Published on
31 October 2011
From a Guest Blogger: And so we enter another week of the ‘OccupyLSX’ protest outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Once again the protest is in the headlines as not only Dr. Giles Fraser but also the Dean Graeme Knowles have resigned their posts. Meanwhile ‘evil’ capitalists are still beavering away just as ‘feckless’ protestors […]
Published on
21 October 2011
Posted in British Politics, Human Life, Public Policy, Social Commentary
The Intergenerational Foundation, a Think-tank that ‘promote(s) fairness between generations’, has just launched a press release headed 25 Million Unoccupied Bedrooms. It claims that ‘each generation should pay its own way’, and that ‘British policy-makers have given undue advantages to the older generation at the expense of younger and future generations’. The press release promotes […]
Published on
12 October 2011
Posted in British Politics, Public Policy, Social Commentary
Last week saw the end of the Conservative Party Conference, the last of the three major party conferences. The usual practice at such events is that leaders seek to inspire party activists and to unveil strategies for electoral success. Such strategies can often be captured by a catchy phrase or term. One such is the […]
Published on
21 September 2011
The Government is currently undertaking a consultation about the National Policy Framework for house-building. The aim is to simplify the policies binding local councils and house-builders. The responses of groups such as the National Trust, Woodland Trust and Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have – predictably – been negative. The National Trust is […]
Published on
7 September 2011
Posted in Abortion, British Politics, Human Life, Public Policy
The amendment tabled by MPs Nadine Dorries and Frank Field to the Health and Social Care Bill has provoked much media controversy. It would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that this one amendment, among the hundreds proposed, has come altogether to dominate coverage. To a casual reader of the amendment as tabled it is […]
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
10 June 2011
Posted in Culture, Europe, Marriage & Family, Moral Philosophy, Public Policy, Social Commentary, Virtue, World Affairs
‘We live in an age of growing self-indulgence, of hardening materialism and of falling moral standards… When we see around us the havoc which has been wrought, above all among the children, by the breakup of homes, we can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in […]
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 […]