Right-Wing Watch
Home secretary forced to “water down” immigration speech
The Financial Times reports today that home secretary Teresa May was forced to "water down" her first major speech on immigration last week, after an intervention from Downing Street and business secretary Vince Cable. Unnamed sources within the government told the FT that May's original speech was "over the top" - with particular objections to passages which attacked the level of Tier 1 visas.
Cameron’s crazy claim vanity photographer will save taxpayer “a lot of money”
David Cameron has made the bizarre claim his vanity photographer will actually save the taxpayer lots of money. Former Tory party staffer Andrew Parsons and WebCameron filmmaker Nicky Woodhouse are being paid £35,000 each by the Cabinet Office, for jobs that were not advertised and didn't exist under the Labour government.
At it again: Now IDS misleads on jobs for foreigners
DWP is under investigation from the Statistics Authority. In today's Daily Mail, IDS makes erroneous claims about the proportion of "net jobs" goings to "people from overseas".
Investigation ordered into DWP’s use of statistics
The chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar has ordered an investigation into the way the Department of Work and Pensions uses statistics, following a string of concerns over the nature and presentation of stats by the department - often in secret lobby briefings, with press releases and tables not made publically available on the DWP's website for scrutiny - despite the coalition’s commitment to 'throw open the doors' of public bodies.
Labour should campaign on AV
Andy Burnham says "It would be a recipe for chaos and confusion if Labour candidates were also supporting AV in their literature." He's wrong - the party should campaign for AV.
Lord Lawson cherry picks data to spread climate change denial
At an International Policy Network seminar this week, Lord Giddens and Lord Lawson, chairman of the climate change-sceptics Global Warming Policy Foundation, once more rolled out the familiar climate change sceptic argument that there has been no global warming so far this century.