Tag Archives: tom harris

Why commission a report if you’re determined to ignore its conclusions?

By Mark Pack | Published 1st September 2010 - 8:58 am

Last August, the then Labour government commissioned a KPMG report into the future of NHS Direct (along with some other related NHS services). The report has been submitted to the current government, though not published.

So if Labour MPs and members were saying how the government must publish the KPMG report right away to see if it justifies the plans to migrate NHS Direct over to the planned 111 service, fair enough.

But for many in Labour to be demanding that the NHS Direct plans be abandoned without knowing the outcome of the KPMG report is tantamount to saying, “Who cares …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged NHS, tom watson | 14 Comments

What prospect for Lib Dem / Labour cooperation in the next Parliament?

By Stephen Tall | Published 23rd August 2010 - 9:55 am

The message from Labour-sympathising Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley in this morning’s paper is a stark one: “Labour is playing bad politics.” The reason?

The leadership campaign is turning into a tin-ear, foot-in-mouth competition about who can be nastiest to the Liberal Democrats. As candidates desperately try to prove themselves more true Labour, more tribal than the next guy, they are in danger of missing the big picture about our changing politics. They could end up wrecking their party’s position for the next generation, which is their own.

All political parties sometimes reach for their tribal comfort blanket, especially after a …

Posted in Op-eds, Opposition watch | Also tagged jackie ashley | 32 Comments

Twitter’s fun, but let’s not pretend it’s revolutionising democracy

By Iain Roberts | Published 11th August 2010 - 10:20 am

As a local councillor, I want to reach my constituents and make sure they can reach me.

If I put out a leaflet it costs a bit and takes a while to deliver, and I can reach thousands of constituents.

I write a blog post and then let people know about it by email – that reaches a few hundred (and it’s much quicker and cheaper).

Or I can tweet and reach about ten.

Because, despite the promise of Twitter as providing a great two way link between politicians and those they represent, it’s a long way from achieving that.

The reason? Twitter for …

Posted in News, Op-eds | Also tagged twitter | 5 Comments

Shouldn’t Labour MPs just nominate the candidate they think is best for the job?

By Stephen Tall | Published 5th June 2010 - 10:50 am

I’ve been intrigued these past couple of days to see the main Labour blogs fall over themselves to argue that the current three front-runners for the Labour leadership – now they have the MP nominations needed to be on the ballot – should urge their parliamentary colleagues to nominate one of the three also-ran contenders to ensure “the widest possible field of candidates in the leadership election”.

I can understand the principle behind the campaign, of course. Frankly, if I were in the shoes of a Labour member (as I was for a number of years), I …

Posted in Op-eds, Opposition watch | Also tagged david miliband, labour leadership contest, LabourList, left foot forward, next left, tribune | 21 Comments

A reply to Tom Harris: Lib Dems wait for the voters to speak. (It’s called democracy, and we kind of like it).

By Stephen Tall | Published 15th March 2010 - 7:45 am

Labour MP Tom Harris, bless him, is clearly feeling a little bit insecure, as the Lib Dems enjoy a successful conference with a spring in their step and the full glare of the media spotlight. Tom’s blog is a good, fun read – but like his Tory equivalent Iain Dale, he has a bit of a tribal blind spot when it comes to the Lib Dems.

Here’s what Tom has to say about Lib Dem shadow schools secretary David Laws declining to take the media bait asking whether the party would back Labour or the Tories in the …

Posted in General Election, Op-eds | Also tagged hung parliament, iain dale, nick clegg | 33 Comments

NEW POLL: Is it time to end ‘politically restricted’ jobs?

By Stephen Tall | Published 18th February 2010 - 7:15 pm

Blogging Labour MP Tom Harris has an interesting story today, revealing that Tina Stowell, the BBC’s head of corporate affairs “is not only a wannabe Tory candidate, but still has a live website proclaiming her love of all things Cameron.” But Tom doesn’t point this out in order to fulminate or demand her resignation:

And you know something? I don’t have a problem with this. I would much prefer to know the politics of someone I’m dealing with because at least you know where they’re coming from. She wants to become an MP? Good for her! I hope she

…

Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged civil service, featured, Local government, politically restricted | 16 Comments

Britain’s best MP competition: the results

By Keith Halstead | Published 7th January 2010 - 4:20 pm

Our ‘Britain’s Best MP’ competition has come to a close with Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich, a clear winner. The final results are:

Douglas Carswell 47%
Gisela Stuart 16%
Tom Harris 12%
Lynne Featherstone 9%
Bob Russell 6%
Jo Swinson 6%
David Howarth 2%
Chris Mullin 2%

I appreciate that the results do not make happy reading for visitors to this site and the results of online polls cannot be taken too seriously, but please don’t dismiss this competition just yet.

Whilst acknowledging that our hope of getting people to listen to the MPs answers and then vote for their ‘best MP’ based on what they heard probably …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged bob russell, david howarth, douglas carswell, Gisela Stuart, jo swinson, lynne featherstone, yoosk | 10 Comments

Voting started in Britain’s best MP campaign

By Keith Halstead | Published 23rd December 2009 - 1:20 pm

You may remember that back at the beginning of December we launched our ‘Best MP’ campaign to highlight the fact that not all MPs should be tarred with the same brush as the ‘expenses cheats.’

We asked users of our website – Yoosk - to send in their nominations for Best MP and to send us the questions they would like to put to the nominees. All eight nominated MPs agreed to answer and you can compare what they said on our website now and cast your vote in our Poll, which will be ‘live’ until the 31st December.

Here …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged bob russell, david howarth, featured, jo swinson, lynne featherstone, yoosk | 1 Comment

What makes a ‘good’ MP?

By Keith Halstead | Published 9th December 2009 - 1:40 pm

Well, there has been plenty in the news recently about what makes a ‘bad’ MP so we at Yoosk thought that it might be a good idea to focus for a while on the qualities of a ‘good’ MP. End the year on a positive note.

And that is why we started our ‘Britain’s Best MP’ campaign two weeks ago. We want to find out who the good MPs are and what differentiates them from the rest. We asked our users at Yoosk to nominate their candidates and these are the people they put forward:

Gisela Stuart (Lab)
Lynne …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged bob russell, chris mullin, david howarth, douglas carswell, Gisela Stuart, jo swinson, lynne featherstone, yoosk | 9 Comments

Save general election night!

By Mark Pack | Published 7th September 2009 - 8:50 am

Yesterday’s Sunday Times reported how our traditional general election night is under threat from more and more councils wanting to move their count to a Friday.

Although there are some understandable reasons for this (principally the extra logistical burden of new checks against postal vote fraud), overall losing the drama of Thursday night through to the early hours of Friday morning would be a backwards step because:

Posted in General Election, News | Also tagged featured, jonathan isaby | 15 Comments

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