Fighting back against Google

The Tory MP for Harlow, Rob Halfon, has secured an historic backbench business debate tomorrow on privacy and the internet. In my opinion, this subject is of vital importance to our public life. I attended the Backbench Business Committee with Rob as a witness to secure the debate, and invasions of privacy online are of growing concern to many of us. One centrally important aspect of this discussion (but not by any means the only issue) is the behaviour of Google with their Street View programme: as the infamous cars trundled down the...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (11)

Eat your heart out, Fukuyama

Russia and Nato are now allies, or birds of a feather at least. The Independent reports that the twentieth century’s opposed spheres will work together for stability in Afghanistan. The attendant irony is blissful. Two years ago, machismo raged between Nato and Russia over Georgia. Why the sudden accord? There are two schools of thought, both relating to the East’s inexorable rise.

Russia can no longer determine Central Asia of its own accord: China co-opted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a long-time pillar of Russian power in Asia, to condemn Russia’s...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (12)

Weak, weak, weak

Weak again. For the second session in a row Miliband was feeble at PMQs. He opened in his quiet-assassin mode with a quickie question. ‘There are reports that the government is planning changes to housing benefit reforms. Are they?’ Clearly he meant to wrong-foot Cameron by tempting him into admission which could be instantly disproved. But Cameron simply denied the suggestion and Miliband had no embarrassing disclosure to fire back with. Pretty duff tactics there.

He fared slightly better when he asked Cameron what advice he’d give to a family facing a...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (55)

The new fairness battleground

The f word, fairness, got another outing today at PMQs as David Cameron attempted to defend the coalition’s proposed housing benefit changes from attack by Ed Miliband. Cameron’s argument was that it isn’t fair for people to be subsiding people on housing benefit to live in houses that they couldn’t afford to live in themselves. On this, I strongly suspect that most people in the country agree with him. If Labour wants to turn housing benefit into a big issue, the wedge will work to the Conservatives’ advantage.

However, what should be...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (22)

The pros and cons of tweaking the housing benefit cuts

It says a lot about the Lib Dems that a meeting between their party leader and deputy leader can throw up so many policy differences. When Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes chatted behind closed doors yesterday, the latter sought concessions over the coalition's housing benefit cuts – the cuts that Clegg then had to defend in the House. This morning, it was reported that he might just get some of them, even though Downing St are denying the story.

Regardless of the outcome, the situation...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (8)

PMQs live blog

VERDICT: The housing benefit cuts inspired Ed Miliband's chosen attack – and he deployed it quite effectively, with none of the unclarity that we saw last week. For the most part, though, Cameron stood firm – leaning on his favourite rhetorical stick, What Would Labour Do? – and his final flurry against Ed Miliband was enough, I think, to win him this encounter on points. But don't expect this housing benefit issue to dissipate quickly. Bob Russell's question was evidence enough of how tricky this could be for the coalition.

1232: And that's it. My quick verdict shortly....

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (16)

Miliband's stage directions

Labour have sprung a leak, and it's furnishing the Times with some high-grade copy. Yesterday, the paper got their hands on an internal party memo about economic policy. Today, it's one on how Ed Miliband should deal with PMQs (£). With this week's bout only an hour-and-a-half away, here are some of the key snippets:

1. The Big Prize. "The big prize is usually to provoke the PM into appearing evasive by repeatedly failing to answer a simple question, often one that requires a simple Yes or No."

...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (27)

When public safety is threatened, strikes should be banned

The Fire Brigade’s Union (FBU) have called for strike action in London during the busiest firefighting night of the year: Bonfire Night.  Attempts to renegotiate work patterns (already changed in several fire brigades but unchanged in London for thirty years) have been hysterically termed ‘sacking’ all London firefighters by the union.  Rather like the threatened British Airways strike during Christmas 2009, this is a clear attempt by a trade union to use its monopoly power to force an employer into accepting its terms by inflicting maximum possible damage on the general public.
 
This...

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (28)

Labour tries to prise Osborne and IDS apart

Labour’s spin is less dexterous now that Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson have passed into night; but it can still artfully disguise politics as principle. Douglas Alexander is at in the Guardian, fanning the dull embers of George Osborne and IDS’ summer spat. He renews the offer of cross-party dialogue that he made on Andrew Marr last Sunday, before retreating, saying:

‘But beneath the talk of "we're all in this together" (a phrase specifically recommended for repeated use by Republican pollster Frank Luntz), what the chancellor announced on welfare

Continue reading...

Email to a friend  |   Permalink   |   Comments (13)