Angela Smith has today celebrated the help given to carers and parents in making sure our children get a 'Sure Start' to their lives. In these difficult times it is important carers and parents get as much help as possible to make sure children get a good start. Luckily for kids these days' carers and parents have lots of help. With the introduction of the government's highly successful Children's centres many local areas in north Sheffield and Barnsley have expert help readily available. Also with tax credits and nursery vouchers many young mums can now return to work in the knowledge their young children are being well looked after and learning new skills. On top of this new mums are entitled to 9 months maternity leave, which helps build that all important bond with their new babies. For instance Rebecca Reynolds, whose son, Harry is pictured with Angela, said: “My new baby is due at the end of April this year. I will be taking the full nine months paid maternity leave as I did with my first child, Harry who is now 2 years old. Having nine months off with my baby is so important.

• Osborne under pressure to detail how he’ll pay for “promises he can’t afford”
  George Osborne today walked naked into a press conference to trumpet Tory plans to reverse Labour's National Insurance increases, without explaining where the £6billion will be found to pay for it if they win the general election. Claims that unidentified "efficiency savings" could be found to pay for the tax cut was immediately attacked by the Chief secretary to the treasury, Liam Byrne: "Two months ago the Tories told us that not doing more on the deficit was 'moral cowardliness'. Since then, they've repeated promises for married couples, pledged tax give-aways for the richest estates and promised to sell off the banks at a 'discount' rate - rather then getting taxpayers' money back. "And just last week they were implying billions extra to increase personal allowances. They have entirely lost sight of cutting the deficit. Rather than making more promises he can't afford, the test for George Osborne is to tell people how he'll pay for the ones he's got." The Conservatives will be praying that their friends in the media will skip questions about where the money's coming from, but it didn't take long for the Evening Standard's Paul Waugh to throw George Osborne's own words back at him, recalling that the shadow chancellor said: "If you want to cut taxes you can't simply rely on more buoyant tax revenues, you can't simply rely on cutting red tape, you've got to look for real areas where you can reduce demands on the state." Read the full article.
• Tories ’sack’ ad agency as poll gap shrinks to 2 per cent
  Labour are bracing themselves for an increasingly personal attack on Gordon Brown after polls suggest that the Tory poll lead is withering nationally and they are behind Labour in the key marginal seats. As the Evening Standard reports today, desperate Tories have effectively sacked the advertising agency behind the ridiculed 'airbrushed' posters of Cameron and called in Margaret Thatcher's favourite advertising men instead: "Mr Cameron signalled a change of gear by hiring the Saatchi brothers' creative team, who were behind the Labour Isn't Working slogan that helped carry Baroness Thatcher to victory in 1979 and other aggressive campaigns. They also came up with the Labour's Tax Bombshell poster for the successful 1992 campaign and the infamous Demon Eyes poster in 1997 which portrayed Tony Blair with satanic eyes." Labour's election co-ordinator, Douglas Alexander, recently told LabourList: "This election will be won by people, not posters." Read the full article.
• Tories rush to fix unhealthy website bought from US right wingers
  With tired hacks regurgitating clichés explaining why online campaigning won't make much difference to the forthcoming election, and that attempts to copy President Obama's successful Internet campaign are doomed to failure, you might be forgiven for thinking that British political parties wouldn't be spending too much effort online. You would be wrong, of course, but the Conservatives' latest attempt to mobilise support online - cash-gordon.com - has today badly backfired after the Political Scrapbook blog revealed that the Tory's new website was bought "off the shelf" from right wing American lobbyists opposed to President Obama's healthcare plan. That Cameron's Conservatives think it's okay to link up with friends of Tory MEP Dan Hannan, who called the NHS "a sixty year mistake", is worrying enough, but by lunchtime today the site had effectively been taken over by anti-Conservative messages after it was discovered that tweets using #cashgordon were reproduced on the site's front page, irrespective of their content. To make matters worse, it was soon revealed that the same error also allowed malicious code to be injected into the site, meaning that pornographic images were displayed before any visitor was promptly redirected to a porn site. All this activity soon pushed #cashgordon to the top of the UK twitter charts, something Conservative bloggers at first claimed was a success for the Tories, but is best described as an epic fail. If the Tories can't run a website, how do you think they'll run the country? The Shadow Cabinet is marked by the fact that it's got a lot of millionaires, but the least experience ever.
• Boris misleads Londoners about ticket office closures
  Today, at Mayor's Questions, Boris Johnson claimed that no ticket offices will close, but this document [pdf] shows that claim is untrue. Several will close, several others will close for most of the week, and many more will see their hours of operation severely cut. It is a clear example from London of broken Tory promises and how the Conservatives cannot be relied on with our public services. Labour's Navin Shah AM said: "Boris Johnson misled Londoners today when he told the Assembly that no ticket offices will close under his programme of ticket office cuts that constitute one of his biggest broken election promises. Documents released today show he was not telling truth. Several ticket offices will close, others will close for most of the week and large numbers of offices will see their opening hours drastically cut. Nearly five hundred ticket office staff will be lost under these Conservative cuts and many stations will feel less safe and less friendly as a result of this broken election pledge. "Nearly two years in Londoners are entitled to ask what the mayor is delivering. It shows our public services are not safe with the Tories." Boris Johnson's time as London's Mayor has been marked by a series of broken promises, some details of which are available here and here.
• Viewers turned off by soft-soap Cameron
  David Cameron's super-soft interview with ITV's Sir Trevor McDonald flopped last night after it was revealed that the programme was watched by fewer than HALF those who tuned in to Piers Morgan's chat with Gordon Brown last month. The Prime Minister's prime time talk was viewed by more than 4 million, despite being criticised by some for concentrating on the personal rather than political side of Mr Brown. David Cameron last night hit back with a similar interview, but failed to even get close to the PM's viewers. Just 1.7 million bothered to watch the show. The Tory leader's error is that viewers have decided that they know enough about David Cameron, the man, but not enough about what he stands for. Gordon Brown however has a history of being guarded about his personal life and viewers were eager to learn more about him as a husband and father, as well as leader of the country. The Media Guardian has more.
• Labour releases powerful film on Conservative crime choices
  Labour today renewed its call for voters to look again at Conservative policy, releasing a powerful critique of their crime choices. The professionally produced film controversially spends much of its 2 minute and twenty seconds focused on a man AGREEING with Tory crime policy. But Labour's not going soft on Cameron, far from it, this is a very strong film which packs a punch. Launching the film, Alan Johnson, Labour's Home Secretary, said: "I am urging people today to take a long hard look at the Tories' policies on crime and particularly the fact that they would make it harder for the police to use DNA to catch criminals. Our hard hitting short film exposes how weak the Tories are when it comes to fighting crime." Watch the film on YouTube.

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