as Mayor I thought he was going to ask for an early commercial break.
Gideon Osborne is trying to kill the idea of full employment
Last night, the heir to a multimillion pound fortune declared that it is wrong for people to get money for doing nothing. This came as part of a special announcement that £4billion more would be cut from benefits than previously planned.
This was certainly not part of a transparent and obvious ploy to get the News of the World/Met Police phone-hacking scandal off the front pages.
In turn, the irony of a party which recently appointed a big-time tax avoider to a senior role – and which has turned a blind eye to a practice costing the UK many more sums than benefit “scrounging” – was quickly lost on everybody.
But Gideon Osborne’s announcement is interesting because it heralds – or at the very least confirms – the death of an idea. And not just any old idea.
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Wind now delivering about 10% of UK power
According to data from the National Grid, production of electricity from wind reached a historical record on the 6th of September this year, with around 10% of all electricity delivered to consumers generated by the UK’s wind farms.
At the peak time of 8.30pm on Monday 6th September, 1860MW was being generated – largely from Scotland – accounting for 4.7 per cent of total generation at the time.
National Grid also believes that if embedded wind generation (generation feeding directly into the low voltage local electricity networks by smaller wind farms) is taken into account wind generated about 10 per cent of GB’s power during the 24 hour period.
This is not including the contribution from other renewables such as hydro, which contributed a further 4%, according to data held by Elexon, the balancing and settlement code company for Great Britain.
Commenting on the news RenewableUK Chief Executive Maria McCaffery said:
We are expecting to see the contribution of electricity from wind gradually increase over the next decade, to around 30% of the UK’s total consumption. This news confirms that not only are the wind farms we have built so far starting to deliver, but that UK wind farm electricity yields are the best in Europe, and comparable with established technologies such as hydro.
These figures underpin the strong contention that renewable energy – and wind energy in particular – is no longer alternative. It is on the scale and growing rapidly.
RenewableUK is the trade and professional body for the UK wind and marine renewables industries.
The Guardian also reported yesterday that over the past two years, 40 percent of all new electricity generating capacity in Europe came from wind turbines.
From Spain to Sweden, so many new turbines are being erected that Europe is on target to produce 15 percent of its electricity from wind by 2020. By 2050, half of Europe’s electricity is expected to come from wind.
Tory council becomes first to write to Pickles protesting against cuts
Conservative-run Derby City Council has found itself lobbying against the Tory-led national government’s spending cuts.
At the end of July, a council vote forced Conservative council leader Harvey Jennings to write to communities secretary Eric Pickles in protest at the impact of government funding cuts on Derby.
On Wednesday night, the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems all voted to lobby education secretary Michael Gove over his decision to axe most of the city’s schoolbuilding programme, which was weeks away from signing contracts when he pulled the plug.
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Hacking: MPs unite against ‘arrogant’ media
The House of Commons yesterday voted unanimously to refer the News of the World hacking controversy to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
It is the most powerful Commons committee, with the power to subpoena witnesses. Expect Andy Coulson to be up on the dock soon, with more embarrassing headlines for David Cameron.
We already reported on Tom Watson’s words, who said:
They, the barons of the media with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators, they are untouchable, they laugh at the law, they sneer at parliament, they have the power to hurt us and they do with gusto and precision.
We are afraid, and if we oppose this resolution it is our shame. That is the tawdry secret that dare not speak its name.
But the move also got support from Tory backbenchers such as Nadine Dorries, who said: “It is our fault for having allowed the media to reach a point of arrogance.”
That was soon followed by this amusing exchange on Sky News, where Chris Bryant MP called Kay Murley ‘a bit dim’
Channel 4 News last night also reported:
A former News of the World journalist’s claim that Andy Coulson would have been aware about an alleged culture of phone hacking at the paper has been thrown into doubt because he had left the paper before Mr Coulson became its editor, Channel 4 News understands.
However, as DocRichard points out:
the Press Gazette records that Andy Coulson was appointed deputy editor of the News of the World in May 2000. So McMullen and Coulson did overlap.
Channel 4 have now amended their article.
The FT Westminster blog said last night, “that the new unity may also mean that the Tories can no longer dismiss the affair as party-political point scoring.”
Why are Labour people still advocating invading Iran?
contribution by Naadir Jeewa
Yesterday a row erupted on Twitter between a group of young supporters of the two Milibands over Iran, with David’s supporters talking up the prospects of military action against Iran as Blair did last week, and Ed’s supporters mainly reiterating current US strategy.
There’s a couple of problems apparent when Wes Streeting (an Oona King campaign team staffer) claims that “the speeches of Ahmedinejad, the work of academics, intelligence” proves the existence of Iranian WMD capability.
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