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Archive for July, 2010

Lansley’s man’s big food business links

12/07/2010, 12:08:40 PM

The Guardian, among others, is reporting this morning that the Food Standards Agency is to be abolished as part of the overhaul of the Department of Health, to be set out by Andrew Lansley in the white paper which is to be published at 15.30 today. The Guardian reports:

The Food Standards Agency is to be abolished by Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, it emerged last night, after the watchdog fought a running battle with industry over the introduction of colour-coded “traffic light” warnings for groceries, TV dinners and snacks. The move has sparked accusations that the government has “caved in to big business”.

Going on to say:

Andy Burnham, Labour’s health spokesman, said: “Getting rid of the FSA is the latest in a number of worrying steps that show Andrew Lansley caving in to the food industry. It does raise the question whether the health secretary wants to protect the public health or promote food companies.” Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum, said it was “crazy” to dismember the FSA. “It had a hugely important role in improving the quality of foodstuffs in Britain and it was vital to have at the centre of government a body that championed healthy food. This appears just the old Conservative party being the political wing of business,” Fry said.

But something that the Guardian, along with the rest of the news media, has missed is the background of Lansley’s Special Adviser, Bill Morgan.

Morgan who is leading on policy development at the Department of Health, and has been at the heart of the work on the white paper, used to work for Mandate Communications. This is something of which they are very proud indeed.

Not particulary suprising, given that most special advisers work in public affairs at some point in their careers. However, it is interesting to note that Mandate work or have worked for rather a lot of “big businesses” with an interest in the regulation of the food industry.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that they specialise. And, actually, not just ordinary “big businesses”, but firms like Kraft Foods, Coca Cola, Cadbury and Tesco. More like massive behemoths of global agribusiness, then.

Who are presumably celebrating this morning.

Posted in Inside, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Khalid Mahmood is not impressed with AV

12/07/2010, 11:41:28 AM

Nick Clegg made his pitiful address to the House of Commons on electoral reform as though it were the greatest package of constitutional reform since the Great Reform Act of 1832. The truth, however, is a little more prosaic. Of the three main changes he announced, two are very much the work of the Conservatives and suit their political prospectus far more than they suit Clegg’s.

Even the planned referendum on the alternative vote (AV) is hardly the stuff of Lib Dem dreams. For those idealistic Liberal Democrats who have battled for decades for the promised land of proportional representation, their leader’s announcement must have come as a bitter blow.

I oppose the alternative vote system. I should say that this is not because I think it will do me much harm come the next election. I was, after all, elected with more than fifty per cent of the vote in Perry Barr. I oppose AV because, for one thing, it compromises one of the very best aspects of our democracy: its simplicity. I have never met a single constituent of mine who cannot understand the physical action of voting: one cross in one box. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

Monday News Review

12/07/2010, 07:54:02 AM

Gove faces grilling

Michael Gove faces the Commons for education questions today

Ed Balls piled fresh pressure on Michael Gove, the beleaguered education secretary, by calling on him on Sunday night to answer questions over the withdrawal of funding from the schools construction programme. Mr Balls, shadow education secretary, wrote to Mr Gove demanding to know what advice he had from officials over the need to consult on last week’s decision and whether it had left the government open to legal claims. – The FT

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes, today distanced his party from education secretary Michael Gove over the contentious decision to cancel 700 school rebuilding projects. Hughes said he was not entirely comfortable with the handling of the announcement, adding it would be “a nonsense” to build the new free schools proposed by Gove using cash that could have improved existing buildings. Gove has agreed to meet Lib Dem councillors concerned by his announcement, and the issue is likely to be raised at a Liberal Democrat meeting of its MPs organised by Nick Clegg, the party’s leader and the coalition deputy prime minister. – The Guardian

(more…)

Posted in Unbound | No Comments »

And Balls just keeps pummelling Gove

11/07/2010, 06:46:15 PM

Uncut is completely neutral in the leadership election. We have occasionally been accused of being closet Balls backers. This is wrong. We are not.

But we have consistently argued for a leadership campaign in which the candidates actually demonstrate some leadership, rather than just pontificate about it.

This means taking the fight to the Tories. Getting on with the war of attrition that is opposition.

Perhaps the reason some have badged us Ballsites is that he has been overwhelmingly the best of the candidates at this.

The letter below is not just a blistering, forensic attack on Michael Gove’s handling of the building schools for the future farrago, it is yet another such attack. (more…)

Posted in Inside | 6 Comments »

Sunday News Review

11/07/2010, 08:39:01 AM

Miliband: amassing an army of supporters

The Leadership

“The Labour Party can only win power again if we win the battle locally. We need an army of activists, trained and ready to take on the coalition. The Con-Dem cuts don’t just threaten the recovery, they threaten the livelihood of every community”. – David Miliband, The Mirror.

“It would be all too easy for Labour leadership candidates to please their natural supporters by accusing the Lib Dems of being collaborators – a word John Prescott used to describe his former colleague John Hutton, advising the Government on pensions – as if we were now living under Nazi occupation. But that risks driving the Lib Dems further into the arms of the Tories.” – The Independent.

“[David] Miliband’s ideas can only become reality if he is elected leader and if Labour wins the next Election. Clegg, in his statement on political and constitutional reform last week, was addressing the Commons as Deputy Prime Minister. One only has to recall the difference between the aura of power of Tony Blair in 1997, and the lack of authority of successive Tory leaders of the Opposition to see how authority has passed from Labour to the Coalition.” – The Daily Mail.

“David Miliband has surpassed himself with the sorriest excuse for a “nothing to do with me, guv” speech we have heard since Gordon Brown’s departure. The shadow foreign secretary, who always strained every sinew to make it look like he supported Brown when he was in office, is now trying to oil out of his support for the doomed Labour government to help his leadership bid.” – The Telegraph.

(more…)

Posted in Unbound | 1 Comment »

The week Uncut

10/07/2010, 06:21:52 PM

Another week in the race is over. As the contest rolled into July, five people said the same things they said last week, to some slightly different people, and one man got ready to say lots of things about two people, which a great many more people will read.

It was the week that Burnham didn’t quit, Balls didn’t smear and Michael Gove broke the hearts of millions of children, enraged thousands of teachers, disappointed hundreds of parents, and made one man very angry indeed.

In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s better-read pieces of the last week:

“It was like looking at bambi. So I shot him.” Watson on the moment he lost it with Gove

Ed Miliband’s taste in music causes an argument in the Uncut office*

Bounder doesn’t think Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is big or clever

James Ruddick thinks the Tories are storing up glory by trashing our past

Nick Palmer argues Ken Clarke isn’t wrong, he just doesn’t mean it

John Woodcock on Ed Miliband and why he is wrong about flexible labour markets

*By office we mean Starbucks

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Pete Willsman in the Plumstead Badlands IV

10/07/2010, 01:12:21 PM

Latest update on comrade Pete Willsman’s last ditch attempts to get himself validly nominated for this year’s election to Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).

At the Erith & Thamesmead executive committee (EC) last night, Willsman’s Plumstead branch (he still appears on the Erith and Thamesmead membership list, though he has now transferred to Oxford East) moved a resolution for the next general committee (GC) that Erith and Thamesmead’s NEC nominations be reopened. It was defeated.

It was said that Willsman had been branch secretary for 15 years. His recent move to Oxford was not cited. (more…)

Posted in Inside | 5 Comments »

Saturday News Review

10/07/2010, 08:32:06 AM

And so it begins

The Peter Mandelson memoirs are released this week

At times, Lord Mandelson said, Mr Brown feared that he had “killed” all three men, but, wound up by his lieutenants, was unable to stop the feud, meaning that Mr Blair was forced to devote too much energy dealing with him. The former business secretary said some of the blame for the hostilities lay with the people around Mr Brown who, he said, treated Mr Blair with “unbridled contempt”. – The Telegraph

In an interview published by Saturday’s Times newspaper, the peer said that relations between Mr Blair and Mr Brown were “awful” and “exceptionally bad” between 1994 and 2007, not least because the latter “couldn’t get over” the fact that he was not prime minister. Lord Mandelson also said he wished the pair had “behaved to me and treated me differently” – a reference to his two resignations during the Blair government. – The FT

(more…)

Posted in Unbound | 1 Comment »

Tom Watson describes the moment that he lost it with Gove

09/07/2010, 11:30:45 AM

In the Commons chamber on Wednesday, Labour MP Tom Watson denounced Tory education secretary Michael Gove in terms so furious that he was obliged to withdraw them. It is already becoming a celebrated moment. One in which real anger at this government’s arrogance seemed, for the first time, to be articulated on our behalf.

If you haven’t seen it, you should first watch the video here. Then read Tom’s account, below, of how he got into that state.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 26 Comments »

A family story of where Labour went wrong, by Helen Godwin Teige

09/07/2010, 09:36:35 AM

In 1997 my entire family voted for Tony Blair. We were genuinely thrilled as we celebrated the landslide. I was 21 and optimistic after a lifetime of Conservative government.

Fast forward to 2010 and only half of us still gave Labour our vote, with my mother making it very clear that this was their last chance. Interestingly, of the Labour voters, two of us are now members. We both got involved in the election campaign and felt passionately that Labour was the right party, on policy across the board and particularly to get us out of the recession.

But what about the rest of my family; what went wrong? (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 5 Comments »