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Lesson for Dorries: report says abstinence education doesn’t work

by Unity    
July 1, 2011 at 4:24 pm

The American Foundation for AIDS Research published a new issue briefing in 2007, which fully deserves to be widely circulated.

It assesses the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education programmes for HIV prevention amongst young people.

The briefing pulls together the evidence from a wide range of published studies covering the outcomes of abstinence-only programmes in both the US and internationally and arrives at an unsurprising but damning conclusion:
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Eric Pickles uses his department to push rubbish, media ignores it

by Paul Cotterill    
June 26, 2011 at 4:08 pm

Ben Goldacre uncovered a massive scandal the other day, but as far as I can see no-one has picked up on its political importance (as opposed to Ben’s media slant).

It concerns a press release from Pickles’ Department, which announces:

New, cutting edge analysis of council spending data by procurement experts Opera Solutions has revealed that greater transparency coupled with improved analysis is the key to unlocking massive savings by driving down costs.

The report gives the highest estimate yet of potential savings that could be achieved if councils secure better value for the £50 billion of public money they spend on procurement every year. The £10 billion figure is equal to £452 per household every year and equivalent to the salaries of almost half a million bin men or 650,000 dinner ladies.

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Once again, ministers ignore evidence of low benefit fraud

by Richard Exell    
June 23, 2011 at 9:02 am

How much Tax Credit fraud takes place? As of yesterday, we know the answer to this question.

In 2009/10 no more than 1.9% of tax credit entitlement was accounted for by fraud. 1.4% was a more likely figure. What is more, this figure was down from 2.3% in 2008/9.

Once again the government is nowhere to be seen in appreciating how low this figure is.
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Workless households: another success ministers don’t want to explain

by Richard Exell    
June 21, 2011 at 1:26 pm

Yesterday new statistics showed that the proportion of working age households who were workless was lower in 2010 than in 1997 – despite an increase after the global recession hit this country.

There was even more good news: the proportion of children living in workless households was also lower in 2010 than in 1997 and the number of children fell by more than a third of a million. I held off blogging about this until today because I wanted to double-check whether DWP Ministers would say anything about these figures.

Of course they didn’t – it was good news and they seem only to be interested in bad-mouthing the achievements of the Department they run.
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A Liberal Conspiracy guide to the “hateful Right”

by Don Paskini    
June 21, 2011 at 9:00 am

Matthew Barrett on ConservativeHome wrote an article yesterday about “the hateful Left”.

After a full day’s work, Barrett managed to find nine journalists who are members of this “hateful Left”. We’ve come up with ten members of the “hateful Right” – it took us about ten minutes to compile, and we aren’t even scratching the surface.

If I were a right winger, I would think twice before accusing my political opponents of “spewing poison” or being hateful, particularly if after a day’s work the best haters that I could come up with were Owen Jones, Laurie Penny and a cartoon in the Guardian being mean about Iain Duncan Smith. So here’s a selection of some of the finest right-wing hatred, lies, self-pity and downright ignorance:
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Cameron’s Cuddliest Conservatives

by Guest    
June 17, 2011 at 4:01 pm

Contribution by Sarah Hayward

Fridays are normally a bit of non-event as far as Parliament is concerned. But it’s always worth checking out what backbenchers are up to. Today saw the second reading of Christopher Chope’s private member’s effort, the Employment Opportunities Bill. Among the provisions of the attractively-titled Bill was an opt-out on the national minimum wage.

Yes. It seems despite Cameron’s best detoxification efforts, and embracing of Labour’s landmark policy, there’s still a rump of Tories willing to support efforts to lower wages for the least well-off, ironically and inversely pushing up the welfare bill for those benefits that are linked to income, but that’s another blog.
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How Cameron is ignorant of the real world

by Paul Cotterill    
June 16, 2011 at 3:00 pm

So Ed Miliband’s had a good PMQs, and all the Westminster bubble commentators, the Westminster bubble wannabee spin doctors and the Westminster bubble ex-wanabee-but-wanabee-again-soon-spin doctors are really happy that he got stuck into Cameron by exploiting the latter’s weakness in policy detail and implementation.

It’s almost as though that exactly what they thought he should do, although of course last week I think one of them thought the best way forward was to come clean about how Labour rubbish was and how great the Tories’ plans are for everything. continue reading… »

Government’s own report admits welfare cuts will reduce incentives to work

by Sue Marsh    
June 10, 2011 at 9:27 am

After weeks of asking and several Freedom Of Information requests, I’ve finally unearthed the “assessment” the DWP did into Time Limiting (to one year) the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)!

Clearly I use the word assessment in much the way ATOS do: pick a policy and then write some stuff that proves what you want to say.

Just in case you are not an uber-geek like me and can’t stay awake long enough to plough through 16 pages of fairy stories, here’s a quick summary:
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Why Cameron’s triangulation could be his greatest weakness

by Adam Ramsay    
June 9, 2011 at 11:40 am

Labour was always accused of spinning. In a sense, this seems to ultimately have contributed much to their downfall – but not in the ways we would expect.

The usual complaint about spin is that it misleads. But this feeling of spin didn’t cost Labour any election. Despite the lies of the Iraq War, the 2005 election wasn’t even close. I’ve not heard anyone argue this was a major issue in the 2010 election.

No, for me, the problem is that Labour never made the case for the principles of the left.
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How do you sleep at night, Chris Grayling?

by Sue Marsh    
June 9, 2011 at 9:34 am

Yesterday, the Conservative minister Chris Grayling told us that assessments used to determine whether or not someone is “fit for work” or not are “not money driven” – somehow ignoring the “target” of saving £1 billion from the sickness benefits bill.

And here’s Mr Grayling, during a recent DWP committee meeting, telling us that the decision to stop all ESA benefits entirely after one year – whether the person is then fully recovered or fit for work or not – was entirely based on cost cutting.

When asked if after one year these vulnerable sick or disabled people would have found work or even be fit for work, he replied:
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More on Tory plans to character assassinate Miliband as “odd Ed”

by Sunny Hundal    
June 8, 2011 at 11:00 am

I want to come back to Tim Montgomerie’s article in the Mail on Sunday where he reveals:

When Ed Miliband first became leader, Conservative HQ decided to paint Gordon Brown’s successor as Red Ed — a high-taxing, high-spending prisoner of the trade union movement. Research reveals that voters haven’t rejected this Red Ed label — but larger numbers have now decided that he’s Odd Ed.

The retort that ‘voters are saying this, not us, honest‘ is an old trick when doing character assassinations.
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Govt research shows Future Jobs Fund a success

by Don Paskini    
June 5, 2011 at 10:00 am

One of the first acts of the government last year was to get rid of the Future Jobs Fund. One year on, they’ve finally got round to doing some research about whether or not the Fund worked.

And guess what? “This study suggests that FJF has been successful in preparing customers for work and, for many participants their reported experiences had been to such a high standard, that they could not think of any improvements to the scheme.”
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What happened to your pledge not to close hospitals Mr Cameron?

by Richard Blogger    
June 5, 2011 at 9:45 am

The British love the NHS and in particular, they love hospitals. When I give a talk about the government’s NHS policy I often start by asking people to say what most embodies what they think is “the NHS”. It is not GPs; it is always hospitals.

Politicians know this and they are careful when it comes to suggesting that a hospital has to be downgraded or even closed. In some cases politicians even campaign against their own party’s Secretary of State. While in opposition, David Cameron was adamantly against closing them.
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Westminster shocked as Tory says Labour must listen to them

by Sunny Hundal    
June 4, 2011 at 4:43 pm

Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome is unfailingly polite in person and clearly a very good editor. I’m not convinced by his political nous though. After all, he was convinced the Conservatives failed to win a majority in 2010 because they didn’t push hard enough on immigration – a claim rejected by Lord Ashcroft himself rather convincingly.

Montgomerie writes in the Daily Mail today: ‘Ed Miliband is a disaster not just for Labour but for democracy‘. All very nuanced as I’m sure you can imagine.
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Will Cameron cut Lansley loose over the NHS? I doubt it

by Sunny Hundal    
May 29, 2011 at 1:14 pm

The Sunday Telegraph today has an extraordinary report today that David Cameron is planning to drop Andrew Lansley over the NHS Bill.

But it looks to me like the conflict between Lansley and Cameron is being played up by the media.
The Telegraph says:
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The government’s migration policy is failing

by Guest    
May 26, 2011 at 4:12 pm

contribution by Sean Bamford

Figures release by the National Office for Statistics this morning shows net migration at its highest level in more than five years. A major factor in producing these figures is the decline in the number of people leaving the UK. 344,000 people left the UK in the year to September 2010, down 20% from its peak of 427,000 in the 12 months to December 2008,

By contrast the number of migrants coming in to the UK has remained broadly constant at 586,000, taking net migration to 242,000, up from 198,000 at the end of 2009 and 163,000 the year before.
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Andrew Lansley and his wife: a conflict of interest?

by Diane Abbott MP    
May 23, 2011 at 9:02 am

At the heart of the Tory NHS ‘reforms’ are concern about the encroachment of the private sector. So the fact that Andrew Lansley’s wife has set up shop as “Low Associates” offering “strategic policy advice” is of more than passing interest.

Sally Lansley’s (nee Lowe) company is based in her home, so it must be challenging to keep her role as Andrew Lansley’s wife and her role as a strategic policy advisor separate.
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How Ken Clarke could redeem himself

by Guest    
May 19, 2011 at 8:17 pm

contribution by Emma Poole

I’m not sure it’s a task anyone could achieve but if he followed the little bit of “soapbox” advice I’m going to give here, then it’d help redeem him in my eyes.

As you may be aware I am a rape survivor. Luckily it wasn’t a “serious” rape as he didn’t punch me at the same time! To me though, it has been a curse.
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What happened to Libdem promises on social care?

by Guest    
May 19, 2011 at 2:03 pm

contribution by Richard Blogger

The Health and Social Care Bill addresses social care on every page: because it is in the title that is on every page. The Bill does not address the huge issues in social care at the moment, it does not address the forthcoming crisis in social care.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto says this:

We will integrate health and social care to create a seamless service, ending bureaucratic barriers and saving money to allow people to stay in their homes for longer rather than going into hospital or longterm residential care.

Cue applause from yours truly. Has the Health and Social Care Bill done this? No, not at all.
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How Lord Ashcroft hopes to deliver a ‘Conservative majority’ for 2015

by Sunny Hundal    
May 18, 2011 at 9:10 am

A year into the current government, Lord Ashcroft has done a detailed analysis of voters perceive the Conservative party and what is required for a majority (a vote share of around 40%) can be achieved in 2015.

It’s an impressive document that is worth dissecting; usefully, posted online. Here are some excerpts on the direction of travel Lord Ashcroft thinks Conservatives should take.
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