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.
Right-Wing Watch
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”.
Cultural change is best way to make parliament more representative
In the general election of 1964, Peter Griffiths, a “Tory nonentity”, shot to victory with a racist slogan; ‘Skin-Deep Democracy: How race, religion and ethnicity continue to affect Westminster politics’ (pdf), a new report published today by Quilliam, shows that a lot has changed since then – but also warns that the parties could do more to promote integration through equal involvement in Westminster politics.
Cable: Drive for Local Enterprise Partnerships “Maoist and chaotic”
In what are becoming frequent bursts of candour about the government’s deeply-flawed regional policy, business secretary Vince Cable told the annual dinner of Birmingham’s Lunar Society that his plans to scrap regional development agencies and replace them with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) have been “a little Maoist and chaotic”.
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.