They Blog For You

You Gov say: The majority of the public thinks that Downing Street’s Director of Communications Andy Coulson should be removed from office (pdf) and that investigations into the News of the World phone tapping affair should be reopened after fresh allegations, our survey reveals. In 2007, the News of the World’s royal [...]

Yesterday I seemed to be in high demand with the national media. Before you get excited, it wasn't due to any Wayne Rooney style juicy gossip, but both the Guardian and the Times had decided that I was going to be their rent-a-quote for the day on that equally hot [...]

I’D LIKE a show of hands here: anyone think that, in the last parliament, the Tories were somehow obliged to stick with their “patient’s passport” policy because it was in their 2005 election manifesto? Well, what about Labour’s commitment to unilateralism in its 1987 manifesto? Were we somehow morally or democratically obliged [...]

Back during the Summer recess I had an email from the president of a new organisation called Fair Spend, asking for endorsement. As such a new organisation, Fair Spend is still really in its developmental stages, but its aim is to get the fairest price for products and services most [...]

Having been bailed out after their unprecedented greed and recklessness by the State at a cost so far of some £850bn (59% of Britain’s entire GDP), the banks are now sending the most provocative signal they can that they don’t care a fig about government, society or public opinion – [...]

EVEN if the AV referendum is held on May 5 as planned, to coincide with other elections hapening that day, it will cost the taxpayer between £80 million and £100 million. Money well spent? Ask those of Nick Clegg’s constituents who depend on Sheffield Forgemasters for a living. Hat-tip, once again, to [...]

ED Balls MP recently visited Cardiff to join forces with Kevin Brennan MP to campaign against the privatisation of the Royal Mail amid fears the Government is seeking to sell off the public service.The demonstration,  in conjunction with the Communications Workers Union (CWU), took place near the main Post Office [...]

In a major first, the new House of Commons committee which aims to give back bench MPs more of a say in Parliamentary business has scheduled a debate this Thursday (9 September) on the subject of British military involvement in Afghanistan - and there will be a 'free vote' for [...]

Hugh Richard's funeral service was in  Hereford Crematorium today.  The tributes were touching and inspiring. it was wonderful to see again friends from the Nuclear Free Wales campaign of 1980-81. So many are still engaged in the environmental movement. Some have massively contributed to the widening understanding of the perilous [...]

IT’S NOT unknown for people to travel some distance in order to attend an interview for a job. Neither is it all that unusual for those candiudates to be reimbursed by his or her potential employer, even if he or she is unsuccessful. So you can hardly blame my colleague, Chris [...]

Whenever such a cat’s skein of evasion, misleadingness, distortions and downright lies unravels, there is always a serious and dangerous abuse of power at the root of it.   And that applies here, big time, for all the participants – the police, the Home Office and Home Secretary, the News [...]

So, yesterday Parliament returned after the summer recess and we were straight in the chamber to discuss and vote on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. This is a hugely hot topic, as you can read in my article in the Enfield Advertiser tomorrow, so lots of MPs wanted [...]

FANS of our occasional podcasts (you know who you both are) will be relieved that Copeland MP Jamie Reed and I got together yesterday to record our latest episode of Two Men and a Pod. Topics include, inevitably, the Labour leadership election, whether Labour in opposition should elect the Shadow Cabinet [...]

Mike Hancock tells me that the baseless accusation against him was the result of an over enthusiastic cross examination of a group of students returning to this country. There was excitement that a woman with a Russian name was working for an MP. I have been approached by three journalists [...]

The IMF paper for next next week’s Oslo meeting on the international economy will come as a shock to this Tory-Lib Coalition.   The IMF has always been seen as the enforcer for the neoliberal Washington Consensus, yet here it is now saying: “A recovery in aggregate demand is the single [...]

WHAT larks! The boundary changes proposed by the Tories would hit the LibDems more than anyone else, according to a new survey (paywall). This confirms the results of a separate survey reported by the Beeb last month. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the turkeys will still be [...]

THE Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs, Kevin Brennan MP, has demanded an inquiry after a newspaper investigation found players buying lottery tickets in 3,000 outlets had a much smaller chance of winning.The investigation found players buying £1 Thunderball tickets in some of these outlets were not able to chose from [...]

DURING the general election campaign I received one or two emails from constituents asking why I had voted against measures to prevent climate change. I was puzzled. I wasn’t aware I had done so. In fact I knew for a fact I had voted for the government’s Climate Change Bill in [...]

CARDIFF West MP, Kevin Brennan, says that a new study has confirmed people’s worst fears about the impact in Wales of the Tory/Liberal Emergency Budget.Analysis from the independent think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed recently that the poorest would be hit hardest by the measures announced in [...]

Coulsongate gets murkier.   Further evidence in the New York Times today from journalists who were on the News of the World when Coulson was editor has attested that mobile phone-tapping was rife.   It seems increasingly likely that Coulson knew about it, and quite likely encouraged it, though he has [...]