Ed Miliband will address the big TUC march – and why it matters

by Owen Jones    
February 10, 2011 at 2:41 pm

So, it’s official. Ed Miliband will be speaking at the TUC’s ‘March For The Alternative‘ on 26th March. Well, that’s what Peter Hain told me on Twitter today, and I’m willing to take his word for it.

Cue right-wing hysteria about ‘Red Ed’. In other countries, no-one would blink if the left-of-centre opposition leader joined his supporters in marching against an aggressive neo-liberal government.
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Eric Pickles’ crusade in Whitehall is being exposed for its unfairness

by Sunder Katwala    
February 10, 2011 at 1:49 pm

Many of the most senior Liberal Democrats in local government have attacked the government’s local government spending settlement, publicly declaring no confidence in the fairness of the government’s approach to cuts and in Communities Secretary Eric Pickles who the LibDems accuse of “gunboat diplomacy” in an extraordinary letter to The Times (£).

As The Times reports (£):

The grassroots of the Liberal Democrats have declared open revolt over the scale and pace of cuts to frontline local services.

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Watch: Spaniards flash-mob a bank in style

by Sunny Hundal    
February 10, 2011 at 10:00 am

A few months ago, the Spanish anti-capitalist activist group flo6x8.com slipped into one of the offices of Banco Santander in Seville.

Activists planted seven ‘transistors’ across the bank to play music.

And then the Rumba dancing started.

via @paul__lewis

Boris’s budget to lose London households £200

by Sunny Hundal    
February 10, 2011 at 9:30 am

London Assembly members will today claim that London Mayor Boris Johnson’s budget will lose every household in London the equivalent of £200.

The budget proposes:

Cutting funding to London by over half a billion pounds – equivalent of £200 per household

Cutting around 1,000 police and 890 police community support officers

Cutting jobs, skills and economic funding by 50%

Labour London Assembly members will today (at 10am) propose an alternative to Mayor Boris Johnson’s £13.6 billion budget, which seeks to lessen the cut in police numbers and reverses some of Boris Johnson’s fare rises.

The government grant to the Metropolitan Police Authority, London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Greater London Authority, Transport for London and London Development Agency is being cut £618 million this year alone.

This cut comes on top of the cuts Mayor Boris Johnson has been making since he was elected in 2008, including:

* £1.7bn cut to London’s buses
* Cut the Thames gateway bridge (and with it £200m of funding)
* Cuts to police numbers
* Scrapped London’s affordable childcare programme, which helped thousands of parents into work
* Cut 450 tube ticket office jobs
* £28m from plans to make underground stations step-free
* Ended free entry for all school children to London Zoo and Wetlands Centre

The meeting today is the first part of a two-stage budget setting process. The Assembly will consider the Mayor’s final budget at its meeting on 23 February; the final budget may be amended by a two-thirds majority.

Why an export-led economic recovery looks more unlikely now

by Richard Exell    
February 10, 2011 at 9:10 am

Yesterday’s trade figures show that the trade deficit for goods and services hit £4.8 bn in December and the deficit for goods alone was £9.2 bn; both were the worst figures ever.

The annual trade deficit for 2010 was £46.2 bn, up from £29.7 bn in 2009. The £51 bn annual surplus on trade in services was down £1.7 bn from 2009. The government’s hopes for an export-led recovery can’t stand many more results like this.
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Revealed: Banks to profit from Big Society

by Don Paskini    
February 9, 2011 at 5:10 pm

In the latest attempt to save the floundering Big Society, David Cameron announced today that “the big society bank will be taking £200m from Britain’s banks to put into the voluntary sector.”

Sounds good, right? Money being taken from banks and given to charities?

But here’s the small print:

“Fourth, they will support the establishment of the Big Society Bank to act as a sustainable provider of wholesale finance to social investment intermediaries, including, subject to objectives, business plan and structure, the injection, on a commercial basis, of £200 million of capital (and, thereby, funding) over two years, commencing in 2011.”

So instead of millions being “taken” from the banks, the money will be provided on a commercial basis.

The banks will end up making a profit out of loaning money to charities which are desperate for cash as a result of the government’s savage cuts in public spending.

What an utterly pitiful and desperate policy.

(hat-tip @tobyblume from Urban Forum)

Why I u-turned and joined the Labour party

by Ellie Mae    
February 9, 2011 at 3:45 pm

Yesterday morning I got into a Twitter exchange with Ed Miliband (or the cyborg that controls his account), in which I declared I would never again be able to trust the Labour Party.

By the evening, I had joined. Given the scale of my U-turn, I should fit in well. So, what gives? I hear you ask.

What indeed. Well, in short, it was a pub conversation with a couple of Labourites. After a few hours of deliberating, I made a beer-fuelled acknowledgement that, in the last six months, my priorities have changed.
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Page 3 model Hollie offers view on liberties

by Sunny Hundal    
February 9, 2011 at 2:45 pm

I think we have new candidates for BBC discussions on human rights.

Page 3 model Holly, 20, was pictured saying this yesterday in the Sun newspaper.

(via The Sun – Tabloid Lies)

They say:

If we take The Sun at their word when they say that Page 3 is about empowerment, then unless we are to accept that this tabloid’s long-standing hostility against the Human Rights Act has been a harmless joke, we must conclude that this is the topless model’s own opinion, and she has chosen to use her appearance on Page 3 to express it sincerely.

So let’s have her appear on Newsnight to defend it.

That’s a great idea! She could also help the TaxPayers Alliance to write a report saying why the HRA is such a burden on ordinary people.

Banning EDL marches, or being careful what you wish for

by Owen Jones    
February 9, 2011 at 2:01 pm

If you were a genuine democrat at the turn of 1937, you would have been scared. Fascism was on the march across Europe. Italy had fallen first; German Nazism had shut down the world’s greatest labour movement; a fascist-backed military coup against Spain’s left-leaning government had plunged the country into a nightmare civil war.

Here in Britain, Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts – backed by the likes of the Daily Mail – were loudly agitating for a fascist government on the European model. So perhaps you would have backed the Conservative Government’s Public Order Act, signed in to law on 1 January 1937.
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A basic guide to disability cuts, and why they should be opposed

by Guest    
February 9, 2011 at 10:40 am

contribution by Sean Gittins

Unfortunately, cuts and changes to disability and sickness benefit have with a few exceptions not entered into mainstream debates. If we are to get the public to realise not only how unfair the Coalition’s proposals are but also do something about it then this needs to change.

The government is proposing alterations and cuts to two of the most important benefits available to the sick and disabled (although there are others): the Employment Support Allowance (ESA), and the Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
continue reading… »

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