Information obtained through Parliamentary questioning on Prime Ministerial business has revealed a striking pattern amongst No 10 special advisers meeting with Rupert Murdoch’s News International newspapers and media outlets.
This afternoon the government confirmed the first trickle of successful Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the bodies designed to replace the eight regional development agencies in England.
London’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson today criticised the coalition government’s plans for housing benefit, labelling it a “Kosovo-style social cleansing of London”. Johnson’s criticisms mark another dispute in the space of a week between the London Mayor and the prime minister – after David Cameron vowed to block any moves for London estuary airport.
The Liberal Democrats have got themselves in quite a mess on higher education funding. Today, we have the bizarre spectacle of the Vince Cable pulling out (on “police advice”) of a planned speech at Oxford University because students planned to protest his Government’s plans to at least double tuition fees.
Labour MEPs voted against the overall call for a budget increase and against a host of outrageous calls to increase spending. But it gets far more interesting than that. For all their bluster Conservative MEPs failed to table a single amendment to the final budget package that would have resulted in a reduction in spending against 2010 levels. It was left to Labour members to propose cuts of more than €1bn to wasteful agricultural subsidies.
A key premise of George Osborne’s argument for rapid spending cuts has been questioned by former civil service boss, Lord Andrew Turnbull.
The police have contradicted Vince Cable’s claim that they advised him to pull out of a visit to Oxford University today – what would have been the first ministerial visit to Oxford since the publication of the Browne Review into higher education funding. More than 12,000 students had signed up on Facebook to protest the Browne Review this afternoon.
Welfare systems need to address two different types of situation faced by working age households. They need to provide short-to-medium term support for living costs in response to labour market fluctuations and frictional unemployment; and longer term support for those who are without a market income for extended periods (in practice many households are located on a continuum between these two poles).
Britain does not have a “bloated welfare” system despite George Osborne’s rhetoric. The truth is that welfare spending is lower than at any time from 1979 to 1997.
Forced to walk a path between support for the troops and reporting the evidence emanating from theatre, most outlets chose to portray the lack of resources in terms they understood and thought their audiences would too.
