Later today, Welsh budget minister Jane Hutt will present the Assembly government’s draft budget in what amounts to the toughest fiscal environment since the birth of devolution. She will do so as it emerged that Liberal Democrat run Swansea Council is considering outsourcing its entire adult social services department by 2012 to save costs.
George Osborne “stands ready” to help Ireland in the midst of economic crisis. It’s the least he can do after cheerleading their disastrous economic policies as a “shining example”.
NASA has announced that this year is the hottest year so far, just as climate scientists predicted it would be. This has been accompanied by the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in satellite records, and other extreme weather events around the world, many of which were also predicted by climate scientists. It is against this backdrop that one of Britain’s most prominent climate change ‘sceptics’ has admitted he’s driven by “ideological war”.
Our nation faces an unprecedented housing crisis. More than 4.5m people are languishing on waiting lists. Around 2.5m people are living in cramped and overcrowded conditions. And to top it all off, the Government has unleashed a programme of housing benefit cuts that could force hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes, leaving many at risk of ending up on the streets.
“If you had the luck of the Irish, you’d wish you were English instead” sang John Lennon – a second generation Irishman. When it comes to the public health of the Irish in Britain, he was right. It is well-established that Irish people have poorer health than the White British population as a whole, including lower life expectancy and a host of limiting long-term illnesses; including the highest cancer rates of any ethnic minority group.
George Osborne has announced the biggest tightening of fiscal policy over a four-year period since World War II, to be achieved mainly through cuts in public spending. He believes that it will lead to lower long-term interest rates and, by increasing certainty about future levels of taxes, boost consumer and business confidence.
Award-winning Indy journalist Johann Hari has put right-wing Mail attack dog Richard Littlejohn to the sword on his own Sky News show. Hari tore into Littlejohn for spreading lies which the BNP feed on, his ignorance over asylum seeker benefits and BNP leader Nick Griffin’s description of him as his “favourite journalist”.
The Labour government in response to the public outrage on bankers’ pay promised to increase transparency by introducing legislation that would force banks to reveal the pay of their top earners. It wouldn’t name and shame but it would, for example, show how many people were earning more than £1 million or more than £10 million in any one bank.
The prime minister performed a u-turn today over the appointment of two vanity photographers to the public purse today – having only last week said they would “save the Government and the taxpayer a lot of money”. Former Tory party staffer Andrew Parsons and WebCameron filmmaker Nicky Woodhouse will now be paid by the Conservative party, and not the civil service.
The National Climate March takes place on the 4th of December – it’s the one time in the year we put as many people together as we can to say we need radical action to address the climate emergency, one simple thing we can do. This event doesn’t just happen – people work like crazy to make it happen – all you have to do is turn up, to make their work worthwhile.
