A common rhetorical trick for politicians is to talk about 'looking after the tax payer'. However the reality is that they are often only really concerned with particular tax payers - the electoral groups that determine the outcomes of elections - often people on middle-incomes.

I am the first person to stand up and bang the drum for Newbury - we're a great market town with a great sense of community. We're above average in almost every respect - most notably in employment and affluence, yet still we seem to be letting our young people down by failing to provide them with the education they so badly deserve.

You seem to be a little confused as to why people have reacted so strongly to your recent comments about welfare reforms.

The bedroom tax, due to come into force up all over the country on 1 April, must be turned into this Tory-led coalition government's poll tax.

I am sure you of all people do not need to be reminded that people claiming JSA or any other benefit to which they are entitled are not criminals, that jobcentre staff and benefits advisors are not their parole officers, and that the nation's benefits system was brought into being after a hard fought struggle by previous generations of trade unionists and working class men and women in this country to ensure a minimum of protection and justice for working people in periods of economic turbulence, ill health or any other crisis which might occur in their lives.

There is... no solid evidence that private prisons are better than their public sector counterparts. Audits have however found that inexperienced staff and cost cutting measures have left many private prisons struggling to create a safe environment for prisoners.

The cynical attempt to stigmatise, demonise, and dehumanise millions of people up and down the country, regardless of their personal or individual circumstances, surely ranks as one of the most vicious and brutal acts of any British government in living memory.

George Osborne has conjured up an image of lazy unemployed people enjoying comfortable lives whilst other (decent) people get up early to go out to work. This feeds into the same theme in some parts of the media about lazy unemployed people but is far from the reality.

At the heart of Twigg's oratory was a depressing reaffirmation of Labour's support for neoliberal education policies and the choice agenda. Chastising Michael Gove for seeing academies as a panacea, Twigg has plumped instead for a 'whatever works for you' approach

The chancellor's autumn statement saw him take yet another opportunity to articulate his disdain for the poor, as he outlined the government's intention to deepen its attacks on the unemployed and benefit claimants. It also confirmed the abiding economic illiteracy which underpins austerity.

The National Council of Voluntary Organisations recently estimated government cuts to the sector at £3.3bn by 2015. On top of this, a recent report has revealed that giving fell by 20% between 2010/11 and 2011/12, a loss of almost £2.3 billion in real terms.

This was a group of people in anticipation of a new era for their country. I felt simultaneously honoured to bear witness but also a little like a gatecrasher at an intimate family celebration. I wish this family well because peace is an inalienable right too.

For the past two weeks Britain has been engaged in something akin to a group hug over the success of the London Olympics and the achievement of Team GB in amassing enough medals to make us seem a nation of winners.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations are thankfully behind us, but in their wake they have left a mark of shame at the sheer amount of public money involved not only in paying for this event, but in propping up the Monarchy year after year, an institution as ludicrous as it is pernicious in the 21st century.

The ongoing economic crisis engulfing the British economy each week reveals an increase in the level of disdain, if not utter contempt, in which working people and the poor are held by David Cameron & Co.

Sixteen years after Mitterrand's death, the ghost of the first (and, before now, only) left-wing President of the Fifth Republic looms as large as ever. Over the past weeks, as once more the spectre of a Socialist in the Elysée has haunted Europe, commentators have dredged up the radical programme introduced by Mitterrand on his 1981 election.

Resistance to harm reduction initiatives, and to legalisation or decriminalisation of drug use, stems from many impulses. Here I will discuss just one: an expectation placed upon the addicted.