Unions are propping up the Labour Party by Sunny H

George Eaton at the New Statesman illustrates how dependent the Labour Party has become on money from the unions.

As donations from the rich have dried up, the party has become increasingly dependent on trade union money (see graph).

In the first nine months of 2009, trade unions accounted for 72 per cent of the total £10.9m in donations to Labour, up from 52 per cent in 2008. Back in 1994, when Tony Blair became Labour leader, trade unions accounted for just a third of the party’s annual income.

While such dependency is an issue for New Labour, it is also an issue for the trade unions who will increasingly ask whether it is worth their while to prop up the Labour Party when it is doing little to support workers’ rights, or build a broad membership base.

Eaton adds:

Meanwhile, the unions may begin to question whether they are getting value for money. The tightest squeeze on public spending since the 1970s and a cap on public-sector pay rises may lead members to challenge union heads over donations.

The best Cameron billboard poster spoofs by Sunny H

An actual defacement

Posted on Virtual Economics

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From My David Cameron

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From My David Cameron

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From Go Fourth

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By Beau Bo D’Or

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By Beau Bo D’Or

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By Beau Bo D’Or

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And there’s another one at Frank Owen’s Paintbrush

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Use the My David Cameron website to create your own

How the Tories have flip-flopped on education by Sunny H

The Education Maintenance Allowance is a weekly grant given to poor students, worth up to £30 a week, to encourage them to carry on staying in education.

The DirectGov site says:

Basically, EMA is cash in your hands to help you carry on learning. If you’re 16, 17 or 18 and have left, or are about to leave, compulsory education, then it could be for you.
…
There’s no catch. As long as you attend regularly and work hard, there should be no problem in receiving EMA. And if you stay in learning, it could affect what you earn – the latest research shows that learning a new skill and getting a new qualification can actually mean more money in your hands,increasing your annual salary by up to £3,000.

In unveiling their education policy this week, the Conservatives claimed they supported the EMAs. Shadow education secretary Michael Gove told Parliament: He was “absolutely” in their favour.

But the evidence actually shows deep tory confusion and flip-flopping over whether they would support the measure.

The blog Left Foot Forward uncovered these quotes from the Conservative shadow cabinet:

- Chris Grayling, January 2005: “Bribing young people to sign up for courses they may not complete might make ministers’ targets look achievable – but [EMAs] do absolutely nothing to help solve this country’s chronic skills shortage.”

- David Cameron, November 2007: “we think there are some really practical problems and issues with that sort of compulsion”

- Michael Gove, January 2008: [Asked if was in favour of EMAs] Yes, absolutely

- Michael Gove, August 2008: Claimed it was a flop and, according to the Guardian, “said fewer than 400 extra children eligible for free school meals (FSM) had stayed on after finishing GCSEs since 2004, despite the introduction of the EMA at a cost of £924m.”

- David Cameron, January 2009: Says again that “Yes” he supports EMAs.

It seems the Conservatives are yet to settle on a coherent education strategy.

UK to get £2bn from bankers’ bonuses tax by Sunny H

Reuters reports:

Britain looks set to reap a windfall of at least 2 billion pounds as its controversial tax on bank bonuses fails to deter banks from paying a round of big payouts.

With around three weeks to go before 2009 bonus packages are signed off, banking sources dismiss original government estimates that the 50 percent tax on bonuses over 25,000 pounds would raise around 550 million pounds.

At a time when the public purse is tight, this will be welcome news for many within government. We have gone from £550 million to £2 billion.

Inevitably there is criticism from the Financial Times, which has declared the tax a failure because it failed to stop banks from giving out huge bonuses.

But was it all a waste of a time? The Guardian’s Nils Pratley says it points to a deeper problem:

The episode has at least demonstrated that shareholders, who ultimately bear the cost of the bonus tax, are a supine bunch. Institutional investors were meant to act as the policemen here, telling banks to preserve capital instead of paying an avoidable tax. These big investors have failed to speak out. It’s time for the likes of Legal & General, Prudential, Fidelity, Schroders and Aviva to explain why.

Earlier this week the impending imposition of the bankers bonuses tax led London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson to complain.
He said:

I am extremely anxious about rumours in the City that seem to confirm that the recent knee-jerk and ill-thought-out tax grab by the Government to punish bankers is causing some of our most important institutions to consider their options,

Funny. He doesn’t have a problem with punishing London’s poor commuters, only rich bankers.

Iain Dale appoints himself arbitrator of blogs by Sunny H

The hysterical Conservative blogger Iain Dale wrote a blog post today titled ‘Is Left Foot Forward Really “Evidence Based”?‘

His complaint is that:

Left Foot Forward rather pioulsy describes itself as an “evidence based blog”. Why, therefore, is THIS story still on its site? It alleges a Conservative U-Turn on Educational Maintenance Allowances. The author of the piece, James Mills, alleged that David Cameron had reversed Tory policy on EMAs at a Cameron Direct meeting in Hammersmith. He said that Cameron had said he would keep EMAs, while other Tories, like Michael Gove were committed to outright abolition.

After seeing a video of the event LFF admitted that the words attributed to Cameron had not actually been uttered.

He then goes on to say that in his opinion LFF should “should issue an apology for this blogpost after having removed it”.

Who died and appointed Iain Dale the arbitrator of how blogs should behave?

A few weeks ago Dale published a blog-post titled ‘Oxford is Cool‘, which continued in a series of ill-informed posts spouting global warming denialism.

That blog post was thoroughly eviscerated by Unity here – but rather than amend his blog post to admit his mistake, Dale instead tried to pretend he was being victimised.
In his defence he said then:

I regard the internet as a place for debate – where you can throw something out there and let people debate the rights and wrongs.

One standard for himself and another for others. Even when exposed as having published complete shite, Dale refused to amend his mistake.

In this case, Will Straw has already pointed out his defence:

1) We issued a clarification as soon as it became apparent that James’ recollections of David Cameron’s precise comments were wrong. But the substantive point remains that David Cameron now says he supports EMAs when he previously said “we think there are some really practical problems and issues with that sort of compulsion”, Grayling said it had done “absolutely nothing to help solve this country’s chronic skills shortage” and Michael Gove called them a flop. Read our full piece for the full story.

2. The point about describing ourselves as “evidence-based” was simply that we would use links and first-hand testimony to back up our stories and would try and avoid churning out too much opinion. Generally we get it right but we sometimes get it wrong. If we do so we correct it – something that can’t be said for all bloggers.

More funny #lolplot pics on yesterday’s failed coup by Sunny H

(made by reader redpesto)

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(made by reader redpesto)

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(made by reader redpesto)

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(made by reader Ed Rooksby)

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(made by reader Ed Rooksby)

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(made by reader David Wright)

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Who scooped the Hoon – Hewitt plot? by Sunny H

Who actually broke the story that Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon were planning to rebel against Gordon Brown? Sure, it’s not a big issue but I’m interested in it as a matter of record.

Rumours last night that Tessa Jowell was planning to leave were of course unfounded. So go to the real names first?

It did look like the first person to have tweeted it was Andrew Sparrow at the Guardian. But it doesn’t list the exact time.

Guido Fawkes claims he was not long after that, but actually he was third in line.

By 12:17pm James Macintyre at the New Statesman had published the story on his blog, before the Guardian did.

The New Statesman tweeted it immediately too.

So even if Andrew tweeted it first, he wrote the story after. James on the other hand wrote the story first and then tweeted it.

So it looks like the New Statesman’s James Macintyre got that scoop, and Guido’s inference that he was second is wrong.

How many new Quangos has Cameron announced? by Sunny H

David Cameron promised a ‘bonfire of the Quangos’ last year when he attacked Labour for making people “feel so powerless”.

This week on Liberal Conspiracy we’re launching Cameron’s Quango Watch, given the party has finally started announcing some policies.

New Quango no. 1:

“We will introduce a [supermarket] ombudsman to curb abuses of power which undermine our farmers and act against the long-term interest of consumers,” Nick Herbert, shadow minister for farming and environment told a farming conference here.

Sounds like a good idea, but it’s still a new quango.

New Quango no. 2:

To make sure the NHS is funded on the basis of clinical need, not political expediency, we will create an independent NHS board to allocate resources to different parts of the country and make access to the NHS more equal. (Page

Only yesterday the Conservatives were arguing for more political interference just before they argued against it.

So that’s two new quangos so far. Please let us know if you spot any more.

Update: New Quango no. 3

“George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, outlined plans on Tuesday to keep a future Tory government on a strict path to cutting the £178bn deficit, including the creation of a new three-person “budget responsibility committee” to police his plans… The Tory plan would see the creation of an office of budget responsibility, producing medium-term borrowing forecasts, making official recommendations for fiscal policy and assessing the UK’s fiscal sustainability over 50 years.” – FT

(via Rosie in the comments)

Sun forced into crushing apology over Prof. Nutt by Septicisle

Back in November the Sun decided that it was time to resort to the old tabloid trick of attacking someone by association when they couldn’t lay a finger on the target himself personally.

David Nutt, a senior adviser on drugs to the ACMD, had just been defenestrated by Alan Johnson for daring to argue again that cannabis isn’t as dangerous as either the government claims or its classification suggests.

So naturally it was time to go scouting around his children’s social networking pages to see if they could find any pay dirt.

The result, an article which accused his son Stephen of partaking in cannabis because he was smoking what was clearly a roll-up and not a normal, honest, cigarette, his daughter Lydia of drinking underage, and the by no means hypocritical sneering at his eldest son for appearing naked in the snow in Sweden, ended up being removed with days of it appearing.

Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission published Stephen Nutt’s letter of complaint on their website (h/t Tabloid Watch):

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper removed the article from the website, undertook not to repeat the story and published the following letter:

FURTHER to your article about photographs of me on my Facebook site, (November 14) I would like to make clear the pictures were not posted by me and while I had been drinking I was smoking a rolled-up cigarette which did not contain cannabis as the article insinuated. My younger sister Lydia was not intoxicated, so was not drinking under age.

My older brother lives in Sweden where it is custom to use a sauna followed by a ‘romp’ in the snow in winter. He was neither drunk nor under the influence of intoxicants. Innocuous photographs were taken out of context in an attempt to discredit my father’s work.

Which is about as comprehensive and wounding a clarification as ever gets published in the Sun.

The article was so obviously in breach of the PCC’s code on privacy, not to mention accuracy, that it should never have been published in the first place though; why then should the paper get away without making anything approaching an apology, only having to print a clarification buried away on the letters page?

Reasons why Tory family tax-breaks won’t work by Newswire

(image by Beau Bo D’Or)

The Conservative Party is debating whether marriages should be ‘recognised in the tax system‘ as a means to encourage marriage and give further tax breaks to middle-class parents.

The Financial Times’ economics editor Chris Giles outlines several reasons why these won’t work:

Simplicity. Transferable tax allowance further complicate the income tax system.
Independence. Recognising marriage in the tax system undermines a woman’s (or a man’s) ability to keep her income separate from that of her spouse. Women’s legitimate irritation at being treated by the state as an appendage to their husbands was one of the main reasons the tax system became increasingly blind to marriage under the last Conservative government in the 1980s and 1990s.

Misunderstanding history. It wasn’t nutty progressives who got rid of the married man’s allowance and undermined the married couples’ allowance in the tax system. It was a combination of those awful lefties (Nigel Lawson, John Major, Norman Lamont and Kenneth Clarke) who were Conservative chancellors between 1983 and 1997. Gordon Brown took the last bit of the married couples allowance and called it the children’s tax allowance in 2001. It now has a new and horrible name: ‘the family element of the child tax credit’ and it is assessed on joint family income.

Incoherence 1. George Osborne wants to get rid of the family element of the child tax credit – ie the one part of the tax system that is a remnant of the old married man’s allowance. In his 2009 Party Conference speech, he said: “We can no longer justify paying means-tested tax credits to families with incomes over £50,000.” This passage came just six paragraphs after he said: “That is why we are going to support marriage in the tax and benefit system.”

Incoherence 2. The standard argument for a marriage tax break goes like this. Children of married parents have better and more stable lives, therefore marriage is good, therefore the tax system should support marriage. While the correlation is true, there is no evidence that proves the causality runs in this direction. Only the most bone-headed reject the possibility that stable, well-meaning couples are likely both to marry and to raise children well. This wilful confusion of correlation with causation is really worrying in politicians that seek to govern.

Incoherence 3. Is the world really a better place if a couple who would have chosen not to marry decide to tie the knot because they would pay a little less tax? It strikes me as perhaps the most morally dubious reason possible for marriage.

The full blog post with more reasons is here.

[via Paul Sagar]

Why Goldman Sachs isn’t going anywhere by John B

The usual suspects are in full-on froth mode about the non-news on Goldman Sachs allegedly moving to somewhere godawful to escape a small, one-off tax on salaries.

Obviously, like nearly all right-wing frothers nearly all the time, they’re talking complete and utter bollocks.

US culture site the Awl nails it on why:

Goldman Sachs “is understood to be considering its options in the wake of the UK’s windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses, a new 50pc top income tax rate, and increased banking regulations” is hilarious, and it is also a dead giveaway that the Telegraph uses the phrasing “is understood” to introduce this idea. Let’s see: here’s an incredibly-secretive, super-private financial institution of which it can be “understood” that they’re going directly to the papers as the first volley in a bargaining plan. But: hilarious! They’re going to pretend that they’re willing to leave London? They’re going to offshore the London office? To where? Glamorous downtown Sofia? Belfast? Tallinn or Toronto?

Think it through, boys. Nobody who works in that office will leave London! What’s the point of being rich if you have to live somewhere crappy? It just doesn’t work like that. You can near-shore and off-shore the jobs no one wants to Salt Lake City or wherever—but you can’t move the income producers to a town where they can’t get a cab and a fat steak. If you give Goldman Sachs anything at all to stay put, it means you both are huge morons, just like New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg was when GS pretended it was going to move from downtown Manhattan to more expensive quarters in midtown, and they wouldn’t even have done that. Ever.

Word.

BBC agrees TPA not an impartial body by Sunny H

The BBC’s Helen Boaden has admitted that the TaxPayers’ Alliance is not an impartial body and would do more to avoid giving that impression in the future.

She was replying in a letter to John Prescott MP, who had earlier complained about the way BBC News described and covered the right-wing lobby group.

In the letter, published on John Prescott’s blog, she said:

I do accept that the TPA’s publicatons and policies come from a distinctive political position and think we should try to avoid our output giving the impression that it is an impartial body.

I’ll be discussing with senior colleagues how we might do that in the same way that we discuss all the wider editorial issues that I have to deal with as Director of News.

The BBC’s changed position will be welcome news to many who have constantly pointed out the TPA’s close links to the Conservative Party.

The TPA has also failed to comment on Tories wasting taxpayer money in the past.

More bizarrely, Helen Boaden also said:

I do not think it would be accurate or fair to describe it on air, as you suggest, as “a group with close links to the Conservative Party.”

… despite admitting it had many close links with the Conservative Party.

‘The trouble with Tories and Twitter…’ by Newswire

Labour MP Kerry McCarthy has had an unobtrusive career since she entered parliament in 2005, voting along party lines with relentless loyalty. Her parliamentary expenses are a bit more interesting, if you’re keen on interior design – McCarthy furnished her London home from Habitat – but even then, she’s a fairly middling figure. TheyWorkForYou gives her claims for 2007/2008 a ranking of 215th out of 645 MPs. That leaves plenty of more spectacular receipt-flashers ahead of her.

If you’ve heard of McCarthy, it’s probably in her capacity as Labour’s new media campaign spokesperson, or (even more likely) as “Twitter tsar” – encouraging her colleagues to embrace the communicative powers of technology, and maintaining impressively open channels through her own blog and Twitter account. Well, open apart from a few exceptions.

In mid-December last year, she blocked blogger Iain Dale after a minor tweet-spat. And, shortly after, McCarthy was elevated from the Labour mass to become a key target for online Tory campaigners, with Dale promoting a #kerryout campaign set up by fellow right-wing blogger Tory Bear and citing “her behaviour on Twitter” as a compelling reason to push her out. Because social media etiquette is always hovering just above education, immigration and employment in a voter’s mind.

…read Sarah Ditum’s full article here

Obama makes first trans-gendered appointment by Newswire

President Barack Obama has appointed what is believed to be the first transgender woman to a senior government role.

Defense industry veteran Amanda Simpson of Tuscon, Arizona, who really is a rocket scientist, was just appointed by President Obama to the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security as a senior technical advisor.

Her job will include managing exports of dual use technology as well as conducting press and media liaison work for the agency.

In a statement she said:

I’m truly honored to have received this appointment and am eager and excited about this opportunity that is before me,” she said in a statement.

“But as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others.

More at The Huffington Post.

Unsurprisingly, several conservative Christians in the US described her appointment as ‘political correctness’ (gone mad?)

Evening Standard finally turns on Boris over fares by Sunny H

This was the front page of the Evening Standard yesterday.

We pointed out on 1st January:

From January 4th, millions of Londoners will return to work to find they have been hit by Mayor Boris Johnson’s huge fare increases:

- A single bus journey by Oyster up 20% to £1.20
- A weekly oyster bus pass up 20% to £16.60
- Six-zone peak single Tube fare by Oyster up 10.5% to £4.20
- A five-zone off-peak single Tube fare (outside zone 1) up 18.2% to £1.30
- Most Oyster pay-as-you-go Tube fares up by 20p per trip.

Overall tube fares will rise 3.9% and overall bus fares up by 12.7%.

It seems the Evening Standard has finally decided to hold Boris to account.

Picture posted by @politic_animal on Twitter.

Muslims to counter-protest extremist march by Sunny H

The group British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) has today issued a press release stating it was “alarmed and disappointed” to learn that the extremist group Al Muhajiroun, in the guise of “Islam4UK,” were planning a procession through the streets of Wootton Bassett.

The choice of venue was deliberately designed to cause maximum offence and distress to friends and families of fallen servicemen.

Dr Shaaz Mahboob, Vice Chair of BMSD, said:

We stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Wootton Bassett and the Armed Forces. The vast majority of British Muslims accept our Armed Forces are doing an admirable job under exceptionally difficult circumstances.”

“It is only because of the sacrifice of these brave soldiers that extremists like ‘Islam4UK’ are able to protest freely. Anjum Choudary and his followers betray everything this country stands for and the very constituency they claim to represent, which is ordinary British Muslims.

We plan to hold a counter-protest to demonstrate that ordinary Muslims are deeply opposed to the values of Islam4UK.

BMSD will also write to “Islam4UK” later this week, urging them to cancel their protest and respect both the neutrality and military tradition of Wootton Bassett.

Did US evangelicals urge Ugandan anti-gay Act? by Newswire

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
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For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
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The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.

…more at the New York Times

Graph: why UK health spending better than US by Sunny H

This graph published first on the National Geographic blog clearly illustrates the difference between spending and outcomes in the UK and US healthcare systems.

It shows how much more Americans spend just to do slightly better than the UK in life expectancy.

It doesn’t even take into account that lack of health insurance contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year in the US.

Despite David Cameron’s claims that he is fully committed to the NHS – he has recently had meetings with advocates who seek to undermine the NHS as it stands now.

[hat tip @CharlesArthur]

Watch: Fox News guest – strip-search all Muslims by Newswire

“We have to use profiling. And I mean be very serious and harsh about the profiling,” retired Lt. General Tom McInerney of the U.S. Air Force tells Fox News.

But such attempts are likely to increase our threat from terrorism.

Studies have showed that many militants and terrorists are actually driven by humiliation they suffered from authorities and deep sense of revenge that inspired.

[via Mediaite]

Indy keeps batting for Tories with Eton intvw by Sunny H

The Independent continued its tacit support for the Conservatives yesterday in an interview with the headmaster at Eton School.

The deeply sympathetic interview by deputy political editor Nigel Morris said it was a: ‘Warning for Labour over attacks on public school background of Tory leader’.

The interview helpfully highlighted the apparent effort Eton makes in attracting students from a range of backgrounds.

Tony Little, who has been head of the £9,617-a-term school for seven years has criticised politicians who have used its name to score points.
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Mr Cameron, in turn, has been trying to play down his schooling in an attempt to boost his credibility with the general public and avoid being dismissed as an out-of-touch toff.

Mr Little said “one might have hoped” such tactics had been left behind in the last century, but added that he and the school tried to rise above them.