Sacking or Backing?
Monday, June 30th, 2008Jackie Ashley has an interesting piece in today’s Guardian:
Labour must decide. Sack or back him, deadline autumn: It can’t go on like this. The top people need to make up their minds on Brown by conference time or the party will be in ruins
Ashley correctly points out how mad it is for all of this [...]
Incurring the Wrath Of Alan Giles …
Friday, June 27th, 2008Regular readers will recognise the contributions to this blog of Alan Giles. I suspected my last posting on James Purnell would get him going, but …
I’m cautious about many of the changes that are being proposed in the Department of Work and Pensions, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t like all of them. But [...]
Purnell Makes Me Think … Again
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008It is with more than a little surprise that I realise that the only Minister - in this government - that this blog has congratulated is James Purnell. This was when Purnell was at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport when he announced the end of the imposition of silly, meaningless performance targets my [...]
Poverty in the Round
Thursday, June 19th, 2008Poverty cropped a lot last week, not least because the Government announced that numbers of children in Poverty had increased for the second year running.
I’ve already mentioned (in my report on the Compass conference) the comments from Ruth Lister that the government was now paying the costs for ignoring poverty amongst families and amongst childless [...]
The Future of PFI?
Thursday, June 19th, 2008Also last week I caught up with a friend of mine who works for one of the global financial institutions. His company are advisers on PFI, they help put together programmes and deals. He was telling me that the turn down in the economy is having quite an impact on PFI. Several big players have [...]
More Policy Reflections from Last Week
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008I did say that I would write some words on some of the other meetings that I had last week, that seem to be pertinent to the predicament that the Party faces at the moment, and indeed that any progressives on the centre left face.
So, I’ll start with some thoughts following the Renasi lecture last [...]
Dirty Leftie Rides Again
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008The Dirty Leftie blog has resumed but at a different place.
I always enjoyed this blog - check it out at:
www.dirtyleftie.wordpress.com
Compass Conference I
Monday, June 16th, 2008As I said previously, the Compass Conference was everything that Labour Conferences are not these days. The conference looked forward and was a genuine platform for debate and discussion. In many ways this was helped by the workshop programme that was syndicated to groups and organisations across the progressive wing of UK politics. these groups [...]
A Thoughtful Week
Sunday, June 15th, 2008An interesting week this week, with lots to think and blog about, although I should have really got round to talking about some of this stuff earlier.
At the beginning of the week I was in London for a couple of days, firstly for the annual Renaisi lecture at which two of local government’s best managers [...]
Podcast: Understanding the Climate Change Bill
Friday, June 13th, 2008The Climate Change Bill is just about to start its final passage through the House of Commons. The bill breaks new ground as the government seeks not only to lay out its strategy for dealing with climate change, but seeks to establish the benchmarks by which progress - and success - can be judged.
But environmentalists [...]
