Another Tory broken promise on health
Low-paid health workers including nurses look set to lose jobs or pay. The move would break one of two promises made by David Cameron and George Osborne.
Right-Wing Watch
Clegg faces lose-lose situation over Forgemasters
Nick Clegg has some tough decisions to make, both on the national stage and a lot closer to home, and faces a lose-lose situation over Sheffield Forgemasters.
Pickles’s meddle and populism bill
Jessica Studdert, political adviser to the Labour group at the Local Govt Assoc, examines Eric Pickles’s meddling in the very localism he claims to champion.
Pickles using smoke and mirrors to hide scale of cuts to councils
Shadow communities minister Barbara Keeley argues Eric Pickles is hiding the true scale of the cuts to councils, which hit the most deprived areas the hardest.
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.
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.