ShiftingGrounds

It is a well lamented fact of the contemporary job market that the existence of zero-hour contracts is so widespread.

In today’s Guardian there is an interview with the co-ordinator of Labour’s policy review, Jon Cruddas. Up front and centre Cruddas explains One Nation Labour and what it seeks to achieve:
“Work and home is what One Nation is about – family life, how people live everyday life. Care for people, pride in country.

Michael Gove has once again proved himself as being possibly the most dangerous man in the government; Gove has been consistently been pursuing his regressive education agenda but has never attracted the same vilification or even attention as figures like Andrew Lansley, Jeremy Hunt and Chris Grayling.

This morning saw the State opening of Parliament, complete with what was a very unsurprising Queen’s speech.  In amongst the tradition and the now pseudo-constitutional heckle from Dennis Skinner, the Queen’s speech denoted the future business of her government.

Last Thursday was the One Nation Conference; a day of debate and discussion around the mantra of One Nation Labour.

In the harsh light of day after yesterday’s raft of welfare reforms, both George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith are being pushed to defend themselves. The former has lashed out at Labour and other critics, and the latter is being pushed to put his (minimal) money where his mouth is when it comes to his claim that he could live on £53 a week.

Tuesday saw the energy secretary Ed Davey approve plans for the French energy giant EDF to build a nuclear power plant, the first in what is hoped to be a new generation of power plants. The plant is to be built in Somerset; Hinkley Point C.

Late last year the IPPR released a report, arguing that the North of England is being squeezed out between Alex Salmond and Boris Johnson. In this report, they argued that if further powers were given to the north it could boost the region’s economy, and in doing so, boost the national economy by £41bn.

Why is it that media coverage of climate change is so convoluted and contradictory? Part of the problem derives from climate change itself; it is an immensely complex subject, subject to all manner of technical subtleties and nuances that baffle most of the population. I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, claim to be an expert myself.

‘Responsible’ and ‘moral’ capitalism are phrases often knocked about by progressives to describe the ideal end point of their beliefs; the centre of a Venn diagram between ideology and pragmatism. It’s a potent and emotive concept, one that few would disagree with, but also one that is currently lacking in substance.

Last night Jon Cruddas gave a speech to the Resolution Foundation on what he saw as two “building blocks for the Labour Policy Review”: earning and belonging.

Yesterday saw the defeat of government plans to introduce boundary changes to constituencies before the 2015 election. For the first time since the beginning of the coalition the Lib Dems walked through the arches with Labour to defeat a government motion in a dramatic abandonment of collective responsibility.

Today’s speech from Andy Burnham set out One Nation Labour’s alternative to the coalition’s vision of the NHS. Burnham turned the tables on the staple-Tory argument of cost effectiveness, lambasting the coalition’s top-down reforms as being costly and detrimental to both the NHS and patients.

Last week saw the launch of the One Nation e-book, a move signifying the slow but steady progress toward a manifesto.

In these weeks of political rebirth as all the parties put on their serious voices and try to spark our interest again, the Tories have been talking tough justice. Last week at conference, Chris Grayling has made clear his desire to bring a harder line into the Department of Justice.

On the 20th of September 2011 Chris Grayling made the assertion that our benefits system was in such a state that it attracted ‘benefit tourists’, immigrants who come here in order to sponge off our welfare system.