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Ed Miliband warns of “dire consequences” of closing Brixham Coastguard Station

By Labour Matters ⋅ February 23, 2011 ⋅ View Comments

Labour Leader Ed Miliband has pledged his support for the Brixham Coastguard Station, fearing its closure could have “dire consequences”, reports South Devon’s Herald Express:
In a message of support to the local coastguard team, Mr Miliband said he was ‘very concerned’ about the potential loss of the maritime rescue centre.
He said: “The Brixham, Falmouth and Weymouth waters that this station serves is an extremely busy area both for commercial shipping and for leisure activities.
“I worry that with the closure of this station local knowledge of the waters will be lost and this could have potentially dire consequences.
“I’m hopeful that the government will think again and I know that Patrick Canavan [...]

Cameron’s Kingston Hospital “has a safe future” claim ridiculed

By Labour Matters ⋅ February 23, 2011 ⋅ View Comments

David Cameron, who infamously told the country he would “cut the deficit not the NHS”, has had his election claim that Kingston Hospital would have a “safe future under a Conservative government” thrown back in his face in the Surrey Comet, after huge cuts to the local hospital were announced just ten months later.
During the election David Cameron said: “Kingston has a safe future under a Conservative government. [Its] future should depend on the choices that patients and GPs make, and overwhelmingly patients and local GPs in Kingston support this hospital and the excellent maternity unit, which I’ve seen for myself.”
Kingston Hospital’s plans published last week reveal that [...]

Debbie Abrahams is Labour’s choice for Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election

By Labour Matters ⋅ December 12, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

The Labour candidate to contest the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election has been announced as Debbie Abrahams, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Mrs Abrahams, who was the 2010 Labour candidate in Colne Valley, polled most votes of party members in a three-way battle.
The vote was held in private at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at Oldham Civic Centre.
We understand that a by-election in former MP Phil Woolas’ constituency will now be held on February 3.
Former Oldham mayors Riaz Ahmed and Abdul Jabbar also stood for selection but were beaten by Mrs Abrahams.
She said today: “It’s an honour and a privilege to have been selected as Labour’s candidate. Now I’m looking forward to [...]

MP under pressure as Kingston Lib Dems split over tuition fee hike

By Labour Matters ⋅ November 29, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

Liberal Democrat MPs may live to regret joining the Tories in government if this week’s Surrey Comet is anything to go by.
The first difficulty for the local Lib Dem MP and government Minister, Ed Davey, is the revelation that the government has been caught using inflated figures to justify closing Kingston Magistrates Court as part of £15m government cuts.
“The true running costs make Kingston the sixth cheapest of London’s 33 courts, and more than £200,000 a year cheaper than the three courts slated to take its workload,” the paper reports.
More worrying for Ed Davey is the split between himself and his Lib Dem council, highlighted in a [...]

‘Stealth cuts’ to tax credits will deprive working families of £6.2 billion

By Labour Matters ⋅ November 15, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

It is understandable if many Londoners skip the business pages of the Evening Standard, but if they do they’re missing a treat as Chris Blackhurst continues to make the pages worth reading even if you don’t wear a pinstripe suit. Take today’s article about the largely ignored ’slow burn’ cuts destined to hit working families:
“Since the Spending Review, the economists who work for Resolution Foundation have been crunching the numbers on how the cuts affect the less well-off. What they’ve discovered is that the changes to the tax credits system will deprive working families (that vast body of people so beloved of leading politicians in their party broadcasts, literature [...]

Tory MP to keep promise to vote against student tuition fees increase

By Labour Matters ⋅ November 13, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

We would like to congratulate the CONSERVATIVE MP for Ilford North, Lee Scott, for showing the Liberal Democrats what should be done after you’ve signed a promise not to support a rise in student tuition fees. We’ve been keeping an eye on Mr Scott after he seemed to waiver in his opposition to the fee rise in his local paper earlier this month, but the Redbridge Guardian this week reports that:
Lee Scott, Ilford North MP, said he “has never sat on the fence” and he wanted to make clear his opposition to raising tuition fees.
He said: “I’m not going to be voting for a rise in tuition fees.”
David Willetts, [...]

Lib Dem challengers crushed by Labour landslide in Kentish Town by-election

By Labour Matters ⋅ October 29, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

Labour crushed the Liberal Democrat challengers in the Kentish Town by-election yesterday, winning 53% of the vote in the London borough of Camden seat.
Once again voters rejected Nick Clegg’s party, swinging behind Labour in massive numbers instead.
Labour’s new Kentish Town councillor Jenny Headlam-Wells won 1,411 votes, while the Lib Dems could only muster 715. The Green Party candidate came third with 349 votes, with the Conservatives trailing with just 186.
Ken Livingstone, Labour’s candidate for the 2012 London Mayoral election, was quick to congratulate Jenny Headlam-Wells via Twitter, but a photo of a Labour leaflet distributed during the by-election which parodied Liberal Democrat Ministers Vince Cable and Danny [...]

Lib Dem vote collapses, Labour triumphs in three by-elections

By Labour Matters ⋅ October 22, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

In three local by-elections held yesterday Labour triumphed, with a wholesale collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote in Labour’s favour.
In Nick Clegg’s Sheffield back yard, Labour’s Terry Fox comfortably kept Manor Castle Labour with a massive 17.5% swing from the Liberal Democrats to Labour. Labour won 2,092 votes with the Liberal Democrats trailing in a poor second place with just 303 votes.
It was an even worse story for the Liberal Democrats in Oxford after local Labour campaigner Mike Rowley took the Barton and Sandhills seat from the Lib Dems. This time the swing from the Lib Dems to Labour was 10%. Again the votes tell the story, with [...]

Honoured economist warns Spending Review cuts will cause another recession

By Labour Matters ⋅ October 20, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

The Government’s cuts were branded the “greatest error seen in our lifetime” by a former Bank of England rate setter today who warned the country now faced another recession and a long painful recovery, the Press Association reports.
Economist David Blanchflower said a double dip into the red was inevitable following the announcement of the comprehensive spending review.
But he predicted worse was to come as any return to growth would be anaemic and not strong enough to generate enough jobs to tackle rising unemployment.
The US-based economist’s comments came on the day he was made a CBE for services to his industry and the Bank of England.
Speaking after [...]

Parents hit by £2.8bn Working Tax Credits cuts

By Labour Matters ⋅ October 20, 2010 ⋅ View Comments

Alan Johnson described George Osborne’s Spending Review speech as “smoke and mirrors” and as journalists and economists wade through the detail a rather less rosy picture for ordinary people is starting to emerge.
Working Tax Credits for instance are to be hit with a £2.8bn cut over the next four years, today’s Spending Review documents reveal.
Almost £1.8bn is to be cut from couples with children who work part time by changing the rules for how many hours a couple must work before they are eligible to claim Working Tax Credits. The minimum number of hours is to be raised from 16 hours to 24 hours a week, but one partner [...]

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