If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
This is a big deal - we are not only putting a truly vast sum of money at stake - the defence contractors estimate £25 billion, so we can assume at least three times that, 10 years late - we are also binding ourselves into a strategic commitment to maintaining not just a nuclear arsenal, but to a uniquely cold-war era one, based around submarine launched ballistic missiles.
Alan Johnson MP has revealed that he is considering a bid for London Mayor in 2016. Here are four reasons why he is Labour's best choice.
Ultimately, we must invest in our infrastructure and make the UK the most attractive place in the world to do business. It's time to stop the talk and get spending. If this is the course of action the Government has decided to take - rightly, in my view - let's get on with it.
Back into recession, austerity yet to fully bite, pressure from backbenchers, the Opposition and world leaders - the Government needs to take bold action to show that austerity and growth can go together.
The endless eurozone crisis provokes a despairing weariness. The G8 has come and gone in Camp David, bringing, so it seems, a solution no nearer. Yet another EU summit will gather later this week. No-one is holding their breath that something fresh and decisive will emerge to halt the ever-mestasising threat of sovereign default. Yet, something has recently changed. To weariness, now add raw alarm. Over the years, European politicians have repeatedly cried wolf, invoking deadlines for a final solution to the euro-crisis that they have then declined to honour. Now, the new deadline is the Greek general election on 17 June. David Cameron has even labelled it a referendum on membership of the eurozone.
According to the Observer, senior members of Labour's shadow cabinet want Ed Miliband to commit Labour at the next election to an in-out referendum on the European Union. Is that wise?
I give you, courtesy of Conservative Home, a website offering therapy for frustrated Tories, this unattractive vignette: "Mr Hilton was also accused of being unprofessional: turning up at the meeting in shorts and a T-shirt, clutching a plastic bag full of oranges. As the meeting went on, Mr Hilton is said to have started 'inexpertly' peeling an orange, getting juice all over the crotch of his brushed cotton shorts.
Something really extraordinary has happened this week. In his speech to the IOD in Manchester, the prime minister has fashioned a new narrative for his government's economic agenda. Before jetting off to the G8 in the US, he has talked of austerity WITH stimulus for the first time - and seems to have consigned to the political dustbin that 'binary choice' rhetoric of his first two years in government. With low to no growth in the UK, Camp David may prove to be an appropriately named location for one D Cameron. Is he now pitching his tent on new political ground? I'm fascinated.
Two years into government, after 13 years in opposition (or in the case of the Liberal Democrats almost a century) you would have expected a Queen's Speech packed with ideas. Ministers would have spent months battling it out to have their legislation included in the government's packed programme.
Predictably, the prime minster is taking flak over his decision to run parenting classes for people. As expected, some are calling the initiative an example of the Nanny State. In due course, editors will pull out examples of poor parenting by members of his government or those who advise him. We all know what's coming, don't we?
Boris Johnson provoked both glee and outrage when he wrote, in his regular Telegraph column, that the next Director General of the BBC should be a Tory. "Imagine", opined Alastair Campbell "if we had said what Boris said". The difference, of course, is that a Labour politician would never say it. They just did it.
The Tory-led government is unpopular, out of touch and presiding over a Downing Street-created double dip recession. You would have thought that they would exercise a degree of caution and perhaps pause to reflect before blundering on.
The Tories are in trouble and these elections are only the beginning of a long battle within the Party. Only time will tell if Cameron is able to lead a united Party into the next General Election, but when Cameron is at the centre of the squabbling, it is hard to see him being able to do so.
With Barack Obama making a bold strategic judgement in stating his support for gay marriage, even while David Cameron quietly omits the issue from the Queen's speech, I speak to a London couple whose civil partnership is rapidly approaching, and Conservative MP David Burrowes who will vote against the bill when it comes to the Commons.
The truth is, beards tend to fascinate people in the Western world. Other cultures have the beard built into their social DNA, but here, in this side of the world, a beard raises a question or two. Especially if you're David Beckham.
I used to think it was advisable, before entering marketing, to leave reality behind. Now I've realised it's essential.
