From bad to worse for David Cameron and George Osborne, as the UK’s GDP growth was today revised downwards to -0.3%. This confirms the double-dip recession, and paints an even direr picture of the economy than previously thought.
Looks like it might be time for that Plan B, eh George?
Companies bidding for police privatisation contracts in the West Midlands and Surrey have been beset by allegations of tax avoidance, reckless safety breaches and human rights abuses. A new report by investigative journalist David Hencke lifts the lid on the corporations who want to run our crime investigation, forensics, 999 call handling and custody services.
Perhaps the most controversial candidate, however, is KBR, linked to former US vice president Dick Cheney. Looking to cut costs at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the company exposed workers to fumes from burning toxic rubbish in open pits. KBR was slapped with a series of class action lawsuits accusing the company of causing “symptoms ranging from respiratory problems to lymphoma and leukemia”.
Back in the US, meanwhile, the company avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by employing its workers through a series of shell companies based in, err, the Cayman Islands.
The likes of KBR care more about the bottom line than the thin blue line.
David Cameron was reprimanded by the Speaker during PMQs this afternoon — after calling Ed Balls a “muttering idiot”.
“… using our hard-won credibility, which we wouldn’t have if we listened to the muttering idiot sitting opposite me.”
Marking the return of his Flashman tendency, opprobrium heaped on Cameron has been greater as Ed Balls suffers from a stammer.
Naturally, the Chancellor led the boorish cries of “More, more!”
Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude has landed the role of recruiting PR and advertising consultants for the coalition government – just months after his helpful advice led to a woman suffering 40% burns.
Addressing a PR conference in London yesterday, Maude announced:
‘Suppliers should know that this Government is on the hunt for the best talent and the most innovative ideas, albeit keenly priced. I challenged my civil servants to come up with innovations that will make it easier for industry to do business with us; now we’ll be looking to industry to come forward with innovative ideas for us.’
Let’s hope he starts listening to some of their advice before he goes on air next time…
The government’s director of propriety and ethics has “tightened internal processes” after David Cameron’s taxpayer-funded Number 10 email newsletter was used to claim that Labour were “on the side of Britain’s something for nothing culture.”
While the email is billed as a “news roundup or a personal message” from David Cameron, party political lines are prohibited in the email, the production of which is supposedly overseen by civil servants.
It looks like this line was slipped in by a Number 10 special advisor:
“While we’ve been putting in place a sensible, modern welfare system that protects the vulnerable, our opponents have shown they are on the side of Britain’s something for nothing culture.”
Sue Gray, who has previously headed up ethics investigations on Liam Fox and Hazel Blears, ruled that the email was in breach of civil service rules.
Hilariously, Cameron’s message railed against the “abuse” of taxpayers’ money.
Employment minister Chris Grayling overruled his senior officials to generate anti-immigrant headlines about “benefit tourism” — despite the majority of claimants in a DWP study being British citizens.
With emphasis on “failed asylum seekers” and those arriving “in the back of lorries”, research looking at the original nationality of benefits claimants was spun into scaremongering headlines implying criminality amongst what were now British citizens claiming benefits perfectly legally.
A freedom of information request from freelance journalist Solomon Hughes has exposed the clash between Grayling and the two top statistics officials in his department. Rather than follow best practice and release data to all media outlets at the same time, Grayling demanded that his opinion piece for the Telegraph be released first — shaping coverage as anti-immigrant before anyone had seen the actual statistics.
“The proposed course of action – releasing the text of the Daily Telegraph article under embargo until midnight and then publishing the statistics on the ad hoc website at 7am … may attract criticism from some elements of the media and/or from the UK Statistics Authority. Both have been critical of the Home Office in its release of certain statistical information.”
As deputy head of statistics Tim Knight observed, this is not the first time Grayling and his boss Iain Duncan Smith have been caught massaging the figures (see Left Foot Forward for complete list):
The robost email exchanges reveal more than a little embarassment from DWP civil servants when it comes to their ministers.
Doubtless revelations in ConservativeHome won’t help to heal the growing rift between David Cameron and his aide Steve Hilton, who is currently in self-imposed exile in California.
With Hilton’s parents coming to Britain as asylum seekers during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, a hatchet job column on the policy guru claims:
“David Cameron would refer to Steve as the little Hungarian fascist”
Though Bruce Anderson claims that the term was “meant affectionately”, its inclusion in an article which describes Hilton as a “whining, egomaniacal perpetual adolescent” has already raised eyebrows.
Barely two years into the government and poisonous “blue on blue” briefings are already flying.
Readers will be well aware of the transparency crusade launched by Eric Pickles and his sidekick advisers Giles Kenningham and Sheridan Westlake. Having scrapped the Audit Commission, councils have been repeatedly urged to let untrained “arm chair auditors” (the public) cast their eye over the town hall books.
An eagle-eyed reader used our tips contact form to let us know that Messrs Kenningham and Westlake don’t appear to be abiding by their own rules. Data detailing their gifts, hospitality and media meetings has not been updated for nine months.
The gap between rhetoric and reality on transparency is becoming a chasm. This time last year, Eric Pickles wrote to councils last year telling them not to answer embarrassing FOI requests on spending.
Scrapbook will again have to ask: has Eric Pickles ushered in an era of transparency or an era of hypocrisy?
