#demo2010 – open thread
I’m sure many of our readers were amongst the 50,000 protesting against government plans on student fees today, organised by NUS and University and College Union.
This is an open thread for people to share their experience of the day, what you think of the protests, and what the next steps should be. We’ll update it with reactions over the course of the evening.
Several of our contributors have been tweeting from the demo – including Sunny, Ellie Mae, and Laurie
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Labour’s fight for the South should start with women and lower-income voters
contribution by Tom Gann
The recent pamphlet by think-tank Policy Network, ‘Southern Discomfort Again‘, repeats the orthodoxy that left us with just 10 seats in the South by emphasising the anxieties and aspirations of “Middle Britain”.
But it misses the possibility of Labour organising an election winning force in the South by mobilising two groups we have failed with: women and DE non-voters, especially against the Coalition’s cuts.
This requires the leadership to be braver than they have been.
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Dorries Still Whining About Expenses
Under the headline “MPs fear being ‘torn apart’ for criticising expenses regime“, Epolitix are reporting yet another spectacularly misconceived bout of whinging by the Honourable Member for Mid-Narnia, Nadine Dorries.
Nadine Dorries has warned that another expenses scandal is coming at MPs “like a train” due to the inadequacies of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).
While lobbying the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee for a debate on the new expenses system, Dorries claimed that MPs were ‘frustrated, angry and despairing’ at the current system because…
“IPSA have been refusing a large number of claims which MPs have been putting forward, not because they are inappropriate claims, but because they have missed out a field on the form or incorrectly completed a form,”
Not the kind of complaint that will elicit much in the way of sympathy from anyone who’s ever submitted a claim for welfare benefits or wrestled with a tax return.
In response to a parliamentary question, at the end of October, IPSA revealed that of 5,256 claim forms submitted in September, 162 were still awaiting payment, adding that this was because the claim form had not completed correctly or because the MP had either failed to provide sufficient supporting evidence for their claim or submitted a claim which had given rise to ‘some other query’.
Most small businesses would be overjoyed if 97% of their credit accounts were settled within 30-60 days, but this is seemingly not good enough for Members of Parliament, even if the fault lies largely with their own inability to submit the correct paperwork.
The main thrust of Dorries’ argument to the committee, which was also backed by Tory MP Adam Afriyie, seems to be that the rejection of a small number of inadequately presented claims by IPSA will inevitiably by misinterpreted by the media as evidence of further impropriety, giving rise to another expenses ‘scandal’. The argument, one presumes, is that it would, therefore, be preferable for IPSA to go back to the old system of rubber stamping MPs expenses claims without asking too many awkward questions and take it on trust that MPs have now learned their lesson, in order avoid feeding more ammunition to the Daily Telegraph.
That’s one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at this is to note that all three major parties operate their own centralised research facilities in the House of Commons, for which MPs pay an annual subscription fee.
If MPs can spread the costs of research in such a manner then its surely not beyond the wit of some of them to club together and hire a couple of competent accounts clerks, so as to ensure that their expenses forms are filled in correctly and that the proper evidence is submitted with their claim.
DWP’s research shows ‘workfare’ doesn’t work
As the government prepares to announce plans to force the long-term unemployed to undertake community work for their benefits, a Department for Work and Pensions report has highlighted the failures of such schemes elsewhere in the world.
The report reviews workfare schemes in Australia, Canada and the US. While advocates for work-for-your-benefits programmes say unpaid work eases the transition into employment, the research shows the opposite.
Indeed workfare programmes have been found to reduce unemployment chances by limiting the amount of time participants spent on job search and by failing to provide the skills and training employers seek.
Workfare schemes, such as the Work Experience Programme in New York, are particularly ineffective at helping people with long-term barriers to work back into employment, the research found.
Three silly misconceptions about the Phil Woolas case
contribution by Cory Hazlehurst
On the whole, I’m heartened by Labour reactions to Phil Woolas’s expulsion from both Parliament and his Party. The reaction of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been an entirely different matter.
This anger from Labour MPs depresses me more than I can say, but it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
There are three other general types of reaction to the Woolas case that I think are worth addressing:
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Housing benefit victims to lose right to support
Housing benefit claimants who fall into arrears when their payments are cut will not receive full support from their councils, an MP warned today.
Speaking at a Westminster Hall debate, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives Andrew George said the cuts to housing benefit announced in the emergency Budget and the comprehensive spending review would lead to an increase in homelessness and demand for social housing.
He said tenants who were no longer able to pay their rent as a result of a shortfall in their housing benefit ‘will be found intentionally homeless and therefore not eligible for assistance from the local authority’.
Councils are only obliged to provide temporary accommodation for a limited amount of time to those found intentionally homeless.
The National Housing Federation said it was expecting a number of test cases to challenge this situation once the cuts come in from April next year.
Exclusive: fund-raising letter to support Woolas
You may have already heard that some Labour MPs are sending around a letter to try and raise funds to support disgraced MP Phil Woolas.
We have been leaked a copy of that letter, and publish it here exclusively.
Dear Friend,
You will have heard that Phil has lost the case and the injustice and implications of this ruling for politics are hard to imagine. Phil is now no longer an MP.
The decision of the electoral court has no appeal process other than to go for a Judicial Review (JR).
As a Labour candidate, Phil was covered for costs for the election petition hearing by the Party insurers, but their insurance does not cover the JR and as you know the Party has refused to fund any further action.
Contrary to what some are claiming, winning the JR would also clear Phil’s name of the allegations of deception as well as overturning the point of law.
We have strong QC opinion that we can win this case; Lord Falconer has also given his opinion that the law was not properly applied and that winning does indeed clear Phil’s name.
To finance this action, we have to purchase an insurance policy to cover costs in the event that we do lose. The legal team are working for free as they feel so strongly that we have a case. We really need your help in financing this and any help will be very much appreciated. If we win, you get your money back; if we don’t raise enough to buy the premium, you will also get your money back.
Cheques, payable to T Allen, should be sent to:
Cllr John Battye
[address redacted]If you would prefer to use a bank transfer please email the address below and we will send the account details.
If you do send a donation please also email: woolasappealfund@googlemail.com and advise us of your name, address, email and telephone number so that we can check against donations received.
Thank you very much for your kind support at this difficult time.Best Regards
Cllr John Battye
Our source said: “Quite funny, I thought only Pandas get appeal funds…”
You can sign Don Paskini’s letter supporting Harriet Harman’s comments on Woolas.
Update: Paul Flynn MP has spoken out on Twitter:
Harriet Harman is not isolated. At the PLP last night she was surrounded by MPs offering support. The alleged offence is not a minor one.
A poll has found overwhelming support for Harriet Harman’s position too, says UK Polling Report:
In YouGov’s daily poll for the Sun yesterday we also asked for the first reactions to Phil Woolas being ejected from Parliament. 71% thought that the courts were right to expel Woolas, with only 7% thinking they had made the wrong decision. There was also very little sympathy for the argument that the ruling risked stifling free political debate during elections. Only 9% thought the law was wrong and a restriction on free speech, with 74% supporting it.
#IagreewithHarriet – sign our open letter backing expulsion of Woolas
On Friday, after Phil Woolas was found guilty of lying in his election leaflets, Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman took the obvious and common sense decision to announce that he would be suspended from the Labour Party and that Labour wouldn’t be wasting its limited resources on helping him launch an appeal.
Today, we hear reports that some Labour MPs have told her that she is a “disgrace”, that “she should consider her position”, and that there was “real anger” at the event, with a lot of “shouting” from enraged MPs, as a result of this decision.
As a grassroots Labour supporter, I am sickened by this kind of self-indulgent behaviour.
continue reading… »
Vaz blames ‘racist shooting’ on video game
In a story you may not have picked up on over the weekend, Police in the Swedish city of Malmo have confirmed that an as yet unnamed 38 year old man has been arrested in connection with a series of gun attacks on people with ethnic minority backgrounds.
Prior to the arrest, local police had suspected that more than a dozen unsolved shootings over the last year, in which one person died and eight more were wounded, may have been the work of lone gunman. The man arrested at the weekend has now been charged with one count of murder and seven attempted murders.
Make of that story what you will, but what has piqued my interest here is not the story itself but an Early Day Motion (EDM 907) put down a couple of weeks ago by Labour MP, Keith Vaz, in relation to these shootings.
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Why Conservatives could win Phil Woolas’ seat
I’m rather pleased that ‘Comrade’ Woolas has gone. I’ve also had a think about what we, from the Labour party, might want from a candidate in Oldham.
During this year’s General Election, and the aftermath in this CLP, all attention has been obviously focused on the respective Labour and Lib Dem campaigns. I’d suggest it gets more interesting if you have a look at what the Tories were doing.
Oldham E had been a Lab-Lib marginal since 1997: this year it became a 3-way Lib-Lab-Con marginal. The 3782 votes we lost between 2005 and 2010 didn’t go to the Lib Dems – their vote went down by 295. The Tories gained 3872.
That’s so far ahead of the national swing to them that you have to ask how they did it.
continue reading… »
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