It was Acceptable in the 80s

Not Dan Hodges says:

July 7, 2013 at 11:23 am 

Owen Jones walks into a bar, and finds it staffed by a dinosaur. “Bloody hell, shouldn’t you be extinct!?” says the dinosaur.

Miliband Reforms Give Even More Power to Unions | FT
Indy Union Calls for Strike Over Redundancies | MediaGuido
Len: Fiddling While Unite Burns? | Hopi Sen
Would-Be Labour Candidate Attacks Unite | Mark Pack
How Public Perception Differs From Reality | UK Polling Report
Twitter Media Bitch Fight of the Week | MediaGuido
40,000 Lazy Civil Servants Could Be Sacked | Telegraph
Time to Answer West Lothian Question | Telegraph
What is Labour For? | The Commentator
Power of Tory Wives | James Kirkup
Blunkett Takes City Second Job | Political Scrapbook

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2013

It was Acceptable in the 80s

If 22-year-old Vicky Fowler beats the incumbent Tory MP Marcus Jones in Nuneaton in two years’ time, she will become the first MP to have been born in the 1990s. His majority is only 2,069 so it is not beyond the realms of possibility. Vicky defeated former BBC reporter Miriam O’Reilly for selection. By comparison Sir Peter Tapsell (b. 1930) has served the House since 1959.

H/T @LabourHistory

LibDems Urged to Head to Portsmouth for “Stimulating Activity”

An appealing invitation from Mike Hancock’s backyard. Local LibDems in Portsmouth are mobilising this weekend. “Stimulating activity” all round:

“Activists will gather from across the region for free food, invigorating campaigning and stimulating company. You can come for as much or as little of the day as you like. We want to make the day a great experience for you, with lots of stimulating activity that best uses your skills.”

Handycock’s troops preparing for a by-election?

Labour Stars Turn Out For Fabian Gala Dinner

Finally Ed Balls has turned up. The suspiciously absent Shadow Chancellor held court at the Fabian Society’s champagne reception at the National Liberal Club last night. Following in a tradition theirpredecessors would have no doubt have approved of, it was survival of the richest at £100-a-ticket. Labour bloggers Laurence Durnan, Mark Ferguson and James Bloodworth chin-wagged with the party’s former head of digital Sue MacMillan before their Norwich North PPC Jessica Assato kicked off the much-needed money-raising auction. Tom Watson generously donated a signed copy of his DCMS committee report, vowing “if you do win it [he] promises not to invite you to a Drenge concert”. The report went for £100, paid by Ken Livingstone’s old pal Nicky Gavron. Worst party ever…

Wonk Watch: Mandarin to Head Social Market Foundation

Seasoned Cabinet Office mandarin Emran Mian is off to become the Director of the zero-impact Social Market Foundation wonk shop when Ian Mulheirn quits in August. In his spare time Mian writes novels about murder suspect bankers. Sounds about right…

YouGov Poll: Public Falls Out of Love With BBC

We are forever hearing that Auntie Beeb is one of the institutions cherished most by the British public, admittedly usually from the BBC itself. Now a YouGov poll has found this to be a myth. 36% think BBC programmes have got worse over the last ten years, just 23% see an improvement. 48% say the licence fee offers bad value for money, 72% slam them for paying executives too much and 70% say TV and radio presenters are paid too highly as well. Perhaps most worryingly for Lords Hall and Patten as they face the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon? 69% want a police investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing in BBC severance pay…

FLASHBACK: Cameron’s Cash For Access

Labour and the unions might well be in a different league to the Tories when it comes to donors buying access, policy and stitching up seats, though that doesn’t mean Dave is not up to his neck in dodgy donations as well. Adrian Beecroft was  in the “premier league” of Tory donors, he gave well over half a million to the Tories since 2006. Beecroft lobbied Cameron on workers’ rights and no-fault dismissal and he even got to write a report on it. Kerching!
Then there is the case of JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, who Cameron personally advised on the process of making a donation. An impeccable Cameroon source told Guido that he was in the room when David Cameron was directly advising JCB Chairman how to make a donation. He was obviously listening: Bamford has donated over £2.5 million in recent years and lent Cameron his helicopter many times. In 2012 Downing Street commissioned a report from him. Bonus!
And what about Michael Spencer, who boasted in an interview that he knew the government would veto the Financial Transactions Tax, saying he had it “first hand” from a “very, very senior” government figure. Spencer refused to reveal his source: “I’m not comfortable telling you who I speak to in private”.Guido hears that it was David Cameron, over dinner…

PMQs Live Blog: Follow the Money Edition

Follow our live blog and leave your comments in the comments…

Another Fleet Street Editor Move

Another Fleet Street editor is on the move. Gareth Morgan is leaving the helm of the Daily Star Sundayto group director of digital content for Northern and Shell. He will overhaul the digital output for the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Star Sundayas well as OK!:

“I have 22 years of experience as a journalist, 20 of those on national newspapers and 10 as a tabloid editor. But I have never taken on anything as important as this. The transition from print-focused operation to a combined digital and print newsroom is essential to ensure the future of journalism – the profession I love.”

 Guido wishes a fine gent well.

How Union-Funded ‘Transparency’ Website Smears Tory MPs

Search the Money, the website funded by the GMB, Unite and CWU trade unions that promises to “bring transparency to Conservative Party funding”, has made a string of untrue claims about donations made to Tory MPs. The website collates data from the Electoral Commission by constituency, attributing all of the donations on record in that constituency to the current serving MP. However, for the 2010 intake, this means that many of the alleged donations published by Search the Money actually apply to before they were even selected. Search the Money allude to this in a disclaimer on their website, admitting “it is possible that some of the money listed may pre-date new MPs having been adopted as candidates”. That’s an understatement.
Take Sam Gyimah, to whom Search the Money claim to have “found” £107,176 worth of donations. One of those donations, £1,400 from a Claire Ainsworth to the East Surrey Constituency Association, was made on April 1st 2009. That name rings a bell. Could Claire Ainsworth possibly be the wife of Peter Ainsworth, the Tory MP for East Surrey until 2010? Sam Gyimah was his successor, he wasn’t even selected until February 2010. Almost a year after that donation was made. Guido hears a host of Tory MPs are considering taking legal action against Search the Money over similar untrue claims. Oh dear…

Income Inequality at Lowest Since 1986

Today’s ONS figures show that the income gap between the richest and poorest is at its lowest level since 1986. The graph below shows the Gini coefficient for disposable income in 2011/12 was 32.3%, a fall from last year and lower than every year until the mid-eighties. For all Labour’s hand-wringing, ONS attribute this primarily to a drop in earnings for the at the top and an increase among the poorest fifth.

Also worth noting the growth in disposable income for rich and poor households since 1977:

ONS says the rich are not getting richer whilst the poor get poorer. This will undermine the rhetoric of many on the left. Fundamentally undermining Ed’s plan to fight the election arguing that while the economy might be growing, everyone is worse off.