Ed’s inbox – June 30th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

If Ed Miliband could only read five blogposts each day, he’d read these ones…

The “great pensions divide” – New Statesman
By Mehdi Hasan

As public-sector workers, including teachers, go on strike today, the (right-wing) papers are filled with anti-union, anti-public-sector-pension headlines and stories. The Daily Telegraph, on its front page, claims that “a mid-ranking teacher on £32,000 a year will receive a final salary pension that is the equivalent of having built up a £500,000 pension pot. This is 20 times higher than the average private-sector scheme, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.” – Read more.

Lewis mislays Baldwin memo – The Waugh Room
By Paul Waugh

Remember way back in February when Ed Mili’s director of strategy, Tom Baldwin, sent out an email to the Shadow Cabinet on phone hacking?

The leaked missive told the shadow team not to conflate the BSkyB bid with the hacking allegations at the News of the World.

“These issues should not be linked. One is a competition issue, the other an allegation of criminal activity….We must guard against anything which appears to be attacking a particular newspaper group out of spite.”

Well, it looks like Ivan Lewis didn’t get (or perhaps ‘mislaid’) the memo. – Read more.

Public Sector Workers do a Great Job – THE HONEYBALL BUZZ
By Mary Honeyball MEP

As so many public sector workers take strike action today, we should think hard about the work they do and how we could not function without their generally quietly efficient presence. Sadly, we all too often read in the papers stories down grading their work.

I have one recent and happy story which illustrates the high quality of the public sector in Britain. A day or so ago I had an important visitor due to come for a day of meetings in Brussels. The night before she discovered she had lost her passport. – Read more.

Pub quiz question: who is the leader of the Labour party? – Labour Uncut
By Peter Watt

I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week. I just feel miserable. I have even got to the point that I can barely be bothered to tweet, and that really is a bad sign. But why am I feeling flat now? I mean, for months now, I have been worried about what seemed to be the direction of travel of the party with dog whistles to the left. For months I have worried that the outcomes of the party reform debate would be a damp squib. And for months I have worried that we seemed to be all but leaderless.

So on that basis, surely in the last few weeks things have started to look up? Ed has begun to define himself and his philosophy of “social justice with a hard edge” and an end to the “take what you can culture”. And he has shown real leadership on party reform by demanding an end to elections to the shadow cabinet and hinting at reforming the relationship with the trade unions. For me, these still don’t go far enough and probably could have, and should have, been said months ago. And, crucially, we still have little or no credibility on the economy. – Read more.

Ministers lose the argument on “unaffordable” pensions – New Statesman
By George Eaton

The first mass strikes since the general election are officially underway. The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and three teaching unions – the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the University and College Union (UCU) – have all taken industrial action over planned changes to public sector pensions. A third of schools are expected to close, with another third “partially affected”, and two-thirds of universities have cancelled lectures. – Read more.