A Blog for all seasons

4 May
2011

‘The Science of Justice’

Posted in Recommended Links

A piece of advice to all readers: before going to court, make sure the judge has been fed. Click here to read more.

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21 April
2011

From Red Tory to Blue Labour

Recent years have seen interesting developments in political thought. Two years ago, Phillip Blond wrote an article for Prospect magazine – ‘The Rise of the Red Tories’ – calling for a new brand of ‘civic conservatism’ which would be ‘socially conservative but sceptical of neoliberal economics’. He criticised the big market vs. big state dichotomy […]

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19 April
2011

Time For a Better Financial Stability Mechanism

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has this last weekend called for a better plan to be drawn up to deal with government debts in Europe, and has criticised responses to individual crises so far which threaten to undermine investor confidence there. As Britain prepares for a referendum on its voting system […]

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15 April
2011

A Privatisation Too Far?

‘A privatisation too far’. Many would be surprised to know how Margaret Thatcher reportedly viewed the idea of privatising British Rail. Although the Thatcher administration privatised much of the national industrial infrastructure, British Rail was finally sold off by her successor, John Major. The mania for privatisation even saw Britain’s first private prison open its […]

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13 April
2011

Egypt, Tunisia, and the Failure of Neoclassical Economic Theory

‘The regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia have been hailed as victories for democracy, as proof of the liberalizing power of social networking media, as testimony to the power of nonviolent political action. All of that they may indeed be; but the events in Egypt and Tunisia also illustrate a major defect in our economic […]

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11 April
2011

No to AV: The Case Against Electoral Reform

Posted in British Politics

The second of our two-part series looking at issues surrounding the UK-wide referendum on the electoral system on 5 May 2011. The first part, Yes to AV: The Case For Electoral Reform, can be found here. Sir John Stokes, known for his robust views, once said that there ‘is no better qualification for a minister […]

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8 April
2011

Yes to AV: The Case For Electoral Reform

Posted in British Politics

The first of a two-part series looking at issues surrounding the UK-wide referendum on the electoral system on 5 May 2011. The second part, No to AV: The Case Against Electoral Reform, has now been published and can be found here. As a Cornishman I am sometimes tempted to feel sorry for supporters of the […]

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6 April
2011

Britain on the Brink: What has Christian Faith to Do with Essential Values?

‘How is it that England, and then Britain, has actually become a nation? And the answer clearly is that, where the observer sees warring tribes, petty kingdoms, years of feuding and so forth, the cohesion first given to England came out of the arrival of the Christian Faith and the organisation that it brought  . […]

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