"There's not a single reason in the system why a young person from a disadvantaged background, who wants to go to university, should not go," added Clegg. 11.38am: There are three polls around this morning. Here they are.ICM for the GuardianLabour: 41% (no change since ICM last month)Conservatives: 36% (up 3)Lib Dems: 11% (down 4)Labour lead: 5 pointsAs Anthony Wells says at UK Polling Report, ICM normally give the Lib Dems higher ratings than the other pollsters and 11 points is their lowest rating in an ICM/Guardian poll since 1997.Populus for the Times (paywall)Labour: 41% (down 1 from Populus last month)Conservatives: 33% (no change)Lib Dems: 10% (down 1)Labour lead: 8 pointsYouGov for the SunLabour lead: 44% (up 1 point from YouGov in the Sunday Times)Conservatives: 32% (no change)Ukip: 8% (down 1)Lib Dems: 7% (down 1)Labour lead: 12 pointsGovernment approval: -3512.
That sounds fair enough. Rich people are good at hiding income, it's a game they play to show themselves how smart they are. Property in the real estate sense is harder to hide: it's just there. So a tax on property wealth, levied every year on bricks, mortar and reinforced concrete, is tempting.But the politics really suck and so do the practicalities. Vince first proposed a "mansions tax" in the heady days of opposition – I think the target figure was ￡1m at the time, enough to frighten off a lot more people, not confined to those in houses currently worth that much – to a Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth, a few miles from Sandbanks,
marc by marc jacobs tote, the wedge of Poole harbour that boasts one of the richest postcodes in Britain.
And he said Labour would do more to protect low-paid workers.I wouldn't have been hitting public sector workers on ￡7,000 or ￡8,000 a year, working part time who have pensions of just ￡3-4,000 a year who are seeing a huge cut in their pensions and rises in their contributions. It is not fair. Everybody has got to bear some burden. The public sector pensions had to be reformed but you shouldn't be hitting the lowest paid in this way.10.10am: Alastair Campbell is giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry now. You can follow the hearing on our media live blog. 10.13am: Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, has talking about the strikes on BBC. His language was very similar to Ed Miliband's. According to PoliticsHome, he said that strikes were always a sign of failure and he refused to condemn the unions for what they were doing.
She will announce plans to plans to give communities tougher protection from anti-social behaviour.10am: Stig Abell, director of the Press Complaints Commission,
kate spade wallet sale, and his predecessor Tim Toulmin give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. 10.30am: Ed Milband, the Labour leader, gives a speech in Glasgow on the case for Scotland staying in the UK. He will argue that the goals of fairness and justice are best delivered within the UK.10.30am: Labour MPs Natascha Engel and Keith Vaz and Tory MP Douglas Carswell speak at a People's Pledge press conference where it will set out its campaign strategy for 2012. The People's Pledge is a cross-party group campaign for a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.
But does that really mean that no-one should discuss what's going on? In the downgrade debate today, I suspect no-one will mention what Moody's sees all too clearly: the scale of the debt increase, and the effect of QE in keeping the price of government debt artificially low. To listen to Osborne go on about austerity, it's easy to forget that he's attempting one of the biggest debt increases in the developed world, midway through one of the weakest recoveries, all washed down by the biggest QE experiment the world has ever seen.For ideological reasons Miliband and Balls won't mention debt, they don't regard it as a problem. And because QE makes debt cheaper, neither will quibble with that either (Balls didn't this morning).
Am I part of the problem as you see it? Or do I get a free pass as my roots are south of the Watford Gap? Lawrence Webb replies: London thrives on attacking [sic] the brightest and the best from around the world, as a highly-skilled worker you are unlikely to be competing for social housing.1.19pm: In response to my original points on the housing crisis in London,
kate spade bags, From Lawrence Webb responds: The current housing crisis only exists because neither Boris nor Ken before him took any action to resolve it. Successive governments have not done enough to reverse the trend of selling off council houses and have not replaced their housing stock. Open door immigration has made the situation worse.
Richards reminds him that he has used the "war" analogy before – but at that time (before the election) to argue that at a time of war you needed to keep spending, not cut it, until the war was over, using the examples of Churchill in the second world war. Cable explains the difference between the "closed economy" of Britain at the time of the second world war – not really answering the question. "We're in very dangerous terrain," Cable says.6.26pm: Richards asks Cable about his wife Rachel Smith's comments today saying that the cuts go too far. Cable's wife is in the hall. He says his wife is a highly intelligent person and has her own views, and is also a wonderful wife, and he certainly does not insist she share his views.
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