According to the Labour Party Rulebook: “Party conference shall decide from time to time what specific proposals of legislative, financial or administrative reform shall be included in the Party programme. This shall be based on the rolling programme of work of the National Policy Forum.” (Emphasis added) The results of that “rolling programme of work” […]
Posts under ‘Public services’
John McDonnell goes home to Liverpool (video)
Nov 4th, 2016 by John McDonnell.John McDonnell returns to where he was born and grew up in Liverpool – some of the “worst slum conditions in the country… but we just called it home”, he says. He talks about what it was like, moving into their first council house, free education and why a Labour government can give hope to people again:
Good riddance IDS: long may this internal warfare continue
Mar 19th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a […]
How we are punished for not responding to George’s not-so marvellous medicine
Mar 6th, 2016 by Sian Errington.In February, the Guardian revealed that from a £300 million ‘relief fund’ to help local councils struggling with the scale of funding cuts demanded of them 83% of the funds will go to Conservative run councils. The five most deprived local authorities in the country – Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Manchester, Knowsley and Hull – are also […]
Healthcare US style… or how neoliberalism really works
Feb 29th, 2016 by Richard Falk.Richard Falk is retired and lives in Santa Barbara, Califormnia Along with several million, I suffer from the eye disease known as glaucoma. It can be managed, rather than cured, by taking eye drops several times a day. Based on the advice of my doctor, I rely on Azopt and Lumigen, two drugs produced by […]
Yvette Cooper is wrong about nationalisation
Feb 25th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.This was bound to come back at some point. In a speech this week to launch The Changing Work Centre – a new think tank looking at, you guessed it, the changing nature of work – Yvette Cooper admonished Jez and John McDonnell for talking about re-nationalisation. “Labour must not get drawn into touting yesterday’s […]
Osborne gambles on a windfall – something you can’t do on a zero hour contract
Nov 26th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.In war, there’s only a short amount of time your weaponry has an edge over the enemy. Labour has spent the last couple of months shelling the Tory trenches with the party working tax credit shells. This week, the new ‘police funding’ gun has been pressed into service. Both pasted the Tory position to the point […]
Alternative Autumn statements: continued Tory failure versus Corbynomics
Nov 25th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Having spectacularly failed in his stated goal of eliminating the deficit in the last parliament, George Osborne is repeating his experiment in this one. Both the June 2010 and 2015 Budgets proposed ‘fiscal tightening’ of £37 billion. In the first of these Budgets the main method was cuts in public spending. In the second it […]
Osborne stirs up more shit in which to bury himself in
Oct 5th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Quietly and surreptitiously Osborne is marking out his pitch for the leadership. The trouble is, it’s thoroughly bad pitch. By denigrating opponents of privatisation he has set his face against the 70% of the population who earnestly want rail re-nationalised, a proportion so large that it must include nearly half who’re Tories. Osborne must assume […]
EU membership means no renationalisation
Sep 18th, 2015 by Danny Nicol.Public ownership of gas and electricity is destined to become a cherished aim of the Labour Party. For years under privatisation, the swindling of the consumer has gone hand-in-hand with outrageous profit-taking by the corporate giants, to the loss of the public purse. Far from helping customers through keen competition, the main effect of energy […]