Author Archives: Stephen Tall

The list of the first 180 of the 2,500 post offices due to close within the next 15 months has been unveiled. They include:

The full list can be downloaded here.

The closures have been condemned by Lembit Öpik, Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform:

“These closures are completely unnecessary. It is obvious that there are ways of sustaining post offices without breaking the bank. What’s missing is the Government’s willingness to do so.

“What is the point in consultation if the views

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From Sky News’s Boulton & Co blog:

Under the heading “Third party experts back our position”, one release quoted Richard Lambert, head of the CBI saying “the sums mentioned by Mr Osborne may be small for these people.”

When I contacted the CBI, they were rather surprised to find Lambert had been enlisted as a supporter…. He actually has a much more nuanced position than the press release implied, basically saying Osborne’s policy might work but might not… He neither endorses nor criticises the policy.

So at the prompting of the CBI, I expect a fresh, “modified” press release to be

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Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable has criticised the tax plans of his Tory counterpart, George Osborne:

“Any expectation that the Conservatives had a radical and meaningful plan for fairer taxes has been blown out of the water with this utterly feeble set of half promises and unfunded commitments.

“The Tories have apparently made a large open-ended commitment without explaining how it will be paid for.

“They have borrowed from the Liberal Democrats the idea of taking action on non-domicile residents in the UK, but their proposal is completely inadequate and seems to be entirely voluntary.”

Desperately trying to pull rabbits out of hats ahead of their party conference, David Cameron has proudly trumpeted Tory plans to give tax breaks to married couple families.

But it’s not just those irresponsible couples who ‘live in sin’ and refuse to conform to the Tory stereotype of who makes good parents who will be penalised – as Vince Cable forcefully notes, so too will widows and widowers struggling to bring up kids on their own:

“It would appear that the so-called Tory tax cut for families is not a tax cut at all, but an increase in tax credits;

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Sky News’s Jon Craig is trumpeting the news that Buckinghamshire Tory MP, John Bercow, will not be attending his party’s conference in Blackpool next week.

For some time now, he’s been billed as the Tory most likely to cross the floor and join Quentin Davies on the Labour benches. Bercow’s absence is ‘fuelling speculation’ ((c) all media organisations everywhere when trying to justify passing on hearsay).

More interesting is Jon’s last para:

In a further sign of turmoil and panic in the Conservative Party, Shadow Home Secretary and defeated leadership candidate David Davis has cancelled all his appearances at fringe

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The Tory MP for Croydon Central, Andrew Pelling, who is also a member of the Greater London Assembly, has been suspended from the Tory party, following his arrest last week on suspicion of assaulting his wife.

This is the Tory statement as reported by the BBC:

“Following a meeting today with the Chief Whip, Andrew Pelling’s case has been referred to the Conservative Party’s Ethics and Integrity Committee. Until a conclusion is reached, he has been suspended from the Conservative Party Whip.”

Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable has delivered a typically withering-yet-courteous assessment of Gordon Brown’s determination to assemble a ‘government of all the talents’.

Speaking at a Fabian Society fringe meeting at the Labour party conference in Bournemouth, he’s quoted by the BBC saying:

“I am concerned about what I would regard as big tentism – this attempt to get everybody into the same fold. I think it is an attempt to create – in the nicest possible way – a one-party state.”

He likened Mr Brown to Jomo Kenyatta, former president of Kenya, for whom he once worked and

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Calm down, nothing too exciting – one of Dave’s A-listers, Judith Symes, has crawled inside Gordon’s big tent. She stood for the Tories in Brighton Kemptown in 2005, coming within 2,373 votes of unseating the sitting Labour MP. The Brighton Argus has more. (Hat-tip to Guido.)

Last week, the Lib Dem conference overwhelmingly approved plans drawn up by Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes to tackle the issue of the estimated 600,000 immigrants currently living in the UK illegally – they would be able to earn British citizenship if they could prove they had no criminal record and could show a long-term commitment to the country.

The proposal earned praise from The Economist, which said “the plan looks more credible than the government’s commitment to deport all illegal immigrants, something which at the current rate would take at least 25 years.”

The response …