The WitanagemotHeadlines
Recent Headlines
| MPs query non-... | BBC Politics | |
| Ennobling people from outside Parliament to make them ministers should be "exceptional", cross-party MPs say. | ||
| Nick Clegg set... | Guardian Politics | |
| Lib Dem leader outlines key demands before election expected on 6 MayThe Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, last night spelled out the four "tests" he will set for Labour and the Conservatives if they are to seek his party's support in a hung parliament following the general election.His "four steps to fairness" are: reform of the tax system to lift 4 million people earning £10,000 a year or less out of income tax altogether, financed by higher taxes for the rich; a "pupil premium" to target extra education spending at the most disadvantaged children; a switch to a greener economy with less reliance on financial services; and voting reform for Westminster elections.Clegg declined to say whether his party would lean towards Labour or the Tories if neither party secured an overall majority in the poll expected on 6 May .But he told the Independent he would talk to the party that won the "strongest mandate" and was keeping all options open ? including a formal coalition with Lib Dem ministers in the cabinet."If a party with no majority has the strongest mandate, we accept the principle that that party has the right to govern either on its own or to reach out to others," he said.But he said "no deals" would be discussed with other parties before the votes are counted."We are not here to play games with other parties," he said. "We are here to secure a big mandate for the big changes we want in Britain."Once we know the lie of the land after the election, we have to work out the best way to do that."Clegg also said that, to calm market nerves in the event of a hung parliament, the Lib Dems would propose an immediate £10bn repayment of national debt, financed from £15bn of spending cuts to be outlined this month.Speaking ahead of this weekend's Lib Dem spring conference in Birmingham, Clegg criticised the Tories for stoking fears that a hung parliament might cause a run on sterling because of market uncertainty about the ability of a minority government to reduce Britain's record £178bn deficit.He branded the Conservative warning as "an act of economic vandalism and a political protection racket".Nick CleggGeneral election 2010James Sturckeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Gordon Brown: ... | Guardian Politics | |
| PM announces pay freeze for doctors, dentists and hospital consultants as well as senior managers across most of the public sectorSteve Bell |
||
| Harry Cohen un... | Guardian Politics | |
| Investigations will focus on how the MP, who is standing down at the general election, wrongly claimed the second-home allowance for four yearsPolice have launched an investigation into the expenses claims of the Labour MP Harry Cohen who received more than £70,000 in a second home allowance for a house he rarely visited, it was reported last night.Cohen, who was severely criticised last month for a "particularly serious breach of the rules" by a Commons committee, is the fifth Labour MP to be subject to a Scotland Yard inquiry.Officers will focus their investigations on how the MP, who is standing down at the general election, wrongly claimed the second-home allowance for four years.Cohen received money for a second home when he was renting out the property designated as his main home, the standards and privileges committee said last month.Over the past few weeks, the Metropolitan police are understood to have approached Commons authorities seeking documents relating to claims made by Cohen, the Daily Telegraph reported.Today, three MPs, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine, are due to appear before the courts after being charged last month with multiple offences under the Theft Act.Another MP, Eric Illsley, is also being investigated over claims he allegedly made "phantom" claims for council tax.The Commons committee last month called for the Leyton and Wanstead MP to become the first MP to lose a £65,000 retirement payoff to claw back the wrongly claimed money.Attention has focussed on a Colchester home bought by Cohen in 1998 which he told the Commons authorities was his main residence. He used his second-home allowance to fund a home in his north-east London constituency, which was in accordance with the rules.In 2003 Cohen's wife fell ill and the couple began to spend more time in the constituency home so that Cohen could look after her while still carrying out his parliamentary duties.As the Cohens were not using their Colchester house, they began to rent it out. From early 2004 until August 2008 they periodically let the house on six-month leases.But Cohen continued to tell the Commons authorities that the Colchester house was his main home, thus enabling him to use the second home allowance to claim for the home in the constituency.The parliamentary commissioner for standards, John Lyon, found that Cohen was in breach of the rule saying that an MP's main home should normally be the one where he or she spends the most nights.As an outer-London MP, Cohen could have claimed the London supplement, instead of the second-home allowance, if he had designated his constituency home as his main home.But the committee said Cohen claimed more than £70,000 between April 2004 and August 2008. If he had claimed the London supplement instead, he would only have been able to claim about £9,000.MPs' expensesLabourCrimeTelegraph Media GroupJames Sturckeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Councils told ... | BBC Politics | |
| Wellderly, webinar and disbenefits are among new forms of jargon being used by the public sector, a survey reveals. | ||
| Hugh Muir's di... | Guardian Politics | |
| Revealed: how the Cameroons plan to win the election. A matter of cheques and balances? Why all the fuss about Lord Ashcroft's money, asks David Cameron. Our accounts are healthy ? the debts are down. It was useful once, but now we don't even need it. And there is some truth to that. For the beneficial effect of the Tory poll lead has been to attract many more donations from figures and companies keen to make nice with an incoming government. The coffers are swelling. But what to do with it all? Well, already we are told a deal has been struck with an outside company that will manage the digital side of the Tory manifesto. They have great hopes for dominating the campaign in cyberspace, with an intimidating online presence and a state-of-the-art marketing blitz. There will also be an irritating flurry of Obama campaign-style text messages, sending the Cameroonian doctrine to people's mobile phones whether they want it or not. But that's not to say that the high command won't be meeting the people, and when they do, it is likely to be via upmarket battle buses of the luxurious type favoured by the multimillionaire footballers of Roman Abramovich's Chelsea. Elections are always a long, tough grind. But with money, they needn't be unpleasant.? And what more can we say about Donal Blaney, the rightwing Conservative activist whose Young Britons' Foundation runs "madrasa" training for party election candidates? That's the foundation whose leaders say the NHS is a waste of money and global warming is a scam. Views that Tory party chairman Eric Pickles was desperate to distance himself from this week. Well, we know he writes a blog, Blaney's Blarney, and that once the "attack dog of the right" was a face on the Conservative-leaning internet channel 10 Doughty Street. And would he be the same Donal Blaney who was a councillor in Hammersmith in 1999, and chair of the party's youth wing, Conservative Future; who was forced to defend his activities after being taken to task by the Commission for Racial Equality for a campaign with the slogan Fulham Homes for Fulham People, which made questionable claims about council housing of asylum seekers? "There is no racist implication in the leaflet," insisted the party back then, but certainly the whole thing left a sour taste in the mouth. And yes, that was him.? Twitter is the world and the world is twitter, but with the character count so limited, people can't always say what they mean. For instance, yesterday culture secretary Ben Bradshaw tweeted: "Another brilliant column by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian plus Steve Bell at his best!" But there's confusion. For did he mean the Steve Bell cartoon lampooning George Bush and David Cameron? Or was it the other Steve Bell masterwork ? the one in G2 depicting Tony Blair as a war criminal? We are left trying to work it out.? For it could be the latter. Discipline isn't what it was in these, the dog days of New Labour. People speak more freely. They even have a laugh with the press. On Tuesday, said the prime minister's spokesman, Gordon chaired a cabinet meeting at which transport secretary Lord Adonis gave a presentation of the UK high-speed rail future. "Lord Adonis received 'a ripple of applause' after he called himself 'the thin controller'," said the spokesman, a reference to the Fat Controller of Thomas the Tank Engine, he explained. "And how is John Prescott?" quipped a voice from the ranks. "Always in our thoughts," came the reply.? Finally, for all our misgivings, the trend towards outsourcing creeps its way through every area of national life. Today, the church. This from a notice sent to parishioners in the Hertfordshire town of Berkhamsted. "Beloved members of St Peter's, if you have an hour to spare one week in six, any day of the week, would you please help by being part of the cleaning rota (or send your domestic along)." It's the very latest thing: celestial brownie points by proxy. How the other half could save itself.Hugh Muirguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Social care co... | Liberal Democrats | |
| Commenting following today?s cross party Age UK, at which the health spokespeople of the three main parties met to discuss the reform of social care, Norman Lamb said: ?It?s clear from today?s social care summit that voters want politicians to come together and solve one of the biggest social challenges facing our country. ?We need long-term solutions to this problem so that older people are treated with the respect they deserve. We cannot continue with the current system where people have to sell their homes to pay for care and the quality of care on offer is not up to scratch. ?There was broad agreement that solving the crisis in social care is going to require a partnership between the state and individuals and if the other parties are willing then there is no reason why the current differences in opinion should be insurmountable. ?Liberal Democrats want to put an end to the political bickering. We are willing to work with the other parties to solve this problem once and for all. There should be no preconditions and we are open to all ideas that seek a solution that will be fair, affordable and sustainable. ?Rather than shouting at each other let?s have a commitment from all three parties to start finding a solution now.? |
||
| Academics dema... | Guardian Politics | |
| ? Lobby consists of 90 academics, politicians and experts? Claim appropriate information has not been made availablePressure on the government to organise an independent inquiry into a new generation of nuclear power stations will intensify today with a call for action from a group of 90 high-ranking academics, politicians and technical experts.The huge lobby says the "climategate" email scandal and other events have shaken public trust in the scientific governance of environmental risk, making a wider assessment of nuclear power more important than ever.Paul Dorfman, an energy policy research fellow at Warwick University who has been coordinating support for an inquiry, said more debate was needed for a decision on nuclear to have full democratic backing. "The kind of consultation we have had so far has been flawed and inadequate. The government has put the cart before the horse by wanting endorsement before either the design of the reactor and the way waste will be treated has been decided. There is a democratic deficit here that needs correcting," he said.Nuclear consulting engineer John Large, another campaign signatory, agreed. "The public consultation has been a failure because the appropriate information has not been made available for the public to make a proper assessment of the benefits and risks," he said."We need Ed Miliband [the energy and climate change secretary] to organise an independent inquiry as he is entitled to do under the justification regulations," he added.These two critics are standing alongside a long list of academics, such as Jerome Ravetz of Oxford University and Mark Pelling of King's College London, as well as MPs including Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democrats, Michael Meacher from Labour and Jane Davidson, the environment minister in the Welsh assembly.A "justification" process is a requirement under European Union law but Miliband will himself be able to decide whether he needs an inquiry or not. He is believed to want to take this step as soon as possible so that new nuclear power stations could come on stream in 2017, in time to meet an expected energy shortage.The Department of Energy and Climate Change was unable to comment on the matter last night.Energy industryEnergyNuclear powerEd MilibandTerry Macalisterguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Letters: Centr... | Guardian Politics | |
| On Monday, it was announced that a cross-party blueprint was being drawn up in an effort to stop the squabbling about funding for the care of elderly people (Political parties trade blows ahead of elderly social care talks, 10 March). Just a few days later though, these efforts have been sabotaged by the parties' unwillingness to compromise. Progress cannot be made in the current pressure-cooker pre-election atmosphere. The priority must be for the parties to outline their approach to the problem, rather than become trapped in ironing out the intricate details of a solution before their central visions are even defined.But what is clear, is that each of the parties is neglecting to mention a key partner in this social care debate ? the children of older people. The baby-boom generation will soon need support. It may well be that their children ? in many cases affluent children ? should be means-tested and assessed for contribution, in much the same way as older people themselves are asked to make a contribution. I hope that at the very least, the party manifestos will include a statement of what they intend to do. The worry is that by the time the election arrives, other priorities will take over and funding care for the elderly will slip down the agenda.Leon SmithNightingale care home, London? Localism is now the mantra of all three major parties. In principle, it's unarguable. But is also raises the key issue of who is accountable for what. In terms of government resources allocated to primary care trusts, the issue is simple. How can a government ever announce that money is going to be spent on this development or that expansion of a service when they no longer have any control over the decision-making mechanisms? This wouldn't be a problem if there were real accountability at local level. There is not. MPs or ministers can write to PCTs, hold meetings with them or require explanations. But in the end, the PCTs are responsible.The Treasury has never liked earmarked funding. Devolving funding and responsibility ensures that reductions in spending aren't placed at the Treasury's door. It also makes it easier to announce that something will happen, even if the responsibility for delivering it doesn't lie with central government. One solution would be to ringfence funding ? as was done in the early days of this government ? to kickstart a particular programme. Everyone would know that the money would be absorbed locally, be it by local government or an agency. The government would get the credit for getting the service going, the politicians wouldn't be held in disrepute for promising something that the public doesn't see delivered and we would be able to have some genuine accountability.Unfortunately, the trend is in entirely the opposite direction ? which is one reason why people's disaffection with politics and politicians is so profound.David Blunkett MP Lab, Sheffield BrightsideSocial careOlder peopleLong-term careLocal governmentPublic financeDavid BlunkettNHSguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Make defence s... | Guardian Politics | |
| Former chief of the defence staff says plans to replace Trident should be abandoned and troop numbers increasedOne of the country's leading military figures last night said plans to replace the Trident nuclear missile system and build two large aircraft carriers should be abandoned and the money saved spent on alternatives more relevant to future conflicts, including a bigger army.Lord Guthrie, the first chief of the defence staff under New Labour, said the problems facing the defence budget was "too big to massage, to trim, to rely on efficiency savings and prayer". Britain, he added, faced a "moment of decision" in shaping a new defence strategy."Potentially the most devastating threat which we are only just beginning to face is that from non-state aggression. This would include the use of nuclear or radiological 'dirty bombs', detonated by terrorists who are able to slip across open borders with relative ease," he said. Other threats came from cyber warfare and piracy.Replacing the four Trident nuclear missile submarines and building two aircraft carriers and buying planes to fly from them at a combined cost of £28bn were not in his view sustainable projects, Guthrie made clear in an address to the centre-right thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies.A new "lightweight" option for delivering nuclear weapons, for example cruise missiles, should be explored, he said.The RAF, meanwhile, had too many fast jets. It was committed to buying 232 Typhoon Eurofighters at a cost of £20bn. Yet missions conducted by the RAF over the past 25 years had hardly ever involved more than a dozen aircraft, he added. What the RAF really needed was "more helicopters, unmanned drones, and transport". A former head of the army and member of the special forces, he said: "The threats of the present and the future point to the need for more troops, not less. This will mean that cuts have to be found elsewhere."Guthrie recently sharply criticised the Treasury under Gordon Brown as Chancellor for blocking funds for the armed forces, notably depriving it of helicopters. "It will take political courage and determination to ensure that the best interests of the UK are secured and I wonder whether the MoD will be capable of achieving this."Defence policyMilitaryTridentRichard Norton-Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
||
| Letters: Frail... | Guardian Politics | |
| The economy: B... | Guardian Politics | |
| Afghanistan: W... | Guardian Politics | |
| UK harmony nee... | BBC Politics | |
| Nick Clegg: 'W... | Independent Politics | |
| With friends l... | Independent Politics | |
| Police inquiry... | Independent Politics | |
| My demands for... | Independent Politics | |
| The Big Questi... | Independent Politics | |
| Budget date gi... | Independent Politics | |
| Labour MP faci... | BBC Politics | |
| A fifth Labour... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Tories say Lab... | BBC Politics | |
| Economic storm... | BBC Politics | |
| UKIP welcome l... | UKIP | |
| Afghan concern... | BBC Politics | |
| Cameron anger ... | BBC Politics | |
| The question v... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Ex-chief warns... | BBC Politics | |
| David Cameron ... | BBC Politics | |
| Samantha Camer... | Telegraph Politics | |
| The MEP for Wa... | UKIP | |
| Prince of Wale... | Telegraph Politics | |
| We must rebala... | Liberal Democrats | |
| Combat Stress ... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Immigration is... | UKIP | |
| Gordon Brown d... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Nick Clegg: ho... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Alex Salmond s... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Liberal Democr... | Liberal Democrats | |
| Gordon Brown a... | Telegraph Politics | |
| The long war o... | Our Kingdom - A Conversation on the Future of the UK | |
| Pensioners to ... | Telegraph Politics | |
| Pay freeze for... | Independent Politics | |
| Brown is leadi... | Liberal Democrats | |
| Half of school... | Liberal Democrats | |
| Gordon Brown s... | Independent Politics | |
| Former Labour ... | Plaid Cymru | |
| The biggest ri... | Conservative Party | |
| Leaders of Pla... | Plaid Cymru | |