Politics Summary: Monday, September 14th

In a speech today to the Labour pressure group, Progress, Peter Mandelson will contrast Labour’s approach with the Conservative Party’s “slash and burn” programme accusing David Cameron of planning “deep, savage, indiscriminate across-the-board spending cuts.”

The Daily Mail report the speech as a challenge to the unions with the headline: “Mandy tells unions: We’ll fight you on spending cuts after TUC chief predicts 4m jobless and riots in the streets.” TUC Secretary General Brendan Barber has warned that, “Spending cuts will provoke a double quick, double dip recession. Unemployment could well exceed 4 million.” Jackie Ashley in the Guardian writes, “if there have to be cuts, then taking away child benefit from the better off, and the winter fuel payment from richer pensioners, would seem sensible ideas.”

The Guardian’s annual survey of executive pay shows that although bonuses were lower, basic salary hikes hit 10 per cent with “the average chief executive of a blue-chip company now [earning] a basic salary of £791,000.” Only 22 women hold full-time executive director positions in the FTSE-100.

The Independent report that early results from a heroin prescribing pilot showed crimes committed by addicts dropped from about 40 to six a month, after six months of treatment. Their leader outlines that, “A nationwide roll-out of heroin clinics would be a significant step, but a profoundly sensible one.”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released today reveals that opposition is easing on the Democrats’ plan for healthcare reform “with 46 percent in favor of the proposed changes and 48 percent opposed.” When asked on the necessity of government reform to control healthcare costs and expand access to care, “53 per cent now call government action essential, while 44 per cent see it as doing more harm than good.”

3 Responses to “Politics Summary: Monday, September 14th”

  1. Welcome to Left Foot Forward! | Left Foot Forward

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  2. Government should listen to its advisers on drugs policy | Left Foot Forward

    […] is an interesting story in today’s Independent, flagged in Left Foot Forward’s Politics Summary, which reports that a group of government-appointed drug experts are to call for a nationwide […]

  3. Caroline Collett

    If the government had the same policy on banning the cigarettes and not advodacated it by giving drug abusers methodone “legally” and “clean needles” and making all drugs class A we would not have the very sad and broken society we are now living in! I believe in getting straight to the source ot the problem, and somehow the main drug supplies are coming in from Afganistan and Pakistan! So now you know, do something about it.
    Yours sincerely
    Little worker
    Caroline Collett ( Salvation Army, Bristol)

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