Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th November 2014

[TechnicalEphemera]

Have we had this steaming pile from Nick Cohen.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... y-internet

Fabulous Lib Dem puff piece. Apparently Clegg has single handedly saved us from the Stasi State by stopping May's surveillance bills.

Ignoring the following.

1. GCHQ is already intercepting (without warrant or legal cover) far more than May is asking for.
2. They happily pass this information around.
3. Clegg knows the above and has said and done nothing.
4. Secret courts were supported by Clegg.

He must think we are stupid.

Mind you he is right about Cooper, if Ed wins I seriously hope he doesn't appoint her Home Secretary. Scary scary thought.

[TheGrimSqueaker]

Heads up!

That 5 Live thing about CMG should be on soon.

Loved Jon's line about purple Tories!!

[letsskiptotheleft]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-labour" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hasn't London had enough of egotistical Mayor's?

[TechnicalEphemera]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-labour

Hasn't London had enough of egotistical Mayor's?

Hasn't she got any self awareness?

Seriously, if Norman Lamont stood against her he would win comfortably (and that would just be for the Labour nomination. For Mayor it would be a landslide).

[letsskiptotheleft]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-labour

Hasn't London had enough of egotistical Mayor's?

Hasn't she got any self awareness?

Seriously, if Norman Lamont stood against her he would win comfortably (and that would just be for the Labour nomination. For Mayor it would be a landslide).

Don't think she has, she can't do, every time she goes on TV I reckon Labour loses a few 1000 votes, she believes her own self promoting hype.

[Tubby Isaacs]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-labour

Hasn't London had enough of egotistical Mayor's?

Don't tell me about it.

No obvious interest in transport or development, which is the most important part of the job. Never run a council or department. And not conspicuously bright. Or popular.

[tinyclanger2]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ion-labour

Hasn't London had enough of egotistical Mayor's?

Don't tell me about it.

No obvious interest in transport or development, which is the most important part of the job. Never run a council or department. And not conspicuously bright. Or popular.

And that's just the pro's.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Patrick Collins on David Mellor. Saving you clicking on the Mail, here it is.

Listeners to BBC radio sport in the 90s will recall the moment at six minutes past six on Saturday evenings, when a tune would blare and a plumply over-elocuted voice would begin to bluster.

David Mellor was putting football to rights. His opinions were forceful, provocative and totally untainted by knowledge; this team wasn’t ‘doing the business’, that player wasn’t ‘cutting the mustard’, these managers were ‘tactically naive’.

We were reprieved for a few weeks in 1997 when he went to defend his Parliamentary seat. The electors of Putney emphatically rejected him. And so, at 6.06 on Saturday evening, we were greeted with: ‘Hello again! Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the airwaves, I’m back!’ Many people seemed to dismiss him as a harmless impostor who was using football to seek street credibility. But others perceived an edge of real nastiness in his sweeping, scornful judgments and glasses were raised when he left the programme.

Yet we wondered if memory was playing tricks. Was he really as awful as we believed? The answer arrived last week, in that tape of our hero’s altercation with a London taxi driver.

‘You’ve been driving a cab for 10 years, I’ve been in the Cabinet, I’m an award-winning broadcaster, I’m a Queen’s Counsel.

‘You think your experiences are anything compared to mine? I don’t want a lot of backchat, I don’t want to know how much you know about London because you don’t know as much about London as I do. Because you think you’re a big s***, having driven a cab for 10 years, you don’t need to worry about someone who has been in the Cabinet, who’s an award-winning broadcaster, who’s a Queen’s Counsel. If you think you’re going to be sarky with me, get a better education. Do you get any of this, my little friend?’

That was our Dave, still ‘doing the business’, still ‘cutting the mustard’. One of a kind, they say. Let us hope they’re right.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Abbott got a stunning 7.45% when she stood for Labour leader in 2010.

Since then she's put her foot in it on Twitter and got sacked from the frontbench.

[ErnstRemarx]

Oh bugger it, I should post this in The Pub, but it's so bloody good that I hopw you'll all excuse the intrusion...

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[rebeccariots2]

Lor luvvus - Shapps has just said if the Conservatives are back in government they will get full employment .....

Probably won't be paying employment though will it Shapps / Green / Whoever you are today. How many volunteers and workfare / free labour placements will there be if you get your way.

Westminster Hour on R4 now. Shapps is cringe-making.

[RogerOThornhill]

Take a look at the DM front pages for tomorrow...

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/5 ... 72/photo/1



Talk about obsessed...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Lor luvvus - Shapps has just said if the Conservatives are back in government they will get full employment .....

Probably won't be paying employment though will it Shapps / Green / Whoever you are today. How many volunteers and workfare / free labour placements will there be if you get your way.

Westminster Hour on R4 now. Shapps is cringe-making.

Interest rates will be up pretty sharpish if it looks like full employment.

[rebeccariots2]

Take a look at the DM front pages for tomorrow...

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/5 ... 72/photo/1



Talk about obsessed...

That is extraordinary. Bins - not the NHS, not the economy - bins. Most people have far more pressing concerns than the frequency of bin collections.

[TechnicalEphemera]

Take a look at the DM front pages for tomorrow...

https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/5 ... 72/photo/1



Talk about obsessed...

That is extraordinary. Bins - not the NHS, not the economy - bins. Most people have far more pressing concerns than the frequency of bin collections.

Quite right, but now the Express has stopped covering The Diana conspiracy bins will have to do.

[tinyclanger2]

Brief summary on today's CMG experiment. Since I started "recording" (ie: opened a tab for each simultaneously) the tweet results are as follows:

CMG 10,097 (some adverts and a few pro-Cameron but v small proportion)
CMS 46 (33 of which were anti-Cameron)
VoteLabourGetMiliband 5 (2 pro Ed one unclear)

[rebeccariots2]

Oh bugger it, I should post this in The Pub, but it's so bloody good that I hopw you'll all excuse the intrusion...

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Absolutely amazing Ernst. Great live performance ... the counting involved in that is something else.

Very tame audience though - I'd have been doing a bit of whooping after that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Scottish Daily Mail has SNP to hit middle earners because it wants control over the personal allowance.

I wish the sodding Lib Dems hadn't foisted that stupid policy on the UK, so I can see the SNP's point, if they lower it. Much better ways to help the working poor.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The adults have come out to play with Osborne.

Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said on Sunday that Osborne would have to admit on Wednesday that the public finances are in worse shape than the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting at the time of the last budget, in March.

“Things haven’t gone as well as hoped since March, not in the sense that the economy has done less well than hoped but, because earnings growth has been relatively poor, other tax receipts have been relatively poor. We’ll probably end up with the deficit a bit higher than the OBR was expecting back in March,” Johnson told BBC1’s Sunday Politics programme.

He said that even with Osborne’s promised squeeze on welfare benefits, there would have to be big cuts to other public services in the next parliament. “The consequence will be that by 2018 we are looking at spending cuts of one-third in a whole slew of public services – local government, police, justice, police environment – all of these things,” he said.

But, in his interview, Osborne argued that the IFS analysis was wrong, because it did not make allowance for the fact that a future Conservative government could introduce even more welfare cuts.

You're not even making the ones you've said you would.

[rebeccariots2]

The adults have come out to play with Osborne.

Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said on Sunday that Osborne would have to admit on Wednesday that the public finances are in worse shape than the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting at the time of the last budget, in March.

“Things haven’t gone as well as hoped since March, not in the sense that the economy has done less well than hoped but, because earnings growth has been relatively poor, other tax receipts have been relatively poor. We’ll probably end up with the deficit a bit higher than the OBR was expecting back in March,” Johnson told BBC1’s Sunday Politics programme.

He said that even with Osborne’s promised squeeze on welfare benefits, there would have to be big cuts to other public services in the next parliament. “The consequence will be that by 2018 we are looking at spending cuts of one-third in a whole slew of public services – local government, police, justice, police environment – all of these things,” he said.

But, in his interview, Osborne argued that the IFS analysis was wrong, because it did not make allowance for the fact that a future Conservative government could introduce even more welfare cuts.

You're not even making the ones you've said you would.

On R4 today the analyst (can't remember who) was saying that on current performance, or lack of it, if the coalition were to stick to what they have said they have find to plug the deficit it will mean cuts of at least 33% in all departments that aren't protected over the course of the next parliament .... Eye watering. No wonder Osborne was refusing to commit to not raising VAT on the Marr show this morning.

[Tubby Isaacs]

You've seen that he's going to spend £15bn on roads too?

[rebeccariots2]

You've seen that he's going to spend £15bn on roads too?

Yes. There was a lovely comment BTL on the G piece likening this budget bonanza to a political Black Friday ... pretty spot on. Trouble is we've got months of this to come.

[Tubby Isaacs]

We've had £17bn, by their own figures, just today!

[rebeccariots2]

We've had £17bn, by their own figures, just today!

It's him - Osborne - repeatedly saying he can give funding to the NHS and these projects because they've managed the economy so well and it's strong .............. and then in the next breath we are told that the deficit hasn't been dealt with as they predicted and things are still very ropey so we must have more spending cuts for the forseeable future - that drives me nuts.

Which is it George? You can't have both. But I supposed he's used to having both ... doesn't present any kind of contradictory problem for him.

[RogerOThornhill]

That idea of Boris's to devolve the justice system down to city/regional level. Take a look at Greenhalgh's statement about it:

Greenhalgh said savings would come from getting the police, courts and prosecutors answerable to the same goals and by “co-locating them in the same buildings, working off the same IT systems, with the same priorities.”

yeah, I can't see any potential issues and conflicts of interests and potential miscarriages of justice arising from that at all...I think on balance I'd prefer the police and justice not to be working off the same IT system.

It's not like a hospital where you'd expect, say X rays to be available to all clinicians to look at no matter where the origianl was taken - police and justice have to be separated.

[rebeccariots2]

Ian McMillan @IMcMillan · 2h 2 hours ago
Just found two billion quid for the NHS in this drawer labelled 7th of May.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That idea of Boris's to devolve the justice system down to city/regional level. Take a look at Greenhalgh's statement about it:

Greenhalgh said savings would come from getting the police, courts and prosecutors answerable to the same goals and by “co-locating them in the same buildings, working off the same IT systems, with the same priorities.”

yeah, I can't see any potential issues and conflicts of interests and potential miscarriages of justice arising from that at all...I think on balance I'd prefer the police and justice not to be working off the same IT system.

It's not like a hospital where you'd expect, say X rays to be available to all clinicians to look at no matter where the origianl was taken - police and justice have to be separated.

I can just about see the mayor overseeing probation- it's such a mess at the moment. But courts?

[RogerOThornhill]

I can just about see the mayor overseeing probation- it's such a mess at the moment. But courts?

Especially in London - Law Courts, Old Bailey - these are special ones which aren't the same as anywhere else in the country.

[RogerOThornhill]

Hmm...puts her intervention in the Mansion tax debate into context.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebri ... -peer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Elderly Parliamentarians dozing off a good lunch were startled to glance up to the public gallery and spot actress Angelina Jolie, an old friend of Lady Helic, gazing down benignly.

Now tongues are wagging in Westminster that Miss Jolie is being lined up herself set on a seat in the House of Lords.

Wonder whether her old mate Willie Hague put her up to that?

[adam]

Is that this Murnaghan?

http://www.dermotmurnaghan.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Or this one?

http://www.victorianhospitalarchitecture.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm pretty sure that one or both of them are actually Dave Gorman. Really.

[HindleA]

Good piece on UC IMHO




http://www.alexsarchives.org/2014/11/th ... it-fiasco/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


"early financial modelling indicates there will be almost as many losers as winners"

"ubiquitous conditionality" where the State moves beyond the acknowledgement of structural factors...modification of behaviour are what is required.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I can just about see the mayor overseeing probation- it's such a mess at the moment. But courts?

Especially in London - Law Courts, Old Bailey - these are special ones which aren't the same as anywhere else in the country.

Yes, good point.

Greenhalgh actually says courts and the police have the same priorities. Incredibly thick.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Btw, Roger, did you see Jo Shuter can appeal her lifetime ban from teaching?

It was rather harsh.

The DfE guy said

“I have now reconsidered this matter in light of the points raised by Ms Shuter on appeal and consider that the decision not to set a period, after which Ms Shuter would be entitled to apply for a review of the prohibition order, was not a proportionate sanction given the factual allegations proved upon admission before the panel,” he said.

In other words, she would have sued us. And there'd be a court case with "head of flagship academy school birthday party on the taxpayer" headlines.

[adam]

I can just about see the mayor overseeing probation- it's such a mess at the moment. But courts?

Especially in London - Law Courts, Old Bailey - these are special ones which aren't the same as anywhere else in the country.

Yes, good point.

Greenhalgh actually says courts and the police have the same priorities. Incredibly thick.

It's a while since I paid close attention to this but back in the day magistrates courts, on the one hand, and crown and county courts, on the other, were administratively completely different organisations, run by different departments (I think mags were part of the home office and the others were in the LCD) with different procedures and practices and different IT development just as IT development was becoming the core of how everything was done. (When I worked in a combined crown and county court, which was a very long time ago now, 1990, the listing officer, who was in charge of making sure absolutely everything kept moving forwards somehow, relied on a big board behind him with movable tabs, a bit like the football league tables you used to be able to send off and get from Shoot! magazine at the beginning of the season, and no sections in the court at all kept computerised records).

[seeingclearly]

Good piece on UC IMHO




http://www.alexsarchives.org/2014/11/th ... it-fiasco/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


"early financial modelling indicates there will be almost as many losers as winners"

"ubiquitous conditionality" where the State moves beyond the acknowledgement of structural factors...modification of behaviour are what is required.

I'd agree with every word of that. Universal Credit really is that dystopian.

Let's hope it never comes to fruition.

[LadyCentauria]

You've seen that he's going to spend £15bn on roads too?

According to the Beeb, it is the same £15bn that was initially announced in 2013...

[LadyCentauria]

Good piece on UC IMHO




http://www.alexsarchives.org/2014/11/th ... it-fiasco/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


"early financial modelling indicates there will be almost as many losers as winners"

"ubiquitous conditionality" where the State moves beyond the acknowledgement of structural factors...modification of behaviour are what is required.

...alarmingly belated attempts by DWP to set out how the whole system is supposed to work when it is finished.

How on earth anyone is supposed to design an effective IT system without knowing what it supposed to do just leaves me aghast – and has done since the very beginning. Every time Select Committees broached the subject (or came near to it) IDS and friends would launch off into waffle about Agile and Waterfall as if mention of those magic words would automatically solve everything – and as if those ways of working would make it easy as pie to start by designing a programme to calculate 1 claimant @ a per month +/- b earned income + x% of crent = £d and then cobbling on extra bits to deal with the great variety in the shape and make-up of families and households in the UK and the six very different benefits those families/households could be entitled to.