Ed Miliband being attacked for NOT stuffing Lords with party donors
The Labour party got a lot of flak over the “cash for honours” inquiry across 2006 and 2007, which finally ended with nobody facing charges.
How things change.
Today’s Times front-page splash sees Ed Miliband attacked for “snubbing” party donors – because only one of the ten new Labour peers had been a party donor, Sir Gulam Noon.
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Poll shows Left winning argument on economy
A new poll by ComRes for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday contains good news for the Left.
It shows that there is strong support for left-wing arguments made on the economy and the pace of government cuts.
John Rentoul reports:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements:
I expect to be worse off personally as a result of the spending cuts
Agree: 65% Disagree: 16%The cuts are unfair because they will be felt more by the poor than by wealthier households
Agree: 56% Disagree: 30%The scale of the cuts planned is too severe and too fast
Agree: 51% Disagree: 34%The need for cuts at the scale proposed has been exaggerated by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for party political reasons
Agree: 37% Disagree: 42%The Government is cutting public spending in a way that is fair to every section of society
Agree: 32% Disagree: 52%The Coalition Government is ensuring that the most vulnerable sections of society are protected from the spending cuts
Agree: 28% Disagree: 51%
Seems that while the public broadly buy the argument that some cuts are needed – they do not agree that the cuts are fair, that “we are all in this together” nor that the pace or scale is necessarily needed.
Bad news for the Libdems too: Only half of all people who voted Lib Dem in May would vote Lib Dem now; one in three people who voted Lib Dem at the election would now vote Labour.
Con 37% (+2)
Lab 38% (+1)
LD 13% (-3)
Other 12% (-)
Are the TPA blind to Royalty? (pt 2)
contribution by Tim Fenton
Since the announcement of the upcoming Royal Wedding, it has become clear to an increasing number of people that the event is going to have a cost attached, and that cost will in part be picked up by taxpayers.
As I posted the other day, this kind of expense, if incurred elsewhere in the public sector, would normally incur the wrath of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), but on this matter they have chosen to equivocate.
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Why Labour should oppose the Irish bank bailout
So after claiming there is no alternative to slashing public spending, our government plans to contribute £7 billion towards the bailout of the Irish government/banks.
Since May, we’ve heard the Tories say that we have to slash public services, make hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, and cut benefits for everyone from ex-servicemen to pensioners and carers. They wouldn’t even loan money to British businesses to invest in new exports.
But as soon as a corrupt, incompetent right wing government and their partners in crime in the banks need our cash, Cameron and Osborne manage to find £7 billion for them.
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Help clean up Corporate Lobbying in Brussels
contribution by Nishma Doshi
Public spending cuts, tax evasion and the lack of proper financial regulation – these are the “solutions” to a financial crisis and a recession.
Instead of investigating as to why the banks collapsed or even considering regulating them to ensure that this never happens again, the European Union has handed bankers a blank cheque, supporting bail outs and demanding austerity when governments find themselves in dire straits.
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The favourite phrase of those who’ve always had it better
The last time an aphorism from Baron Young of Graffham made the headlines came a week before polling day in 1987, when he grabbed Norman Tebbit by the lapels and shouted ‘Norman, listen to me, we are about to lose this fucking election’.
He need not have worried. The Conservatives proceeded to win that fucking election, and Lord Young was reappointed to the cabinet, enabling him to mastermind the privatisation of what few nationalised industries by this stage remained.
He thereafter returned to his business career.
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#NeverHadItSoGood Tory resigns
Tory adviser Lord Young, who claimed in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession – this so-called recession – started…” has just resigned.
Over on twitter, people have been giving their own examples of how they’ve #NeverHadItSoGood:
@pcs_union: Home Office staff losing their jobs, department takes on people on work experience. http://bit.ly/a1Q7If #neverhaditsogood
@thedancingflea: #neverhaditsogood Unemployed workers stigmatised for not applying for jobs that aren’t there.
@richardblogger: Waiting lists for hip and cataract ops in my county are now 6 months #neverhaditsogood
@jackdaw100: 500,000 public sector jobs to go #neverhaditsogood
@wdjstraw: VAT to rise to 20% with knock on effect on retail jobs and growth #neverhaditsogood
And let’s not forget that Lord Young is hardly the first Tory to sing praises of recessions
Andrew Lansley, The Blue Blog, 24 November 2008
I’ve been reading up on the impact of previous economic downturns on our health. Interestingly, on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families.
Dr Liam Fox, Hansard, 22 October 1992, column 636
all we hear from the Opposition is poverty, poverty, poverty–la, la, la, always on the one note, never accepting the complexity of the issues. Not once did the Opposition mention that. They are always hitting on the one strand. That does not advance the debate one little bit. It is just boring for Conservative Members.
Sir George Young, now Leader of the House of Commons, Independent, 29 June 1991
SIR George Young, Minister of State, yesterday rejected criticism that he lacked concern for the homeless. Sir George, who is responsible for housing, referred to beggars in London as ‘the sort of people you step on when you come out of the opera’, while at a private Tory dinner.
Race and racism: A white Briton writes
When I fill in those diversity forms for job applications, I always put ‘White British’ or ‘White English’, or whatever variant I’m meant to use.
That’s what I am, although it seems so clumsy: what is ‘white British’ anyway and who gets to be that rather than, say, mixed race British? How mixed does your race have to be before you’re mixed race?
Does my gypsy grandmother count as ‘white’, or should that lineage be viewed as ‘mixed race’? I don’t know.
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How the BBC gave free rein to global warming deniers during ‘climategate’
contribution by Hengist McStone
I’ve found quite an extraordinary broadcast from last year which examines bias on the BBC’s coverage of the climategate story less than two weeks into the affair.
Essentially the programme suggests there may be a pro-green or pro-climate science bias, by inviting two denialists on to the programme to ask why hasn’t the BBC given more ‘skeptical’ coverage to the story.
What is extraordinary is that this was broadcast on Decmber 4th 2009 when no facts were known about the email leak.
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Apparently Labour factional fighting is back. Or not
One of the worst political predictions of recent years was made by Ed Balls on the morning that Gordon Brown became leader of the Labour Party.
We all got up early that Sunday morning to hold a Fabian fringe before the main event – where Balls expressed relief that Labour had finally been “liberated” from the compelling media and political prism of the Blair v Brown rivalry.
If only it had been true.
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
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» Violence in the office
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