They Blog For You

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 [...]

                 First we are told that providing a new loan to Greece, or Ireland, or Portugal, creates a line in the sand, prevents the contagion spreading. As each sucessive loan demand showed, that did not work. The incoming tide of debt erased the lines. The contagion spread. The mixed metaphors [...]

I am told that there is a new welcome emphasis on the public’s views at Downing Street. They are taking polling more seriously. It was worries by the public about the Health reforms that lies behind the recent decision to consult again and if necessary to change the plans. I trust [...]

Last night I was put through my paces by an audience in Oxford on BBC Question Time. I was quizzed on the NHS, social mobility, arts funding cuts and the AV referendum. You can watch the episode again here . We had a feisty debate on the NHS - unbelievable for [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Tory tax rise means thousands more families to lose their child benefit Up to an extra 750,000...

Tory tax rise means thousands more families to lose their child benefit   Up to an extra 750,000 people will become higher rate taxpayers tomorrow (Wednesday), meaning that thousands more families will lose their child benefit in 2013 Labour will warn today.   Following changes announced in last June’s Budget by George Osborne [...]

Would it surprise you to know that 45% of children in Edmonton are living below the poverty line, making Edmonton the joint seventh worst constituency for child poverty in the whole of England? Enfield as a borough doesn't fair much better - 37% of children live in poverty making it [...]

Delyn MP and former Policing Minister David Hanson has expressed his concern at reports that 2,200...

Delyn MP and former Policing Minister David Hanson has expressed his concern at reports that 2,200 of the most experienced Police officers are to be lost due to the government’s huge frontloaded cuts to the police.   North Wales Police is one of many forces across the country that has been given [...]

               Readers will know I am against the UK lending any money to Euro member states in trouble. We kept out of the Euro thanks to some of us arguing that case. Some of us  forecast the likely problems and do not see why the UK should pick up any of [...]

I've written before about the importance of keeping EMA. In simple terms, it's a small but vital weekly fund available to young people from low income families to enable them to afford the associated costs of staying on in education after 16. EMA was on that long list of things [...]

                  Based on doorstep conversations recently, and visits to speak to Conservative Associations, I encounter the following attitudes. Many Conservatives now see the Coaliti0n government as heavily Lib Dem influenced. They tell me they want changes in policy, to reflect the poor financial condition of the country and the preponderance [...]

Last week I attended a TUC event in Parliament encouraging everybody to stand together for public services and specifically for the NHS. You can see me in the photo on the left - big pink hands and all - supporting the cause with Frances O'Grady, TUC Deputy General Secretary. It [...]

                  The Chancellor said in his budget the Revenue will study the effects of the 50% tax rate on tax revenues.                 The Adam Smith Institutue has already published some of the important findings. (In the Revenue and Growth effects of Britain’s high personal taxes)They show that the Howe Lawson income tax [...]

When 250,000 people march in Central London to complain about cuts the government should listen, and should engage with their leaders in a sensible dialogue. There are many things I felt I wanted to say had I been invited to talk to them as Mr Miliband was able to do. I would [...]

It emerged in the Budget debate which ended today in the Commons that the need for spending cuts is far from the inevitability that Osborne has always claimed.   The independent OBR estimates of growth for the next 5 years, albeit recently scaled down, are still 1.7% this year, 2.5% next year, [...]

You're no doubt sick of me going on about the Budget now, but I did want to draw attention to a small victory. Last Wednesday, the Chancellor announced that he would not abolish Community Investment Tax Relief, despite being advised by the Office of Tax Simplification to scrap it. I [...]

It's only after analysing the finer details of the full Budget report and all the changes that Chancellor George Osborne wasn't prepared to say when everyone was watching, but instead hid in a long written document (perhaps in that hope that nobody would notice), that we can see who's really [...]

I just did an interview on the Daily Politics about public spending cuts - and why the government was actually finding it rather more difficult to curb spending than the rhetoric suggests. It is a mathematical fact that total public spending is actually set to rise from £669 Billion in the last year of Labour, to a projected £740 Billion [...]