HOME: The week Uncut

29/01/2011, 04:00:48 PM

In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:

Uncut introduced the league table of shadow cabinet “work rate”

Atul Hatwal says opposition is the world of the opportunist

Now you see it, now you don’t – Richard Drax MP works his magic

Tom Watson asks: Why didn’t police investigate all the phone hacking leads?

Pat McFadden says the slow-down is more to do with confidence than snow

Dan Hodges wants to know if Ed Cojones is the man in the mask

John Woodcock thinks Alan should come back, but Ed will excel

Peter Watt presents the rhyme and reason for early intervention

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GRASSROOTS: Forget Keys and Gray – Giles Coren and Katie Hopkins are the real calamity duo

29/01/2011, 10:30:10 AM

by David Hodges

Richard Keys and Andy Gray deserved to be sacked. Their idiotic claims judged a professional on the basis of gender instead of aptitude and ability. There is no place for that in the pub, let alone within a national television studio. Apologies accepted by Sian Massey, it is now time for their vilification to end. They have rightly paid a heavy price.

Since then, two loosely-termed political commentaries have proven that idiocy on this issue is not confined to either gender. This began with the bigoted man’s response in a quite superb article in yesterday’s Daily Mail by Giles Coren. He articulated that Keys and Gray were in the wrong, not because their comments were sexist, but merely as “You shouldn’t pass unflattering remarks about women behind their backs because it is not a well brought-up thing to do”. What a quaint upbringing Mr Coren must have endured.

He then purported to follow in the footsteps of Tory MP, Dominic Raab, in proclaiming that men are the real victims of oppression. That argument is bereft of evidence and highlights the intellectual malaise behind the defenders of the status quo. For instance, in 2008 average women’s hourly pay (excluding overtime) was 17.1 per cent less than men’s. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Friday News Review

29/01/2011, 07:28:47 AM

The ‘net’ goes wider

Nick Brown, the former chief whip and key political ally of former prime minister Gordon Brown, became the latest public figure yesterday to say that he believes his private calls and messages were eavesdropped. The Newcastle MP revealed that he believes his landline was the subject of an “amateurish” bugging operation around the time his homosexuality was made public in 1998. Five years later, he was also approached by police investigating voicemail hacking claims and warned that his mobile phone may have been illegally accessed. The former Cabinet minister is the latest senior Labour figure to come forward with claims that his phone calls and messages were hacked. Tessa Jowell, the former culture secretary, revealed that her phone may have been accessed as recently as this week and she has hired lawyers to discover who hacked into her messages on 29 separate occasions in 2006. Although it is not known in both cases who was responsible for the hacking, the claims will further fuel the phone hacking scandal engulfing the News of the World (NOTW), which is now the subject of a new police investigation following the decision of the Sunday paper to sack its head of news, Ian Edmondson. – the Independent Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: Only direct action can save us from Cameron’s Machiavellian Prince

28/01/2011, 03:00:42 PM

by Robin Thorpe

Machiavelli advises any aspiring Prince (or ruler; royal blood not necessary, although being related to the Queen can’t harm) to be ruthless from the day that he seizes power and “to determine all the injuries that he needs to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all, and not have to renew them every day, and in that way he will set men’s minds at rest and win them over when he confers benefits”.

The ruler should do this while his people are still getting used to his rule so that they start off fearful and learn to love him as he becomes more lenient. The lesson is that people do not mind being afraid if they are looked after and that things improve. If they improve, then it does not matter if they are not as good as before, as long as there is tangible improvement on the immediately preceding time. Machiavelli advises not to be timid or delay any acts of violence, but to inflict them once and for all so that “people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful”. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: NHS: Cumbrian case study shows Labour, not the Tories, are the reformers.

28/01/2011, 01:00:32 PM

By Jonathan Todd

Labour’s compassion built the NHS under Attlee and Labour’s investment saved the NHS under Blair and Brown. But it is Labour reform that has kept Cumbria’s community hospitals open and achieved better health outcomes in so doing. These successes are now threatened by Tory incompetence.

Gerry Robinson, the management guru who once tried to “fix the NHS”, bemoaned the lack of piloting contained in Andrew Lansley’s NHS plan on the Today programme last year. The presenter (Evan Davis, as I recall) then misdirected him towards Cumbria. While Cumbria may have much GP commissioning, it has benefitted from Labour reform, not opened a window on Lansley’s future.

The Financial Times reports that Cumbria offers “a glimpse into what the … government’s healthcare revolution could look like”. It may be that Lansley’s spinners have been whispering in the ears of Davis and the Financial Times, but Cumbria isn’t the first domino to fall in Lansley’s revolution. It is benefitting from a flowering of reform championed by Lord Darzi and patiently cultivated by NHS workers. Evolution would have meant more such reform, not a “grenade tossed into the PCTs”. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Opposition is the world of the opportunist – lessons from the new shadow cabinet league table

28/01/2011, 07:00:43 AM

by Atul Hatwal

“I’m a proven campaigner” is a phrase that cropped up repeatedly on campaign literature during the shadow cabinet election. Everyone had a track record. But in what?

Opposition requires a very different set of skills to government. It’s not enough to be committed and pound the streets canvassing, important though that is. And being able to sift through a red box quickly isn’t particularly useful either.

Opposition is about holding the government to account.

Yesterday’s Uncut shadow cabinet “work effort” league table helps show who is working hard at building a record in opposition and who is not. The table isn’t meant to be the final word on performance, but it does shine a light on who is putting in the hours.

It also lays bare some common truths about how to oppose. They are exemplified at the top of the league, but also used skilfully by some of the shadow secretaries of state in the less high profile departments. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Friday News Review

28/01/2011, 06:59:48 AM

More questions raised over Lansley’s health reforms

Andrew Lansley has said the UK’s outcomes when it comes to health issues such as heart attack and cancer are among the poorest in Europe, despite similar spending. But John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund think-tank, has now challenged these claims and called for a cautious interpretation of the evidence. While UK heart attack rates in 2006 were twice those in France, the UK will actually have lower rates by 2012 if trends continue, he wrote in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). “Comparing just one year – and with a country with the lowest death rate for myocardial infarction (heart attack) in Europe – reveals only part of the story,” he said. “Not only has the UK had the largest fall in death rates from myocardial infarction between 1980 and 2006 of any European country, if trends over the past 30 years continue, it will have a lower death rate than France as soon as 2012.” – PA

Meanwhile David Cameron has claimed that family doctors’ frustrations with the current healthcare system in England are the driving force behind the controversial Health and Social Care Bill, which will lead to the scrapping of Primary Care Trusts and the establishment of new GP-led “consortia” that can purchase care from state-run hospitals or private providers. Speaking at a Downing Street reception for GPs running pilot schemes on Wednesday night, the Prime Minister said: “So many of you are telling me about your frustration with the current system, that you want to do more and become more involved. That is what is behind all this.” However the doctors’ powerful trade union, the British Medical Association, is stepping up its opposition to the reforms and will hold an emergency meeting of its council in March to discuss them. – the Telegraph Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Great leader, or nearly man?

27/01/2011, 05:00:10 PM

by Rob Marchant

He has always been seen as a heavyweight and a bruiser. He has experience of the treasury at the highest level and was well-respected there. He is ferociously intelligent, one of the brightest of all his Oxford contemporaries, who, famously, does not suffer fools gladly. And, despite failing in his bid to be elected leader, there is no doubting his importance as Labour’s de facto number two, at a time of great turmoil for both the party and the economy; a politician seen as a ballast of rigour against the madder and less thought-out ideas of some of his colleagues on the left.

Raise your glasses to 93 year-old Denis Healey, the most celebrated Labour-leader-who-never-was of my lifetime. John Rentoul’s coverage of Healey’s recent Mile End group speech added a couple of insights, but the essentials of the story are well established.

Of course, there are as many differences as similarities between Healey and Ed Balls. Unlike Balls, he was not an academic economist, but a double-first classicist who, despite his on-the-job training, learned his brief well and actually made it to be chancellor. Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: As Ken steps back from Press TV, is there an organised Tory smear campaign against him?

27/01/2011, 02:00:32 PM

by Ian Stewart

Ken Livingstone has terminated his association with Press TV, the Iranian government sponsored TV channel. It was a difficult gig for him to defend and it is not surprising his enemies made much of it. Evidence is mounting, though, of an organised online smear campaign run by supporters of Mayor Johnson. One which goes far beyond the legitimate concerns about Press TV.

On 21 January, Conservative libertarian blogger, Peter Reynolds, posted that Conservative bloggers and supporters of Boris Johnson online were being encouraged to highlight Ken Livingstone’s continued employment by Press TV. Bloggers have apparently been encouraged to link Livingstone’s name with terms such as “holocaust denial”, “anti-women” and “anti-semitic”. Reynolds claims that he knows for certain that pressure has been brought to bear in this direction, in an attempt at cyber-smearing with guilt by association.

This is not a new tactic. But it is a disturbing development in the politics of London. By playing this card, Johnson is obviously hoping to firm up the “Jewish vote” in the capital, much in the same way that Respect tried to exploit the “Islamic vote” in East London. The trend is incredibly disturbing, as the last thing we need here is an escalation of US-style sectarian politics. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: New league table of shadow cabinet “work rate”

27/01/2011, 11:00:52 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Uncut analysis shows Alexander, Healey, Balls and Murphy lead way in holding government to account

Douglas Alexander, John Healey, Ed Balls and Jim Murphy are the shadow cabinet’s leading campaigners in and out of Parliament, according to a new analysis of the “work rate” of Ed Miliband’s top team.

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At the top of the table, Douglas Alexander has conducted a forensic examination of Iain Duncan Smith’s department for work and pensions, putting down 89 written Parliamentary questions that have helped provide the material for 26 press releases. Read the rest of this entry »

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