Ken takes up ‘class war’ theme against Tories
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has taken up the ‘class war’ against the Tories in this week’s Tribune magazine.
In it he attacks David Cameron’s Conservative Party for waging a ‘class war’ against average voters.
Livingstone argues that the Tories have ‘reverted to type’, and that ‘those on average incomes, the least well off, the unemployed, teachers, health workers and others must suffer from a savage attack on public spending’. Livingstone also claims that ‘a meaningful fight against climate change would be abandoned’.
‘These are open class-war policies, with a vengeance’.
But he also argues that just focusing on lower income voters cannot build Labour a winning electoral coalition.
Labour “can only win when it has the support of both those on ‘middle incomes’ and the less advantaged,” he says.
He also calls for Labour to engage in dialogue with those who “support a progressive agenda but who, for various reasons, are not natural Labour supporters”.
Ken Livingstone will be the main speaker at next week’s Progressive London event.
More from the Tribune interview here.
Social media has huge impact on Haiti Appeal
Social media websites were the biggest referrers to the Disasters Emergency Coalition fund-raising appeal on Haiti, the organisation has claimed.
The DEC says it had raised £10m in 24 hours after the Haiti Earthquake Appeal was launched.
Facebook and Twitter were by far the biggest referrers to their site after Google and BBC.
The amount includes online and phone donations only, with amounts from corporate, postal, events, SMS and over-the-counter donations still to be recorded.
The DEC issued a statement saying social media “played a crucial part in raising funds and awareness” in the 36 hours following the appeal.
Although the TV ads was not broadcast until Friday evening, £8m was raised online following the first DEC announcement on Twitter at 7.41pm on Wednesday.
You’re the first to know – DEC #Haiti Earthquake Appeal now live, UK broadcast appeals to follow
An SMS donation system was launched shortly afterwards and by Saturday morning a total of 148,000 people had donated online.
The DEC Facebook page now counts over 11,000 fans as of Sunday morning – a phenomenal rise up from 800 five days earlier.
Bloggers showed their support by adding DEC banners and buttons to hundreds of UK blogs.
DEC Chief Executive Brendan Gormley said:
Their donations mean our member agencies can continue to source and deliver the emergency supplies needed like safe water, shelter, medicine and food. We hope people will continue to give their support so that more emergency aid can be added to what will be a massive humanitarian effort.
Photograph sharing site Flickr has also been used to host images from the DEC’s member agencies, with 34,000 views of the DEC account on Friday.
The ability to pool resources on sharing sites and follow the DEC’s 13 member agencies through newly implemented Twitter ‘lists’ has also proved invaluable to the committee in updating the public on developments.
Examples of what donations will go to include:
* £25 will supply a kit of household essentials.
* £50 buys a food pack to feed a family for a fortnight.
* £100 provides temporary shelter for two families.
To make a donation to the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal visit www.dec.org.ukor call 0370 60 60 900
Boris finds £75k for USA day despite crunch
London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson has found £75,000 for a ‘USA Day’ in the capital despite raising fares for commuters and earlier cutting festivals on cost grounds.
Last year Boris killed off the multicultural festival Rise on cost grounds. But his department has miraculously found money to promote the United States in London, according to the Guardian.
Steve Hart, regional secretary of the Unite union, said:
It is remarkable he is subsidising predominantly wealthy Americans when he has cut £300m from the bus subsidy and increased fares by 20%.
Rise began in 1996 and had become the largest anti-racist festival in Europe, attracting crowds of about 100,000.
Update: Adam Bienkov reports that Boris didn’t seem to be aware that his office was actually sponsoring the USA festival.
Is London’s occasional Mayor ever aware of his own policies?
Watch: Ed Balls makes Gove look like a fool
[via Septicisle]
Atheist Bus launches new ad campaign
The organisers of the extremely popular Atheist Bus ads launched the second part to their campaign today.
While the first ad campaign stated: ‘There’s probably no god. So stop worrying and enjoy your life’.
The new one states: ‘Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself’.
On Guardian CIF Ariane Sherine explained the reasoning behind the new campaign:
However, rather than using adverts to try and campaign politically, we thought it would be more beneficial to try and change the current public perception that it is acceptable to label children with a religion. As Richard Dawkins states, “Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a ‘Marxist child’ or an ‘Anarchist child’ or a ‘Post-modernist child’.”
“Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions, and our adverts will help to do that.”
…
We hope the advert’s message will encourage the government, media and general public to see children as individuals, free to make their own choices as soon as they are old enough to fully understand what these choices mean, and that they will think twice before describing children in terms of their parents’ religion in the future.
The adverts will go across billboards and buses from 20th November to coincide with Universal Children’s Day.
The campaign has a Facebook page here.
Watch: Fox News pushes global warming denialism
Extolling his widely known scientific credentials, Fox News host rubbishes global warming by saying it was the codest year on record. The two are not always related.
[via Kevin Blowe]
Tory rebel: I’m not sexist but these women…
Meet Tory ‘rebel’ Sir Jeremy Bagge. He is against Conservative Party leader David Cameron pushing his own preferred candidates into a local seat.
Today, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he is reported as saying:
“I personally feel that Central Office are dictatorial. They have shoehorned us, they have deceived us, they have betrayed us.” Sir Jeremy pauses before declaring: “I think they need a boot up the backside, a b—– good kick to wake them up, to be perfectly honest.”
Sir Jeremy, a member of the association executive, said: “I’m going to be there on Monday night. I’m only given two minutes to speak but I will say my bit. I might make a complete b—– idiot of myself but I will have done my bit and not done a u-turn.”
That is in response to him and his band of rebels challenging the Cameron ‘A List’ candidate Elizabeth Truss.
In return he has been called ‘Turnip Taliban’. Apparently he’s quite proud of that name:
I have a turban actually. I went to Pakistan a few years ago, and when I read ‘Taliban Turnip’ I put my b—– hat on. I’m proud to be called that. I prefer to be called Taliban Turnip than Tory Toff.
Sounds good to us. But could his vendetta against Truss be motivated by sexism? Absolutely not, he says:
“Sorry, no, I have never said I’m anti-women. I have got absolutely nothing against women.
“Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can’t do without them. My god, take my wife.”
What does she do for a living? “What does she do? She looks after me. Looks after the children. Runs the house.”
Oh dear. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel sorry for Cameron when he has these people holding him hostage.
Stewart responds to Fox News lies
Last week Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart caught out Fox News showing video from a previous rally to play up the number of people who attended a different rally against healthcare
Sean Hannity from Fox News then apologised.
This was Jon Stewart’s response on The Daily Show.
[via North of Westminster]
Fox News caught in new fake footage scandal
This week the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart exposed how Fox News re-used footage to exaggerate the number of people attending a Fox promoted anti-healthcare rally.
It is increasingly difficult to find clips of The Daily Show to show in the UK as Comedy Central have stopped clips being shown outsides the US.
[via North of Westminster]
Poll: most voters think Sun attack back-fired
A poll for PoliticsHome today found that 65% of voters think the Sun’s reporting on the letter sent to Jacqui Janes was over the top and crossed the line.
About half of all those who voted said they were more inclined to defend Gordon Brown, with only 17% saying they were less inclined.
PoliticsHome reported:
In addition, more than three times the percentage of voters (thirty one per cent) say that this episode has made them think more of the Prime Minister than think less of him (9%). A comparable proportion (twenty eight per cent) say that the episode has made them think less of the Sun.
Today the Daily Mirror hit back, quoting Jamie Janes’ uncle as: ‘My sister’s grief has been hijacked to make a political point..it’s wrong‘.
Army veteran Ian Cox said he was outraged sister Jacqui Janes’s attack on the PM’s condolence message spelling mistakes had been hijacked by opponents.
And Mrs Janes yesterday said she had been misrepresented in the row and only acted out of concern that her son did not have the proper military kit in Afghanistan.
The Mirror story and the poll will come as a huge embarrassment to the Sun newspaper and Rupert Murdoch, who has also had to back-pedal over comments that he thought US President Barack Obama was racist.
A survey for YouGov released today found that most people believed the influence of the Murdoch empire was waning in contrast to Google.
Yesterday Tory blogger Guido Fawkes defended the Sun as:
This morning’s reporting of Brown’s conversation with Mrs Janes was a good news story, news is after all what people don’t want you to hear, the rest is spin. The left is now in full on “Murdoch is evil” mode, Fox and the Sun will be characterised as liars. They will take presenters like Glenn Beck and columnists like the great Kelvin MacKenzie and make out that this is biased news – it isn’t, it is opinionated infotainment.
Seems the “news story” was not perceived as “good” by a vast majority of the public.
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