Aug 15 2007
Labour’s (and Polly Toynbee’s) errors about the Economic Policy Review
Falsehood has travelled half way round the world before truth gets her boots on.
Error One:??The Economic Policy Review is going to recommend a wholesale abolition of Health and Safety law so employers can have unsafe factories and offices.
Why on earth would anyone think that was either good politics or good economics? The Review will instead say "We advise improving the risk assessment regime in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to make responses more proportionate". The intention is to do less box ticking and essay writing where there are no serious safety hazards, but to require strong management of risks where there are dangers.
Error Two:??the Review will recommend a doubling of motorway in the UK.
That is simply an invention. There is ??no such quantified recommendation?? in the report.
Error Three: we will propose an end to paid holidays and family friendly employment.
Again it is difficult to see why we should want to propose that - we are trying to get more seats in Parliament! What we do say is "We advise restoring the Social Chapter opt out, and producing UK rules on Works Councils, part time and fixed term working, on sex discrimination, information and consultation that balance the interetss of exisiting employees with the need for a flexible labour market to create more jobs". We believe these judgements are best made following democratic debate in the UK rather than behind closed doors in Brussels, and believe we need to give more people the chance of a job.
We do propose abolition of the Working Time Directive in the UK - the reduction of overtime directive - and the abolition of the very costly bureaucracy Labour imposed in the name of date protection. These two measures account for 44% of the extra cost imposed on business by this government, according to the British Chambers of Commerce. The costs they impose means less?? money for investment and new jobs.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
All this and, as I understand it, your report hasn’t even been published yet! Doesn’t this confirm my earlier posting regarding the folly of the premature release of information from your detailed policy reviews?
Incidentally, you are very generous in using the word “error” to describe these deliberately malicious lies. Labour always has and will continue to fight dirty. You should know that by now and with all the PR and media people in your ranks your party should be more effective in dealing with it.
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I see, this was all a carefully planned media campaign!!! I think you should re-read your diary posting on August 13 at 07:21.
However, we are basically on the same side in wanting to ensure that Brown is not able to comfortably walk back into 10 Downing Street whenever he decides to call an election. I still maintain that your party is losing the initiative and failing to get its messages across whenever these policy review reports are launched. The same thing happened recently with Ian Duncan Smith’s policy review.
David Cameron, in my view, has given himself a massive task in having to overcome the image he has created by basing himself on Blair when it should have been obvious to even a political novice that Blair had finally been seen to be a charlatan by the voters. Style over substance must be rapidly reversed but if the substance is not presented effectively your party is doomed to languish in opposition to the unworthy Brown and Labour.
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[...] If you visit the forum, do bear in mind that you are a guest, and that the forum debate is polite and professional. There are two threads: Radio 4 Interview and Has the world gone mad. Devil’s Kitchen or Ministry of Truth, it is not. I wonder if Mutley the Dog, David Osler or John Redwood have a view on this. Incidentally, John Redwood refutes Polly Toynbee’s statements about his (alleged by her) proposals to undermine Health and Safety law recent report on deregulation. [...]
It baffles me how Toynbee has so many fans, or even a job coming to think of it. The other week she was trying to smear Boris Johnson as a racist because he writes good parody. Now she wants her readers to reference you, and any Tory that proposes change in the direction of less regulation, to Rumsfeld and Cheney by insisting you’re “… a neocon throwback from the Thatcher era.”
It is always worth noting that Toynbee is a signatory to an ideology called ‘humanism’ that seeks to curb religious freedoms. She is President of the ‘British Humanist Association’.
Wikipedia sheds a bit of light on her cult here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Humanist_Association
Anyone that stands against the ulterior motives of her or her ‘Humanist’ allies is therefore smeared. As she did with Boris Johnson, she picks up on little bits of what you have said or written and proceeds to twist the context and distort the facts, before using what marketing men and consumer behaviourists call ‘reference groups’ in an attempt to put centre-ground voters off you.
Polly picks up a tidy sum from the Guardian in the process.
NB I HAVE EDITED OUT A COUPLE OF PARAGRAPHS. These remain the views of Steven L, not mine JR
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