They Blog For You

Arising from the dross and trivia of the national newspapers today are some beacons of truth. Julian Glover in the Guardian says the unsayable. "Afghanistan is already yesterday's war, though it is still to be tomorrow's defeat".  The Independent escapes from the current events of the day, to remind us of a [...]

Today, the Labour Party has launched an interactive map showing local police job losses resulting from the Tory-led Government's 20% police cuts.As you can see, the Metropolitan Police - which covers Edmonton - has already announced 2,337 job cuts that will take place over a timescale of three years, taking [...]

It is scarcely possible to overstate the gravity of the charges against Murdoch’s organisation over the criminal offence of phone hacking.   There is undoubtedly a great deal more to be exposed, but we already know that phone hacking was rife at News International (N.I.) on an almost epidemic scale, that [...]

  It’s 18 months since David Taylor died.  The grief and shock at his wholly unexpected heart attack was accompanied by the regret at the sadness of his final months. David, the retiring MP for North West Leiscestershire, was unfairly dragged into the maelstrom of the Commons Expenses scandal in spite of his [...]

Total of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 363    The calamity deepens but hope is on the way. It's nearly a month since the carefully varnished flow of half-truths were emitted from Fukushima. The Japanese nuclear company TEPCO fell into the auto-pilot of 'reassure at all times' mode. All bad news was announced [...]

For the third time in a row – Greece, Ireland and now Portugal – the continuing Eurozone crisis is being handled badly.   A Portuguese bail-out will shortly be arranged among the EU countries, but in practice dominated by the conditions laid down by the most powerful country, Germany.   This [...]

  What’s the point?  One Millionaire David Cameron is married to a millionaire. He earns a good salary. What point is he making by ‘celebrating’ with a Ryanair no frills trip? The only things that make flying bearable are the frills. Why the self-flagellation? Who is he trying to impress? Most people would regard [...]

Have you noticed your pint going up in price recently? Firstly there was the VAT rise in January, which saw an extra 6p added to the price of a pint and then at the end of March, the 7.2% increase in alcohol duty added on another 4p. I know beer [...]

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day at the North Middlesex University Hospital, not as a patient (I wasn't ill, thankfully), but as an observer, work-shadowing in a number of different departments.It's been a year since the £130 million new facility opened so it was a great opportunity for [...]

KEVIN Brennan, MP for Cardiff West, has hit out at the terrible condition of Pendine Road in Ely after Cardiff County Council failed to keep their promise to repair the road surface by the end of the financial year.The road, which is a popular route to avoid traffic on Cowbridge [...]

Rarely can a Budget have disintegrated so quickly.   Dixons have just announced sales falling by 11% over the last 11 weeks, and are now cutting capital expenditure by 25%.   Oddbins goes bankrupt.   The former Asda boss has predicted a “long-term trend of trading down”.   HMV has just issued its thrid [...]

  My pre-election expectations range from realism to pessimism. I anticipated the results of all my six General Election results except the last one in 2011 and the first one in 1987.  I could have lost both. Today's poll on the Assembly Election is an extraordinary one.  The only worthwhile analysis was [...]

Yesterday is being termed as "Black Wednesday" for families - the day the Government introduced cuts to tax credits, childcare support and child benefit that will only add to the squeeze that low and middle income families are already feeling thanks to January's 2.5% VAT increase and the affects of [...]

As has often been said, the banks have a policy: privatise their gains, socialise their losses.   However we should have a different policy: make the banks pay for what they have done and restructure them so that they can never do it again.   Fat chance of course that anything like this [...]

  Part of the excitement of the coming Assembly Election result is the prospect of a fresh group of exciting new AMs. Until Monday I expected one of those to be Mari Rees. When I cheerfully answered the phone to Mari’s father my friend Caerleon Doctor Russell Rees on Monday I had [...]

As the first pilot schemes for getting claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work have judged that 70% were fit for work, the real attitudes of the Tories towards unemployment is becoming painfully clear.   Their Work First model of active labour market policy is defined by increasingly punitive approaches to conditionality [...]

  Paul Maynard the new Tory MP for Blackpool was on the next table to mine in the Terrace Cafeteria at lunchtime today. I noticed that he was shuffling some papers with intriguing pictures of power stations. He told me that he was speaking in today's final adjournment debate in which [...]

The Lloyds TSB Foundation wrote to me recently to let me know about the £194,800 it had invested in local community groups in 2010.The grants, which ranged from £15,000 to £36,300, were given to nine charities serving Edmonton and the Enfield area, including the Enfield Women's Centre, Crossroads Care Enfield, [...]

KEVIN Brennan MP, is urging businessmen and women in Cardiff West to come forward and demonstrate their entrepeneurial ideas in a bid to scoop a £50,000 prize.The competition is open to existing businesses as well as those who simply have a fantastic new idea and the winner will not [...]

I was recently provided with some particularly alarming statistics on low birth weight babies. After yesterday's post on child poverty I'm sure you're all thinking that it's always doom and gloom around here but I can't help but want to desperately draw people's attention to these figures so that appropriate [...]