Published on
24 June 2011
Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has given a revealing interview to The Sunday Telegraph on the place of religious belief in Britain today. Despite being billed as ‘a wide-ranging intervention into the growing debate on the place of religion in modern society’, and in spite of starting by making […]
Published on
17 June 2011
Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Education, Public Policy
A question for readers: what is the difference between a Free School, an Academy, and a Swedish School? No, it is not that the latter boasts clog-shod teachers trained in ABBA dance routines, but that they are simply different names for what is essentially the same idea, introduced by the previous Labour Government, and extended […]
Published on
13 June 2011
Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Christianity, Conscience, Ethics in the Media, Religion
As a Catholic and an Englishman I have never quite understood the enthusiasm of some of my European co-religionists for the idea that there must be strict separation between state and Church, and have often thought that the amusement to be derived from watching indignant Frenchmen flail their arms around indignantly about Bishops sitting in […]
Published on
25 May 2011
Posted in British Politics, Ethics in the Media, Freedom, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Virtue
If we were to be given £1 for every time we had heard the admonition not to ‘tell tales’ during our schooldays, there might be few people who would need to work for a living. Yet the recent furore over so-called ‘super-injunctions’ taken out by celebrities to prevent details of their private lives being revealed […]
Published on
10 May 2011
Posted in British Politics, Civil Liberties, World Affairs
The Scottish National Party (SNP) have won a clear majority in elections to the devolved Edinburgh legislature, and will become the first party ever to form a majority government through it – a remarkable result given that the Scottish Parliament uses a system designed in part to prevent the election of majority governments. Considering that […]
Published on
21 April 2011
Posted in Big Society, British Politics
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 […]
Published on
15 April 2011
Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Political Economy, Public Policy
‘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 […]
Published on
11 April 2011
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 […]