13,787 source-backed politics facts - each attributed to a named person and a number, linked to the original source. Page 132 of 138.
“the party treasurer, Ian Blackford, has been suspended.”
“Margo MacDonald, the heroine of the Govan by-election in the 1970s, was carpeted for alleged indiscipline and all sorts of dire punishments loomed. But after pressure from the back benches, she got a severe censure.”
“But dafter things were to come. In a poorly researched attempt to deflect the stream of negativity, the SNP wheeled out a photogenic new recruit. Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh defected from the Scottish Tories, but it turned out that not only had s…”
“she had also been a member of the Labour Party five years before.”
“but also there are rumours that candidates are proving difficult to find.”
“The 2001 census will include a question on religion, which means our religious identity, the only identity that matters to us, will be officially acknowledged.”
“Five years ago, under the auspices of the multi-faith Religious Affiliation Group, a campaign was launched to include a question on religious affiliation in the 2001 census.”
“The Census Amendment Bill has just been given its second reading”
“It took more than 460 years to unpick the Act of Union of England and Wales and acknowledge Welsh identity.”
“Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has ruled there unopposed for 20 years, and is fielding as its parliamentary candidate one of the most powerful and feared men in the country, “Hitler” Hunzvi.”
“a pact Yeltsin had spent more than six years failing to push through the legislature.”
“when we look at Russia today . . . we see an economy that is growing . . . we see a Russia that has just completed a democratic transfer of power for the first time in a thousand years.”
“In 1995, on the eve of presidential elections”
“I cannot say I am an absolutely honest man, nor can any person who survived in this country before 1985, or who built great things after 1985.”
“Seventy years ago, R H Tawney identified what he saw as Labour’s gravest weakness”
“Lord Falconer must be panting at the sheer nerve it takes to deprive community schemes of £29m in order to save “face”.”
“In January and February this year, the Helen Suzman Foundation carried out the first national opinion survey in Zimbabwe for many years. The results, garnered from 1,000 rural and 900 urban households, were striking – 65 per cent wanted Mu…”
“69 per cent said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the government;”
“only 35 per cent wanted Zanu-PF to continue in power;”
“and 68 per cent lacked confidence that the government was telling the truth.”
“Overwhelmingly, voters blamed the government not only for the wretched state of the economy, but also for its failure to solve the land question: 55 per cent wanted things to stay just as they were on the land, leaving the white farmers in…”
“80 per cent said it was not sensible to blame the whites for the country’s problems.”
“55 per cent wanted things to stay just as they were on the land, leaving the white farmers in place,”
“while a further 13 per cent actually thought that white farmers who had left should be invited back.”
“The survey showed Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) lagging behind Mugabe by 30 per cent,”
“but half of the electorate either refused to answer or were undecided.”
“The Helen Suzman Foundation survey found that only 30 per cent of people felt they could criticise the governme”
“Bill Clinton, who recently hot-footed it to Russia, offered the equally sunny appraisal that “when we look at Russia today . . . we see an economy that is growing . . . we see a Russia that has just completed a democratic transfer of power…”
“The results, garnered from 1,000 rural and 900 urban households, were striking – 65 per cent wanted Mugabe to step down right away; 69 per cent said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the government; only 35 per cent wanted Z…”
“The survey showed Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) lagging behind Mugabe by 30 per cent, but half of the electorate either refused to answer or were undecided.”
“Whereas Mugabe endlessly harped on the land question and inveighed against whites, the survey showed that only 9 per cent thought the land question was the most important issue, compared to 76 per cent who placed economic issues first; 80 …”
“The Helen Suzman Foundation survey found that only 30 per cent of people felt they could criticise the government without fear of violence.”
“In January and February this year, the Helen Suzman Foundation carried out the first national opinion survey in Zimbabwe for many years.”
“the ordinary Zimbabweans, hard-pressed as they are, will find the courage on 24 and 25 June to vote for a different future.”
“A mere 34 per cent of the electorate voted.”
“from 47 per cent to 70 per cent.”
“The best monthly figure this year [1999] by Capita, according to official Lambeth and Capita information, was October at 55 per cent and, according to official Lambeth information, the average since the financial year started in April has …”
“The result of the bus tycoon Brian Souter’s privately funded referendum showed 28 per cent of Scots voters were against the repeal of Clause 28. More than a million – an important headline-grabbing landmark number – stirred themselves to f…”
“the public and press were barred from its meetings – indeed, they did not know that the group existed, let alone where and when it met. Deals were cut in private. Councillors excluded from the governing clique were bullied or squared befor…”
“An average council has between 50 and 60 members.”
“A mere ten will be in the cabinet.”
“In 1960, the young Margaret Thatcher promoted a private member’s bill that allowed the public and media access to council committees.”
“Pilot tests of closed cabinet government have proved so unpopular in Islington and Brighton that they have been suspended in the former and abandoned in the latter.”
“The New Local Government Network was founded in 1996 and has since become one of the most powerful lobbying groups around.”
“as the front page of its shiny Network News drooled in December last year, cabinet members need “not necessarily be drawn from the [elected] council”.”
“They receive quarterly “informal briefings from high-profile speak”
“Gordon Brown has been aware of the work we’ve been doing for a number of years.”
“the Supreme Court after five years of struggle.”
“About a week after the article appeared, I received a call from a man who introduced himself as the Israeli consul general in Toronto, Meir Romem.”
“A couple of days later, I got another call, from Paul Michaels of the Canada-Israel Committee in Toronto.”
“May 1997 was a spectacular win for Labour in Battersea”
“signed by more than 160 people and published on 3 May”
“He dates the decline in morale to the beginning, 12 years ago, of the intifada”
“over 20 years”
“18 years of Tory misrule”
“first Labour government in 20 years had been elected”
“16 in total”
“first birthday”
“for a hundred years”
“three separate committees”
“for a year”
“Most civil servants, said another minister, are not interested in delivery. They like to be involved in policy-making, but delivery and measuring the success of the policies are seen to be lower-grade activities.”
“For the top 3,000 civil servants, said one influential adviser, policy development is all that matters. Implementation of policy is for the second-raters.”
“Those civil servants who are sent to the social security offices in Newcastle and Glasgow are regarded like the not very bright younger sons of families in Victorian England who were sent off to run a sheep farm in Australia.”
“the half-hearted attempt by the Home Office to keep some polling stations open for seven days during the local elections”
“a 47-page internal Home Office report”
“Sir Michael Bichard, the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education and one of the Blairites’ favourite civil servants, proposed that potential high-fliers should spend two or three years in service delivery.”
“Tony”
“Tony Blair appointed his own Policy Unit, and took Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell with him from his period as opposition leader.”
“Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Charlie Whelan accompanied Brown when he entered the Treasury and immediately started to ruffle a few official feathers.”
“Conor Ryan, a policy expert as well as someone who briefs the media, moved from opposition to government with Blunkett, as did Michael Barber, a professor at London’s Institute of Education.”
“David couldn’t have managed without those two,” said a government insider.”
“For the top 3,000 civil servants,” said one influential adviser, “policy development is all that matters. Implementation of policy is for the second-raters.”
“the half-hearted attempt by the Home Office to keep some polling stations open for seven days” during the local elections.”
“a 47-page internal Home Office report (“That’s another problem – all their reports are so damned long and wordy,” observes another ministerial critic)”
“Where one form would do, the civil servants will send out ten.”
“the burden of proof is always on those who think boldly”
“about 16 years ago”
“Its chair is Bert Massie and there are 14 other commissioners representing various interests such as the business, trade union and voluntary sectors, as well as Scotland and Wales. Ten of the commissioners are disabled.”
“The bedrock for the commission will be the controversial Disability Discrimination Act which has taken a drubbing since its enactment in 1995.”
“As president more than a quarter of a century later, and nearing the end of a seven-year term, he is now seeking re-election for the sole apparent reason, bless him, that he cannot conceive of not being there.”
“A strong prime minister – at present the confident Socialist Lionel Jospin – to direct the nation’s affairs for a limited time, working under a decision-making president with different political goals and endless years to pursue them.”
“Chirac was a political monarch until just two years into his presidency. Then he tossed away his power by dissolving parliament on a whim – a gamble that went disastrously wrong. The left-wing opposition under Jospin, unable to believe its…”
“He will be 70 when the election is held.”
“The obliging tyrannosaurus rex is Valery Giscard D’Estaing, the French president of the 1970s who failed to attract enough votes to take him beyond a single seven-year term.”
“A reduction to five years was, as it happened, on the verge of becoming law just before he took office in 1974 – and he never sought to apply the principle to himself.”
“Amazingly, considering the usual pace of French constitutional reform, it is quite likely that there will be a referendum before the year ends.”
“A five-year presidency in any form would be a mistake and I will not accept it.”
“No more 14-year reigns stretching over consecutive seven-year terms of the kind Francois Mitterrand enjoyed at the expense of France’s democratic sanity, not to mention the probity of its public life.”
“At 29, he is the second youngest Member of the Scottish Parliament”
“In the parliament’s first six months, he was said to have used the word “independence” only twice.”
“Instead of the old demand for independence negotiations as soon as the SNP won a Scottish general election, the new strategy is for a referendum of the Scottish people after an election victory.”
“the proportion of Scots casting their votes for independence has never been much more than one-third.”
“recent polls that show two-thirds of Scots want more constitutional change and that the SNP has a 33 to 37 per cent lead over Labour.”
“A 21.4 per cent swing to the SNP certainly pushed Labour into third place in the Ayr by-election this March.”
“recent polls that show two-thirds of Scots want more constitutional change”
“30 per cent want to see the monarchy abolished”
“only 58 per cent of Scots, polled in January this year, want to see the monarchy continue indefinitely”
“21 per cent would prefer to have Anne as monarch”
“only 11 per cent want Charles”
