What a difference a year makes

A year ago, I was praying for the parliamentary summer recess to give some cover to an obviously flailing Labour leadership, which didn't seem to be able to get the public's attention and make its arguments effectively. Ed Miliband seemed to be a nice guy but lacked the gravitas to be PM (despite my hopes of 9 months before).

Then the hacking scandal (finally) broke into the public conciousness, amd Ed made his historic demand for a full public enquiry (resisted until the last moment by Cameron and Clegg, it should be noted), and since then hasn't really put a foot wrong:

- the May election results were very good for Labour, except for Ken losing to Boris (but by a much tighter margin than expected). And bear in mind, Ken Livingstone was selected before Ed became leader. All in all, it showed that the people were willing to listen to Labour again, a remarkable result 2 years after losing power. It usually takes at least a parliamentary term (the exception being 1970-74, which highlights the parallels between Cameron's government and Heath's).
- Ed has repeatedly rattled Cameron in the Commons, and the new members of the front bench team are beginning to find their feet.
- Labour has helped to cut the reputation of Osborne to shreds, especially over the Budget. The performance of the Economy has tanked, which Labour predicted it would if the Tories cut public spending without a plan for growth.
- Cameron's mask has slipped totally, and he is increasingly seen as being out of touch and/or uncaring. He has done more to re-establish the Tories as the Nasty Party than any number of Labour PPBs could ever have done.
- He has secured his position against the Blairites in the Party (think how the Murdoch affair would have played differently if David had been in charge).

All in all, a good year's work. Much more to be done over the next 3 years, though!

I think it will be the Tories who will be relieved when the recess comes this year.

Government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich

The Mail on Sunday [I refuse to link to this rag] reports that David Cameron wants to strip housing benefit from under 25's. Apart from the utter unfairness of this, there are a few problems with this:

1) Most receipients of HB are in low paid work (so much for "feckless" under 25's, Mr Mail Headline editor).
2) What happens if someone is thrown out of their home by their parents, or has an abusive parent - are they supposed to live on the streets?
3) If someone is in work and loses their job, does Cameron expect them to move back with their parents? With their partner?
4) Talking of partners, if 2 people have a joint claim, one is 24 and the other 26, do they get HB?
5) Surely this is age discrimination under the Equality Act? Denying something from someone because of their age is discrimination.

This seems to be policy thought up by an out of touch rich boy, to keep his right wingers happy. And it is probably only a few days until the Lib Dems cave in and accept this (as well as Gove Levels).

The best way to reduce the HB bill would be to increase the minimum wage, or otherwise encourage employers to pay a living wage, as most people getting HB are in work. Demonising those who receive it as feckless and lazy is plain wrong.

The truth is the government subsidises low wages through the benefits/tax system. Workers would be better off if they got higher wages, and it would help reduce the deficit (by reducing benefits payments and tax credits, and increasing the tax take). But all this government seems to care about is to help their businessmen friends by sqeezing wages and reducing employment rights.

This really is the government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich.

What they don't want you to know

http://occupydesign.org.uk/whose-debt

The debt of UK financial institutions is 6 times UK GDP. Government debt is just under one times GDP. Which do you think is more dangerous, Mr Osborne?

More Tory cronyism

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/contract-awarded-to-octavius-black-an-eton-crony-of-david-cameron-7743511.html

Imagine if Labour had awarded a multi million pound contract to Charles Faulkener? The open cronyism of this government is getting sickening.

Michael Rosen nails the debt problem

http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/billions-were-not-allowed-to-talk-about.html?spref=tw

Amazing a children's writer gets it, but politicians/economists don't!

Unbelievable

The Green Benches: Exclusive: Richard Branson's Virgin gain contract to profit from those suffering from sexual diseases in West Sussex

Bear in mind the CCG is supposed to do the comissioning for West Sussex. How did they not know about Virgin winning the bid? Are the CCGs just there for show?

Osbourne's Captain Renault moment

George Osborne 'shocked' at level of tax avoidance among wealthy | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Just goes to show the top Tories don't live in the real world, or are very disingeneous. It would be instructive to see Osborne's tax returns, as well as those of his wife, to see if he is avoiding tax.

Some good news

New Statesman - Why the odds are against a Tory majority

Same old Tories, same old sleeze

The Tory treasurer has been caught offering access to Cameron and Osbourne for a 250k donation to the party. Sounds familiar - it was 50k before the election. Why is anyone surprised?

And the Tory response - nothing actually happened, so that's al right then. How do we know this has not happened before? We need full disclosure from the Tories.

Talking of corrupt party funding, when are the Lib Dems going to pay back the 2.5m they received from a doner who has subsequently been found guilty of fraud?

Tony Blair looks whiter than white compared to these lot.

Polly Toynbee on the budget

A budget for Tory blowhards and Redwood dreamers | Polly Toynbee http://gu.com/p/36ckt

Could this be Osbornes's 10p tax moment? They certainly seem to have miscalculated this badly, or they were so arrogant that they didn't care...

The politics of the budget

The politics of the Budget are clear – and the holes are becoming clearer too | Alastair Campbell

The politics of envy

Remember when the right used to accuse the left of 'the politics of envy': unfairly demonising the rich and sucessful? Now the Tories are engaged in a new version: demonising the poor and unemployed in favour of the rich top 1%. Poor workers are played against benefit claimants and public sector workers (for example over housing benefit, pay and pensions). The poor are also accused of somehow causing the recession, along with it being blamed on too high government spending (the bankers are somehow not to blame). I think this is wrong for the following reasons:

1) Most housing benefit is claimed by workers on low incomes not the unemployed. It essentially subsidises low pay and high rents, especially in the south. If the government was really concerned with rocketing HB, they would impose rent controls. As it is they are using HB as a weapon of social engineering.

2) It was the bankers who created the conditions for the recession, by pushing people into debt and comoditising bad debts. Deregulated banks cause recessions (most of the recessions of the 1800s were caused by banks over lending, as was the slump of the 1930s).

3) The rate of Job Seekers Allowance for a single person is £71 per week: out of this you have to pay everything except rent and council tax. We have one of the lowest level of benefits in Europe, and they are also harder to claim.

4) The recession was not caused by too high government spending, however much the right seems to think it was. Finally, Spain - NYTimes.com demostrates that the spanish government was running a surplus and had a lower national debt than Germany before it imploded.

But of course facts can't get in the way of creating a right-wing narrative.

The right-wing frenzy continues...

Cameron faces battles on two fronts over infrastructure plans | Politics | The Guardian

The Tory-led government now wants to privatise our roads. After all, the privatisation of the railways went so well, and led to cheaper fares. Oh, wait...

The funniest part was the BBC talking about toll roads in France. These are run by the government to help finance the (state run) SNCF. D'oh.

Only in America (or a fascist dictatorship...)

Daily Kos: Arizona out-crazies other contraception bills. Use birth control, get fired.

Arizona legislators have removed language from a bill which would have made it illegal to fire some for using contraception (even if it is paid for by the employee). The war against reality (and women) continues in the US.

The Lib Dems finally drop all that embarrasing democracy stuff

Interesting comments from Lib Dem MPs this week, basically saying the 'sovereign' LD conference can be ignored if the party is in power. Well, that is going to improve voters trust in politics, isn't it? Didn't the LDs keep going on about how democratic their party was? I guess that's gone the way of their 'progressive' policies. They are little more than the Tory-lite party now.

Now they have basically sold the NHS down the river, I hope Labour hangs this round the necks of all LD candidates at the next election.

The mystery of the disappearing "workfare" document

FactCheck update: DWP fail to explain disappearing “workfare” document | The FactCheck Blog

Ken Livingstone calls for Mayor to be banned from having a second job

My Letter to David Cameron | Ken for London

It really does show how out of touch Boris has become, when he thinks £250,000 is 'chicken feed'. He already earns more than the PM.

Osborne's excuses are beginning to sound hollow

New Statesman - Osborne's "no money left" claim could backfire

The A4e stench

Welfare boss Emma Harrison made a pile renting out her stately home to A4E | Politics | The Observer
This could be a bombshell for IDS and his welfare reforms, especially coming on top of more companies withdrawing from the workfare schemes. There has been a bad stench around A4e for several years, since some of its staff were found to be falsifying results. Why were they awarded this contract, and why did Cameron give Emma Harrison a job?
This blog (Redpepper.org.uk) claims A4e have been forced to pay back money to the government five times since 2008 due to irregularities.

Star Trek's Patrick Stewart speaks out about the coalition

New Statesman - The NS Interview: Patrick Stewart

The world against Apartheid

I have just finished watching the BBC4 series The world against Apartheid: have you heard from Johannesburg?, which bought back memories of supporting the anti-apartheid movement in the 80s and early 90s. The struggle demonstrated that individuals can make a difference if they campaign together - shades of the current UK Uncut movement today.

As someone says in one of the programs - You may feel like you are a drop of water in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops of water.