Yearly Archives: 2010

Green challenges on transport policy

When Labour came to power in 1997, it promised to reverse the remorseless growth in road traffic. Within a few years, Labour’s first transport secretary, John Prescott, had self-admittedly failed in this ambition, and indeed Labour had almost been sunk by the fuel-price protests. If the Left is to achieve real change in the all-important area of ‘transport policy’, then it is going to have to be both much more ambitious and much more savvy than was the Blair government.

Now the coalition wants to cut its meagre bank levy

So much remains in doubt on bonuses. But what we know for sure is that the Treasury’s entire bank levy revenue estimates between 2011-2014 were made when bonus payments were anticipated to be higher than they had been in 2008. And the idea that the banks should be offered another sop when they should be paying for the mess they created simply demonstrates where this conservative coalition’s priorities lie.

Cultural change is best way to make parliament more representative

In the general election of 1964, Peter Griffiths, a “Tory nonentity”, shot to victory with a racist slogan; ‘Skin-Deep Democracy: How race, religion and ethnicity continue to affect Westminster politics’ (pdf), a new report published today by Quilliam, shows that a lot has changed since then – but also warns that the parties could do more to promote integration through equal involvement in Westminster politics.

Many will be worse off under Universal Credit

Last week’s welfare reform white paper included the following graph, claiming to show that “many households will receive more under Universal Credit than under the current system”; at first viewing, the graph does appear to show small weekly gains for those in lower income deciles, and insignificant losses for those higher up the income distribution. But all is not as it seems.

Cameron’s Happiness Index is welcome news for progressives

Simon Kuznets, the Nobel Prize winning economist who helped develop GDP, recognised such flaws when warning the US Congress in 1934: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of the national income.”

Cable: Drive for Local Enterprise Partnerships “Maoist and chaotic”

In what are becoming frequent bursts of candour about the government’s deeply-flawed regional policy, business secretary Vince Cable told the annual dinner of Birmingham’s Lunar Society that his plans to scrap regional development agencies and replace them with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) have been “a little Maoist and chaotic”.

Wales and Scotland set to publish draft austerity budgets

Over the next fortnight, the devolved bodies are expected to publish their draft budgets against the background of the toughest fiscal environment since the birth of devolution. Last week Left Foot Forward reported on the double whammy being faced by Northern Ireland with health minister Michael McGimpsey warning of “large numbers of redundancies” in the NHS and substantial concerns over the impact of the UK government’s welfare reforms on the most vulnerable.

Remember those that shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old

Remembrance Day is always a day that makes one particularly melancholic and not just for the most obvious reasons. In many respects Remembrance Day is meant to be a celebration rather than a time of sorrow and mourning; who can doubt the joy that many hundreds of thousands would have felt in 1918 when one of the most harrowing conflicts in modern history finally came to an end?

The CPS, judiciary and Yasmin Alibhai Brown just don’t get Twitter

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is well remunerated to exercise her opinions every week in her Independent column. Her free expression keeps a roof over her head, so you’d expect her to be forgiving when others exercise their rights. Sadly not. Whilst she didn’t call the police about Cllr Compton, she says she would have done so, and has backed up the CPS position that these tweets are “menacing”.