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Jamie Oliver’s super-sized obesity claims
As leaders of the world convene in New York for the UN’s annual assembly, Jamie has thrown his Food Revolution under their noses. But is he right that obesity kills more than under-nutrition? FactCheck investigates.
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Cameron gets his police figures back to front
“We can only assume this was a slip of the tongue, rather than an attempt to mislead the House…”
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Cameron slips up on employment figures
The PM battled to explain the grim news today that unemployment has suffered its largest quarterly increase in two years, jumping by 80,000 between May and June. As he looked to private sector jobs growth for salvation, Mr Cameron was lambasted by Ed Miliband who said: “His claim, and the Chancellor’s central claim – that you can cut the public sector and the private sector would make up the difference – isn’t happening.” Who’s right?
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50p tax rate may be losing government money
The top rate of income tax may not be raising any revenue for the government and could even be losing it money, a think tank is warning.
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Are the Tories gerrymandering the election boundaries?
Calls for political reform spun out of the expenses scandal of 2009 and hurtled towards last year’s general election, with all three major parties promising change in their manifestos. Labour proposed a non-partisan parliamentary boundary review that would look at the rules for the redistribution of seats, as well as an Alternative Vote (AV) referendum. Its manifesto said: “The cost of politics to the taxpayer must be minimised but we reject using this as an excuse to gerrymander constituency boundaries in the interest of one political party.” The Tories meanwhile championed a 10 per cent cut in the number of MPs, while the Lib Dem manifesto stated that it would making voting fairer by introducing Single Transferable Vote (STV) for elections, the number of MPs could be cut from 650 to 500. We’ve already said no to AV, so now it’s down to the boundary changes to kick start reform. But is it fair, or are the Tories manipulating the system?
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The Met’s bombshell bill for the London riots
After the funeral of Mark Duggan today, whose death sparked the riots a month ago, it is understood that police forces from Cornwall to Northumbria will finally leave the capital – ending four weeks of unprecedented extra support for the Metropolitan Police. Will the government pay up, or will the police foot the bill? FactCheck investigates.
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No room for complacency on homelessness
Homelessness figures are still low compared to the high they reached in 2003 – but they’re already climbing sharply.
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Why less is more when taxing the super rich
Twenty leading economists have called on the government to scrap its 50p tax rate for high earners, warning that it will do “lasting damage” to the economy. Is the 50p tax rate worth it? FactCheck investigates
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Were the rioters a ‘feral underclass’?
Feral Underclass is a humdinger of a phrase from Ken Clarke, but what does it mean? Previously, David Cameron lumped the rioters together as “pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick”. And after almost a month of naming and shaming the rioters in the national press, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has released the facts. So do they deserve the stigma? FactCheck investigates.
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Nadine Dorries steps up abortion row
Nadine Dorries’ latest charge is that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s (Bpas) central London clinic only has an hour a week that it dedicates to counselling sessions. And if you can’t make that session at London’s “largest” Bpas clinic, or if it’s booked, you’ll be unceremoniously packed off to their Richmond clinic. Is she right? FactCheck investigates.
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Is Britain Nato’s top gun in Libya?
Britain “won’t be left behind” in the grab for Libyan oil contracts, William Hague said today, as world leaders flocked to Paris to plot out the new Libya. And why should we? Rumours are rife that Libya’s new government plans to hand the French the keys to 35 per cent of the country’s oil. And we’ve done just as much to help Libya as the French, haven’t we? Hmm not exactly, FactCheck discovers.
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Cutting through the rhetoric on abortion
Tory MP Nadine Dorries is leading a campaign to stop two charities from counselling women considering an abortion. Has she got her facts straight?
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How’s that riots crackdown going?
“There’s currently no legal mechanism for forcing offenders to agree to meet their victims. If the rioters don’t feel like a face-to-face showdown then, as things stand, they won’t have to do it.”
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‘It’s health and safety gone mad’
‘The “health and safety gone mad” story has become such a newspaper favourite that it’s not a great surprise to discover that sometimes the facts haven’t been allowed to get in the way of a good headline.’
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Will prisons in England and Wales burst at the seams?
“The powder-keg potential of the situation is clear to voices from inside the prison system – rapidly rising numbers of new inmates, many of them vulnerable first-timers thrown in with serving prisoners, some members of street gangs whose violent rivalries will continue on the inside.”