“Britain could be plunged into darkness by Labour’s 1970s-style plan to freeze power bills, it was claimed last night. Energy firms said capping prices would halt the investment needed to avoid blackouts and gas and electricity rationing. In the most Left-wing speech by a party chief in decades, Ed Miliband said he would fix power bills until 2017 if he won the next election.” – Daily Mail
>Today: Paul Goodman: The Conservatives must mean business
>Yesterday: Mark Wallace: Labour wants a return to the 1970s: Britain can do better than Miliband
>Yesterday: Harry Phibbs: Labour’s housing target lacks any credibility
>Yesterday: WATCH: Miliband – “Britain can do better than this”
“My decade at the heart of the Treasury and No 10 had come to an end, and now there was just a big silent void. I’d get to lunchtime, and switch my mobile phone off and on again to check it was working: how could it be that I hadn’t had a single phone call or text all day? I felt totally lost and a little abandoned. In truth, I was also having recurring anxiety dreams about Gordon screwing up in public.” – Daily Mail
>Yesterday: WATCH: Gordon Brown runs away from questions about Damian McBride’s book
“The Labour leader announced that he wants to ‘change politics’ by reducing the voting age for the first time since 1969 so politicians ‘hear the voices of people that haven’t been heard for a long time’. But he was quickly accused of bowing to pressure from his union paymasters by making the announcement – which comes seven months after Unite demanded Labour make votes for 16-year-olds a manifesto pledge.” – Daily Mail
“Boris Johnson yesterday criticised well-off Britons who buy large houses to pass on to their children instead of giving their wealth to charity. He said the country needed to adopt a culture of philanthropy like that of the US, where there is a ‘culture of giving and being recognised as givers’.” – Daily Mail
“Control room operators will ignore incidents including people trapped in lifts, any animal rescues and automatic alarms going off. Volunteers have been trained to cover for the strikers, who are walking out from midday to 4pm in a row over pensions. Troops will only step in if there is a major blaze.” – The Sun (£)
“A senior Tory MP has rounded on Eric Pickles for “running roughshod over any concept of localism” after the Communities Secretary supported plans to build housing estates on greenfield land just outside the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency.” – The Times (£)
“The BBC was criticised yesterday for not describing the armed jihadists behind the Kenya shopping centre siege as terrorists. The corporation’s journalists have avoided using the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ in reports. Instead, they described the terrorists as ‘Islamist militants’ or ‘suspected Al Shabaab militants’ – and only used the word terrorist in when quoting someone else.” – Daily Mail
>Yesterday: Martin Parsons: Lessons from the Peshawar church attack: appeasing Islamism leads to more terrorism
“As the man, who had a dog, made for the controversial author, Mr McBride’s publisher, Iain Dale, grabbed hold of him and ended up on the pavement of Brighton’s promenade. Mr McBride was giving an interview about his memoirs which detail the poison at the heart of the last Labour government.” – Daily Express
>Yesterday: WATCH: Iain Dale grapples with a protester
“Controversial MEP Godfrey Bloom ‘quit’ UKIP yesterday with an extraordinary parting rant at the party and the journalist who helped bring about his downfall…In a characteristically provocative intervention he told the BBC he was now thinking of taking up shooting, adding that ‘Michael Crick might be the first cartridge, if it isn’t my own party chairman’.” – Daily Mail
>Yesterday: Mark Wallace: “Godfrey Bloom stamped on my face!” – UKIP’s growing-up process sees the end of an era