Archive: 5 July – 11 July 2010
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Friday 9 July 2010
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Lady Amos will become the most senior British official at the United Nations. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
This blog is taking an unashamedly Martyn Lewis approach this evening and hailing some good news.
Journalistic cynicism will be cast aside as this blog welcomes the appointment of two outstanding people to new jobs:
• Valerie Amos, who became the first black woman to sit in the cabinet when she succeeded Clare Short as international development secretary in 2003, is to become the new UN under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief. Lady Amos, currently British high commissioner to Australia, will replace Sir John Holmes.
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Sreengrab from the government webstatus Twitter account
Ah, the technical problems. Despite suffering many of these since the launch of its Your Freedom website last week (the above tweet is both surreal and genuine) the coalition is proceeding with its apparent desire to poll internet opinion on policy decisions.
The latest is a deal with Facebook for a "spending challenge channel" where you can make suggestions for further public spending cuts (you know, the ones the IMF is warning about). What fun! I'm old enough to remember when Facebook was mainly about throwing sheep and playing Scrabble-like games of dubious copyright, but if the kids these days want to trim the education budget who am I to stop them... ?
The big question to ask of any of these idea-seeking schemes is if they succeed in coming up with the answers. Last night via Facebook, however, an example did pop up. The Barack Obama feed linked to a blogpost announcing the White House was launching a competition, now in its second year, where federal employees can make and vote on suggestions for cutting waste from government spending. Continue reading...
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The Lib Dem pensions minister announced gifts to funds, something lost among the focus on Michael Gove's apology Continue reading...
Pensions minister Steve Webb. Photograph: PA
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Thursday 8 July 2010
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School building projects stopped. Click image for full graphic. Photograph: Paul Scruton for the Guardian
The list of school building projects scrapped and saved has got the government into trouble. Get the full revised list - and find out how your constituency is affected
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For the first time the carbon emissions of every local authority have been released. Find out how yours does
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Dusty Springfield and George Galloway Photograph: Redferns/Reuters
Perhaps he just doesn't know what to do with himself.
George Galloway is taking a break from agitating to make a musical about Dusty Springfield. Yes, you did read that correctly.
On his blog for the Daily Record, the anti-war campaigner, and until recently Bethnal Green and Bow MP, writes:
The star who shines brighter than all the rest on this trip down memory lane is Dusty Springfield – as fresh today as a spring field should be. And, as it happens, one of the many projects on which I'm working - with Scots writer Ron McKay - is a stage musical, eponymously entitled Dusty
You don't have to say you love him but as change of careers go it's up there with the most dramatic. Continue reading...
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The education secretary, Michael Gove, has spent today apologising for mistakenly allowing schools in England to believe that their rebuilding programmes would be going ahead when hundreds of others were being scrapped.
As a result of 25 errors in an original list issued by the Department for Education on Monday, parents and teachers at a number of schools – around a dozen in all, we think – had their hopes raised in vain.
Labour MPs have called the slip-up "intolerable" and "astonishing". Gove, who has pulled the plug on Labour's Building Schools for the Future programme, has been labelled a "miserable pipsqueak".
We are putting together a package of material in relation to this story, and we are interested in hearing from schools – there are about 700 in total – whose building programmes have been cancelled.
Are you one of the schools which had put work into a BSF programme that will now not go ahead? How much time and money have you lost – and what are the consequences of the building not going ahead? What's your opinion of Gove's mishandling of the situation – and what should happen now?
We would like to hear directly from you – please email us at educationguardian.co.uk@guardian.co.uk – or, if you have general views on the issue, please post them below.
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Michael White: From Cameroonian gay men gaining asylum, an Iranian woman facing stoning, to Dr Jeffrey John being denounced, how do we view the public attitude to a private act? Continue reading...
Dr Jeffrey John, criticised for his sexuality when put forward as Bishop of Southwark. Photograph: PA Photo/PA
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Michael Gove. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news as it happened – including the fall-out from Michael Gove's apology, and David Cameron's speech on public service
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Wednesday 7 July 2010
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All MPs agree that duck houses are out. But they believe the new expenses body fails to understand their needs. Photograph: PA
The summer holidays are just about in sight and exhausted MPs, who have not recovered from the general election, are dreaming of Greek beaches.
But one topic is dominating conversations in the bars and tearooms of Westminster above holiday fantasies: the hated Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) which monitors MPs' expenses.
A startling figure is doing the rounds at Westminster. Senior figures are saying that around 200 MPs are not bothering to make expenses claims because the rules are so complicated and take up too much of their time.
Some of these MPs have tried to make claims but have now given up. Others have not even bothered.
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Davinia Douglass, who was injured in the 7 July 2005 bombings of the London Underground. Photograph: AP
A lot of threads get pulled together in today's newspapers: the military retreat from Sangin in Afghanistan, David Cameron's announcement of the inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture, all this on the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London and divergent assessments of the continuing terrorist threat from Islamist militants.
On a grim day, the tabloid emphasis on the miraculous reconstruction of Davinia Douglass's face – horribly disfigured by the Edgware Road tube bomb – is surely the right one. Best to be positive, helpful to all concerned, including ourselves, to look to the future rather than exclusively to recriminate about the past.
Davinia Turrell, as she was then, is helped by Paul Dadge after the 7/7 bombings. Photograph: Edmond Terakopian/PA
The rest is more complicated. On BBC Radio 4 this morning, the military analyst Robert Fox, who writes for Comment is free, likened Sangin to Corleone, the mafia town in the mountains behind Palermo, a place of rackets, drugs and brigands masquerading as something grander. He could have said Belfast of the 80s.
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Defence secretary is due to announce pull-out of British troops from Sangin, Afghanistan. Photograph: Corporal Adrian Harlen/PA
Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including Liam Fox's announcement on Sangin and PMQs
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Tuesday 6 July 2010
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Tory MPs are wondering whether Liam Fox will be one of the first Tories to resign from the cabinet. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Conservative MPs who lost out on ministerial jobs, after toiling on the frontbench during the hard years of opposition, are whiling away the hot summer months with a new game. In the bars and tearooms of Westminster they are placing bets on who will be the next minister to resign from the cabinet.
The game was disrupted when David Laws resigned as treasury chief secretary over his expenses. "I was most disappointed when David Laws resigned," one former frontbencher said. "It meant that I lost my bet that Iain Duncan Smith would be the the first minister to resign."
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Among the 30 presentation bills before the Commons are proposals to abolish the TV licence, repeal the Human Rights Act and leave the EU. Photograph: PA
Well, this is fun. Shortly after Nick Clegg presented his constitutional reform package to MPs yesterday, gently mocked as a Billy Liar fantasy moment by Simon Hoggart, a posse of rightwing Tory MPs unveiled a very different legislative programme of their own – one to cheer you up or terrify according to taste.
Among the 30 bills presented to the Commons were ones to trim the minimum wage and abolish the TV licence, give immunity from prosecution to people who tackle burglars in their own home (or clear snow outside it), reintroduce national service and make criminals serve their full sentence. Oh yes, and tax relief on private medical insurance, plus what looks like a bill to reassert UK sovereignty over those pesky Europeans.
Who is responsible for this retro-fest of ideas straight from my 1950s childhood? Step forward Thatcherite former minister Christopher Chope, and those Northamptonshire neighbours, Wellingborough's Peter Bone and Kettering's Philip Hollobone, last seen in this column introducing a bill to ban the burqa in Britain.
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Unidentified detainees clean the common area at Guantanamo Bay. Photograph: Tim Dirven/Panos Pictures
Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including more cuts, and David Cameron's announcement of a torture inquiry
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Monday 5 July 2010
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Nick Clegg, pictured delivering a speech on political reform in May, received scant support from Lib Dems today. Photograph: Pool/REUTERS
Nick Clegg put in a strong performance today when he delivered his most important parliamentary statement since his appointment as deputy prime minister in May.
The Liberal Democrat leader faced a tricky challenge when he announced that a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote system will be held on 5 May next year.
A formidable alliance of Conservatives and Labour diehards made clear that they will, as I blogged on Friday, made trouble when legislation to enable the legislation comes before parliament.
The following exchanges show the strength of opposition Clegg encountered today and his success in dealing with opponents:
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The government is expected today to make its long awaited announcement of a Judge led inquiry or commission into allegations of British complicity in the use of torture. Indeed the government's need to make the statement tomorrow forced Nick Clegg the deputy prime minister to bring forward his own statement on constitutional reform to today
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David Cameron at prime minister's question time last month. Photograph: PA
Prime minister's question time is "far too noisy" and needs to be conducted in a "more civilised manner" – so claims John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, in an interview with the Independent today. The Speaker was setting out his intention to overhaul the weekly parliamentary barracking session that takes place on Wednesdays at midday, when the house is sitting.
Bercow will float some options for reform in a speech tomorrow in which he will urge a debate on how to improve scrutiny and restore civility in the Commons.
Bercow told the Independent that the two-way clash between the main party leaders has to stop.
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Whitehall. Photograph: Paul Owen
When the brown stuff hits the fan everyone starts to behave badly, not least by exaggerating a situation that is already bad enough. Thus local authorities and construction firms, for example, rush to sew up school building contracts in the hope that this will prevent them being postponed or canned by Michael Gove, the education secretary.
We had a classic example of bad-boy behaviour this weekend when the newspapers were briefed that ministers now want civil servants to prepare cuts of up to 40% in their departments – not the 25% talked about in George Osborne's budget just days ago.
All sorts of people rushed to explain the obvious, that you ask for more than you expect to get as a routine negotiating tactic. You do it, at least in part, so that everyone will be sort of grateful when you settle for less.
Yet the gleeful media, which might be more sympathetic after their own relentless jobs cuts, pretend to take it at face value. So do the civil service unions. It's a classic response to a classic tactic. Do any of us believe either side?
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… and how much traffic does it get? The latest government data reveals how £94.5m of government money was spent - before they even got to paying for staffing
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Whitehall in central London. Photograph: Paul Owen
Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including ministers' talks with civil servants over redundancy terms and Michael Gove's cuts to the schools budget
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