Gong Hei Fat Choi

Happy Chinese New Year, year of the Metal Tiger.

We're off to Chinatown in Manchester for lunch later today for some dim sum. Yum Yum!

Another thing to commemorate today is the formal use of the term The Labour Party on this day in 1906 by MPs of the Labour Representation Committee.

An interesting footnote was the election of Keir Hardie, as Chairman of the PLP, by one vote over David Shackleton, "The Lancashire Giant".

Richest 10% now 100 times better off than poorest!

Does any more actually need to be said about the greatest failure of this LABOUR government? I don't think so!

But don't be fooled into thinking the Tories would be any better, after all their only tax promise to date is to slash tax for the richest 3,000.

Disraeli must be spinning in his grave, wondering why he bothered writing Sybil, or The Two Nations.

Labour has run out of ideas on child poverty

Figures released by the New Policy Institute show an increase in the number of children living in severe poverty since 2005.

It is clear that Labour has failed to tackle child poverty with its over-complex tax and benefit tricks.

We Lib Dems will invest more in education to give every child a fair start and break the link between poverty and low grades.

As for the Tories', they have huge gaping holes in their policies on poverty.
A hodge-podge of tax cuts for millionaires and tax bribes for marriage would do nothing to tackle severe poverty when most of these families are not even in work, let alone in a position to inherit more than £1m from their relatives.

3,070,621 - Maggie's Millions revisited

In 1982, when the Tories were in government unemployment went above 3 million for the first time since the Great Depression, that was one-in-eight.

I was at university in the North and saw at first hand the devastation that their economic and social policies wrought, and how they ripped out the heart out of so many communities with reckless abandon.

So it was interesting to read a poll saying that so so many people still do not trust David Cameron and his "Toff Street Kids" cabinet, seeing the Tories as the party of the upper classes.

The same poll in the Guardian showed the Lib Dem vote at 21%, and Labour at 29%, clearly showing that more and more folk are seeing us as the party of fairness and social justice.

I suppose that if you want to end the stale and corrupt two-party politics at Westminster, then voting for we Lib Dems is not only the best thing to do, it is the ONLY thing to do.

'Crisis? What Crisis?'

Back in 1979, then Labour PM Jim Callaghan returned from Guadeloupe to face a barrage of questions from the press and political opponents about the state of a strike-torn country, denying allegations that Britain was in chaos.

Britain, was was a country divided then, strikes had been erupting all winter in protest at the government's 5% pay limit.

We'd had a bakers' strike, lorry and tanker drivers were on strike, and by the end of the month, water workers, ambulance drivers, sewerage staff, and dustmen were out, heralding the "Winter of Discontent".

All of which brings me to the lamentable events in Westminster this week.

On a human level, I feel sorry for Gordon Brown. The man is obviously an able and capable man, who has devoted his life to public service. He has held two of the Great Offices of State, ironically, Callaghan's still the only man to have held all four: PM, Chancellor, Home, and Foreign Secretary.

And yet all of this has turned to ashes in his mouth.

With friends like those in the Labour Party, who needs enemies?

If I can offer any words of comfort, it would be "alea iacta est" (the die has been cast), they were supposedly uttered by Julius Caesar on this day in 49 BCE as he led his army across the Rubicon in northern Italy.

Hold fast and make the coming election a battle of ideas (which I believe that we Lib Dems would win hands down) and which would show the shallowness and vapidity of any Tory claims to represent the British people.

Are Labour set to self-destruct?

I am no fan of the New Labour Project, that goes without saying.
I have residual fondness for the Old Labour party and of course the whole of the Labour Movement, well my Post-grad studies were in Labour History!
However, like many people I am totally perplexed by the shenanigans of Hewitt and Hoon (sounds like a mid-range Derbyshire estate agents). Just as I thought that GB gave as good as (if not better) than Cameron at PMQ (I especially liked his "change in the morning, change in the afternoon, change in the evening" quip), along come H2O (Hoon + Hewitt= 0, geddit? no? please yourselves) to scupper any chances that their party may have in the forthcoming general elections.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that we Lib Dems by far provide the bestest answers (or at least the most pertinent questions).

However, I do NOT want to see a Tory government returned. I remember the desolation they wreaked last time round.
Whole swathes of the North, the Midlands, Scotland, and Wales lay in ruin.

Many of the deep social and economic scars that this country still has to try to heal are as a DIRECT result of their inane, bullying, uncaring, and frankly idiotically vindictive policies.

I have often thought that Mrs Thatcher was probably the only Marxist Prime Minister we have ever had, inasmuch as she saw how class is so vital to our understanding of society.
Unfortunately for everyone, (teachers, nurses, steel-workers, miners, anyone with a social conscience) she was a petit-bourgeouis Poujadist nincompoop (as the release of the Cabinet papers just before Christmas showed), bigotted, hateful, and self-righteous, all in one "Home Counties package".

If you think the Tories have changed you are much-mistaken.
They just want to win! At any cost! They will say, and do-ish anything to that end.

Take any issue that any progressive can rally around, they are at the opposite end!

* Progressive taxation? more like regressive, breaks for the top 3,000 families inheritance!
* Better schooling for all? only if you mean the paid-for sector or grammars.
* Equal Rights for women? only if they'll get out of the workplace, and go back in the home, preferably married.
* Equal Rights for Gays and Lesbians, including marriage? Not if some Tory blogger says, "feel uneasy at overt displays of affection by randy homosexuals".

As for local politics, just look what a mess they are making in councils up and down the country, Bradford (er...), Calderdale (double er...), Barnet (Easy Jet as a business model?) what planet are they from?

I could go on, but I'd only be boring myself, and possibly you dear reader.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the new damp squib from Hewitt and Hoon.
Why do they want a leadership contest? I have no idea. Unless they have someone in mind, but who?
Where is this knight in shining armour who will rescue Labour?
Johnson? Nice bloke, but knows, and admits, his own limitations.
Darling? All we'd get are sub-Blackadder Goes Forth, Captain Darling jokes.
Straw? Man of... and promoted beyond his abilities.
Milibands junior and minor? I had far more time for their father, great theorist and lecturer, and anyway for Mili Junior, to quote Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

There really is no-one, NB no women, in the current crop who could take over the reins at such short notice and hope to make any sort of impact.
If I was being really mischievous I'd be starting a "Bring Backing Blair" campaign. They are determined to score as many own goals for the Tories as they can.

Nope, to paraphrase Shakespeare again this time Mercutio "a plague on both their houses".

If you want passion, purpose, and principle, we Lib Dems are the ONLY party to vote for.

"coy, kittenish, camp, and crazed"

What a fab description of Lord Mandelson by Simon Hoggart in today's Guardian.

I've always thought Mandelson to be one of the most gifted political operators of his generation. That is not to say that I admire his politics, nor yet his rather common parvenu fascination with wealth and the uber rich, nor even his near-corrupt relations with Geoffrey Robinson, or the Hinduja Brothers.

I thought that Gordon Brown bringing him back into the Cabinet was a stroke of genius, the only thing that could have topped that would've been to bring Tony Blair back.

My point is that Mandelson has managed to inject some vim and vigour into an otherwise moribund Labour Party.

And if the Tories are to be stopped from ruining Britain for the second time in a generation, then we need not only the Lib Dems but also Labour to be on top of their game.

Wise Spending?

I listened to Peter Mandelson's speech on the news and I'd like to see the government actually follow this up by commitments to scrap Trident, the ID cards, etc.

Where I do agree with him on is his analysis of the Tories' "thinly disguised zeal" for cuts.

I certainly don't want to go back to the 1980s and the "lost generation" of unemployed and the social and economic consequences that flowed therefrom.

The current state of Britain...

Labour have now been in government for more than a dozen years.
This government started with so much hope, (do you remember "Things can only get better"? I do) but now we are left with so much disappointment.
Labour has wasted its opportunities and wasted your money.
They've invested in health and education but lacked the courage that would have allowed them to spend it effectively.
They've failed to build a fairer society and instead inequality has increased and social mobility fallen.
They're the party of redistribution but in the wrong direction.

Above all they will be remembered for going to war in Iraq. It was an illegal war waged on false claims. Labour may have taken the decision to go to war but the Tories voted it through.

Even before the current Economic Crisis, the gap between rich and poor is now wider than at any time than under Mrs T.

Shame!

A dozen years of a Labour Government and the inequality gap is still widening

We all know that the Tories are for the well-off, viz Tory MPs' moats, duck houses, caviar-stuffed foie gras (okay, I made that last one up), but one thing we all knew (sic) was that Labour was for cutting the gap between the rich and the poor.
In fact the last time that happened was under the Wilson/Callaghan government of the 1970s.

However, thanks to a fellow councillor and statistics supplied by the Left Economics Advisory Panel:
* 13.2m people live in poverty, including 2.1m pensioners and 3.9m children.
* Over 20% are officially income poor, in 1979 it was 13%. However, 58% of British Asian and 40% of Black British people are income poor.
* The poorest 20% of the population pay nearly 40% of their total income in taxes, compared to 34.8% for the richest 20%.
* At 17% of average earnings, the UK state pension is the lowest in Europe (the EU average is 57%!)
* The gender pay gap is 17% for full-time work and 38% for part-time work.
* If unemployment benefit had kept pace with earnings, Job Seeker’s Allowance would be over £100/week today. Instead, it is £64.30 or £50.95 for under-25s.
* Executive pay has risen at 7 times the rate of the average worker.
* Tax havens cost the Exchequer at least £18bn annually.

A total and shambolic failure of Social Justice policies by Labour. Oh and what do the Tories recommend? Removing Inheritance Tax for millionaires.

Britain's income gap widest since the 1960s

Britain under Labour is a more unequal society than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s.

The incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election.

Remember this is Labour we're talking about not the Tories, we expect inequalities to rise under the Tories (and they do), but Labour?

They seem to have abandoned their commitment to halve child poverty by 2010. It's outrageous that so many children continue to miss out on the basic necessities most take for granted. For those left to languish in the misery that poverty inflicts is a tragedy.

Their promise to make Britain a fairer place, where income doesn't affect a child's life chances, rings hollow. In 2001, Gordon Brown referred to child poverty as a 'scar on Britain's soul'.

It's taking a hell of a long time to heal!