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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Starting in the early hours of tomorrow morning, we shall be bombarded with analyses of the local election results. Are the gains and losses for each party above, below or on a par with expectations? Is Ed Miliband on course to become Prime Minister? Has UKIP overtaken the Liberal Democrats?
It doesn't appear that the current scheme helps the existing home owner and it may make it even tougher for them to sell. What it does do is address the impending shortage of homes that this country is facing as well as facilitating the sale of those homes in a more affordable way.
I have found in many places traditional voters of different stripes, Labour and particularly Tory, who might not agree with every Green Party policy, but who will be voting Green on Thursday because they value their local Green Party's hard work and community knowledge, and have found their county or unitary council unresponsive, undemocratic, untransparent - and they want shed some Green light on its workings.
As you may well know, last week Labour leader, Ed Miliband, announced that if Labour were to form the next government they would encourage businesses to pay employees the Living Wage (approximately £8.55) by cutting business rates or tax levels for those that do. As someone who employees 20-30 people (some on PAYE and others freelance) at the London Jewellery School, I whole-heartedly welcome these plans.
Whilst it is true that a handful of Ukip candidates have caused us embarrassment, others have been quite unfairly traduced. After the election I will go into details of false allegations and the downright intimidation that has happened to some of our good people.
Let's get this straight: a vote is never wasted as long as you use it. And the people who say this are wrong.
Each successive government of course blames the last for the financial mess it inherited but the truth is that the blame game pales in respect to apportioning blame for the 2008 global financial disaster.
One of the most exciting things about representing Leicester is being part of city of so many faiths. We have our splendid churches, our mosques, hindu temples, synagogues, a Jain temple and of course our Gurdwaras. I'm proud that we are city that celebrates every major religious festival.
I have a theory about why the anger has gone out of mainstream politics -- and it revolves around television. The telly-box is what the media studies people call a "cool medium" -- it is much kinder to soft-spoken, reasonable people with an ample store of pithy sound-bites than to tub-thumping ideologues who could make themselves heard in the far corners of Trafalgar Square without the aid of a microphone.
Scots deserve answers on how their pensions will be protected if we leave the UK and the cost of doing so.
My, we are a gloomy lot. Last week, I discussed the possible impact of a triple-dip recession. Last Thursday's GDP figures suggest that Britain's economy has so far avoided this fate. However, it is also clear that the government's hopes of steady growth of 2 - 3% a year have yet to be realised. And YouGov research for the Resolution Foundation finds that five years of economic troubles have left a deep mark on public opinion.
The politicians' draft Royal Charter is supposed to be a wizard wheeze to entrench "voluntary independent self-regulation", Judge Leveson's Orwellian oxymoron, without crossing David Cameron's Rubicon into statutory regulation. Of course, it does nothing of the kind. It is state regulation by any other name.
An unprecedented triple-dip recession has been averted, but yesterday's lacklustre growth figures mean our economy is simply back to where it was six months ago. This continues the overall picture of a flatlining economy in Britain ever since George Osborne's last spending review. In fact, this is now the weakest recovery for over 100 years.
So as Bill bounces goofily round the globe, adored at every corner, Tony provokes and irritates whilst bewildering us with an effortless master class in realpolitik, something that I miss in British politics.
John Mann MP's comments in response to Thursday's UK GDP figures, for the first quarter of 2013, display a sort of unhelpful ignorance that is not conducive to any meaningful discussion on economic policy, or constructing a worthwhile criticism of the government's economic policy.
Now is the time for the Labour party to create a new discourse and move away from "the Reagan and Thatcher settlement" Ed Miliband knows that he cannot sit back and watch the Coalition unravel, but if he is to win the next election, he has to set out moral and ideological terms for the future of the party.
