Just 32% of Tea Partiers won elections
For all the talk of the Tea Party’s strength – and there will certainly be a significant number of their candidates in Congress – just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election. A few races remain too close to call.
In the Senate, 10 candidates backed by the Tea Party ran and at least five were successful. (Race in Alaska has not yet been called.)
In the House, 130 Tea Party-backed candidates ran, and just 40 so far have won.
Identifying Tea Party candidates is undoubtedly inexact. Our criteria, generally, was to include anyone who has either been backed by a Tea Party group or has identified themselves as a member of the Tea Party movement. Toward the end of this cycle, however, seemingly every Republican was trying to associate themselves this way. One left off the list was Dino Rossi, despite Jim DeMint endorsing him, since Tea Party groups backed Clint Didier in the primary.
…the full math and names on MSNBC
BNP on the verge of bankruptcy
BNP leader Nick Griffin faces being axed as a Euro MP as he fights to avoid bankruptcy over his party’s soaring cash crisis.
He is among top officials thought to be personally liable for the racist group’s £700,000 debts – which it admits it cannot pay.
Anyone made bankrupt is legally barred from being an MP or Euro MP.
The BNP’s money woes were laid bare by ex-chief fundraiser James Dowson in a letter seen by the Mirror.
Mr Dowson told North-East printers who produced its newsletter that the finances were like “a shipwreck”.
John Hirst and making the case for prisoners’ votes
If the opponents of giving prisoners the right to vote could have chosen someone to front the campaign, John Hirst might not have been their first choice, but he’d have definitely been in with a shout.
Hirst is not an easy man to like. Convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after killing his landlady in what can only be described as an almost entirely detached manner, he served 25 years when he had been sentenced to only 15.
Less often mentioned is that he was abused as a child after being placed in the care of Barnardo’s, has Asperger’s syndrome and having been given a life sentence, will remain on licence until he dies.
continue reading… »
Coalition to weaken homeless protection
The government intends to change the definition of homelessness, weakening the statutory obligations on local councils, as part of its housing benefit changes, DWP minister Lord Freud told a House of Commons Select Committee.
The Guardian reports:
Freud said it could be “quite valuable” to revise the current criteria in place, arguing: “We have found it very difficult to define homelessness in this country. The estimates [of homelessness] go from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands depending on who you are talking to.”
…
“Clearly the common view of homelessness is nothing over one’s head at all. The statutory definitions are different to that, and they are adequate housing.”
Westminster Council had already written to the government to propose a series of specific changes which would weaken the statutory homelessness duties faced by councils which the Council argues are necessary if it is to be able to cope with the impact of the government’s housing benefit cuts.
Supporters and critics of the government’s housing policy have suggested that its reforms will almost certainly lead it to weaken these statutory obligations on homelessness. Freud is the first minister to publicly begin to argue for this in public.
Will Israel’s public snub of William Hague force another Libdem u-turn?
contribution by Seph Brown
William Hague arrived in Israel late yesterday evening only to find the door shut, in what appears to be a growing trend of humiliating foreign dignitaries to force a political point.
The Foreign Secretary landed in Tel Aviv only to be told that the ‘special strategic dialogue’ between the two countries would be suspended.
The snub is suspiciously similar to Israel’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new settlement homes the day before US Vice President Joe Biden landed in Israel to discuss the country’s security. Israel later apologised to Biden and claimed the timing was an accident.
Hague’s slap in the face however was unabashedly intentional.
continue reading… »
How the Coalition will u-turn on printing money
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is due to make an announcement on interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) tomorrow morning.
In all likelihood, they will suggest that QE, aka printing money, should be pursued.
What you won’t hear however is howls of protest from Coalition politicians who were previously against it.
Here is Chancellor George Osborne last year while in opposition:
The Shadow Chancellor described the decision to effectively print more money as a “last resort”, necessary because of the “complete failure” of Labour’s other measures to tackle the recession.
He told BBC News, “I don’t think anyone should be pleased that we have reached this point. It is an admission of failure and carries considerable risk.”
Here is Vince Cable in the Sunday Times:
Printing money appals him. “This is the Robert Mugabe school of economics. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope. It is a very dangerous manoeuvre, although I don’t think it’s sensible to say we can’t ever do it.” He would prefer zero interest rates.
[links via @DuncanWeldon]
He also goes on to say government debt is very different to personal debt but we’ll leave that aside for now.
Tory bloggers too were singing from the same hymn sheet last year. Iain Dale said, “Printing money is the economics of Robert Mugabe“.
Earlier this month however, Osborne made a u-turn and said he would back the BoE if they suggested printing money.
Rather curiously – all those dire predictions aren’t heard now.
Could this be because they either didn’t understand what was going on then, or simply wanted to take a blind oppositional stance? Or maybe they could explain why their predictions didn’t materialise then or what has changed now.
If you want an excellent overview on Quantitative Easing, see this blog by Paul Mason.
Why the left should champion a softer approach to drugs
contribution by Jon Lansman
Two days ago, the Guardian devoted its front page lead to the report by a committee headed by former Government drugs advisor, David Nutt, published in the Lancet, which concluded that “alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the UK by a considerable margin, beating heroin and crack cocaine into second and third place“.
The Guardian predicted that the report would “reopen calls for the drugs classification system to be scrapped and a concerted campaign launched against drink“.
So far as I can tell, the report has been totally ignored by Left politicians and bloggers alike. Why?
continue reading… »
Watch: Ed pokes fun at Cameron’s photographer
Yesterday, the Daily Mirror revealed that David Cameron had put his personal photographer on the public payroll.
Andrew Parsons has been made a civil servant a year after we revealed how he staged shots of Mr Cameron in the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey. Mr Cameron hired the snapper to transform his image when he was leader of the Opposition and his wages were picked up by the Tories
So much for austerity cuts eh?
The story was picked up by Ed Miliband today in the House of Commons and used to make fun of Cameron. The reply was pathetic.
More evidence Tories know little about Trade unions
I see Iain Dale’s verging on the ridiculous again; this time insulting millions of people in trade unions:
Have you noticed something? Trade Unions very rarely call their members out on strike over pay any longer. Nowadays it is on ‘safety’ issues. Usually spurious ones. This now seems de rigeur for the RMT whose strike today is ostensibly on the safety consequences, and the Fire Brigades Union also cites safety as one of the reasons for their strike.
So Iain think that trade union members care nothing for their role in ensuring public safety, are simply interested in their own paypacket, and that public safety is just a recently thought up bargaining chip?
continue reading… »
Clare Sambrook wins Paul Foot award
contribution by Guy Aitchison
Congratulations to openDemocracy author Clare Sambrook who has been named winner of the Paul Foot Award 2010 for her reports on the UK’s shameful detention of asylum seekers’ children.
The award, which recognises the best campaigning journalism of the year, was announced this evening at the London BAFTA headquarters by Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye.
Clare won with a remarkable shortlist which included Nick Davies, of the Guardian, for his investigations of phone-hacking at the News of the World when Andy Coulson was editor, and Jonathan Calvert and Clare Newell, of the Sunday Times, for their reports on MPs and peers seeking cash for influence.
Clare’s journalism is rooted in End Child Detention Now, a citizens’ campaign to end the scandal of child detention by the UK immigration authorities — formed in July 2009 by six friends.
Clare submitted work that exposed government attempts to bury medical evidence that detention harms children, and the cosy relationship between government and the security companies that run prisons and detention centres for profit. The seven articles she submitted from openDemocracy are:
- When they said ‘We will end child detention,’ they meant ‘Keep on arresting babies’
- Let’s make sure they really do end child detention now
- Election time: asylum seekers lose their last safety net
- Surveillance + detention = £Billions: How Labour’s friends are ‘securing your world’
- Has Meg Hillier gone mad?
- Take one traumatised child
- Roll calls, body searches and sex games
Clare’s full back catalogue for oD can be read here.
Responding to the award, Clare Sambrook said:
Reading Paul Foot’s books when I was fresh out of university gave me a strong sense of what journalism could and should be. This is a massive honour, hugely encouraging and a real boost to the End Child Detention Now campaign at a time when the government has reneged on its commitment to stop this inhumanity.
Anthony Barnett, Founder of openDemocracy and Co-Editor of It’s OurKingdom blog, said:
We were proud to publish Clare Sambrook’s exceptional reports on the scandalous imprisonment of children in Britain and their ruthless mistreatment by the authorities. She joined meticulous research with beautiful, energetic writing to expose a shocking reality. We hope her reports will indeed help bring child detention to an end
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