Left Foot Forward
Cornwall floods will be more frequent and severe following cuts to defences
The overnight flooding in Cornwall, which police have called a “major incident”, was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Mr Cameron described it as “a very difficult night” (though thankfully there are no reports of any casualties), praised the police and coastal services for doing a “fantastic job” and said the government “stand ready to help in any way that we can”.
Rebuilding the progressive left
Back in June, Left Foot Forward wrote about a project being run by a collective of community organisers, environmentalists, campaigners, Labour and Lib Dem activists, bloggers, writers, and development workers. A wider group convened again this week to hear the interim findings of the research.
Johann Hari skewers Richard Littlejohn on his own show
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”.
Two cheers for Cameron! But what about the rest of the party hacks on the payroll?
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.
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.
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.