Having our say

Yesterday evening, Brockley Labour passed the following motion in response to the Labour Party’s review on rules and democracy. This review is being undertaken by Ray Collins, an ex-General Secretary of the Labour Party and an interim report was presented to Labour’s Conference, Collins Review Interim Report Sep 2013. I commented on the debate at conference on this blog in an article called Labour’s Rules considered by those that can change them. …

Tough on Welfare, tough on the causes of welfare; it’s not the poor!

Tough on Welfare, tough on the causes of welfare; it’s not the poor!

The new stars of Miliband’s reshuffle Rachel Reeves and Tristan Hunt both made speeches/interviews over the weekend and they have caused wide dismay in the Labour Party or at least in the Deptford Bridge Kremlin. Mind you not sure what we were expecting. Reeves’ speech reported here in the Guardian, has allowed herself to be quoted, and thus allow Labour’s welfare policies to be summarised as “Tougher then the Tories”.  One of the reasons Reeves was promoted and Liam Byrne sacked is that Byrne behaved as if he wanted to compete with the Ian Duncan Smith in a ‘being a shit competition’. Even if we want to be tougher, which the vast majority of the Labour Party don’t, no-one will believe us and since now we are now committed to repealing the bedroom tax and converting benefits into bricks, we have a different story to tell. …

On Labour’s new Shadow Cabinet

On Labour’s new Shadow Cabinet

One step forward, two steps back?

Ed Miliband reshuffled Labour’s Shadow Cabinet earlier this week, 1½ weeks after the #lab13 and since three of Len McCluskey’s four horsemen of austerity have been either demoted or sacked many, particularly the Tory blogosphere saw this and reflected on it  as a reinforcement of Miliband’s conference speech vector and a move to the Left. The full story is probably more nuanced than the stories told by the mainly right wing commentariat but you can take your choice from Red Ed stamps McClusky’s Marxism on Labour to Miliband punishes the poor messengers. …

On (Ralph) Milibandism

After Ed Miliband’s speech to #lab13, the Daily Mail published an attack on him  through his father’s record, headlined  “The man who hated Britain”.  The ensuing fracas stimulated partly by Ed demanding a right of reply in the Mail is covered well by Tim Fenton at his Zelo Street blog and I point at a couple of articles below in this article’s postscript.  The Guardian in its high minded way decides to look at Ralph Miliband’s ideas to see if they could be called hateful. The article was written by Stuart Jeffries and the language is at times both highly colloquial and exceptionally direct. It’s this article that has led me to think about his ideas. …

Google deleted five million index entries in a week

Google deleted five million index entries in a week

Earlier today, Torrent Freak published an article detailing the number of take down requests that Google receives and acts upon, in the previous week, they report

Google received DMCA notices from 5,407 copyright owners and reporting organizations requesting the removal of 5,310,080 URLs spanning a total of 37,413 domains.

Obviously, I have been exposed to the copyright maximalist’s constant propaganda at #lab13 and further with the press coverage of the Select Committee, so its great to see this reported. The Torrentfreak article ends, …