Also on Comment: Britain's most important political commentator is Ian Hislop and he paints Britain's MPs as "corrupt, second-rate and incompetent"... Local government: ThinkTankCentral: The EBacc may discriminate against poorer students, warns Civitas WATCH: William Hague promises to help Scottish government if they seek return of Lockerbie bomber Nick Clegg says Liberal Democrats will not let Tories water down human rights laws - Guardian Government backs down on plan to shut Twitter and Facebook in crises -Guardian Tories will have to accept CCTV as police prepare to examine 40,000 hours of images in massive effort to prosecute rioters and looters - Times (£) Community work for ex-offenders can succeed - Jonathan Aitken in The Times (£) Daily Mail and Sun warn Cameron against failure on immigration... but The Telegraph says he will miss his target ...but writing in The Sun, Andrew Green of MigrationWatch says the Coalition won't hit his targets: "The changes announced so far won't be enough to reach their target. There must be a crackdown on bogus students, and it's time economic migrants were limited to five years while British workers are trained to take their place. We've been lied to for years. Cameron must get a grip and soon." "Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva, a senior researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said it was likely that the UK’s population of eastern Europeans would continue to increase for some time to come. “The factors that created the initial pull for A8 workers to the UK are still in place – there is a demand for their labour, wages are still much higher than Poland or other A8 nations and there are now well-established communities and networks here,” he said." - FT (£) > Damian Green yesterday: "Britain is addicted to immigration" and it will take a while to break the addiction Vince Cable has agreed to a controversial European directive to give agency workers the same rights as full-time employees of British companies Nick Hurd MP launches social impact bonds to encourage private investors to reduce costs of social problems "The Government expects to raise up to £40m across pilot schemes in Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster, Birmingham and Leicestershire, which are expected to be up and running early next year." -Independent "The government has put the annual bill for assisting the UK's 46,000 most deprived families at more than £4bn a year, representing an average of nearly £100,000 per family. They are often affected by multiple issues, such as poor education and drug or alcohol addiction, and ministers are concerned the current focus on treating the problems of individuals creates a costly cycle of deprivation, which they find almost impossible to break. It is hoped the use of social impact bonds, where investors get paid a return for successful projects, can intensively tackle several problems in a family setting." - BBC 26 million Britons will be obese by 2030 as Health minister Anne Milton promises action plan by end of year - Independent Commentary on Cameron, Libya and foreign policy Unions are planning a rolling series of targeted strikes instead of mass walkouts, if talks over pension reforms fail - Guardian Anti-Bercow Tories may use boundary review to oust Speaker from Buckingham seat Police arrest man over online threats to Tory MP Louise Mensch - Scotsman Conservative Central Office collegaue of Cameron's, Andrew Honnor, becomes Interim Director of Public Affairs at News International - Independent Blue paintbomb thrown at Nick Clegg splashes his face "He shrugged off the attack during a party question-and-answer session in Glasgow as “not a big deal”. Mr Clegg was accompanied by Lib Dem MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife Willie Rennie, who took the brunt of the paint. He said: “It was two disgruntled individuals who chose not to speak about their concerns in advance but were purely interested in a stunt." - Express British Beer & Pub Association: High UK alcohol taxes are threatening jobs and leading to less drinking - Express And finally... No more babies for us says David Cameron after visiting hospital where their daughter, Florence, was born - Express "David Cameron boasted he was a hands-on Prime Minister yesterday – at nappy changing. During a visit to the Cornish maternity unit where his daughter Florence was born, the nation’s leader claimed he had done the last five nappy changes." -Herald > Yesterday's video: The Camerons take baby Florence to visit the hospital where she was born ToryDiary: What will voters make of a falling GCSE pass rate? Tom Clougherty on Comment: In defence of tax havens WATCH:Brandon Lewis MP: With regulatory safeguards the gaming industry can produce real economic benefits
Writing in The Guardian the Deputy PM praises human rights laws: "The Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights have been instrumental in preventing local authorities from snooping on law-abiding families, in removing innocent people from the national DNA database, in preventing rapists from cross-examining their victims in court, in defending the rights of parents to have a say in the medical treatment of their children, in holding local authorities to account where they have failed to protect children from abuse, in protecting the anonymity of journalists' sources, and in upholding the rights of elderly married couples to be cared for together in care homes."
"The immigration minister, Damian Green, said: ‘These statistics cover a period before we introduced our radical changes to the immigration system to bring net migration back down to the tens of thousands.’" - Metro
"An analysis of the new laws by the Department for Business discloses that it will cost firms more than £1.8 billion a year, leading to warnings from major employers that they will have to cut jobs... The laws are being introduced despite a pledge by George Osborne, the Chancellor, to boost economic growth by cutting red tape and other obstacles facing businesses." - Telegraph
Anne Milton quoted in the Daily Mail: "Tackling obesity is a priority for the Government and through Change4Life, we are encouraging people to make simple changes, such as eating more fruit and vegetables, cutting down on fatty foods and being more active,’ she added. If we are to find new ways of supporting people to change their behaviour and achieve real sustained improvements in public health we need to work with public health , voluntary and commercial organisations."
"If Mr Bercow’s seat is redrawn to take in parts of a seat now held by a sitting Conservative MP, they believe, the party should be able to contest the new constituency. A senior Conservative said it would be “quite unfair” if Mr Bercow was allowed to stand for a redrawn constituency while another MP was not." - Telegraph
Friday, 26 August 2011
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