The whistleblower who warned that Haringey social services were failing to protect children just six months before the death of Baby P is to stand for election there as a Liberal Democrat councillor.
Former social worker Nevres Kemal, above, who will contest the Noel Park ward, said she will try to rid the council of a culture of “lying, deception and cover-ups”.
Following Total Politics’s controversial decision to interview Nick Griffin, the magazine’s website is also running responses to it, including one from Dominic Carman (Lib Dem candidate for the same Barking constituency as Nick Griffin):
Take three of Griffin’s answers from the Total Politics interview and contrast them with what he told me privately:
On Afghanistan: “The only way you could win there is if you nuked it, which can’t be done.” He told me: “We should send (British) troops in to Afghanistan…and we should obliterate as many cities as it takes.”
On VAT: “We’ve never said we’re increasing VAT.” He told me: “Income
The Guardian had the story this week about the former chair of the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee (yes, the former chair of the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee):
Tory MP David Curry was today ordered to repay £28,000 and issue an apology after the Commons standards and privileges committee ruled that he had broken rules relating to parliamentary expenses.
The findings are particularly embarrassing because Curry was chairman of the committee until he stood down in November last year after he called for an investigation into the expenses allegations made against him.
Over on the Friends of the Earth site they’ve published Nick Clegg’s response to their 2010 election lobbying campaign:
This election could be a turning point, not just for Britain but for the world environment. Some people think that’s overstating it, but the scientists tell us that the coming five years could be our last chance to avert dangerous climate change. That means the government we elect next has the most enormous responsibility: to provide change at home and leadership abroad to stop the disaster from happening.
I am a huge supporter of Friends of the Earth. I’ve met up with FoE
A petition calling for the creation of a Youth Minister has been launched by Revolver Entertainment and the Damilola Taylor Trust. As with many other initiatives around at the moment, one of its aims is to give a voice to the disillusioned young people. It certainly isn’t stinting in its ambition though – aiming to collection over a million names on a petition to be presented to the Prime Minister after the election.
Linked to the campaign is a new British film, Shank, which addresses issues of gang violence and knife crime. The storyline and script for Shank were developed using workshops with teenagers, and some of the casting was also done through schools and social media.
Mo Ali, Shank’s Director, says, “Kids killing each other is more of a trend now and it’s very sad. It’s the environment that teaches them that it’s ok to do that, or that it’s cool to stand up for your rights and kill someone for them. There’s no emotional connection to taking a life. We have to tackle that – we have to show how horrible it is as much as possible, but with these young kids, the last thing they want for us to do is to ram it down their throat.”
Mo Ali’s role in the film is in itself interesting because as Nick Taussig of Revolver explains, “Mo Ali, from a background of poverty and violence, found a way out. Giving Mo the opportunity to direct the film was all the more meaningful and significant because of this. I hope that through the work we’ve done thus far with the Damilola Taylor Trust, a workshop built around the issues of the film for at-risk teenagers from Waltham Forest and a forthcoming creative writing day, a few young Britons might follow Mo’s inspiration.”
I do like the political pastiche of the film’s poster used to launch the petition:
The Young Foundation has launched a new website, First Political Memory, which aims to reconnect people’s everyday lives with politics through sharing stories about when we first became aware of the wider world.
You get an interesting – and broad – snapshot as you browse the site and you can also add your own memories here – and share them in the comments below.
I’ve recently stumbled across a piece by Lynne Featherstone MP which I’d forgotten about. Written in 2006, the points it makes about political campaigning still read well:
Vietnam war vet and Republican John McCain and London mayor and former restaurant review Ken Livingstone are probably not often bracketed together politically! But I have been thinking recently about them both and their own rather different political personas.
Both have had periods of great popularity – though McCain still seems to be basking in it whilst Ken’s has well and truly worn off – and it has not been for their stances on particular
One thing Alistair Darling most certainly did not do was to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000, the Liberal Democrat policy that would take millions out of income tax completely and also cut the tax bill for those low income households on higher incomes. Instead, he went in the opposite direction by freezing (i.e. cutting in real terms) the income tax threshold.
(Given the Fabians criticised the Lib Dem plans for raising the basic income tax …
The Evening Standard has won a significant victory in a High Court libel battle brought by a Conservative MP.
Jacqui Lait, MP for Beckenham, had sued over an article headlined “Women MPs will be put off by Kelly reforms”.
Mr Justice Eady today struck out elements of her claim and ordered her to pay £10,400 legal costs.
The November 2009 article correctly pointed out Ms Lait had claimed “large sums” to travel to her family home in Sussex even though her constituency home is only 11 miles from Westminster…
The judge said it was “unreal to suggest that readers of
Many congratulations to Carl Minns and his team in Hull on this much deserved acolade:
Hull City Council has been crowned the most improved in England, six years after it came bottom in a survey of 150 local authorities.
Hull beat four other councils to win the ‘Most Improved Title’ at the Local Government Chronicle awards…
Leader of Hull City Council, Carl Minns said: “The most important factor is to ensure that residents get excellent quality services but it is always good to have external recognition of the improvements to services.” (BBC)
I blogged earlier today about how the Mirror bigged up a poll showing Tory support unchanged (within the margin of error) into a story of how their support was plunging.
But looking again at the story, I realise just how badly wrong their graph is.
The two key pieces of information about Labour’s rating in the poll are that:
(a) It was 30%
(b) It was 32% in the previous poll
Now look at the graph:
See what’s happened? What should be a downward Labour line has become a flat …
Sometimes good intentions don’t quite result in the good outcomes you’d wish. In this case, the issue is a recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that general election candidates should have to publish their financial interests just as MPs do.
The logic is a good one: if you’re a voter wanting to chose between candidates, it’s a bit odd if you only know about the financial interests of an MP standing for re-election but not of the people they’re up against. You want to know the interests before you cast your vote, not find out afterwards whether or not you should regret your choice.
However, as the committee recognised, its proposals came out too late to change the law for the 2010 general election. Therefore instead the Ministry of Justice has just published a voluntary scheme, detailing a recommended set of questions that candidates should answer about their financial interests.
Perhaps the most controversial will be the section on tax, where people are asked if:
I confirm that, for the tax year 2008/09, I have not claimed to be, or been treated as not resident, not ordinarily resident or non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.
Non-doms are a controversial issues anyway; the appearance of this recommendation just before an election is unlikely to cool such partisan passions. When neither Parliament nor the Committee on Standards in Public Life have decided on such a rule (so far – and I hope they do in due course), should the Ministry of Justice unilaterally be slipping it in to a report so soon before an election?
Overall, the recommendations themselves acknowledge that they go beyond what is currently required of MPs. To require candidates to publish the same information as is required of MPs makes obvious sense; for a government ministry to go beyond that off its own bat could turn out to be quite controversial.
With a voluntary code, published rather late in the day and plenty of scope for individual candidates to partially answer the questions, we’re unlikely to see a triumph of transparency that results in voters being significantly better informed. However, it will at the very least provide a test of the different provisions which should make for better legislation when the whole process most likely becomes law during the next Parliament.
It’s a group of people that is not that often explicitly addressed in Liberal Democrat policy debates or campaigning and messaging discussions, expect in as much as they are part of the millions who would benefit from the party’s policy of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.
Yet these low earner households have been the bedrock of many of the party’s biggest electoral successes in the last decade. The party’s control of a string of large cities – Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol and so
A double triumph in the Mirror today: for Vince Cable and for British journalism.
For Vince Cable – congratulations on another poll putting you the most popular choice for Chancellor (32% versus 23% for Darling and 21% for Osborne).
For British journalism – take a bow at a story that uses phrases such as “plunges” and “it’s all the fault of George Osborne” when in fact the poll results are, er…, not statistically significantly different from the previous poll by that pollster. (The changes are all within the margin of error.)
Perhaps next time we’ll have a footnote, “Hey, the above …
Yikes. Not quite sure what’s the most surprising from the interview I’ve just watched. The good joke from Gordon Brown about Peter Mandelson or the collapse of David Cameron, who asks for the interview to stop, turns to his minder off camera and asks for a different style of questioning.
With that unconventional question, Liberal Democrat MP David Heath has joined the ranks of blogging MPs (having previously tried out a few posts that were simply his newspaper column reproduced):
I’m not sure the resemblance is that obvious, but that’s what Ann Treneman called me in the Times this morning. I guess it’s better than “like a Tajik with toothache”, which is what her predecessor Matthew Parris once came up with.
Yesterday The Voice ran an op-ed from the Resolution Foundation’s Sophia Parker about the, “9.4 million working-age ‘low earners’ – those people living on an average household income of £15,800 while remaining broadly independent of state support.”
It’s a group of people that is not that often explicitly addressed in Liberal Democrat policy debates or campaigning and messaging discussions, expect in as much as they are part of the millions who would benefit from the party’s policy of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.
Yet these low earner households have been the bedrock of many of the party’s biggest electoral …
As a circular from the Electoral Commission explains:
Until now, members of HM Forces and their spouses or civil partners registering through a service declaration have had to renew their registration every three years. From commencement of The Service Voters’ Registration Period Order 2010 on 19 March 2010, the length of registration based on a service declaration is now five years and so, from 19 March 2010, service voters will only need to renew their registration at the end of a five year period.
The extension of the length of registration will apply to all service personnel and their spouses or
A ban on broadcasting video clips of the proceedings of the House of Commons on YouTube could come to an end in the coming weeks after months of delicate negotiations between the Palace of Westminster and broadcasters led by the BBC.
Existing rules forbid YouTube or any other website, such as a newspaper’s, from embedding any clips of parliamentary proceedings – meaning that the only way to watch parliament online is via the news clips from the major broadcasters, live on the BBC’s Parliament channel or the Westminster website…
Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat MP for Dumbarton East, has long
Tories buy campaigning package off the shelf from US company.
Company also does some rather right wing work. This is either outrageous (Right wing? You shock me!) or unsurprising (Americans? Right wing? You surprise me!)
Package as launched by Tories includes unmoderated twitter stream.
Unflattering tweets start appearing.
Site pulled.
Lesson for the day: unmoderated feeds of content on political sites bring tears before bedtime. Those who have been awake for the last decade may not wish to call this “news”.
PS Myself, I’d have been suspicious of a US supplier that advertisers a “one pager” which is actually two …
I’ve already reviewed two of the titles in the new seven book series from biteback: Why Vote Liberal Democrat and Why Vote. But what to make of the other fives titles – covers Labour, Conservative, Green, SNP and Plaid? (Although a UKIP book was also publicised, it never got published as UKIP failed to produce the necessary copy.)
Both the Labour and Conservative books are ‘unofficial’ in the sense that they are by prominent party members, but ones who have no official role in the party’s policy or campaigning decisions – Rachel Reeves, Labour …
Douglas Alexander’s soundbite about wanting to make 2010 the “word of mouth” election has got a fair amount of coverage in the last few days, such as in this mostly thoughtful piece by Andrew Rawnsley.
Why do I only say “mostly thoughtful”?
That’s because it’s a good piece, but also displays a weakness so common in contemporary British political commentary. It’s the feeling that it’s more important to talk about what an American did a couple of years ago than how the British political system has worked over the last few elections.
Because if you want “word of mouth”, and you know …
Police forces across England and Wales are teaming up with local councils in a welcome move to encourage agents and candidates to abide by the Postal Voting Code of Conduct. They will be sending letters to agents and candidates asking them to personally sign up to the Code of Conduct.
In previous years the Code has been a national agreement negotiated by the Electoral Commission with, on the one hand, electoral administrators and, on the other, the main political parties. The involvement of both parties and administrators means the Postal Voting Code of Conduct strikes a balance between recognising the genuine …
It’s Sunday. It’s 9am. It’s time for jenga, but first the news.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
A failure of scrutiny on digital bill: Peter Black blogs about the letter signed by, amongst others, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidates Bridget Fox and Julian Huppert. Danger of Parliament rushing through legislation without proper debate? Who would have thought it.
Elementary errors: Giles Wilkes on the important difference between a stock and a flow. More interesting and useful than I’ve made it sound.
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Big Stories
BA fights to limit the impact of cabin crew strike
By way of introduction, a sample of what Kitty Ussher (Labour MP for Burnley) had done:
Kitty Ussher used allowances for £20,000 house make-over
The records reveal that Miss Ussher, the MP for Burnley, contacted the Commons fees office within 12 months of being elected, with a detailed programme of work for the property she had already lived in for five years.
The new extremism in 21st century Britain, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin considers both far-right and Islamic extremism, their causes and possible responses. It is unusual for a study to look at both these forms of extremism, and as the books editors explain that is not just a publishing phenomena; academics and experts predominantly focus on one or the other with as a result relatively little opportunity to learn from comparing and contrasting different extremist movements.
George Thomas I think this article is well written, thank you. This past week has seen a reminder in two different ways of when the LGBTQ+ community supported the miners and ...
Nick Baird Ajax should of course have been cancelled years ago. Unfortunately due to the sunk costs the MOD and Government seem to be converging on a plan to spend another...
Peter Chambers > The standout project is Ajax, which should be immediately cancelled.
Oh if only! Ben Wallace confided that "the money is spent" and that if the programme...
Tristan Ward It has been perfectly obvious since the start of trump's second term that UK defence spending must rise. The political difficulty is equally obvious given th...
cim @Nick Baird - Even taking a quarter off the UK's budget would still keep us comfortably in the top 10 for all countries and ahead of the (also nuclear-armed) Fr...
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New by-election poll gives Burnham 5 point lead
Bobby Charlton and Arnie Sidebottom at Stamford Bridge
Pope Leo speaks for all liberals when he condemns racism, supports migration, and supports Ukraine
Growing Asylum backlog undermines Government's case
George Thomas 
Nick Baird 
Peter Chambers 
Tristan Ward 
cim 