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Monday 5 July 2010

Len Freeman | 11:13 UK time, Monday, 5 July 2010

Here is Emily Maitlis with details of tonight's programme:

"A billion here a billion there - pretty soon it all adds up".

The first billion to be cut will be in the Department of Education. Another £265 million will go from the Department of Business. The budget for housing will also be badly hit.

The Treasury insists most of the cuts will be to projects that are unfunded or have not been started. Tonight, we ask what difference they will make and who will be hurt the most. We'll report from one council already cutting their spending and facing difficult choices on front line services.

We'll hear from the man who wants to lead Labour - Ed Balls - and hope to speak to the Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

Also tonight we look at the plight of modern veterans - a disproportionate number of whom find themselves with drink and substance abuse problems, often on the wrong side of the law. In a moving film we hear from Steve, Danny and others who are trying to work out where things went so wrong for them. And we hope to speak to the armed forces minister.

And if it were befitting for a deputy prime minister to publicly punch the air, this might have been the moment to do so. Nick Clegg, announcing in the Commons, the kind of constitutional reform his party's dreams are made of. We'll bring you all the detail and reaction from our political panel on the programme tonight.

Do join us at 10.30pm on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two.

Emily

From earlier

Here are some early thoughts on tonight's programme:

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander is to announce more cuts to this year's public spending - with the largest share to come from the Department for Education including the Building Schools for the Future programme.

In East Sussex today they're deciding how to implement cuts of £8.4m - the Chief Executive says "front line service impacts are unavoidable" with children's services and transport and environment taking the biggest hits. We'll be there as the council's cabinet makes its decision and we'll look at the impact of the cuts locally.

We will also have a special report on how many ex-servicemen end up in prison. Up to 8,500 veterans are thought to be in custody across the UK. Is the government doing enough to help ease servicemen back into civilian life?

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 2.

    Whilst I am for the coalition and utterly against the infantile posturing of the Labour Party who have washed their hands of responsibility for the economic crisis but will never, I believe, cleanse their consciences I worry about the impact of student loans on higher education.

    We are in a huge crisis but it seems unfair to me that graduates who have put their faith and their money in the system will now see the jobs they need to repay those loans disappear and their prospects diminish.

    That will have a knock on effect on future graduates and then the universities will probably become more dependent on foreign students whose host countries will be gradually improving their own higher education establishment with more funds.

    Are recessions not the time to invest in higher education?

    But all that said huge sums of money have to be raised and when departments are looking at cuts of 25% or greater due to the soulless Labour Party having devastated the economy everybody gets hit.

  • Comment number 3.

    On the servicemen I gather some 1500 ex-service people sleep rough on the streets of the capital each day.

    That is a huge figure and is surely why so many end up in trouble.

    Our duty of care should extend to psychological help for war veterans and genuine retraining.

    How do we pay for it?

    Keeping a small army in prison is very expensive and reducing that number will cost less and free up spaces for the more deserving.

  • Comment number 4.

    Its amazing that those on the far right don their sheep's clothing of democratic respectability but then also chip away at the democratic process and Westminster individually.

    They try to propagate discontent with the existing political structures but never identify what they would replace them with.

    That is always a tell tale sign that should lead people to ask questions about motivation and integrity.

    For instance the BNP is "not a Nazi Party" they are "modern and progressive" - its just that their members histories tend to suggest a different story.

    Democracy will always have plenty of problems but over time they will be resolved as the system corrects itself.

  • Comment number 5.

    Are the guv doing enough 2 Help EX Servicemen eh NO

    plenty of help for muppets who dont deserve it

  • Comment number 6.

    Is it Arnhem Farnam or Fleet

    I'm going Double Dutch

  • Comment number 7.

    A Pay Cut for All Public Servants who earn more than the PM
    barristers and the like No more per year than A G.P earns (i would prefer them 2 get the same as a Nurse)

    10,000 foreign prisoners in jail 38 thou per year, think Japanese Gangsta
    and boot them wasters back 2 where they came from,that would save 4 billion a year

    easy init

  • Comment number 8.

    ADVERTISING STANDARDS

    I have queried the lack of balance in advertising for military personnel before - no pictures or mention of the maimed, dying and dead.

    Now it appears I should add the risk of ending up mentally shattered, with a possibility of going to jail.

    Civilisation eh? What sort of person sends those in their care, to such a fate, for a tenuous advantage - if any? Oh yes: Maggie and Tony. Nuff sed.

    I gather Tony got another US medal and a whole heap of Dollars. Well - he never could resist meddling.

  • Comment number 9.

    almost 10% of our prison population is ex-servicemen??


    gangy: nuLabour merely continued the same policies as the Tories before them. Indeed, as it will soon be "next year", presumably they will both then start to agree entirely about the "necessary cuts", that being about the ONLY economic difference between them.



    #7: "i would prefer them 2 get the same as a Nurse".

  • Comment number 10.

    given the military take 6months to 1 year training people to break the norms of society [ie kill] why is it not assumed it might take the same amount of training to put them back into society?

    they have been brainwashed into a culture of macho violence and praised for being violent and aggressive now they have to be brainwashed out of it.

    they have made the physical trip to civvy street but not the mental one and from the numbers breaking down its clear they have no idea how to do it?

    so instead of a plan to fix it [the uk has no society building science] you get the wheel scene dialogue of despair from midnight express

    ..Where are you going? Why don't you walk the wheel with us? Oh! I know. The bad machine doesn't know that he's a bad machine. You still don't believe it. You still don't believe you're a bad machine? The factory knows, that's why they put you here. You'll see... You'll find out... In time, you'll know....

  • Comment number 11.

    ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to publish salaries in three bands: Incredible, Unbelievable, Graham Norton

    [from newsbiscuit]

  • Comment number 12.

    POINT WELL MADE JAUNTY (#10)

    Another angle to consider, I suppose, is the possibility of pre-existing 'psychology'.
    Maybe some simply DELAY criminal behaviour, by being constrained in a service environment. Not too difficult to argue that a tendency to hurt Johnnie Foreigner, and to hurt Charlie Indigene, might be close cousins.

    And let's not forget we are the Alcohol Capital of the Western world.

  • Comment number 13.

    12

    if people are bad machines then its a bad factory that made them? but then choosing the good is an 'oppression' and challenges the marxist materialist supremacy. they don't mind if people are bad machines just so long as everyone are 'equally' bad machines. It would be 'unfair' if there was a policy to make good machines if not everyone could be a good machine etc

  • Comment number 14.

    prinCessPit of darkness mandy bringing out a book...Torture...I'd rather reed A telling bone dierecTory

  • Comment number 15.

    THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DAVE AND NICK

    Dave KNOWS (in his delusion) he is a giant among men, while poor Nick just wants to be one. It is so reminiscent of the Owen and Steel show. Right from the arm-and-back-patting-contest, on the steps of No10, it was obvious who dominates.

    Anything Dave gifts to NIck will have magic string tied to it. YANK!

    You broke the Third Rule Nick.

  • Comment number 16.

    after Cleggs performance in the House today it is all looking rather fraught indeed one would suppose that the wheels are coming off the coalition bus....pip pip...

  • Comment number 17.

    #10 Jaunty

    Just wonder if it is ever truly possible to unlearn that which has been learned and instilled. Perhaps some control can be exercised to the instincts and newly honed skills. Whether such control/constraints will be strong enough to hold them remains to be seen.

    #8 Barriesingleton
    Was there not a few years back a spoof recruitment poster something along the lines of....

    Join the army, learn new skills, travel to far off exotic lands, meet wonderful interesting people.............. and kill them!

  • Comment number 18.

    17

    lots of evidence that people can reskill even late in life?

    the military training has to take away personal responsibility so people obey orders without thought [even for one's life]

    if you take such people out of that environment of orders into one where there are no orders some are lost. So one either can give them a set of orders to obey [this would be seen as an 'oppression' in our society] and or you rebuild the personal responsibility.

    there could also be programs to deal with adrenalin addiction and deep shock such as work at detox centres.

    the one problem it might be hard to overcome is that people who have been through near death experiences tend to see this society as mainly made up with people occupied with the shallow, venal and trivialities. This is a true appraisal so one does not need to be cured from that view.

    the best people to carry out such retraining would be ex military who, themselves, have successfully made the mental trip back to civvy st and so know the 'bridges'.

  • Comment number 19.

    Channel 4 still can't bring itself indicate that those arrested, in London, for the myurder of Zac Olumegbon, are black. Tell me, how does keeping this fact from the public (including the black population) solve the problem of 'black-on-black' crime? What problem does the omission solve? Are we likely to spontaneously become racist were we to learn the colour of the victims and perpetrators? How are black people to do something about violent crime in their midst - for we are told solutions to communities' problems must come from within - if the loony-lefties pretend it doesn't exist, out of a misguided sense of political correctness?

    Left-wing thinking is a wonder to medical science. A disorder of some type, perhaps.
    ..................

    In its increasing and desperate appeal to the yoof audience, the Channel 4 News crew appears to believe it is responsible for the stay of execution of 6music - a station that wasn't ever to be closed.
    .....................

    Hands up who thinks Jon Snow wants P.R. in a British General Election and has an ever-so-slight dislike of the Conservative party?

  • Comment number 20.

  • Comment number 21.

    19

    the fairness agenda [ie materialist marxism] is a fairness without good. A thief is fair if he robs everyone regardless of race colour or creed but there is no good in that fairness yet he would tick all the boxes of the state marxist philosophy.

    the fairness the media happily gang bang us with is such a fairness without good. The 'fairness-ites' would rather commit injustice upon many than give up their addictions to the false belief that 'fairness' is the highest idea of the mind.

    at its heart the fairness without good agenda is a crippling cowardice that fails to choose the good as the highest idea of the mind. It is like the citizens of a town in a western who let the bandit 'sheer them like sheep' just for a quiet life and don't support the sheriff [the good] who is hung out to dry.

    for a journalist keeping out facts because of fear would be cowardice?

  • Comment number 22.

    #17

    instincts in full swing, Brightyangthing, (^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)

  • Comment number 23.

    #20

    what of it? what is it that you're trying to say?

  • Comment number 24.

    FOR BYT:
    (^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)(^_^)

  • Comment number 25.

  • Comment number 26.

    #18

    Left-sing dabbling im 'science' is based on false/fake policies and therefore reminas CARP.

  • Comment number 27.

    just watching newsnight again and I can't help but notice Olly Grender can never get in a word in edge ways. It's very painful to watch! Can we have some better moderation?

  • Comment number 28.

    Just watched Michael Gove on Newsnight - never seen such contemptuous, supercilious, arrogant display by a politician since the darkest days of the Thatcher years (on yer bike etc.) - but Norman Tebbit wasn't even as cooly superior as this lot - here we go, spiralling into economic disaster, and they just sneer, blaming everyone except the true culprits - banks, big business, market forces.

  • Comment number 29.

    struggle@19
    Jon Snow is a hateful Lib. And thats the main reason why i don't watch C4 news. When you think of it, Jon Snow presenting a news programme is as bad as having Nick Griffin presenting a news programme; both are just wrong...although push come to shove, I'd have to watch the 'Griffin show' as I do have difficulty listening to sanctimonious out-of-touch libs.

    struggle, you wrote this:
    "Channel 4 still can't bring itself (to) indicate that those arrested, in London, for the myurder of Zac Olumegbon, are black"

    well thats a given. With C4, what you do is listen to the report, if they don't give a name, you can hazard a guess whats going on; oh what a surprise, the perp was a black fella, but C4 left us in the dark on that one. Anything that shows failings in the dream of the rainbow world the good folk at C4 live in is generally ignored, skirted around etc..the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ are mustard at this as well. Look at the money they have spent on courses over the years regarding messing with facts and how to inform without targeting minorities or highlighting a racial trait such as young blacks carry guns like the rest of us carry phones.

    Watching C4 and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is like playing a puzzle game - an easy puzzle game, filling in the blanks once used to be fun but because the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and C4 are becoming an irrelevant news outlet - you can get more factual news via your laptop and without the BS added - I find them tedious to watch. I will have NN on but I'll be more focused on independent news outlets from the web, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is background white noise for the simple folk.
    And that's saying summit because I'm quite thick meself.

  • Comment number 30.

    if radio 6 is so successful then the private sector can run it for a profit? given its record companies lobbying for it then they can pay for it? why should the public subsidise them? Its not like there is a shortage of space on the web to run a radio station?

  • Comment number 31.

    How far out of touch are politicians. They have just cut 54 Billion off building new schools, put countless public and private sector people out of work, Project managers, carpenters, bricklayers, Architects, ect ect and all they are bothered about is proportional representation!!! I agree BSF needed some slimming by removing the beaurocracy but cutting the program altogether no only puts us back into recession and keeps us there as future generations are not equip to build a strong economy. God help us all. But cutting the program altogether no only puts us back into recession and keeps us there as future generations are not equip to build a strong economy. God help us all. Oh and do we need a 10million visit by the pope?

  • Comment number 32.

    How far out of touch are politicians. They have just cut 54 Billion off building new schools, put countless public and private sector people out of work, Project managers, carpenters, bricklayers, Architects, ect ect and all they are bothered about is proportional representation!!! I agree BSF needed some slimming by removing the beaurocracy but cutting the program altogether no only puts us back into recession and keeps us there as future generations are not equip to build a strong economy. God help us all. Oh and do we need a 10million visit by the pope? I suppose he can ask god for new schools and jobs….

  • Comment number 33.

    :o) Absolutely LOVED my favourite trio of Danny/Olly/Peter with Emily tonight - pity we didn't have more time! Excellent report by Liz on the soldiers who have been grossly let down after serving the country. I hope the government really do help the soldiers.

  • Comment number 34.

    "legacy, Legacy, L-E-G-A-C-Y!!!"

    M. Gove: part of the fault for the deficit does indeed lay with the nuLabour Govt, and its disastrous 'deregulation' of the Finance sector. In that, you are right they are responsible for the financial situation of the Nation.

    BUT YOU WERE THE OFFICIAL OPPOSITION THE WHOLE TIME!!!!!


    now you want to cut social spending in the UK, in favour of lower taxes on the rich and multi-nationals? You want to harm the investment into our future that Education is, you will force also cuts in spending on the services that prevent children becoming a future Law and Order burden?

    no wonder you are making it easier for middle-class parents to "opt-out" with financial help from the State (a further future drain on regular State school's budgets!), you are knowingly trying to turn State schools into a living hell, and where some kind of reintroduced 11+ separates those from privileged backgrounds to have a superior and further education.


    balls is finally starting to look like a semi-competent Cabinet member!

    -------
    "The Gerrymandering Attempt"

    ridiculous! - If the Govt falls after losing a vote of no confidence, then WHY would it NEED a further two weeks to rule, without permission from Parliament?

    professor bogdanro: i *very* much enjoyed and appreciated your comments on election night, but... what to say about your comments tonight?


    firstly, you state that "the 66% to dissolve Parliament does make Parliament stronger" - how can that **BE**???!? At the moment it only requires 50% of MPs for the Govt to resign - and for a General Election to be called by constitution. This proposed change (which won't go to the *Country* to vote for!!) VASTLY reduces power from Parliament to the Govt's benefit!

    removing the right of the Executive to order a General Election whenever it wants to is a *completely* separate issue from increasing the amount of MPs that have to rebel against the Govt, in order to call an Election - *against* the Dictatorship's wishes.

    professor, these are basic mistakes. If i am wrong, would you please explain where?

  • Comment number 35.

    here's the sad thing about the cuts in the Capital (building) budgets in Education - if those investment monies went to small and medium sized local building cooperatives, instead of the huge tax-avoiding corporations, then they would have generated local growth and employment, and with the higher incomes of the work-force (and probably higher standard of quality!) there would have been more economic activity in total in the area. In fact, that kind of investment tends to repay the investment and over.

    *But we are arguing about decent schools for our future generations!!*

    Even though much of the Capital projects went to friendly donator corporations, AT LEAST those schools got built!

    labour hand the money to tax-avoiding corporations, tories have cut the spending and building altogether.

    who *cares* what the LibDem policy ...was.


    none of them are willing to invest in small locally owned companies, the *exact ones* that create growth and employment in an area. And is *every* Tory now going to parrot that meaningless phrase "Labour's Legacy"?

    it is SO *lovely* they are showing they all agree! Word for word for word for word for word...

  • Comment number 36.

    just watched the veteran's report, thank you newsnight. They are our soldiers, and they deserve better. ♥

  • Comment number 37.

    the peice on Pauline Manefane was beautiful!! x

  • Comment number 38.

    #18 jaunty: ex-servicepeople often tend to work best working together in a cooperative enviornment. Some characteristics of military training can rub other people up, just as "shallow, venal and trivialities" can annoy the service-personnel.

    that can function as a part-way house, as they reintegrate into civilian life. Plus, they would work, and get paid salaries in a supportive structure that can help with personal finance, if they need it.


    maybe buiding new schools?


    ---

  • Comment number 39.

    #26 addendum

    And if looked by lawyers, I'm sure would be considered illegal. I'd be more than happy to help them in their invesigations!!!!

  • Comment number 40.

    btw, despite yesterday's music video, i'm not actually an anarchist - more of a Social Democrat, ...or 'techno-Hippy'.

    cracking tune though, isn't it? ;)


    i still believe in Parliamentary Democracy, despite not really seeing anyone i would vote for (bit of a problem there!), and it needs saying - these changes in the electoral reform Bill can only erode the legitimacy or Parliament even more.

    it is clear gerrymandering (which will also help the Tories under the AV system!), it is blatantly a shift of power from our elected representatives to an unaccountable Govt, it is a sly and corrupt attempt to manipulate Public opinion to get what they want, whilst offering AT MOST a new electoral system that with their other changes will benefit them most anyway!

    and the truly foxy element of all this? It will be that they get the LibDims to vote for electoral reforms they rightly sneered at before the election, whilst the tories can pretend not to want AV - and the price for this Benevolent Gift to the LibDims Coalition Pawdners, is that the LibDim Pawdners allow through - even vote for! - measures that would be utterly abhorent to them if they had the slightest shred of self-respect and dignity of their beliefs.

    pretty clever politicking by the Tories.

  • Comment number 41.

    #39 addendum

    Such lawyers would not only earn their usual fees, which I understand are not insubstanial, but might also be hailed as HEROES by the grateful Nation, never mind myself.

  • Comment number 42.

    In the most significant left wing 'scientific experiments' it's a lot to do with imitation, for lack of truly artistic creativity and imagination, as well as attempt at deprivation of any form of human dignity and freedom. Balls? And I'm convinced that it's being aided by the current equivalent of the former KGB. By Russians anyway and the greedy all over the place. Ir's also motivated largely by jealousy and a feeling of inadequacy.

    If it was only myself that was affected then perhaps I wouldn't have even dreamed of bringing into the public eye but it's not only me, is it?

    I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that it is on the globally scaled abuse and should be dealt with, in my opinion, ASAP.

    mim

  • Comment number 43.

    WOULDN'T TONY HAVE BEEN A LITTLE CHEAPER AND JUST AS PIOUS?

    The visit of the Pope must have the Smash Potato aliens ROFL themselves to complete metal fatigue.

    If this is how advanced nations spend their time and money, how the xxxx do we define PRIMITIVE?

    Apparently Gove wants to promote deep thought among our young. Well you can start right here, Priggy Boy - no better example of non-thought than mindless Papery.

    Oh - it's all going awfully well.

  • Comment number 44.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 45.

    29 oh Yes U cant call A ShoveAll A shovel or was it A Spoon, lefTie LOON/z

    u may offend an idiot

  • Comment number 46.

    The CamerOnion mag 2 grid getting rid of 50 mp's not enough must try harder

  • Comment number 47.

    Gripe about publicking great ringfenced pensions

    the private sector took a hit in the Far East MarkIt then anderson accounting among others gave U.S. A hit in the west, result private pensions worth Zilch

    bent accounting
    accenture what does that MEAN

    the private,s have 2 make up the public shortFall.........Nice

    i have 65 quid in my private pension sussed it 15yers ago it was all a big Con

  • Comment number 48.

    post 44 balls

  • Comment number 49.

    SINCERITY WITHOUT EYE-CONTACT

    How impressive to watch Obama and Netanyahu pledging themselves to their boots.

    Would it not be better if their union WERE breakable? That would mean they were in the real world, and that they had to work at it.

    What a load of phoney window-dressing.

  • Comment number 50.

    Michael Gove is the most loathed politician on earth....official

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