BB FANS

Election 'being dominated by vested interests'
Captains of industry accused of hijacking election for their own ends after National Insurance row dominates start of campaign

Lots of links to other points of view

By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor Independent

Election 2010

Brown unveils 'realistic and radical plan'
By Andrew Woodcock, Press Association


Labour's 2010 Manifesto
Read Labour’s election pledges inadvance of our 2010 manifesto
www.labour.org.uk/LabourManifesto

State Pension Changes
Under the new reforms, your pensioncould change. Find out more
www.direct.gov.uk/betterfuture

Gordon Brown unveiled Labour's manifesto for the May 6 General Election today, describing it as "a realistic and radical plan for Britain".

Under the slogan "A Future Fair For All", the document promises to rebuild the economy, renew society and restore faith in politics.

It sets out plans to give citizens a greater voice in public services and allow the takeover or merger of under-performing schools, hospitals and even police forces.

As expected, Labour promises not to raise the basic, higher or top rates of income tax over the life of the next Parliament. There is no such commitment on VAT, though Labour does pledge not to extend it to food, children's clothes, books, newspapers and public transport.

Launching the document at the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, Mr Brown said the manifesto was "a realistic and radical plan for Britain that starts with securing the recovery and renews Britain as a fairer, greener, more accountable and more prosperous country for the future".

Mr Brown said the policies in Labour's manifesto were "rooted in the day-to-day concerns of the British people" and showed the party would be "restless and relentless reformers" in building the future.

In a defiant response to critics who claim the Government has run out of steam, he drew a direct comparison with the New Labour team which won a landslide victory under Tony Blair in 1997.

"In 1997, New Labour asked the country for the opportunity to renew Britain, our hospitals, schools , towns and cities," said Mr Brown.

"Now, in a changed time, New Labour is once again ready and equipped to answer the call of the future."

And he added: "We are in the future business and, under my leadership, we will always be in the future business, building a future fair for all."

He acknowledged Labour was in "the fight of our lives" to win the upcoming election, but warned that a Conservative victory would risk tipping Britain into a double-dip recession.

Today's manifesto contains few significant new spending commitments, focusing instead on reforms of public services and support for the economy as it emerges from recession.

In the face of Conservative promises to ditch the planned rise in National Insurance, Labour makes clear it will stick to its plans to halve the UK deficit within four years, funded in part by "fair taxes and lower priority spending".

Among plans to support the recovery, Labour promises to create one million new skilled jobs and provide 70,000 advanced apprenticeships a year, as well as establishing a Green Investment Bank to direct funds to new low-carbon technologies.

Britain's national infrastructure will be modernised, with high- speed rail and broadband internet access for all.

A new UK Finance for Growth organisation will deliver £4 billion in capital for business, focusing on the growth sectors of the future.

Following the controversial purchase of Cadbury by Kraft, corporate law will be changed to require a two-thirds "super-majority" of shareholders before any takeover, which Labour argues will foster a culture of long-term commitment to companies.

The minimum wage will rise "at least in line with average earnings" and there will be a new £40-a-week Better Off in Work guarantee.

Jobs or training places will be guaranteed for young people out of work for six months, with benefits cut at 10 months if they refuse a place, and for anyone unemployed after two years.

Families with small children will benefit from a £4-a-week Toddler Tax Credit and there will be an extension of paternity leave to four weeks.

Labour also promises more free nursery places for two-year-olds and one-to-one tuition for primary school pupils falling behind in the 3Rs.

In a highly Blairite approach to public services, parents will be given the power to demand new school leadership teams through takeovers and mergers, in a process which will lead to 1,000 "accredited" schools by 2015.

Every NHS hospital will become a foundation trust, with institutions already holding this status able to take over the management of less successful trusts.

NHS patients will be given the right in law to choose any provider able to meet NHS quality standards at NHS costs, as well as the right to GP services in the evenings and weekends.

And patients will be given legally binding guarantees to receive cancer test results within a week of referral and a maximum 18 weeks' wait for treatment or the offer of going private.

Police Chief Constables will be required to bring in new management teams in units under their command whose results are below par, and in exceptional cases the Home Secretary could even force poorly performing forces to merge with more effective neighbours.

Labour promises to provide the funding to maintain policing and support officer numbers at current levels, and says it will deliver early intervention with the country's 50,000 most dysfunctional families to prevent crime.

Following the blow to public confidence in Parliament caused by last year's expenses scandal, the manifesto confirms plans for referendums - to be held on the same day - on the Alternative Vote system for Westminster elections and a democratic second chamber.

Voters will win a right to "recall" erring MPs and there will be a statutory register of lobbyists and a ban on MPs working for lobbying companies, as well as legislation for fixed-term parliaments and an all-party commission to "chart a course" to the UK's first written constitution.

For the elderly there will be a National Care Service - though this will initially provide free care at home only for those with the greatest needs - and a cap on the costs of residential care after two years in a care home.

Older workers will have the right to request flexible employment and to stay on in their jobs after 65 and the link between the basic state pension and average earnings will be restored from 2012.

First-time home-buyers will be relieved of stamp duty on all house purchases below £250,000 for two years, paid for by a 5% rate on homes worth more than £1 million.

On the environment, the manifesto commits Labour to generating 40% of electricity from low-carbon sources by 2020 and to create 400,000 green jobs by 2015.

And it offers "pay as you save" home energy insulation and energy bill discounts for pensioners.

There is also a ban on putting recyclable and bio-degradable materials in landfill with the aim of moving towards a "zero waste" Britain.

The document states: "The argument of this manifesto is that to deliver a future fair for all we need to rebuild our economy, protect and reform our public services as we strengthen our society and renew our politics.

"We, Labour, are the people to carry out this next stage of national renewal because of our values and our understanding of the role of government: to stand by ordinary people so they can change their lives for the better.

"It is our belief that it is active, reforming government, not absent government, that helps make people powerful."
Independent

'Ask what you can do for your country': Cameron invokes JFK as he puts Broken Britain at heart of manifesto
By JASON GROVES and LIZ HAZELTON Mail

Nick Clegg launches 'four steps to fairer Britain'
By Gavin Cordon and David Hughes, PA [Independent

General election 2010: Vanessa invites David into her lovely studio
The Tory leader and the BBC radio host wax lyrical about a world in which fresh-faced people from the Tory party knock on everyone's door.
Independent

Take That! Cameron

Take That star Gary Barlow joined the Conservative leader David Cameron on the campaign trail as the Tories launched plans for an X Factor-style singing competition for schools. ITV

Come on, chaps. If you can't do jokes, we'll laugh at you
From the posters to the TV debate, the electorate has outrun the leaders for wit. A flash of humour could show us a winner


Marina Hyde - The Guardian

Serious times call for serious politicians, as the party leaders keep telling us, which is why their failure to serve up any decent jokes is something of a worry. That might sound contradictory. But humour is often far more persuasive than anger or didacticism, making wit something to which our politicians (or their scriptwriters) should aspire. A good joke speaks of an agility of mind, a willingness to take risks, a gift for empathy and defusing tension, and the ability to change the game by getting people to consider something from an alternative and perhaps unexpected angle.

So something is awry when the electorate has all the best lines, as they have had in this election. The Tories' best gag of the campaign thus far was to co-opt Labour's bewilderingly misconceived Gene Hunt posters, following their slogan with a cheeky parenthesis declaring "Idea kindly donated by the Labour party". But otherwise the voters have made all the running, be it with subtle internet spoofs or the raw amusement of the David Cameron poster in Hackney on which someone had simply scrawled the legend "**** off back to Eton".

Despite the excitement over the televised debate, it comes to something when Gordon Brown, who is believed to have last made a joke shortly before the Act of Union was passed, produces what the pundits deem gag of the night. For those of you who have already forgotten this zinger - which is to say those of you who aren't Westminster villagers who've spent a decade ********** to the West Wing box set and rather tragically imagine the debates have finally made them a central character in the UK version of the show – it ran thus. "I'm grateful, by the way, David, for you putting up all these posters about me and about crime and everything else. There is no newspaper editor who has done as much for me in the last two years because my face is smiling on these posters. I am very grateful to you and Lord Ashcroft for funding that."

Not an appalling joke, but hardly beyond the wit of a know-it-all teenager, which tells you how drearily commuted our expectations have become. Against such fare, Ronald Reagan's genuinely funny gag about not wanting to exploit Walter Mondale's age takes on the comic heights of a George Carlin routine.

To put it another way, it's the jokes that weren't made on Thursday night which had the most devastating potential. Consider Cameron's alarm bell-ringing tale about having met "a 40-year old-black man" who had come to Britain aged six, served 30 years in the Royal Navy, but who was now embarrassed about our dysfunctional immigration system. Had either Brown or Clegg the quick, poacher's ear of a comic, they might have interrupted to express enormous admiration that Mr Cameron had unearthed the navy's last cabin boy. It certainly wasn't a bit of footwork beyond a galaxy of tweeters, who immediately jumped on the mistake.

Of course, it all seems so easy when you're watching on your sofa bantering with your followers, instead of sweating under the studio lights trying to remember 637 statistics and wondering whether the next thing you say is going to lose you the election. But finding this kind of space to hit your target, even under enormous pressure, is the political equivalent of being a great striker, and had Brown or Clegg put this one away they would have left Cameron unable to mention another real person for the entire campaign, for fear of his opponents' inquiring with exaggerated politeness whether the case study were a friend of the famous cabin boy.

The fact that Gordon won't have got the hairdryer treatment from Peter Mandelson for missing it merely underscores the fact he's not a top flight player. One doesn't hope for flashes of brilliance, merely that howlers are not made. Yet as time goes on, if you don't "own" the humour, then someone else will. People want to laugh, and failure to provide the laughs means they'll find them at your expense. No matter how righteously repulsed one was by Tony Blair's faux-self deprecation, when Cherie was overheard insulting Gordon Brown at a Labour conference, the then PM still managed to defuse an increasingly toxic story with a simple line. "Well," he said, "at least I don't have to worry about her running off with the bloke next door."

Reagan's joke was a reminder that you don't have to be vicious to be funny, and that nothing deters people from taking you seriously quite like taking yourself too seriously all of the time. This week, perhaps the party leaders might appreciate that little would say "This is no time for a novice" as memorably as a properly funny putdown of one's callow rivals, just as little would say "You're both as bad as each other" as neatly as a well-timed bit of cheek, just as nothing would say "We're all in this together" as convincingly as a great universal joke about our shared predicament. Come on, chaps. Tell us the one about the Labour man, the Tory, and the Lib Dem.
Guardain

The wizard behind Cameron’s little blue book
How do you reconcile the best of Thatcherism with an appeal to new Tory voters? Call for Oliver Letwin . . .Timesonline

Cameron berated by ex-soldier during walkabout: 'You gave me your card and said to ring... but you never got back' Mail

Tories launch damage-limitation exercise as Cameron is hit by plagiarism claims

By Colin Brown Independent - more links with this post


seven statements made by Mr Cameron in the TV broadcast had been plagiarised from Mr Clegg's speeches and broadcasts. They included saying that people were "desperate for change", that politicians should not just tell people "what they want to hear" and that the country needed "energy and optimism".

Tycoons who backed National Insurance cut 'to be made Tory peers' Mail - more links with this post