Poll of polls: Libdems fall to lowest ever vote
Support for the Liberal Democrats has slumped to its lowest level since the party was formed in 1988, according to The Independent’s “poll of polls”.
Nick Clegg is now the most unpopular third party leader since David Owen led the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1989. The Liberal Democrats’ 11 per cent rating in the first poll of polls since last May’s election highlights the dramatic slide in their fortunes since they entered the Coalition with the Conservatives.
The 57 Liberal Democrat MPs would be reduced to a rump of just 15 at the next election if this level of support were to be repeated then.
Labour is now on 40 per cent and the Tories on 38 per cent, giving Labour an overall majority of 14, according to the weighted average of the regular surveys by ComRes, ICM, Ipsos MORI and YouGov.
John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, who compiled the figures, said that the costs and benefits of the Coalition had been distributed very unevenly between the two parties in it.
Why the assassination of Salman Taseer matters
Just a few days ago I wrote about the tensions building in Pakistan over the proposals to amend the blasphemy laws.
I mentioned in passing high profile Punjabi governor Salman Taseer who was an outspoken advocate of the reforms. He was the focus of much bile and criticism from the religious right.
Today he was murdered.
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Clegg could make education fairer by taxing private school fees
The ‘pupil premium’ is a good idea about to be sacrificed on the altar of austerity.
The Government has failed to keep the promise in the Coalition Agreement that this pledge – intended to spend more money on disadvantaged pupils – would be funded “from outside the schools budget”. Instead, the Education Secretary Michael Gove has acknowledged that the ‘premium’ will be funded by redistributing money within a shrinking schools budget, which means that most schools will see their funding cut.
Ministers face an unenviable choice: do they risk a backlash from most parents, unhappy at seeing less money spent on their children, or do they let down the worst-off children, whom they pledged to help?
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How Cameron and Clegg were against VAT rise before they were for it
This is what one politician said in 2009:
You could try, as you say, to put it on VAT, sales tax, but again if you look at the effect of sales tax, it’s very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you.
Any sales tax, anything that goes on purchases that you make in shops tends to . . . if you look at it, where VAT goes now it doesn’t go on food obviously but it goes very, very widely and VAT is a more regressive tax than income tax or council tax.
That was David Cameron at ‘Cameron Direct’ meeting in Exeter last year.
And this is what Nick Clegg told the Libdems:
Liberal Democrats have costed, in full, our proposals for tax cuts. We can tell you, penny for penny, pound for pound, who pays for them. We will not have to raise VAT to deliver our promises. The Conservatives will. Let me repeat that: Our plans do not require a rise in VAT. The Tory plans do.
Their tax promises on marriage and jobs may sound appealing. But they come with a secret VAT bombshell close behind.
So if you’re on an ordinary income, you have a choice. If you want your taxes to rise: vote Labour or Conservative. If you want your taxes to fall: choose the Liberal Democrats.
It’s not clear why those promises and the “fully costed plans” had to be changed, despite both parties being resolutely against a VAT rise before the election.
More broken promises? You betcha. As Left Foot Forward pointed out earlier, there are alternatives.
Right-wing wonks claim the battle for equal pay for women has been won
The latest piece of wearying cognitive dissonance from a right-wing think tank is published by Dr Catherine Hakim, reporting on ‘feminist myths’ in employment practices.
Dr Hakim from the Centre for Policy Studies argues that the battle for equal opportunities has been won (yay!), and that further activity by the all-powerful feminist lobby would be counter-productive.
You may be thinking: ‘why should I give a tuppenny sod about what the CPS thinks?’. The problem is, these people are the non-horse-related working parts of Cameron’s brain.
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Three areas in which the NHS is already struggling
Even before the cuts in real-terms funding that lie ahead, the NHS is already struggling.
In hospital maternity units, staff shortages are compromising the safety of mothers and babies. Despite this, the Prime Minister has refused to confirm a promise to increase the number of midwives that he made in the run-up to the election.
Writing in Sunday’s Observer, Cathy Warwick (General Secretary of the Royal College of Midwives) described how extremely busy days, once an occasional problem, have become commonplace.
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London fares jump by up to 74% this week
Former mayor Ken Livingstone is today launching a campaign against Boris Johnson’s new fear fare increases for public transport.
Campaigners will hand out leaflets to commuters across 70 Tube, rail and bus stations in London today, protesting about the new fares rises put in place by Boris Johnson.
Since 2008, a single bus journey by Oyster is up 44%.
But some commuters will see a rise in fares of up to 74%. Since the Zones 2-6 One-Day Travelcard is being permanently withdrawn, travellers will have to buy a 1-6 Zone Travelcard instead – a jump from £8.60 to £15 during peak times. Off-peak, it’s a 57% rise from £5.10 to £8.00.
A monthly Zone 1-5 travelcard is up £258 a year and, from this week, the cost of a monthly zone 1-2 travelcard will rise above £100 for the first time, to £’106 (up 14%).
Could it all have been avoided?
Boris did away with £50 million a year revenue by scrapping of the Western Extension of the congestion charge zone.
He also wasted money on vanity projects including the hugely costly new bus for London and his ‘fantasy’ Thames airport.
Today at West Hampstead station Ken met commuters alongside local Labour party members and handed out leaflets highlighting Boris Johnson’s drastic fare rises.
‘End anti-torture imperialism now’
I am only an occasional reader of Norman Geras’s blog these days, but happy to grant him this late seasonal gift.
I look forward to the upcoming CiF post, ‘End anti-torture imperialism now’ – in which some progressive-minded person lets us know why the prohibition of torture is a culturally relative norm that must occasionally be sacrificed to other pragmatic considerations.
Here is the link Norm, although I am surprised you missed at the time.
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Tories speed up plans to private NHS Direct too
The Pulse magazine reports:
The Government has announced it will rapidly expand the number of areas piloting the new 111 non-emergency telephone line, ahead of GP consortia taking control of the service.
The 111 phone service – which provides patients with a single phone number to access non-emergency care and will replace NHS Direct – is already being piloted in four regions: County Durham and Darlington, Nottingham City, Lincolnshire and Luton, but the Department of Health wants to expand this in England prior to universal coverage by 2013.
Not only is the pilot being rushed forward quickly, the provider may also change.
Health secretary Andrew Lansley revealed last month that GP consortia will be charged with commissioning local providers for the 111 service, offering the job to any NHS provider – including NHS Direct or private firms – under the controversial ‘any willing provider‘ policy.
(via @Richardblogger)
After recently announcing that NHS Direct would be replaced with a ‘cut-price service’, Lansley quickly backtracked in face of public pressure.
He said he had not announced plans to scrap NHS Direct, only to “phase out the NHS Direct number”. It is now obvious that Andrew Lansley plans to do much more than just change the number.
Not only that, he wants to accelerate the process of privatisation before its effects have been properly measured.
Only a few months ago Cameron said: “Conservatives will stop these pointless, retrogressive re-organisations and closures.”
Now even Conservative MPs such as Sarah Wollaston (former GP) are critical of their party over the scale and speed of NHS privatisation.
The Royal College of Nursing say it would be “shortsighted” to axe a service that had saved the NHS more than £200 million by dispensing advice over the phone.
Update: As LC contributor Ellie Mae revealed a few months ago, outsourcing firm Capita is looking to get in on the business.
The white-washing of Thatcher’s legacy is our new disease
Jackie Ashley in the Guardian predicts a new cult of Thatcher as right-wing conservatives assault Cameron’s supposed liberal-leaning concessions on Europe and human rights, a cult that will be reinforced annually as the archives are opened under the thirty years rule.
Perhaps she had noticed the article by Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards and once Thatcher’s Chief of Staff, in the Mail on Sunday. It drips with longing for ‘Attila the Pen’ as he looks back on the internal memos of her first years in Downing Street.
But this longing for Thatcher is profoundly misconceived, if not deranged, picking up from the later madness that drove her from office.
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