Frank field in a ‘we must do something about immigration‘ shocker.

He said temporary restrictions would help give the Government’s welfare reforms a “fair wind”, as ministers try to encourage the long-term workless back into jobs.

“It’s come to a head because I found out that one in five households has never ever had work,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “During the recession, the Government just needs to tell Brussels that we just can’t have free movement of labour.

The figure is wrong.

The actual number of households where no one has ever had work is 1.8%, not 18.8%.

@britishfuture @Telegraph Did FF really say “I found out 1 in 5 households has never ever had work”? True figure: 1.8%telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8…

— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) May 21, 2012

Correct stat for households where nobody has ever worked 1.8% telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8… not 1 in 5 (Frank Field’s claim) telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…

— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) May 21, 2012

Be Outraged calls for a new economic approach including government action to promote growth and transform the financial sector from a “bad master to good servant”, and is published today by Oxfam.

It also calls for a tax on financial transactions (also known as a Tobin or Robin Hood tax) to control speculation and act as a valuable source of revenue.

It is published two days before Europe’s leaders meet to discuss ways to boost growth across the continent amid fresh economic and political chaos in Greece.

Its authors include Sir Richard Jolly, a former UN assistant secretary general, Stephany Griffith-Jones, Financial Markets Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue of Columbia University and Frances Stewart of Oxford University.

It identifies a number of related problems that need urgent action:

- Unemployment: More than 10 per cent of European adults are unemployed, up by 50 per cent since 2008. More than one in five- 22% – youth under 25 are unemployed and in some countries over 40%

- Women: Cuts in public spending usually leave women to pick up the pieces and children to bear the brunt. It is counter-productive to sacrifice their rights and support in the name of credibility in financial markets

- Inequality: Top incomes have soared in the UK and US especially: the globe’s richest 1 per cent (61 million people) earn the same as the poorest 56 per cent (3.5 billion);

- Lack of international support for global recovery: Action – including the fiscal stimulus – agreed at the 2009 G20 in London restored recovery for a year, helping global growth reach 4 per cent in 2010. A new stimulus and renewed coordination is badly needed now;

- Finance: the sector should serve the needs of the real economy and help manage and mitigate risk. For the past two decades it has done neither.

Be Outraged was inspired by ‘Indignez-vous’, a multi-million best-seller written by Stephane Hessel, former member of the French resistance and endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

A copy of the report is available at www.oxfam.org.uk/policyandpractice

Chesterfield Borough Council’s Cllr David Stone and deputy Mayor, Cllr Paul Stone – who represent Barrow Hill and New Whittington – have both resigned from the party this week after becoming disillusioned with Lib Dem policies.

Cllr David Stone, himself a former Mayor of Chesterfield, who has served the borough as a councillor for more than half of his life, said: “This has been a very upsetting thing for me to have to do, and I am very proud of what we have achieved in the past.

“But at the end of the day I am in politics for people, not for parties, and unfortunately now we have three parties who don’t put people first.”

… more at Derbyshire Times

Channel 4 Dispatches reveals how easy it is to buy our most personal and confidential information.

Here’s an exclusive clip from tonight’s film at 8pm.

Daily Mail headline: “NHS spends £1 million a week on repeat abortions” bit.ly/JLax7U < whole piece is riddled with rubbish #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

For example: “figures reveal 1000s of women are using abortion as form of contraception” HOW does it reveal that? Evidence?? #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Next, what does the marital status of the woman having an abortion matter if all DM is concerned about is the cost of their sluttiness?

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

BUT, collapsing single & cohabiting women into same category is ridiculous. Half of women having abortions are married/cohabiting #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Next, wheeling out idea that introducing ‘independent’ (ie anti-choice) abortion counselling will reduce abortion rate. Evidence?? #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Finally, standard anti-choice tripe about abortion as ‘lifestyle choice’, ‘trivialising procedure’ need for ‘responsibility’ #mailfail

— Abortion Rights (@Abortion_Rights) May 14, 2012

Unity explains the £1m figure is bogus:

This is an issue I looked at in some detail last year and back then I found that even with government incorrectly including the costs on non-elective procedures in theeir figures they still managed to come up with an average cost per abortion of £680, which would give an annual cost of £43.7 million for ‘repeat’ abortions if you don’t try and fiddle the figures, and when I re-did the figure using the government’s own calculation methods, but excluding non-elective procedures, the average cost per abortion came down to just £580 per abortion, giving an annual cost for ‘repeat abortions’ of just £37.3 million.

Even that lower figure may be an overestimate as I used a base cost of £494, extrapolated from figures given in BPAS’s accounts, only to discover some months later that BPAS actually charges the NHS around £420 per abortion. Based on that last figure, the average cost per abortion comes down to around £515 with an annual cost for ‘repeat abortions’ of £33-34 million a year.

On a claimed figure of £44.2 million a year for England and Wales, the Daily Mail’s figures are out by anywhere from £6-10 million a year.

Sarah Ditum also points out the Daily Mail’s confusion:

The Mail is keen for there to be more unmarried mothers. Don’t look so staggered, it’s on today’s front page. “NHS spends £1m a week on repeat abortions: Single women using terminations ‘as another form of contraceptive’”, the headline wails, and the body copy adds plaintively, “According to the statistics, single or unmarried women account for five out of every six repeat terminations.” There’s only one implication I can see: the Mail thinks abortion should be available exclusively to those with a ring on their finger.

Which would leave those women who aren’t married to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term, which would finally bring an end to the nuclear family and induce the matrilineal society that the crypo-Marxist Daily Mail has always wanted! Hang on, that isn’t what the Daily Mail has always wanted at all, is it? There’s something rum going on here.

Could the Daily Mail get any more ridiculous? Don’t answer that…

It could have huge repercussions for politics in London, especially since the Conservatives are now a minority administration.

The pact also includes a number of positions for the Conservative Group.

It states:

It is important the performance of the Mayor and all the GLA’s Functional Bodies, as well as other organisations that run public services in London, are scrutinised in depth and held to account. We are open to more constructive working between the Assembly and the Mayor over the four year term.

The agreement will last for four years but will be subject to review after two years.

It is agreed that Labour will Chair the Assembly in the first, third and fourth years.

There will be a Green Chair in the second year. There will be a Green Deputy Chair in the first year and a Labour Deputy Chair in the second year.

They say they hope the Conservative Group will nominate a Deputy Chair for the final two years.

Click here to see the full break-down of jobs for each year.

Here it is (via Guardian live-blog). Looks like the end of the line for Jeremy Hunt.

Fred Michel to Rebekah Brooks:
27 June 2011 16:29

Hunt will be making references to phone hacking in his statement on Rubicon this week.

He will be repeating the same narrative as the one he gave in Parliament few weeks ago.

This is based on his belief that the police is pursing things thoroughly and phone hacking has nothing to do with the media plurality issues.

It’s extremely helpful.

On the issue of the privacy committee he supports a widening of its remit to the future of the press and evidence from all newspaper groups on the regulatory regime.

He wants to prevent a public inquiry. For this the committee will need to come up a strong report in the autumn and put enough pressure on the PCC to strength itself and take recommendations forward.

JH is now starting to looking to phone hacking/practices more thoroughly and has asked me to advise him privately in the coming weeks and guide his and No 10′s positioning…

Fred

Source close to Hunt: ‘This is another Fred Michel email which wasn’t from a conversation with Jeremy. He’ll answer questions at Leveson’

— James Chapman (Mail) (@jameschappers) May 11, 2012

Jeremy Hunt/Adam Smith asked Newscorps toundermine Ofcoms case for BskyB referral to CC. Now we know asked them to guide Govt on hacking!

— Ivan Lewis (@IvanLewis_MP) May 11, 2012

Here is what Jeremy Hunt said to Parliament on June 30 2011 as prefigured by Michel on June 27 in his email to Brooks (next tweet)

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 11, 2012

JH – “Therefore while the phone-hacking allegations are very serious they were not material to my consideration” regarding Sky bid.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 11, 2012

Workers in the NHS and the Ministry of Defence and government departments – members of Unite, the UK’s largest union – will be joining other union members in nationwide protests which will feature a lunchtime rally at London’s Methodist Central Hall addressed by Unite’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey.

Unite believes that the coalition’s sustained attack on public sector pensions – which have seen the average Unite NHS member paying an extra £30-a-month in contributions – is part of a wider attack on the public sector, which includes privatisation of the health service, the introduction of regional pay and the continuing erosion of pay levels.

The unions’ action comes in the week that Unite, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) launched their 68 is too late campaign to increase public awareness of the impact of raising the age when people will receive the state pension.

A comprehensive list of the actions Unite members are taking part in tomorrow can be found here.

The report, Poverty and Inequality in 2020: Implications of Changes in the Structure of Employment, also found that changes that we might expect to lead to lower poverty, such as reducing the gender pay gap or rebalancing regional growth, are (by themselves) unlikely to do so.

It is widely thought that job market changes could help to reduce poverty in the UK However, today’s report finds that expected changes to the labour market will actually increase relative poverty in the UK by 2020 and do very little to affect absolute poverty.

The key forecasted changes in the labour market over the next decade, including the type of jobs available and the expected general improvements in the qualifications/skill levels of workforce, will tend to widen inequalities rather than reduce them, continuing recent historical trends.

The main reason for the projected rise in poverty rates is that earnings are forecast to grow in real terms over the decade, while benefit typically will not (and some will fall in real terms through savings in social security spending).

As earnings are a more important income source for those in the middle and top of the income distribution than those at the bottom, this causes inequality and relative poverty to rise.

But the projected changes to employment structure, such as the continuing growth of both high-skilled and low-skilled jobs at the expense of those in the middle, will also cause relative poverty to rise slightly.

The full report and findings: Poverty and Inequality in 2020: Implications of Changes in the Structure of Employment, by a team from the Institute for Employment Research at Warwick University and the Institute for Fiscal Studies , is available to download for free from www.jrf.org.uk

Then come to our Pro-Choice public meeting next week and have your say.

We are seeing an alarming change of climate at the moment, as activists and politicians opposed to a woman’s right to choose turn their attention to abortion providers and individual women seeking abortion.

Already this year we have seen women harassed and filmed outside abortion clinics, the website of abortion provider BPAS hacked by an anti-choice fanatic, hundreds of clinics hit by spot checks in search of bad practice.

And we’re still awaiting the launch of the government’s consultation on abortion counselling, which could see anti-choice groups handed NHS contracts to advise women on their pregnancy options.

Fortunately pro-choice supporters have been responding brilliantly: groups have sprung up to oppose clinic ‘vigils’ and harassment, counter-protests have drawn huge crowds, and just last Saturday loads of you held demos around the country to tell anti-choicers to ‘SPUC Off!’

Now we need to build on this upsurge in support and talk about what comes next. So we’ve scheduled a Pro-Choice Public Meeting in Parliament on Wednesday 16th May.

Speakers confirmed so far include:
Diane Abbott MP, Shadow Minister for Public Health
Zoe Williams, Guardian columnist and journalist
Kat Banyard, founder of UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion
Richy Thompson, British Humanist Association, Education & Faith Schools officer

The meeting is free and open to all, but if you would like to attend please email choice@abortionrights.org.uk and let them know you’re coming.

7.00pm, Wednesday 16th May, Committee Room 10 in Parliament.

It shows the scene at the Golden Dawn victory press conference.

As the leader was walking in, a henchmen shouts at the journalists to rise up. Those who didn’t were told to leave.

Tony Blair has recently expressed an interest in re-engaging with British politics. Would you be more or less likely to vote Labour in a General Election if Tony Blair was Labour leader rather than Ed Miliband?

Net More likely 24%
Net Less likely 40%
Neither more nor less 37%

Among Labour voters from 2010, the figures were roughly reversed: Net more likely 40%, Net less likely 21%. But around 40% of Labour voters said it would make little difference.

Turns out Tony Blair is no longer the harbinger of popularity he once was with the general electorate.

This brings the total to 11 cases resulting in acquittals for violent disorder from 9th December 2010, with only one case resulting in a guilty verdict.

Andrew and Christopher were arrested on 9th December 2010 after being accused of pulling police officer Cowling from his horse, both young men’s lives have been kept on hold for almost 18 months before finally being able clear their names.

The day after the incident in 2010, David Cameron publicly announced that ‘the boys who had pulled the police officer off his horse belonged in jail’, despite the brothers denying the charges.

According to the campaign group Defend Peaceful Protest:

In the defence’s summing up, Andrew’s barrister asserted that in a trial which has seen 8 police officers give evidence against the defendants, at least one police officer has lied, seeking to deliberately mislead the jury, which as she explained was both an unpleasant and difficult job to establish.

She also asked the court to consider what a different trial we would have seen without the benefit of vast amounts of footage served and edited by the defence. Footage which depicted police officer Cowling carrying out four separate counts of assault on both Andrew and Christopher.

At one point Andrew’s barrister told the jury, “Cowling must think you don’t have eyes in your head”, when comparing Cowling’s version of events with that which the footage showed.

Jennifer Hilliard said outside court today, “this is a good day for justice and the democratic right to protest.”

The Defend the Right to Protest Campaign welcomed today’s acquittals and said they will continue to stand in support of the Hilliard brothers and all those who have endured the court system to fight injustices.

This is what he said to a reporter from Sunderland Echo

The key quote:

Nick Clegg should take a real hard look at what they are doing as it has been really bad tonight. He needs to listen, he’s got to do something.

via Sunderland Echo

The report, out today, shows that a quarter of Britons think disabled people exaggerate their disability.

Alarming stigmas and attitudes

One in five (21%) British adults surveyed think disabled people need to accept they can’t have the same opportunities in life, with men (28%) more likely than women (15%) to hold this view.

More than one in four (26%) Britons think bars and nightclubs are not places for people with wheelchairs, a belief more commonly found in men (31%) and 18-24 year olds (32%), compared to women (21%) and 45-54 year olds (22%)

Poor knowledge and understanding
One in four (24%) Britons believe disabled people often exaggerate the extent of their physical limitations, with men (28%) again more likely to hold this view than women (20%).

More than three quarters of people with MS (76%) can think of at least one occasion when someone has questioned the fact they have MS because they ‘looked well’, with over half (53%) able to recall at least one occasion when their symptoms have been mistaken for drunkenness.

Understanding of MS particularly poor
A large majority (71%) of British adults admit that they don’t feel they know enough about MS.

Most people don’t realise MS attacks in early adulthood, with almost 4 in 5 people (79%) either estimating that MS is most commonly diagnosed among people aged over 35 or answering ‘don’t know’.

Significant numbers of people who know someone with MS are under-equipped to understand the condition, with just one in five (20%) feeling they know enough about it.

The report also finds that costs to suppliers of delivering environmental and social obligations may be less than even Ofgem estimates.

The report argues that tougher regulation of the energy market is needed by regulator Ofgem to improve competition and to ensure that pricing is fairer for consumers.

It says the ‘Big Six’ energy companies are continuing to overcharge their existing customers to subsidise cheap offers

As a result some families are paying as much as £330 more than their neighbours to use the same amount of energy from the same company

Will Straw, IPPR Associate Director, said:

Our research adds to the growing body of evidence that competition is not working in the energy market. We are calling on the Big Six and Ofgem to demonstrate whether efficiency savings are being achieved in the energy market and whether consumers are benefitting from lower bills as a result, as we would expect if competition was working.

We need more competition among energy companies so that households get a fairer price for their energy. Ofgem’s previous attempts to reform the market have not delivered the changes needed. UK consumers cannot afford further delays in bringing down bills.

IPPR recommends that:

- Ofgem addresses the problem of overcharging and loss leading by enforcing its own policy that energy companies must offer tariffs that are reflective of their costs.

- Ofgem should reconsider its proposals for tariff reform and consider restricting suppliers to offering a fixed number of tariffs

- Ofgem should consider fully the needs of independent generators in its proposals to improve wholesale market liquidity and consult on the full range of reform options for the market, including a return to a pool

Their local elections poll found a massive 17 point drop in support for the Conservatives, with a swing of 12.5% to Labour.

Labour were also much more trusted to protect local services by voters.

The poll was conducted for the Daily Mirror.

The full details are here

Survation is a member of The British Polling Council and abide by its rules.

via Nathaniel Tapley

‘Fuel for thought‘ shows that increased demand for biofuels is set to push global food prices to crisis levels, with the EU’s biofuels policies alone set to push up prices by as high as 33% for oilseed, 22% for maize, 21% for sugar and 10% for wheat between now and 2020.

It says that rather than being the sustainable answer to climate change that many people expected, there is a solid evidence base that biofuels contribute to extra greenhouse gas emissions instead of helping to reduce them.

Clare Coffey, biofuels advisor for ActionAid says:

In a week dedicated to Clean Energy, the Government must face up to the fact that biofuels are not the hoped-for magic bullet against climate change.

Not only are biofuels bad for the environment, but as ActionAid’s new report shows they are having a devastating impact on the lives of people in poor countries. They need to be ruled out of all clean energy discussions.

As well as driving up global food prices and creating world hunger, the new ActionAid report shows that Europe’s biofuels policies – which the UK has signed up to – are increasing landgrabbing, pushing people in poor countries off their land.

The ActionAid report shows how a series of dodgy deals by European companies have led to rights abuses in countries in Africa and Latin America.

Poor families in eleven villages in Tanzania are suffering economically after a British company converted 8,200 hectares of land to grow fuel for the European market.

While in Guatemala – a country that the EU labels as being a significant supplier of biofuels for the European market – the grabbing of land for sugar production has resulted in violent clashes and even deaths.

On Saturday 28 April, supporters of SPUC will form chains and hold placards. The Abortion Act 1967 came into effect on 27 April 1968.

Here’s the list of ‘chains’ that will take place on Saturday 28 April from 11am to 1pm, for pro-choice activists:

Ashton-under-Lyne
Balsall Common
Banff
Bath
Bedford – 12 noon to 1.30 pm
Bideford
Blackpool
Brecon
Brighton
Bristol
Cardiff
Carnforth
Cheltenham
Chester
Chorley
Congleton
Crosby
Eccles
Edgbaston
Edinburgh
Enniskillen – 12noon to 2pm
Erdington
Farnham
Godalming
Guildford
Hammersmith
Handsworth
Huddersfield
Hull
Lincoln
Llanelli
Loughborough – Sat 21 April
Milton Keynes
Narborough
Newcastle under Lyme
Newcastle upon Tyne
Nottingham – Sat 21 April, 10am to 12noon
Paignton
Peterborough
Plymouth
Preston
Reading
Sale
Salisbury
Sheffield
Stevenage
Swansea
Telford
Truro
Uxbridge
Vale of Glamorgan
Wavertree
Worthing

Discussion on the topic has already started at the microsite tobintax.theinformationdaily.com launched earlier this week.

Update: Follow the debate on Twitter

Articles from Simon Chouffot of the UK’s Robin Hood Tax campaign, Ryan Bourne, Head of Economic Research at the Centre For Policy Studies, Marina Yannakoudakis, the Conservative MEP for London and a host of others have been published, with interactive discussion in full swing on the Twitter stream #tobintax.

The financial transactions or ‘Tobin’ tax has become the subject of intense debate following the European Union’s stated intention to implement such a tax under the enhanced participation procedure in the Eurozone countries.

The roundtable event on 23 April run in In association with The Centre for Policy Studies.

The line up of UK and EU politicians and experts on the panel includes:
Andrew Tyrie MP, Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee
Roger Liddle, former adviser to President Barroso
Kay Swinburne MEP
Iain Anderson, Cicero consulting
John Chown (a leading tax expert)
Tim Knox – Director, Centre for Policy Studies

The webcast will be available free-of-charge for anyone that registers in advance. The webcast audience will be able to participate by putting their questions to the panel during the event via email and Twitter.

In posts highlighted by EDL News, he allegedly threatened Muslims with an Oslo-style bomb attack.

A spokesman for Northumbria Police said: “A 29 year old man was arrested on Saturday night on suspicion of assault and possessing racially inflammatory material. He is currently in custody and is helping police with their enquiries.”

EDL News say:

There is plenty of evidence out there that [Norwegian terrorist] Breivik was partly inspired by the English Defence League, in fact before he went on his murderous campaign, he emailed his manifesto to a large number of EDL members who he had been in contact with.

Leadership claim time and time again that their far right organisation does not breed extremism. South Shield’s Division member, Kenny Holden, seems to prove the opposite when he states his intention to set a pipe bomb off in Ocean Road, a predominantly Asian area in the City.

Last week five men were arrested by anti-terrorism police for inciting racial hatred online – all linked to North West Infidels, a splinter group with links to the English Defence League.

The meeting will begin by examining the historical resonances between Jewish and Muslim experience of discrimination and continue with analysis of the causes and manifestations of hostility between Jews and Muslims in contemporary Britain.

It will end with reflections on new directions and initiatives in Jewish-Muslim relations.
Independent Jewish Voices seeks to bring new perspectives to the troubled question of anti-Muslim attitudes among Jews and anti-Jewish attitudes among Muslims.

THURSDAY 26 APRIL, 7-9 PM
THE SMALL HALL, FRIENDS HOUSE,
173-177 EUSTON ROAD, LONDON, NW1 2BJ
(Opposite Euston Station, close to Euston Square and Kings Cross Stations)

Entrance: £10 / £5 concession (for students or unemployed only)

CHAIR: REETA CHAKRABARTI is the Education and Social Affairs Correspondent for BBC News

PANELLISTS: GILBERT ACHCAR is Professor in Development Studies and Chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is the author of many books, the latest of which is The Arabs and the Holocaust (Saqi Books, 2011).

ROB BERKELEY has been Director of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading race equality think tank, since January 2009. He is co-editor of Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion (Sage: 2007).

TONY KUSHNER is Director of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton. He has recently completed The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present to be published by Manchester University Press later this year.

ADAM SUTCLIFFE is Senior Lecturer in European History at Kings College London. He is the author of Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and the editor of Philosemitism in History (Cambridge University Press, 2011).