Here's a quote from the speech:

I have always been sceptical of affirmative action. I do however, support Barack Obama's policy on affirmative action, on the basis of economic background.

In the UK, when UCAS forms have to be filled in, the detail of your parents' education has to be mentioned. The right-wing media immedietly denounced this. Consider this. One student who went to an expensive nursery, then a private primary school, followed by an Eton education, enjoying one-on-one tuition, and then further private tuition and gets 3 A's, is compared with a student who gets 3 B's, lives on a council estate, and went to a comp with 25 people per class, having to work every night in a fast food restaurant to bring in money for their family. Isn't it probable, that in equal circumstances, the second student would do much better than the first?

Nonetheless, I was sceptical of this current bill. My worry was that affirmative action would just cream off richer women and minorities.

But I read in the papers (which I still maintain I loathe), of an encounter in Westminster:

David Heathcote-Amory, saw a black woman walking on the member's terrace and demanded to know if she was an MP. "Yes, I am actually. Are you?" Dawn Butler, the former adviser to Ken Livingstone replied. He snapped to his colleagues: "They're letting anybody in nowadays."

The same slanders against this bill, were said of one of the best acts of the Wilson administration, the Equal Pay act.

Harriet Harman has consistantly maintained loyalty to the government, but fought hard for progressive policies against people like John Hutton (why doesn't he just defect to the opposition?).

She reminded me in dark times, why I was a Labour voter. The pay gap between full-time workers is 17%, and between part-time workers, a shocking 40%. She said: "Do we think she is 40 per cent less hard-working, less intelligent, less qualified?"

It is a major factor in low pay that 70% of those on the minimum wage are women, and 40% of part-time workers are on the minimum wage. Feminism isn't some metropolital liberal worry about not enough female FTSE 100 directors, it is at our red beating heart of social justice.

Apparently though, not all agree. The Daily Mail has suprisingly been against this, normally being a much more wise and thoughtful paper. They say that women "choose less well-paid jobs" because they want "more time with their families". The Mail would have to imagine that every woman had a family, and that they had them in teenage years for this to be true (oh, wait, they DO think that every teenager is pregnant). The pay gap sets in long before women decide to have children (and contrary to the Mail's warnings, women are having children much later).

The Women and Work commission found that after just 5 years, the pay gap between those who have earned first-class degrees is 15%.

Indeed, the bill doesn't go far enough. Harman had to compromise with Hutton (who I just want to deport) on pay audits. Also, it was the Tories who not long ago, were mocking the government for not supporting pay audits.

Why do many conservatives like to pretend that there is no ideology in between cut-throat, tough luck, lassez-faire Thatcherism, and throw-you-in-the-gulag communism? These particular conservatives are more politically ignorant than I thought.

Pay audits, whereby private firms who underpay female workers can be named and shamed, enhance economic competition. It strengthens our economy, and social justice at the same time.

On the most contraversial part of the bill, it doesn't ban white men from getting jobs, as spun by the Express. It gives employers a legal right to balance skewed workforces, whether largely female/male or white/thnic minority. They are under no legal requirement. I have been to primary schools where the workforce was largely female, as have been the secondary schools I've been to. Employers would have the right to balance the workforce with more males. That's it. This is what the controversy has been about.

Now we return to another fine Labour woman, Barbera Castle. The same arguments were shot at her, word for word. We apparently can't afford gender equality in a time of 'recession'. This argument is potent, as most low-paid are women, so the wages of the low-paid would rise.

It is the same principle as tax cuts for the rich during times of recession. A recession used to be when a factory owner had to close his fourth factory. If you give tax cuts to the rich, he will open a fifth, failing factory, and spend the rest on boats and cars. If you give tax cuts to the bottom half, they will go out and spend the money in the local economy, allowing the factory owner to re-open the fourth factory. Everybody wins.

A feminist agenda would do wonders for the economy. The estimated NPV of universal childcare, on a neutral estimate in 2003 would have been £40 billion over 65 years. The top estimate, was £93 billion. Wasting women's education and skills costs us £23 billion a year.
Don't believe me? In Norway, they mandated that 40% on corporate boards had to be female, and business growth soared. Mckinsey found that stock growth went up by 53%, when there were more women in senior positions.


Never fall for David Cameron. He defines himself as a 'progressive'. That doesn't mean anything. Would anyone call themselves 'regressive'? George Osbourne says there is "much to learn" from George W. Bush's 'compassionate conservatism'.

This is what Boris Johnson ran on. His first act? Slashing half-price bus fares for poor Londoners. Would he be bewildered to know that many can't afford 4x4's? Apparently not. About driving these Chelsea tractors he says:

"Tee hee, I said to myself ... out of my way, small car driven by ordinary person on modest income. Make way for the Nissan Murano."

It isn't that the Tories are toffs (they are). It's that some can go to private schools, which allows them to be shocked by low pay, and poverty. Harriet Harman follows in the tradition of people like Attlee who have done so. Most of the Tories don't know any other world though.

This bill defines what Labour is for, and I hope it starts the process of bringing back soul to the party.

David Davis and the Conservative blogosphere have made much of how they hate CCTV and the DNA database - conveniently forgetting that these things were introduced by the last Conservative government.

My old class mate (college class, that is, not social class) George Pascoe-Watson, the Sun's political editor, just said something on Sky that's taken me by surprise. Referring to Dave's commitment to campaign for David Davis in the forthcoming self-inflicted by-election, George said this might mean that the Tories "might not stand a candidate against him". What on earth does that mean? That DD has resigned as a member of the Conservative Party? That he won't be the Tories' official candidate?

Davis's own claim that this by-election will give his electorate an opportunity to pass judgment is perhaps true, but what happens if and when he arrives back at the Commons with his new mandate? That the 70,000 voters in Haltemprice and Howden should have a veto over policy agreed by the House of Commons, a policy supported by an overwhelming majority of citizens (including, presumably, a similar proportion of Haltemprice and Howden's voters)?

The rather magnificent Denis MacShane is on Sky at the moment, being gloriously patronising about DD's "little by-election". At least half of the Labour MPs I met in the tearoom in the past hour have told me they think Labour shouldn't stand a candidate. Not sure yet; we should probably let the dust settle before that decision is taken.

I had lunch a few weeks ago with a good friend of DD's who said DD had given up any hope of leading his party. If rumours about an irreconcilable split between Dave and DD are true, could this be DD's last throw of the dice, a chance to attract some attention after years in Dave's shadow? He says he wants to take a stand against government infringements on civil liberties. Does that mean he feels that no-one else in his party (aka Dave) is willing to do so?

What is fascinating about Dave's most recent pronouncement in this is his statement that "I wish him well" in his by-election campaign. He sounded like a disinterested commentator, not the leader of the Opposition and the Conservative Party.

Visit Tom's blog (but only if you've nothing better to do). 

So David Cameron today claims that the Tories are the true progressive party in the UK - but why then is Tory education spokeman today blaming progressive education policies for letting down British children?

Do you think the Tories even talk to each other any more?

At times like these we do not need further self-inflicted wounds, but the 42 days legislation promises to be just that.

Two great videos from the Daily Mirror in recent days. One of Gordon Brown giving a great short speech to open the Black Britannia exhibition. And another of David Cameron cycling wrong-way up a one way street and thru red traffic lights on his way to the House!

Michael Portillo's column in the Sunday Times reflects on why the Conservatives have not opened up a significant lead in the opinion polls: the opposition's performance on Northern Rock exposes doubts about whether they are ready to govern.

Why doesn't someone make a formal complaint about Ashcroft? He apparently isn't on the electoral register anywhere, his companies are a web of international intrigue (some British, some not British) and the Tories appear to be lying about his tax and residence status.

Ashcroft's ill-gotten gains which may have been illegally donated to the Tories are funding nasty, personal attacks against some of our brightest and best candidates.

Plus he's paying millions in to the Tories nationally.

If someone is the majority (or outright) owner of a company and therefore has the power to direct that company to make a political donation, surely that should be seen in the same way as Abrahams' donations via proxy or Hain's imaginary think tank.

Otherwise why doesn't everyone who wants to make a secret donation just register an imaginary company and make the donations through that...

HOLD ON A MINUTE - THAT'S JUST WHAT LOTS OF THE TORIES HAVE DONE....
 

David Cameron has just announced that he's withdrawing the Conservative Whip from Derek Conway, hours after enduring a massive onslaught of criticism from the general public and his own grassroots and only hours after his initial reaction on the matter included support for Derek Conway.

David Davis is said to have been furious after Cameron's U-turn. Could this have been the end of Dave, or would it have been dealt swiftly by Lord Ashcroft? Cameron's latest statement came just hours after we learned that Conway's eldest son was also possibly siphoning taxpayers funds to subsidise his higher education costs. The internal dynamics of team Cameron have also been fractured, as there had been talk of various grassroots organisations preparing to overtly lobby Cameron on the issue.

I listened and read with interest David Cameron’s plans for the long-term unemployed. I was intrigued and concerned.

"David Cameron's constituency party has admitted receiving £7,400 in invalid donations, it was revealed today. The Witney Conservative Association has agreed to forfeit the sum to public funds after initially banking the money."

Excellent post from Labour & Capital about the investment fund managers Fidelity, who unlike all other major British managers are significant financial contributors to the Conservative Party. Over £320,000 in the last three years.

Tom P (the author) and his wife, have an ISA investment account with them. He has written this letter asking why they are donating money to the Tories, are they planning future contributions and do they disclose these donations when they bid for business in Conservative controlled Council pension fund authorities?

“The arrogant, superior young toffs who lead the Conservative Party, neither of whom have done a serious day's work in their life... David Cameron was executive at Carlton Television which lost over a billion pounds while he was there. I take no lectures from that young man about business competence. ...Nor can we blame Gordon Brown for the sub-prime disaster in the United States of America or the recklessness of bankers.”

This was my crimbo present come early from Paul Myners on BBC1 Question Time last week. According to today's Professional Pensions the Tories have now made an official complaint about Paul’s comments. He is the Chair of the government’s “Personal Accounts Delivery Body” PADB.

David Cameron today launched the Conservative Co-operative Movement, stealing policies on co-operative run schools launched by Ed Balls (a Labour Co-op MP) in September. It is an insult to Labour Co-op members and the broader co-operative movement for Cameron to suggest that the Conservative philosophy of "freeing the individual" and private profit is in any way compatible with the mutual philosophy that underpins co-operation.

This must surely be a no-brainer for a leader whose primary purpose is to show his party has changed. But Cameron must deepen his change project to rebut the charge that he is simply the pretty face for a party where too many have not changed their ugly views on race.

http://fairdealphil.blogspot.com/2007/10/camerons-cap-doesnt-fit.html#links

It's a badly kept secret that most of the right of centre press in this country would like to see a Conservative Government. You get the feeling that the only reason the Murdoch press has backed New Labour for 10 years in because the Tories were so unbackable in the shape they were in.

But let's look at a couple of the tabloid stories today in The Sun.

The Pre Budget Report is the worst example I have ever seen of the opposition setting the agenda. If this continues voters will soon get sick of such opportunism and vote for the real thing which will mean a Tory Government.