The government’s consultation “A fairer future for social housing” says that “social housing – affordable and stable – should act as a springboard to help individuals make a better life for themselves”. Yet the result of this announcement will do the exact opposite – it will ensnare individuals in poverty, create ghettos of deprivation, and prevent future generations getting access to proper affordable housing.
There are increasing signs that the BNP are resorting to more and more desperate measures to inflate what little influence they have. Lisa Nandy MP reports in the Tribune on the work of a small group of anonymous online bloggers who have gone to extraordinary lengths to whip up anti-Muslim feeling.
Of the many billions of pounds that the government have cut in their ideological zeal to shrink the state, few have met with the passion and unified outrage that have greeted the £162 million abolition of the School Sport Partnership grant.
Vince Cable’s assertion that the Liberal Democrats are not guilty of reneging on their pre-election promises as they are simply honouring their commitment to the coalition agreement, will leave many wondering whether it is worth believing anything that the Lib Dems say – while in a revealing interview in the Total Politics December magazine, former Chief Secretary David Laws exposes just how much Nick Clegg’s focus was, pre-election, on a hung parliament.
Fully one month after the scale of the government’s cuts to school sport were unveiled, politicians, journalists and sports stars have at long last been stirred into fighting back, the realisation of the horror about to be unleashed finally dawning. As Left Foot Forward reported in October, the Department for Education is scrapping the £162 million PE and Sports Strategy – a strategy which has been proven to work, significantly raising participation in competitive sport.
As with all good Budgets, it is only once the dust settles that the implications of the measures announced become clear and Scotland is no exception. Following the publication on Wednesday of the SNP government’s draft Budget, finance secretary John Swinney is facing calls from the main opposition parties to explain to parliament the government’s decision to forego its albeit limited tax varying powers.
The criminal justice system is not effective at dealing with children and young people. Evidence shows that about half of the 10 and 11 year olds sentenced in court in 2008 will have re-offended within a year – and their experience within the criminal justice system actually increases the likelihood that they will go on to commit further crimes.
Something has to be done about the country’s digital infrastructure. It is the good that the government recognises this, but like the Labour administration before it, the Lib/Con coalition repeatedly fails to grasp what needs to be done and how to do it.
David Cameron’s enterprise adviser Lord Young resigned today after saying people were better off after the recession. Young had told the Telegraph: “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession – this so-called recession – started.” Labour leader Ed Miliband described the remarks as “disgraceful” and said people would feel “insulted” by his comments.
Islamist terrorism predates the EDL by many years. Osama bin Laden published his justification for the indiscriminate killing of Americans and Jews everywhere in February 1998 and the ‘secret apparatus’ of the Muslim Brotherhood is believed to have assassinated Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha, then prime minister of Egypt, as long ago as 1948.
