How do we resolve our housing problem?
contribution by Michael Gun-Why
Housing Policy died around the mid-1990s. It died a slow silent death. What was once an important ministerial portfolio was subsumed into urban regeneration agendas and programmes to tackle anti-social behaviour.
In the last month, with the mild furore over the cutting of housing benefit, we have witnessed the death rattles of housing policy. Several cases in national newspapers of large unemployed families living in million pound mansions in London, make the case for cutting housing benefit simply ‘common sense’, doesn’t it? The answer is yes.
The problem for left of centre progressives is this doesn’t feel right.
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The minister is right to warn press not to follow the lurid gossip
The Telegraph reports on its front-page that “a Cabinet minister is ready to take legal action to halt a series of increasingly lurid but baseless rumours sweeping Westminster over his sexuality … Friends of the minister have warned that he will not hesitate to take “action” should unfounded allegations that he is homosexual, which are circulating on the internet, appear in mainstream media”.
This identity would be considerably more closely guarded from Telegraph readers if the newspaper had not already placed itself at the forefront of those using online sources to spread innuendo with the subtlety of a brick in its Mandrake diary column on Wednesday.
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Increasing benefits helps people get jobs
Right-wing think tank boss Neil O’Brien writes that:
“If you give people more benefits, they will be better off today. But if that encourages them to stay on benefits, rather than find work, they will be poorer tomorrow. “The question to ask,” as Nick Clegg wrote, “is what its dynamic effects are, particularly across the generations. How does it increase opportunities? Will it unlock the poverty trap or deepen it?”"
Let’s have a look at what these dynamic effects might be.
Between 1996 and 2009, benefits for lone parents were increased substantially. So according to the Clegg/O’Brien theory, we would expect more of them to be encouraged to stay on benefits. Over the same time period, benefits for single adults of working age decreased in real terms. The same theory would suggest that this would lead to more people finding work.
Here’s what actually happened:
In 1996, during a time of economic growth, 45% of lone parents were in work. In 2009, when Britain was in severe recession, 57% of lone parents were in work. continue reading… »
Contrary to the media, the sex industry doesn’t empower women
contribution by Sian Norris
We live in a society that has very successfully sold the sex industry to us as an empowering ‘lifestyle’ choice where women exploit men’s ‘need’ for sex in order to extract money from them.
We are told that it’s a free choice and feminists who criticise that choice are prudes, anti sex and anti women.
This cultural narrative is a chimera that disguises the real story of the sex industry, a story that involves PTSD, sexual assault, drug abuse and sex trafficking.
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Is Norman Tebbit more tolerant of gays than Labour leaders?
In the long tradition of controversial blog titles, I submit the above for you consideration.
It seems an odd statement after all, Norman Tebbit is a man notorious for his “strident” position on homosexuality.
Throughout the years he has done a number of things which leave him somewhat estranged from the gay community.
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Taxpayers’ Alliance: take from the poor to give to the rich
The Taxpayer’s Alliance have a new report out about how to reform welfare.
They claim to have spent a lot of time on the report, and it includes detailed calculations for things like the computation of negative income tax (if rG – T >= 0, then N = M – rG + T and so on).
It is an attempt to simplify the benefits system and improve financial incentives for people to take a job, while reducing the overall cost of the system.
The way that it seeks to do this is by making lots of middle and lower income taxpayers considerably worse off.
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Where do Lib Dems really stand on gay marriage?
Recently, Simon Hughes spoke to this issue in a video interview, then widely reported – e.g. by gay media outlet Pink News – that Hughes had indicated that gay marriage will happen in this parliament.
However, that is a rather optimistic assessment of what Hughes actually said. Indeed, Hughes actually dampened expectations that gay marriage would be adopted as a matter of Lib Dem party policy, let alone coalition policy.
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A drug to ‘cure’ lesbianism?
contribution by Elly
This week Newsweek reported that a doctor at Florida International University has been experimenting with a drug to treat pregnant women, whose unborn female foetuses show signs of a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).
This condition can result in the babies being born intersex.
The drug, Dex, is supposed to reduce the likelihood that the babies will be born with ‘ambiguous’ genitalia.
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Could you survive on less than £14,000 a year?
contribution by Chris Goulden
On Tuesday, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published the second annual update of CRSP’s research into “A Minimum Income Standard for the UK”.
Amidst an impending debate led by Frank Field about how we define poverty in this country, the MIS method highlights a very different way of approaching the issues.
Unlike the relative poverty line, MIS is not arbitrary and is decided on democratically by representative groups of the public reaching consensus about what makes up an adequate lifestyle, from food to clothes to bills.
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Why is this government against families?
Iain Duncan Smith loves families. Nice families, of course, with a mum and a dad – not any old rag-tag childrearing unit.
His Centre For Social Justice believes that “married two-parent families produce the best outcomes for both adults and children”, and in government, he’s contributed to the policy of removing the dubious “couples penalty” from the benefits system.
Why dubious?
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Rejecting the ‘not in my back yard’ approach to feminism
contribution by Elly
Feminist anti-sex work campaigners are busy this month. On June 17th Bristol Feminists Network announced their opposition to a license application (now at appeal stage) from a strip club in the ‘Old Market’ area of Bristol’s City Centre.
On the same day, Demand Change (run by Object and Eaves For Women), launched an ‘Action For Men’, leafleting men on the issue of criminal law regarding prostitution.
But the problem with opposing lap dancing clubs in city centres suggests a ‘not in my back yard’ approach by the feminist groups involved.
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Does Jeremy Hunt illustrate why class still matters?
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, recently revealed his vast ignorance of British footballing history whilst managing to insult thousands:
[A]s a Minister I was incredibly encouraged by the example set by the England fans, I mean not a single arrest for a football related offensive and the terrible problems that we had in Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s seem now to be behind us and I think, you know, there is small grounds for encouragement there even though obviously we are very disappointed about the result.
Anybody with even a basic knowledge of English football will know that what happened at Hillsborough had absolutely nothing to do with hooliganism.
That Hunt was shadow secretary for the same office during last year’s 20th anniversary Hillsborough memorial services is an even greater indictment of his callous ignorance.
But could there be something more going on?
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New government housing policy: make people homeless
In yesterday’s Budget, the Tory/Lib Dem government set out their key housing policies over the next four years:
1. Increase homelessness.
2. Reduce the number of homes available for rent by people who are unemployed or in low paid work.
3. Ensure that people on low incomes are evicted from more affluent areas and herded into ghettos.
4. Increase overcrowding, and therefore increase ill health and reduce educational attainment.
5. Increase personal debt amongst people in housing need.
6. Take £15 per week away from people who have managed to find low cost housing.
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Shock as council refuses to endorse gay blood donation
Labour controlled Nottingham City Council made the shocking decision this week to remove references to gay and bisexual men from a motion celebrating World Blood Donor Day.
The motion highlighted discrimination against gay men from donating blood. It also urged the council to lobby the National Blood Service about scrapping the policy.
Councillor Alex Foster, who proposed the motion, told Liberal Conspiracy that the rules on blood donation should be changed to reflect the real risks.
The UK Blood Service is currently reviewing its policy in relation to gay men donating blood. The NHS has already decided that it’s safe for gay men to donate bone marrow and semen, and to carry donor cards, but hasn’t yet made its decision about blood. I thought it was important for the City Council to join a number of voices lobbying the NHS about the signals that discrimination sends.
Which Labour candidate can social democrats be proud of?
contribution by James Maker
Is there any credible candidate among the Labour front-runners social democrats can be proud of?
For me, one of the most profound points emanating from Tuesday’s Newsnight exchanges was the performance of the front runners David and Ed Miliband.
Taken out of the comfort zone of audiences largely composed of party activists, the elder Miliband was unable to put forward the central line of his candidacy; creating a legion of community activists, grassroots movements and democratising the party machine.
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Complete tits
A nice young man known as @Article_Dan turns up on Twitter today to say that some old bag abused his wife in a Sainsbury’s cafe for breastfeeding her (Article_Dan and his wife’s) baby.
Says Article_Dan:
“My wife – the mother of our five month old daughter and four year old son – just spent the morning shopping in Sainsbury’s with the kids hanging of each arm.”
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We need a woman’s voice in the Labour leadership tomorrow
We may be about to see the first policy reversal of the new government on plans to give anonymity to men accused of rape. As a barrister I worked on cases involving rape and understand the enormous stigma involved and the barrier that it presents to achieving convictions.
This would be a backward step in an area that is already a real worry.
If David Cameron accepts it was a mistake we should give him some credit: being able to admit that you are wrong is a sign of strength not weakness. But there are also wider lessons that we should draw from this episode too.
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Frank Field’s false crusade against ‘welfare dependency’
You have to hand it to the Tories. Hiring Frank Field as ‘poverty tsar’ to do a seven month study with no implications for the ‘financial’ side of things (e.g. benefits) is a brilliant stroke.
Not only will they be able to parade in their non-partisan laurels when the report is delivered, but it’ll be tweedle-dum to Iain Duncan-Smith’s tweedle-dee.
Banging the education drum will be met with Tory plans to ‘individualise’ education provision by reintroducing credits for kids to go to private schools.
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Harriet Harman is right to demand half the cabinet is female
Harriet Harman has called for half of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet to be women.
She’s right.
There’s no good reason why Labour’s shadow cabinet should be male dominated.
If the issue is that there aren’t enough “Brilliant/ Talented/Experienced/whatever women” that’s a fault of the system we’ve employed, not a reflection on the abilities of Labour women.
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The David Laws paradox explains why I’m on the left
There are three lessons of David Laws’ resignation.
1. If you want to keep your job, following the rules has lexicographic priority over technical ability. Laws was widely regarded, even before the platitudes that followed his resignation, as superbly able minister. This was not enough to keep him in a job. The message here is that it is better to be a prissy, priggish follower of rules than a man of any other virtues – which is a perfect recipe for mediocrity.
It is in this sense that I agree with James Forsyth, that there’s something very depressing about this affair.
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed.
» Cambridge student demo: policeman punched student in the face
» An ode to David Cameron
» Why the student protests are unlikely to backfire despite the coverage
» She is free now, but the justice system still fails raped women
» Why Nick Clegg offers a recycled vision of society
» We need to reclaim the true ideals behind civil disobedience
» Why Ireland should default on its debts and start afresh
» How Labour could regain the initiative again on immigration
» Irish bankers: a modest proposal
» Is Nick Clegg ditching his own principles on inequality?
» Guess what? Ireland drank neo-liberal magic potion and it failed
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