A spokesperson for the Fabians told Liberal Conspiracy today that the budget for this year’s spending on staff had already been set.

But the new Fabian Secretary General Andy Harrop had already told staff he wanted to change Fabian policy and ensure they pay interns.

A message posted on their site today said:

Our interns currently work part-time for a three-month period only which allows them to combine gaining work experience in politics with looking for another paid job.

We look forward to July when we will be able to offer a salary to interns in addition to an excellent introduction to working in politics.

Think-tank IPPR and blog Left Foot Forward pay a living wage to their interns.

However Demos and Compass do not pay their interns, yet.

Ed Miliband said the political economy of the country was no longer delivering for “the working people in this country” and called for a new direction.

Sources close to him say Miliband is determined to keep pushing for an end to the casual ‘neo-liberal’ attitude the previous Labour government took to financial markets.

The 1945 welfare state settlement was built in response to the failures of the 1930s.

The 1979 market settlement was a response to the failures of the 1970s.

What you might call the 1997 settlement was a response to the failures of part of that settlement when it came to the public realm.

And now in the period after the financial crisis, we face such a challenge once again.

The failures that led up to the financial crisis of 2007 and with which we are still living today demand a new settlement.

The kind of capitalism we have seen for the last thirty-odd years has simply stopped delivering for the vast majority of working people in this country – the famous squeezed middle.

He said the party was looking at how a National Invesment Bank could help support businesses.

He also said that a Labour government would also make it mandatory for big companies that worked with the government to offer apprenticeships.

The ‘squeezed middle’ defined

When John Humphrys asked me what I meant by the squeezed middle, I should have said this:

The squeezed middle are working people.
People bound together, now as in the past, by a set of values.

The value of working hard.

Whether it is in a factory, a mine, on a shopfloor, or a barracks.

Whether it is on the railways, at a supermarket checkout, or at a call centre.

The value of making an effort, of taking responsibility for yourself and your community.

A hope that work should earn you the chance to give your kids a better start in life than you had.

And the simple belief that you should not have to battle vested interests which use their power to rig the system, that everyone deserves a fair shot.

Why the Thatcherite settlement has failed

But by 2007, it was clear that these factors were not enough to sustain rising living standards for working families.

The basic promise of the 1979 era, that those at the middle would benefit as well as those at the top, began to unravel.

For the five years before the last recession, the economy grew by 11%, but the wages of everyone earning less than average incomes stayed the same.

And on current forecasts, the average worker will be earning the same in three years’ time as they were ten years ago.

The rising tide has not lifted all boats.

He also dismissed the suggestion that criticising big banking bonuses was anti-business.

The full speech is here

95% believed the health reforms would increase inequalities. 97% believed that competition would undermine the provision of high quality integrated care.

The present reforms are likely to fragment services, reduce the effectiveness and increase inequalities in outcomes.

Simon Lenton, Chair of the British Association for Community Child Health said:

This poll demonstrates the strength of feeling from doctors providing services for children and families. We urge professional membership organisations to join us, the RCGP, the BMA, the RCN, the RCM and the FPH to speak out about the impact of the Bill in the interests of patients. We need to stand together to protect the NHS for them.

97% thought that the upheaval caused by the Bill would distract the NHS from the huge task of meeting the current financial challenges facing the service.

Here’s the 1930′s Fred Astaire homage to Fred Goodwin.

Their website is here – www.kissandtellcabaret.com

Performed by Melinda Hughes and Jeremy Limb; written by Melinda Hughes, Jeremy Limb & Lloyd Evans.

Last year Ken said if elected he would create the first ever ‘Victims of Crime Commissioner for London’ – to improve support for the victims of crime.

Yesterday, Ken launched his policing pledge promising to reverse Boris Johnson’s cuts to 1700 police officers.

Ken’s team have started advertising the campaign on the Evening Standard too.

A video of the camera in action, taken by LC blogger Jim Jepps, was posted here over the weekend.

National newspapers followed up the story, forcing the council to backtrack rather abruptly.

Jim Jepps was interviewed by the Guardian yesterday

In a statement the council said:

All flash cameras have the capacity to deliver voice messages when activated but in this instance it appears that voice messages were inadvertently activated when the camera batteries were replaced four to five weeks ago.
…
We do not want to stop residents from enjoying their open spaces and communal areas and under no circumstances would we want voice messages to be used in areas where they may be disturbed. The voice messages will be deactivated as soon as possible.

Original video

1. Do you think the creation of “Free Schools” – new state schools set up by parents, teachers or voluntary groups which are outside the control of local authorities – will make education standards better or worse, or will it make no difference?
Will make standards better 23%
Will make standards worse 33%
Will make no difference 23%
Don’t know 21%

2. The founders who set up “Free Schools” are not able to make a profit from running them but they are allowed to commission private companies to provide services to the schools. In principle are you in favour or against allowing free schools to commission private companies to manage their school?
In favour 28%
Against 44%
Don’t know 28%

We don’t want private companies in our education system, says the public!

3. One free school has recently announced that it is commissioning an education company, which runs schools in Sweden, to manage their school. Supporters say that this company has an
excellent reputation for running schools and this is a practical way of providing new school places in the area. Opponents say that private companies should not be allowed to profit from running publically funded schools.
Do you support or oppose allowing this free school to commission a private company to manage their school?
Support 30%
Oppose 41%
Don’t know 29%

As more horror stories come out of private companies profiting from education, expect support to fall even more.

Emma Harrison told BBC 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics that the government was chasing positive headlines and poll ratings at the expense of poor families.

Harrison is founder and chairwoman of A4e – which is one of the companies running the back-to-work scheme.

There are going to be people who are going to be trapped, and I think we need to be really, really careful we don’t catch the wrong people in these big reforms?…?Let’s not harm the most vulnerable people in this country

The FT reports tonight that the comments will be a blow to David Cameron.

You can listen to the programme from here for the next seven days.

First, Saturday Night Live and then the Daily Show skewer him.

The athletes gathered in New Delhi to highlight the growing opposition to Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics and called on the Indian government to boycott the event unless Dow was dropped as a sponsor.

Athens 2004 Paralympian Girraj Singh said: “The Indian Olympics Association and Sports Ministry of India should show much stronger protests against this sponsorship.”

Another participant at the press conference was 17 year old Sachin, who lives in one of the water contaminated communities behind the Union Carbide factory and who has lost both legs as a result of drinking contaminated Bhopal water.

He said:

Dow Chemical is responsible for the contamination of ground water in my community. Because of Dow Chemical’s refusal to clean up the hazardous waste left by the Union Carbide factory, 40,000 people are routinely exposed to cancers and birth defect causing chemicals. By allowing Dow Chemical as a sponsor Lord Coe is encouraging Dow to continue to poison the unborn.

There are now two campaigns that activists are pursuing with the site Change.org.

The first campaign, started by British nurse Lorraine Close, calls on London organisers to drop Dow as a sponsor. It has more than 18,500 signatures.

The second campaign, recently started by ex-Olympian Jalaluddin Rizvi, calls on the Indian Government to boycott the Olympics.

Carmarthenshire council chief executive Mark James will benefit from a change to the authority’s constitution made four years ago that allows council funds to be used in defamation cases.

Mr James is suing blogger Jacqui Thompson, a community councillor from Llanwrda, near Llandovery.

Last June she was arrested after the council objected to her filming one of its meetings on her mobile phone. Mrs Thompson is seen as a thorn in the side by the council, largely because of a controversial blog she writes called Carmarthenshire Planning Problems.

The council’s decision to call in the police sparked a UK-wide debate about whether people should be allowed to film and record meetings of public authorities.

Read more at Wales Online

Disgraced former RBS boss Fred Goodwin was told this afternoon that his knighthood is being removed by order of the Queen.

The unprecedented step was taken on the recommendation of a secretive Whitehall body which is responsible for ensuring the honours system does not fall into disrepute.

But as others pointed out:

Fred the Shred loses knighthood, Hester rejects £1m bonus. Phew, says City, diversion worked, business as usual, no regulation please.

— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) January 31, 2012

In a letter to Nick Clegg he said that billions of taxpayers money was “flowing straight into the hands of private landlords”.

He said the government needed to look at how to regulate the private landlords “who have done so much to drive up the costs of housing benefit”.

These private landlords currently receive a public subsidy to make enormous profit on properties often in a very poor state of repair. Why are we letting them get away with this?

Responsibility has to run all the way through society – the majority of private landlords provide decent accommodation at a fair price – now it is time for every landlord to live up to those standards.

Our message to the Government is simple. We all agree on the principle of a benefit cap. But let’s not pretend that will solve every problem. The bill for housing benefit is too high – and it won’t come down to a reasonable level until we build more homes including at affordable rents, set higher standards for decent rented accommodation and clamp down on profiteering private landlords once and for all.

It’s not clear why Laim Byrne did not decide to begin with this narrative from the start of the welfare cap debate.

They say that there is a great deal of research on climate change communication.

But too often this valuable knowledge doesn’t reach the people who need it most: climate change communicators. At the same time, researchers are often unaware of how to promote their work beyond academic journals.

At Taking Climate, the best research evidence is translated into practical guides on a wide range of topics, ensuring academics and practitioners get the most from climate change communication research.

Talking Climate is a partnership between the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN), the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) and Nottingham University School of Sociology and Social Policy.

The site launches with a comprehensive and regularly updated database of academic papers, a newsletter, and a blog featuring comment and analysis from climate change communication experts.

Talking Climate

Related
Sunny Hundal – The climate change message is not being heard. Here’s how to change tack

When asked: “Would you support or oppose a new tax upon people with houses worth more than £2 million?” – the question was supported by 66% of respondents, including a majority of Tories.

19% opposed such a tax and 15% chose “Don’t know”.

What about cheaper Mansions?

Asked if they’d support a Mansion Tax on houses worth more than £1 million, 50% still said they would support such a tax.

The lower figure was opposed by 35%, while 15% said they didn’t know.

Respondents were also asked: More generally, do you think the taxes on the wealthiest people in the UK should be increased, should be decreased, or kept at their current levels?

An eye-popping 62% of respondents, including 50% of Conservatives, said taxes on the wealthiest should be increased.

Only 5% said taxes should be decreased, and 26% said current levels were fine. 7% were unsure.

The poll suggests the public would respond favourably if Ed Miliband called on the government to plug the deficit with a Mansion Tax instead targeting the disabled.

He will say that he comes there with “humility about the scale of challenge for Labour” after losing the Scottish elections nine months ago.

Rather than take Osborne’s approach of threatening Scotland, Miliband’s main argument will be that the goals of fairness and justice are best delivered within the United Kingdom.

He is expected to say:

I say lets confront the real divide in our society.

Not between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

But between the haves and the have-nots.

So I am not here to tell Scots that Scotland cannot survive outside the United Kingdom.

But I am here to tell you that we need to make Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, a fairer, more just, place to live.

And we can do this best together.

While he won’t draw a direct contrast, the phrase “not here to tell Scots” may be interpreted as criticising Osborne’s approach to preventing a break-up of the Union.

At 12 o’clock, a group of 15 wheelchair users chained themselves together in the middle of Regent Street using handcuffs, causing a backlog of traffic to build up and bringing Oxford Circus and the surrounding area to a complete standstill.

They were joined by over 100 more people who had responded to a call by UK Uncut to meet at Holborn station to ‘shame the government into withdrawing the bill completely’.

A crowd of people, including a samba band, gathered there and marched together towards the target, which had been a secret until the wheelchairs were chained in place.

Some people said they had travelled from as far as Manchester, Cornwall and Edinburgh to take part in the action, which was called by disabled activists and others directly affected by the bill.

The protest comes after a week in which the bill stalled on its progress through Parliament, with many aspects rejected by the House of Lords.

Opposition has been mounting following publication of the ‘spartacus report’ which was written, researched and funded by disabled campaigners, and which claims that the government misled the public and ‘broke its own code of consultation’.

Nearly half a million people would lose their Disability Living Allowance, including disabled children.

From a press release

However, Diane Abbott MP, has walked out on talks because she believes the group is a ‘front’ for pushing through anti-choice proposals developed by Nadine Dorries MP, despite a recent heavy loss in Parliament, following a vote on the proposals.
 
Polling shows that under a quarter of Britons support the government’s proposals.
 
In a letter to Anne Milton, Diane Abbott, the Shadow Public Health Minister says:

I entered into the meetings in good faith.  I was genuinely interested in improving the quality of counselling available to women.  But I now believe the ‘consultation’ will be a front for driving through the anti-choice lobbyists’ preferred option without legislation or a debate on the Floor of the House.

On the proposed consultation, Ms Abbott said:

There is no doubt which option the government wants to drive through.  There will be no legislation or debate in Parliament.  These changes are unwanted, undemocratic and unsubstantiated with evidence.  I think women and families across the country will be as horrified as I am by the way the government is trying to turn the clocks back.
 
Women in this country want to have choice over their fertility and that is a basic human right. It is crucial that we maintain women’s access to impartial, non-directive and clinical information on pregnancy choices.  At the moment, there is a duty for women to be fully informed about the choices available to her – including alternatives to an abortion.

 
from a press release

Ken Livingstone even wrote to him and went to City Hall personally to deliver the letter challenging him to a television debate. Boris Johnson refused.

So the Ken team have come up with ‘Boris Johns-hen’, which is going to be following the Mayor of London over the next few months.

And they’re releasing clips from their escapades!

via Dave Hill

The activists are angry about the impact that the proposed Welfare Reform Bill will have on poor and disabled people. Recent reports have shown that as a result of the bill 500,000 families stand to lose their homes while others will become ‘imprisoned in them’.

Nearly half a million people would lose their Disability Living Allowance, including disabled children. People with terminal illnesses would be forced into work, and 3.2 million will be put through demanding tests that have already pushed some to take their own lives.

According to their own research, the government’s flagship reform will push 100,000 children into poverty.

The target of the secret action is not being pre-announced, with UK Uncut only calling on people to travel to Holborn tube station in central London with a charged Oyster card, ready to travel to a secret location.

Richard Whitehurst of DPAC said:

Cuts to disabled people’s benefits and services will not save money but will ultimately cost the taxpayer far more as pushing disabled people into destitution and withdrawing care services will lead to an increased demand for NHS care. With the cap on benefits some single disabled people living in London will be left with only £25 a week to meet all their needs for food, heating and all other costs after paying their rent.

The exact details of where the action is expected to be leaked through Twitter.

Workers have been fighting to save their pensions, they held the first ever national strike at Unilever in December and are continuing with further strikes accross the UK this week.

To promote their cause, Unite the union have released this video:

The segment was presented by the comedian and writer Francesca Martinez.

She not only presents the case well but also pushes back strongly at Michael Portillo for pushing the view that disability fraud was widespread.

hat-tip @latentexistence

We thought it was a good spoof. But no, he was actaully being serious.

Watch