Newspaper Front Pages - Thursday 27th November 2008
Click through on the title for all the papers.
Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.
Recession may cause non-Abolition of Local Government by Hazel Blears
An excellent article from Chris Game of the University of Birmingham Institute of Local Government Studies on how the Recession may just about save something of Local Government from the rapacious cluelessness of Hazel Blears’ abolition package.
Speaking at a recent Belfast conference of local authority chief executives, Communities and Local Government Secretary, Hazel Blears, claimed her department had gone ‘back to the drawing board’ on any issues that might help local government ‘in the tough times ahead’. These included a possible reconsideration of the Government’s latest bout of restructuring, taking place under the controversial auspices of last year’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act
Lord Malloch-Brown on Afghanistan: It may not work M’Luds, but we’re keeping Stum
“Caveats” are the limitations by which countries which forces in Afghanistan place limitations on the scope of operation of their Armed Forces. The Government was questioned in the Lords on 25/11/2008 about this.
Lord Malloch-Brown, the Labour Minister responsible refuses to discuss caveats, the despite the fact that the NATO Commander will do so in public.
He claims that working in secret is a better “approach” out of “respect” for our Allies, but does not even bring the information to the House of Lords to demonstrate whether that approach has worked or not over an entire 12 month period.
The people being disrespected here are us, and our political process.
Newspaper Front Pages - Wednesday 26th November 2008
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Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.
Newspaper Front Pages - Tuesday 25th November 2008
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Front Page Images here and on the Front Page are Courtesy of Sky News.
BBC Places itself at heart of Political Blog Coverage of Pre-Budget report
I’m not going to cover the pre-Budget Report in detail (although somebody else on the team might do so).
Instead I’m noting what I think is a significant development in the BBC approach - that of linking out systematically to Political Blogs, which are not all particularly well-known bloggers, either. For the BBC, this approach can add interest in what is a long session. There are links to around a dozen bloggers.
Also, the links are direct links which pass Google-juice, a practice that had been noted as missing on the BBC website recently. This is crucial for blogs to gain exposure.
The things missing from here are Northern Irish and Scottish blogs, and a Lib Dem MP, but the Lib Dems had an extra blogger linked.
A couple of mistakes. Twitter links should be to the individual message, as should blog links - and they quoted a paragraph from Richard Kelly including an inaccuracy.
Overall - probably 7 out of 10 in my view for this Live Blog. Not bad at all. I’ve listed all the blog links below the fold.
