“Ask yourselves why will the Tories not give a guarantee to a cancer patient that they will see a specialist within two weeks?

“Why will they not give a guarantee of an 18 week wait before you get your NHS treatment? Why won’t they give a guarantee about weekend and evening opening of GPs’ surgeries?

“Why won’t they give a guarantee about neighbourhood policing? Why won’t they give a guarantee of these things?

“The reason is that they don’t want to bind themselves to the services which are personal to people’s needs. Services which the vast majority of people rely on.

“If you can afford to buy these services yourselves you are not going to worry too much about whether they come or go.

“If you can’t afford these things yourself – and that is the vast majority of middle and low income people in this country – then these services really matter.

“I sometimes think the Conservatives do not understand that people on middle and low incomes cannot rely on private health, cannot rely on private education, cannot rely on private security.

“People need these services. And they need these services provided by the government which is on their side.” Gordon Brown, The Daily Mirror.

We need more of this if Labour is to defeat the Tories and what ever you might think of Labour only the rich can afford a Tory government.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has decided not to take any further court action over the fairness of bank overdraft charges.

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that the OFT could not use a part of the unfair consumer contract regulations to decide if bank charges were unfair.

However, the OFT said it still had “significant concerns” about the way banks operate current accounts.

It said “fundamental change” was still needed in the interests of customers. BBC.

So banks can continue shafting us with their exorbitant charges which makes them around £2.6bn a year. What I like is the Supreme Court’s justification.

The judges said that overdraft charges were part of the price that customers agreed to pay for the package of services their banks provided, and as such were excluded from the scope of the regulations. BBC.

It’s not as if we’ve got a choice it’s almost impossible for the average person to survive in the UK without a bank account and every bank makes complex and expensive charges which we’ve little chance of understanding. Isn’t usury illegal? Not any more courtesy of the Supreme Court.

The Conservative party chairman, Eric Pickles, is from a working class background himself, and insists the class system is “as dead as a doornail”. If so, why does the party’s official website mention the state schools attended by three members of the shadow cabinet, but not the private schools that educated the rest? Jon Dennis, The Guardian.

During the Blair years, it was often said that exceptional wealth at the top would inevitably trickle down to the bottom of the pyramid.

The reality is that the only thing that trickled down was a shower of credit cards, insane mortgages and ridiculously irresponsible loans dished up to the desperate. But it was only a matter of time before the policy of further ripping off the most financially vulnerable was going to end up bursting like a swollen, pus-filled spot. The trite old saying that chickens come home to roost proved wiser than a hundred top economists lined up together. Claude, Hagley Road to Ladywood.

Parents who allow their children alcohol at home may be increasing the chances of future drinking problems, says England’s chief medical officer.

Sir Liam Donaldson accused some parents of a “laissez-faire” approach and said “. Letting children taste alcohol to ready them for adulthood was “misguided

Evidence showed that this could lead to binge drinking in later life, he said. BBC.

Evidence – I’ve not the time needed too completely refute the evidence – personally I don’t accept Donaldson’s accusation, a brief look at the details as provided back up my instincts.

Firstly looking at the Chief Medical Officers Guidance and looking for any references I found this.

The work to support the Department of Health in producing this report has been carried out by Professor Mark Bellis and his team at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University. Department of Health.

So off to the John Moores University website where there are 60 reports on alcohol abuse alone – I looked through a few but couldn’t identify which reports might have been used.

So back to the Guidance where I downloaded the Guidance on the consumption of alcohol by children and young people and looked at section 6 references the first reference to Professor Bellis is.

Bellis MA, Hughes K, Morleo M, et al (2007) Predictors of risky alcohol consumption in schoolchildren and their implications for preventing alcohol-related harm. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 2:15.

The first thing that strikes me is the report was published two years ago, no wonder I didn’t locate it on the University website. Now looking at the Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, And Policy website we find the report Predictors of risky alcohol consumption in schoolchildren and their implications for preventing alcohol-related harm, which concludes.

Although previous studies have examined predictors of risky drinking, our analyses of access to alcohol and youth income have highlighted eradicating underage alcohol sales and increased understanding of children’s spending as key considerations in reducing risky alcohol use. Parental provision of alcohol to children in a family environment may also be important in establishing child-parent dialogues on alcohol and moderating youth consumption. However, this will require supporting parents to ensure they develop only moderate drinking behaviours in their children and only when appropriate. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy.

Now how does that back up Donaldson’s claims – still I’ve a full time job to do and have only been able to carry out the most cursory investigation – but it didn’t take much using Donaldson’s own references to reach a different conclusion – Donaldson appears to be manipulating evidence to meet his own political agenda.

Back in September Shaun Usher, a freelance writer, started the blog, Letters of Note – which Shaun describes as an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos – far more interesting than Twitter – you know the decline in the use of paper is something to be mourned.

Hat Tip: Very Short List.

Cartoon source: Steve Bell, The Guardian.

If you’re a photographer you might well think so

While the use of anti-terrorist stop and search powers has fallen in recent months, a succession of high-profile incidents involving the use of the legislation against photographers has embarrassed senior officers, who privately concede that the rank and file are misusing their powers on the ground.

Recent examples include Jeff Overs, a BBC photographer who told the Andrew Marr Show he was stopped under suspicion of terrorism reconnaissance while photographing St Paul’s Cathedral, and Andrew White, an amateur photographer questioned by two police community support officers for photographing Christmas lights in Brighton.

In April two Austrian tourists were forced to delete their shots after being stopped by police in Walthamstow; and Alex Turner, an amateur photographer, was arrested under section 44 after taking images of a fish and chip shop in Kent.

Earlier this week Grant Smith, an architecture photographer, was apprehended under section 44 by City of London police while photographing Sir Christopher Wren’s Christ Church, around the corner from the Gherkin.

Smith, a critic of the stop and search policy, had been wearing a badge that read “I am a photographer not a terrorist” when police approached him. To top it off, when an ITN London Tonight crew arrived in the area to cover the story they reportedly found themselves subject to similar treatment. Paul Lewis, The Guardian.

Perhaps I’m being over dramatic, but you have to wonder how we’ve ended where photographing a chip shop can get you arrested. Haven’t the Police got something better to do with their time? You’d hope so.

There are many – myself included – who often yearn to wreak revenge on Labour for its crimes, cowardice and craven appeasement of the rich. But in the light of the alternative, revenge is a luxury the low-paid couldn’t afford. It’s a miserably weak reason to support Labour, but don’t imagine things couldn’t get worse: oh yes, they could. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.

Nicolas Sarkozy has had buckets of British ordure poured over his head for his attack on the “excesses of freewheeling” Anglo-Saxon financial capitalism, asserting that the European economic model has not led to the same mistakes, and for calling for the British to adopt some good old-fashioned EU regulation. He is a little Napoleon trying to do down our greatest national asset, it is declared. He must be resisted to the last. Unfortunately for his British critics there is a small problem. Sarkozy is largely right.

The City of London is now too big and too risky for a country our size. It is not just that bailing it out has cost £850bn, as the National Audit Office reported, and that the recession it imposed has led to the biggest ever increase in peacetime public borrowing. For years it has crowded out exporters and manufacturers. Money has flowed into the City forcing the pound up to crazy levels, and making it hard for exporters to compete, while at the same time generating credit flows that have made property, construction and financial services the routes to quick profits. Under City influence the alpha and omega of business life has become keeping up the share price. Innovation and investment can go hang. Will Hutton, The Guardian.

Labour MP for Stroud David Drew had the lowest claim of all the county MPs for the year, coming in at £13,059, which was to cover hotel and food expenses when in London.

Fellow Labour MP for Gloucester Parmjit Dhanda had the next lowest second home claim for the year of £17,652.69. This is Gloucestershire.

That said they’re still claiming an awful lot of money when you consider the median UK salary is a £25,428 and we are talking second home claims which include the cost of staying away from their main home. The maximum they could have claimed was £24,006 which Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown of the Cotswolds and Tory MP Laurence Robertson of Tewkesbury both duly claimed.

I’ve not the figures for the latest full year but last year the total expense claim for David Drew was £133,256 and for Parmjit Dhanda was £153,906 – so there’s plenty of room for improvement by all MPs.

Alistair Darling wanted to impose a VAT rise above 17.5% in his pre-budget report to raise extra revenue but was persuaded by Gordon Brown to opt for an increase in national insurance instead, government sources disclosed today. Patrick Wintour, The Guardian.

VAT is a pernicious tax which hits those on low incomes much harder – why are so many politicians and pundits intent on making the poor suffer? It’s the rich that got us into the mess why not make them suffer the most?