ToryDiary: Voters support slower path to deficit reduction
Dr Andrew Murrison MP on Platform: My mental health blueprint for veterans has been sent to Number 10
LeftWatch: Labour bashing Chris Grayling reveals that 1.4 million Britons have NEVER had a job
Local government:
- The joint Conservative/Lib Dem administration running Wolverhampton City Council seems to have collapsed.
- Eric Pickles gives a Written Statement on what he did over the summer months.
- Where does Red Ken stand on the tube strikes?
James Morris MP answers ConservativeHome's Twenty Questions for New MPs, including this answer to which government department he'd most like to run: "Foreign Office or Defence. There are profound forces at work globally with a decisive shift in power from west to east. We need to take a creative and innovative approach to protecting our national interests."
"BBC unions last night declared war on the Conservatives with an extraordinary threat to black out coverage of David Cameron’s keynote speech to the Tory party conference. They unveiled a series of damaging strikes which will also disrupt its reporting of Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review next month... Philip Davies, a Conservative member of the Culture Select Committee, said: "Mark Thompson (the BBC Director General) was saying recently that the BBC had a Left-wing bias in Margaret Thatcher’s time, but that has since been ironed out . He might now want to think again. It’s entirely predictable of course and demonstrates the inherent Left-wing bias that still exists. What it shows is that their bias is more important to them than broadcasting events that are of interest to the public. They don’t want to get the Conservative message across because it doesn’t fit in with their agenda." Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries said: ‘These are cynical and politically motivated strikes which prove the BBC unions have declared war on the Government.’" - Daily Mail
Cameron considering five year delay to renewal of Trident... [- Guardian]
...but Fox isn't on the same page according to the FT (£): "The defence secretary told the Commons that he unambiguously agreed with maintaining the “continuous-at-sea deterrence” (CASD) principle, which has survived since 1960s but is being reconsidered to reduce costs. Mr Fox’s strong pledge of support came in spite of Downing Street confirming that a downgrade of the nuclear posture was an option in the defence review and would be considered by the national security council."
Police want protection from spending cuts"Senior police officers want protection from the worst of the public spending cuts so forces can deal with any rise in social and industrial tension. Police Superintendents' Association president Ch Supt Derek Barnett will outline this call at the body's annual conference in Cheshire on Wednesday." - BBC
Charles Kennedy urges extra subsidy for Scotland in spending review
"We have to be terribly careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because trying to provide education services in the Highlands, or in the Borders … inescapably, that is going to cost you more per capita … than it is in the central belt or in metropolitan England.” - The former Liberal Democrat leader, quoted in The Herald
Michael Gove plans to give schools the right to give preference to poorer children - Guardian
"Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has asked his officials to look at how such a change could work, giving new schools an incentive to focus on teaching disadvantaged children and emulating charter schgools in the United States, such as the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP)." - Times (£)
Telegraph puts spotlight on Labour's union links
"And what about Labour? Had the party won the election, it, too, would be implementing spending cuts. Yet, shamefully, its leadership candidates sit mutely by, afraid to say anything that might damage their chances of picking up union votes. They want to skulk behind the massed ranks of the public sector unions and hope the country won't notice. But it will." - Telegraph leader
"Harriet Harman backed a union campaign against spending cuts yesterday by saying Labour would support coordinated strike action." - Daily Mail
At TUC hustings Ed Miliband pledged to attend union anti-cuts rally but David Miliband declined - FT (£)
Coalition tensions over civil liberties v security"The spooks and the cops are unwilling to see detention without trial brought down to 14 days. They are opposed to the idea that control orders should be scrapped. David Cameron — a more paternalist Tory than civil libertarians such as David Davis — may be unwilling to overrule his security experts, who are warning that to take a more liberal approach could make a terrorist attack in Britain more likely. But if he insists on retaining Labour’s controversial measures that would put him on a direct collision course with Nick Clegg on an issue of symbolic importance for the coalition. “These are big battles,” says one insider. “If Nick wanted to, he could make this the dealbreaker.” - Rachel Sylvester in The Times (£)
Coalition delays next Queen's Speech"The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have been accused of an abuse of power after they announced plans to abolish next year’s Queen’s Speech. Labour accused Coalition ministers of giving themselves more time with which to push through their controversial cuts legislation by delaying the next state opening of parliament. The move would effectively postpone next year’s Queen’s Speech, in which the Government lays out its plans for the next session, until 2012. The speech has traditionally acted as a deadline by which a Government must get its plans through, or be forced to le t them fall." - Herald
"Plans to move to five-year, fixed-term parliaments have been backed by MPs despite warnings it could lead to clashes between the Commons and the judiciary. The Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill gained its second reading in the Commons by 311 votes to 23, Government majority 288, after Nick Clegg had earlier claimed it would remove the right of a prime minister to seek a dissolution of Parliament for "pure political gain"." - Express
Nick Boles' idea for an electoral pact may be the LibDems' only chance of survival - Michael Brown in The Independent
> Yesterday's ToryDiary: Why an electoral pact between the Coalition partners isn't as simple as it may seem to be
The poor like tax least "Whereas 30 per cent of the AB social group told ComRes that the tax they pay benefits them because of the public services they use, only 20 per cent of the C2 social group and just 19 per cent of the DE group said that they regarded the taxes they pay as good value for the services they get in return." - Research quoted by Dominic Lawson in The Independent
"An all-party commission warns that taxes will have to rise to cope with the financial pressures caused by an ageing population; an increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity; combating climate change; closing the gap between rich and poor; abolishing child poverty and improving skills levels in the workforce." - Independent
Bill Clinton has defended Tony Blair from his critics as the former prime minister collected a major political award - Telegraph
And finally... THE GUARDIAN, yes The Guardian, lists some reasons to love Ann Widdecombe... "She loves cuddly animals (a rare anti-hunting Tory who lists Buttercups Goat Sanctuary as one of her favourite causes can't be all bad)...
She turned down an offer of a job as Britain's ambassador to the Vatican...
Michael Howard doesn't like her. She once dressed as a miner and went down a coal mine when fighting Burnley as a Tory candidate...
She's a campaigner for prison education...
She appeared in Doctor Who...
Her parliamentary expenses were very low..." - The full list.
ToryDiary:
- Why an electoral pact between the Coalition partners isn't as simple as it may seem to be
- A narrative for the government (Draft #1)
- The Coalition smiles back at the TUC snarl
- Douglas Carswell leads Eurosceptics' ridicule of Coalition's referendum lock
Mark Field MP on CentreRight: Why is Parliament being fixed for five rather than four years?
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