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At the start of the pandemic, the government called for councils to do "whatever it takes" and promised to foot the bill. I would imagine the Secretary of State regrets those words nearly as much as he regrets sitting beside Richard Desmond…
Nowhere is Labour’s pledge to end austerity and pursue radical and transformative policies welcomed more enthusiastically than in local government. Councils have been on the receiving end of Tory austerity for eight long years, and a Labour…
We all know the gut-wrenching feeling when you get ripped-off. Whether it’s getting a new coat and then seeing it in the sales for half-price a week later, or when you see a story about an old computer console you threw in the bin years ago…
It is astonishing that, at a time of major cuts to school budgets, the Government would think it wise to spend hundreds of millions of pounds turning all schools into academies when there is not a shred of evidence it will help improve…
You may have seen the utterly nonsense story doing the rounds today that Islington Council has banned pork in our primary schools. It’s a great example of how the modern media works. A story is exaggeration beyond the point of truth by…
I wrote recently about how councils have largely coped well with massive cuts from the Tory-led Government, but that a future Labour Government had to break away from seeing councils as the easiest way to cut spending. Councils are now at a…
Over the next few weeks, local authorities across the country will be announcing their budgets for the coming year. This will be the fifth year in a row that councils will be subject to the biggest cuts to our budgets since the Second World…
After four years of massive cuts, 2015 is the year when council finances will start to fall off a cliff. Local government has borne the brunt of the cuts to public spending since 2010. My Council, Islington, typical of authorities in urban…
As if being in poverty wasn’t bad enough, being charged for being in poverty adds insult to injury. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, published last year, calculated that the premium paid by poor people on essential utilities and…
Credit where it's due; this afternoon's announcement that the Government is rolling out Free School Meals to all infant school children is a welcome first step. But it isn't enough and Labour can, and must, go further. However belatedly…
15 April 1989. As a 14 year old boy I witnessed, from the safety of another stand, 96 people be killed or fatally injured at Hillsborough. Since then others, led by the awe-inspiring families of those killed and injured that day, have led…
Michael Gove is often said to be the most ideologically obsessed education secretary ever. He is a man on a mission to introduce market forces into the education system in the fevered belief that this will raise standards. And he isn’t…
