2013 – Page 2 – davelevy.info

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

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

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, …

Beyond simple keynesianism

In the aftermath, of Ed Miliband’s conference speech, I came across two important articles published on the Touchstone and IPPR blog sites. Responsible Capitalism Takes Shape by Duncan Wheldon, and On left populism and Labour’s conference by Nick Pearce. It was Wheldon’s article that caught my eye first but both he and Pearce suggest there is a tension in the Labour Party between those who believe that British Capitalism no longer serves the interests of the majority; that what’s good for business is no longer good for people and the ‘simple keynesians’ who follow the old New Labour policies of using macroeconomic policy and demand management to encourage private sector growth. Pearce argues that Miliband believes that it’s broken and needs rebuilding, he’s on record as saying he thinks the 2015 election will be as transformative as that in 1979 and as he put it in the conference speech in speaking about the fact that capitalism seems no longer to let people afford a decent life, …

Is piracy really the most important issue facing the creative industries

Today, Parliament released the “Culture” select committee’s report “Supporting the Creative Industries”. The headline pursued by most media outlets is that Google’s efforts to limit copyright infringement by its ‘users’ is, to quote the committee chairman, John Whittingdale, “derisory”. This is reported by Computing, which extends Whittingdale’s quotes which demand further action from Google which is erroneously singled out as the single largest source of piracy and thus the single largest source of damage to Britain’s creative industries. Peter Bradwell of the ORG, and Paul Bernal of UEA cover the report and its impact, in Peter’s case on the ORG Blog, in an article called, Culture Committee copyright report one-sided and simplistic and in Paul’s case on his blog in an article called, Supporting the creative economy?. The ORG verbal evidence to the committee is available as a video here…, on Parliament TV. Enjoy the show and Peter’s persistant return to statistics and facts …

Germany turns Left

While I was meeting up with fellow conference delegates from Lewisham on Sunday night, the results from the German general election were being forecast and announced.

As expected the German conservatives increased their share of the vote and the number of seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Federal Parliament, but their parliamentary allies and the source of their parliamentary majority, the Free Democrats (FDP) failed to reach the threshold required to get seats. The FDP have been voted out of the parliament and consequently the right wing are five seats short of a majority. …

What was said at the ORG meeting on the surveillance state?

The openrights group meeting at #lab13 was held, and has been reported at their web site in an article called ‘Tom Watson MP: “The surveillance state is running amok and Parliament has absolutely failed.”‘ They have caught the opening speakers, Paul Johnson from the Guardian, Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch, Javier Ruiz (ORG) and Tom Watson MP on video which I recommend you watch, although I have precised the contributions below. …

Second thoughts on the way back to London

On the journey home, I shared a table with one of the exhibitor staff; we spoke about Ed’s speech and Labour Party Reform, particularly the suggestion that we should hold a primary for our Mayoral candidates. My fellow traveller said that he’d like the opportunity to help choose Labour’s candidates; since he also lived in Lewisham, I am not sure if he was referring to Lewisham or London and while I spoke about the supporter’s organisation he didn’t seem that interested. I need to think about this.

He also said he thought the speech was left wing, and I expressed surprise. Miliband is speaking about improving markets and making them work, not imposing worker’s or even consumer’s control. It’s about regulation. This is in contrast to the right but it’s not in itself left wing. Renationalising the Utilities would be left wing, although I am not sure that we really want that method of control re-imposed. …

Ed Miliband’s Leader’s speech, what I think!

After my experience at Manchester last year, where the queue to get into the auditorium to hear Ed Miliband speak started at 13:00, I got to the Brighton Centre early, and got one of the last seats in the balcony. By the time I publish this, many others will have commented, and I didn’t take any notes so my perceptions may be influenced by others comments. If you want the transcript, it’s available on Labour List here and the Labour Party have published a web video avaialble on you tube, or there’s a hyperlink in this article. …