David Miliband’s PLP support, I make it 58 MPs (48 officially nominated)… [Update]

David Miliband will officially be on the ballot paper to be the next Labour Leader after 36 MPs 48 MPs officially nominated him, the full list can be found on the Labour Party website & are in bold below along with other MPs who have publicly backed him:

Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East)
Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Willie Bain (Glasgow North East)
Gordon Banks (Ochil & South Perthshire)
Hugh Bayley (York Central)
Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough)
Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway)
Chris Bryant (The Rhondda)
David Cairns (Inverclyde)
Alan Campbell (Tynmouth)
Jennifer Chapman (Darlington)
Anne Clwyd (Cynon Valley)
Ann Coffey (Stockport)
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire)
Mary Creagh (Wakefield)
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield)
Julie Elliot (Sunderland Central)
Louise Ellman (Liverpool Riverside)
Christopher Evans (Islwyn)
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse)
Caroline Flint (Sheffield Don Valley)
Paul Flynn (Newport West)
Mike Gapes (Ilford South)
Patricia Glass (North West Durham)
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East)
David Hanson (Delyn)
Tom Harris (Glasgow South)
Margaret Hodge (Barking)
Tristrum Hunt (Stoke Central)
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood)
Ivan Lewis (Bury South)
Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow)
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitchem & Morden)
Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East)
Anne McGuire (Stirling)
David Miliband (South Shields)
Jessica Morden (Newport East)
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley)
Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire)
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts)
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South)
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich & Woolwich)
Jamie Reed (Copeland)
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd)
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central)
Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall)
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge)
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent)
Peter Soulsby (Leicester South)
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside)
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West)
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool West Derby)
Keith Vaz (Leicester East)
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South)
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield)
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness)
Phil Woolas (Oldham East and Saddleworth)

You can sign up to his campaign via davidmiliband.net

Will UKIP lose Tories Totnes, or will the Greens hinder the Lib Dems…

Target number 19 for a high flying Liberal Democrats is my constituency, Totnes (hate the name, it should be called South Devon but anyway). It needs a 3% swing for the Lib Dems to overturn the notional Tory majority of 2722 and win a Tory stonghold which has only been Liberal for one year in its 125 year history.

A couple of interesting dynamics to the Totnes constituency which makes the result so hard to predict is the strong Green Party and UKIP presence in the area, for example plenty of UKIP signs have popped up on local farms and business which usually have Tory signs up. At the last election UKIP polled just shy of 4,000 votes, I wouldn’t be surprised if that increased to 5,000 or even 6,000 at the expense of the Tories – those extra 2,000 votes could well be balanced by the Greens who are strong especially in Totnes town.

I wouldn’t like to say which way the seat will fall, but if I had too I would say UKIP will push Labour down to 4th in the vote as Labour minded people vote tactically & give the Lib Dems are small win by hundreds, even tens of votes – definitely a seat to watch.

Full list of candidates:

Jeffrey Beer	UK Independence Party
Julian Brazil	Liberal Democrat
Simon Drew	Independent
Stephen Hopwood	Independent
Lydia Somerville	Green
Michael Turner	British National Party
Carol Whitty	Labour
Sarah Wollaston	Conservative

Get involved with @stonewalluk’s anti-homophobic bullying film FIT.

In an attempt to help deal with the issue of homophobic bullying in schools, the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity Stonewall has this week sent out to all secondary schools in England and Wales an interactive DVD designed to confront homophobia in schools (Stonewall Scotland is sending them out in March). Recent research conducted by YouGov for Stonewall showed the magnitude of the problem of homophobia in schools:

Nine in ten teachers said their pupils experience homophobic bullying. But nine in ten teachers have never received any training on how to prevent and respond to homophobic bullying.

Anyway, here’s a trailer for a sneak peak:

And more information, trailers and freebies can be found over at stonewall.org.uk/FIT and if you want to write your old school or your children’s school asking them to organise a screening then Stonewall have provided a template to copy and make it easy to do.

Stonewall on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stonewalluk
Stonewall on twitter: http://twitter.com/stonewalluk

Update:

Thanks to Chris Sealey, who has pointed out that there is a petition on the No10 website asking the Prime Minister to do more to tackle homophobic bullying schools:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/gay-education/

David Cameron made to look very foolish over his claim violent crime is rising.

I’m not sure if you got the chance to catch either the 6 o’clock or 10 o’clock BBC News bulletins, but in his speech made yesterday Cameron made a claim that under Labour “We have had rising violent crime” – the BBC reporter pointed out that this was actually false and questioned Cameron on it, yet he failed to concede he was wrong. The BBC followed this by this graph which was shown on the screen:

Source: British Crime Survey 2008/09

As was clearly explained by the BBC, the trend in violent crime has been down over the past 15 years, pointing out its almost down by 50% since its 1995 peak – I think it would be hard for even the most strident Conservative supporter to not think Cameron came across anything other than very foolish from this episode. So instead of fuelling the fear of crime which The Daily Mail and The Daily Express do so well, Cameron as a person of great responsibility should shy away from making such fictitious claims – especially when they are so easily refuted.

More of my thoughts on this subject here: David Cameron was wrong on ‘broken Britain’, and he’s wrong on the ’social recession’.

Update:

Mark Easton has now blogged on the original film clip I based this post on, he goes into greater detail than I do and cites an official CCHQ email claiming “violent crime up nearly 70% Labour” despite this being a total misrepresentation. Its clear Cameron and the Conservatives should know better than to fiddle official figures to make them suit their rhetoric, especially when fear of crime is already a massive issue.

Thanks to @tscholesfogg on twitter for the link.

David Cameron was wrong on ‘broken Britain’, and he’s wrong on the ‘social recession’.

Today David Cameron continued a theme he has long pushed, that Britain has a “broken society”. He claimed today, in a speech on family and social policy that Labour have lead Britain into a ‘social recession’. He seized on the disturbing Edlington case which in a stroke of luck the courts ruled on today, claiming it was not an “isolated incident of evil” but symptomatic of wider social problems. Lets be clear this case was truly horrific, anyone who has read through the reports from the court could not argue otherwise but to suggest that this case reflects a wider pattern reflected across society is nothing short of ridiculous.

Looking at the history shows us that cases whereby children do evil crimes are not confined to the here and now, the obvious comparison is the 1993 Bulger case but before that in 1968 Mary Bell was convicted of the manslaughter of two boys (aged four and three) aged just 10. Do these cases mean we should assume that under the the Conservative’s in the 90′s and Labour in the 60′s that Britain was void of morality and broken? Of course we don’t, these are isolated incidents which we find so shocking because they are so rare – this is not to say that local authorities and governments should not learn as much as possible from such cases, but we must not be fooled into thinking we can stop such horrific child crimes from happening.

To be fair to David Cameron, he also points to “high crime rates”, teenage pregnancy and drugs to show that Britain has a ‘broken society’, its not hard to find out that the “high crime rates” Cameron mentions are indeed a good deal lower than in 1997 – with the latest quarterly police figures showing a further 8% drop in overall crime, whilst the latest British Crime Survey stated “that the risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen to a new historical low of 22%.” Cameron should look at the facts and instead of pandering to The Daily Mail and creating empty sound-bites, realise that on a day whereby the DEC Appeal announce that donations from the British Public have topped £42 Million for Haiti that although Britain has some real problems, its far away from being the ‘broken’ hell he portrays.

I put it to David Cameron and The Conservatives that if today’s society is ‘broken’, then it has never been ‘fixed’.

Is the economy starting to swing in favour of Labour?

Some encouraging economic news has tonight been reported in The Guardian, it points out:

Britain’s leading tax-and-spending think-tank has predicted that Gordon Brown would fight the general election with the public finances on an improving trend after the latest figures for borrowing showed a surprise pick-up in tax receipts.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies public finance bulletin points out that although December’s level of borrowing was indeed a record, “there was a good chance that the deficit for the full year would come in below Alistair Darling’s £178bn forecast in the pre-budget report.” As pointed out by Jessica Asato on twitter this is certainly no time for complacency or triumphalism on Labour’s part, but if one issue is expected to dominate the election campaign, “its the economy, stupid.”

If the prediction by the IFS comes to light and the state of the public finances come May are indeed on an improving trend, along with continuing better than expected unemployment figures – what does this mean for Gordon Brown’s chances against David Cameron?

As I’ve heard Nick Robinson say, the public give little credit to a government for what it has done, so although Labour can claim to have had some success in dealing with the recession and especially keeping unemployment down they must set out a clear vision for the future of the economy, especially in dealing with unemployment and the deficit. Yvette Cooper is totally right when she states that Labour investment has played a crucial role in keeping people in work and getting those unemployed back to work, she states:

We’re investing around £2bn extra this year and £3bn extra next year in additional help and support for the unemployed – money the Conservatives repeatedly opposed – Yet that investment is already paying off, helping families across the country and saving £2bn this year alone compared to the budget plans. George Osborne said we couldn’t afford this investment in the unemployed, the truth is we can’t afford not to.

The figures from National Audit Office show she is spot on, by investing to keep unemployment down they predict at the very least “the government would save £10bn in benefits for the £5bn spent on anti-unemployment measures.” She pointed out that investment for the unemployed, opposed by George Osborne, would continue under a Labour government and as Gordon Brown said with great effect in the Commons, “For this government, unemployment is not a price worth paying”.

Labour need to play on this message, its investment is working – not only is it keeping people in jobs, but also saving money and keeping the deficit down. What’s more, by doing this they can force George Osborne into the centre of the election campaign – and as has been discussed over at Liberal Conspiracy he’s widely seen to be one of the weakest members of the Shadow Cabinet. He was found wanting over the recession and his plans for immediate public spending cuts have been widely criticsed, David Blanchflower told the New Statesmen – “He seems hell-bent on creating the Osborne Dip”, further adding:

I gather Osborne fully expects to be the most unpopular chancellor ever, within six months of being appointed. I don’t doubt it. I am still waiting to hear which distinguished economists think that his plan to cut public spending in the depths of recession is a good idea.

Conservatives such as Theresa May like to continually remind the public that we have just endured a “Labour recession” and I’m unsure how this plays with the electorate but Labour must fight back over the economy and take on George Osborne and the Tories over their plans for the economy and make the centre of the election campaign about a continued ‘Labour recovery’ or an “Osborne Dip”. The choice is clear, it will be painful under Labour but under the Tories of George Osborne it will be much much worse .

Conservative plans for teaching are ridiculously ill-informed.

It seems these days a day doesn’t go by without a policy announcement from the Conservative Party, whilst this is welcome you would have thought after four years of planning they would be well thought out and nothing short of impressive – as it is the “brazenly elitist” proposals put forward by David Cameron and Michael Gove are ridiculously ill-informed and only serve to abandon potentially good teachers who for whatever reason didn’t fully achieve academically.

The basics of the policy put forward by the Conservative’s include the withdrawal of teacher training funding to postgraduate’s who achieve a third-class degree, the obvious failure of this part of the proposal is it assumes every degree is worth the same – I would have thought a third in maths from Oxford is a more than adequate qualification to be able to teach at primary school level – also it totally disregards othe attributes which are important to be a teacher.

In an excellent article Francis Gilbert asks ‘What makes a great teacher?’ in it he points out:

Cameron’s cardinal mistake is to think qualifications make a good teacher. They don’t.

It should be clear being able to re-write what you learn in a academic manner and perform well in exams doesn’t automatically mean you will be a good teacher, or a better teacher then someone with a lower class degree. If you don’t have the enthusiasm or the ability to create a stimulating learning environment then “the pupils will become demotivated and disaffected.” As Francis Gilbert rightly points out another “crucial point is that none of these teachers learned their skills by getting a good degree: they learned them on the job.” Its all very well having a good degree, but when it comes to it you learn more about teaching in the classroom then at University.

A teacher with a third who is able to motivate their pupils to learn is more desirable than someone with a 2:1 who is unassured in the classroom, by all means make teaching an ‘elitist’ profession – who doesn’t want the best possible teachers – just don’t assume academic achievement is the most important trait which makes a great teacher.

Is Chris Grayling right just because the public support him?

Well of course the simple answer is no, public support doesn’t mean any change of law should happen – but as was gleefully pointed out to me today on twitter an ICM poll in The Telegraph shows:

“79 per cent of all voters believe householders should only face prosecution if they use grossly disproportionate force against burglars. Only 17 per cent back keeping the current law – which permits prosecutions and convictions if “reasonable force” in tackling intruders is exceeded.”

Of course I’d have expected no less, when the reporting on the Munir Hussain case was so one-sided, failing again and again to point out just how “grossly disproportionately” his actions were.

As it stands the Director of Public Prosecutions has already rejected Tory demands for householders who confront burglars to be given greater legal protection. Keir Starmer, the most senior prosecutor in England and Wales, concluded that the current guidelines, which permit people to use “reasonable force” to protect their property, “worked very well” further adding:

“There are many cases, some involving death, where no prosecutions are brought. We would only ever bring a prosecution where we thought that the degree of force was unreasonable in such a way that the jury would realistically convict. So these are very rare cases and history tells us that the current test works very well.”

It’s clear the view of the public is at odds with those in the legal profession, who widely back the current law. As such the Government needs to decide whether to take the advice of the experts and tackle the misconceptions, or pander to the (mainly) right-wing press and perceived public support and back a change in the law.

My view in backing the law as it stands are summed up nicely in a quote I found on The Spectator website:

“It is the function of a jury to deliver its verdict on a criminal, not a vengeful vigilante, no matter how provoked. Theoretically awarding householders greater impunity from prosecution with stern sounding descriptive laws is populism at its worst: it does not improve the administration of justice or guarantee the safety of those it is intended to protect.”

More of my thoughts on this topic can be found here: Chris Grayling’s madness over Conservative “licence to kill” plans.

UKIP MEP resigns from their EU grouping citing homophobia, now for some Tories?

Although its unsurprising that such a right-wing grouping would contain members who are, “if not homophobic, not exactly complimentary of homosexuality” – it is still good to hear a British MEP standing up for their principles and the principles of the majority of the people who voted for them. Although I don’t agree with Nikki Sinclaire’s politics on Europe, she must be applauded for acting upon her unease about the allies UKIP have seated themselves with in the European Parliament.

Now isn’t it time for some Conservative MEPs to find some conviction and follow Edward McMillan-Scott MEP who was expelled from the Conservative Party, afterwards expressing his unease with the Law and Justice Party pointing out it had banned homosexual marches for being “sexually obscene” – as well as calling Michał Kamiński, the leader of the Tories grouping “a homophobe with fascist links”.

More about the Conservative Party’s unsavoury homophobic allies whom David Cameron has defended can be found here.

Its all very well having the ‘best policy ever’, but if the media are more interested in your dodgy donations…

A new policy has had a fair few Tories on twitter declaring it as the ‘best policy ever’ – ‘the reason I vote Conservative’ and such like, why no one can deny that the sediments of providing scholarships for children of fallen troops are admirable (I may do a blog later concerning the actual policy.) One problem is it seems the media are more interested in Conservative financial affairs with its PPC for North Richmond, Zac Goldsmith then this policy.

All you have to do is look at the websites of the various news outlets and the ‘best policy ever’ comes well below stories about quicker Tory cuts, Goldsmith donations ‘errors’, Lib Dem attacks on Cameron’s deficit proposals – you get the picture. If the press aren’t making much of a noise over this policy, surely the chances of it being absorbed by the majority of the public over the headlines of dodgy donations are minimal at best?