How more transparency in accounting could help deal with tax avoidance

by Guest    
January 6, 2011 at 6:35 pm

contribution by Lydia Preig

This week, the European Commission’s call for evidence on country-by-country financial reporting drew to a close.

It is asking whether multinationals should be required to disclose, on a country-by-country basis, information such as: sales, costs, profits, number of employees and taxes paid (and more).

If these new standards are adopted, this would be an important step towards combating international accounting fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance.
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The different maps that illustrate the Tory cuts

by Guest    
January 6, 2011 at 11:00 am

contribution by Jon Stone

Possibly because of its straddling both a national and local focus, the anti-cuts movement seems to have rather got the hang of map making. Here I’ve brought together a collection of the best maps from the anti cuts movement.

To start with, excellent website False Economy has a rather basic map of the country that sorts news stories and testimonies about local cuts by their region.

A few local groups have produced regional maps of where cuts to arts and culture are going to fall. Areas covered so far include Wales and Manchester. There may well be more.

Someone has taken data from the Public Libraries News blog and produced an excellent Google Maps mash-up that illustrates the scale and breadth of library shut downs across the country. Unhappily, each pin does not represent a single closed library, but often an entire cluster of closures in a town.

Meanwhile, the Manchester Evening News has interactive and non-interactive versions of a map which shows where the coalition’s cuts to council budgets and services will mainly fall.

Back in August the Daily Mirror mapped out the coalition’s cuts to the Building Schools For the Future programme, and sorted the cuts by area. It found that the cuts disproportionately fell in Labour constituencies.

And finally, Homeless charity Shelter has produced a map that shows the startling effect of the coalition’s brutal cuts to housing benefit on different areas of the country.

Pissed off? Thankfully, anticuts.org.uk has drawn up another great Google Maps project – that will show you your local anti-cuts group.

Can you think of or point to any other maps I may have missed out?

—
cross-posted from the red rock

How Labour should respond to the coming NHS crisis

by Guest    
January 6, 2011 at 10:44 am

contribution by Richard Blogger

The NHS financial crisis I outlined yesterday will be a terrible thing, but it could also be an opportunity for Labour.

For a start, it will finally convince the public that the Tories can never be trusted with the NHS: never again will a Tory leader be able to tell the British public “the NHS is safe with me”.
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Netroots UK has sold out; this is what you can expect

by Sunny Hundal    
January 6, 2011 at 9:10 am

We have now sold out all the available tickets to Netroots UK and are massively over-subscribed. Thank you to everyone who’s bought tickets and to the TUC for having the foresight to organise and host it.

Netroots UK, on Saturday 8th January, will be the biggest event of its kind in perhaps a long time. We hope it will become an important annual fixture in the political calendar and eventually be replicated in key cities across the country.

This is what you can expect…
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Jones seeks Mayoral nomination for Greens

by Jim Jepps    
January 6, 2011 at 8:30 am

Today Jenny Jones will be announcing her intention to seek the Green Party’s nomination to run for London Mayor in 2012. Jenny has been an outstanding London Assembly Member from the very beginning in 2000 and is a very capable and likable politician.

Although I’ve yet to make my mind up about who I’ll be supporting for the role Jenny will be a strong contender for my pick.

It’s no secret that I have significant political differences with Jenny around policing issues, where I think she has always been too willing to see the police’s side of any question.

But I’ve never confused this with the idea that she is unwilling to criticise the police (she is, for example when she was the instigator of reopening the investigation into Blair Peach’s death) or the fact that she is an excellent and radical green politician.

If she is selected by the Green Party, I will be extremely happy to give her my first preference (and probably Ken number two, as long as he behaves).

According to the ever excellent Mayor Watch;

The party will announce its candidate in March following a ballot of all London members.

Jones will be joined her bid by fellow Assembly Member Darren Johnson who will serve as her running mate. Johnson unsuccessfully stood as Mayor in the 2000 and 2004 elections…

In a statement Jones said the capital “desperately needs the green measures that a Green Mayor would introduce for a cleaner, safer city. Whether it’s cleaning up on air pollution, investing in public transport, increasing the supply of affordable homes, or keeping the police local, Greens deliver on their promises and work for the whole of London.”

For me I’m going to wait and see who else announces their intention to run before making up my mind on who I’ll be supporting for my first preference (Greens use STV in internal elections) and I’m hoping we’ll have at least one or two more high quality candidates to choose from to make the race truly competitive.

Certainly one of her strengths will be that she knows exactly what is expected of a Green Party Mayoral candidate and, as a disciplined and intelligent campaigner, would be a safe pair of hands for the role in my opinion.

Why lefties like me must drop the cry of betrayal

by Owen Jones    
January 5, 2011 at 2:14 pm

Unions selling out their members. Ed Miliband surrendering to the Blairites and the right-wing media. Spineless Labour MPs who would vote for the killing of the firstborn if it was a three line whip.

These are the sorts of accusations you will often hear being hurled around by people on the left – and yes, that includes me. The cry of betrayal is as much a part of the culture of the left as duffle coats, five-hour meetings in a pub on a Saturday afternoon and factional disputes over Hugo Chavez’s dress sense.

But the problem with the ‘cry of betrayal’ is twofold.
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Are we seeing the Islamification of Britain? The opposite in fact

by Guest    
January 5, 2011 at 11:06 am

contribution by Matt Hill

Are we seeing the ‘Islamification’ of Britain? If a breathless report in the Independent yesterday is to be believed, the answer is yes. ‘Record numbers embrace Muslim faith‘, claims the article.

But look beyond the hype, and a different story emerges. Some people are eager to be misinformed about the spread of western Islam.
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Has Labour changed its cuts ratio again?

by Sunny Hundal    
January 5, 2011 at 10:30 am

I reported in October, not long after Alan Johnson was appointed shadow chancellor, that Ed Miliband Labour had decided to abandon Alistair Darling’s deficit reduction plan.

Darling’s plan earlier this year was a 66:33 (cuts:tax rises) ratio in order to deal with the deficit, and eventually national debt. He was opposed by several Labour MPs, most forcefully by Ed Balls during the Labour leadership election.

AJ announced, under the new leader, that the new plan was to focus more on growth and less on cuts.

The ratio would now be 50:50 with a greater emphasis on creating jobs through new infrastructure projects. I liked the new plan.

But yesterday AJ told Radio 4 something different, which they reported as:

Labour’s economic plan would be “60/40” tax rises/spending cuts says Alan Johnson.

Obviously this is more welcome – I’d be more happier with a 60% split towards tax rises so that the economy can recover quicker.

But when did this policy shift take place? Has Radio 4 reported this right?

Heffer says Cameron should call an election

by Sunny Hundal    
January 5, 2011 at 9:30 am

I love Simon Heffer for the trouble he goes out to cause David Cameron.

His column in the Daily Telegraph today says:

Mr Cameron knows very well that if he were forced to call an election later in the year he would probably lose it (which is why I argued here last week that he should call one now, as his best chance of getting a mandate). Try to fast forward to about June or July: the sun may well be shining, and England may still be winning Test matches, but unemployment and inflation will be rising, interest rates will probably be rising, and therefore mortgage repayments will be rising too. It follows from all these things that the rate of bankruptcies will be rising, as will the rate of business failures.

Against such a background, and even though much of the mess was caused by his own party when in government, even Mr Miliband will look good. Were the Coalition to crumble after the May 5 elections, and were Mr Cameron unable to continue by leading a minority government, what would be the most likely outcome? It would be a Labour minority administration led by Mr Miliband, supported by a reduced rump of Lib Dems with much more conviction than they currently show, and tolerated by the socialists of the nationalist parties.

That is followed by the usual fulminations about how Cameron is betraying the Tories over Europe, and doing to much to “appease the Lib Dems”.

More of this please Mr Heffer!

Why 2011 will be the year the NHS will almost collapse

by Guest    
January 5, 2011 at 9:05 am

contribution by Richard Blogger

2011 will be the year that the NHS collapses and it needs explaining, briefly, why this will happen. So far, health secretary Andrew Lansley has been rather clever and rather dim.

Take the “dim” first.

The NHS is a very large organisation to run. It is particularly difficult to run when the money is short. Lansley has taken the attitude that he does not want to run it. He’s refused to pay any attention to the financial issues in the service.
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