clawsfour

Can Labour emulate Tories' 1992 victory?

Well yes, obviously.

But here is a nice piece by Will Woodward, the Guardian's Head of Politics, which poses the question quite neatly. And points to a possible answer.

DNA held illegally

I may be getting more right wing in my old-age, but if removing the DNA of persons not charged with any offence from the national DNA database means offenders go free, that is just mad. 

A European legal ruling today means fingerprints and DNA samples can't be held unless you are convicted of a crime.

200,000 people would not currently be on the database if that were the case. (That's according to the police who hold the data. The Tories say 1,000,000. God help us if they end up in charge of the economy and have to do proper sums.) 

But because they are on the database, nearly 14,000 crimes have been linked to people involved, including

114 murders
116 rapes
55 attempted murders and
68 sex offences. 

Personally, I would much rather have a national DNA database than murderers and sex offenders at liberty to offend again. You can have a sample from me today. 

And when can I have my ID card

Death by a thousand cuts

Imaginary cuts that is.

I was outraged to discover that the budget for our sportsmen and women was to be slashed in the run-up to 2012.

But not as outraged as I was to find out this was a complete work of fiction by sports journalists who have apparently fallen into the same trap as the politicos - the story is it's Labour's fault, now make the facts fit.

In this case the facts are that the total funding package has gone up 5 per cent to just shy of a quarter of a billion pounds. And because effort and resources are being put into events where British atheletes have a real chance of success, many sports are seeing a substantial boost - swimming +24%, cycling +22%, basketball +137% and so on.

Even so only two sports have seen a slight reduction in their development grant. Athletics down 5 per cent to £25.1m and badminton 1 per cent to £8.6m.

So where did the cuts story come from. The usual fall-back for a journalist looking for a cuts story. It's a reduction in the budget. Last year you spent £1,000 on a holiday. Next year you spend £1,100. That's an increase. Unless you previously told a bitteratti journalist you wanted to spend £1,200. Now it's a cut. Particularly if you are a Labour minister.

Fortunately the real world deals with real money so even more enouraging is the 54 per cent increase for the atheletes competing in the Paralympic Games.

Further comment over at Labour Matters.

All at sea

One of the least remarked bills introduced by yesterday's Queen's Speech was the Marine Bill - the culmination of years of hard work by the Labour government and conservation organisarions to provide safe havens for marine wildlife.

In 1992 the Labour Manifesto declared that the social responsibility of a government could be tested by the way it looked after it's wildlife.

Labour has now gone the extra mile - several miles in fact - drawing up plans for a marine conservation network surrounding our islands. This network will not only benefit critically endangered species, but also allow the regerstion of declining fish stocks, helping the fishing industry and consumer as well.

Mark Avery, Conservation Director for the RSPB said,

The UK's seas are internationally important for marine wildlife, including seabirds, whales, fish and corals.

Hilary Benn, Labour's Environment Secretary hailed the Bill as,

a significant day for our seas and the wonders that lie beneath them.

And a significant day in drawing another dividing line between Labour and the Tories.

Where have all the social workers gone

Of course, every tragedy requires lessons to be learned. However small that tragedy is in the scale of human suffering it is huge for the individuals concerned.

But when the dust has settled, people sacked and lessons learned following the investigation into the murder (for that is surely what it was) of baby P in Harringey there will be fewer people willing to bear the responsibility of predicting when a parent will kill their child. At the moment 30,000 children are under the protection of Social Services departments. No doubt there are more children at risk who have been missed.

But when the current media hysteria moves on to the next object of public hate and fewer children are protected by fewer social workers then will The Sun, The Mail and the rest share the blame for the next, inevitable, tragedy?

And one thing continues to puzzle me. The figures seem to vary a bit, but my understanding is that somewhere in the order of six children are killed by parents each month. Yet the media have ignored these tragedies for their single fixation.

An arresting attitude

It is certainly true that the Metropolitan police could have handled the investigation into the theft (why do we continue to use plumbing jargon? Leak?) of documents and information from the Home Office with a great deal more sensitivity. They may have been able to investigate the issues at hand without arresting a Conservative MP, they may not.

There are probably questions to be asked about why the Mayor of London was told of the decision to arrest and not the Home Secretary.

What is not in any doubt are two things. Firstly we are not living in a police state as claimed by the increasingly swivel-eyed Tony Benn.

Secondly the stomach churning hypocrisy of the Tory Party. The outrage that the police have arrested a Tory in the conduct of their investigations does not sit well with their attitude to arrest of Labour politicians and members of staff during the cash for honours investigation. This was summed up quite neatly at the time by Conservative MP Nigel Evans who said the arrests were a "seismic" development, adding: "It is important, we have to realise that the allegations are very serious indeed.

"Nobody is above the law, not the prime minister and not Lord Levy either, and this is something I think that we all have to learn."

Pity the Tories didn't learn it, then. Or, maybe nearer the truth, they didn't learn it because they still don't care. The age old truth of the Conservative Party is that it one rule for the common man and no rule for them. And that is the absolute dividing line when it come to the next general election. Recession or no, the Tories are, and always will be, in it for themselves alone. The class war, unfortunately, is still alive and well, but it's the Tories who keep breathing life into it.

Sound economics is always sound economics

Another quote for you. Gordon Brown? Alistair Darling? Some lefty economist after the Pre-Budget report?

Now what really gets me is this, that it is very ironic that those who are most critical of the extra tax are those who were most vociferous in demanding the extra expenditure. And what gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get some of the tax to pay for it.

Actually, Margaret Thatcher being very old Labour in 1981, defending her budget (against the even more right wing or her Conservative Party) to the Guardian Young Businessman of the Year Award Ceremony. 

And clear blue water

If you ever need to know how out of touch with the real world and real people the Tories are, look no further than Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley MP, who said yesterday,

On many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families...

Today that quote has been withdrawn from its original posting on the Conservative Party's Blue Blog web-site. Now there's a surprise. Unfortunately for the Tories one of the delights of the web is the imprint you leave by posting something lasts a long time, so Lansley is now spread far and wide. Something Cameron would like to do to him no doubt.

James Purnell MP, Labour's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, responding to Andrew Lansley's comments that the recession can be 'good for us', said:

Now more than ever it's important to help people who are sick to stay in work so that they can support themselves and their families. During the Tory recession people's health suffered as they were abandoned to long term unemployment or thrown onto incapacity benefit. Yet today the Tories think a recession will be good for people's health.

The Conservative Deputy Chairman may already regret letting the cat out of the bag when he said 'the recession has to take its course' but it remains Conservative policy. Now we know that not only would the Conservatives do nothing but sit back and watch the recession ‘take its course' - they actually believe it would be ‘good for us'.

There is a clear choice for the British people: Labour's approach will give real help now for families and businesses to help Britain come through these difficult times stronger and sooner; the Conservatives would sit back and watch as the recession became longer and deeper.

Clear red water

Well if anyone thought the Pre-Budget report was going to be the usual, slightly pointless, Pre-Christmas report about the state of the economy then a quick glance along the newspaper shelves this morning will disabuse you.

The right wing media are mourning the death of new Labour (didn't care much for new Labour previously, I seem to remember) and pointing to a Britain on the edge of bankruptcy. The centre ground cautiously suggest a brave move (although most reserve their positon to change this to a foolhardy move if it all goes wrong). And the left media........ oh, I forgot.

What is certain is that there is now the sharpest political divide since Cameron tried to rest the centre ground from Labour by claiming the inheritance to Tony Blair. Rather than being swept into insignificance by accepting the need to support the government when the country is facing economic difficulties, Cameron has gone for the high risk separation. The Tories have set their stall out against  the economic package announced yesterday in a very stark way. The clash between a government which believes intervention is necessary to help stimulate the economy and an opposition which will leave everything to the markets (just remember the last time they did that) could not be more clear.

And the game is now on for the General Election. if the measure announced by the Chancellor gain some traction in the next 12 months, then labour will be home and hosed. If they fail, then Gordon Brown will have gift-wrapped an electoral advantage to the Tories.

High earners to pay 45%

Today, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling will not be giving the details of a pre-budget report. Today will be a full blown budget designed to help stimulate an economy that the bankers, mainly, have pulled into recession.

In some ways the 2.5% off VAT and a new tax rate of 45% for high earners is fairly small beer. Certainly I am not convinced that 50p off the price of a 20 quid jumper is going to get the engines turning again. The other measures, including additional tax relief for low income families, are more likely to pump cash rather than credit back into the economy.

But in one major respect, today's budget will be the most important since Labour first switched priorities from private tax cuts to public service investment in 1997.

Suddenly an ocean of clear blue water has opened between Labour and David Cameron's neo-cons. Unusually, Alistair Darling has summed this up rather neatly. He said, "I despair of people who say in a moment of difficulty facing the country there's nothing we can do. It's back to [Thatcher's] idea that unemployment is a price worth paying."

None of this, however, will bring forward the date of the General Election which will be in May 2010. The Prime Minister should break another out of date, useless tradition and announce 4 May 2010 as the date immediately after today's budget.