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On crime: where does the left go from New Labour’s legacy?

by Owen Jones    
April 13, 2011 at 1:50 pm

Being a victim of crime is no fun. My family’s house was burgled repeatedly when I was growing up. On one occasion – when I was 15 – it happened in the early hours when we were all in bed. Three years back I was beaten up and mugged on a bus in Tottenham. And, just before Christmas, my flatmate and I had our bikes stolen: a few days later, they appeared in all their glory on Gumtree.

It’s true to say that some parts of the left has always had trouble cobbling together a popular position on crime which, after all, remains way up there on the general public’s list of concerns. The standard line is that crime – well, mostly petty crime, rather than more middle-class crimes like embezzlement – is a product of economic circumstances.
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Ignore the splitters – it’s the central bank that needs shaking up

by Guest    
April 13, 2011 at 9:15 am

contribution by John West

Those looking to clip the wings of high finance, end its reckless gambling and usher in a period of stability should be disappointed at the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) – but probably not for the reason they think. And those who like their prejudices confirmed will be pleased to hear that George Osborne is to blame.

And on balance, the ICB’s interim findings seem to be the right approach, as Ed Balls recognises. Splitting the banks would be an awful lot of fun but there is scant evidence it would create a safer financial framework.
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Poll: Voters lose faith in govt running of economy

by Sunny Hundal    
April 13, 2011 at 9:05 am

The story of how voters are rapidly losing faith in the government’s management of the economy is one the media has shied away from.

YouGov asked the same question since May last year: “Do you think the coalition government is managing the economy well or badly?”

The trend is quite stark and moving in the wrong direction for the government.

These numbers should make any Coalition supporter think twice about Osborne’s plans.

More importantly, when will the media start asking why so many people think the economy is being managed so badly? Is it because the public feel the effects much more than London-based newspaper editors?

The information architecture behind False Economy and the cuts data

by Clifford Singer    
April 12, 2011 at 4:27 pm

As part of a project to make available to programmer data on the government’s cuts – called APIs Against the Cuts – Sunny asked me write on the information architecture behind the False Economy website.

False Economy was built using the ExpressionEngine CMS – which has also been used by 38 Degrees, the Obama campaign and A List Apart among others. It’s built with PHP and uses a MySQL database.

False Economy crowd-sources information about:
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Is the financial sector bad for Britain?

by Left Outside    
April 12, 2011 at 2:02 pm

Following on from a series of posts recently by me on the financial sector, VoxEU has published an article supporting the broad thrust of my argument; finance is too big, too powerful and needs to be shrunk.

Our results show that the marginal effect of financial development on output growth becomes negative when credit to the private sector surpasses 110% of GDP. This result is surprisingly consistent across different types of estimators (simple regressions and semi-parametric estimations) and data (country-level and industry-level).

The threshold at which we find that financial development starts having a negative effect on growth is similar to the threshold at which Easterly et al. 2000 find that financial development starts increasing volatility.

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Is this why News Int’l doesn’t like 50p tax?

by Sunny Hundal    
April 12, 2011 at 1:43 pm

Media Monkey at the Guardian:

Can this really be true? Monkey was accosted by a weary Wapping insider at the British Press Awards to be told that there were – apparently – 100 journalists across all News International’s London titles paid more than £100,000 a year. Oh, and half of those were on the Times, a statistic not so popular at the other three papers.

Sadly few names of the big earners were forthcoming but expect a lot of enthusiasm for the scrapping of the 50% tax rate for those high earners on the Times’s leader page.

National protest against benefit cuts, Thursday

by Newswire    
April 12, 2011 at 9:45 am

Thursday, April 14th sees the 3rd National Day of Protest Against Benefits Cuts.

Protests and events will be taking place in London, Bristol, Scotland, Poole, Brighton, Leeds, Burnley and Cardiff with more cities expected to confirm events this week.

Protest Outside The Daily Mail – Stop the Defamation – Stop the Lies
Thursday, April 14 – 2pm
Daily Mail Headquarters, Young Street (off Kensington High Street), London W8 5TT
Protesting about the media’s defamation of benefit claimants.

Islington Protests Against Benefit Cuts
Thursday, April 14 – 8:30am – 9:30am
There will be a protest at 8.30am to 9.30am outside the Atos Healthcare Assessment Centre at 1 Elthorne Road, just off Holloway Road.
Protesting against the company which carries out the Work Capability Assessments.

Protest Outside Westminster City Hall & Mass Food Give Away!
Thursday, April 14 – 5:00pm – 9:00pm
Protest Outside Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QP
Protesting against the ban on rough sleeping and handing out food, as well as the Housing Benefit caps.

Millions are set to be affected by savage cuts to housing, disability, sickness and welfare benefits. Disabled people,those with long term illness, the unemployed, single parents, carers the low waged, part time students, volunteers, homeless people and college students are all likely to see a devastating drop in disposable income with many slipping even further below the poverty line.

Claimants are being asked to pay for the mistakes and extravagances of the richest. Meanwhile poverty pimps like Atos Origin and A4e are set to rake in hundreds of millions on government contracts to bully and intimidate people from claiming the pittance handed out in benefit payments. Many disabled people have threatened suicide if these cuts are allowed to continue. Some have tragically already carried out that threat.

The first two days of protest against benefit cuts have seen demonstrations, meetings, unemployed discos, public pantomimes and occupations in cities across the UK.

Atos Origin have been forced to close offices, protesters have gathered inside and outside workfare sharks A4e and demonstrations have taken place from Downing Street to local town centres such as Lydney and Crawley.

For further details plus details of other protests around the UK please visit: http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wordpress.com/

Facebook event page

Is Labour preparing for the coming economic upheaval?

by Sunny Hundal    
April 12, 2011 at 9:03 am

Ed Balls’ response to the interim report by the Commission yesterday was quite lacklustre. We’ve had the biggest financial crisis this country has ever faced, with a banking system still teetering on the edge of collapse (protected only by taxpayer guarantees), and yet the report makes some ineffectual recommendations about ring-fencing and raising the amount of money they hold?

Lehman Brothers, which was neither a retail bank and had capital ratios of above 10% would have still collapsed. Yet, the shadow chancellor was happy to accept at face value the watered-down recommendations. This feels like it could become a costly political mistake, especially over the longer term.
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Retail sales slump: ‘the biggest in 16 years’

by Sunny Hundal    
April 12, 2011 at 8:00 am

Consumers’ underlying uncertainty about jobs and incomes have hit retails sales very sharply, according to figures out today by the British Retail Consortium.

Stephen Robertson, Director General, British Retail Consortium, said today:

This is the worst drop in total sales since we first collected these figures in 1995. Non-food retailers were particularly hard-hit. This is strong evidence of the pressure customers and traders are under. This year’s later Easter is a factor but this fall goes way beyond anything that can be explained by that alone.

Uncomfortably high inflation and low wage growth have produced the first year-on-year fall in disposable incomes for thirty years. Mounting fuel and utility costs, falling house prices, higher VAT and the prospect of more tax rises and job losses left people unwilling to spend unless they really had to.

These pressures aren’t going away and the arrival of higher National Insurance is likely to compound them in the immediate future.

The next interest rate decision is a difficult balancing act for the Bank of England but, for now, supporting our weak economy must be the priority.

Don’t worry guys, George Osborne’s Enterprise Zones will turn things around!

It’s not like lefties predicted that adding more uncertainty into the economy through deep cuts would make things worse huh?

The apparent acceptance of vandalism in anti-cuts groups harms us all

by Guest    
April 11, 2011 at 7:30 pm

contribution by Bethan Tichborne

My politics have changed radically over the last year. This time last year I was hostile to anarchism, now I’d be more comfortable calling myself an anarchist than a socialist.

That’s because I’ve met many intelligent, committed and open-minded anarchists, because I’ve seen how well consensus-based decision making can work, and that efforts to organise non-hierarchically can be both more empowering and more effective than the alternatives.

But two people who I have a lot of respect for have recently voiced their discomfort with the apparent acceptance of violence in various anti-cuts groups.
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