Pickles cuts grants to councils by 10% – and by 18% over 2 years
Philip Walker unmasks Eric Pickles’s sleight of hand to conceal a 10% cash cut in grant funding for council services in 2011/12 – an 18% cut over two years.
Right-Wing Watch
Eric Pickles’ cuts target Britain’s poorest areas
The Government claims that “We’re all in this together”. But even with Eric Pickles’ ‘transition grant’ into account, the poorest areas will do worse out of this settlement.
Is this the winter of Lib Dem discontent?
Another week, another chameleon-like manouvre from the Liberal Democrats as the tuition fees crisis looks increasingly likely to be the party’s poll tax moment. As Patrick Wintour writes in the Guardian, many Lib Dems have privately admitted their regret over signing the NUS pledge opposing tuition fees at the time of the election, arguing they did it under the encouragement of party HQ.
IDS is doubly wrong on housing benefit and rent inflation
Declan Gaffney shows how IDS has used figures on Local Housing Allowance deceptively argue the burden of the cuts would fall on landlords
IDS forced to correct statistics again
Following yesterday’s article on Left Foot Forward that discussed Douglas Alexander’s exposing of three counts of statistical misuse by Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has released a written ministerial statement clarifying his remarks.
Laws: Clegg was preparing “very discreetly” for a hung parliament
Vince Cable’s assertion that the Liberal Democrats are not guilty of reneging on their pre-election promises as they are simply honouring their commitment to the coalition agreement, will leave many wondering whether it is worth believing anything that the Lib Dems say – while in a revealing interview in the Total Politics December magazine, former Chief Secretary David Laws exposes just how much Nick Clegg’s focus was, pre-election, on a hung parliament.
Fox under pressure on £4.3bn of mystery “non frontline savings”
Jim Murphy has urged the Government to come clean on how it would achieve “at least £4.3 billion of non frontline savings”. The MOD is unable to account for its numbers.
Cameron: Cable doesn’t know what he thinks
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”.
Clegg wanted Lib-Lab Coalition to commit to cap on tuition fees
Nick Clegg went into Coalition talks with Labour demanding “a commitment not to raise the cap on tuition fees”. It means he changed his mind on the issue three times in as many weeks.
UK’s leading climate sceptic admits he’s driven by “ideological war”
NASA has announced that this year is the hottest year so far, just as climate scientists predicted it would be. This has been accompanied by the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in satellite records, and other extreme weather events around the world, many of which were also predicted by climate scientists. It is against this backdrop that one of Britain’s most prominent climate change ‘sceptics’ has admitted he’s driven by “ideological war”.