http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures Discussion and debate from the Centre left of British politics. Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:18:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In just 24 hours this week Eric Pickles - the shadow minister for Communities and Local Government - demonstrated the hypocrisy of the Tories in seeming to talk up local decision making but re-enforcing central control and command. On Tuesday Pickles me with Tory local government leaders to tell them that ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=166 The latest attempt to introduce an elected mayorship in local government has failed dismally. Yesterday the people of Bury voted in a Mayoral referendum that was triggered following an 8,000 strong petition. In the event the people of Bury voted 2 to 1 against introducing a Mayoral system. The turnout for ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=165 Did you hear the Today programme this morning? There was quite a focus on whether we were in - or - facing a recession of not. The consensus that we were probably not heading for recession although we faced a difficult couple of years. But it as the contribution of Sir ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=164 Jackie 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=163 Regular 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=162 It 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=161 Poverty 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=159 Also 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=160 I 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 ... http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=158 The Dirty Leftie blog has resumed but at a different place. I always enjoyed this blog - check it out at: www.dirtyleftie.wordpress.com http://www.andyhowell.info/Political-Futures/?p=157