Wagner’s dreams of snow-capped glory may have gone up in smoke yesterday, but there’s still hope for those hoping to stick it to Simon Cowell – and do the same to the Clegg-eron coalition over their savage cuts agenda. Captain SKA’s hit video “Liar Liar” – featured on Left Foot Forward ten days ago – will go for Christmas gold against whoever wins the X Factor, going on sale from December 12th.
Education cuts dominated Westminster this week; cuts to school sport, cuts to higher education, cuts to Educational Maintenance Allowances, reports Shamik Das.
The debate over school sport reached Prime Minister’s Questions today, with Ed Miliband putting David Cameron on the spot over cuts to the school sport budget. The Leader of the Opposition urged Mr Cameron to “overrule” Michael Gove, warning him he “will live to regret” the £162 million abolition of School Sport Partnerships, which have a proven track record of success.
The Tory right were on the march in Brussels today, voting in hardline Eurosceptic Martin Callanan as the leader of the party’s MEPs. Callanan was the unanimous victor in the poll of the Conservative’s 24 Members of the European Parliament, winning over 50 per cent of the vote – including the support of Daniel Hannan, who had told Callanan’s rival Charles Tannock he would vote for him, only to double-cross him.
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.
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.
Nearly 50,000 people have viewed a music video against the coalition’s cuts, which features a montage of Nick Clegg, George Osborne and David Cameron droning on about us “all being in this together”, and even a star-turn from Mr Clegg’s (alleged) political inspiration – Mrs Thatcher.
The latest Reuters/IPSOS Mori Political Monitor makes grim reading for the Liberal Democrat leadership. Though the headline voting intention figures – Conservatives 36% (-3); Labour 39% (+3); Liberal Democrats 14% (unchanged) – actually represent an improvement from their faltering performance in the Sun/YouGov daily tracker series, satisfaction and perception levels among the public leave Mr Clegg and his colleagues with plenty to think about.
David Cameron rapped Vince Cable over the knuckles at Prime Minister’s Questions today – insisting the business secretary’s claim that Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) were “Maoist and chaotic” was actually “not his view”.
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”.
