This is what happened the last time cuts were so drastic
by Guest

contribution by Adam White

George Osborne will finally be announcing details of the Coalition’s plans to drastically cut public spending this week, in what the news has interestingly (and correctly) labelled “the largest reduction to public expenditure to public spending since the ‘Geddes Axe’”.

Even Krishan Guru-Murthy at Channel 4 calls them, “the biggest cuts since the twenties”.

So let’s shed some light on that period of British economic history and see the consequences of those cuts.
continue reading… »

by Imran Ahmed

In Germany, Angela Merkel has stated that multiculturalism has “failed, utterly failed”. That the idea of people from different backgrounds living happily side by side does not work.

As a religious and cultural atheist that grew up in a Muslim family I admit to being somewhat torn.

by Guest

Tory Minister for Work and Pensions Ian Duncan Smith announced his plans for a Universal Credit “which will restore fairness and simplicity to a complex, outdated and wildly expensive benefits system.”

As a recipient of disability benefits I am in full agreement with him – the system I went through was unfair and prevented you from going back to work

by Darren Johnson AM

The Mayor’s latest draft of his Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy was published last Friday without so much as a whisper in the press.

This worthy wishlist sets out how London could cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2025, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process. But there are snags..

by Sunny Hundal

It turns out Ed Miliband did recruit Alan Johnson as shadow Chancellor to sell his own vision of how the deficit should be dealt with.

The plans, revealed in the Observer today, show that Labour will be closer to Ed Balls’ plans than that by Alistair Darling. In fact they go even further.

by Guest

It has gone largely un-noticed that Lord Browne’s report would take power from universities, reduce student choice and bar many from study.

Way down on page 33 he proposes a benchmark of UCAS points above which all students qualify for finance…

by Don Paskini

Here are some key lessons about how to win in the South and increase support for Labour, from the people who actually managed it:

1. Good candidates - both Andrew Smith and Kelvin Hopkins were personally popular, decent, principled MPs, prepared to vote against their party when they thought it was wrong on issues from renewal of Trident to the Gurkhas.

by Paul Sagar

Sunny draws attention to the latest risible claims of right-wing loon tank Migration Watch.

What actually animates me this morning is Sunny’s gunning for the BBC over its failures to report the MW nonsense as such. I feel Sunny is too one-dimensional in his condemnation of the BBC, and picks poor strategy in response.

by Dave Osler

It is terribly bad form for a chap to come over all chippy about his education. Frankly, that’s the sort of stuff one would expect from a provincial Grammar School boy, and not a journalist, novelist and historian of the stature of Guy Walters.

Nevertheless, the Old Etonian has devoted a post on the Daily Telegraph-sponsored blog to make plain his umbrage at the way a book review in the Jewish Chronicle casually takes a pop at him for being an Old Etonian.

by Don Paskini

A new pamphlet was released this week about why Labour lost the support of people in Southern England, and what it needs to do to win them back.

The 2010 remix has pages and pages about how immigration and welfare reform lost Labour support, the inevitable opinion polls designed to prove that the public agree with the authors, and concludes with eight “key messages”.

by Richard Exell

On Monday, The Sun ran a story about “Benefit Ghettoes”, about areas where a lot of people live on Jobseeker’s Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and “other benefits, including one parent, disabled and carer handouts.”

Running alongside was an opinion piece from employment minister Chris Grayling, who concentrated on two million people “on the sick”…

 

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