Councils plan for exodus of poor families from London.

London boroughs are booking bed and breakfast lodgings in Hastings, Reading and Luton as London prepares to see some 82,000 families forced to leave the city because of George Osborne's changes to housing benefit. London is about to see an exodus of the poor from the city.

The controversy follows comment last week by Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, who said the unemployed should "get on the bus" and look for work. Another unnamed minister said the benefit changes would usher in a phenomenon similar to the Highland Clearances in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when landlords evicted thousands of tenants from their homes in the north of Scotland.

Honestly, only a Tory could bring up the subject of the Highland Clearances and imagine that he is being witty when making a comparison with present day Tory policy.

In a sign that housing benefit cuts are fast becoming the most sensitive political issue for the coalition, Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, last night accused the government of deliberate social engineering.

"It is an exercise in social and economic cleansing," he said, claiming that families would be thrown into turmoil, with children having to move school and those in work having to travel long distances to their jobs. "It is tantamount to cleansing the poor out of rich areas – a brutal and shocking piece of social engineering," Cruddas added.

The National Housing Federation's chief executive, David Orr, described the housing benefit cuts as "truly shocking". He said: "Unless ministers urgently reconsider these punitive cuts, we could see more people sleeping rough than at any stage during the last 30 years."

This is almost a textbook re-run of what we witnessed under Thatcher. Until she became Prime Minister, the sight of people sleeping rough in London was a relatively rare one. Under Thatcher, it became an almost routine vision.

Now the Tories have, once again, launched a savage attack on the poorest members of society and are introducing policies which will see many of them unable to afford to live in the capital.

There are rumblings of discontent amongst the Liberals, but it won't amount to naught. Power has, seemingly, removed their teeth.

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said last night he would table amendments to change housing benefit rules. He said: "I would fully expect to be one of those putting forward proposals for changes in the housing benefit rules, particularly for London."

But, as always when the Tories are in power, the middle class will remain largely unaffected by the chaos which they are dealing out to the poorer members of society.

This will play out on their TV screens as stories of the random poor. Eventually, they will tire of it and flick channels.

That's, certainly, what the Tories and Liberal Democrats are hoping for. As it's not as if they haven't been warned of the results of what they are about to do.

At a meeting of the Commons work and pensions select committee last Wednesday, the day Osborne announced £81bn of cuts in the spending review, MPs were told by London council chiefs that the housing benefit cuts could have devastating results.

Nigel Minto, head of sustainable communities at London Councils, who works closely with the capital's housing directors, told the committee that since June London councils had been "procuring bed and breakfast accommodation" in outer London and beyond. The committee was told similar problems would occur in other cities with high-priced property such as Brighton and Oxford.

Jeremy Swain, chief executive of the homelessness charity Thames Reach, said he was particularly worried about the impact on numbers sleeping rough in London. "We have reduced rough sleeping dramatically and we have a target of zero rough sleeping in London by 2012. For the first time I'm thinking that we will not achieve that," he said.

Karen Buck, shadow minister for work and pensions, said: "The sheer scale and extremity of the coalition proposals means almost a million households are affected across the country."

The truth is that the Tories don't care. I honestly have come to believe that they loathe the poor. It's the only rational explanation for the way they behave each and every time they gain power. They are simply shockingly oblivious to the pain they are causing.

But last night Cameron insisted the cuts were tough but fair. "Departments have to make savings. I don't underestimate how difficult this will be. But we are doing what we are doing because it is the right thing to do – right by our economy, right for our country."

Because it would obviously be "wrong" to ask those of us who could afford it to contribute more in taxation. That would, to the mind of a Tory, be insane talk. The Con-Dem coalition plan to wipe out the deficit by raising 23% by taxation and 77% from benefit cuts. That statistic alone says all that needs to be said about their priorities.

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Tags: Con-Dem coalition, Osborne, Clegg, Cameron, housing benefit

Nick Clegg 'searched conscience' over spending cuts.

Nick Clegg has told Desert Island Discs that he had to search his conscience when making the cuts in benefits which have caused so much outrage here in Britain.

Speaking about the cuts, he said: "I have spent every day of this process, pretty well every minute of this process, asking myself whether there are pain-free alternatives, whether we are doing the right thing, and I genuinely believe there is no easy alternative.

"I have certainly searched long and hard into my own conscience about whether what we are doing is for the right reasons.

"I am not going to hide the fact that a lot of this is difficult. I find it morally difficult. It is difficult for the country."

Why is it that politicians think that we will feel for them if they tell us that their acts of cruelty were difficult for them to bring about? And why does he imagine that the rest of us would only have accepted "pain free alternatives?"

I should hope, at the very least, that Clegg was tortured before he threw 490,000 public service workers on to the dole, that is the very least he could have done.

And, likewise, one would hope that he felt anxiety before removing benefits from the disabled.

But, missing from all of this apologia is any explanation as to why alternatives were not explored. Why were the rest of us not asked to contribute more? Why was the top rate of income tax not raised? Indeed, why are so many people who earn a good living, like myself, not asked to contribute in any way other than a 2.5% increase in Vat? Why aren't the city bankers, the people who caused this economic crisis more than anyone else, being asked to contribute more than the £2.5 billion scheme which Osborne has conjured up?

Clegg and the Tories can expect little sympathy when they tell us how hard they found it to be so cruel to the sick, the old and the disabled.

The entire budget is a regressive disgrace. It was a genuinely hateful way to address the deficit and revealed the Tories as utterly unchanged from the days when they were known as "the nasty party".

The main difference at the moment is that the Tories have the Liberal Democrats acting as their heat shield, absorbing the public anger and attempting to give the Tories a fig leaf of respectability as they carry out this act of political thuggery.

So, if Clegg is expecting sympathy for how hard he found it to bring himself to agree to what he agreed to, he won't get an ounce of it from me.

As far as I am concerned he, and his party, are dead in the water. They will be slaughtered at the next election because of what Clegg has agreed to, and they will fully deserve it.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Nick Clegg, George Osborne, Tories, Liberal Democrats, Con-Dem coalition

Spending review cuts will hit poorest harder, says IFS.

It normally takes the Institute of Fiscal Studies longer than twenty four hours to work out whether or not a budget has been progressive or regressive, but, in the case of George Osborne's latest offering, no such time was necessary.

Osborne, backed by Nick Clegg, has made the ridiculous claim that the rich would carry the burden of this budget much more than the poor. It was a silly claim at the time when they made it, and the IFS has wasted no time in identifying what we all recognised when Osborne was making this silly claim.

Detailed analysis by the IFS undermining the government's case is expected to put intense pressure on Liberal Democrat ministers in the coalition who have stressed the need for tax rises and spending cuts to be progressive.

The chancellor, who acknowledged that his package of £81bn of cuts had involved "hard choices", insisted yesterday that they are fair and would be borne by "those who have the broadest shoulders".

But the IFS said that with the exception of the richest 2% of the population earning more than £150,000 a year, the less well off would be proportionately the hardest hit, with families with children the "biggest losers".

Carl Emmerson, the IFS acting director, said: "The tax and benefit changes are regressive rather than progressive across most of the income distribution. And when we add in the new measures announced yesterday this is, unsurprisingly, reinforced.

"Our analysis continues to show that, with the notable exception of the richest 2%, the tax and benefit components of the fiscal consolidation are, overall, being implemented in a regressive way."

The IFS have also poured scorn on Osborne's claim that his cuts of 19% across all governmental departments is less than the cuts Labour would have implemented.

The IFS challenged Osborne's claim that the government's cuts to those departments whose budgets were not protected averaged 19% compared with 20% implied by Labour's plans.

It said the Osborne's figures failed to take into account the £6bn of cuts already announced by the government this year while the actual figure under Labour would have been 16%.

All in all, the lies told by both Osborne and Clegg have been exposed with almost record speed. That's not really very surprising, as the distance between what they claimed and the truth is actually gargantuan.

Clegg, for reasons I could never work out, kept making the bizarre claim that the cuts would create a "fairer" and "more democratic" Britain. How he imagines punishing the poor brings this about was always lost on me.

The IFS also criticised plans to scrap council tax benefit and replace it with a system of locally administered council grants. It said that it would create a "postcode lottery", providing an incentive to councils to award grants in a way that encouraged poor families to leave the area.

"The incentive it provides to local authorities to encourage low-income people to move elsewhere is undesirable," Emmerson said.

The IFS findings are most damning for Clegg, who continues to insist - to anyone who will listen - that this budget is "fair" and "democratic". As I said a few days ago, I have absolutely no idea what measurement Clegg is using when he makes those claims. But him saying that something is "fair" and "democratic" doesn't make it so. The IFS appear to concur that conclusion.

As the IFS were briefing reporters about their conclusions, both Nick Clegg and David Cameron were answering voters questions in Nottingham. And Clegg was sticking to his script that this budget was fair and democratic.

Fairness was "literally the question I have been asking myself every single day of this very difficult process we have been going through", the deputy prime minister said.

"I honestly would not have advocated this if I didn't feel that, notwithstanding all the difficulties, we tried to do this as fairly as possible.

"Of course I understand people are very, very fearful, and fear is a very powerful emotion and it kind of sweeps everything else aside.

"But I would ask people to have a little bit of perspective: if you look at some of the announcements we made yesterday, and add that to some of the announcements we made in the budget, I think the picture is a little bit more balanced than people are saying."

Clegg appears to think that by securing a pupil premium and protecting overseas aid - both admirable things in their own right - that he has somehow kept the budget "fair" and "democratic". But that's the problem with coalition politics, one is always left celebrating the fact that things could have been much worse than they actually are.

The rest of us simply look at the budget - as the IFS has done - as it actually is. And what we see is a regressive budget which attacks the poor, the old and the disabled. It's a disgrace. And the Liberal Democrats should shudder that they were part of the government which produced this travesty. It goes against everything which they claim to believe in. And the IFS have dismissed Clegg and Osborne's claim that it is fair and democratic with almost record speed.

It is not. And that fact should now be beyond doubt. The country's leading tax and spend think-tank have made their view on this abundantly clear.

UPDATE:

Clegg has decided to embark on some cognitive dissonance. The facts are simply too unpleasant for him to deal with.

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has taken the highly unusual step of attacking the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, describing its methods of measuring the fairness of the coalition's controversial spending review as "distorted and a complete nonsense".

That's a classic case of "shoot the messenger".

UPDATE II:



Clegg and Cameron attempt to win over a sceptical audience, and fail. Support for the Liberal Democrats is now at a twenty year low.

As I have said ever since he joined this Con-Dem coalition, he is leading his party to oblivion. He will never be forgiven for this.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Osborne, Clegg, Cameron, Con-Dem coalition, budget

Spending review axe falls on the poor.

I know it's just me, but I found it quite sickening to watch Nick Clegg pat George Osborne's back as he sat down having announced his brutal spending cuts.

Osborne was as smarmy and self pleased as he always is, as clear a product of the upper end of Britain's class system as one is ever likely to see, taking obscene pleasure in removing vital benefits from people in need.

Outlining his long-awaited comprehensive spending review, which will cut £81bn from government spending, Osborne vowed to restore "sanity to our public finances and stability to our economy". Perhaps the most striking of the new cuts announced was a package of £7bn in extra welfare cuts on top of the £11bn already made in the last budget. This will include the withdrawal of £50 a week from the million people claiming incapacity benefit for more than a year.

In a rapid-fire speech to the Commons, Osborne slashed £350m from the legal aid budget, reduced the police budget by 20% over four years, and hacked two-thirds off the £9bn communities department budget, including more than halving the support for social housing over four years. The pension age will rise to 66 from 2018.

Rail fares will be allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012, higher education spending will be cut by 40% – £2.9bn – by 2014/15, and flood defences by 15%. Further education will be cut by £1.1bn by 2014/15 and the "poorly targeted" education maintenance allowance for 16- to 19-year-olds is abolished.

And, most sickening of all, he then reduced the entire process to an Oxford debating society game, by announcing that the extra £7bn savings on tax credits and a range of other welfare benefits had enabled him to limit the overall reductions in the budgets of Whitehall spending departments to 19% over the next four years – less than the 20% pencilled in by the Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling.

If that wasn't an example of pathetic schoolboy one-upmanship, then I don't know what else it could possibly be.

For months he spoke of the need to cut these departments by between 25 and 40%, only, in the end, to play a game where he could score the cheapest of points against his rivals. And that tactic was only made possible by further slashing benefits needed by the poor, the old and the disabled.

Alan Johnson did well to point out the obscenity of what we were witnessing.

"We have seen people cheering the deepest cuts to public spending in living memory," he said. "For some people opposite this is their ideological objective. For many of them, not all of them, this is what they came into politics for."

And that, I think, is what I found the most obscene about the entire process. Had they announced these cuts in a sombre mood one might have deduced that we were witnessing what Osborne has always claimed, a government having to do something because there was no alternative. But what we witnessed was a Conservative celebration. Conservatives cheering to the rafters as they deprived benefits to the incapacitated, and slashed money for social housing. It was quite a sight. To see people actually cheering as they celebrated the loss of 490,000 public sector jobs over the lifetime of this parliament.

And the myth that the deficit will be paid on the shoulders of Britain's highest earners was exposed as the lie it always was. It is the poor, the disabled, the unemployed and the old who will be asked to suffer the most.

Taking the measures one at a time, the first – and the biggest – was to "time limit contributory employment and support allowance" for one year, that is the benefit formerly known as incapacity benefit. What this means is that a disabled or seriously sick person who has a working spouse, however low-paid their job may be, will lose their personal entitlement to benefits after a year.

Singles will be able to fall back on a means-tested safety net, but everyone else will be forced to rely on the generosity of their partner. Expect wheelchairs in Downing Street as the coalition does away with the long-established principle that people who have contributed their own national insurance in the past, and then become sick and disabled, should expect a modest stipend from the state in recognition of this.

On housing benefit, already savaged in June, there was a move to link the maximum rents paid for council and housing association properties to the market rent, something which will further encourage the cleansing of the poor out of central London.

This is what his Conservative colleagues were applauding. Reducing the savings credit, which rewarded pensioners who had saved from seeing their income support entitlement removed pound by pound to, in effect, punish them for their prudence.

How that fits in with the Tory philosophy is simply beyond me, especially as he went to such lengths to placate the equitable life savers of Middle England.

But, as much as Osborne and the rest of them will harp on about the reductions being 19% as opposed to the threatened 25% or 40%, one thing is worth remembering: these are the most brutal cuts in public spending in Britain since WWII.

And they do risk - the loss of 490,000 jobs in the public sector alone highlights the risk - of a double dip recession.

Those who oppose Keynesian economics, as Osborne clearly does, are pinning all their hopes on the Confidence Fairy.

Advocates of austerity believe that mystically, as the deficits come down, confidence in the economy will be restored and investment will boom. For 75 years there has been a contest between this theory and Keynesian theory, which argued that spending more now, especially on public investments (or tax cuts designed to encourage private investment) was more likely to restore growth, even though it increased the deficit.

The two prescriptions could not have been more different. Thanks to the IMF, multiple experiments have been conducted – for instance, in east Asia in 1997-98 and a little later in Argentina – and almost all come to the same conclusion: the Keynesian prescription works. Austerity converts downturns into recessions, recessions into depressions. The confidence fairy that the austerity advocates claim will appear never does, partly perhaps because the downturns mean that the deficit reductions are always smaller than was hoped.

It was brutal, and there is every chance that it won't work, and yet that was what caused Clegg to reach out his hand and pat Osborne's back as he took to his seat.

That moment truly made me wince. Because it shows that Clegg is not, as some have unfairly suggested, making deals for the sake of achieving political power. He is a true believer. He rejects Keynesian policies as vigorously as Osborne does.

My problem is that I think both of them are terribly wrong. And I fear we will all pay for their mistakes. And no-one, despite the claims of Osborne and Clegg, will pay more in the short term than the poor, the unemployed, the old and the disabled.

Watching Conservatives applaud that yesterday, and watching Clegg pat Osborne's back to celebrate his cruelty, are about as sickening a thing as I have ever seen on the floor of the Commons.

UPDATE:

It's well worth reading Johann Hari on this:

George Osborne has just gambled your future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people – perfectly sensibly – cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand, and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That's why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 – caused entirely by deregulated bankers – by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.

David Cameron and George Osborne have ignored all this. They have ignored the warnings of the Financial Times, the newspaper most critical of their strategy. They have dismissed the warnings of Nobel economics laureates like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who have consistently been proved right in this crisis. They have refused to learn from the fact that the country they held up as a model for how to deal with a recession – "Look and learn from across the Irish Sea," Osborne said – has suffered the worst collapse in the developed world. They have instead blindly obeyed the ideological precepts they learned as baby Thatcherites: slash the state, and make the poor pay most.

It's simply never, ever worked before. And yet Osborne, Clegg and Cameron insist that this time it will.

It can't be coincidental that this is being done to us by three men – Cameron, Osborne, and Nick Clegg – who have never worried about a bill in their lives. On a basic level, they do not understand the effects of these decisions on real people. Remember, Cameron said before the election: "The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school." Osborne is a beneficiary of a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn and which is stashed offshore to avoid tax. Clegg actually thought the state pension was £30 a week, a level that would kill pensioners.

These attitudes have real consequences. We're not in this together. Who isn't in it with us? Them, their friends, and their families.

UPDATE II:

There are two stories in today's Independent which really do perfectly highlight the Tory mindset.

The first tells us that Tory whips had actually warned MP's not to look too happy when Osborne announced the cuts:

Tory MPs had been told by party whips not to cheer the cuts too loudly. The message was that the cuts were a grim necessity, not something to enjoy or do with ideological zeal.

What does it say about the Tories that their own whips actually have to warn them not to look too happy as they make 490,000 people unemployed? And, worse, when they find themselves unable to comply with such a request?

Then tucked away inside is this gem:

The Queen is set to become one of the wealthiest crowned heads in Europe after the future of the British monarchy was secured in a historic deal with the Government that will give the House of Windsor a share of the £210m profits from government estates relinquished by George III.

The Civil List and the parliamentary system for funding the head of state are to be abolished, and from 2013, the Queen will receive her funding directly from the Crown Estate, which owns £6bn of British land and business. The deal means the Queen, and her successors, will not have to dip into her private wealth to help fund her crumbling palaces and staff wages, reducing financial concerns for Prince Charles when he ascends the throne, and potentially leaving him with a vast income.

Nice to know, as Clegg, Cameron and Osborne are so fond of telling us, that we are all in this together. He actually announced this in the same speech in which he took away billions in people's benefits.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Osborne, Clegg, UK politics, recession, austerity packages, public cuts

Prominent Tory donors among business leaders who backed Osborne's cuts.

I said yesterday that I suspected the business leaders who had written to The Telegraph insisting that Osborne must stick to his guns regarding the Tory planned cuts would turn out to be Tory supporters.

Today's Independent:

The 35 businessmen warned against delaying cuts in a letter to the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph drawn up by Lord Wolfson, chief executive of Next. He has donated £293,250 to the Conservatives since 2006 and was made a Tory peer three weeks after the May election.

Another signatory, Sir Christopher Gent, non-executive chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, has given £113,400 to the Conservative Party since 2003, while Aidan Heavey, chief executive of Tullow Oil, has donated £5,500.

Seventeen of the 35 chairmen or chief executives who signed yesterday's letter were among the businessmen who endorsed a similar round-robin before the May election backing Tory plans to reverse Labour's proposal to raise national insurance contributions by 1 per cent. Mr Osborne later cancelled it for employers but retained it for employees.

It really says everything about the relationship between the Conservative Party and these business leaders that they will send round-robin letters at a moments notice backing Tory policies. And it's notable that, when they asked the Tories to reverse Labour's plans to raise national insurance contributions by 1%, that Osborne raised it for employees, but not employers.

One of these same business leaders who is demanding that welfare be slashed and social services axed - rather than see a rise in taxation - earns £6.5 million a year.

Now some economists have spoken out about the twaddle these supposedly impartial business leaders are spouting:

Christopher Pissarides, Britain's new Nobel laureate in economics and professor of economics at the LSE, said: "I am rather puzzled as to why big companies think the private sector will create jobs if the cuts are immediate rather than spread over two or three years, to give the private sector time to plan ahead. The situation is not so grave; there is no big risk premium of government debt as in Greece or Spain. I see a lot of confidence in the ability of the British Government to control the deficit. That confidence will remain if there is a well-arranged plan over the next few years rather than the next few months."

David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, said of the letter: "It's a terrible, terrible mistake. The sensible thing to do is to spread [the cuts] over a long time. Clearly you have to deal with the deficit, but there is no economics that says you have to deal with it in a week or a month."

Stephen Alambritis, chief spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "Large companies can take these cuts in their stride. The City will reward them with a higher share price if they reduce their workforce. But the Chancellor should not be emboldened by these business leaders.

"Some small firms rely on public-sector contracts for 50 or 60 per cent of their turnover. If the cuts are swingeing and overnight, these companies will be lost to the UK economy forever."

As I've said a thousand times, no-one is suggesting that we don't need to do something about the deficit, but there really is no need to pay off the mortgage in five years rather than twenty five.

People should remember that we finally paid off our WWII debt during the premiership of Tony Blair. And, that shortly after WWII, with debts far greater than the ones we currently face, we built a welfare state and much of our social housing.

All of this undermines Osborne's fallacy that he has no choice other than the one he is proposing. He's doing this because he wants to slash the cost of the state, not because it is the only possible solution to the situation we currently face.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Osborne, Con-Dem coalition, cuts

Social housing budget 'to be cut in half'.

David Cameron is to slash the social housing budget in England by 50% and to change - for the first time ever - the right of tenants to a house for life.

Ministers are expected to introduce a "flexible tenancy" for people who move into council housing for the first time.

Tenants will be checked over a period of time to see if they still require help with housing from their local authority, the BBC has learned.

In August, Prime Minister David Cameron suggested tenants in England should get fixed-term contracts and be encouraged to move into the private housing sector if their finances improve.

He said greater flexibility was required within the social housing system, allowing tenants to move to find work.

But Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes said his party was against the idea, which was not coalition policy.

Labour accused Mr Cameron of threatening the long-term stability people value from secure tenancy.

I would have thought that this might cause a huge rift between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats but I am so used to the Lib Dems lying on their backs and showing their bellies to the Tories that I suspect nothing will happen.

A party which enjoys huge support in university towns has already ripped up it's promise to abolish tuition fees and now plans to allow them to be doubled, despite the fact that most of them, including all five Lib Dems in the coalition cabinet, signed a pledge promising to oppose any rise in fees.

I feel sorry for the Lib Dems. They are basically decent people who Clegg has allowed to be turned into Cameron's cannon fodder.

They now appear to be backing Cameron's insistence that council tenants can be forced to rent in the private sector once their earnings reach a sufficient level. Forget how well you get on with your neighbours, forget any sense of community and belonging which someone might feel for the place where they live, Cameron will now insist that certain people move on simply because they can afford to.

And it won't surprise me that the Liberal Democrats, led by a man who is a conservative in all but name, will dutifully follow along behind. It's shameful to watch what Clegg is doing to that party.

And the public appear to be waking up to what is about to happen:

Most voters expect the poor and elderly to bear the brunt of David Cameron's savage cuts, an exclusive Sunday Mirror poll has shown.

Fifty-six per cent of those quizzed in our survey said the Government's welfare benefit cuts would hit the "poorest, elderly and most vulnerable" the hardest. Just 28 per cent disagreed.

Nearly half - 46 per cent - said Cameron understands the needs of the rich better than the concerns of ordinary people.

A similar number feared that the loss of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs is too high a price to pay to slash Britain's deficit. Just 30 per cent of people asked agreed the job losses were a "price worth paying" against 47 per cent, who disagreed.

It seems that there is no policy too right wing for Clegg to insist to Cameron that he can't back it. What experience do any of these public school boys have when it comes to council housing?

None. None at all. And yet they are seeking to impose their values on a culture which they simply do not understand.

Click here for full article.

Tags: council housing, Cameron, Clegg, Con-Dem coalition

Where will the axe fall? Whitehall waits for the bloodbath.

I have said ever since George Osborne spoke of cuts of between 25 and 40% that I thought he had pulled this figure from his ass and that such reductions were impossible to achieve.

Now, a member of his own team has stated, that achieving such cuts is "a metaphysical impossibility".

But we are about to find out where the axe is to fall.

Alan Johnson, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, is to attack Osborne's claim that the cuts are unavoidable.

As the outbreak of hysteria over the cutting of child benefit showed, most people in the UK support cuts, as long as the cuts do not directly involve themselves. We are all for other people getting along with less, but heaven forbid that it should directly affect us.

The Osborne tactic has achieved public support until now, because it has been all talk. We can all share Osborne's revulsion at immigrants receiving tens of thousands of pounds in benefits. If the deficit could be reduced merely by removing such obvious wrongs then Osborne would end up the most popular man in the country.

But, eventually, he is going to have to tell us what exactly he plans to do.

As the outrage over child benefit showed, at that point I fully expect Osborne's popularity to fall like a stone.

There is nothing unavoidable about what Osborne and the Con-Dem coalition are about to do. They have decided, as a matter of policy and ideology, to pay off the mortgage over five years rather than 25. It's going to hurt.

The people who support Osborne now, do so because they imagine that these cuts will affect other people. Once they realise that the cuts affect themselves, I expect them to lose their enthusiasm for them immediately.

Osborne has sold these cuts by highlighting benefit abuse, which most Brits abhor. But he's not going to be able to achieve the figures he is speaking of by merely cutting out such abuse.

And, as the outrage of high tax payers who lost their child benefit showed, at that point the whole thing is going to move from the abstract to the deeply personal.

The Con-Dem coalition have been getting away with murder up until now, talking tough - which people love - without actually telling anyone how it is going to affect themselves.

That honeymoon is about to come to a shuddering halt. And, once Osborne has spelt out where he intends to make his cuts, I don't think he or the coalition are going to be very popular at all.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Osborne, Con-Dem coalition, spending cuts

No knockout, but the Ed corner celebrates a PMQs points victory.

Ed Miliband's first PMQ was important because he was not elected by the majority of his own parliamentary party, so it was important that yesterday didn't end with a feeling of buyers remorse.

And, whilst I could pick holes all day at his stilted delivery, there can be no question that he won the battle on points.

Searching for Mr Cameron's weak point, the Labour leader decided to go hard on the decision to withdraw child benefit from higher rate taxpayers. He described last week's announcement as a "shambles" and, reflecting the political zeitgeist, not "fair".

Mr Miliband wanted to know how many stay-at-home mothers would lose out. When Mr Cameron didn't offer an answer, the Labour leader played a prepared card: "I may be new to this game, but I thought I asked the questions and you answered them."

Awarding the Prime Minister "nought out of two on straight answers", he said: "We should try to change the tone of these exchanges, but he must provide straight answers to straight questions." Later he deployed the best joke of the session, saying the child benefit announcement at the Conservative Party conference had been such a mess that Mr Cameron must have wished that the aborted BBC strike had gone ahead.

The Prime Minister's pre-cooked lines were less effective. Welcoming Mr Miliband to his new perch, he hoped that he would stay there for "many years to come". But it wasn't a new gag. George Osborne, the Chancellor, had used it against Mr Johnson the previous day.

Jubilant Labour MPs toasted their new leader in the Commons bars last night. But old heads knew not to get too carried away. "One session down, only four and a half years until the election," one quipped. They also knew that Mr Cameron would not underestimate his new opponent again.

My favourite moment was when he quoted Cameron stating that he "liked" child benefit and wouldn't change it at an event billed as "Cameron Direct".

It's early days, but he made a good start. He punctured the notion that Cameron is a straight talker. Cameron plays on this a lot, and it's simply not true.

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Tags: Ed Miliband, David Cameron, child benefit

Coalition hints at bringing end to universal benefit.

The Tories loathe the idea of universal benefits, which is why Osborne risked outraging his party by abolishing the right to child benefit for the better off citizen in the UK.

Now, the Tories plan to attack the principle of universal benefits again, this time by challenging the right of all old age pensioners to claim a winter fuel allowance.

But as the axe hovers over funding ahead of the spending review on 20 October, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the winter fuel allowances paid to all over-60s could be restricted to the least well-off or taxed to limit the sum received by wealthy pensioners. It follows the row at the Tory party conference last week over plans to axe child benefit for high earners from 2013.

The move would strike at the heart of the principle of universal benefits for the elderly and fly in the face of assurances given by Mr Cameron that the payments would be "safe" under a Tory government. Some senior Tories oppose such a dramatic U-turn because of the damage it would cause to the Prime Minister's credibility.

I actually agreed with the plan to limit child benefits to those who actually need them, but I do worry about means testing anything which affects old age pensioners. Many old age pensioners are incredibly proud, and would do without a benefit before suffering what they see as the indignity of being means tested. That's why, in principle, most of us support this as a universal benefit.

We all remember the awful stories of old age pensioners dying of hypothermia because they were too scared of their fuel bills to turn on the heating in the winter. This universal benefit was introduced to make those horror stories a thing of the past.

By means testing such a benefit, Cameron risks bringing those horror stories back as some old age pensioners will simply be too proud to apply for help.

With the Government apparently signalling an end to universal benefits, the Age UK poll also showed 73 per cent of the public opposes means testing. Only half of Tories surveyed at the party conference agreed that "everyone who has worked hard and paid taxes all their life deserves the same support from the Government in old age".

Michelle Mitchell, Age UK's charity director, said: "With the lives of thousands of older people at risk if essential care services are cut, the Chancellor will not quickly be forgiven if he fails to support the oldest and frailest, who rely on public services the most."

73% of us oppose means testing pensioners, for very good reason.

They are amongst the most fragile people in the country, and that is why most of us would rather give a well off pensioner money they don't need, than run the risk of watching someones granny die because she is too proud to ask for help.

Cameron is now going to reverse that. It's yet another thing that he failed to tell us when he asked people to vote for him. At this point I am left wondering why he bothered to release a manifesto at all.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, pensioners fuel allowance, Tories, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Con-Dem coalition

Cameron Leaves Us Puzzled.

I didn't get a chance yesterday to comment on David Cameron's speech to the Conservative party conference.

It was a strange affair. He said very little that made any coherent sense, accusing Labour - rather than the private sector - of causing the financial collapse, which left him speaking a language all of his own, where black was white and the greatest hope for the UK is to embrace "the Big Society"; a notion which Cameron has been pushing for quite a while, but which most of us still don't understand.

It's something to do with him closing down our local facilities, but volunteers taking them over. You know, a Nirvana where we now do for nothing jobs for which people were previously paid. In fairness to the Tories, they appear to be as puzzled about what he is talking about as the rest of us are.

The coalition, he said, was not all about cuts, but "an attempt to create a country based not on Labour's selfish individualism but one based on mutual responsibility". Labour, he said, was now the party of the status quo: "We are the radicals now, breaking apart the old system."

Tackling one of its most common criticisms, he said of his core idea: "The big society is not about creating cover for cuts but an attempt to create a citizenship that is not simply a transaction in which you put your taxes in and get your services out. When we say 'we are all in this together' that is not a cry for help, but a call to arms."

However, he stopped short of claiming the big society could simply replace the government, an impression he regretting giving in last year's conference speech.

The repeated emphasis on the "big society" frustrated some party activists, who regard it as too elusive a concept and a flop on the doorstep at the last election.

That's how out there Cameron's "big society" notion is. He is now abandoning Thatcher and the Tories love affair with individualism, indeed, he calls such a notion selfish and, bizarrely, attaches it to New Labour.

Some others reviewed this speech about nothing:

Anne Perkins:

Though fairness was billed as the theme, the speech actually turned out not to have a theme at all, and fairness emerged as only one short under-developed passage among all the other short and under-developed passages. His idea of fairness was entirely limited to the relationship between the average taxpayer and the benefit claimant and based on the perception that now seems to be driving Conservative thinking, that there are large numbers of people turning their back on available work for the pleasure of hanging round all day "on their sofa".

It's a classic Thatcher technique where the unemployed are blamed for their own predicament. They are "Social Security scroungers" and, by implication, responsible for their own plight because they choose to lay "on the sofa" rather than to seek employment.

John Harris had, I thought, a very good notion about where Cameron gets his idea of "the Big Society":

At the tail-end of the election, we made a film in Cameron's constituency: Witney, where the Cotswolds blur into Oxfordshire. A few people we met said the villages therein had undoubtedly played some role in the idea of the "big society". And fair play to them: the charity shops, summer fetes, scout troops etc did amount to what some people call "social capital", and a kind of high-end version of the good(ish) society. Note also: hardly any poverty there, a lot of retired folks, plenty of millionaires, no real sense of the rat-race.

Which brings me to that speech.

Hey you! Do you want to set up a free school? Be a special constable? Turn your workplace into a mutual? Take this or that service off your council and somehow run it yourselves? Put on a fete, or open a charity shop?

It's a nice idea. But watch the film we made during Labour conference about the lives of even pretty affluent people in the Mancunian suburb of Altrincham. They are time-poor. They barely have enough hours spare to feel they're being good parents. Thanks to the cuts, their lives will be getting even more stressed and harried. And then – and forgive me for a bit of class politics here – they behold a very wealthy man with a cut-glass accent telling them their country needs them, it's all about the "big society", and they need to get with it.

Most of this will either sound dreamy and impenetrable or extremely patronising, or both.

And Aditya Chakrabortty highlights what I found the most disgusting aspect of Cameron's speech:

Let us be clear: this goes way beyond the usual conference grandstanding – it's a cynical rewrite of the past couple of years. A massive failure of the private sector has been Photoshopped into the fault of the state.

Cameron can't even be honest about how we got into this mess, as he is so determined to blame Labour for a world wide economic collapse. It's fanciful and it is extremely dishonest.

And his solution is to talk of a "big society" which is a notion only he seems to fully understand.

For his first ever conference speech as Prime Minister, I thought this was hollow and dishonest at it's core, and simply confusing when addressing where we go from here.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, Conservative party conference

Phone-hacking scandal: Andy Coulson 'listened to intercepted messages'.

The story that Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of The World and now Head of Communications for David Cameron's coalition, did not know of the blatant illegality being carried out in his own news room was always hard to believe.

Now, a journalist who worked under him has come out and stated that Coulson not only knew that his journalists were listening in to celebrities messages, but that he even listened to recordings of them himself.

Coulson has always denied knowing about any illegal activity by the journalists who worked for him, but an unidentified former executive from the paper told Channel Four Dispatches that Coulson not only knew his reporters were using intercepted voicemail but was also personally involved.

"Sometimes, they would say: 'We've got a recording' and Andy would say: 'OK, bring it into my office and play it to me' or 'Bring me, email me a transcript of it'," the journalist said.

The claim, due to be broadcast tomorrow night, goes beyond earlier statements by Coulson's former colleagues.

Sean Hoare, a showbusiness reporter, told the New York Times Coulson had "actively encouraged" him to intercept voicemail.

Paul McMullan, who handled investigations, told the Guardian illegal activity was so widespread in the newsroom that Coulson must have known about it. Coulson has denied all the claims.

Channel Four's anonymous witness, whose words are spoken by an actor in the programme, says: "Andy was a very good editor.

"He was very conscientious and he wouldn't let stories pass unless he was sure they were correct ... so, if the evidence that a reporter had was a recorded phone message, that would be what Andy would know about.

"So you'd have to say: 'Yes, there's a recorded message.' You go and either play it to him or show him a transcript of it, in order to satisfy him that you weren't going to get sued, that it wasn't made up."

Coulson resigned from the newspaper after his royal journalist, Clive Goodman, was jailed after listening to the personal voice-mail messages of three members of the royal staff. Coulson claimed as he stepped down that this was a case of one bad apple and that the practice was not widespread.

Many people have come forward since the New York Times started investigating this and have stated that Coulson's version of events was untrue.

Indeed, there are even reports that the News of The World issued threats to make sure that all investigations stopped at Goodman.

Adam Price, one of the MPs from the media select committee which last year investigated the phone-hacking scandal, described how he stopped voting to compel News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, to be called as a witness.

"I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, they would go for us – effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them."

This story really isn't going to go away. Cameron appears to think that he can make out that this is a case of Labour MP's attempting to put pressure on his Head of Communications for political reasons. And that might play out well within his own party.

But, to the rest of us, this whole thing is beginning to stink. Too many people have come forward, and they are all saying essentially the same thing. Coulson knew.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Coulson, News of the World, Conservatives, Cameron

John Rentoul: If Ed is a gift to Dave, he's a Trojan horse.

We've all read how delighted the Tories are to be facing Ed Miliband rather than his brother David.

Now John Rentoul - Blair's biographer of all people - is warning Cameron that, if Miliband is a gift, then he is a Trojan bloody horse.

We know two things about how the general public will view the early clashes between Cameron and Miliband. One is that they know next to nothing about the new Labour leader; the other is that they tend to give a new face the benefit of the doubt. Cameron finds himself in a similar position to that of Tony Blair when, as Prime Minister, he faced his fifth and last Conservative leader.

Cameron's own arrival at the despatch box to which Ed Miliband will step up next Wednesday prompted furious discussion in Blair's office and between Blair and Brown. Blair took a "wait and see" approach, feeling his way to Cameron's weaknesses, sizing up his new opponent. Many Blair advisers, having read books about American politics, knew that it was a priority to "define your opponent before he can define himself", and urged him to paint Cameron as a Thatcherite, Norman Lamont's adviser and a public relations man.

Brown agreed with them. The most vivid image from the House of Commons in those days was of Brown almost pulling at Blair's arm, his body language shouting: "Let me at him!" But Blair understood the danger of seeming too nasty about his untested foil. When Brown got the chance, he called Cameron a "salesman", which came across as elitist, and then tried the "playing fields of Eton", which backfired because people thought Cameron was polite.

It is being reported elsewhere that Cameron is planning to use the term "Red Ed" as a rallying call for the Conservatives. I find this idiotic. It might be a nice piece of alliteration, but it is nowhere near the truth, and the public won't be so stupid as to accept it as such.

Indeed, Cameron's worry should be that, as the cuts become painful and real, Ed Miliband might be speaking out for an awful lot of people when he states that Cameron's coalition is going in too hard and too quick.

Mr Cameron attacked Mr Miliband's move to the left of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown after backing tax rises while delaying action to reduce the deficit. The stance left "a massive gaping hole of credibility in his entire approach", the Prime Minister told the The Sunday Telegraph.

It follows a claim by the Chancellor, George Osborne, that Labour had made a "historic mistake" in electing Mr Miliband: "They have chosen to move off the historic centre ground of British politics. He is a man without a mandate or an answer to the deficit, and that makes him weak."

This appears to be the new Tory strategy; to portray Miliband as having "no answer to the deficit", rather than simply having a different answer than the one they are committed to.

This is okay as long as cuts to reduce the deficit are merely something which we are all talking about; but this will change once the severity of the Tory cuts becomes clear.

At that point Miliband's calls for less severity will start to resonate with an awful lot of people.

Who is to say that a Labour leader with a basically leftish tilt, against a coalition finally making deep cuts, is going to be unpopular? Who is to say that he doesn't face a strategic opportunity at the next election, when that coalition includes the Liberal Democrats, who have an "itch to switch" to working with Labour? Not just because they feel an ideological closeness but because they want to stay independent by avoiding being glued to one party for too long.

One of the most intriguing things about Cameron's speech this week is how he will deal with Ed Miliband, a box marked Handle With Care.

The Conservative approach to Miliband so far has been an extremely childish one. Cameron can please his base with name calling this week, but the public won't like it, any more than they appreciated Gordon pointing out Cameron's public school past.

Miliband represents a serious threat to the Tories. His position in a new poll confirms this.

A YouGov/Sunday Times poll last night put Labour ahead on 41 per cent with the Tories at 39 and the Lib Dems on 11.

That's no gift to the Tories. And it's idiocy to think that you can sell it as such.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Labour, Conservatives, Cameron, Miliband

Morale boost for Ed Miliband as poll gives Labour first lead in three years.

In and of itself, it's almost meaningless, but I note it nevertheless.

Ed Miliband ends his first week as Labour leader with his party ahead of the Tories in a Guardian/ICM poll for the first time since Gordon Brown ducked the chance of holding an election in 2007.

It's important only because it undermines Blair's claim that the party could not move a millimetre to the left of New Labour without courting disaster.

Ed Miliband is clearly somewhere to the left of his brother - the clear New Labour candidate - and yet is being given a cautious welcome by the public.

And, as I expected, the results are in many ways fuelled by public reaction to the coalition's planned cuts.

The poll also shows that the public mood is swinging against the scale and speed of spending cuts, with 43% now saying the cuts have gone too far compared with the 37% who think the balance is right. By contrast, in July 39% thought the balance right, and 38% said too far.

And all of this is happening before a single cut has been implemented.

Once Osborne actually starts to make cuts of between 25% and 40% I fully expect their to be outrage across the political spectrum. As I have always said, these are percentages which he has plucked from his ass. It's simply impossible to impose a cut of 25% on any public service without reducing it to a shadow of it's former self. And that's looking at his proposed cuts at the lower end of his scale.

Imagine the impact of a 25% cut on something as simple as your local bus service. One in four buses gone, the packed insides as more and more passengers are forced to cram in together. Now apply that to all other public services. Imagine the police force deprived of a quarter of their effectiveness. Imagine the strikes which are sure to break out when Osborne tries to impose these savage cuts across the board. We are already seeing house prices plummet in reaction to what Osborne has proposed, so it does not surprise me at all that Ed Miliband has seen a rise in the polls before most people even know what he stands for. People know that he does not favour cuts on the scale which Osborne proposes and that appears to be good enough for now to ensure that people consider giving him a chance.

All of this is taking place before a single cut has been implemented. Once they are implemented, I fully expect chaos to take place.

And, as expected, Labour's gains are made largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats.

There has been a shift of opinion in Labour's favour since May, with support up almost eight points at the expense of the Lib Dems. Almost one in four people who voted Lib Dem are now thinking of voting Labour instead.

Once the reality of what Clegg has signed up to becomes apparent, and people re-read his comments stating that benefits should not be there 'to compensate the poor for their predicament', I fully expect there to be a progressive exodus from the Liberal Democrat party.

The right wing newspapers have nicknamed him "Red Ed", but I think Miliband has positioned himself perfectly to counter the economic savagery which the Con-Dem coalition have in store for us all.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Ed Miliband, Labour, Cameron, Conservatives, Con-Dem coalition

State Secrecy and Official Criminality.

Scott Horton looks at the real reason that the Obama administration denied torture victims their day in court:

The Holder Justice Department would have us believe that it is protecting state secrets essential to our security. That posture is risible, and half of the court saw through it. The dilemma faced by the Justice Department was rather that evidence presented in the suit would likely be used in the future (not in the United States, obviously) to prosecute those who participated in the extraordinary renditions process. Twenty-three U.S. agents have already been convicted for their role in a rendition in Milan. Prosecutors in Spain have issued arrest warrants for a further 13 U.S. agents involved in a botched rendition case that touched on Spanish soil. Prosecutors in Germany have opened a criminal investigation into the use of Ramstein AFB in connection with torture and illegal kidnappings. Prosecutors in Poland are pursuing a similar matter. And Prime Minister David Cameron was recently forced to brief President Obama on his decision to direct a formal inquiry which could lead to prosecutions tied directly to the subject matter of the Mohamed case. This is the remarkable background to the case decided by the Ninth Circuit, and remarkably not a single word about this appears anywhere in the opinion—or even in most of the press accounts about it.

The scandal here is that this was done to hinder other nations who are seeking to bring prosecutions against clearly illegal behaviour.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have called the Department on its acts of constitutional treachery. From the West Coast:

The decision to short-circuit the trial process is more than a misreading of the law; it’s an egregious miscarriage of justice. That’s obvious from a perusal of the plaintiffs’ complaint. One said that while he was imprisoned in Egypt, electrodes were attached to his earlobes, nipples and genitals. A second, held in Morocco, said he was beaten, denied food and threatened with sexual torture and castration. A third claimed that his Moroccan captors broke his bones and cut him with a scalpel all over his body, and poured hot, stinging liquid into his open wounds.

From New York:

The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.” All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

Other nations will continue with prosecutions. International law won't go away no matter how much Obama and his administration will it to do so.

The Bush administration committed crimes. All Obama is doing is trying to make it more difficult for other nations to have access to the information they need to secure convictions.

But, three of Britain's most senior judges have already rejected the argument Obama relied upon and ordered the British government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed – unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary. Miliband's argument was very similar to the one Obama used in the United States. And the British court rejected outright the argument which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have accepted by a single vote.

So, this information will come out, even if it has to come from governments which are allied to the United States. David Cameron had this to say when he announced his inquiry into torture:

"The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country that believes in freedom, fairness and human rights grows," the prime minister told the Commons.

It's a real source of shame that Obama isn't prepared to go as far as Cameron to answer the same questions which plague America's reputation.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, torture, war on terror, Bush, crimes, war crimes

The secret dossier of lawbreaking that spells trouble for Murdoch...and Cameron.

The controversy surrounding David Cameron's communications director, Andy Coulson, is deepening, with the Independent obtaining proof that the News of the World paid a private detective to provide hundreds of pieces of confidential information, often using illegal means.

The "Blue Book", a ledger of work carried out by Steve Whittamore for News International titles, including the NoW and The Sunday Times, details a series of transactions including obtaining ex-directory phone numbers, telephone accounts, criminal records checks and withheld mobile numbers. It reveals the itemised details of checks on public figures, including Peter Mandelson, ordered and paid for – at up to £750 a time – by reporters working for the redtop. Staff from a number of other national newspapers made similar requests, and their details are contained in further dossiers held by the Information Commissioner, the privacy watchdog.

Among the journalists requesting information from Mr Whittamore, who was later convicted of offences committed under the Data Protection Act, was the former NoW editor Rebekah Wade, now Rebekah Brooks.

The contents of the dossier were collated by the Information Commissioner following a raid on Mr Whittamore's Hampshire office in 2003, but the watchdog has previously refused to disclose its contents, to protect the identities of the people named within it.

The disclosure of the extent to which the NoW and its sister titles used the services of private investigators to obtain personal information by questionable means will add to the controversy threatening to engulf News International (NI), whose bosses have consistently denied any wrongdoing over the affair.

The more widespread these practices are proven to be, the harder Coulson will find it to credibly retain his defence of essential ignorance.

Coulson argued that a couple of bad apples were behaving in a way which he could never have foreseen. The narrative contained in the "Blue Book" is an entirely different one. In that book these practices come across as almost routine.

Now, the IoS can reveal that the Blue Book details a list of 1,027 transactions between Mr Whittamore and a client referred to as "Times Sun News of the World". The itemised spreadsheet lists highly confidential details, including the name of the journalist making the order, the service requested and the "target" of their investigation. Subjects include the former boxer Chris Eubank, former Labour minister David Lammy, and a target described simply as "Rooney".

Many of the tasks were carried out for reporters working for other titles in the group, and some would have been for legitimate journalistic investigations. Just 5 per cent – covering credit checks and searches on company directors – were definitely legal, almost 25 per cent were definitely illegal, with the remainder relating mostly to obtaining private addresses, which is a grey area.

So, at least 250 of the transactions were "definitely illegal". That's an awful lot of bad apples.

Murdoch's share price could ultimately suffer as a consequence of this, but Cameron will also suffer. He has publicly tied his judgement to Coulson's survival.

And, the more information comes to light, the less one is able to attach any credibility to Coulson's defence.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Andy Coulson, News of the World, Cameron, Murdoch