Tim Page

I admire Vince Cable’s audacity, arguing, as he has in his New Statesman essay, that John Maynard Keynes would have supported the Coalition Government’s deficit reduction package. Sadly, my admiration stops there.

Cable is quite correct to point out that Keynes was a liberal, not a socialist. Keynes was not a man of the left, in the political times in which he lived; the fact that he is associated with the left today is a sign of how the political centre of gravity has moved rightwards. A more interesting question is whether Vince Cable is a Liberal (as opposed to a liberal). Coming a day after Nick Clegg called for political differences within the Coalition to be aired publicly, so the voters can spot the Liberal arguments, Vince Cable chooses some strange bedfellows. Quotes from his essay, including “another point made by both me and George Osborne in 2009″ and “In modern times, the best analysis has come from Friedrich Hayek” do not exactly put clear yellow water between Vince and the right.

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Nicola Smith

I have a guest post up at Left Foot Forward considering some of what we still don’t know on Universal Credit – at the moment the only certainty is that before UC is even introduced billions of pounds will be cut from welfare spending.

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Nicola Smith

Earlier this week the Prime Minister claimed that “300,000 private sector jobs have already been created over the last 6 months alone”. While it is correct that employment levels rose between March – September 2010 (although the most recent data show that between August – September 2010 there was a 64,000 fall in the employment level) ONS data on workforce jobs presents a very different picture, showing that across the UK the number of jobs has fallen by 27,000. How can this be?

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Philip Pearson

Our case against Coalition plans for forest privatisation should consider the evidence that the private sector failed properly to manage our woodland resources before the Forestry Commission was created in 1919. Jim Pratt MBE, a retired Forestry Commission worker, writes here about the “strong precedent for assuming it will not do so in the future.”

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Bill Adams

What’s happening in Tunisia is a lesson to all us, and it’s especially personal for trade unionists in Yorkshire and the Humber. The world’s economy cannot run at the lowest common denominator: we need decent work, good wages and conditions, and stable sustainable economies. Only then will we see a return to growth, prosperity and true freedom.

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Paul Sellers

Eype beach, part of Dorset’s world famous Jurassic coast, is to be sold off by Conservative-controlled West Dorset District Council. According to the Metro, they have deemed it:

“a waste of money to maintain and manage as it does not generate any income.”

Of course, the same could be said of most beaches, parks and beauty spots, but selling off these public resources would leave us all much poorer. The threshold for the minimum bid has been set at just £1.

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Nigel Stanley

In my presentation at Netroots UK I included graphs showing how public opinion on the cuts has moved since the election using data from YouGov.

Today they have published a further data set for a poll conducted Jan 8-10 in which they have again asked these questions.

In a weak joke I have made far too many times I say one pole does not make a telegraph system. I have high regard for YouGov, but the laws of probability mean that polls are occasionally inaccurate.

But if today’s polls are right then there has been a significant move in public opinion as the astute Anthony Wells notes.  More people expect to be diectly hit by the cuts, there is a marked shift in whether people think they are good for the economy (which is the one I think is crucial) and the majority who say they are unfair has increased again.

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Alexandra Kemp

There are principles worth fighting for and Universal Child Benefit is one of them. It is top of the list for the Women’s Income Network (WIN) the brand-new coalition of campaigning voices and women’s charities including Fawcett, the Child Poverty Action Group and leading academics.

Universal Child Benefit unites a consensus across the political divide as society’s only universal recognition of the costs of bringing up children. It acknowledges the typically- lifelong financial impact of motherhood with its downward pull on women’s pay and prospects. It is the progressive response to the truth universally acknowledged that household income is not equally shared but that money paid direct to mothers is likely to be spent on children, a premise accepted by all governments since the Second World War.

Not any more.

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• Jobs, family, health key to Brits happiness
  ONS finds that job security is our number one concern
• Government to cut employment rights
  As The Telegraph reports on Government proposals to cut unfair dismissal protection

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Nicola Smith

One of today’s leaked proposals on employment rights is a Government plan to reduce the time period over which employers have to pay Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) for qualifying staff. If reports are correct, this policy seems likely to be a Coalition own goal. While evidence shows that it will have no positive impact on employment rates, it does seem likely to lead to increased unemployment (as workers are required to leave jobs that they would currently have a greater chance of returning to) and a rise in social security expenditure.

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