Byers. Hoon and Hewitt suspended by Labour Party
We’ve just received word that former cabinet ministers Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt have been suspended by the Labour Party on the instructions of the Chief Whip, Nick Brown, and General Secretary, Ray Collins, pending an investigation into allegations that they were willing to try and influence policy in return for cash.
The decision follows what we understand was a heated meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, this evening, at which a number of MPs demanded that strong action should be taken against the three former ministers.
#cashgordon crashes and burns
In the last few minutes, the Conservative Party has taken down its Cash Gordon website after a major security failure which allowed twitter users to rick-roll the site using javascript embedded in a tweet.
To compound Tory embarrassment, one of the sites to which visitors were briefly redirected featured an image of three naked old men engaged in an explicit sex act, although the Tories can, perhaps, consider themselves lucky not have been Goatse-rolled at any point during today’s debacle.
So, that’s another expensive Tory new media project down the crapper in a matter of hours.
UPDATE
I’ve now been advised that both goatse and lemonparty did appear on Cash Gordon site for a while, all of which nicely sums up the Tory new media department’s day.
Venables journo has manslaughter conviction
This one come firmly from the file marked ‘You couldn’t make this up even if you worked for a tabloid’ via the offices of Private Eye.
If you look at the bylines under much of The Sun’s recent coverage/speculation about the recall of Jon Venables to prisons for as yet unknown breach of his licence terms, you’ll frequently find the name of the Sun’s Chief Reporter, John Kay.
What you won’t find in The Sun is any reference whatsoever to Kay’s 1977 conviction for the manslaughter (by diminished responsibility) of his Japanese wife after an apparent murder-suicide bid.
The story was, however, recorded by the Miami News who, on 21 December 1977, published this brief account of Kay’s efforts to end his own life…
John Kay, 33, drowned his wife in the bath, said the prosecutor in court at St. Albans, England. Then he tried six times to kill himself. First he slashed his wrists – but the cuts were not serious. So he threw himself head first out of a window, but landed on a plastic garbage can. Next he turned on the gas in the kitchen, but the oven had a self-lighting mechanism he was unable to put out. He tried to hang himself but couldn’t get into an effective position. He then stood on a bridge overlooking a bypass, but decided, remembering the window episode, it was not high enough. His final attempt: driving his auto full speed into a stationary car. Kay (a reporter, it must be recorded) lived, slightly injured, to tell the tale – in court.
I dunno about anyone else, but I can’t help thinking ‘Wasp Factory’ when reading that…
‘Cash Gordon’ campaign designed by US anti-healthcare lobbyists
Political Scrapbook has pulled off a hell of scoop this morning…
On the day the US Congress passed legislation providing health coverage to 32 million Americans without insurance, Political Scrapbook can reveal the Conservatives’ Cash Gordon campaign was developed by an anti-healthcare lobbyist described as “Karl Rove 2.0?.
Writing on the Blue Blog yesterday, the affable Sam Coates claimed that Conservatives’ campaign site against Labour/Unite links was “built in just a few days”. What he doesn’t tell you is that the system has been purchased off-the-shelf from Republican strategists David All Group and was originally developed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Cash Gordon is based on Operation Waiting Game, which leverages social media against reforms which, it is claimed, “will have the same devastating effects in the United States as it has in Canada and in nations across Europe: longer wait times and lower quality care”.
To make matters even worse for the Tories…
In an embarrassment for CCHQ, the party’s flagship campaign is currently hosted alongside those attempting to ”rescue America from government-run health care”, including NotSoSure.org and Hands Off. Another site rails against homosexuals in the armed forces, stating the military “should not be used as a tool to advance the goals of gay activist groups”.
For a party that’s now supposedly ‘gay friendly’, the Tories do seem to have rather a lot of queer-bashing ‘friends’.
Gove accused of strike hypocrisy
Over the weekend, the Sunday People dug up another rather embarrassing blast from Michael Gove’s past:
Yes, that is the young Michael Gove pictured on an official NUJ picket line during a long-running dispute in Aberdeen in around 1989/90.
My how times change….
A Song for Cameron
There’s a bit of meme going around at the moment of various blogger’s choosing theme tunes for their blogs all of which led me to the realisation that, thus far, David Cameron hasn’t got a tune.
Barack Obama had a tune…
Bill Clinton had a tune…
Tony had a tune… (sorry!)
And Maggie had loads… (not that she would have wanted them)
But as for Dave, there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon.
Okay, so there are a few obvious contenders, like this…
And Jarvis nails its pretty well, of course…
Sadly, there isn’t a video of Frank Zappa’s cover of The Clovers’ doo-wop classic ‘Cocksucker’s Ball’ so we’ll have to make do the original in honour of D-Cam’s days as a Bullingdon Boy… (definitely NSFW audio)
And I’ve always thought this one by the Beatles fits pretty well…
Although its possible that Beau Bo’s come closest so far to capturing the essence of the Tories…
Tell you what. Let’s throw this one open to the floor… can you think of a better theme tune for D-Cam than any of these?
Telegraph finds entrance to Narnia
MPs’ expenses: Nadine Dorries says ‘main home’ is tiny Cotswold cottage
Nadine Dorries, who has repeatedly declined to disclose the location of the property, was paid the allowances on the basis that she needed two homes to work in both London and her Mid Bedfordshire seat.
Mrs Dorries is under investigation by John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who may recommend that she repay public funds received for unjustified claims.
MPs are entitled to claim back “second home” expenses that were “necessarily incurred in staying overnight away from their main home for the purpose of performing their parliamentary duties”.
Most designate a constituency house as their “main home” and bill taxpayers for a flat close to Westminster, where they can stay the night after working in Parliament.
Yet in a highly unusual arrangement, Mrs Dorries tells Commons officials that her “main home” is a one-bedroomed lodge-keeper’s cottage in a small Cotswold village, 90 miles away from Parliament and 55 miles from her constituency.
This allows her to claim “second home” allowances for her family house in her constituency, where neighbours have stated that she spent a significant amount of her time.
In all she has claimed £60,524 since 2006. She used the money to pay the house’s £18,000-a-year rent, as well as council tax and other domestic bills. She recently moved into a bigger farmhouse half a mile away.
—-
What a wonderful job we’re doing of keeping Nadine in the lifestyle to which she thinks she’s entitled.
Choose your scumbag of the week
As a bit of fun for a Friday morning we thought we’d offer our readers an opportunity to choose their political scumbag of the week, largely because this week has conveniently provided us with a strong field of contenders.
The rules are simple. just read through the following list of political low-lifes, decide which one is biggest scumbag and then use the either the comments facility or twitter* to hurl a bit of pithy but well-merited abuse at them.
*If you tweet in a response you’ll need to include a link to this post for it to be picked up
Sometime during the day – which is likely to more or less when I can be arsed – I’ll tot up the scores and we’ll have ourselves a winner.
So without further ado, lets list the nominees…
Dizzy in a tizzy over MP’s invoice
From the file marked ‘are you fucking stupid or what?’…
A few days ago Dizzy Thinks spotted an oddity in the expense claims of Hull North Labour MP Diana Johnson:
At the end of the detailed, albeit censored claims, provided on the Parliamentary website, is an invoice to the tune of £1,654 for “delivery of a leaflet in Hull North Constituency during September and October 2007?.
Looks legit doesn’t it? However there’s is an oddity about it. You see, there appears to be no such company as J W Shipley Distribution, either solvent or dissolved, listed on Companies House. An advanced search for all companies with “Shipley” also throws up nothing. Curious!
There is, however, an “independent” member of Humberside Police Authority called John Shipley who happens to be a local Labour Party activist in Hull, who also stood for the Labour Party in Hull during the 2002 elections.
I tried to contact Mr Shipley yesterday for confirmation that the invoice was from him but as yet have had no response.
So is a Labour MP claiming Parliamentary expenses to pay a Labour member to deliver leaflets? Well, although he may not have responded, I’ve been speaking to Liberal Democrats in Hull who confirm they personally saw Labour activist (and frequent election agent) John Shipley out delivering the leaflets in question.
Rum indeed. Investigations are, as they say, continuing…
Tell you what, let’s save both LDV and Dizzy the time and effort of making even bigger arses of themselves by pointing out a few screamingly obvious facts.
1. The invoice from ‘JW Shipley Distribution’ does not include a company number nor does it appear to use the words ‘Limited’ or ‘Ltd’, hence Dizzy’s inability to find any reference to it at Companies House.
2. As a sole trader, John Shipley – it this is indeed him – entitled to use just about any business name he likes when carrying out trading activities, as long he doesn’t misrepresent the legal status of his business or use any of the restricted words or phrases set out in company law.
3. According to a statement given to the Yorkshire Post, who picked up this non-story yesterday, the invoice relates to the “distribution of a non-party political Parliamentary report to 40,000 households in Hull North in autumn 2007.”
Typical costs for a solus distribution of a leaflet or newsletter run to around $50 per 1,000 leaflets, which puts the amount listed on the invoice- £1654 – well within the usual ballpark which would, for a 40,000 delivery run – come in at around £2000.
In fact, if you look at the price here then it seem apparent that what JW Shipley Distribution have done is knock off the VAT that would have been payable had the leaflets gone out via an established distribution company, saving the taxpayer £350 in the process.
Unless either can provide evidence to show that the leaflets weren’t delivered or that the payment was not declared to HMRC as income then there’s nothing more to be said here.
Even if a Labour activist did get paid for delivering these leaflets, its of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.
In the days when I used to produce community newsletters for distribution to upwards of 17,000 households I used to farm out the delivery side of things to a local Scout troop and pay them the same amount that I would have done had I gone through a commercial business. I got the newsletters delivered – and usually much more reliably than I would have done by ‘going commercial’ – and they got their utilitiy bills nicely covered with a bit on top for additional equipment and extra activities for the kids.
It’s called localism and it works.
It’s not just criminals who carry knives
Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of Spirit Level films’ excellent new documentary ‘The Fear Factory‘, which I promise I’ll get around to reviewing for Lib Con sometime in the next few days.
In anticipation of that review and in keeping with my recent post on dodgy election leaflets, its been brought to my attention that the Lib Dems have been actively fear-mongering is some of their recent leaflet, the most egregious of which has to be this effort, which is being delivered to households in Haringey.
Why they don’t just go the whole hog and stick out a leaflet featuring Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees I don’t know but for what its worth the leaflet makes the following claims:
One in five thugs who are caught carrying a gun or a knife are let off with a caution. This news once again exposes Labour’s complete failure on crime.
Gordon Brown’s Roll of Shame:
- One in five criminals caught carrying a weapon only get a caution
- Only one crime in a hundred ends with a punishment in court
- Two violent crimes committed every single minute
A little over 18 months ago, a friend of mine left work at about half past six in the evening and started to walk home.
He managed to walk only about 40 yards or so from his workplace when he was stopped by two PCSOs and subjected to a search, during which he was found to be carrying a Stanley knife.
As a result of this, he was issued with a fixed penalty notice for £80.
According to leaflets like this, my friend is both a ‘thug’ and a ‘criminal’, after all he is one of the one in five who ‘got off’ without being dragged in court after he found to be carrying a knife.
As you might well have guessed already, there’s an important detail I’ve yet to mention that casts this story is a somewhat different light, and that detail happens to be the nature of his place of work…
…A local hardware store and builder’s merchants.
My friend isn’t a thug and he certainly isn’t a criminal. He’s was just unlucky enough to forget to take the Stanley knife he uses as work out his pocket on a day on which he ran into a couple of PCSOs on a day who were were on the make and looking for any opportunity the could find to dish out a few tickets.
In fact, he swears to this day that the two PCSOs actually watched him leaving the shop and that that’s the only reason he was pulled over and searched – after all he’s in his late twenties and was wearing his normal work clothes at the time.
So my question to Lynne Featherstone, in whose constituency this leaflet is being delivered is…
Would you like to explain to be my friend exactly why your party is calling him a ‘thug’ and ‘criminal’?
Tories offer state funding to schools linked to ‘occult society’
Liberal Conspiracy has obtained a set of notes taken at a recent seminar which show that the Conservative Party is pushing ahead with plans to provide state funding to a network of independent schools with close ties to a controversial occult society.
The notes were taken at a recent seminar organised by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF), an offshoot of the Anthroposophical Society, which exists to promote the occult philosophies of the German mystic Rudolf Steiner, and also suggest that a newly registered educational charity with close ties to the Conservative Party may be actively engaged in the promotion of Conservative education policy in such a way as to breach the Charity Commission’s regulations on charity involvement in political activity.
The meeting, which took place last November, was described as a ‘pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner Schools’ and included seminars with Sam Freedman, the head of Policy Exchange’s education unit and a current advisor to Shadow Education Minister, Michael Gove, and Rachel Wolf, the Founder/Director of the New Schools Network and former education advisor to the Conservative Party. continue reading… »
Now the Poles are nicking our abortions
It’s a matter of common knowledge that the Daily Express has long since scraped right through the bottom of the barrel and is now busily digging its way to Australia.
Nevertheless, the latest entry in it ongoing ‘thieving foreigners’ series really takes the biscuit:
NOW POLES GET FREE ABORTIONS ON NHS
POSTERS advising Polish women to fly to Britain for free abortions on the NHS sparked outrage yesterday.
They urge women to take advantage of EU rules allowing Poles free medical care in the UK.
And it tells them it is cheaper to fly to the UK to end an unwanted pregnancy than to pay for an illegal backstreet termination in Poland.
The advert – which borrows tastelessly from a famous “Priceless” credit card campaign – is promoted by a Polish feminist group. It was condemned last night for encouraging “abortion tourism”, and piling pressure on the hard-pressed NHS.
Poland has the fourth, or maybe fifth, most restrictive abortion laws in Europe behind the Vatican City, Malta, Andorra, the Irish Republic and, sad to say, Northern Ireland, and that makes thing kind of thing both inevitable and the clearest possible demonstration of the utter futility of placing draconian restrictions on access to abortion services. continue reading… »
Election 2010 – Tackling Graph Abuse
Spring is a time of year that full of firsts. The first newborn lambs. The first snowdrops and daffodills…
…and the first election leaflets to feature an inaccurately drawn graphs, the credit for which appears to be going [inevitably] to the Lib Dems in Camden for this delightful effort>
(Hat Tip: Ben Goldacre)
Obviously, the actual graph that Ben ran across is on the left with my own rather pointed commentary on the right.
So, what are we going to do about this kind of thing?
Rather than run through the usual exercise of taking the piss on a case by case basis, I thought we might try a bit of different approach in an effort to encourage political parties to be a bit more honest in their dealings with the y-axis.
So, today, I’d like to announce the official launch of Liberal Conspiracy’s own Graph-Fix service, which is open to all our readers of whatever political persuasion.
The way the service works is all pretty straightforward.
If you do receive an election leaflet that features a dodgy-looking graph, and it can be any kind of graph from any party, not just the LibDems, then all you need do is send a scan or digital photograph of the graph to me at talkpoliticsuk[at]gmail[dot]com along with the details of the party/candidate responsible and the constituency in which it was delivered.
For purely practical reasons, I would prefer that you only send General Election leaflets – unless you run across something particularly egregious in a local election leaflet – and because there are a fair number of boundary changes this time out, you should also include any information that the leaflet might contain about the source of the information contained in the graph.
I’ll then check the graph for accuracy and, if necessary, redo it so that it provides an accurate visual representation of the information it contains, after which I’ll contact the party in question and send them over a set of corrected image files for future use, including a high quality .eps file for use in their printed materials and jpeg and png files for use on their website.
If we get a few of these, then I’ll also produce a weekly round-up/rogue’s gallery post of the most egregious pieces of y-axis abuse I’ve received that week together with a few suitably sarcastic comments to keep you all entertained.
And that’s all there is to it…
Oh, and regardless of whether you do choose to make use of this service, I would still recommend that you take the time to scan and upload any leaflets you receive to the Straight Choice’s live election leaflet archive.
Cameron TV love-in bombs in the ratings
Oh dear…
Trevor McDonald Meets David Cameron attracted nearly 1.7 million viewers on ITV1 last night, Sunday 14 March – less than half the audience for Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan on the same network last month.
The Conservative leader opted to submit to a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than an interview, with McDonald and the cameras following him at work and at home.
ITV1’s resulting 60-minute documentary attracted 1.689 million viewers and a 10.8% share from 10.15pm, according to unofficial overnights.
This compared with Morgan’s interview with Brown, seen by 4.2 million viewers, a 22.7% share, when it screened in the same Sunday-night slot on 14 February.
If that weren’t bad enough, the Guardian are also reporting that Cameron was well beaten in the ratings by both Match of the Day 2, on which the featured games were Man Utd v Fulham and Sunderland v Man City, and by a repeat of episode three of Great British Railway Journeys, which saw Michael Portillo travelling from Todmorden to York with a trip on the Embsey and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway thrown in for good measure.
What else can you say but…
…Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Lib Dems in a tangle over homeopathy
A couple of weeks ago James Graham helpfully documented one of the more rapid reverse ferrets in recent political history; the rapid withdrawal of a wholly idiotic Lib Dem statement made in response to the Science and Technology Committee’s recently published evidence check report on homeopathy. This week, James is back with a revised Lib Dem statement on homeopathy which he bizarrely describes as ’sensible and measured’. Frankly, ‘disingenuous and weaselling’ would be a rather more apt description of the new statement, which reads as follows:
A recent report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee examined the provision of homeopathy through the NHS and called for funding by the NHS to be stopped. The Committee did recognise that many users derive benefit from its use and did not argue that such treatments should be banned.
When it comes to NHS provision, we support a review by NICE into the cost effectiveness of Complementary and Alternative (CAMs) therapies, including homeopathy; as well as expanding the work of NICE to look at the cost-effectiveness of existing conventional treatments.
The Liberal Democrats believe that, as a basic principle, individuals should have maximum freedom about how they choose to get treated, so long as the therapy is safe. We know that many complementary therapies are popular with the public. The NHS budget is limited and we want to make sure that NHS funding is focused on treatments which are efficacious and cost-effective. NICE reviews of all existing treatments would give us the best possible basis for future decisions over funding.
There ain’t nuthin’ more powerful than the smell of Tory mendacity!
Is Alan Johnson right to accuse the Tories of deceit over their recent claim that violent crime has risen by 44% since 1998?
Of course he is, in fact he doesn’t go anything like far enough in his accusations. Not only are the Tories wilfully misrepresenting the evidence provided by the police recorded crime statistics, but they are also pursuing a deliberate and wholly mendacious strategy of seeking to undermine public confidence in the British Crime Survey, a point that Johnson has, as yet, failed to put over forcefully enough.
As evidence, let’s refer back to an article by the Shadow Justice Minister, Dominic Grieve, which was published by the Telegraph in January 2009 under the title ‘Fiddling statistics is no way to restore public confidence”. In the article, Grieve makes the following claims about the British Crime Survey.
The BCS is an obviously poor measure of violent crime. It does not count homicide offences, rape and multiple assaults. It also excludes some of the most vulnerable victims of violence, including: the homeless, elderly people in care homes, students in digs and – until this year – all children. In fact, we know that police recorded violent crime has nearly doubled since 1997.
Grieve’s suggestion that the BCS is an ‘obviously poor measure of violent crime’ because it does not count homicide offences is as risible as it is boneheaded. The clue here is in the name, British Crime Survey, which explains precisely why it doesn’t count homicide offences – you need to be alive in order to complete the survey form. In any case, homicides accounted for only 662 of the 2.1 million violent offences that the BCS estimated as having taken place in 2008/9, a mere 0.03 percent of the total number of offences. continue reading… »
TUC – Women will be hit hardest by public sector cuts
A new report by the TUC, which is published today to coincide with the start of its annual Women’s Conference, indicates that women are likely to bear the brunt of any job losses resulting from early cuts in public services.
The report, Women and the Recession – One Year On, warns that early public spending cuts would hit female employment hardest because around four in ten women work in public sector occupations, compared to less than two in ten men.
Of particular concern here is the fact that those regions in which women are most likely to rely on the public sector for employment (Wales, the North East and Yorkshire and Humber) also have some of the highest male unemployment rates in the country, making it very likely that early spending cuts, of the kind favoured by the Tories, will result in a substantial rise in the number of families in which neither of the parents are in work.
The report also notes that job losses and other cuts in public expenditure will have a long-term impact on women by substantially reducing their retirement income.
Currently, the average income that women receive in retirement is a third less than the male average, a figure that would be far worse were it not for the superior record of the public sector in providing decent pensions for women and lower-paid staff. With women holding almost two-thirds (64.5 per cent) of defined benefit schemes in the public sector, any cuts in pension rights would disproportionately fall on them.
The report also estimates that women are currently subsidising the public sector to the tune of around £5billion a year in unpaid overtime.
Commenting on the report, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
“Slashing public spending may satisfy fiscal hawks and city traders but it would cause misery to millions of people who have already suffered from the recession. A fresh wave of public sector job losses could leave many families with both parents out of work.
“Many women choose to work in the public sector because it offers secure work with a good work-life balance and a decent retirement income. It’s hardly fair that these are now all under threat thanks to the mistakes of super-rich bankers, who are already back collecting their bonuses.
“When politicians talk about the need for deep spending cuts they rarely say how this would affect ordinary working people. But as our report makes clear – women would have to pay for these cuts with their jobs and pensions.”
The full report can be downloaded here.
Why does algebra reduce teenage conceptions?
I don’t usually do requests, but at the prompting of Watchman in comments, this is part four of my trilogy of posts on teenage pregnancy, and this time we’re looking at whether educational performance makes a difference.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
To try and answer Watchman’s question, I went back to the area data for local authorities in England (using data from 2007) and mapped the conception rates and percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion, for women under 18, against GCSE grades, using standard DCSF categories, e.g. the percentage of school levers gaining 5 GSCEs or better at grades A*-C, etc.
The main results are pretty much what most people would expect.
There is a positive correlation between conception rates and the percentage of young women leaving school without any qualifications at all, although the Pearson coefficient (PMCC = 0.4) indicates that the link here is not, perhaps, as strong as many people would expect.
For young women leaving school with at least some qualifications to their name, the correlation between educational performance and conception rates is a bit stronger (PMCC = -0.5 to -0.6) for most of the performance categories.
In general terms, areas with better GCSE results have lower conception rates in women under 18, although the link is a fairly moderate one.
There was, however, one very interesting result in the analysis. continue reading… »
Why do so many teenagers get pregnant?
And so we come to the third and final part of my triptych of commentaries on teenage pregnancy, in which we’ll look afresh at the national picture and at:
a) why Labour’s efforts to reduce the number teenage pregnancies by half between 1999 and 2009 proved to be a failure, regardless of what Alex (at Labour List) would like to think and why, in fact, it was never going to be a success; and
b) why social conservatives have nothing at all to crow about here, and are no more likely to succeed in cutting conception rates amongst teenagers than Labour.
To quickly recap the story so far, what we’ve found it that within England there is a strong link between conception, birth and abortion rates for women under 20 and local patterns of socio-economic deprivation.
By looking at data from the EU, we’ve also found regional patterns in Europe that correspond to local patterns in England, with trends in teenage pregnancy rates in areas of low socio-economic deprivation most closely resembling those in Scandinavia, while areas of high socio-economic deprivation show trends that most closely match the Baltic states and other parts of Eastern Europe.
So it seems that the economy is driving teenage pregnancy rates..?
Yes… and no. continue reading… »
Michael Foot (1913-2010)
“Foot arrived in the High Street, on what was his 70th anniversary of joining the Labour party, pushing a Zimmer frame that doubled as a seat. When supporters came up to meet him he took his glasses off and tipped his head to one side to listen. At 92 years old he was as articulate as ever.”
“Looking at literature from the BNP that had been circulated locally, he said. ‘They are a disgrace to this country. We had a similar problem with Mosley in the East End. They came in and tried to steam up hatred on racial grounds. Labour led the opposition to Mosley then, and they will do it today with the BNP. People have to vote Labour to stop this.”
The Observer, Sunday May 1st 2005
—–
On behalf of everyone associated with Lib Con, we’d like to express our condolences of Michael’s family and friends.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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