Libdems fight against TV licensing for refuges
The Liberal Democrats have a launched a campaign for women’s refuges to get a discount on their TV licenses from the BBC.
While luxury hotels and others get a TV licence discount for multiple sets on their premises, refuges providing shelter and support for victims of domestic abuse are charged the full price for each of their licences.
Individual refuges are reportedly spending hundreds or even thousands of pounds on TV licences that should be spent on essential services for abused women.
The campaign page states:
For victims of abuse, television is not merely a luxury. It can have an important role to play, offering comfort and a welcome distraction, especially for children caught in the middle of abusive relationships. The last thing a woman arriving at a refuge needs is to face demands for payment of a TV licence.
Furthermore, the activities of enforcement officers can put women at risk. It is a known tactic of violent ex-partners to pose as officials in order to gain access to refuges. For women to be put in a position in which they are answering the door to someone who may be an enforcement officer, but could equally be a violent man seeking his ex-partner, is totally unacceptable.
To support the scheme you can sign the petition on this website. (via The F Word)
The campaign stems from the recent paper (Real Women) published by the Libdems focusing on issues affect women in society.
Americans call for a boycott of Scotland
A group of Americans have launched a website and petition calling for the boycott of Scotland over the release of Libyan bomber al-Megrahi.
On the website they say:
Constantly we are bombarded with emails from those who claim that this act of terrorism occurred on Scottish soil and thus the choice to release al-Megrahi rested solely with Scottish authorities democratically elected by the people of Scotland.
That is all very fine and well. But the vast majority of the victims were Americans on an American airliner headed for the United States. One would think that at the very least, the Scottish government would have enough respect for the American victims to take into account the American perspective, which was to not grant al-Megrahi a “compassionate” release.
…
Why did MacAskill and the Scottish National Party desire so strongly to show compassion for al-Megrahi, but not for the American victims? Why have the concerns of the American families been so routinely dismissed and discarded? Why have we been shown such an incredible level of disrespect by the Scottish authorities?
But the decision was attacked on other liberal American blogs. A popular post on Daily Kos pointed out:
Boycott Scotland? Go F**k Yourself
There is a rule in the Scottish Jusice System. Anyone who is terminally ill with three or less months to live is released on compassionate grounds to die at home. This is the rule now and has been the rule in the past.Now because of the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi which now means that his appeal against his conviction will not take place as he agreed to drop it so he could die at home (this is something that seems to have been ommitted in all the reporting that has reached US shores, though judging by the quality of reporting on the NHS l really shouldn’t be surprised).
Visitors from the US accounted for 340,000 trips to Scotland in 2008, and spent £260m in the country, according to figures published by VisitScotland.
This accounted for 21% of spending by people from outside the UK.
VisitScotland spokeswoman Alison Robb told the BBC: “We have had e-mails from people in America saying they’re going to cancel their holidays but have had no cancellations through our booking engine.
“We have alerted our staff and made them aware of the situation.”
Climate Camp issue open letter to Met police
Organisers of Climate Camp, due to start this week from Wednesday, have issued an open letter to the Met Police.
Watch the video below or read the text.
Open Letter to the Met
Open Letter
FAO Chief Superintendent Ian Thomas,
New Scotland Yard
London SW1H 0BGDear Chief Superintendent Thomas,
On August 17th, you wrote to the Camp for Climate Action, requesting further information on the location of our next Camp, which will take place from August 27th to September 2nd, somewhere in the London area. You say that you require this information in order to help with “community liaison”, to ensure the Camp is a “safe and healthy” event, and to help you put a “pre-planned and proportionate policing operation” in place. We are writing this open letter in order to alleviate your concerns, and to make our position clear both to yourself and to the public.
Community liaison has been a vital part of every Climate Camp. At Drax in 2006, Heathrow in 2007 and Kingsnorth in 2008, we put a lot of time and effort into spending time with local residents and allaying people’s concerns, and this year will be no different. We have a good track record of building community support for the Camp and for climate change campaigning, we’ve already been in touch with local Councils across London, and our friendly outreach volunteers will be chatting to the locals from the moment we arrive on site. We plan to be excellent neighbours for as long as we’re there, we’ll be open and welcoming to any local residents with questions or concerns, and we’ll leave the site spotless when it’s time to go.
As regards health and safety – thanks for your concern, but again we’ve got it under control. As with previous Camps, we’ll have great food, water, compost toilets, a team of medics, a wellbeing space, excellent on-site communication, emergency vehicle access, and a family space. We also have a “Safer Spaces” policy and a “Tranquillity Team” to help keep the site free from oppressive behaviour or aggro. Anyone who’s spent time at past Camps will tell you how friendly and safe the atmosphere is – better than most mainstream festivals.
Of course, there is one unfortunate exception to all of this. While most visitors to previous Camps have had an inspiring and positive experience, some of us have had to suffer violence, intimidation, theft, sleep deprivation and harassment, thanks to past examples of “pre-planned and proportionate policing operations”. Local communities have been disrupted by police road closures and indiscriminate stops-and-searches. Members of the public have been attacked with batons or arrested on trumped-up charges simply for standing on the perimeter of a campsite (nearly all of them have now been acquitted or had their charges dropped). Judging from past experience, the best thing the police could do to ensure the health and safety of the public at Climate Camp 2009 would be to stay as far away from it as possible.
Bearing all of this in mind, I hope that you, and the public, understand why we don’t feel able to reveal the precise location of the Camp at this time. Every other aspect of the Camp has been organised in an open, accountable and democratic way, via monthly public meetings. The only secret is the location. There’s a simple reason for this: I’m afraid we just don’t trust the police. Why? Because it seems as though every time we have a protest, the police turn up and start hitting people. Look what happened at the G20. That’s not really a very good way to win people over.
Just because you’ve started using friendlier language and talking about “lighter-touch” policing, do you really think we’re suddenly going to believe you’re our friends? Just a few weeks back the Big Green Gathering was shut down by the police on spurious grounds, for “political” reasons. If the police are really trying to build up trust within the climate action movement, then that’s a funny way to go about it.
The precise location of the Camp for Climate Action 2009 will be announced via mass text as part of the exciting August 26th “Swoop”. I’m afraid you’ll just have to sign up on our website, and wait for the updates just like everybody else!
Yours sincerely,
The Camp for Climate Action Media Team
via The Daily (Maybe)
Update: Swoop locations now revealed
100k sign NHS petition aimed at Americans
Over hundred thousand people have signed a petition aimed at Americans to stop them spreading lies about the NHS.
Organised by the campaign group Avaaz.org – it exhorts American legislators to “ignore the myths about health systems in our country and others that are being pushed by US healthcare companies”.
So far the group has collected over 100,000 signatures that will be sent to the US Congress.
The British health care system isn’t perfect, but we would never trade it for the one in the US.
Yet conservative US politicians and greedy insurance companies are pushing lies about the NHS as a way to scare the American public off national health care – risking Obama’s whole movement for change and threatening his majority in Congress.
Sign the petition below and tell friends – huge numbers of us will cause a stir in the US media and affect the debate, and Avaaz will deliver our message to wavering US Senators this month before they cast their vote in Congress.
Click here to read and sign the petition
BKYP join forces with 38 Degrees
Campaigners from Boris Keep Your Promise, who want the London Mayor to keep fund Rape Crisis centres as promised, have joined forces with online campaigners 38 Degrees.
On the page where you can sign the petition, they say:
During Boris Johnson’s campaign to be elected Mayor of London, he promised big improvements to rape crisis provision. He promised to cut the amount he spent on media relations and spend the savings on guaranteed funding to increase the number of centres serving the capital from one to four.
Over a year later, the funding commitment over 4 years is £830,000 short of what he promised and we have only heard about plans for one of the three new centres. At the same time, reported rapes increased by 14.5% last year, while convictions remain very low at 6.5%.
Matty Mitford from BKYP sent out an email saying:
38 Degrees have a sight more lobbying experience than we do, so we’re confident that if anyone can get a petition to have an effect, it’s them. So please sign and forward if you can. Putting the URL in a Facebook/Twitter/blog etc status update would be awesome too. We’d like to get this out to as many people as we can.
For the sake of transparency (a big deal to us) we’d like to make it clear that once you sign the petition you will be added to 38 Degrees mailing list. We’re only condoning the petition as it’s so easy to opt out of their mailings if you want to.
Click here to sign the petition
Quote of the day
A bit of light entertainment on a Friday afternoon from Freeborn John:
LPUK [Libertarian Party UK] showed some early promise, I thought, but seems to have turned into the saloon bar at a home counties golf club; its members have, for some reason, elected as their leader a cross between Captain Mainwaring and David Icke.
All very odd.
thelondonpaper: will you miss it?
New International today announced it was closing thelondonpaper.
Media Guardian story:
The paper will continue publishing for about a month while News International consults with 60 staff members. It is understood that the London Paper’s final day of publication is likely to be Friday 18 September.
Today’s announcement signals an end to the London freesheet wars, which began almost exactly three years ago in August 2006, when News International decided to launch an afternoon freesheet and Associated Newspapers retaliated to protect the London Evening Standard and its morning freesheet Metro by launching London Lite.
Perhaps the impending paywalls made the freesheet a difficult fit within the Murdoch empire. Or perhaps Rupert Murdoch has just given up on throwing money away.
Either way, it marks another recent media failure, especially after the bad investment that myspace turned out to be.
On twitter, most people were fairly ambivalent.
@ChantelleFiddy
all you below par journalists beware – londonpaper staffers are gonna eat ya’ll for dinner.
@andylazybird
The London Paper is set to close – thank f*ck for that, just the pthers to go and the streets will be ours again http://tr.im/wLNt
@jessicabateman
Can’t believe The London paper is closing. How am I gonna find out where Lily Allen went to dinner last night now?
@marmadook
the london paper is no more? what what? Do I have to downgrade to the metro!?
@samranger omg. How will I ever feature in the london paper’s lovestruck section now? Devastated.com
@ZoZoWilko
why would they close The London Paper- everyone knows its so much better than the Lite!
Are you sad or elated London is going to be slightly more cleaner? Or perhaps you’re pissed that Associated Newspapers won the battle?
Twitter wars: right-whingers not happy
You may have seen Charlie Brooker’s clip calling Dan Hannan a few names on TV yesterday.
Some right-wingers with no sense of humour clearly did not take lightly to their poster-boy getting denigrated so badly.
Writer James Delingpole, best known for writing climate change denial rubbish for the Spectator, shed some tears on his blog:
Normally the joy of Brooker is that whatever he says, you think: “That’s so true.” But in this case it just isn’t. Or funny. And I’m really not saying that because I’m a friend of Dan’s. (There’s probably even a schadenfreude part of me which quite enjoys seeing the overexposed baldie being given his comeuppance) (xxxxDan). I’m saying it because, judging Brooker by his own high standards, it’s lame, totally uninsightful, woefully unamusing. And because, worst of all, it evinces exactly the kind of intellectually lazy, identikit-left, student-bar, group-think which Brooker is normally so quick to condemn and mock.
Rather fittingly, Charlie Brooker let loose on twitter saying:
What a clueless, rat-faced, simpering, humourless, piss-writing, fuck-of-a-shit: http://tinyurl.com/delingcuntmorelike
And then again.
Delingpole defends himself:
@charltonbrooker. Oi. Less of the rudeness. I was coming at you from a position of love and admiration. Ungrateful warthog-faced cunt.
Will Heaven (who?), a fellow blogger of Delingpole, annoyed he was missing out on the action, defends his mate:
Just lost any remaining respect for @charltonbrooker after his utterly rude, boarish and spiteful attack on @jamesdelingpole
And then adds:
@charltonbrooker Go back to your windowless hovel to write funnier jokes!
But just as it was all getting quite amusing to watch, Charlie Brooker says:
@JamesDelingpole How dare you. I’m a walrus-faced c**t not a warthog-faced c**t. But let’s not fight: @WillHeaven seems to be getting upset
Oh well, at least you can watch the video clip again.
Labour keep up NHS attacks on Tories
The Labour Party continues to use the NHS as a line of attack on Conservatives after a week of bad press for the latter, thanks to Dan Hannan MEP.
Today health secretary Andy Burnham writes in the Guardian that there were “three substantial dividing lines” between Labour and the Tories.
The first concerns national targets and standards. Andrew Lansley says the Tories would scrap Labour’s three flagship waiting targets: 18 weeks, four-hour A&E and the two-week cancer target. This would be a backward step. Now that these targets have been achieved, Labour will turn them into enforceable rights for patients. They will be minimum standards below which performance should never be allowed to slip. Removal of these standards, as the Tories propose, would inevitably see a loss of public accountability and a return to postcode variation.
The second dividing line is on NHS pay. Andrew Lansley drops heavy hints that the Tories would reintroduce local pay bargaining. mistake. National pay structures bring a stability to the system in terms of recruitment and retention.
The third area concerns national accountability. The Tories have proposed handing over the day-to-day running of the NHS to an independent board. This would be a major change in NHS governance – a major gamble with a structure that broadly works and it is by no means clear that it would bring any improvement in performance.
For a party that has promised a “bonfire of the quangos”, turning Britain’s best-loved institution into the biggest quango in the world – responsible for a £100bn budget and 1.4 million staff – is an idea that has had dangerously little scrutiny to date.
Unsurprisingly Hannan’s response to criticisms of his appearance on Glenn Beck has been to say that his critics were wrong. What else did you expect?
Meanwhile the Press Association reports that former health minister Lord Darzi was touring the US media defending the NHS.
He and Tom Kibasi, an honorary lecturer at Imperial College London, wrote an article in the Washington Post setting out “facts” about the NHS for American readers. They said fear was playing a major role in how the NHS was being discussed in the US. “The myth-making ranges from the misleading to the mendacious to the downright ludicrous,” they said.
“Bizarre allegations of “death panels” denying care to the elderly, doctors unable to make medical decisions and “socialised medicine” fill newspapers, airwaves and the blogosphere. These are, without exception, categorically untrue.”
Tories in damage-limitation over Hannan
Senior people at Conservative HQ have moved rapidly into damage limitation mode after the tabloid press turned on people bashing the NHS.
After a strong condemnation by shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley was not deemed enough, David Cameron was forced to issue his own response.
Update: A full statement has now been posted on the Conservative Party blog:
Millions of people are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS – including my own family. One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you’re injured or fall ill – no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you’ve got – you know that the NHS will look after you.
That’s why we as a Party are so committed not just to the principles behind the NHS, but to doing all we can to improve the way it works in practice. So yes, we will spend more on the NHS, but we will also improve it so that it is more efficient and responsive to patients. People working on the frontline will actually be able get on with the job they signed up for, without getting tied up in a web of targets. And we will put more power in the hands of patients by giving them better information about the care they can expect to receive.
Underlying these reforms, and our whole approach to the NHS, will be one big ambition – that future generations will be even prouder of the NHS than we are today.
(Image via the Tory Fail blog)
But not everyone is sticking with the party line, as Paul Waugh points out.
Then again, the Tories’ Online Communities Editor Craig Elder has now made plain his own views, backing a blog that states that “we love the NHS…like hostage victims love their hostage takers”.
Coverage in the Sun and Daily Mail today has been very negative for the Conservatives.
A Daily Mail story said:
Professor Stephen Hawking has defended the NHS after its severe criticism during the American political debate over health care reforms. The physicist spoke up for the NHS after the Republican Right claimed it was ‘evil’ and ‘Orwellian’ in a direct attack on Barack Obama’s plans to overhaul health care in the U.S.
Critics of the president have said his plans would introduce a ’socialist’ system like Britain’s.
A Sun comment piece today said:
They reckon our health care system is uncaring, unfair and unbelievably bad. Trump card? Joker more like. True, in the UK the NHS is a political football. And NHS-bashing is a national sport among both doctors and patients.
But that’s because the health service has become a victim of its own success. Many people weren’t around before it was formed – or their memories don’t stretch that far – so they’ve no recollection of the bad old pre-NHS days.
More media coverage
Daily Mirror: Tory MEP in rant against British NHS
Evening Standard: Twitter army goes to war for NHS
Kaminski caught lying on Jewish apology?
Did Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, from Poland’s Law and Justice party, lie about charges of anti-semitism?
The Tories have been trying to push back at accusations against him, made recently in the New Statesman by James Macintyre.
That lead to a war of words between Tory MEP Dan Hannan and Macintyre, detailed here.
Michal Kaminski is a key member of David Cameron’s new grouping in the European parliament and is an important ally. In his support Stephen Pollard recently wrote in the Daily Telegraph:
A further accusation is that, in an interview, he [Kaminski] said that he would apologise [for the Jedwabne massacre] only if someone “from the Jewish side” apologised for what “the Jews” did during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland from 1939 to 1941. Mr Kaminski flatly denies this, and no one has produced a shred of evidence to contradict him.
But Toby Helm at the Observer chased up this claim and writes on his blog:
Kaminski does indeed deny this. But perhaps he should stop denying it. Here is the evidence. In 2001 Kaminski gave an interview to the Polish weekly paper Nasza Polska. Three weeks ago he flatly denied to the Observer that he ever gave the interview. In fact he said he had never spoken to a journalist from this paper, which often carries – how can one say it – pieces that would not always delight Jewish people. So the Observer emailed the editor of Nasza Polska, Piotr Jakucki, to see what he had to say.
A few days later, Jakucki replied, confirming that “Kaja Bogomilska made an interview with deputy Michal Kaminski in person”, making him aware she was from Nasza Polska.
The issue is no longer just about charges of anti-semitism, says Helm, but “about honesty and judgment. Kaminski’s honesty and Cameron’s judgment.”
Will Kaminski own up? Will Tories stop defending him and crying ’smear’? We’ll have to wait and see.
Tory MEP: homophobia doesn’t exist
According to Pink News the Tory MEP Roger Helmer believes that homophobia is a “propaganda device”.
Writing on his blog Roger Helmer said recently:
And while we’re mentioning semantic issues, let me point out that the neologism “homophobia” is not so much a word as a political agenda. In psychiatry, a phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I have yet to meet anyone who has an irrational fear of homosexuals, or of homosexuality. So to the extent that the word has any meaning at all, it describes something which simply does not exist.
“Homophobia” is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history. It is frightening evidence of the way in which political correctness is threatening our freedom.
Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill told the Independent that Helmer should meet the families of Michael Causer and Jody Dobroski, two gay men who were beaten to death.
On the blog, titled Straight Talking, Helmer also defended Michal Kaminksi, who has been accused of homophobia and anti-semitism. In a television interview in 2000, Kaminski, a Polish Law and Justice Party MEP, was heard to call gay people a derogatory term that can be translated as “fags” or “queers”
The Conservatives have yet to respond.
On the blogs, Laura Woodhouse at The F Word said:
his rather feeble justification for his assertions is that, etymologically speaking, “homophobia” is an irrational fear of homosexuals, and no one irrationally fears homosexuals, so it’s all a load of cobblers designed to stop people with, um, really reasonable views using said views to inform really, er, progressive, liberating and humanitarian laws such as that banning homosexual marriage. The bastards.
Julian Ware-Lane at LabourList added:
The Conservatives in Europe now have links with people whose views can most kindly be described as questionable. This latest statement will not dispel the impression of a lurch to the right. I hope that David Cameron will condemn Mr Helmer and his ill-conceived outburst.
Climate Rush hit Mandelson at home
Protestors from the environmental action group Climate Rush chained themselves to Mandelson’s home today.
The direct action stunt was carried out to support wind power and the Vestas workers at the Isle of Wight.
The Climate Rush demonstrators chained themselves to the railings and planted miniature wind turbines at the front of the house in Regent’s Park.
The Guardian reports:
Ellie Robson, 21, a history undergraduate at Cambridge University, said she wanted to expose the government’s hypocrisy over climate change as she chained herself to railings outside the business secretary’s house.
She said: “Less than two weeks after announcing the government’s plans for a low-carbon Britain, Vestas shut down because there’s no demand for wind turbines in this country.
“Mandelson, the man in charge of the nation’s purse strings, jets off to Corfu and ignores the Vestas workers’ occupation.
“If we’re going to have a low-carbon Britain then we need our government to support these workers, rather than forcing the closure of their factory and the loss of their jobs.”
Climate Rush activists have also been involved at the Isle of Wight – trying to get food to the protesters.
Fish & Chips for the Vestas occupation from Emily James.
An Evening Standard report added:
The Yes Men, Andy Bichelbaum and Mike Bonnano, protest by pretending to be powerful people and spokesmen for prominent organisations. They create fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received on them to appear at conferences and on TV.
They have posed successfully as representatives of oil giant Exxon Mobile, the American government’s department of housing and urban development and the World Trade Organisation.
Their documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World, will be released tomorrow.
The demonstrators vowed to stay outside the house until the First Secretary and Minister for Business and Enterprise returned from his holiday in Corfu.
Climate Rush can be followed on Twitter here and on Facebook.
Nut-jobs compare Obama to Hitler/Stalin
It’s only been 6 months since he became President and right-wingers in America are already busy comparing Obama to Hitler.
The imagery below is published by LaRouche Pac, a lobby group in the United States organising against Obama’s health-care bill.
But lobby groups aren’t the only ones taking things to an extreme.
This week Rush Limbaugh, the unofficial leader of the Republicans and the popular right-wing talkshow host, compared Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Nancy Pelosi to Nazi leaders.
But while the US media and Republicans shrieked in anger when a MoveOn.org ad in 2004 compared Bush to Hitler, the response to Limbaugh’s tirade has been much more muted.
Elsewhere too, the Republican opposition to Obama’s healthcare plans is turning ugly.
Republican and pharma-funded lobby groups are organising Americans to attend meetings where politicans are talking about healthcare – to ’send them a message’.
Angry scenes broke out in Florida this week when a large mob assembled in Tampa Bay to oppose Obama’s healthcare plans.
According to the Huffington Post:
Police officers were called to calm down an unruly crowd outside a health care reform town hall meeting in downtown Tampa, Florida on Thursday evening, according to local news reports.
…
Many of the hundreds of protesters said that they had been inspired by a conservative activist group promoted by Fox News host Glenn Beck and some received emails from the county
…
Several hours after this story was posted on Thursday night, the Tampa Tribune removed a reference to protesters carrying signs that depicted President Obama as the Joker. Yet one conservative blogger who attended the event reports seeing several people “with signs depicting President Obama as the Joker.”
But Obama’s critics, while not short of hyperbole, are having trouble deciding who exactly they should paint him as.
Some have obviously gone for Nazi symbolism. Others are trying their hand at painting Obama as a communist.
Is anyone going to denounce these nutters as ‘anti-American’? We’ll have to wait and see.
Only 1/16 rapes reported end in conviction
Fewer than one in 16 rapes reported to the police results in a conviction in court, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.
In a response to a Parliamentary question by Lynne Featherstone Chris Huhne found that conviction rate has fallen from less than one in 13 in 1998.
The Liberal Democrats today called for up to 15 more Rape Crisis Centres to be opened across the country, and for more money to be invested in centres that provide medical care and counselling to the victims of sexual assaults.
Their other proposals to prevent violence against women, unveiled today, include:
- Investing more in Sexual Assault Referral Centres to provide forensic medical examinations and counselling.
- Rolling out classes about rights and fair treatment in relationships in schools with organisations like Relate
- Providing better systems in schools and social services for children and adults to report abuse
- Ensuring that women living in refuges can continue to work
Liberal Democrat women’s spokesperson Lynne Featherstone said:
The low conviction rates across the country in rape cases are nothing short of a national disgrace. We the worst rape conviction record in Europe.
Victims of sexual violence need the help and support offered by Rape Crisis Centres to help them come to terms with their ordeal and to increase the chances of successfully prosecuting their attackers.
The system for dealing with rape is rotten at every level. It is little wonder that women have so little confidence that their attacker will ever be punished.
The proposals form part of the Liberal Democrat Policy Paper ‘Real Women’.
The paper also recommends that airbrushing in children’s adverts should be banned.
More transparency on lobbying needed
Taxpayer funded lobbying is only the tip of the iceberg a group claimed today, in response to a report by the TaxPayers Alliance.
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency issued a press release today saying:
The UK [lobbying] industry is worth £1.9bn, the vast majority of which is spent by business lobbying government. We think the public has a right to know about everyone trying to influence our politicians, not just those in the public sector.
The report by the Taxpayers Alliance today comes ahead of the government’s response to the Public Administration Committee’s recommendation in January for a mandatory register of lobbyists in the UK.
A decision by the Cabinet Office is expected imminently.
David Miller from the ALT added:
By its own admission, the report is incomplete because so many lobbying consultancies simply choose not to voluntary disclose their clients. This is just one reason why a mandatory register of lobbyists and their clients is necessary – to show precisely who is lobbying whom, whether nuclear power companies, or environmental groups, and which areas of policy they are seeking to influence.
The spending figures by groups such as Action on Smoking and Health or Alcohol Concern are absolutely dwarfed by the amount spent by the tobacco and alcohol industry on influencing government, as well as advertising and marketing their products. Until we have real transparency, we have no way of knowing how much industry is spending or who they are talking to in government.
Boris accused of letting women down again
London Mayor Boris Johnson was today slammed for announcing just one Rape Crisis centre, and not the three promised in his original manifesto.
In a video (below) he offered just £635,000 over three years to support women suffering from rape and domestic abuse. He had originally promised £744,000 a year for four years – a cut of nearly 2 million pounds.
BBC News report
Responding to the Mayor’s announcement, Boris Keep Your Promise campaign spokesperson Matilda Mitford said:
While any amount of Rape Crisis funding is always welcome, today’s announcement is in truth a huge £2 million cut, cynically spun by the Mayor as a funding announcement. Since his election Boris Johnson has made repeated changes to his original Rape Crisis pledge and when confronted by our campaigners only a few weeks ago, Boris reaffirmed his manifesto commitment to fund an extra 3 rape crisis centres showing himself as Mayor of Spin.
She added:
According to today’s announcement, each year he will have given less to Rape Crisis than his ‘chicken feed’ yearly second income, a far cry from his grand promises during election time. Until Mr Johnson makes good on his original manifesto commitment of £744,000 a year and three new centres, we can only assume that he is giving as little as he can get away with. Trying to score political points at the cost of some of societies most vulnerable women is no way to defuse this row.
More:
Tory Troll: Boris Johnson and Rape Crisis Centres: The Facts
Mind The Gap: Boris finally announces funding for Croydon…
Boris announcement
Macintyre blasts Hannan over Kaminski’s past
Why is he so keen to defend anti-Semites? asks James Macintyre of Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.
The row kicked off when the New Statesman’s political editor wrote in last week’s edition that Jewish leaders had turn on Tories after Cameron made an alliance with Polish MEP Michal Kaminski.
He belongs to Poland’s Law and Justice party, one of whose MPs, Artur Górski, described the election of Barack Obama in the US as “a disaster” and “the end of the civilisation of the white man”. Kaminski is a former member of the neo-Nazi National Revival of Poland party (NOP), which, in a direct quotation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, says in its manifesto that “Jews will be removed from Poland, and their possessions will be confiscated”. In 2001, he condemned his own president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for apologising over the Polish massacre of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne in July 1941.
…
Also in Poland, Rafal Pankowski of the Holocaust campaign group Never Again said: “Kaminski has an extreme-right background. To have him, of all people, the chairman of a group that legitimises far-right tendencies across Europe, is somewhat ironic. [Especially] for a leader like Cameron, who domestically opposed the BNP, for example . . . I would call on David Cameron to sever links with Kaminski.”
The only response from the Tory has been from Dan Hannan MEP, who wrote an extended diatribe attacking those making the accusations and defending Kaminski.
He also used Guido to support his own assertion that Macintyre was a “Labour spin doctor”:
Before turning to the substance of the allegations, it’s worth considering who is making them and why. Three pieces have appeared within the past 24 hours, all making a similar point: this one in The Independent by the Labour MP Denis Macshane; this in The Guardian by Tim Garton-Ash; and this in The New Statesman by James Macintyre. None of these authors would pretend to be disinterested. Denis Macshane is a thoroughly likeable sort: one of those rare pro-Europeans who genuinely knows about other countries. He is also, as he would be the first to own, a Euro-zealot, who has a particular bee in his bonnet about the Tories being “xenophobic“. I’ve never met Professor Garton Ash, but I read him every week. He’s plainly a clever and knowledgeable man – he must, for example, know how unfounded are his constant digs about David Cameron’s “Latvian legion”. But he wouldn’t pretend, either, to be impartial about European integration. James Macintyre is the only one of the three who is a journalist, and he is widely recognised as, first and foremost, a Labour spin-doctor: Guido has the full charge-sheet here.
Writing on his blog, Macintyre hits back at Hannan:
I reported on-the-record complaints about this man from various leading Jewish figures across Europe, including the Chief Rabbi of Poland. For this, I am accused of "the most shameful tactic yet", and of being a "first and foremost Labour spin doctor". Quite apart from the fact that Hannan has spent his career posing as a journalist, a leader writer and a columnist while desperately seeking elected office as an official Conservative candidate (while I have never sought office, frequently written critically of Labour and never been a member of a political party), I am amused that his "journalistic" source for this smear is the Tory blogger "Guido Fawkes". Conservative fanatics such as Hannan and "Fawkes" have never forgiven me for reporting President Obama’s verdict on David Cameron: that he is a "lightweight"; a claim which I have had confirmed by a number of officials and which I know to be as true as it is upsetting to some.
…
I am sorry that Hannan does not share the verdict of a real journalist on my piece: that of his superior Telegraph colleague George Pitcher, the paper’s highly respected religion editor. Or, say, his former ally in Brussels Edward McMillan-Scott, who told my colleague Daniel Trilling that “I regard [Kaminski] as completely unsuitable for the post of vice-president and also therefore unsuitable as the leader of the new group. It doesn’t take long to find out his past is pretty dodgy”.
Hannan has yet to reply.
CEO contradicts Cameron on links to big business
As part of the Tory re-branding exercise, Bloomberg reported on 1st July:
David Cameron, whose Conservative Party is on course to win power in the U.K. in the next year, said he wanted the government to broaden its base of contractors away from large companies including Capita Group Plc. “At the moment in the civil service there’s a sort of mentality of ‘no one got fired for giving the contract to Capita,’” Cameron told an audience of volunteer workers in London today. “We’ve got to have a culture that’s a little bit more experimental and is prepared to take a bit of a leap sometimes with a small organization.”
Yesterday Bloomberg interviewed the CEO of Capita, who said:
“Conservative party members of a very high level have expressed considerable interest in Capita and outsourcing,” Chief Executive Officer Paul Pindar said in a telephone interview today. “If the Tories win the next election and some of the strong statements they’re making on reducing their cost base are followed through, we could see some good opportunities.”
…
“We thought Cameron’s remarks were flattering, and we’ve talked to other members of the party who thought so too,” said Pindar.
Clearly Mr Pindar failed to get the memo from Cameron to keep shtum and toe the line. Still waiting for Cameron to embrace ‘Red Toryism’ and small businesses.
Coulson to face MPs as Tory support cracks
Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson will face the culture select committee at the House of Commons tomorrow.
Perhaps MPs could ask him whether he was completely unaware that NotW journalists other than Clive Goodman were involved in illegal phone blagging activity. They could also ask him if the NotW had ever paid private investigators to hack into people’s voicemails or to obtain information illegally. Perhaps MPs could also ask Rebekah Wade, who will also be giving evidence, why News International paid off people to keep silent, while telling the world that only the royals had their phones hacked, and that too only by Goodman.
On Friday former Sun editor Rebekah Wade confirmed the out-of-court settlement with Gordon Taylor. It was the first time News International has admitted those allegations. Yesterday the Independent on Sunday reported that shadow chancellor George Osborne refused to repeat Coulson’s denial he knew of the pay-offs.
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