Can I be the only one who thinks it distasteful and unnecessary for the government to have released the port-mortem report on David Kelly? His family and friends were not happy about it, Lord Hutton specifically ruled that it should remain confidential. So why was it released? It hasn't silenced the conspiracy theorists. Far from it, it gave them another opportunity to vent. They are not the sort of people to let evidence and the conclusive findings of the report that Kelly took his own life, get in the way of their view that the poor man was killed by the government. I have heard more than one accuse Alastair Campbell of actually committing the act himself. Enough already. It was a tragic death, but it was suicide. Can we stop raking over this unfortunate soul's bones and allow him to rest in peace?
Monday 25 October 2010
Thursday 21 October 2010
George gets his axe out
So Gorgeous George finally had his day. After months of anticipation, yesterday he revealed the size of his axe. And my, wasn’t it big? £81 billion worth of cuts, with many departments taking massive hits to protect spending of health, education and defence. The Departments of Communities and Local Government will have to cope with cuts of 68 per cent, god alone knows how it will survive.
If the Chancellor appeared unperturbed by the fact that the cuts will lead to 490,000 public sector job losses, he looked completely overjoyed to be slashing the welfare budget by £18 billion. For as well as blaming Labour for the financial mess in which we now find us, he also attributes responsibility to those who make a lifestyle choice to live off the state. I have yet to meet anyone who has chosen to survive on £65.45 per week (or £51.84 if you are lucky enough to be under 25) but I am sure that Mr Osborne knows loads of them. That is presumably why he has declared war on benefit scroungers and cheats and is taking tough action to tackle the cost of benefit fraud which he estimated at £5 billion (a number which is somewhat at odds with the DWP’s own figures something we will ignore for the time being but see Cathy Newman for an explanation if you are interested). He has been talking about it for weeks including several of the 61 minutes of yesterday’s speech and was banging on about it again on morning on the Today programme.
It is important for everyone to have an enemy and all those people living the life of Riley at taxpayers’ expense are his. But many of his Lib Dem colleagues are less comfortable with his choice of villain. They would rather that the government tackled tax cheats – and apparently it is. For during his speech Mr O did reveal (albeit sotto voce) that £900 million would be invested at the HMRC to tackle tax evasion and fraud which costs us, wait for it, a staggering £7 billion – yes, that is £2 billion more than benefit fraud. Now you will be forgiven for not being aware of this since it barely got a mention in the post-review briefings by Government ministers or in the media coverage. One does wonder why there is less interest in this war. . .
If the Chancellor appeared unperturbed by the fact that the cuts will lead to 490,000 public sector job losses, he looked completely overjoyed to be slashing the welfare budget by £18 billion. For as well as blaming Labour for the financial mess in which we now find us, he also attributes responsibility to those who make a lifestyle choice to live off the state. I have yet to meet anyone who has chosen to survive on £65.45 per week (or £51.84 if you are lucky enough to be under 25) but I am sure that Mr Osborne knows loads of them. That is presumably why he has declared war on benefit scroungers and cheats and is taking tough action to tackle the cost of benefit fraud which he estimated at £5 billion (a number which is somewhat at odds with the DWP’s own figures something we will ignore for the time being but see Cathy Newman for an explanation if you are interested). He has been talking about it for weeks including several of the 61 minutes of yesterday’s speech and was banging on about it again on morning on the Today programme.
It is important for everyone to have an enemy and all those people living the life of Riley at taxpayers’ expense are his. But many of his Lib Dem colleagues are less comfortable with his choice of villain. They would rather that the government tackled tax cheats – and apparently it is. For during his speech Mr O did reveal (albeit sotto voce) that £900 million would be invested at the HMRC to tackle tax evasion and fraud which costs us, wait for it, a staggering £7 billion – yes, that is £2 billion more than benefit fraud. Now you will be forgiven for not being aware of this since it barely got a mention in the post-review briefings by Government ministers or in the media coverage. One does wonder why there is less interest in this war. . .
Friday 8 October 2010
Conference Seasonal Affected Disorder
Another year, another conference season done and dusted. This year was more gruelling than previous ones since the advent of the Con-Dem coalition meant that I had to endure two days in Liverpool at the Lib Dem Conference as well as two in Manchester with the comrades before the final round in Birmingham with Dave and the boys. On the positive front it was good to stay in big cities that can cope with thousands of conference goers without collapsing – the hotels are clean, they aren’t a rip off and you can get a decent meal. Anyone who has experienced a Blackpool or Bournemouth conference will understand just how important these things are.
But what of the conferences themselves? Well, a couple of observations. The first sartorial: a quick look around each of the conference halls revealed that Lib Dem delegates still favour the comedy tie and the novelty waistcoat, at Labour there were a plentiful supply of anoraks in anoraks and the ICC in Birmingham has distinguished by the large numbers of woman who wearing clothes run up from curtain material and men in chalk stripe, double-breasted suits. Oh, dear, oh dear (or Doe a dear for the Tory ladies).
On a more serious note, it was depressing just how few ethnic minority delegates attended the Lib Dem conference. Yes there were a few black faces in the crowd but once you eliminated consultants like me, others on commercial passes and journalists, I reckon you would have had just a handful of party delegates who weren’t white. The fact that the Conservatives have done better at recruiting ethnic minority activists should be a source of great shame to the party, hang your head Nick Clegg. Not that we should be getting too excited about the number of black people at the ICC, it was nothing like representative of the population but at least it felt that the party recognises it needs to take active steps to make it more so.
As for the atmosphere, there was a good deal of excitement and congratulation at the Lib Dem conference but it also felt like few, including minister or two, had grasped the reality that they were in government and were now responsible for things. The Labour conference felt flat and out of sorts. At first people were working out what the election of Miliband, E would mean for the party and when they worked out that it would mean the departure of Miliband, D a grey cloud descended over Manchester. I went to Birmingham expecting much celebrating – after all the party is back in power after 13 long years. And yes, people were delighted to be back in, to have beaten Labour. But they were also a bit subdued and that was before the child benefit debacle which got so many of their backs up.
But what of the conferences themselves? Well, a couple of observations. The first sartorial: a quick look around each of the conference halls revealed that Lib Dem delegates still favour the comedy tie and the novelty waistcoat, at Labour there were a plentiful supply of anoraks in anoraks and the ICC in Birmingham has distinguished by the large numbers of woman who wearing clothes run up from curtain material and men in chalk stripe, double-breasted suits. Oh, dear, oh dear (or Doe a dear for the Tory ladies).
On a more serious note, it was depressing just how few ethnic minority delegates attended the Lib Dem conference. Yes there were a few black faces in the crowd but once you eliminated consultants like me, others on commercial passes and journalists, I reckon you would have had just a handful of party delegates who weren’t white. The fact that the Conservatives have done better at recruiting ethnic minority activists should be a source of great shame to the party, hang your head Nick Clegg. Not that we should be getting too excited about the number of black people at the ICC, it was nothing like representative of the population but at least it felt that the party recognises it needs to take active steps to make it more so.
As for the atmosphere, there was a good deal of excitement and congratulation at the Lib Dem conference but it also felt like few, including minister or two, had grasped the reality that they were in government and were now responsible for things. The Labour conference felt flat and out of sorts. At first people were working out what the election of Miliband, E would mean for the party and when they worked out that it would mean the departure of Miliband, D a grey cloud descended over Manchester. I went to Birmingham expecting much celebrating – after all the party is back in power after 13 long years. And yes, people were delighted to be back in, to have beaten Labour. But they were also a bit subdued and that was before the child benefit debacle which got so many of their backs up.
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